Yung Suk Kim
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Paul did not write a systematic theology or specific church doctrines when he wrote Romans. His audience was Roman Christians, and his last will was to preach the gospel to all, especially gentiles in Spain. Through this letter, Paul wants to pave the way for a visit to Rome and expects their support on his mission trip to Spain. The question is this: What kind of the gospel does he want to share with them? Traditionally, the letter has been read...
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Yung Suk Kim raises a perennial question about Jesus: How can we approach the historical Jesus? Kim proposes to interpret him from the perspective of the dispossessed--through the eyes of weakness. Exploring Jesus's experience, interpretation, and enactment of weakness, understanding weakness as both human condition and virtue, Kim offers a new portrait of Jesus who is weak and strong, and empowered to bring God's rule, replete with mercy, in the...
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How to Read Paul provides an incisive, yet brief, examination of Paul as a writer and theologian steeped in the cultural, intellectual, and religious crossroads of the ancient world. Through an analysis of Paul's undisputed letters, Yung Suk Kim explores and explains Paul's key theological concepts and situates them in their proper cultural context. By placing Paul in the Jewish, Hellenistic, and Roman worlds that informed his thinking, this book...
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This book combines critical New Testament scholarship with homiletic concerns. Kim unravels complexities of the most prominent themes in the New Testament such as faith, freedom, and transformation, and brings them into dialogue with modern preaching contexts, ranging from personal identity to social justice to global issues. This book invites readers to reinterpret the most familiar themes that have not been thoroughly explored in scholarship and...
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This book questions all familiar readings of the body of Christ in Paul's letters and helps readers rethink the context and the purpose of this phrase. Against the view that Paul's body of Christ metaphor mainly has to do with a metaphorical organism that emphasizes unity, Kim argues that the body of Christ has more to do with the embodiment of God's gospel through Christ. While Deutero-Pauline and pastoral letters use this body metaphor mainly as...
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Parables of Jesus are stories about everyday life, ranging from a person's worldview to economic justice in society. This book examines most parables of Jesus from a critical literary perspective. Twenty-three narrative parables in the Synoptic Gospels are rearranged by their source: Markan parables, Q parables, Matthean unique parables, Lukan unique parables. Each parable invites readers to reengage Jesus's stories in the contemporary world.
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In A Transformative Reading of the Bible Yung Suk Kim raises critical questions about human transformation in biblical studies. What is transformation? How are we transformed when we read biblical stories? Are all transformative aspects equally valid? What kind of relationships exists between self, neighbor, and God if transformation is involved in these three? Who or what is being changed, or who or what are we changing? What degree of change might...
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Jesus cannot be domesticated! In Resurrecting Jesus Kim asks the fundamental two-prong question, "What, then, can we learn from Jesus, and how can we build on the significance of his life and work as we do theology for our day in the here and now?" Kim abandons the traditional divide between criticism and theology and argues that a solid New Testament theology can be reconstructed from a critical study of the historical Jesus. Jesus is put back into...
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Galatians has often been read from a rhetorical perspective, with an emphasis on justification by faith, Paul's autobiographical experience, proofs of the gospel, and exhortations to the Galatians. However, it can be read as a "letter" of which the main theme is the gospel-an umbrella term that covers many other topics, including faith, righteousness, freedom, and new creation. Paul writes Galatians not to argue for an individual justification by...
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Investigating various contexts of the I am sayings in Jewish and Hellenistic traditions, including the immediate context of the Johannine community, Kim seeks to explore the themes and structure of the I am sayings of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. In doing so, Kim demonstrates how the I am sayings of Jesus can be understood as Jesus' embodiment of God's presence--the Logos of God in the world--and how such a language can help transform the struggling...
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Dao De Jing is an ancient wisdom book, purportedly written by Laozi, who flourished in the sixth century BCE according to the Chinese tradition. It is comprised of eighty-one short poems of which the source is diverse, ranging from personal life to communal and political life. It uses abundant metaphors taken from nature such as water, dust, river, wood, and valley. Laozi reminds his readers to rethink their worldview and purpose of life. Parables...
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Toward Decentering the New Testament is the first introductory text to the New Testament written by an African American woman biblical scholar and an Asian-American male biblical scholar. This text privileges the voices, scholarship, and concerns of minoritized nonwhite peoples and communities. It is written from the perspectives of minoritized voices. The first few chapters cover issues such as biblical interpretation, immigration, Roman slavery,...