Christian Invention Research Articles

The Christian invention of time. Temporality and the literature of late antiquity. By Simon Goldhill. (Greek Culture in the Roman World.) Pp. xvi + 500. Cambridge–New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. £34.99. 978 1 316 51290 6

The Christian invention of time. Temporality and the literature of late antiquity. By Simon Goldhill. (Greek Culture in the Roman World.) Pp. xvi + 500. Cambridge–New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. £34.99. 978 1 316 51290 6

Simon Goldhill, The Christian Invention of Time. Temporality and the Literature of Late Antiquity. (Greek Culture in the Roman World.) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2022

Simon Goldhill, The Christian Invention of Time. Temporality and the Literature of Late Antiquity. (Greek Culture in the Roman World.) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2022

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF PERSONHOOD

The notion of personhood has become increasingly dominating modern theological discourse from the nineteenth century onwards. However, it has also become an object of critique by the historians of theology as we cannot find any kind of developed concept of personhood in the early Christian sources. So it was dismissed as a projection of our modern cultural concerns on the historical texts of the Church fathers. Although this critique does justice to the historical distance between our culture and the culture of late antiquity, this article attempts to demonstrate the presence of the theological vision of the human being as embodying individual free will as a gift of God. Certainly, the notion of free will was not a Christian invention as it had a long philosophical tradition in the ancient world beginning from Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics and Plotinus. However, the early Christian theologians were the ones who gave to the notion of markedly universal character, insofar as free will was not considered by them to be a matter of ascetic cultivation solely available to those trained in philosophy. Yet its theological provenance also shaped its structure in a paradoxical way: being the gift of God human freedom appears to depend on God, but this condition does not impose limitations on it but, on the contrary, enables it. The awareness of one’s freedom as a gift of the Other leads toward the formation of what might be designated as a “eucharistic self“. The exploration of the broad implications of this concept can open new avenues for envisioning society without conflict arising from competition between individuals and also help us find solutions to the ecological crisis

Besides Christianity and Commentary: Techniques of the Self, Self-writing, and Genealogy of the Modern Subject

In this piece, I read Foucault’s text “Self Writing” through the lens of technologies of the self. A late addition to the conceptual framework of Foucault’s project, technologies of the self highlight the way in which the subject can transform him/herself, which adds a new component to the analytic of the formation of subjectivity and the genealogy of the modern subject. In Foucault’s discussion of self-writing, techniques of the self illustrate the nature of the distinction between Greco-Roman and Christian practices, the stakes of the distinction in the work of a genealogy of the modern subject, and the way in which writing as a practice functioned across its historical shifts. I highlight two movements to read Foucault’s comparison of Greco-Roman and Christian writing practices: the development of the techniques, and the development of their ethical values. In particular, I suggest the Christian invention of self-renunciation and self-hermeneutics is a crucial distinction in these techniques. In the end, I move to return to literature in the modern context, even despite its inheritance of these techniques, to consider a case in which the text can illustrate other modes of relation to oneself and, as a critical-political movement, expand the conceptual possibilities of modes of being.

