The preferred moral curriculum of a Roman education abounded with exemplary stories of Rome’s native heroes. To inculcate conceptions of virtuous leadership, politicians and populace alike deployed exempla as rhetorical vehicles of the mos maiorum (way of the ancestors). James Petitfils explores Jewish and Christian participation in this widespread pedagogical practice. After surveying Roman discourse on exemplary leadership, the author consults several texts, written in significantly Romanized environments, celebrating Jewish or Christian ancestral leaders (Josephus’ Antiquities 2-4, Philo’s Mosis 1-2, 1 Clement, and The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons ). He highlights their respective appropriation, adaptation, and redeployment of the Roman moral idiom on exemplary leadership in the promotion of self-consciously non-Roman ancestral exempla and languages of leadership.
Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology
A provocative look at a complex aspect of our faith: the fact that the Savior who died on the cross is also the eternal Second Person of the Trinity. Approaching post-Chalcedonian Christology from a variety of disciplines—historical, philosophical, systematic, and practical—six highly regarded theologians emphasize the importance of keeping a Trinitarian perspective.
