Словари
Различные книги в жанре СловариContextual Theology for the Twenty-First Century
Scholars from the United States, Latin America, and Oceania reflect in this volume on the importance of contextual theology for our twenty-first century. Contextual theology offers fresh voices from every culture, and not just from the West. It calls for new ways of doing theology that embrace cultural values, but at the same time challenges them to the core. And it opens up new and fresh topics out of which and about which people can theologize. If the church is to be faithful to its mission, it needs to provide a feast at which all can be nourished.
Indwelling the Forsaken Other
Indwelling the Forsaken Other is a critical reading of Jurgen Moltmann's ethics of discipleship. While Moltmann's notable turn to the inner life of the Trinity as a source for his reflections on the life of the church is influential, it is not without problems. The call emerging from Moltmann's reflection upon Trinitarian life–to copy God in our relationships–may offer some general direction for our actions; however, it also raises several questions. Two important questions for this work are, In what way are we to copy God? and What conditions make it possible to copy God? Moltmann's answers to these questions are insufficient, and consequently he fails to protect the difference between Creator and creation in his analogia relationis. As a result, the ethical direction of Moltmann's work seems to be increasingly muddied and, at best, paradoxical.
Gnostic Trends in the Local Church
Gnostic Trends in the Local Church lays out the basic tenets of ancient and modern Gnosticism. Though there are various authors who have written about Gnosticism over the past two decades, many of them deal with New Age teaching, or in a more limited manner, to answer the momentary surge of The Da Vinci Code and the Gospel of Judas. Instead of going in those directions, Gnostic Trends in the Local Church focuses on the more likely place one will meet Gnosticism: in their own home congregation. Michael W. Philliber shows what the trends look like within a congregation and offers ways to remedy them, while abstaining from alarmism. This is an important book for pastors and other congregational leaders for providing them with tools (modern, ancient, and biblical) that will help them guide their people more firmly into the historic Christian faith.
Paradigms of the Church in Mission
In this book Augusto Rodriguez provides a historical survey of the different paradigms of Christianity in order to understand how and why the church has changed her concept of being the church and of mission. This book will help in understanding how the different paradigms of Christianity, throughout history, have changed the church's self-understanding of being the church and of mission. Rodriguez's aim is to provide an opportunity for Christians to see the different paradigms the church has gone through and understand the present situation of the church in order to live out as fully as possible the New Testament understanding of its mission and better accomplish the task.
Theory to Practice in Vulnerable Mission
Missionaries from the West like to hit the ground running to solve as many of other people's problems as possible in the increasingly short term they have available for service. Hang on, says Jim Harries! After twenty-four years in Africa, observing how poverty, traditional practices, dependency, and misunderstandings continue, Harries asks, what is the point of bringing solutions that local people cannot reproduce? Harries challenges missionaries and development workers to counter dependency on the West by engaging in sustainable ministry that local people can imitate. This requires some Westerners to work on the basis of local languages and resources, a practice known as vulnerable mission. Rooted in personal experience, founded in a postmodern appreciation of language, drawing on anthropology, based in Christian theology, Harries provides a case for the necessity of vulnerable mission in the twenty-first century.
Subversive Christianity, Second Edition
Where is Western culture going? What should Christians think about it? Those who already ask these questions often come up with confused answers. Those who do not are, arguably, living in a fool's paradise (or a fool's hell.)
In this second edition of Subversive Christianity, Brian Walsh returns to the themes of cultural discernment that he unpacked more than twenty years ago. In a new Postscript, Walsh revisits Francis Fukuyama, Bruce Cockburn, and the prophet Jeremiah and asks, Where are we now? In light of 9/11 and the world economic crisis of 2008, how do we discern the times, and what does that discernment tell us about the calling of the church?
John Paul II to Aristotle and Back Again
Have you ever struggled to explain the basics of a Christian worldview, particularly as it concerns God's existence and his relation to the natural order, the basics of morality, even sexual ethics? Utilizing the thought of the late Pope John Paul II and the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, Dr. Andrew Swafford has done just this.
This book explains the philosophical underpinnings of a Christian worldview–in a way that is accessible to the general reader–discussing God's existence, faith and reason, a tour through a virtue-ethics which leads to authentic happiness (and discussing the seven deadly sins along the way), as well as John Paul II's teaching on the «language» of the body and the meaning of the human vocation to make a gift of one's self. The reader will come away with a deep understanding of the philosophical foundations for the Christian life.
He Descended into Hell
The Apostles' Creed is one of the most prominent creeds in Christianity, perhaps even the most recited creed by normal believers in church services. However, the creed holds a clause that seems controversial to Christian mission in some contexts, especially African contexts. The clause, «He descended into Hell,» is the main concern of this book. In African context, where ancestral cult is prominent in both people's worldview and practice, this clause poses a tangible problem of religious syncretism. The phrase suggests a life after immediate death, that a person can continue to live in a certain realm soon after death. Since the clause depicts Jesus descending into hell after death and burial, and preaching to the other souls of the dead in hell, it suggests the possibility of hearing a message of salvation after death, a doctrine hardly held by Christianity. The doctrine therefore becomes good news for those Africans who hold firm the ancestral cult, and those whose relatives had died in sin on earth. Therefore, this book critically examines the origin and use of this doctrine in the church and its validity in an African context.
The Christian Skeptic
The Christian Skeptic was written for those who are not sure if they can still call themselves Christian because they are no longer able to «drink the Kool-Aid» of orthodoxy. It is also for seekers who find the person of Jesus intriguing or compelling but who struggle with all the doctrines that surround his story.
Inspired by Leslie Weatherhead's now out-of-print book The Christian Agnostic, Jody Seymour takes a fresh look at some of the basic tenets of the Christian Faith. He offers new insight into concepts such as the nature of God, the person and work of Jesus, how to read the Bible, the role of the church, and the question of whether or not Jesus really said «my way or the highway.»
This book will give you an opportunity to explore the faith with the windows open to some fresh air, and you may discover that being caught between belief and doubt is a good place to be.
Past and Prospect
Today the Church of the Nazarene faces issues that arise directly out of its past. For that reason, Past and Prospect argues that Nazarenes will be better equipped to face their future as a church armed by an understanding of their own history. Church historian Stan Ingersol examines issues that have characterized the Nazarene way of life during that denomination's first century, showing how the trajectory shaped by the church's founders has been altered through time by the shifting tides of Fundamentalism, mainstream Evangelicalism, global expansion, and the culture of affluence. He contends that current disagreements over polity, holiness, and worship are largely echoes and projections of tensions that have been present in the denomination since its very beginning. As the reader will discover, the common denominator running through these chapters is the prospect of rediscovering a relevant and useful past.