Steward of God's Mysteries: Paul and Early Church Tradition by Jerry L. Sumney

Reviewed by: Steward of God's Mysteries: Paul and Early Church Tradition by Jerry L. Sumney Mary T. Brien jerry l. sumney, Steward of God's Mysteries: Paul and Early Church Tradition ( Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017). Pp. xiv + 209. Paper $28. Only a Pauline scholar of Sumney's caliber and experience could comprehensively address the topic of Paul's relationship with early church tradition in a manner that is at once novel, wide-ranging, and convincing. This he does primarily by countering the theories of three authors who accuse Paul of inventing or transforming Christianity. In substance, this book is a refutation by S. of the arguments presented in Hyam Maccoby's Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), Barrie Wilson's How Jesus Became a Christian (New York: St Martin's, 2008), and James D. Tabor's Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012). But it is much more. It is a unique study of relevant selections from Paul's letters that demonstrate that Paul had links to a variety of preexisting liturgical and doctrinal sources. It is also a solid refutation of the many assertions made over centuries that Paul is "Founder of Christianity." This seven-chapter volume opens with a foreword by Patrick Gray, surveying the centuries-old story of Paul's enemies, from the Ebionites of the second century to the scholars of modern times, exemplified chiefly by Maccoby, Wilson, and Tabor, but not confined to them. The book's core chapters deal in succession with Paul's place in the early church, the meaning of the death of Jesus, the identity of Jesus, understandings of salvation, the coming of the Lord, and the Lord's Supper. The final chapter serves as a review of the explorations made, showing how Paul draws on preformed traditions in a number of places in his letters, respecting these traditions and elaborating a teaching based on them. In dealing with his chosen topic, S. departs from a commonly used methodology. Instead of comparing the teachings of Jesus, as found in the Gospels, with the teachings of Paul, as found in his letters, S. chooses to explore the relationship between the teachings of the earliest church and Paul's thought. He rejects some current methodological approaches as problematic because of uncertainty regarding what the evangelists represent as "the emphases of the historical Jesus" (p. 14). Rather than comparing a primary source (Paul's letters) with a secondary source (the Gospels), S. chooses a more fruitful method, designed to provide textual evidence on the long-standing question, Is Paul is the inventor of teachings about Jesus or does he adopt "the teachings about Jesus that were already current in the church?" (p. 15). S. employs fourteen criteria in the determination of a positive answer to the latter possibility. The criteria chosen represent a synthesis of those established by Vernon H. Neufeld, The Earliest Christian Confessions (NTTS 5; Leiden: Brill, 1963); E. Earle Ellis, "Pre-formed Traditions and Their Implications for Pauline Christology," in Christology, Controversy and Community: New Testament Essays in honour of David R. Catchpole (ed. David G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett; NovTSup 99; Leiden: Brill, 2000) 303-20; Marcus Barth, "Traditions in Ephesians," NTS 30 (1984) 3-25; and Claus Bussman, Themen der paulinischen Missionspredigt auf dem Hintergrund der spätjüdischhellenistichen Missionsliteratur (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Series 23.3; Bern: Herbert Lang, 1971). Chapters 2–6 contain the core of the study. Each chapter offers a detailed analysis of core texts from the undisputed letters of Paul, demonstrating the links between these texts and preexisting traditions—creedal, confessional, liturgical, hymnic, and other. For example, [End Page 738] in dealing with soteriology in chap. 4, S. invokes Rom 3:24-26; 7:4; 8:11; 1 Thess 1:9b-10; 4:14; Gal 2:16, 20; 3:27-28; and 1 Cor 6:11, also offering other possible texts for consideration. Each chapter ends with a conclusion and summary of positions reached. The evidence is clear and compelling that Paul relies on earlier and varied church traditions as a basis for instructions to his churches. In addressing the more...

