Christian Rhetoric Research Articles

Reading Asceticism: Exegetical Strategies in the Early Christian Rhetoric of Renunciation

AbstractWhen in early Christianity the ascetic body came to occupy a central discursive position, exegetes needed to find in Scripture ballast for their changing cultural project. This essay identifies three strategies by which patristic exegetes appropriated for their own purposes an apparently "underasceticized" Hebrew and early Christian past. The writings of John Chrysostom, Jerome, and Origen, respectively, provide the textual base. Chrysostom minimized the difference separating ancient Hebrew from contemporary Christian values: Hebrew patriarchs and Christian ascetics were not to be hierarchically positioned in relation to each other. Rather, "difference" and "distinction" were signalled through an exegetically established and maintained hierarchy of husband over wife. A second interpretive option, represented by Jerome, accentuated the difference between the "carnality" of the Hebrew past and the "spirituality" of the Christian ascetic present. Although Jerome rejected the charges of "Manicheanism" hurled against him, he nonetheless accorded "distinction" to the ascetics of his own day through ingenious intertextual readings of Scripture. A third exegetical model, represented by Origen, circumvented the debate over the "difference in times" by abandoning any chronological trajectory between Hebrew past and Christian present. Here it was not ascetic bodies that were distinguished from marital ones, but reason from sense, virtue from vice-a choice open to both the celibate and the married. The essay thus seeks to correlate modes of exegesis with the debates over asceticism that were prominent in early Christian writing. It also suggests the usefulness of contemporary theory for appreciating the rhetoric of these Fathers' exegesis.

Augustinian and Pauline Rhetoric in Romans Five: A Study in Early Christian Rhetoric

This study contributes to the understanding of early Christian rhetoric by focusing upon the interaction between Augustinian and Pauline rhetoric in Five. The study first examines Augustine's hermeneutic with special attention to the function of rhetoric. It then considers Augustine's interpretation of the Apostle Paul. The author establishes the significance of Romans Five in Augustine's theology and assesses the bishop's exegesis. A particular contribution of the study is the detailed analysis of Augustine's construal of Romans 5:12-21, offering a judicious critique of traditional interpretation. The conclusion provides a solution to the ongoing debate concerning the rhetorical function and argumentative structure of Romans.

Dominant and Submerged Discourses in The Life of Olaudah Equiano (or Gustavus Vassa?)

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Savior too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, There colour is a diabolic dye. Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. (Wheatley 18) Life of Olaudazh Equiano describes the enslavement of an African who eventually embraces Christianity and Englishness. current critical consensus, however, questions the seriousness of the conversion and acculturation rhetoric deployed in the narrative. Several contemporary critics, such as Valerie Smith, Chinosole, and Wilfred D. Samuels, see the Christian rhetoric as disguise, Equiano's affirmations of his acculturation as tongue-in-cheek comments, his pride in his achievements as the pride of the African warrior, and, if none of the above are true, his whole narrative as a sad example of mental colonization. I am going to question these readings which tend to downplay the importance of the conversion discourse, because they seem to be too shaped by our current values, and considerably undermine Equiano's already troubled narrative authority. Although Equiano's embrace of Christianity and Englishness is certainly not whole-hearted, it should be taken more seriously than the current critical debate seems to allow. slave narrative is no less peculiar a kind of autobiography than the institution from which, though antagonistically, it emerged. In his seminal essay on the conditions and limits of autobiography Georges Gusdorf asserts, The concern, which seems so natural to us, to turn back on one's own past, to recollect one's life in order to narrate it, is not at all universal (29). of slave narratives certainly had more reason to engage in this activity than most. public assertion of the self, to some extent a luxury for most of us, was a matter of life and death for the ex-slave, whose previous social status was in itself a denial of his selfhood. On the other hand, in spite of their more obvious motivation, the of slave narratives were inevitably in more problematic positions than the average autobiographer. Their authorial freedom was complicated by a number of special concerns, such as their serious responsibilities to a community or the expectations of a likely audience. most important complication is related to the fictional liberties the of slave narratives are (not) allowed to take. Autobiographies are never purely factual, since human memory is seldom perfect and our experience is by definition subjective. In the slave narratives, however, as James Olney points out, reflections on this subjectivity had to be rigorously suppressed, lest they further undermine the already contested authenticity and authority of the text (|I Was Born'). most important reason for the fictional element in autobiography is, after all, the nature of the enterprise: the author's attempt at reconstructing the unity of a life across time (Gusdorf 37). problems involved in the creation of this unified vision were quite different for the ex-slave narrators film they are for the mainstream autobiographer. Since normally the vantage point of the autobiography is somewhat arbitrary, the author, in order to establish the coherence of the story and the significance of the destination, has to project a linearity onto the path which leads to the moment of writing. This problem is virtually non-existent in the slave narrative, for the simple reason that the path obviously leads from slavery to freedom, and the moment of significance is the acquisition (or reacquisition) of selfhood. Yet there is diversity and sometimes incongruity which have to be unified in the slave narratives, which are not so much in the pathways of the authors lives, but rather in the available discourses, the lines of argument for and against slavery. …

