The author of the Fourth Gospel delivers the true divine identity and significance of Jesus throughout the entire narrative. He aims at guiding his readers through the narrative of the Gospel with the purpose that they will “see” (meet) Jesus, confess him as Christ, and receive eternal life. John actually planned that the text of the Gospel should actively change people. Furthermore, the Gospel of John has wide spectrum of the reader. This means that John opens his message to the all the generations who are no longer in a position to see Jesus physically. Nobody reading this text should or could stay the same, since he or she will be confronted with the protagonist of the text, namely Jesus. By accepting this message, that person will receive life; by rejecting the message, a person will perish. This truth is rehearsed over and again in the narrative for every reader to see. The text of the Gospel thus becomes the “presence of Jesus” among the readers. This functional purpose of the Gospel accounts for the first farewell discourse in John 13:31-14:31. In response to previous scholarship that understands the Johannine farewell discourses solely as a testament, the present study convinces that the discourses interface with classical literature, specifically the following literary styles: Greek tragedy, consolation literature, and the literary symposium tradition. The multiplicity of the generic associations of the discourses sheds new light on the nature of Jesus’ departure as well as his continuing presence in spite of that departure. No longer designed to evoke only the themes of departure and absence, the testament of Jesus in John emphasises instead Jesus’ abiding presence. While the material from Greek tragedy will only further emphasise the theme of departure, the material from classical consolation literature and the literary symposium tradition will accentuate the theme of continuing presence. John has thereby transcended the usual expectations of the testament. Thus the physically absent Jesus becomes present through his first farewell discourse: the reader is confronted with a dynamic portrait of Jesus and this confrontation results in an acceptance of Jesus as Christ, as well as the receiving of eternal life. According to the first farewell discourse, eschatological promise, knowing and seeing the Father, glory, love, pastoral ministry, deeds, prayer, Paraclete, remembering, faith, peace and joy, and the words of Jesus all serve as the replacement of the physical Jesus. Therefore, the first farewell discourse does not indicate the separation of Jesus from his disciples but rather the permanent presence of the risen Jesus in and among them. This is their basis for perseverance, in other words, the foundation of their spreading the gospel messages to non-believers, even though they were in a difficult place. the gospel of John, John 13:31-14-31, the purpose of John’s gospel, the presence of Jesus, the recipient of the Fourth Gospel, the farewell discourse(s), Biblical hermeneutics, glory, eschatological promise, the Paraclete, mutual love, peace and joy / Thesis (PhD (New Testament Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / New Testament Studies / unrestricted

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One of the central issues of early Christianity was the identity of Jesus Christ. Paul and other early Christians discussed this question within the framework of traditional Jewish monotheism and used the language of deity to describe Christ. This thesis explores how and why they integrated the two concepts of monotheism and the deity of Jesus. As a window into this process, it particularly examines Paul’s discourse in 2 Cor 3:16–4:6, employing grammatical-historical exegesis with insights from rhetorical criticism and Oneness Pentecostal Christology. We consider three fundamental questions: (1) What does the exalted language concerning Christ in this text represent? (2) How did Paul reconcile the deification of Jesus with his monotheistic heritage? (3) Why did Paul deify Jesus? What interests were served, and what were the practical consequences? The conclusion is that early Christians, prior to and including Paul, worshiped Jesus within a Jewish monotheistic context and not as a result of Hellenization. They viewed Jesus as the revelation of the one God, not as a second deity or a different personage. Although they reinterpreted their core beliefs in light of Jesus, they did not see their worship of Jesus as violating their core beliefs. The evidence from Paul’s Corinthian correspondence does not require an explicit binitarian or trinitarian model, but it reveals that many early Christians viewed God as both transcendent and immanent and worshiped Jesus as the God of Israel manifested in human identity. We identify four significant socio-rhetorical factors in the monotheistic deification of Jesus: (1) In a context of rapid social change it enabled Christians to combine Hebrew monotheism with Greek longing for universals, thereby claiming both traditional heritage and Christocentric distinctiveness. (2) It gave them a unique social identity and cohesiveness. (3) It affirmed their soteriological experiences, beliefs, and outreach. (4) It positioned the movement to attract all people, moving the new faith beyond Jewish ethnicity and traditional boundary markers so that it became a universal monotheism with a missiological focus. The socio-rhetorically constructed identity of Jesus Christ defined the identity of the early Christians. The result was a distinctively Christian faith. / New Testament / D. Th. (New Testament)

