Making Christians
Regular price
€112.99
A01=Denise Kimber Buell
Analogy
Asceticism
Author_Denise Kimber Buell
Breast milk
Catechesis
Category=JBSF
Category=QRAX
Category=QRM
Category=QRVG
Celibacy
Christian
Christian Identity
Christian literature
Christian theology
Christianity
Church Fathers
Clement of Alexandria
Deity
Disciple (Christianity)
Early Christianity
Epithet
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eq_society-politics
Etiology
Etymology
Explanation
Gender role
Gnosticism
God
God the Father
Hebrews
Heresy
Homoeroticism
James M. Robinson
Jews
Judaism
Kinship
Krister Stendahl
Lactation
Literature
Loeb Classical Library
Marcion of Sinope
Menstruation
Metaphor
Nutrition
Obedience (human behavior)
Orthodoxy
Ousia
Paideia
Pantaenus
Phaedrus (dialogue)
Philosopher
Philosophy
Princeton University Press
Progenitor
Proverb
Religion
Religious text
Rhetoric
Routledge
Self-control
Sexual abstinence
Sexual intercourse
Socrates
Sowing
Tertullian
The Other Hand
The Philosopher
Theology
Theory
Thought
Treatise
University of California Press
Uterus
Valentinus (Gnostic)
Virginity
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691059808
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 197 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 04 Apr 1999
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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How did second-century Christians vie with each other in seeking to produce an authoritative discourse of Christian identity? In this innovative book, Denise Buell argues that many early Christians deployed the metaphors of procreation and kinship in the struggle over claims to represent the truth of Christian interpretation, practice, and doctrine. In particular, she examines the intriguing works of the influential theologian Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-210 c.e.), for whom cultural assumptions about procreation and kinship played an important role in defining which Christians have the proper authority to teach, and which kinds of knowledge are authentic. Buell argues that metaphors of procreation and kinship can serve to make power differentials appear natural. She shows that early Christian authors recognized this and often turned to such metaphors to mark their own positions as legitimate and marginalize others as false. Attention to the functions of this language offers a way out of the trap of reconstructing the development of early Christianity along the axes of "heresy" and "orthodoxy," while not denying that early Christians employed this binary.
Ultimately, Buell argues, strategic use of kinship language encouraged conformity over diversity and had a long lasting effect both on Christian thought and on the historiography of early Christianity. Aperceptive and closely argued contribution to early Christian studies, Making Christians also branches out to the areas of kinship studies and the social construction of gender.
Denise Kimber Buell is Assistant Professor of Religion at Williams College.