Book Review: Early Christian Rhetoric and 2 Thessalonians

Book Review: Early Christian Rhetoric and 2 Thessalonians

Washington, Women and Families

A paper given at the Conference on “Issues Facing the New Administration”, Pepperdine University, January 1989. The nuclear family of much nostalgic conservative Christian rhetoric is a product of the industrial revolution making the father the absent bread winner. The family farm model where both parents shared parenting and providing roles is a better model for work patterns that enable boys and girls to relate to good role models of both genders in their childhood.

Rhetoric and Religious Experience: The Discourse of Immigrant Chinese Churches

This is a book about religious rhetoric, its cultural foundations, and its role in articulating sociocultural change and facilitating psychosocial adaptation to the demands of a new environment. It draws its inspiration from the work of F.G. Bailey, Kenneth Burke, and James Fernandez, and focuses on the ethnography of religious discourse as it relates to Chinese immigrant churches. Contents: Introduction: The Force of Words; The Arena of Religious Discourse; Orators and Audiences; The Public Discourse; Two Sermons; A Model of Chinese Christian Rhetoric and Its Origins; The Chinese Christian World View; Church Unity and Social Conflict; Personal Disorder and the Quest for Identity; Leadership and Religious Authority; and Identification and Transformation.

Christian Rhetoric in Eusebius' Panegyric at Tyre

Christian Rhetoric in Eusebius' Panegyric at Tyre

Christian Rhetoric in Eusebius' Panegyric At Tyre

Christian Rhetoric in Eusebius' Panegyric At Tyre

Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920

Charles Reagan Wilson documents that for over half a century there existed not one, but two civil religions in the United States, the second not dedicated to honoring the American nation. Extensively researched in primary sources, Baptized in Blood is a significant and well-written study of the South's civil religion, one of two public faiths in America. In his comparison, Wilson finds the Lost Cause offered defeated Southerners a sense of meaning and purpose and special identity as a precarious but distinct culture. Southerners may have abandoned their dream of a separate political nation after Appomattox, but they preserved their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition.Civil has been defined as the religious dimension of a people that enables them to understand a historical experience in transcendent terms. In this light, Wilson explores the role of religion in postbellum southern culture and argues that the profound dislocations of Confederate defeat caused southerners to think in religious terms about the meaning of their unique and tragic experience. The defeat in a war deemed by some as religious in nature threw into question the South's relationship to God; it was interpreted in part as a God-given trial, whereby suffering and pain would lead Southerners to greater virtue and strength and even prepare them for future crusades. From this reflection upon history emerged the civil religion of the Lost Cause.While recent work in southern religious history has focused on the Old South period, Wilson's timely study adds to our developing understanding of the South after the Civil War. The Lost Cause movement was an organized effort to preserve the memory of the Confederacy. Historians have examined its political, literary, and social aspects, but Wilson uses the concepts of anthropology, sociology, and historiography to unveil the Lost Cause as an authentic expression of religion. The Lost Cause was celebrated and perpetuated with its own rituals, mythology, and theology; as key celebrants of the religion of the Lost Cause, Southern ministers forged it into a religious movement closely related to their own churches.In examining the role of civil religion in the cult of the military, in the New South ideology, and in the spirit of the Lost Cause colleges, as well as in other aspects, Wilson demonstrates effectively how the religion of the Lost Cause became the institutional embodiment of the South's tragic experience.

Christian rhetoric and the western church fathers

This study investigates the attitude of four western Church Fathers toward the use of rhetoric in preaching: St. Cyprian, Arnobius, Lac‐tantius Firmianus, and St. Jerome. All pagan rhetorical principles from Corax and Empedocles of Agrigentum to Sulpicius Victor were rejected, and the classical concepts of rhetoric were inoperative during the patristic era.

