Browsing by Subject "Witness"

This dissertation argues that, for Luke, universal witness belongs within a broader claim about the identity of Israel’s Messiah. Framed by Luke 24:46-48 (and Acts 26:22-23), the book of Acts narratively construes the unfolding universality of the Christian movement as the unfolding of the universality of Jesus’ Lordship. The “Lukan Commission,” rooted in a prophetic promise, prefigures the role of Acts in narratively unfolding the identity of Jesus as πάντων κύριος (Acts 10:36).

Universal proclamation of salvation in Acts—implicitly by Jesus and explicitly by his witnesses—narratively realizes the universality of Jesus’ Lordship. Luke’s second volume reconfigures the narrative sense of “presence” and “activity” on the basis of Jesus’ exaltation to heaven and Lordship by the Spirit (cf. 2:17-36). Especially as the “word” spreads beyond Jerusalem and the Jewish people, the Lord Jesus’ influence on the unfolding of universal witness becomes pronounced.

Though the apostles receive Jesus’ commission, their outreach is generally restricted to Jews in Jerusalem. Not until the Cornelius incident (Acts 10:1-11:18) does the universal vision of Jesus’ commission (Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8) intersect with apostolic witness, which is why Luke gives the episode almost unparalleled emphasis (cf. 11:5-17; 15:7-11). In this respect, the event proves paradigmatic for Luke’s coordination of christological identity and universal witness, establishing Jesus’ messianic identity as “Lord of all” (10:36). The full scope of Jesus’ identity is what participants in witness must discover in their encounter with the (ethnically) “other” (ἀλλόφυλος).

This theological breakthrough lies behind Paul’s outreach in the Diaspora and finds expression in the makeup of the Syrian Antioch community (11:19-26; 13:1-3), itself the basis for Paul’s outreach to Jews and Gentiles everywhere. In endorsing Antioch’s ministry, Peter, James, and the Jerusalem believers “model” for unbelieving Jews the proper interpretation of the salvation of the Gentiles in relation to Israel’s hopes (Acts 15). Jesus’ identity as universal Lord helps explain Paul’s “turn” to the Gentiles (13:46; 18:6; 28:28) less as a result of Jewish rejection than as a fulfillment of the Messiah’s work as outlined in scripture (1:8; 13:47; 26:23). The receptivity of Gentiles to Paul’s preaching provokes Paul’s Jewish audiences even as it models proper receptivity to the universality of Jesus’ Lordship. The present study confirms that for Luke mission is in part a means for expanding the witnesses’ comprehension of the scope of Jesus’ Lordship in light of God’s work among the Gentiles. Luke’s focus on the response of Jewish believers to this emerging reality in Acts reconfigures notions of χριστός in light of the (narrative) expansion of his identity as πάντων κύριος.

My subject is the redemption of profound suffering. I begin with the presumption that there is no suffering beyond the redemptive reach of God's grace. Drawing on insights from a number of academic disciplines, as well as on a wide variety of literary accounts of profound suffering, I consider the impact of the suffering of interpersonal violence on the formation of individual identity. I frame identity-formation in temporal terms, considering the impact of suffering in each temporal dimension: past, present, and future. In considering the past, I focus on the nature of memory, and argue that the memory of suffering resides in the body, soul, and mind, continually shaping the individual, and that a theological account of memory, therefore, cannot be reduced to cognitive recall. I also suggest that the integrity of the memory of suffering is often a casualty of suffering. In considering the present, I turn to an account of community which I argue is, likewise, an integral element of individual identity. I show the ways in which suffering, and the memory of suffering, continues to isolate those who have suffered. Next, I consider the future, and suggest that the anticipation of the future shapes both the memory of the past and the experience of the present. The memory of past suffering, I argue, threatens to obliterate the future in a way that can be devastating to present identity. I suggest that all three temporal dimensions are not only integral to identity but also embedded within one another. And I argue that, in light of the formative nature of suffering, the redemption of the individual necessarily includes the redemption of each temporal dimension. I suggest that there are specific ecclesial practices which develop habits of right vision, making this redemption evident such that the profound suffering of the past can be re-membered as a witness to God's redemption.

This dissertation addresses the lack of an identifiable group of World War I soldier-poets within the French literary and cultural canon. Through a study of archival matter from the period, including a survey of trench newspapers, contemporary print media, first editions, and material objects, the author concludes that one possible factor is the phenomenon of the democratization of the figure of the poet in the French trenches. The dissertation describes the groundbreaking rejection of the romantic definition of poetry as a sacred activity in favor of the view that poetry could be written by anyone, particularly those who served as witnesses on the front lines of experience. During the First World War, these common soldier-poets, later known broadly as témoins, were validated and encouraged from diverse places in French society: from the trenches where the soldiers' newspapers actively mobilized enlisted men to pick up a pen and write, to venerable institutions such as the Académie Française and Académie Goncourt which continually validated works by soldier-writers during the war years.

However, the democratization of the poet was not always openly received by established poets. Guillaume Apollinaire, who served as a soldier during First World War, struggled with how to redefine his role once he enlisted. Through close readings of a wide variety of his wartime writings, with a particular emphasis on Calligrammes (1918), the dissertation shows how this struggle dogged him until his death on November 9, 1918.

A second case is examined in the figure of Blaise Cendrars, who served in the French Foreign Legion during the war until he was seriously wounded. Through close readings of several fundamental postwar texts like La Guerre au Luxembourg (1916) and J'ai tué (1918) as well an examination of the film J'Accuse (1919), one sees how this poet resisted the idea that soldiers should become writers and how his renunciation of this double role became a crucial part of his personal mythology, helping to explain his mythologized disappearance from poetry in 1917 following the amputation of his right hand.

Through comparing the poetic careers of Apollinaire and Cendrars, two distinct responses to the question of how to witness the war emerge. Furthermore, the social phenomenon of the democratization of the poet in the trenches provides an essential backdrop to approaching wartime texts of witness, from both Apollinaire and Cendrars, as well as lesser-known writers such as René Dalize, Lucien Linais, Marc de Larreguy de Civrieux and Pierre Reverdy.

“Witness” is widely recognized as an essential descriptor of Christian life, in large part because of Jesus’ final words to his disciples Acts 1:8, and yet little agreement exists about what practices constitute Christian witness. Despite Acts’ pervasive interest in “witness” as the shape of apostolic life, no one has yet engaged its entire narrative in order to illuminate its portrait of “witness.” This dissertation fills that gap in Christian scriptural scholarship via cohesive and comprehensive narrative analysis that, following Acts’ lead, privileges a theological hermeneutical lens in order present the epistemic and political aims embedded in Acts’ vision of witness. In Acts, apostolic witness originates with God, and God’s character and power comprehensively shape witness as a communal life-pattern of integrated epistemology and politics that repudiates all forms of falsehood and violence and, instead, embraces truth, resilience, and creativity as exemplified in Jesus’ resurrection. Acts’ portrait of witness urges Christians today toward essential practices of truth telling as well as creative and resilient responses to injustice. This twofold exhortation offers both great encouragement and a strong corrective to Christians engaged in contemporary politics in the United States and beyond.