The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics PDF Download

Author: Hector Avalos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909697737
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Did Jesus ever do anything wrong? Judging by the vast majority of books on New Testament ethics, the answer is a resounding No. Writers on New Testament ethics generally view Jesus as the paradigm of human standards and behaviour. But since the his-torical Jesus was a human being, must he not have had flaws, like everyone else? The notion of a flawless human Jesus is a paradoxical oddity in New Testament ethics. According to Avalos, it shows that New Testament ethics is still primarily an apologetic enterprise de-spite its claim to rest on critical and historical scholarship. The Bad Jesus is a powerful and challenging study, presenting de-tailed case studies of fundamental ethical principles enunciated or practised by Jesus but antithetical to what would be widely deemed 'acceptable' or 'good' today. Such topics include Jesus' supposedly innovative teachings on love, along with his views on hate, violence, imperialism, animal rights, environmental ethics, Judaism, women, disabled persons and biblical hermeneutics. After closely examining arguments offered by those unwilling to find any fault with the Jesus depicted in the Gospels, Avalos concludes that current treatments of New Testament ethics are permeated by a religiocentric, ethnocentric and imperialistic orientation. But if it is to be a credible historical and critical dis-cipline in modern academia, New Testament ethics needs to discover both a Good and a Bad Jesus.

Author: J. L. Houlden
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567084752
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
In Ethics and the New Testament, the author applies strict critical standards to the Gospels, epistles and other writings, which he examines in historical perspective. His explanation of contemporary attitudesincluding gnosticismhelps to clarify the str

Author: Richard B. Hays
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062313444
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 965

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Book Description
A leading expert in New Testament ethics discovers in the biblical witness a unified ethical vision -- centered in the themes of community, cross and new creation -- that has profound relevance in today′s world. Richard Hays shows how the New Testament provides moral guidance on the most troubling ethical issues of our time, including violence, divorce, homosexuality and abortion.

Author: Daniel Harrington, SJ
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742549944
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Jesuits Daniel Harrington and James Keenan have successfully team-taught the content of this landmark study to the delight of students for years. In this book they take the fruits of their own experiences as theologians, writers, teachers, mentors, and friends to propose virtue ethics as a bridge between the fields of New Testament Studies and Moral Theology. Answering the call of the Second Vatican Council for moral theology to "draw more fully on the teaching of Holy Scripture," the authors examine the virtues that both flow from Scripture and provide a lens by which to interpret Scripture. By remaining true to both the New Testament's emphasis on the human response to God's gracious activity in Jesus Christ and to the ethical needs and desires of Christians in the twenty-first century, the authors address key topics such as discipleship, the Sermon on the Mount, love, sin, politics, justice, sexuality, marriage, divorce, bioethics, and ecology. Covering the entire sweep of ethical teaching from its foundations in Scripture and especially in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection to its goal or "end" with the full coming of God's kingdom, the authors invite readers more deeply into an appreciation of the central biblical themes and how, based on the themes, Catholic Christian moral theology bears on general ethical issues in culture. Complete with reflection questions and suggestions for further reading, this book is essential reading for professors, students, pastors, preachers, and interested Catholics.

Author: Frank J. Matera
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664225155
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Neither Jesus nor Paul developed a formal ethical system, yet each left a moral legacy that forms the core of New Testament ethics. In this book, Frank Matera examines the ethic found in the teachings of Jesus and Paul. He explores the broad range of moral concerns found in these writings and finds an identifiable unity that underlies the ethical teachings of both.

