Paul's Idea Research Articles

Ethnic Ethics: Paul's Eschatological Myth of Jewish Sin

AbstractPaul's letters depict gentiles and Jews with different characteristics of sin. This article focuses on Paul's rhetoric about Jewish shortcomings and argues that he has an eschatological myth of Jewish sin: it is the period in the Jewish deity's plan when he has hardened his people into disobedience and disloyalty. While scholars have traditionally tried to connect Paul's ideas about Jewish sin to deficiencies of historical Jews, Paul's claims are primarily animated by his Jewish eschatological scheme and competitive rhetorical needs. Paul re-emerges as a Jewish writer within his competitive social landscape wherein ethnic differentiation was an expected way of imagining the human and divine realms.

Paul's Idea of the "New Man" and Transhumanism

By setting the relationship between human and divine reality in a whole new way, Christian anthropology has provided an authoritative framework for understanding and valuing the dynamics of human life as moving “from the old to the new man”, according to the famous phrase of the apostle Paul. Other great European humanistic traditions with their ideas of man and visions of his progress can be placed in the critical perspective of this Pauline anthropological formula. One of those traditions that relatively recently entered the stage of European intellectual culture is the so-called “Transhumanism”. In this article, a contrast is made between Paul’s understanding of the dynamics of human life and the human enhan­cement with the help of technology in transhumanism.

A Companion to the New Testament: Paul and the Pauline Letters by Matthew L. Skinner

Reviewed by: A Companion to the New Testament: Paul and the Pauline Letters by Matthew L. Skinner Mary Sylvia Nwachukwu and Thinker's Corner matthew l. skinner, A Companion to the New Testament: Paul and the Pauline Letters (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018). Pp. x + 305. $39.95. This impressive volume by Matthew Skinner on Paul and the Pauline letters is the second of a three-volume series. The first volume treats the Gospels and Acts, and the third presents the other letters and Book of Revelation. This volume on Paul has fourteen chapters, with an introduction and concluding recommendations for ongoing exploration of the NT. As a companion, the book actually fulfills its aim to guide readers in the reading of the letters of Paul and to furnish them with background knowledge that enhances reader participation in the theological conversations of the letters of Paul. In presenting Paul and his letters, S. recognizes the importance of social influences, historical backgrounds, and other contexts that connect the documents to their original setting to highlight how they once contributed to larger conversations. In the introductory section, S. draws attention to three important contexts: Paul ministered among people of different settings; he addressed his letters to churches shaped by different circumstances; and he adopted diverse strategies to influence his addressees. The letters must be understood as surviving witnesses that are mirrors for viewing these contexts and influences. The first chapter features the apostle Paul—his background, ministry, legacy, and theology. The chapter discusses backgrounds and currents that influenced Paul, including the OT, Jewish apocalypticism, Greco-Roman influences, and the sociopolitical background of the churches. Another important influence is Paul's particular experience of Jesus Christ, the major influence that changed Paul's understanding of the role of Torah and how God brings the world into a new relationship with Christ. As to how the other backgrounds influenced Paul's theological rhetoric, S. says that, while Jewish apocalyptic themes gave Paul an explanatory framework for his understanding of God's character and the human condition, those ideas were expressed in Greco-Roman thought patterns. In the second chapter, S. explains what to expect from the form of each letter in order to show how Paul pursued his purpose to influence his audiences through a system of communication familiar to them. The seventh chapter complements chap. 2 by presenting the points of contact and divergence between the authentic and disputed letters of Paul. S. defends the integrity of the disputed letters in a manner I have never seen elsewhere. He represents the debates about their authorship and difference in literary style and theological perspective, but he encourages interpreters to focus on each letter as a specific document with specific tendencies and claims. The receptive status of the disputed letters might change if interpreters focus attention on how these letters represent attempts to perpetuate Paul's ideas and legacy. In the subsequent chapters of the book, S. examines the thirteen letters of Paul and the basic insights they offer into Paul's thoughts and experiences. The letters are discussed in [End Page 556] their traditional canonical order, but the chapters are designed to allow readers alternatively to follow the discussion in the chronological order of the letters. The exposition of the letters follows a consistent pattern. After a presentation of the letter's origin, audience, and overview, S. presents theological backgrounds that emerge from Paul's efforts to offer pastoral guidance to the churches in their different circumstances. A discussion of authorship is found only in the presentation of the disputed letters. In reading the author's exposition of the themes of each letter, the reader will also encounter S.'s painstaking effort to show how each letter relates to and/or diverges from other letters. According to S., no single letter gives the entire picture of Paul's exposition of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is a point to consider in the debate about the center of Paul's theology. I recommend this volume to students and interpreters of Paul. It uses simple, nontechnical language, with explanations that aid easy understanding. Of the many interpretations of Paul and his letters that exist...

