| Summary: | <p> The letters of Paul testify to the prominent role that suffering played not only in the life of the apostle, but also in the lives of the communities to which he wrote. Startlingly, Paul does not express either surprise or frustration at suffering’s presence, but instead identifies it as an essential feature of Christian existence: suffering (in some way) derives from union with Christ, and thereby shares in Christ’s own suffering. Although the concept of “suffering as participation with Christ” (SPC) has received some attention within contemporary scholarship, I argue that the conversation would be enriched by the addition of a project that offers detailed readings of key moments in which SPC appears in Paul’s writings, that accepts all the letters in the Pauline canon as equally valid witnesses to “Paul’s thought,” and that uses the findings generated by this exegetical-canonical reading strategy to produce a Pauline “theology” of SPC. The thesis of the dissertation is that (the canonical) Paul’s theology of suffering—read from the tripartite perspective of exegesis, canon, and theology—builds on three foundational convictions (i.e., Christology, eschatology, and cosmology) out of which four correlative commitments emerge (i.e., suffering as salvation’s “prerequisite,” Christ’s suffering as democratize-able, all Christian suffering as participation in Christ’s suffering, and suffering as the site of a profound experience of the love of God in Christ). (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)</p>
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