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Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor is unavailable, but you can change that!

The relationship between God and his people is understood in various ways by the biblical writers, and it is arguably the apostle Paul who uses the richest vocabulary. Unique to Paul’s writings is the term huiothesia, the process or act of being “adopted as son(s).” It occurs five times in three of his letters, where it functions as a key theological metaphor. Trevor Burke argues that huiothesia...

tapping into these stereotypical family attitudes and norms in order to describe his understanding of the church as a family. Adoption is an ancient family expression; it is not just a legal but a sociolegal term; hence an understanding of the social dynamics of ancient Roman family life is germane to any proper understanding and interpretation of Paul’s huiothesia term. Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner (2003: 111) is therefore right to point out that adoption was an accepted and high-profile method of
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