Faithful Feelings: Rethinking Emotion in the New Testament (Paperback)

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“Everything we do, say, and think is, in some sense, emotional. We describe ourselves and our experiences in terms of how we feel.”

In the New Testament, Jesus and Paul displayed a wide range of emotions in their lives and teaching. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards and others have recognized the vital importance of emotion in Christian experience. However, in recent times, many preachers and theologians have relegated it to the margins. Our thinking on the relationship between reason and emotion is often confused or obscure.

Faithful Feelings takes a fresh look at the causes, nature, and role of felt experience in Christian living. While the author discusses the vocabulary of emotion—love, joy, hope, jealousy, fear, sorrow, anger—his primary concern is with emotion itself, how it was perceived by the New Testament writers in their cultural context, and what role it should play in the lives of Christian believers. He argues that our feelings play an essential role in Christian faith, theology, and ethics.

“This book shows originality in its choice of subject, in the application of current research in psychology to ancient texts, in the comprehensiveness of its scope, and to some extent in the interpretation of individual texts. There is no other book that covers the same ground, and the topic is an important one.”

—I. Howard Marshall
Emeritus Professor of New Testament Exegesis,
University of Aberdeen

“This is an immensely significant work that breaks new ground, opening a new field of inquiry that those who follow must address. The interdisciplinary niche it carves out invites further dialogue between New Testament scholars and our colleagues in counseling and psychology.”

—Craig S. Keener
Professor of New Testament Studies,
Palmer Seminary

Matthew A. Elliott (Ph.D., University of Aberdeen) is president of Oasis International, a Chicago-based distributor of books and Bibles into the English-speaking developing world.