What is it about?
Accounting for a variety of literary genres circa the first century CE, the author identifies a prominent strand of thought about the ethical implications of emotional behavior. Morally minded authors consistently describe emotion in terms of a rising temptation to do what feels right irrespective of whether that course is right/rational or godly.
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Why is it important?
A historically-grounded working definition of emotion guides the author's hermeneutic to assess emotion and emotional culpability. Having independently explored emotion in Philippians, Richard Hicks turns his attention here to the Gospel of Mark. (Hicks's working definition of emotion is the culmination of an independent study with Joel Green at Fuller Seminary in 2009. It was presented first in “The Climax of Testing at Gethsemane: Mark 14:32–42” at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. Minneapolis, MN, 6 March 2010. Subsequently published as "'Emotional' Temptation and Jesus' Spiritual Victory at Markan Gethsemane," JBPR 5 [2013]: 29-48.)
Perspectives
My initial interest in Jesus's emotion was sparked during a graduate seminar in Mark (2003), and I concluded that Mark is attuned to Jesus's anger throughout the narrative. As I became better acquainted with the historical context of the New Testament, however, my prior understanding of passages featuring "anger" (e.g., Mark 1:40-45; 11:15-17) was turned on its head. This study, which is the fruit of many years of research, reflects a sort of 180 degree turn from where I started.
Dr. Richard James Hicks
Fuller Theological Seminary
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This page is a summary of: Emotion Made Right, September 2021, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/9783110723076.
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