The backgrounds and meaning of the image of the beast in Rev 13:14, 15

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A Study on the Influence of Philosophical Presuppositions Relating to the Notion of the God-Human Relation upon the Interpretation of Exodus

To my knowledge, Pietersen’s study (2004) is the only monograph published in the last twenty years that has focused on the opponents in the Pastoral Epistles, but his work is not exegetical. In this thesis, I concentrate on 1 and 2 Timothy, the two letters purportedly dispatched to Ephesus. I assemble the relevant pericopae of the letters and offer an exegetical analysis of them, with the intention of providing, first, a composite sketch of the ideology of the opposing group and, second, an in-depth account of the way the faithful Pauline community was to engage these opponents. The first chapter of the thesis is devoted to preliminary issues and methodology. I argue that 1 and 2 Timothy constitute two types of letter, both dispatched in the late first century to the Christian community in Ephesus, each addressing a stage of the conflict in which the community was engaged. I further argue that the polemical portions of the letters reveal specific information about this conflict. I then formulate a stringent method for the study of Paul’s opponents. I summarize and critique historical-critical methodologies and bring the most recent work on theological interpretation of Scripture into dialogue with these methodologies. The result is a new approach to the study of opponents, one that remains rigorously tethered to the primary text and that is characterized by ecclesial concern. In chapters two to six, I apply this method to 1 and 2 Timothy. In chapter two, I offer an exegetical analysis of the explicit units of 1 Timothy, those units where we have clear and certain reference to the opponents (1:3-7, 18-20; 4:1-5; 6:2b-5, 20-21a). Chapters three and four focus on the implicit units in 1 Timothy, those units where we have highly probable reference to the opponents (1:8-11; 2:9-15; 4:6-10; 5:9-16; 6:6-10). In chapter five, I turn to 2 Timothy, analyzing the three explicit units (2:14-26; 3:1-9; 4:15) and the one implicit unit of the letter (2:8-13). In chapter six, I bring together the full gamut of data uncovered in the exegetical chapters, offering overall conclusions about the opponents in 1 and 2 Timothy. As a follow-up to this, I enumerate what I perceive to be the most important implications of the findings for the house of God today. My findings may be summarized as follows. I conclude that the opponents came from within the Christian community in Ephesus and that their teaching is best described as an erroneous eschatological position that derived from the complexity of Paul’s views.

https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10523/5576/ThorntonDillonT2015PhD.pdf;sequence=1

Hostility in the House of God: An "Interested" Investigation of the Opponents in 1 and 2 Timothy

The pentecostal tradition began as an eschatologically-driven pneumatological missionary movement whose identity was shaped by the empowering experience of Spirit baptism. Although characterised by an impulse towards biblically-rooted doctrine as well as an affinity for narrative, the movement has been founded largely on a truncated narrative of ‘Calvary, Pentecost and Parousia’. Previous models of Spirit baptism have not been sufficiently narrative, nor have they engaged with the larger canonical perspective.

This study addresses the deficiency by constructing a theodramatic model of the pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism, locating it in the context of a canonically-shaped theodrama that is organised around the imago Dei motif. It sets the stage for the drama by developing the Spirit-constituted imago Dei role using the covenantal structure of sonship, shaping and sending, which corresponds to the pentecostal concern for relationship, sanctification and mission, evidenced in the three-stage ordo salutis of Holiness Pentecostalism. The thesis proceeds to trace the plot from creation to the church with attention to the anthropological, Christological and ecclesiological manifestations of the image. Using this dramatic framework, it argues that Spirit baptism is the initiation of God’s new covenant people that recreates them through union with Christ as the Spirit-bearing imago Dei.

The Pentecostal doctrine of spirit baptism : a theodramatic model with special reference to the concept of the imago Dei

NOW THESE THINGS HAPPENED AS EXAMPLES FOR US” (1 COR. 10:6): THE BIBLICAL-NARRATIVE DEPICTION OF HUMAN SINFULNESS Stephen F. Jenks, B.A., M.Div., Th.M. Marquette University, 2014 For several decades voices from various sectors of Christianity have decried the loss of compelling language for sin. The atrophying of sin language is of no small moment due to the organic connection between theological loci. Sin talk relates to salvation-talk, human-talk, and Christ-talk. Further, the loss of compelling sin language threatens to silence the church’s voice in the culture. Both classic and contemporary theologies of sin, pursuing the essentialist methods of the past, attempt to define sin and derive the fullness of the doctrine of sin from these distillations. However, many of these renderings of sin are insufficiently attentive to the importance of narrative modes of thought in theologizing. Specifically, they often almost completely ignore the witness of the biblical narrative—both individual narratives and the Bible’s overall narrative structure. Furthermore, they tend to appropriate the narratives, and especially the narrative of the fall in Genesis 3, in ways that actually subvert the narratives’ narrativity through historicizing, mythologizing, and decontextualizing. They therefore provide thin descriptions of the human condition and consequently offer distorted depictions of redemption, humanity, and the divine-human relationship. These patterns can be seen in both feminist theologies that build their definitions of sin from particular views of the human and evangelical theology which derive their definition from biblical propositions. In this dissertation we seek to begin to offer a narrative theology of sin by providing a reading of Genesis 1-11 that attends to its literary character and seeks to identify the reference point for sin and discern its development in the narrative. We will discover that both the reference point for sin and the axis of its development relates to the depiction of the human as the imago dei. We will conclude by demonstrating that indexing the doctrine of sin to a narratively construed imago dei offers a more robust language for sin and in particular, offers a more natural bridge to Christ. Indeed, in the story of redemption, Christ becomes the ultimate reference point for describing sin.

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Bernd Faust

Papers

Dictionary For Theological Interpretation Of The Bible