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Различные книги в жанре Словари

God Hides

Ned Wisnefske

GOD HIDES is a critique of contemporary christian faith. It argues that faith should not be understood as the result of spiritual seeking, but rather as rooted in moral living. Starting with the challenge of Bonhoeffer's «religionless Christianity,» it argues for a common morality, and then shows how that morality leads to Christian faith. The thesis is that in order for us to serve our neighbor whom we see, and not seek God whom we cannot see, God hides. Drawing upon the rich tradition of religious thought from Luther, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Bonhoeffer, this book offers a way past the religious battles in the current culture war. Wisnefske points to the emptiness of the Christian promise of salvation in a time when virtually no one believes there is a hell to be saved from. Instead, he shows that it makes sense today–in view of our nuclear arsenals and environmental crisis–to claim that life is threatened by death. Our present circumstances provide new understanding into the biblical view that primeval chaos threatens creation. A distinctive feature of the book is that it develops the traditional understanding that sin and death are powers threatening creation. Christian faith, accordingly, is best understood as the living hope that creation will be saved from the violence and destruction that threaten to return it to chaos.

Beyond Belief

Группа авторов

Beyond Belief: Theoaesthetics or Just Old-Time Religion? explores the possible reemergence of a theological dimension to contemporary art. Long estranged from symbol and sacrament, contemporary artists–and those who think and write about them–seem to have turned once again to a vision rooted in the sacred. In an era marked culturally by world-weary cynicism and self-conscious irony, a new «humanism» may be emerging, one which aims to move beyond fragmentation and opposition to integration and unification. The aim of this book is not to propose a resurgence of religious iconography, but rather to give voice to long-suppressed–often maligned, and certainly professionally risky–positions informed by and reverberating with themes of the sacred. The essays included here, by a range of scholars working on these issues today, originated as a lively and spirited session of the 2008 College Art Association annual conference.

A Case for Female Deacons

Jamin Hübner

The subject of «women in ministry» has attracted considerable attention in the past half-century of Western Christianity. While much of the debate has centered around ordination and female pastors, few works have focused specifically on female deacons. A Case for Female Deacons challenges reformed and evangelical Christians to accept the legitimacy of female deacons without getting distracted by the more controversial debate about female pastors. The heart of the book contains a thorough exegesis of key passages and a fascinating look at what the church believed about deacons in centuries past. As a graduate thesis, readers will find a cohesive, logical argument supported by a wealth of scholarly research. As a contemporary work in theology, many complementarians and traditionalists will be challenged to revise their position. The end result is a compelling biblical, theological, and historical case for female deacons.

“My” Jesus

Louis Simon

"My" Jesus is a collection of twenty-three sermons–that is to say, good news twenty-three times, twenty-three jets of freedom–preached in French Protestant parishes or on the radio. I say «my» Jesus, not out of pride, but with humility. For I know well that this Jesus is not the Jesus of everyone, and moreover, that it is not a question of imposing it on anyone. This Jesus is not the Jesus of the historians or the scholars, neither the Jesus of the ecclesiastical hierarchies and other guardians of «theological correctness.» He certainly is disputable and impertinent, but this Jesus is mine and I live from him. The sermons ask four questions that are unsettling for any preacher and congregation. How can the message of Jesus still address us today? What does Jesus teach us about God that is truly new? How should we receive the gospel of non-violence of the Sermon on the Mount? How can we remain a Church of Easter Day? It may appear that I am proposing answers to these four questions. In fact, my deepest desire is that the pertinence of their challenge not be forgotten; beyond that, it is up to each one to live with these difficult questions as he or she understands them. –Louis Simon

Restore Unity, Recover Identity, and Refine Orthopraxy

Peter L. H. Tie

Doctrine divides! Not a few Christians dread doctrine, especially the doctrine of the church (ecclesiology) that allegedly causes much confusion, conflict, and controversy within the church. Many choose to avoid it, but James Leo Garrett Jr., Distinguished Professor of Theology Emeritus at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, is convinced that the much avoided and neglected ecclesiology is the place where the churches must begin to rediscover genuine unity, identity, and orthopraxy.
Restore Unity, Recover Identity, Refine Orthopraxy examines Garrett's biblical notion of the universal priesthood. The priesthood concept, properly understood in a communal sense, integrates the mission, membership, ministry, and management of the church. This book is filled with intentional and direct conversations with more than twelve theologians or ecclesiologists from various Christian traditions (Reformed, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Mennonite, Baptist, and other Free Church) in order to shed light on Garrett's believers' priesthood doctrine, which eventually points toward a balanced, biblical, and baptist ecclesiology. An ecclesiology rooted in the biblical priesthood does not divide and extinguish but does unite and distinguish!