The Pastoral Ministry, Ancient and Modern

The Pastoral Ministry, Ancient and Modern Sergio Benvenuto (bio) Reflections on Michel Foucault'sLes aveux de la chair [Paris, Gallimard, 2018] It wasn't until 34 years after Foucault's death in 1984 that what would have been the last (fourth) volume of his History of Sexuality was definitively reconstructed. In Confessions of the Flesh (2018), Frédéric Gros pulls from Foucault's original and edited manuscripts to give us this long awaited volume. Here we have the place where Foucault weighs in on pre-medieval Christian conceptions of sexuality. It should be recalled that, unlike so many historians today, Foucault in his History only marginally dealt with sexual customs in the Western world. He was not seeking to reconstruct how the general population behaved in bed, who they married, etc.; he was occupied with a theoretical elaboration—by philosophers, moralists, theologians—regarding sexuality. Rather than History of Sexuality, it might have more appropriately been called History of Discourses on Sexuality. Basically, Foucault is aristocratic: what counts is what "philosophers" in a broad sense have elaborated on in the relation between the subject and sexual drives. Foucault's decision seems like the historiographical equivalent of the Jesuits' missionary strategy: the Jesuits did not waste time converting the general population, but rather their prince. Foucault takes for granted then that even sexual practices throughout various epochs sooner or later conform to the meditative art on the argument. Foucault makes it clear that the austerity of the "Christian pastoral of daily life" is not a Christian invention, but essentially continues the philosophical morals of pagan authors, in particular those of the stoics like Plutarch, Musonius, Seneca, and Epictetus. I would add, however, that the difference is [End Page 39] that while pagan ascetic ethics were indeed reserved for a very cultured class, for somehow superior beings, Christian ethics were intended to be a directive for all Christians, and thus prospectively for all human beings. Ancient Christian ethics popularized, I would say even democratized, an ascesis that in paganism was not intended to educate the masses. Foucault's thesis is that Christianity's difference with respect to other ethics intended to control one's own and others' sensuality, is that it is carried out by means of a confession (and this even before the practice of confession was institutionalized as a sacrament). By confessing, an individual truth is manifested. "Confess your faults in order to destroy your faults," St. John Chrysostom said. The explicit enunciation to the other of one's own sin, and thus of one's own guilty desire, is a fundamental operant in Christianity. For example, according to St. Ambrose, God punishes Cain not so much for the fratricide he committed, but for his impudence—for having lied to God, for having not admitted his crime before Him. And the confession (aveu) is not simply the communication to the other of something the subject already knows about himself, but rather the inner discovery of one's own guilt. It is our discovery of ourselves as sinners, and our acknowledgement of this before an other, or Other (God). "Thus the sin, at the very moment that it infringes on God's truth or His law," Foucault writes, "incurs an obligation of truth […] At the heart of the economy of guilt, Christianity has placed the duty to tell the truth." "In Christianity, this 'telling the truth' about our blame occupies a far more important place—and in any place plays a far more complex role—than in the majority of other religions […] that require the confession of sins" (para 8710). The sinner is condemned not for his sin, but for not having admitted and confessed it. "The duty of truth, like belief and confession, is at the center of Christianity" (para 8731).1 Foucault may not mention it explicitly in this text, but it is evident what he is thinking: that the ethics of psychoanalysis today—to succeed in sharing one's own unconscious, admitting one's unspeakable phantasies (what Lacan will call "full speech")—derives in some way precisely from this Christian specificity that links faith to a practice of speaking the truth. Psychoanalysis may have Jewish roots in...

The Mythmaker: Hyam Maccoby and the Invention of Christianity

This essay examines the writings of Hyam Maccoby, a twentieth-century Jewish scholar of rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. After locating Maccoby in the context of Jewish anti-Christian writings, it presents his critical view of Christian doctrines. This scholar claimed in numerous publications that Christianity was inherently antisemitic due to the teachings of Paul the apostle, especially his doctrine of the vicarious atonement. It is therefore worth presenting, assessing, and challenging Maccoby's views as a barrier to Jewish and Christian dialogue.

Lex alterius: Using Law to Construct Confessional Boundaries

Historians and anthropologists are confronted with a persistent problem for which there is no clear solution: the conceptual tools which we use to attempt to understand cultures are themselves products of (often) the very cultures we are attempting to understand. Take “religion”. Boyarin ([2004]. “The Christian Invention of Judaism: The Theodosian Empire and the Rabbinic Refusal of Religion.” Representations 85: 21–57) has argued that the very concept of “religion” as we know it was a product of the fourth and fifth centuries, as bishops and emperors constructed Christianity as a religion (the true one, of course), and in counterdistinction constructed “Judaism” and “Hellenism” (or paganism) as “false” religions. For Boyarin, Judaism only becomes a “religion” when Christian authorities define it as one. The same could be said for the jumble of texts, beliefs and rituals that the English, upon arriving in India, lump together under the name “Hinduism”, which they turn into a religion. Building, defining and policing borders between confessional groups has been an important part of constructing identities—or visions of community—in various societies, in particular those ruled by Christians or Muslims, from the time of the fourth-century Christian Roman emperors. In this article, I examine how Christian and Muslim jurists of the fourth to eleventh centuries use law to define and police confessional boundaries, in particular how they attempt to limit interactions that could transgress or blur those boundaries: shared meals, sexual contact, syncretic practices.

