While many books are written on Jesus' death, a gap exists in
writings about the theological significance of a believer's death,
particularly in imitation of Jesus'. Paul, as a first apostolic
...witness who talked frequently about his own death, serves as a
foundational model for how believers perceive their own death.
While many have commented about Paul's stance on topics such as
forensic righteousness and substitutionary atonement, less is
written about Paul's personal experience and anticipation of his
own death and the merit he assigned to it.
Paul and His Mortality: Imitating Christ in the Face of
Death explores how Paul faced his death in light of a ministry
philosophy of imitation: as he sought to imitate Christ in his
life, so he would imitate Christ as he faced his death. In his
writings, Paul acknowledged his vulnerability to passive death as a
mortal, that at any moment he might die or come near death. He gave
us some of the most mournful and vitriolic words about how death is
God's and our enemy. But he also spoke openly about choosing death:
"My aim is to know him . . . to be like him in his death." This
study seeks to show that Paul embraced death as a follower and
imitator of Christ because the benefits of a good death supersede
attempts at self-preservation. For him, embracing death is gain
because it is honorable, because it reflects ultimate obedience to
God, and because it is the reasonable response for those who
understand that only Jesus' death provides atonement.
Studying mortality is paradoxically a study of life. Peering at
the prospect of life's end energizes life in the present. This
urgency focuses on living with mission in step with God, the
Creator and Sustainer of life, who is rightly referred to as Life
itself. By focusing on mortality, we focus on Paul's theology of
life in its practical aspects, in particular, living life
qualitatively, aware of God's kingdom and mission and our limited
quantity of days.
The link between sin and death is rooted in the first stories of Genesis and developed particularly by Paul in the NT. While Genesis sometimes presents death as sin’s consequence, at other times the ...immoral are preserved and the righteous die prematurely. The presence of two trees is used to explain a cause-effect link between obedience and death, but the connection is surprisingly uncertain: the couple does not die on the day they eat from the forbidden tree as forewarned. I use both a narrative and theological approach to understand better death within God’s judicial framework and liberate it from anachronistic attempts to impose Paul’s direct link between sin and death on the more nuanced view presented in Gen 2–3. By underscoring the ambiguity in Genesis, we are better able to identify its unique theological purpose that has a bearing on other Genesis themes.
As the concluding text to one of the more controversial Pauline teachings about women in the church community, 1 Timothy 2:15 carries a host of grammatical, semantic, and cultural questions that tax ...the most motivated and careful exegete. It is rendered distinctly troublesome by the change in number in the verbs and debates about their referent(s), the meaning of "salvation, " and Paul's choice of desired attributes. I examine Paul's use of the figure of Eve by looking first at the Genesis passage, where I consider her role as Adam's helper, her fall, her curse, and her recovery as keys to interpret her mention in 1 Timothy 2. I offer a surprising solution: Adam, not Eve, is saved through childbirth; that is, humanity is savedfrom extinction through the woman's role of mother with the condition that the couple, that is, men and women in the church, maintain the godly attributes listed.
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We report nuclear reaction data for neutron induced reactions on unstable nuclei are critical for a wide range of applications spanning studies of nuclear astrophysics, nuclear reactor designs, and ...radiochemistry diagnostics. However, nuclear data evaluations of the reaction cross sections are largely based on calculations due to the difficulty in performing this class of measurements and the resulting lack of experimental data. For neutron induced charged particle reactions at fast neutron energies, at the MeV scale, these cross section predictions are predominately driven by statistical Hauser-Feshbach calculations. In this work, we present partial and total 59Ni(n, p) and 59Ni(n, α) cross sections, measured directly with a radioactive 59Ni target, and compare the results to the present nuclear data evaluations. In addition, the results from this work are compared to a recent study of the 59Ni(n, xp) reaction cross section that was performed via an indirect surrogate ratio method. The expected energy trend of the cross section, based on the current work, is inconsistent with that of the surrogate work. This calls into question the reliability of that application of the surrogate ratio method and highlights the need for direct measurements on unstable nuclei, when feasible.
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Death takes a prominent place in the writings of Paul. His gospel offers the solution for death as sin's consequence—Jesus' death and resurrection provides propitiation, reconciliation, and eternal ...life. In spite of this confidence, however, he speaks about death often, at times affirms that he anticipates death with a positive attitude, and speaks of dying voluntarily. Paul was aware of his mortality and he lived and ministered out of this awareness. The thesis of this dissertation is that Paul uses expressions of mortality in terms of imitating Christ with three distinct senses or paradoxes based on the occasion into which he was writing. To churches with those who opposed him or his gospel, he spoke of noble death with an honor/shame paradox. To churches that were facing persecution, he spoke of martyrdom with an obedience/defiance paradox. To churches and colleagues who grasped the atoning nature of Christ's death and its implication within God's redemptive plan, he spoke of a life/sacrifice paradox. This dissertation examines Paul's theology of death and mortality by looking at semantics, background influences, then Paul's teaching and example. We begin in chapter two by defining the terminology of voluntary death. Chapters three to six discuss the major worldviews from which Paul drew his theology: Gentile, Jewish, the influence of Jesus and the early church. Chapter seven discusses Paul as a historian and theologian and engages his writings with a view to better understanding his positive affirmations of death in light of his ambition to imitate Christ and to lead others to follow his example.
Having defined death and identified categories for voluntary death in chap. 2, chaps. 3 to 8 trace the cultural and historical development of human thought on mortality and death. Chapter 3 ...considered Gentile views of death and mortality and concluded that noble death is well attested, martyrdom is not, and the idea of atoning sacrifice is, but with some caveats. Many of the concepts that find fuller development in the gospel are present in Greek literature, but the overall impact of the gospel in a polytheistic culture that allows for sacrifices but with an underdeveloped eschatology would be greatly minimized
Paul spoke of his own death in the context of ministry and often spoke of it positively. We have examined some positive expressions for voluntary premature death, specifically noble death, martyrdom, ...and atoning sacrifice. Confusion and overlap exist in contemporary discussions of these terms so we have appealed for semantic precision in order to understand Paul’s motive and optimism better when it comes to his conversations about his death.
We now turn to consider the worldviews that had a bearing on Paul’s thinking. Traditionally, academic conversation on Pauline background turns on cultural polarities such as Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian.
Paul’s View of Death Jenks, R. Gregory
Paul and His Mortality,
12/2015
Book Chapter
In chap. 2, I defined death and offered three positive motives for voluntary death: noble death as a general category for altruistic and often heroic dying for others; martyrdom, dying to promote an ...ideology or cause, typically with a hope of postmortem vindication; and atoning sacrifice, where death itself has a reconciling effect. I considered the way that vicariousness has been used to convey ideas of substitution, representation, and mimesis and concluded that, because atonement needs semantic protection, we had best assign representation and mimesis to martyrdom. The categories, however, are not mutually exclusive. Jesus’ death can be categorized as
From their exile to the first century, Israel was fragmented. Jews inside and outside Palestine struggled to understand their identity. The vast majority of Jews were scattered throughout the ...civilized world as the Diaspora. A “righteous remnant” had returned to the Holy Land looking for covenant renewal, but secular domination put a damper on the covenant vision. The Jewish Hasmoneans staged a successful uprising, and for about 80 years Israel governed itself independently. But Rome returned under General Pompey in 63 B.C. and finally with the installment King Herod in 37 B.C. definitvely established its reign over this complex people.
