Word: philoxenia
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Dates: during 2007-2007
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...Abraham in the Old Testament, who, approached by three strangers, threw them a feast, only to find that they were supernatural. Paul Lim, an Evangelical Christian and Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt Theological Seminary finds special meaning in the fact that the original Greek word for "hospitality" in this verse, "philoxenia," is actually stronger. It means "the love of strangers." Or, as he points out, the opposite of xenophobia...
...such cases, she feels, we may weigh philoxenia against other values. One is fairness - "there are people lined up waiting ... 10 years on lists to enter the country legally." The other is the integrity of national borders: "Hannah Arendt argued that if the state means anything, it means a territorially bounded place, a civic place that sets up terms for citizenship," and where Augustine's "tranquility of order" can be established...
...says Paul Lim, a Vanderbilt University Divinity School professor writing a book on the theology of immigration. The New Testament, he notes, features not just Jesus' famous criterion for the saved--"I was a stranger, and you welcomed me"--but, in its original Greek, an endorsement of philoxenia, xenophobia's antonym. Sanctuary foes must turn to Paul's much more general advice in Romans to "let every person be subject to the governing authorities...
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