The Collection and Synthesis of “Tradition” and the Second-Century Invention of Christianity*

Abstract The following paper argues that “Christianity” as a discursive entity did not exist until the second century CE. As a result, the first-century writings that constitute the field of inquiry for “Christian origins” are not usefully conceived as “Christian” at all. They were, rather, secondarily claimed as predecessors and traditions by second-century (and later) authors engaged in a process of “inventing tradition” to make sense of their own novel institutional and social circumstances. As an illustration, the paper looks at the ways that a series of second-century authors cumulatively created the figure of Paul as a first-century predecessor, and how this process has affected the way the first-century Pauline materials are read. At issue in all of this are our imaginative conceptions of social entities (including “religions”) and what they are, and of how canons and notions of social continuity attendant on them are formed.

L’Évangile selon Adam

According to the founding discourse of Christianity, sin only has its place when inserted in salvation history which allows one to get out of its deadly logic. In order to speak correctly about sin it is thus necessary to understand it on the basis of a Gospel according to Adam as close as possible to the good news attested by the forgiven sinner. The writing of this gospel makes it possible for theology to verify the fruitfulness of the Christian invention of sin by bringing out its critical potential both with respect to the pathologies of religious discourse and life-killing ideologies. This writing which involves the ordered reception of revelation and an understanding of the mode of historicity proper to salvation, allows one to do justice to the anthropological realism of the Christian doctrine of sin.

A Jew’s Jew: Paul and the Early Christian Problem of Jewish Origins

Previous articleNext article No AccessA Jew’s Jew: Paul and the Early Christian Problem of Jewish Origins*Andrew S. JacobsAndrew S. JacobsUniversity of California, Riverside Search for more articles by this author University of California, RiversidePDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 86, Number 2April 2006 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/499635 Views: 153Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref © 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Christopher Zoccali Jews, Gentiles, and “in Christ” Identity: A Post-Supersessionist Reading of Philippians, Religions 14, no.22 (Jan 2023): 131.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14020131Chris L. de Wet Rahab the harlot in Severian of Gabala’s De paenitentia et compunctione (de Rahab historia): Paradox, anti-Judaism and the early Christian invention of the penitent prostitute, HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 76, no.33 (Nov 2020).https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v76i3.6309Todd S. Berzon “O, Foolish Galatians”: Imagining Pauline Community in Late Antiquity, Church History 85, no.33 (Sep 2016): 435–467.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009640716000433Chris L. de Wet Of Monsters and Men: Religious Conflict, Radicalism, and Sexual Exceptionalism in the Works of John Chrysostom, Journal of Early Christian History 6, no.22 (Oct 2016): 1–17.https://doi.org/10.1080/2222582X.2016.1218951

Métissage and Bricolage in the Making of African Christian Identities

English Métissage, bricolage, or hybridizing - the argument continues over the appropriateness of metaphors in the study of contemporary religious productions, and we are invited to question and confront the dialectical or "dialogical" processes which are at work in the appropriation of differences, and the handling of disputes which are part of these processes. A detour by way of all that is involved in the Christian invention of African identities, all that individuals and groups have invested in that invention, the remnant of the colonial encounter, all this contributes to the comparisons which are made in the present writing, and to its conclusions. When we speak of the post-modern re-enchantment with métissage, with its subversive transgressions exemplified by hybridization, or of our fascination with a vanishing bricolage which now is breaking up into simple collage, we may regret the way in which the fecundity of misunderstandings inherent in any encounter has been cancelled, and especially the ambivalent postures which beset the worlds of cultural mixture, and which contribute to their instability. French Métissage, bricolage ou hybridité, la dispute sur les métaphores dans l'approche des productions religieuses contemporaines invite à questionner et à confronter les processus dialectiques ou dialogiques qui sont à l'oeuvre dans l'appropriation des différences et la gestion des différends. Le détour par les enjeux de l'invention chrétienne des identités africaines au coeur de la rencontre coloniale nourrit la comparaison et les conclusions de cet article. Dans le ré-enchantement postmoderne des métissages, les transgressions subversives de l'hybridité ou dans l'éloge d'un bricolage qui dérive en simples collages, on peut regretter la manière dont se trouvent évacuées la fécondité des malentendus inhérents à toute rencontre et surtout les ambivalences de posture qui travaillent les mondes meêlés et entretiennent leur instabilité.

