Over the past five centuries, those who translate the Greek New Testament for English readers have increasingly found it appropriate to do so without recourse to a human soul. This is not simply a case of linguistic slippage, but the consequence of sustained exploration of the social‐historical milieu within which the New Testament writers lived and wrote. This chapter explains three areas of inquiry. First, the significance of historical inquiry for situating the New Testament materials more securely within their first‐century (...) milieu as a prophylactic against colonizing New Testament perspectives, in this case, with foreign assumptions about theological anthropology. Second, the significance of sociocultural forms of inquiry, including medical anthropology and social psychology, for shaping our understanding of humanity in the New Testament world. Third, a rereading of New Testament texts that served previously as taken‐for‐granted illustrations of the New Testament's anthropological dualism. (shrink)

Against those contemporary patterns of thought that segregate thinking and doing, or “theory” and “practice,” this essay urges that Scripture works with a more integrated and communal understanding of human life, and thus of Christian faith. Accordingly, practices like hospitality and table fellowship in Luke or the kiss of greeting in 1 Peter are not faith's accessories; rather, they actually generate the realities they are thought to represent. They restructure relationships and prompt transformed patterns of human life. They not only (...) serve to exemplify the good news, but are themselves the good news. (shrink)

Narrative theology emphasizes the overall aim and recounting of God's ways revealed in Scripture and ongoing in history. An exploration of 1 and 2 Peter from this perspective accentuates the theological role of these short letters in shaping the identity of God's people.