Augustine and the Problem of Christian Rhetoric

Augustine and the Problem of Christian Rhetoric

Book Review: The Language of the Gospel. Early Christian Rhetoric

Book Review: The Language of the Gospel. Early Christian Rhetoric

The Parables of Jesus as Parables, as Metaphors, and as Aesthetic Objects: A Review ArticleThe Parables of Jesus. Joachim Jeremias , S. H. HookeRediscovering the Parables. Joachim Jeremias , Frank ClarkeJesus of the Parables. Eta Linnemann , John SturdyThe Language of the Gospel. Early Christian Rhetoric. Amos N. WilderLanguage, Hermeneutic, and Word of God. Robert W. FunkThe Parables. Their Literary

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Parables of Jesus as Parables, as Metaphors, and as Aesthetic Objects: A Review Article The Parables of Jesus. Joachim Jeremias , S. H. Hooke Rediscovering the Parables. Joachim Jeremias , Frank Clarke Jesus of the Parables. Eta Linnemann , John Sturdy The Language of the Gospel. Early Christian Rhetoric. Amos N. Wilder Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God. Robert W. Funk The Parables. Their Literary and Existential Dimension. Dan Otto Via, Jr. Norman PerrinNorman Perrin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 47, Number 4Oct., 1967 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/486075 Views: 49Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1967 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Dennis C. Duling Norman Perrin and the Kingdom of God: Review and Response, The Journal of Religion 64, no.44 (Oct 2015): 468–483.https://doi.org/10.1086/487168 David Tracy Metaphor and Religion: The Test Case of Christian Texts, Critical Inquiry 5, no.11 (Oct 2015): 91–106.https://doi.org/10.1086/447974

REVIEWS

REVIEWS in this articles: A Companion to Wittgenstein's‘Tractatus'. By Max Black. At the Origins of the Thomistic Notion of Man (The Saint Augustine Lecture, 1962). By Anton C. Pegis. Logique de la Foi. By Henri Bouillard. The Dynamic Element in the Church. By Karl Rahner, S.J. Translated by W. J. O'Hara. Éléments de théologie spirituelle. By Karl Rahner, S.J. De Deo Trino, I: Pars Dogmatica; II: Pars Systematica. By Bernard Lonergan, S.J. The Sources of Acts. By Jacques Dupont. Early Christian Rhetoric. By Amos N. Wilder. Saint Dominic and His Times. By M. H. Vicaire, o.p. Translated by Kathleen Pond. The Totalitarian Threat: the Fruition of Modern Individualism as seen in Hobbes and Rousseau. By Eugene J. Roesch. Miscellanea Taparelli: Raccolta di studi in onore di Luigi Taparelli d'Azeglio, S.I. nel primo centenario dalla morte. A cura della Pontificia Università Gregoriana e della Civiltà Cattolica. Power and Poverty in the Church. By Yves Congar, o.p. Translated by Jennifer Nicholson. Married Love. By Émile‐Joseph De Smedt. Translated by Jennifer Nicholson. The Experience of Marriage. Edited by Michael Novak. The Distress in the Church and the Task of the Religious (Report of the First International Congress of Pro Mundi Vita, Essen, 1963). The Church and Industrial Society, by Gregor Siefer. Religion at Oxford and Cambridge, A History c 1160‐c 1960. By V. H. H. Green. The Preacher's Encyclopedia. Compiled and edited under the supervision of Cardinal Angel Herrera, Bishop of Málaga. English version translated and edited by Mgr David Greenstock. Volume I: Lent and Eastertide. Paul Couturier and Unity in Christ. By Geoffrey Curtis.

Early Christian Rhetoric, The Language of the Gospel, by Amos N. Wilder; S.C.M., 25s.

Early Christian Rhetoric, The Language of the Gospel, by Amos N. Wilder; S.C.M., 25s.

Saint Augustine and the debate about a Christian rhetoric

(1960). Saint Augustine and the debate about a Christian rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 46, No. 4, pp. 400-410.

A PIECE OF EARLY CHRISTIAN RHETORIC IN THE NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPT 1739

Journal Article A PIECE OF EARLY CHRISTIAN RHETORIC IN THE NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPT 1739 Get access G. ZUNTZ G. ZUNTZ Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume os-XLVII, Issue 185-186, January 1946, Pages 69–74, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/os-XLVII.185-186.69 Published: 01 January 1946