Biblical Narratives and Human Flourishing

Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University. She has published extensively in philosophy of religion, contemporary metaphysics, and medieval philosophy. Her books include Aquinas (2003), Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (2010), Atonement (2018), The Image of God: The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Mourning (2022), and Grains of Wheat. Suffering and Biblical Narratives (2024). Judith Wolfe is Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of St Andrews. Her core expertise is in eschatology and apocalypticism in theology, philosophy, and literature, on which she has published widely. With Oxford University Press, she has published Heidegger’s Eschatology, The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought, and the three-volume Oxford History of Modern German Theology.

1. Knowledge through Narrative: Philosophical and Theological Explorations of Biblical Stories

Eleonore Stump and Judith Wolfe

PART I Biblical Narratives and Human Flourishing

2. God, Humanity, and Meaning in the Book of Jonah

Aaron Segal

3. Ecclesiastes and the Good Life for Human Beings

Eleonore Stump

4. The Unbinding of Isaac: Maimonides on the Aqedah

Josef Stern

5. Abraham, Lazarus, and Returning to Life: Kierkegaard on Existential Faith

Sharon Krishek

PART II Biblical Narratives and Human Flourishing in Relation to God and Others

6. Why God Does Not share His Secrets with Us: What We Can Learn from Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on John 15: 14-16 and the Biblical Narrative of Abraham

Patrick Zoll

7. Give Truth to Jacob

Samuel Lebens

8. Divine Disappointments: Humans and Other Animals in the Book of Bereishit

Tamara Wright and Ian Gamse

9. Creation and Participation in John’s Gospel

Darren Sarisky

10. Identifying the Risen Christ: Some Reflections on the Epistemology and Theology of the Road to Emmaus Story

Mark Wynn

PART III Biblical Narratives and Human Flourishing in the Midst of Disorder and Distress

11. A Narrative and Apocalyptic Philosophy of Prayer: Being Towards God

Simon Oliver and Judith Wolfe

12. Jonah, Alienation, and the Meaning of Life

Godehard Brüntrup

13. Images of Mercy: Narrating the Gospel through a Rwandan Catholic Shrine

Alison Fitchett-Climenhaga and Nevin Climenhaga