Author: Hector Avalos
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615921958
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Is religion inherently violent? If not, what provokes violence in the name of religion? Do we mischaracterize religion by focusing too much on its violent side?In this intriguing, original study of religious violence, Prof. Hector Avalos offers a new theory for the role of religion in violent conflicts. Starting with the premise that most violence is the result of real or perceived scare resources, Avalos persuasively argues that religion creates new scarcities on the basis of unverifiable or illusory criteria. Through a careful analysis of the fundamental texts of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, Dr. Avalos explains how four scarce resources have figured repeatedly in creating religious violence: sacred space (e.g., the perception by three world religions that Jerusalem is sacred); the creation of holy scriptures (believed to be privileged revelations of God's will); group privilege (stemming from such beliefs as a chosen people or predestination, which also creates a group of outsiders); and salvation (by which concept some are accepted and others rejected). Thus, Avalos shows, religious violence is often the most unnecessary violence of all since the scarce resources over which religious conflicts ensue are not actually scare or need not be scarce.Comparing violence in religious and nonreligious contexts, Avalos makes the compelling argument that if we condemn violence caused by scarce resources as morally objectionable, then we must consider even more objectionable violence provoked by alleged scarcities that cannot be proven to exist. He also examines the Nazi Holocaust and the Stalinist Terror, which have been attributed to the pernicious effects of atheism or secular humanism. By contrast, Avalos pinpoints underlying religious factors as the cause of these horrific instances of genocidal violence.This serious philosophical examination of the roots of religious violence adds much to our understanding of a perennial source of widespread human suffering.Hector Avalos (Ames, IA) is associate professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, the author of five books on biblical studies and religion, the former editor of the Journal for the Critical Study of Religion, and executive director of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion.

Author: C. A. Anderson Scott
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107450985
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
This book contains the text of the Hulsean Lectures for 1929 on the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Scott was the first non-clergyman to hold this lectureship, and in these lectures he charts the development and gradual evolution of the teachings of Jesus though their interpretation by later teachers.

Author: Richard Hays
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567518531
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
Richard Hays explores the ethical values and dynamics with which Jesus himself lived to show how the New Testament provides challenging moral guidance on some of the most important contemporary ethical issues.

Author: Paul Copan
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 9781441214546
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A recent string of popular-level books written by the New Atheists have leveled the accusation that the God of the Old Testament is nothing but a bully, a murderer, and a cosmic child abuser. This viewpoint is even making inroads into the church. How are Christians to respond to such accusations? And how are we to reconcile the seemingly disconnected natures of God portrayed in the two testaments? In this timely and readable book, apologist Paul Copan takes on some of the most vexing accusations of our time, including: God is arrogant and jealous God punishes people too harshly God is guilty of ethnic cleansing God oppresses women God endorses slavery Christianity causes violence and more Copan not only answers God's critics, he also shows how to read both the Old and New Testaments faithfully, seeing an unchanging, righteous, and loving God in both.

Author: Hector Avalos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909697188
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
In this immensely wide-ranging and fascinating study, Avalos critiques the common claim that the abolition of slavery was due in large part to the influence of biblical ethics. Such a claim, he argues, is characteristic of a broader phenomenon in biblical scholarship, which focuses on defending, rather than describing, the ethical norms encountered in biblical texts. The first part of Avalos's critique explores how modern scholars have praised the supposed superiority of biblical ethics at the cost of diminishing or ignoring many similar features in ancient Near Eastern cultures. These features include manumission, fixed terms of service, familial rights, and egalitarian critiques of slavery. At the same time, modern scholarship has used the standard tools of biblical exegesis in order to minimize the ethically negative implications of many biblical references to slavery. The second part of the book concentrates on how the Bible has been used throughout Christian history both to maintain and to extend slavery. In particular, Avalos offers detailed studies of papal documents used to defend the Church's stance on slavery. Discussions of Gregory of Nyssa, Aquinas and Luther, among others, show that they are not such champions of freedom as they are often portrayed. Avalos's close readings of the writings of major abolitionists such as Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce and Frederick Douglass show an increasing shift away from using the Bible as a support for abolitionism. Biblical scholars have rarely recognized that pro-slavery advocates could use the Bible just as effectively. According to Avalos, one of the complex mix of factors leading to abolition was the abandonment of the Bible as an ethical authority. The case of the biblical attitude to slavery is just one confirmation of how unsuitable the Bible is as a manual of ethics in the modern world.