At this week’s Theological Research Seminar, John J.H. Lee will be presenting, “What We Should Talk about When We Talk about ἁμαρτία (‘sin’) in Paul’s Gospel”
Read the abstract and her bio below.
All are welcome to attend in Camelford Hall (room 226) at McMaster Divinity College at 1:00pm or via livestream at the link below:
Join the Livestream
Password: z00m (Note that the password has zeros rather than “o”)
Abstract
In his 2018 paper, Simon Gathercole aptly observed a prevailing tendency in contemporary Pauline scholarship: the inclination to interpret ἁμαρτία in Paul’s letters as a cosmic evil power rather than as individual acts of disobedience and transgression against God’s law. My paper challenges that trend. Employing a two-stage framework, I conduct a semantic domain analysis of all the related terms associated with ἁμαρτία, as well as a verb-noun pair (ἁμαρτάνω-ἁμαρτία) study across both the undisputed and disputed Pauline letters and the entire New Testament. Based on these linguistic findings, I argue that ἁμαρτία in Paul’s writings is best understood as referring to an individual’s sinful act rather than a cosmic evil force.
Bio
John graduated from MDC in 2024 with a PhD in New Testament. He is the Managing Editor of the McMaster Divinity College Press. Before comingto MDC, he and his family served with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the Caucasus region as Bible translator
About TRS
The MDC Theological Research Seminar (TRS) is a bimonthly gathering for all MDC students and faculty. TRS meets from 1:00 PM to 1:50 PM on alternating Mondays, and includes about thirty minutes for the paper presentation and twenty minutes for discussion.
All advanced degree students are invited to present a paper and share your research with your colleagues. TRS is an excellent opportunity to “test drive” a paper you will be presenting at an upcoming conference and receive helpful feedback on your current research projects. Thinking about submitting an article to a journal and want some interaction first? TRS will provide it. Just published an article or an essay and want to share it us? TRS is an excellent opportunity to broadcast it.
This year the organizing committee consists of Dr. James Dvorak, Dr. Phil Zylla, and Dr. Gord Heath. To submit a paper, contact a member of the organizing committee.