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4 results

Deification in Classical Greek Philosophy and the Bible
  • James Bernard Murphy
  • Published online:
    10 July 2024
    Print publication:
    27 June 2024
  • To be human is to strive to be better, and we cannot be better without knowing what is best. In ancient Greek philosophy and the Bible, what is best is god. Plato and Aristotle argue that the goal of human life is to become as much like god as is humanly possible. Despite its obvious importance, this theme of assimilation to god has been neglected in Anglo-American scholarship. Classical Greek philosophy is best understood as a religious quest for divinity by means of rational discipline. By showing how Greek philosophy grows out of ancient Greek religion and how the philosophical quest for god compares to the biblical quest, we see Plato and Aristotle properly as major religious thinkers. In their shared quest for divine perfection, Greek philosophy and the Bible have enough in common to make their differences deeply illuminating.

  • Chapter 6 - Deification as Intimacy with God in the Bible

  • James Bernard Murphy, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
  • Book:
    Deification in Classical Greek Philosophy and the Bible
    Published online:
    10 July 2024
    Print publication:
    27 June 2024, pp 267-304

  • Summary

    If any book could be said to condemn the whole idea of human beings attempting to become like God, then surely it is the Bible. At the very beginning of Genesis, a serpent (later identified as Satan) tempts Eve with the promise that, if she disobeys God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then she will be “as a god.” According to the Bible, the root of all evil is pride; and pride means precisely thinking that we could become divine. Jesus himself is condemned by the Jewish priests for the blasphemous arrogance of claiming to be divine. And yet, the Bible also promises the faithful that they can become “partakers of the divine nature.” What the Bible condemns, of course, is self-deification. If we surrender to God’s love and seek intimate relation to him, God promises to transform us into creatures who possess divine sanctity and everlasting life. The biblical God is less a paradigm of perfection that we might imitate and more a divine person with whom we might have a loving relationship. According to the Bible, we are divinized not by merely imitating God but by loving and being loved by him.

The Theology of the Books of Haggai and Zechariah
  • Robert L. Foster
  • Published online:
    19 October 2020
    Print publication:
    29 October 2020
  • Tucked away at the end of the Minor Prophets, the Books of Haggai and Zechariah offer messages of challenge and hope to residents of the small district of Yehud in the Persian Empire in the generations after the return from Babylonian exile. In this volume, Robert Foster focuses on the distinct theological message of each book. The Book of Haggai uses Israel's foundational event - God's salvation of Israel from Egypt - to exhort the people to finish building the Second Temple. The Book of Zechariah argues that the hopes the people had in the prophet Zechariah's days did not come true because the people failed to keep God's long-standing demand for justice, though hope still lies in the future because of God's character. Each chapter in this book closes with a substantive reflection of the ethics of the major sections of the Books of Haggai and Zechariah and their implications for contemporary readers.

  • Glaube zwischen Bekenntnis und Welterfahrung: Zur Theologie Dieter Lührmanns*

  • Ulrich H. J. Körtner
  • Journal:
    New Testament Studies / Volume 61 / Issue 1 / January 2015
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    03 December 2014, pp. 92-112
    Print publication:
    January 2015

  • Dieter Lührmann (1939–2013), whose last post was as a teaching professor at the University of Marburg, was a highly esteemed New Testament scholar and theologian. In the tradition of Rudolf Bultmann and his teacher Günther Bornkamm he was a proponent of a theological exegesis which combined strict philological and historical work with theological thought. One of the main points of his research was the concept of faith in early Christianity. According to Lührmann, Christian faith inherently implies a tension between confession and worldly experience. This appraisal of Dieter Lührmann's theological path and achievements focuses on the aforementioned tension and definition of faith which characterise his theological exegesis and theology.