Группа авторов
Список книг автора Группа авторовA Myth Retold
Fifty years after his death, C. S. Lewis fascinates his readers still. Well established as a key figure in children's literature he is increasingly recognized as a significant Christian thinker. The authors in this volume are from a wide range of Christian traditions–testimony to the reach and significance of Lewis's legacy. The essays return to Lewis's devotional and theological works, assessing their place in his own thought and in the theology of the twentieth century. Lewis emerges as an insightful and creative theologian whose ideas continue to surprise in their sophistication and fecundity. Indeed, it is suggested that he represents a way of doing theology–"mere theology"–which suggests ways in which Christian thought may reengage the complex cultural debates of the contemporary world.
From the Margins
Recognized as a leading interpreter of major movements in American Christianity such as Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and the Holiness movement, Donald W. Dayton has produced a body of work spanning four decades and diverse areas of inquiry. In From the Margins, friends and colleagues respond to major essays by Dayton (several published here for the first time) so as to celebrate and reflect on this diverse and rich body of work. The essays highlight the breadth of Dayton's contribution while also revealing a methodological core. The latter could be described as Dayton's deconstructive reading of standard scholarly narratives in order to short-circuit their domesticating effects on the more radical aspects of American Christianity. Dayton's work has challenged long-held assumptions about the «conservative» nature of American Christianity by showing that both in their history and in their deeper theological substructures, traditions such as Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are far more radical and productive of social change than was previously imagined.
Religion and the Politics of Peace and Conflict
The connections between religion and violence are complex and multifaceted. From the conflicts in Middle East and the Balkans to those in Southeast Asia and beyond, religion frames and legitimates political violence. Moreover, in international relations since 9/11, religious language and metaphors have acquired a new significance. In this context the emerging consensus appears to be not only that violence is intrinsic to religion, but also that religions incite, legitimate, and intensify political violence. However, such an unambiguous indictment of religions is incomplete in that it fails both to appreciate significant counter examples and to recognize the diversity that exists within religions on the issue of violence, particularly the religious roots of pacifism and the ethics of non-violence. This collection explores aspects of this ambivalence between religion and violence. It focuses on traditions of legitimation and pacifism within the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and concludes with an examination of this ambivalence as it unfolds in each tradition's engagement with the politics of gender.
A Liberating Spirit
The historical ambivalence among Pentecostals about their relationship to culture and society needs evaluation. How do we understand Pentecostal engagement with society, and how are Pentecostals in North America engaging issues of race, class, gender, and ecology? What theologically motivates North American Pentecostals to respond to social issues? What categories best explain Pentecostal responses to social issues in North America? How do they compare to Pentecostal responses elsewhere? Recently, scholars of global Pentecostalism have proposed that the experience of the Spirit among Pentecostals has elicited the development of a Pentecostal «theology of liberation,» which has implications for understanding Pentecostal responses to social issues. These projects primarily explore the Pentecostal response to cultural issues in areas outside of North America and especially focus on Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This volume assesses whether the categories of social liberation applied to non-Western Pentecostalism characterize Pentecostalism in North America. Is there evidence of a Pentecostal «theology of liberation» that explains Pentecostal engagement in North America? Do social-liberation categories fit the North American Pentecostal responses to social issues or are others more suitable? These and other important questions about the relation between liberation theology and North American Pentecostalism are thoroughly explored in this important collection of essays.
The Bible in Church, Academy, and Culture
This collection of essays celebrates the contribution of John Tudno Williams to the church, to biblical scholarship and teaching, and to the culture of Wales. Written by biblical scholars, historians, theologians, and authorities on Welsh culture, the papers gather around the central theme of the Bible: its interpretation and exegesis and its place in hymns as well as in the visual culture of Welsh Presbyterianism, in theological colleges, and in theological reflection and construction.
God in an Open Universe
Since its inception, the discussion surrounding Open Theism has been dominated by polemics. On crucial philosophical issues, Openness proponents have largely been devoted to explicating the underlying framework and logical arguments supporting their perspective against competing theological and philosophical perspectives. As a result, very little constructive work has been done on the interconnections between Open Theism and the natural sciences. Given the central place of sciences in today's world, any perspective that hopes to have a broad impact must necessarily address such disciplines in a sustained and constructive manner. To date such engagements from the Openness perspective have been rare.
God in an Open Universe addresses this deficiency. This book demonstrates that Open Theism makes a distinctive and highly fruitful contribution to the conversation and constructive work occurring between philosophy, theology, and the sciences. The various essays explore subjects ranging from physics to prayer, from special relativity to divine providence, from metaphysics to evolution, and from space-time to God. All who work at the intersection of theology and the sciences will benefit greatly from these essays that break new ground in this important conversation.
Baptists and Public Life in Canada
Public discussion about the relationship between religion and public life in Canada can be heated at times, and scholars have recently focused on the historical study of the many expressions of this relationship. The experience of Canada's smaller Protestant Christian groups, however, has remained largely unexplored. This is particularly true of Canada's Baptists. This volume, the first produced by the Canadian Baptist Historical Society, explores the connections between Baptist faith and Baptist activity in the public domain, and expands the focus of the existing scholarship to include a wide range of Canadian Baptist beliefs, attitudes, perspectives, and actions related to the relationship between Baptist faith and practice and public life.
The New Testament Church
Christian communities today face enormous challenges in the new contexts and teachings that try to redefine what churches should be. Christians look to the New Testament for a pattern for the church, but the New Testament does not present a totally uniform picture of the structure, leadership, and sacraments practiced by first-century congregations. There was a unity of the Christian communities centered on the teaching that Jesus is the Christ, whom God has raised from the dead and has enthroned as Lord, yet not every assembly did exactly the same thing and saw themselves in exactly the same way. Rather, in the New Testament we find a collage of rich theological insights into what it means to be the church. When leaders of today see this diversity, they can look for New Testament ecclesiologies that are most relevant to the social and cultural context in which their community lives. This volume of essays, written with the latest scholarship, highlights the uniqueness of individual ecclesiologies of the various New Testament documents and their core unifying themes.
The Logic of Incarnation
With his Logic of Incarnation, James K. A. Smith has provided a compelling critique of the universalizing tendencies in some strands of postmodern philosophy of religion. A truly postmodern account of religion must take seriously the preference for particularity first evidenced in the Christian account of the incarnation of God. Moving beyond the urge to universalize, which characterizes modern thought, Smith argues that it is only by taking seriously particular differences–historical, religious, and doctrinal–that we can be authentically religious and authentically postmodern.
Smith remains hugely influential in both academic discourse and church movements. This book is the first organized attempt to bring both of these aspects of Smith's work into conversation with each other and with him. With articles from an internationally respected group of philosophers, theologians, pastors, and laypeople, the entire range of Smith's considerable influence is represented here. Discussing questions of embodiment, eschatology, inter-religious dialogue, dogma, and difference, this book opens all the most relevant issues in postmodern religious life to a unique and penetrating critique.
Empire in the New Testament
How does a Christian render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's? This book is the result of the Bingham Colloquium of 2007 that brought scholars from across North America to examine the New Testament's response to the empires of God and Caesar. Two chapters lay the foundation for that response in the Old Testament's concept of empire, and six others address the response to the notion of empire, both human and divine, in the various authors of the New Testament. A final chapter investigates how the church fathers regarded the matter. The essays display various methods and positions; together, however, they offer a representative sample of the current state of study of the notion of empire in the New Testament.