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8 results

  • 3 - The Structure of 1 Peter

  • Katie Marcar, University of Otago, New Zealand
  • Book:
    Divine Regeneration and Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter
    Published online:
    01 June 2022
    Print publication:
    09 June 2022, pp 52-62

  • Summary

    This chapter presents an overview of the structure of 1 Peter to lay the groundwork for the analysis of future chapters. Following Lutz Doering, this chapter argues that 1 Peter is a Christian diaspora letter. As such, it has much in common with Jewish diaspora letters. This chapter then examines the epistolary prescript (1:1-2) and postscript (5:12-14) to examine how these features are infused with the letter’s theology and anticipate its themes of diaspora, marginalization, divine regeneration, election, holiness, and peoplehood. Moving to the letter body, the chapter outlines the main structural divisions through attention to rhetorical devices, themes, and other features.

  • Christian Identity and Community – An Ethical Approach to Martin Luther

  • ShinHyung Seong
  • Journal:
    New Blackfriars / Volume 95 / Issue 1057 / May 2014
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 January 2024, pp. 324-339
    Print publication:
    May 2014
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  • Christian identity is an important basis of Christian ethics since identity formulates the notion of how to live in and for the world. This research concentrates on Martin Luther's communitarian concept in his theology and ethics. Because the church is a liturgical community for the moral transformation, church needs to communicate with the world through her liturgical ceremonies. Based on this ethical concept in Luther, this research paper focuses on how Christian identity becomes the foundation of theological ethics, how Christian ethics is active in the relation with neighbors and how the church practises her ethics in community with the world.

  • ‘Race’, ‘Nation’, ‘People’: Ethnic Identity-Construction in 1 Peter 2.9*

  • David G. Horrell
  • Journal:
    New Testament Studies / Volume 58 / Issue 1 / January 2012
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 December 2011, pp. 123-143
    Print publication:
    January 2012

  • 1 Peter 2.4–10 is a significant passage within the letter, rich in material from the Jewish scriptures. Verse 9 is particularly significant for the construction of Christian group-identity in that it uniquely applies three words from the vocabulary of ethnic identity to the Church: γένος, ἔθνος, and λαός, widely translated as ‘race’, ‘nation’, and ‘people’. A survey of these words in pre-Christian Jewish literature (especially the LXX), in the NT, and in other early Christian literature, reveals how crucial this text in 1 Peter is to the process by which Christian identity came to be conceived in ethnoracial terms. Drawing on modern definitions of ethnic identity, and ancient evidence concerning the fluidity of ethnic identities, it becomes clear that ‘ethnic’ and ‘racial’ identities are constructed, believed, and sustained through discourse. 1 Peter, with both aggregative and oppositional modes of ethnic reasoning, makes a crucial contribution to the construction of an ethnic form of Christian identity.

  • 8 - Articulating identity

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 71-90

  • Summary

    By the last decades of the first century, the Christian communities around the Mediterranean basin had entered upon a process that would, over a period of two or more centuries, produce a relatively stable, widely shared, and socially embodied sense of who they were and what they stood for. The original Christians, however, had no place in this world as Christians. They were Jews with an odd set of convictions. Judaism in the days of Jesus and Paul, in Judaea and in the diaspora as well, was a more differentiated phenomenon. Judaism in the Roman-Hellenistic age produced a variegated literature in Aramaic or Hebrew and also in Greek. Christianity was an identifiable phenomenon even before the drawn-out, and relatively self-conscious, process of acknowledging and constructing a shared identity. In defining the principles as representing the true sense of the Scriptures and the emerging 'New Testament', Irenaeus had focused attention on his alternative to the Valentinian 'secret tradition'.

  • 7 - Social and historical setting

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 53-70

  • Summary

    The first two centuries of the history of Christianity was a period of struggle for survival and the crucible in which the basic elements of Christian identity and church organization were forged. The Roman Government was usually tolerant of foreign cults and religions, provided that they did not encourage sedition or weaken traditional values. The various local deities of the provinces encompassed by the Roman Empire were easily absorbed into the pantheon and the diverse spectrum of religious life. The God of the Jews, however, demanded exclusive adherence, that sacrifices be performed only at Jerusalem, and prohibited all images. In second century, although Christians were formally in official disrepute and were socially stigmatized, informally they were usually left to do as they pleased, and were even able to protest against their treatment. The second century was a remarkable period of peace, stability and well-being in the history of the Roman Empire.

  • 38 - Articulating identity

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 414-463

  • Summary

    This chapter explores some ways in which Christian belief and some key aspects of Christian identity were articulated and formed from around AD 300 to 451. It displays the character of the interactions between Christian groups and the imperial authorities by considering two disputes which demonstrate the internal problems caused by emergence from the threat of persecution. These were the Melitian and Donatist disputes. In the last century a number of attempts have been made to treat the dispute as a conflict between the provincial 'nationalism' or 'regionalism' of the Donatists, who were striving to preserve an indigenous form of Christianity, and the imperial authorities desire to impose a universal form of Christianity under closer imperial control. In these disputes, internal Christian debate was prompted by changing relations with the non-Christian world. The most important doctrinal controversy of the fourth century concerned Christians' understanding of God, of the nature of Christ and of the very character of salvation.

  • 18 - Articulating identity

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 200-221

  • Summary

    The attempt to articulate the boundaries of Christian identity in the third century involved inner-Church debates between groups which held different views on what constituted Christianity. The Church had been engaged in a long struggle against the gnostic view of God, and that of Marcion. The former separated the highest God from the Creator God of the Old Testament, and the latter separated the Creator God of the Old Testament from the redeeming God of Jesus. Noetus' central doctrine was based on an argument which combined Scripture and Stoic logic. The dynamic monarchian doctrine was condemned for denying the deity of Christ. Christian identity concerned discipline as well as doctrine. Tertullian's views on discipline are focused in his teachings concerning post baptismal sins, asceticism, and martyrdom. Origen's Christian discipline was as strict as that of Tertullian, at least prior to the latter's adoption of Montanism. The Novatian schism raised the question of the nature of the Church.