Stock image for illustration purposes only - book cover, edition or condition may vary.
The Emergence of Sin. The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans.
Matthew Croasmun
€ 157.96
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for The Emergence of Sin. The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans.
Hardback. Commentators have long argued about whether to read Paul's personification of Sin in Romans literally or figuratively. Matthew Croasmun suggests both that the cosmic power Sin is nothing more than an emergent feature of a vast network of human transgression and that this power is nevertheless a real person. Num Pages: 296 pages. BIC Classification: HRAM3; HRC; HRCF2; HRCM; PDA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 235 x 156. .
Where does evil come from? And how did it become so powerful? We can have a sense that when we try to do right by one another, we aren't merely striving against ourselves. The feeling is that we are struggling against something--someone--else. As if there's a force--a person--that wishes us ill. In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul describes just such a person: Sin, a cosmic tyrant who constrains our moral freedom, confuses our moral judgment, and condemns us to slavery and to death. Commentators have long argued about whether Paul literally means to say Sin is a person or is simply indulging in literary personification, but regardless of Paul's intentions, for modern readers it would seem clear enough: there is no such thing as a cosmic tyrant. Surely it is more reasonable to suppose "Sin" is merely a colorful way of describing individual misdeeds or, at most, a way of evoking the intractability of our social ills. In The Emergence of Sin, Matthew Croasmun suggests we take another look. The vision of Sin he offers is at once scientific and theological, social and individual, corporeal and mythological. He argues both that the cosmic power Sin is nothing more than an emergent feature of a vast human network of transgression and that this power is nevertheless real, personal, and one whom we had better be ready to resist. Ultimately, what is on offer here is an account of the world re-mythologized at the hands of chemists, evolutionary biologists, sociologists, and entomologists. In this world, Paul's text is not a relic of a forgotten mythical past, but a field manual for modern living.
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2017
Publisher
Oxford University Press United Kingdom
Number of pages
296
Condition
New
Number of Pages
296
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9780190277987
SKU
V9780190277987
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-16
About Matthew Croasmun
Matthew Croasmun is Associate Research Scholar and Director of the Life Worth Living Program at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and Lecturer of Divinity and Humanities at Yale University. He completed his Ph.D. in Religious Studies (New Testament) at Yale in 2014 and was a recipient of the 2015 Manfred Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise for his dissertation, "The Body of Sin: An Emergent Account of Sin as a Cosmic Power in Romans 5-8."
Reviews for The Emergence of Sin. The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans.
A striking study, then, and well worth reading for an original and stimulating exposition of Romans. Those interested in the philosophical questions of emergentism will find it fascinating and provocative and themselves, on closing the book, with many more questions that they wish to ask.
Euan Alexander Grant, The Emergence of Sin
...highly theoretical...
Jeffrey S. Siker, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly
In one of the most innovative and compelling books on Paul to be published in years, The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans, Croasmun zeroes in on one of Paul's most puzzling and alienating concepts: his portrayal of sin-or, perhaps better, "Sin"-as a kind of mythic god, a personal force or energy that nefariously thwarts divine purposes and enslaves unsuspecting humans.
Wesley Hill, associate professor of New Testament at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, Marginalia Review of Books
[A] fantastic new book...The singular contribution of The Emergence of Sin is Croasmun's lengthy, accessible and paradigm-altering proposal that sin by the individual, Sin as a cosmological presence and Sin as a systemic can be explained best by emergence theory.
Scot McKnight, Patheos
The book is replete with his assiduous engagements with several important figures in modern emergentism, including Philip Clayton and Andy Clark. The natural corollary to this is that Christian theological discourse (in this case what he calls 'an emergent hamartiology') can be a potentially fruitful interlocutor for many non-theological disciplines... I have benefited much from Croasmun's work, and suspect that many others will find this book helpful as well.
Sang-il Kim, Reading Religion
Euan Alexander Grant, The Emergence of Sin
...highly theoretical...
Jeffrey S. Siker, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly
In one of the most innovative and compelling books on Paul to be published in years, The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans, Croasmun zeroes in on one of Paul's most puzzling and alienating concepts: his portrayal of sin-or, perhaps better, "Sin"-as a kind of mythic god, a personal force or energy that nefariously thwarts divine purposes and enslaves unsuspecting humans.
Wesley Hill, associate professor of New Testament at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, Marginalia Review of Books
[A] fantastic new book...The singular contribution of The Emergence of Sin is Croasmun's lengthy, accessible and paradigm-altering proposal that sin by the individual, Sin as a cosmological presence and Sin as a systemic can be explained best by emergence theory.
Scot McKnight, Patheos
The book is replete with his assiduous engagements with several important figures in modern emergentism, including Philip Clayton and Andy Clark. The natural corollary to this is that Christian theological discourse (in this case what he calls 'an emergent hamartiology') can be a potentially fruitful interlocutor for many non-theological disciplines... I have benefited much from Croasmun's work, and suspect that many others will find this book helpful as well.
Sang-il Kim, Reading Religion