Jesus and Menachem by Siegfried van Praag (review)

Reviewed by: Jesus and Menachem by Siegfried van Praag Michael Shapiro Jesus and Menachem Siegfried van Praag . Translated by Lewis C. Kaplan. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013. 183 pp. Subtitled "A Historical Novel in the Time of the Second Temple," Jesus and Menachem was first published in Dutch in 1951. Its author, Siegfried van Praag (1899-2002), was born and raised in Amsterdam, where he attended the university and became a teacher of French. He moved to Brussells in 1936 and then to London in 1940, where he worked for the Belgian and Dutch sections of the BBC. He returned to Holland after the war, resumed teaching, and joined a circle of Jewish writers. He published a memoir, many essays, and over forty novels. Jesus and Menachem, set in first-century Palestine during the Roman occupation, reflects the plight of Jews under [End Page 129] Nazi control. It attracted the attention of Lewis C. Kaplan, a gifted student of languages, who died in 1958 before finishing the translation, recently completed by Peter Uys and Lewis Kaplan's son, Kalman J. Kaplan. Menachem appears in no Gospel account of the life of Jesus, but van Praag has invented this character, the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant, in order to write the novel from his point of view, that of a not unsympathetic, somewhat skeptical but deeply Jewish perspective. Their friendship begins with their first encounter in adolescence, when Jesus saves Menachem from stoning by hostile youths. Although Menachem finds Jesus aloof and detached, he admires his friend's courage, abhorrence of violence, and capacity for compassion. Menachem and Jesus enter adulthood in a fragmented, politicized Jewish world. The main factions are Sadducees (Hellenized Jews willing to collaborate with Rome); Pharisees (rigid adherents to the letter of the Torah); and Zealots (seeking to overthrow Roman rule by violence). Into this seething mix comes a new faction—the growing number Jesus' followers, who are loathed by the others and who return the sentiment. Van Praag has Menachem report many of Jesus' deeds recorded in the Gospels: driving the money changers out of the temple, his baptism by John, turning water into wine at Cana, the Sermon on the Mount, his defiance of Satan's temptations, betrayals by Peter and Judas, and finally his crucifixion and death. As someone who also yearns to rescue his people from their appalling condition, Menachem admires Jesus' integrity but feels that his friend's vision is both too narrow and too broad: he questions Jesus' focus on a personal salvation possible only through faith in him, as well as the availability of such salvation not only to the Jews but also to "the nations" (which historically seems to have been Paul's idea rather than Jesus'). Menachem is also troubled by Jesus' convictions that he is somehow the actual son of God and that universal salvation will only come through his own death. Menachem fears that Jesus is playing into the hands of the other Jewish factions and of the Romans, who would all welcome his death, and he accompanies his friend on the trek to Golgotha in order to protect him from his enemies and to try, unsuccessfully, to dissuade him from martyrdom. Never accepted as a disciple, he hears Jesus' last words and comforts Mary, but he is not a witness to the Resurrection and never becomes a member of the cult. In opposing the claims of competing Jewish factions in first-century Palestine, Menachem struggles to assert the unity of the Jewish people, whose salvation will come, he believes, when they accept the oneness of their [End Page 130] peoplehood despite doctrinal or political differences, treat each other with respect and compassion, and find the collective strength to offer spiritual resistance to their temporal overseers. For him, and presumably for van Praag, the Jewish people were chosen as both central agents and chief subjects of a historical process, a role they must sustain no matter what suffering it entails or what sectarian notions divide them. Through Menachem's eyes, van Praag has also produced a portrait of Jesus as charismatic if self-delusional, a portrait worthy of comparison with such other imaginative depictions...

