Given the sheer volume of scholarship which has been devoted to examining Paul and his congregations, it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to what the texts portray as the apostle's main concern: not what his congregations were in any 'objective', historical sense, but what they were 'in Christ'. / Building on this observation, my thesis may be stated as follows. Traditional Pauline studies, with their emphases either on the apostle's thought or on his congregations' historical situation, obscure the importance of the 'church in the work', a reality established in the text, structured to engender change, and made real rhetorically for readers. / These, then, are some of the questions posed: What influence should an awareness of Paul's hortatory, theological image of his congregations have on our efforts to reconstruct them historically? May the well-known Pauline 'indicative-imperative' be taken as a rhetorical strategy? And: In what way does the text try to make its portrayal the definitive reality lived out by its readers? / The focus of this thesis is on Paul's congregations as the letters indicated 'they should be', and on the linkage this vision in the letters provides between theology and history, author and reader.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.35977 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Anderson, Matthew, 1959- |
| Contributors | Wisse, Frederik (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Faculty of Religious Studies.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001686657, proquestno: NQ55298, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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