1st Edition
Biblical Narratives and Human Flourishing Knowledge Through Narrative
Biblical narratives include some of the most important and influential narratives in human history, shaping human understanding of the most basic questions of human life as lived individually or in social association with others. These narratives have lasted for so many centuries because they offer deep insights into the nature of the human condition and human flourishing. This volume includes chapters by accomplished philosophers and theologians who bring their expertise to bear on biblical narratives to show the way in which each narrative contributes something distinctive to our understanding of human flourishing. They broaden the ongoing work in analytic theology with a new focus on narrative and the knowledge of persons in philosophical-theological biblical exegesis. They also illustrate the narrative cognition that this methodology can provide. The book will be of interest to scholars of philosophy, theology, and biblical studies.
1. Knowledge through Narrative: Philosophical and Theological Explorations of Biblical Stories
Eleonore Stump and Judith Wolfe
PART I Biblical Narratives and Human Flourishing
2. God, Humanity, and Meaning in the Book of Jonah
Aaron Segal
3. Ecclesiastes and the Good Life for Human Beings
Eleonore Stump
4. The Unbinding of Isaac: Maimonides on the Aqedah
Josef Stern
5. Abraham, Lazarus, and Returning to Life: Kierkegaard on Existential Faith
Sharon Krishek
PART II Biblical Narratives and Human Flourishing in Relation to God and Others
6. Why God Does Not share His Secrets with Us: What We Can Learn from Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on John 15: 14-16 and the Biblical Narrative of Abraham
Patrick Zoll
7. Give Truth to Jacob
Samuel Lebens
8. Divine Disappointments: Humans and Other Animals in the Book of Bereishit
Tamara Wright and Ian Gamse
9. Creation and Participation in John’s Gospel
Darren Sarisky
10. Identifying the Risen Christ: Some Reflections on the Epistemology and Theology of the Road to Emmaus Story
Mark Wynn
PART III Biblical Narratives and Human Flourishing in the Midst of Disorder and Distress
11. A Narrative and Apocalyptic Philosophy of Prayer: Being Towards God
Simon Oliver and Judith Wolfe
12. Jonah, Alienation, and the Meaning of Life
Godehard Brüntrup
13. Images of Mercy: Narrating the Gospel through a Rwandan Catholic Shrine
Alison Fitchett-Climenhaga and Nevin Climenhaga
Biography
Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University. She has published extensively in philosophy of religion, contemporary metaphysics, and medieval philosophy. Her books include Aquinas (2003), Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (2010), Atonement (2018), The Image of God: The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Mourning (2022), and Grains of Wheat. Suffering and Biblical Narratives (2024).
Judith Wolfe is Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of St Andrews. Her core expertise is in eschatology and apocalypticism in theology, philosophy, and literature, on which she has published widely. With Oxford University Press, she has published Heidegger’s Eschatology, The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought, and the three-volume Oxford History of Modern German Theology.