One of the central issues of early Christianity was the identity of Jesus Christ. Paul and other early Christians discussed this question within the framework of traditional Jewish monotheism and used the language of deity to describe Christ. This thesis explores how and why they integrated the two concepts of monotheism and the deity of Jesus. As a window into this process, it particularly examines Paul’s discourse in 2 Cor 3:16–4:6, employing grammatical-historical exegesis with insights from rhetorical criticism and Oneness Pentecostal Christology. We consider three fundamental questions: (1) What does the exalted language concerning Christ in this text represent? (2) How did Paul reconcile the deification of Jesus with his monotheistic heritage? (3) Why did Paul deify Jesus? What interests were served, and what were the practical consequences? The conclusion is that early Christians, prior to and including Paul, worshiped Jesus within a Jewish monotheistic context and not as a result of Hellenization. They viewed Jesus as the revelation of the one God, not as a second deity or a different personage. Although they reinterpreted their core beliefs in light of Jesus, they did not see their worship of Jesus as violating their core beliefs. The evidence from Paul’s Corinthian correspondence does not require an explicit binitarian or trinitarian model, but it reveals that many early Christians viewed God as both transcendent and immanent and worshiped Jesus as the God of Israel manifested in human identity. We identify four significant socio-rhetorical factors in the monotheistic deification of Jesus: (1) In a context of rapid social change it enabled Christians to combine Hebrew monotheism with Greek longing for universals, thereby claiming both traditional heritage and Christocentric distinctiveness. (2) It gave them a unique social identity and cohesiveness. (3) It affirmed their soteriological experiences, beliefs, and outreach. (4) It positioned the movement to attract all people, moving the new faith beyond Jewish ethnicity and traditional boundary markers so that it became a universal monotheism with a missiological focus. The socio-rhetorically constructed identity of Jesus Christ defined the identity of the early Christians. The result was a distinctively Christian faith. / New Testament / D. Th. (New Testament)

This thesis seeks to show that Charles Williams makes a significant contribution to theology, and it demonstrates the nature of that contribution. A pattern of theological themes centering on the Incarnation, emphasizing the humanity of Christ, is repeated throughout his works. For Williams, human beings are images of the coinherent Godhead. His theological anthropology further develops through his understanding of imaging, as shown for instance in the Incarnation, and in Dante's characterization of Beatrice as a God bearer. His view of images is built from Coleridge's understanding of the nature of a symbol. This picture of imaging is widely applied, first and foremost to relationships of love, seen as potential incarnate images of grace. Williams seeks to extend his picture to all relationships and, further, to whatever man must do to go beyond himself to an encounter with God. He believes that man is responsible for his brother, in practice by bearing his brother's burdens, with substitutionary acts of vicarious love. A further part of his thinking then views people as living in coinherent relationships, and the universe as a web of coinherent relations. He draws his examples of natural coinherent relations from the world of commerce with its exchange and substitution of labors and from the child living within its mother, and builds a picture of what he calls the City, a broader coinherent society. Coinherence begins and flows from the Trinity and the Incarnation and then is found in relationships between God and man: in the Church, in the future City of God, and in all Creation. The Fall brings about the breakdown of the coinherence of God and man and man and man, and that breakdown is a central characteristic of sin. Williams believes that a regenerated coinherence in Christ brings about a renewal of mankind.

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology���s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed.

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).