ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that how the author weaves a network of causal beliefs that integrates the narrative about Gods initiative and gifts with their identity in Christ and the attributes and behaviors of the prototypical Christ-believer. The chapter highlights the centrality of causal beliefs in human thinking, both in narrative thinking and in attribution processes, and that social categories have a prototype holding attributes. It analyzes the integration of narrative rationale with social practice, without reducing the identity in Christ to either just theology. The combination of attribution theory and social identity theory is applicable to almost any text that in one way or another formulates the identity of a group. Socio-cognitive theories provide a straightforward and cross-culturally valid way of approaching how a group may experience certain behaviors as an expression of group's identity. Every biblical scholar has been well taught not to automatically assume that historical subjects perceived reality in the same way as modern westerners.
