Behold, My Mother and My Brethren!: The Beginning of the Gospel and Becoming a Christian in (Post) Christendom; Mark 1:1 to 4:41 (Vol. 1) (A Kierkegaardian Reading of the Gospel of Mark)
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
In this Kierkegaardian reading of Mark’s Gospel two of the most creative and passionate witnesses of Christ’s gospel are brought together to mutually inform its superlative wonder. Both writers winsomely revealed the nature of human existence in sin, and the new life Jesus lived and made possible for all, as the paradoxical “God-man.” They highlighted “the single individual” against the frenzied crowd “in untruth”—driven by despair whether conscious or unconscious—and vulnerable to enticing publicity and deceptive propaganda. The entrenched societal systems unjustly determined for time and eternity who God favored or disfavored. In dramatic contrast, Mark and Kierkegaard both elucidated God’s “good news” calling forth the highest and “happy passion” of faith capable of creating a new family unconstrained by the status quo of the established order’s old wineskin. In short, through the gospel they powerfully challenged “the system,” whether modern “Christendom” or its first-century equivalent and did so by “merely” following Jesus “out over 70,000 fathoms,” weathering demonic storms and overcoming dehumanizing societal bureaucracies set against them and humanity at large. This Kierkegaardian reading of Mark reveals two kindred spirits, after Christ’s spirit, demonstrating the redemptive love of God for all humanity, centered in Christ.
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- Reveals two kindred spirits, after Christ’s spirit.
- Demonstrates the redemptive love of God for all humanity, centered in Christ.
- Explores the new life Jesus lived and made possible for all, as the paradoxical “God-man”.
- 1 “The Beginning” of Mark’s Sacred History and Kierkegaard’s “Mirror” of Existence-Communication
- 2 Two Voices Crying in the Wilderness . . . of Despair
- 3 God’s Earnestness: “And Everyone Shall Have an Opinion About It”
- 4 Temptation as Our Problem and Christ as Our Prototype
- 5 “The Moment” in the Fullness of Time: The Coming of Heaven and Earth
- 6 The Call to Contemporaneity with Jesus through the Middle Term of Death and the Dynamic of “Spirit”
- 7 “The First Day” in the Sacred History of the Contradiction: Foreshadows of Resistance and Faith, Fame and Infamy, Treason and Redemption
- 8 Concluding Preface to “The First Day”: Glory in Solitude and the Glory Made Manifest
- 9 Mark’s Leper and “A Leper’s Self-Contemplation”: Jesus leprosus and the Gospel’s Inversion of the Fortunate and the Unfortunate
- 10 “Your Sins are Forgiven!”: “The Happy Passion” and Unhappy Revolutions at the First-Century Crossroad and the 1840s Fork
- 11 Jesus and Kierkegaard on Gaining the World: “It is not the Healthy but the Sick . . . there is no Bliss except in Despair, Hurry Up and Despair”
- 12 “Thy Disciples Fast Not?”: Fasting Disciples and Feasting Christendom: Either/Or?
- 13 The Sabbath Dialectic: God Made the Sabbath for Man—On the Sabbath Man Plotted Death for the Son of Man
- 14 Truth, Boredom, and Crushing Publicity: Popular, Demonic, and Regarding Kierkegaard’s Uneven Trousers
- 15 Plundering the “Goods” of the Strong Man: Mark and Kierkegaard as Exorcists in “The Present Age” . . . of Anxiety
- 16 The Sower of Human Freedom, Responsibility, and Fruitfulness, and “The Parable of the Sower in Christendom”
- 17 “If Anyone Has Ears to Hear . . . for Disciples the Road is How”
- 18 The “Fine Species” of Seed that Sows Purity of Heart: God’s Unity and Man’s Disunity
- 19 The Lowly Mustard-Plant Growing in “The Present Age” . . . of Loftiness
- 20 The Situation for Coming to Faith: “Out on 70,000 Fathoms of Water”
Too often, Bible studies just serve to reinforce our cultural assumptions and existing power structures. Refreshingly, Christman’s Kierkegaardian reading of Mark stands as a challenge to our personal egoism, our cultural idolatry, and our political individualism. Christman invites us to ‘become Christians’ by rightly interrogating our conceptions of what that requires.
—J. Aaron Simmons, Furman University
Timely in every sense, Bryan Christman returns to the enigmatic Gospel of Mark armed with the wit and insight of a modern prophet, Soren Kierkegaard. In juxtaposing the beautiful narrative forms of Mark’s Gospel and Kierkegaard’s immense corpus, Christman is making accessible the passion in both for radical self-transformation. Fresh insight into Christology, anthropology, and psychology flow from his skillful analysis of dozens of interconnected theological motifs.
—David Mau, Colorado Christian University
Though his works remain widely discussed at universities and in scholarly conferences, Søren Kierkegaard did not feel that his work was best applied or understood in academic settings. Hence, in Behold, My Mother and My Brethren! Christman does not tender a fashionable argument meant to tantalize at the next biblical studies conference. Instead, his inspired yet learned treatise is meant to stir the individual reader, who, in picking it up, desires a deeper engagement with Scripture and, ultimately, a deeper relationship with God.
—Christopher B. Barnett, Villanova University
- Title: Behold, My Mother and My Brethren!: The Beginning of the Gospel and Becoming a Christian in (Post) Christendom; Mark 1:1 to 4:41 (Vol. 1) (A Kierkegaardian Reading of the Gospel of Mark)
- Author: Bryan M. Christman
- Series: A Kierkegaardian Reading of the Gospel of Mark
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Pages: 256
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9781666738797, 9781666799910, 1666738794, 1666799912, 9781666799903, 1666799904
- Resource ID: LLS:BHLDMYMTHR11441
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-10-17T01:59:46Z