Abstract
How then is The Epistle to the Romans relevant to the modern world? This chapter will examine curriculum content and focus on the essential historicity of humans as beings. To do this, a historical account on the rise of the prototypically “modern” and “ahistorical” contemporary mindset is essential. This will allow readers nowadays to see the continuity between the “ancient” Greco-Roman world and the present as well as reassess the existential problems of humans as historical beings. Indeed, the contemporary world is in many cultural, institutional, philosophical, and epistemic aspects a spiritual and perspectival descendant of Rome (see Chap. 4). “The great methodologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (and some even of the nineteenth century) were educated in the classics” (McDonald 1993, p. 19). Hence, the questions related to the Old Model of Human as expounded in the world of imperial Rome, which The Epistle to the Romans has sought to explore and answer for its original learners, have remained perennial problems until today.
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Notes
- 1.
Ford (1999, p. 24) gives, for instance, a graphic representation of a sociological conceptual model of a grounded, multicultural self. Traditional Confucianism has also comparable model on the inner depths of human.
- 2.
This “protection” is not undisputed by educators. For instance, Myers (1997, p. 55) remarks, “… I am not satisfied with answers that relegate spirituality to the private sphere or those that categorize it exclusively as a component of organized religion. My concern is the whole child. To suggest that spirituality is not an appropriate topic for public discourse about children seems shortsighted, particularly since the richness of such conversation (especially when a variety of cultural voices are engaged) often provides a sense of hopefulness for our future”.
- 3.
This femininity of the inward human (singular in grammatical number and genitive in case) has a textual presence in Rom 1:27. It reads τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν τῆς θηλείας. It refers to (CTP) “the natural function arising from, pertaining to and reflective of femininity”. In direct terms, to be human is to keep the feminine values of being compassionate, graceful, and kind. On the other hand, to be rough, unkind, and ruthless, even committed on a collective scale in pluralities, is unnatural to human (Rom 1:27).
- 4.
- 5.
To translate Ὁ μείζων as the “elder” or the “older” is an off the mark under-translation.
- 6.
“Esau” literally means “hairy”, “to work”, and thus also “manly”. See footnote to Genesis 25: 25 (Zhong wen sheng jing qi dao ben bian ji wei yuan hui 1990, p. 66).
- 7.
Luo, N., & Shui, J. 罗念生、水建馥. (Eds.). (2004). fau,lwj. Gu xilayu hanyu cidian. 古希腊语汉语词典. Beijing: Shang wu yin shu guan.
- 8.
Gen 4:9 (NRSVA), “9 Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’”
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Ho, O.N.K. (2018). Secularity and Education: The One-Dimensional Man’s Tunnel Vision and the Transcendental. In: Rethinking the Curriculum. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8902-2_10
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