Being Human in God's World: An Old Testament Theology of Humanity

J. Gordon McConville explores how a biblical view of humanity provides a foundation for Christian reflection on ethics, economics, politics, and church life and practice. He shows that the Old Testament's view of humanity as "earthed" and "embodied" plays an essential part in a well-rounded Christian theology and spirituality, and he applies the theological concept of the "image of God" to all areas of human existence. The book also pays attention to the ways in which the genres of the Old Testament contribute to its articulation of the human experience. Human life, both as depicted in the Old Testament world and as advocated to readers, comprises all possibilities--between flourishing and tragedy, and between the enacted realization of the image of God and its corruption. Yet it is informed by eschatological direction and hope, which ensures the meaningfulness of the ordinary, daily components of life. McConville shows that true engagement with the Old Testament on the subject is a matter not merely of intellectual comprehension but of commitment to personal and communal transformation, which in whole-biblical perspective is ultimately conformation to Christ.

Being Human in God's World will appeal to professors and students of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, as well as to church leaders and other serious readers.

• Contents
• Introduction: On Thinking about Being Human
• 1. Humanity in the Image of God (Imago Dei)
• 2. "Like God" in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2-3)
• 3. The Human "Constitution" in the Old Testament
• 4. The Situated Self
• 5. The Old Testament's Transformations and the "Spiritual Sense"
• 6. Embodiments: Place and Memory
• 7. The Political Self
• 8. Male and Female
• 9. Work and Creativity
• 10. The Old Testament and Human Formation: The Psalms
• Indexes