The Christian Invention of Judaism: The Theodosian Empire and the Rabbinic Refusal of Religion

ABSTRACT In this paper, it is argued that a significant development takes place in the second half of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, a development that we might call the orthodox Christian invention of religion. The paper examines effects of this development as it touches on Jewish religious historyas well.

Saint Paul: the foundation of universalism

In this bold and provocative work, French philosopher Alain Badiou proposes a startling reinterpretation of St. Paul. For Badiou, Paul is neither the venerable saint embalmed by Christian tradition, nor the venomous priest execrated by philosophers like Nietzsche: he is instead a profoundly original and still revolutionary thinker whose invention of Christianity weaves truth and subjectivity together in a way that continues to be relevant for us today. In this work, Badiou argues that Paul delineates a new figure of the subject: the bearer of a universal truth that simultaneously shatters the strictures of Judaic Law and the conventions of the Greek Logos. Badiou shows that the Pauline figure of the subject still harbors a genuinely revolutionary potential today: the subject is that which refuses to submit to the order of the world as we know it and struggles for a new one instead.

WISSEN, WAS DIE WELT IM INNERSTEN ZUSAMMENHÄLT ODER FAUST IN ÄGYPTEN?

AbstractIn the Coptic Martyrdom of St. Shenoufe and his Brethren there is an insertion of a short episode relating the faustic search for knowledge of a Pagan priest from Hermopolis. Being in danger of being tortured by demons the priest invoces Jesus Christ and is thus saved. In this paper the Coptic story is compared with religious and literary texts from the Pagan Egyptian tradition. Pagan Egyptian culture is usually regarded as encouraging the human pursuit of knowledge of the superhuman. Here to the contrary, it is argued that there are two different positions in the traditional literature: one advocates human endeavor to seek divine knowledge while the other is critical about just that endeavor. The divide between those two viewpoints coincides with the divide beetween religious texts and secular literature. Thus the Coptic episode can be demonstrated to stand in the tradition of Pagan Egyptian stories about magicians and their adventures. Though in its present form it clearly has a missionary intention, the story itself as well as its 'anti-faustian' tendency need not be a Christian invention.

The crux of the cross: Mahikari’s core symbol

This article discusses the cross as a central symbol in the two sects of Mahikari-Siikyo Mahikari and Sekai Mahikari Bunmei Kyodan. An analysis of the use of this symbol leads to a discussion of other aspects of Mahikari's cosmology, particularly its emphasis on Japan's role in the plan of salvation. Okada K6tama, recognized as founder by both groups, offers an explanation of the faith based on the special significance of certain sounds and numbers, and the esoteric relationship of concepts based on the Japanese idea of kotodama. Mahikari's doctrine, as explained by Okada, presents a critique of modern materialism and promises a transformation to a spiritual age, a transformation in which Japan will presumably play a central role. IT WOULD RAISE FEW EYEBROWS to point out that the symbol of the cross is neither a Christian invention nor a Christian monopoly. Most Christians, nevertheless, would probably feel rather ambivalent if they encountered in the main sanctuary of a Japanese New Religion not only the cross but other familiar symbols, such as the Star of David and the swastika. This quite natural reaction says much about how deeply we associate certain symbols with certain interpretations. No interpretation, however, can so appropriate a particular symbol-not even the cross-to the extent that it renders all other interpretations spurious. One way to view the New Religions' use of the symbols of other religions is as yet another example of syncretism. The New Religions, however, might respond by asking, 'Whose syncretism? From their perspective the original interpretation of the symbols could well be theirs, and that of the other religions syncretistic. Fascinating (and * I would like to thank my former student, Ohashi Masako, for producing the fine drawings of the figures, and Professor Kondo Hitoshi, Trustee of the Nanzan Academic Society, for granting permission to use these figures, first published in KNECHT 1993.