Paul as a Child: Children and Childhood in the Letters of the Apostle

(ProQuest-CSA LLC: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) Little is known about what the childhood of the apostle Paul was like,1 or about how he related to children in Christian families and in his communities.2 Considerably more can be known, however, about his views of children and of childhood as a phase of life.3 In addition, we can observe how he employed these ideas in his strategies toward his addressees. In this article I examine Paul's ideas on children and childhood and the way he employs them in his letters. My aim is twofold: to offer a systematic presentation of Paul's language concerning children and childhood, and to show-contrary to several scholars-that his use of this language is considerably more nuanced and distinctive in character than has been realized. During recent years several scholars have drawn attention to the widespread use of kinship language in Paul, especially the sibling (brother/sister) and the parent/child terminology.4 In this kind of language, which is usually employed metaphorically of Christians, many see a reflection of ideas and ideals associated with the family in antiquity: Christians are to relate to one another in ways similar to those of the family, with its structures and mentalities.5 Many of these scholars have focused on how Paul uses such kinship language as a rhetorical means to regulate his relations to his fellow Christians, and in particular to further his own authority.6 Several maintain that Paul by this language exercises a strong control over his communities. This has particularly been emphasized by scholars studying Paul from the perspectives of power and of gender. For instance, Elizabeth A. Castelli has brought attention to Paul's idea of imitation in 1 Corinthians, and of the Corinthians imitating Paul as children to a father (4:1621), and she argues that this forms part of a discourse of power that aims at leaving his authority uncontested and at securing sameness instead of difference.7 Similarly in the case of 1 Thessalonians, Lone Fatum maintains that Paul employs parent/child metaphors in the letter to strengthen his authority and further male prominence, with the effect that women become only associate members of the Thessalonian brotherhood, viz., through their men.8 Below I argue, however, that such readings are highly problematic. Considerable energy has been expended on Paul's parent/child language, particularly his metaphorical use of it.9 Usually, however, scholars have paid attention only to the parent side-for example, Paul as father. Far less effort has been put into the study of the place of children.10 Thus, my focus here will be on Paul's language referring to childhood. Although some scholars have dealt with aspects of this, none has discussed its character and function in a systematic fashion. Since Paul's language pertaining to parents/children is closely related to his language referring to childhood, some of this material will be included in the discussions below. All along, I shall also be attentive to how Paul conforms to or deviates from general attitudes in antiquity toward children and childhood. Owing to the limited space, I can refer only briefly to characteristic features concerning these matters.11 Paul's childhood terminology can be categorized in various ways.12 One is to distinguish between a concrete and a metaphorical usage. For instance, Paul speaks of children in a social-biological sense in 1 Cor 7:14 (children with parents of mixed faith); 1 Cor 13:11 (of himself as a child); Gal 1:15 (of himself as a fetus); and Gal 4:1 (of children as heirs).13 Metaphorical usage outweighs the concrete by far, however. For example, Paul repeatedly speaks of Christians as children of God (Rom 8:16-17,21; 9:7-8; etc.) or as his own children (e.g., 1 Cor 4:14-21; Phil 2:22; Phlm 10). This distinction between concrete and metaphorical is not very fruitful for our purposes, however, since Paul's attitudes toward children and childhood are reflected in both usages, and in a parallel way: notions connected with being a child of God are not likely to differ much from those of being a child of a human being. …

The "Warming Trend" in Conceptual Change Research: The Legacy of Paul R. Pintrich

This article explores the legacy of Paul Pintrich in regard to theory and research in conceptual change. Specifically, this article reviews his vision for a view of conceptual change-a vision that integrated motivation and affect within a broader view of cognition in the classroom (Pintrich, 1999; Pintrich & Sinatra, 2003). This article describes 2 models inspired by his 1993 article, Beyond Cold Conceptual Change (Pintrich, Marx, & Boyle, 1993): Dole and Sinatra's (1998) Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model and the Cognitive-Affective Model of Conceptual Change (Gregoire, 2003), as well as our own personal view of intentional conceptual change (Sinatra & Pintrich, 2003). This article argues that the field may be changed inexorably by Pintrich's vision. Finally, this article describes Paul's ideas for future research in conceptual change.

A constrained variational route to Pauling's electronegativity values†

Pauling's idea of estimating electronegativities of atoms by using bond-dissociation energy data and the idea of ionic-covalent resonance interaction are examined. Effective Hamiltonian for the perfectly covalent and perfectly ionic structures are defined and a constrained variational recipe to obtain their respective ground state energies suggested. These energies, together with the actual energy of the ground state of a diatom are used to obtain an estimate of the ionic-covalent interaction energy at different values of R. It naturally leads to an estimate of the electronegativity difference ΔX between the atoms at various distances.

The apostle Paul, Christian Jew: faithfulness and law

Attempts to recover what the apostle Paul actually believed. This text presents Paul's ideas and discusses his silence on several themes, especially repentance and forgiveness. It concludes that Paul's main concern for converts was moral/ethical probity to the degree of sinlessness.

Quantum chemistry in drug design

Abstract

Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in their Historical Setting. By Robert Banks. Exeter, The Paternoster Press, 1980. Pp. 208. £4·40.

Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in their Historical Setting. By Robert Banks. Exeter, The Paternoster Press, 1980. Pp. 208. £4·40.

