Jesus and nostalgia: A nostalgia construction of ‘ho theos tōn paterōn – ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων’ for facing an identity crisis (Mt 22:32)

Abstract

Several theologians unanimously accorded well with the notion that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew was a pastoral theologian. Nevertheless, the pastoral dimension of Matthew 22:32 has not been subjected to much scrutiny. In the text, Jesus celebrated the tradition of calling the God as the ‘God of the Fathers’. The tradition revealed that Jesus adapted the pastoral approach, which is termed as nostalgia in psychology. In empirical psychology researches, utilising nostalgia provides many positive benefits for people who have psychological problems, including an identity crisis. By using a psychological text to sharpen the understanding of the biblical text, this research showed the nostalgic construction in the tradition as a pastoral approach to the readers who were in a situation of a major crisis.Contribution: By using the nostalgia as a psychological text, this article attempts to explore the pastoral dimension of Matthew 22:32, which seems absent in the study of Matthew 22:32.

Winning over a crisis: Understanding the ‘ποιεῖν’ in Matthew 7:24–27 from the nostalgia perspective

“…The existence of 'historical nostalgia' in this gospel has been shown by Surbakti and Andangsari (2022) to be present when examining the idea of 'ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων' in Matthew 22:32. Meanwhile, although not explicitly stated, the idea of 'personal nostalgia' also appeared when Jesus used a child when teaching his disciples in Matthew 18:2 (cf.…”

“…Sinambela et al 2021) andMatthew 22:32 (cf. Surbakti 2019;Surbakti & Andangsari 2022), the research shows that the poiesis way of life that involves the 'memory' of the past has indeed been vividly evoked in this gospel. Thus, the poiesis way of life associated with personal nostalgia about God is perfectly reasonable.…”

“…When it was written, the first readers of the gospel were in a situation of deep crisis. Deriving from various sources, Surbakti and Andangsari (2022) have reconstructed the situation of the first readers of this gospel quite well. After presenting some analyses, they inferred that:…”