No Shame in Wesley’s Gospel

Edward P. Wimberly

As an African American who was a senior pastor in both white and black churches between 1966 and 1974, Edward Wimberly encountered shame as the feeling of being unloved and being unlovable primarily when his parishioners and counselees experienced a loss of a loved one. Grief was the dominant psychological category for talking about loss in those days, and the feeling of shame of being abandoned and resulting in feelings of being unloved were described as temporary. However, in the middle 1980s pastoral theologians began to recognize shame as a dominant psychological and spiritual long lasting experience that needed to be addressed. Thus, pastoral counselors and pastoral theologians began to explore psychological object relations theory, self-psychology, and the psychology of shame to understand the persistence of the experience of shame.
Today shame as the feeling of being unloved and unlovable is a major experience of many modern people given the nature of the loss of relational connections and close-knit communities. Many psychologies are surfacing focusing on cultural narcissism or selfish love, the cult of self-admiration which is replacing self-actualization, and the equating of wealth and social status with being loved.
Growing up in the Methodist tradition in an African American church, Wimberly was sensitized to John Wesley's small group experience hearing about the class meetings. Moreover, he had been exposed to the use of small groups in Zimbabwe, Africa in 1998 based on African Methodists attempts to recover the village which was disappearing on account of technology, industrialization, and the colonialism's destruction of the family.Thus, based on the author's family of origin community's fascination with Wesley's small group and witnessing this same phenomenon in Africa, Wimberly decided to explore Wesley's cell group practical theology for its contribution to twenty-first century ministry to people who could be classified as relational refugees.

Through the Valley

Jeff Wisdom

A diagnosis of a stage IV cancer is quite a jolt for any family. This is the news that came to Jeff Wisdom, a husband and father in his mid-forties. When the diagnosis of an advanced cancer comes to a family, it can challenge faith and hope. Through the Valley is a biblical-theological reflection on suffering. It details what Scripture says about suffering and what God has promised, both now and in the future. It draws comfort and encouragement from some lessons learned. And it acknowledges and wrestles with some unresolved questions and issues. Jeff's reflections, as one who has endured cancer and chemotherapy, help to bridge Scripture's message and the experience of living with a deadly disease. Excerpts from his wife's journal are included to provide a window into this walk in a dark valley. This book does not address every aspect of the Bible's teaching on suffering, but it makes an important contribution to the topic of the suffering that comes seemingly unexplained as the result of living in a fallen world.

Matching and Dispatching

James O. Chatham

This book takes you «behind the scenes» of the weddings and funerals you attend to show the not-so-visible side of what occurs. The picture can be marvelously heroic, deeply inspiring, fun, hilarious, tragic, angering, or disgustingly pathetic. The one thing certain is that you will see a comprehensive portrait of the human condition, the assorted things we people do when we marry and bury one another. We are at our best and our worst, and we reveal it clearly. The purpose of Matching and Dispatching is to entertain and provide enjoyment, but also to show a rich, usually hidden side of the pastor's world, the pastor being the chief architect behind weddings and funerals. To this end, Jim Chatham has drawn from his four decades of experience as a Presbyterian pastor.

Home, I Am

Ferdinand Llenado

ABSURD When meaning breaks down, consciousness awakens.
AUTHENTIC Where we fall short, grace completes.
ANGER In injury, compassion heals.
ALIENISM When alone, we find our sacred connection.
ANXIETY In fear, God covers us with a shelter of calmness.[/Center]
If you are seeking hope and healing during a crisis of meaning, Ferdinand Llenado's story describes that search, in sincere passion and poetry, providing both a message of encouragement and a model for therapeutic writing. Written in a beautiful tapestry of reality and metaphors, facts and fiction, Home, I Am will take readers into the realm of humanity's inner yearning for answers, absolution, and peace of mind–a condition described here as «finding home.»
From spiritual homelessness to unconditional at-homeness, you are invited to experience with the author an altering journey of self-discovery. Welcome home!

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Theresa A. Yugar

In Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Biography and Text, Yugar invites you to accompany Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a seventeenth-century protofeminist and ecofeminist, on her lifelong journey within three communities of women in the Americas. Sor Juana's goal was to reconcile inequalities between men and women in central Mexico and between the Spaniards and the indigenous Nahua population of New Spain. Yugar reconstructs a her-story narrative through analysis of two primary texts Sor Juana wrote en sus propias palabras (in her own words), El Sueno (The Dream) and La Respuesta (The Answer). Yugar creates a historically-based narrative in which Sor Juana's sueno of a more just world becomes a living nightmare haunted by misogyny in the form of the church, the Spanish Tribunal, Jesuits, and more–all seeking her destruction. In the process, Sor Juana «hoists [them] with their own petard.» In seventeenth-century colonial Mexico, just as her Latina sisters in the Americas are doing today, Sor Juana used her pluma (pen) to create counternarratives in which the wisdom of women and the Nahua inform her sueno of a more just world for all.