Book Review: Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in their Historical Setting

Book Review: Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in their Historical Setting

Paul's Idea of Community: the early house churches in their historical setting. By Robert Banks. Pp. 208. The Paternoster Press, 1980. £4.40 (paper).

Paul's Idea of Community: the early house churches in their historical setting. By Robert Banks. Pp. 208. The Paternoster Press, 1980. £4.40 (paper).

Book Review: II. Biblical Studies: Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting

Book Review: II. Biblical Studies: Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting

Reviews

Otto Neugebauer: Ethiopic Astronomy and Computus.Robert Banks: Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in their Historical Setting.R. N. Swanson: Universities, Academics and the Great Schism.Patrick Collinson: Archbishop Grindal, 1519‐1583: The Struggle for a Reformed Church.Phyllis Mack Crew: Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544–1569.Robert L. Nichols and Theofanis George Stavrou (eds): Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime.William J. Callahan and David Higgs (eds): Church and Society in Catholic Europe of the Eighteenth Century.Norman S. Moon: Education for Ministry: Bristol Baptist College 1679–1979.Harry W. Paul: The Edge of Contingency: French Catholic Reaction to Scientific Change from Darwin to Duhem.Allan M. Grocott: Convicts, Clergymen and Churches: Attitudes of Convicts and Ex‐Convicts Towards the Churches and Clergy in New South Wales from 1788 to 1851.Ralph M. Wiltgen: The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in OceaniaDavid Wetherell: Reluctant Mission: The Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea, 1891–1942.

Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting By Robert Banks Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1980. 208 pp. $5.95 (paper)

Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting <i>By Robert Banks</i> Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1980. 208 pp. $5.95 (paper)

Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in their Historical Setting. By Robert Banks. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980. 208 pages. $5.95 (paper). - The Family and The Fellowship: New Testament Images of the Church. By Ralph P. Martin. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980. 142 pages. $4.95 (paper).

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Resonating valence bonds: A new kind of insulator?

The possibility of a new kind of electronic state is pointed out, corresponding roughly to Pauling's idea of “resonating valence bonds” in metals. As observed by Pauling, a pure state of this type would be insulating; it would represent an alternative state to the Néel antiferromagnetic state for S = 1/2. An estimate of its energy is made in one case.

Electronic States of C2-Molecule, II: Effect of 2s-Shells

Adiabatic potentials corresponding to 62 electronic states, arising 'from various configurations of the C2-molecule which consists 'of two carbon atoms with two 2p-electrons each, are calculated taking into account the effect of 2s-shells. The complete adiabatic Hamiltonian of eight electrons, but not a so-called interaction operator, is used, and direct, exchange, higher permutation, and overlapping integrals are all taken into account. The Same effective charge lC is assumed for 2s, 2ptl, and two 2p77: orbitals, and the minimum electronic energy is obtained by varying lC for each nuclear distance. It is found that !ls-shells repel 2ptl electrons and attract 2p77:-electrons. Thus (s2t12, S2t12)1~O+ state, which was found to be .attractive and deepest when the effect of 2s-shells was neglected in the previous. paper, becomes very higher and repulsive. The results of the present calculation are that the deepest state is, (s2t177:, .,2t1 77:)1.4/1 and that (s2t177:, 2t1'ii3.)1::E1I+ and (s2t111:, s211:$o)1ll .. are next and third respectively. Introdnction In the first part(l) (which will be referred to in what follows as I) of this paper we discussed the interaction between 2p-electrons of two carbon atoms in their ground states. The purpose was not only to separate the contribution of p-electrons to the binding energy of the C2-molecule from other effect but also to study the general character of the interaction between p-electrons in the complex molecule with double bonds due to p-electrons. It was found that the deepest attractive state was (2pq 2, 2p( 2)11]: in contradiction to Pauling's theory(!) which does not allow atoms with fully occupied orbitals to bind. The reasons for this result were that the binding energy is mainly supplied by the Coulomb energy and the effect of exchange and permutation energy is small owing to the large value of effective charge involved in the 2p-orbitals, and that the Coulomb energy is the larger the more q-orbitals involved in the wave function. The same phenomenon was observed in the result of calculation by Bartlett(S) on the single pp-bond. This shows that Pauling's theory can not literally be applied to any simple model for complex molecules. This was an important result of the study in the first part as well as Bartlett's result that the triplet state is deepest in the single pp-bond in contradiction to Pauling's fundamental idea.(2) We shall consider the effect of 2s-shells in the present paper in order to see the general character of interactions of a closed s-shell with Pq- and jJ1r-electrons as well as the quantitative contribution of these interactions to the binding energy

Paul's Idea of Deliverance

Paul's Idea of Deliverance