An incitement to re-assess how society relates to persons with poor mental health

Mainwaring explores the societal contexts of those who suffer poor mental health, and in particular the relational dynamics of how identity, agency, and dialogue are negotiated in personal encounters. This work seeks to serve as an experiment, such that interested readers might better understand the dynamics of relational power that pervade encounters with persons with poor mental health.

Features:

• Foucauldian analysis of the relational dynamics of poor mental health used to re-imagine hegemonic relational dynamics
• Close readings of encounters between individual characters to evaluate how mutuality operates in those encounters
• Study of mutuality as it has emerged in mental health literature, feminist theologies, and theologies of disability

In this collection of essays, leading New Testament scholars reassess the reciprocal relationship between Matthew and Second Temple Judaism. Some contributions focus on the relationship of the Matthean Jesus to torah, temple, and synagogue, while others explore theological issues of Jewish and gentile ethnicity and universalism within and behind the text.

Ruth Christa Mathieson’s unique reading of Matthew’s parable of the royal wedding feast (Matt 22:1–14), which concludes with the king’s demand that one of the guests be bound and cast out into the outer darkness, focuses on the means of the underdressed guest’s expulsion. Using sociorhetorical interpretation, Mathieson draws the parable into conversation with early Jewish narratives of the angel Raphael binding hands and feet (1 Enoch; Tobit) and the protocol for expelling individuals from the community in Matt 18. She asserts that readers are invited to consider if the person who is bound and cast out is a danger to the little ones of the community of faith unless removed and restrained.

Engage compelling arguments that challenge prominent positions in Pauline studies

In this innovative book, William E. W. Robinson takes the reader on a journey through Romans 8:1–17 using Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory. Robinson delineates the underlying cognitive metaphors, their structure, their function, what they mean, and how Paul’s audiences then and now are able to comprehend their meaning. He examines each metaphor in the light of relevant aspects of the Greco-Roman world and Paul’s Jewish background. Robinson contends that Paul portrays the Spirit as the principal agent in the religious-ethical life of believers. At the same time, his analysis demonstrates that the conceptual metaphors in Romans 8:1–17 convey the integral role of believers in ethical conduct. In the process, he addresses thorny theological issues such as whether Spirit and flesh signal an internal battle within believers or two conflicting ways of life. Finally, Robinson shows how this study is relevant to related Pauline passages and challenges scholars to incorporate these methods into their own investigation of biblical texts.

Features:

• Sustained argument that sheds new light on how Paul communicates with his audiences
• Substantial contribution to current debates about central theological concepts
• Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory applied to the metaphors in Romans 8:1-17