There are two coexisting realities classified under New Testament eschatology: the temporal and spatial. While much scholarly attention has focused on the temporal, Luke Woo argues that the spatial aspect is either neglected or relegated to Platonic or cosmological categories. Woo thus seeks to provide a holistic understanding, by investigating these realities for believers under the heavenly tabernacle motif in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Woo posits that the author of Hebrews presents the heavenly tabernacle and all its high priestly activity in order to eschatologically situate, orient, and ground believers; thus enabling believers to actualize their heavenly, priestly identity by serving as priests on earth. Woo uses Edward Soja's Tripartite Critical Spatiality to analyze the heavenly tabernacle's Firstspace, Secondspace, and Thirdspace features found in Hebrews 4:14; 8:1–5; 9:1–14. He suggests that Christ, in his resurrection and ascension, enters an actualized, heavenly tabernacle, which allows believers to spiritually occupy that sanctuary space in the presence of God, establishing a spatial orientation for believers who can identify as heavenly priests and be motivated to serve as such as they live on earth.

In contrast to scholarly belief that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews envisions the transcendent, heavenly world as the eschatological inheritance of God's people, Jihye Lee argues that a version of an Urzeit-Endzeit eschatological framework - as observed in some Jewish apocalyptic texts - provides a plausible background against which the arguments of Hebrews are most comprehensively explained. Instead of transcendence to the heavenly world that will come after the destruction of the shakable creation, Lee suggests the possibility of a more dualistic new world. By first defining Urzeit-Endzeit eschatology, Lee is then able to explore its place in both pre and post 70 CE Second Temple Judaism. In examining Enoch, the Qumran Texts, Jubilees, the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch and finally the Book of Revelation, Lee compares a multitude of eschatological visions and the different depictions of the transformation of the world, judgement and the new world to come. Bringing these texts together to analyse the issue of God's Rest in Hebrews, and the nature of the Unshakable Kingdom, Lee concludes that Hebrews envisions the kingdom as consisting of both the revealed heavenly world and the renewed creation as the eschatological venue of God's dwelling place with his people.

"A tripartite critical spatial study on the heavenly tabernacle for eschatological, priestly implications for believers in the letter to the Hebrews. Luke Woo argues that there are two coexisting realities classified under New Testament eschatology: the temporal and spatial; while much scholarly attention has focused on the temporal, Woo suggests that the spatial aspect is either neglected or relegated to Platonic or cosmological categories. He thus seeks to provide a holistic understanding, by investigating these realities for believers under the heavenly tabernacle motif in the Epistle to the Hebrews"--

The book of Hebrews has often been the Cinderella of the New Testament, overlooked and marginalized; and yet it is one of the most interesting and theologically significant books in the New Testament. A Cloud of Witness examines the theology of the book in the light of its ancient historical context. There are chapters devoted to the structure of Hebrews, the person of Jesus Christ, Hebrews within the context of Second Temple Judaism and the Greco-Roman empire and the role of Hebrews in early Christian thought.

"Who can enter the sacred and heavenly presence of God? And how? Jared C. Calaway argues that the Letter to the Hebrews joined an ongoing debate between ancient Jewish and emergent Christian groups by engaging and countering priestly frameworks of sacred access that aligned the Sabbath with the sanctuary."--The jacket.

The author of Hebrews calls God 'Father' only twice in his sermon. This fact could account for scholarship's lack of attention to the familial dynamics that run throughout the letter. Peeler argues, however, that by having God articulate his identity as Father through speaking Israel's Scriptures at the very beginning and near the end of his sermon, the author sets a familial framework around his entire exhortation. The author enriches the picture of God's family by continually portraying Jesus as God's Son, the audience as God's many sons, the blessings God bestows as inheritance, and the trials God allows as pedagogy. The recurrence of the theme coalesces into a powerful ontological reality for the audience: because God is the Father of Jesus Christ, they too are the sons of God. But even more than the model of sonship, Jesus' relationship with his Father ensures that the children of God will endure the race of faith to a successful finish because they are an integral part of comprehensive inheritance promised by his Father and secured by his obedience. Because of the familial relationship between God and Jesus, the audience of Hebrews - God's children - can remain in the house of God forever.

Nick Brennan investigates the depiction of the Son's divine nature in the Epistle to the Hebrews; despite little attention being directly given to the Son's divinity in recent study of Hebrews, Brennan argues that not only is the Son depicted as divine in the Epistle, but that this depiction ranges outside the early chapters in which it is most often noted, and is theologically relevant to the pattern of the Author's argument. Beginning with a survey of the state of contemporary scholarship on the Son's divinity in Hebrews, and a discussion of the issues connected to predicating divinity of the Son in the Epistle, Brennan analyses the application of Old Testament texts to the Son which, in their original context, refer to God (1:6; 10–12), and demonstrates how the Pastor not only affirms the Son's divinity but also the significance of his exaltation as God. He then discusses how Heb 3:3, 4 witnesses to the divinity of the Son in Hebrews, explores debates on the relation of the Son's “indestructible life” (Heb 7:16) to his divinity, and demonstrates how two key concepts in Hebrews (covenant and sonship) reinforce the Son's divinity. Brennan thus concludes that the Epistle not only portrays the Son as God, but does so in a manner which is a pervasive aspect of its thought, and is theologically salient to many features of the Epistle's argument.

Christians look with hope to the resurrection of the dead and the restoration of all things. But what of those who have already died? Do they also await these things, or have they in some sense already happened for them? Within the Catholic theological community, this question has traditionally been answered in terms of the disembodied souls of human beings awaiting bodily resurrection. Since the 1960s, Catholic theologians have proposed two alternatives: resurrection at death into the Last Day and the consummation of all things, or resurrection in death into an interim state in which the embodied dead await, with us, the final consummation of all things. This book critically examines the Scriptural, philosophical and theological reasons for these alternatives and, on the basis of this analysis, offers an account of the traditional schema which makes clear that in spite of these challenges it remains the preferable option.

The New Testament and the Future of the Cosmos is an exploration into the cosmic eschatology of the New Testament. It invites the reader to grapple with two interrelated questions along with the author: (1) What did the writers of the New Testament teach about the fate of the cosmos, and (2) can we synthesize their teachings into a coherent New Testament theology? By offering a close reading of key texts that inform the topic (most notably Matt 24:29–31; Mark 13:24–27; Luke 21:25–28; Rom 8:19–22; Heb 12:25–29; 2 Pet 3:4–13; and Rev 21:1–5), it is argued that one can, with certain qualifications, ascertain a clear and coherent New Testament message pertaining to the future of the cosmos. Along the way, new exegetical ground is broken in several passages by identifying a previously unnoticed theme that runs throughout the New Testament concerning the future of the cosmos: God’s judgment of the heavenly powers of evil as a key component to the cosmic transition. At present, these hostile powers hold the cosmos captive to death, but on the Day of the Lord they will be overthrown, setting the stage for a materially transformed world to emerge from the hand of God.

Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Union Theological Seminary, 2013 under title: Affect, violence, and belonging in early Christianity.