Some Recent Studies of Women in the Middle Ages, Especially in Southern France

Some RecentStudiesof Womeninthe MiddleAges, especiallyin southern france In the introduction to The Voice ofthe Trobairitz (1989), I followed the lead ofhistorians who take a fundamentally positive view, relativelyspeaking, ofthe condition ofwomen in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thus Joan Kelly, who asked ifwomen had a Renaissance, answered in the negative on the grounds that medievalwomen, as imaged principally in Old French romances, enjoyedagreaterrange ofoptionsthandidwomeninRenaissance Italy.1 Anda historian ofthe Midi such as MartiAureli i Cardona, while tracingthe deterioration ofwomen's status in Provence over the longer duration, found reason to cite a brief window of improvement, a "golden interlude," corresponding to the period of activity of the trobairitz ("La deterioration"). Other scholars take exception to such guarded optimism. Georges Duby proposes that althoughfin'amorwas only a game, and a game played among men, it did help women of feudal Europe to rise from their humiliation-but that meanwhile the evolution of social structures promoted the standing of men, so that the hierarchical distance between the two sexes was not perceptibly reduced ("Le modèle courtois," 276). For Howard Bloch, whose recent book I shall discuss below, the history of women's status since early Christianityseems to show two phases, if not of deepening abjection, perhaps of outright abjection becoming subtler but no less powerful, as the Christian invention of gender, heavily misogynistic and authoritarian, responded to sociolegal advances in women's condition by evolving into the courtly misogyny of the twelfth century, which has continued essentially unchanged down to the nineteenth century and today. For Penny Schine Gold, however, the veryattempt to gauge ups or downs in the condition of women is delusory or at least premature. The notion ofprogress or decline in history obfuscates the complexity, variety, and ambivalence of historical reality___ We should abandon the measuring rod and try instead to understand medieval Recent Studies of Women95 peoplewithin their own terms. Onlythenwillwebe able to appreciate more fully how modern images, attitudes, and experience differ from the medieval, and how much of a fundamental ambivalence, and acceptance of difference and hierarchy we still share with the Middle Ages. (The Lady and the Virgin, XX, 152) Gold defers judgment but does not deny its ultimate interest or perhaps even necessity. Her deferral excuses her from the hard taskofmakingseverejudgmentsnow, possiblyoutofreluctance to speak badly ofthe Middle Ages. It is not clear when, in herview, we shall be able to apply the measuring rod. Bloch does not hesitate to apply it today. His study of Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (1991)stands out as themost thought-provokingeffort ofthe past threeyears that Ihave come across because ofits broad sweep and boldhypotheses. Blochdriveshiswaythroughahostofdifficulties to arrive at the following concise conclusion: As long as woman was property to be disposed of, shewas deprecated in accordwith receivedmisogynistic notions of the feminine as the root of all evil; but as soon as woman became capable of dispos-, ing-and, more specifically, of disposing of property -she was idealized in the terms ofcourtly love. (196) To unpack this formulation, Bloch puts "courtly love" (which he accepts essentiallyasdescribedbyC. S. Lewis andothers) in a dual contextcomprisingtheChristiangenderinventedbythe fathersof the church around the third through sixth centuries A.D. and socio-economic reality in the twelfth century. Whereas others have seen courtly love as opposite to ecclesiastical misogyny, Bloch sees them in a dialectical relation. The church doctrine of 96William D. Paden virginity envisioned it as a state so pure that it could be sullied by desire, by being desired, bybeing seen or glimpsed or thought of, and therefore exhorted women to a state intrinsically impossible in reality; whereas the courtly loverdesired his lady on condition that she be unattainable, in effect exhorted her to a courtly virginity. Bloch accounts for the movement from one system of thoughtto the otherin terms ofevolution inmaterial conditions of society, finding in the relative socio-economic advantage ofwomen in the Midi the key to the development of the courtly revision of Christianmisogyny. Heformulatesanevolutionfromthepatristic gender-system to courtly love and provides a material cause to explain it. This model ofcomplex historical change possesses the qualityofpower, because it attemptsto encompass avast range of phenomena, and the quality of elegance, as in a mathematical proof, because...