The Trinitarian Dance presents a model of leadership development based on the Holy Trinity. Part one analyzes the present state of the cultural and ecclesiastical situation in Canada, identifying specific trends and aspects relating to the need for development of effective leadership in the church. This section sets the stage for Part two, where a theology of trinitarian leadership is developed based on the dynamic of perichoresis, with the motif of a dance used to present a paradigm of transformational leadership. Part three offers church-based strategies for leadership development, concluding with a creative application of the doxological formula that captures the thrust of the entire book and leads it to a finale that includes a benediction of hope for the church through this leadership model.
In this moving spiritual memoir, Dr. William Thiele shares inspiring stories of the birthing of a monastery without walls among everyday women and men around New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Along the way, core contemplative attitudes, practices, and principles were discovered. He offers these stories of birthing a School for Contemplative Living as a challenging call to a frantic and polarized world. Readers will be drawn toward their own spiritual transformation as they encounter imperfect monks with messy lives who are practicing God's presence and learning to serve the world from that presence. He encourages readers to join these monks in the world by forming contemplative communities who radiate loving-kindness as their first priority.
No other book in the New Testament compares to John in its complexity of style and structure. So many factors confuse Johannine scholars, including the complexity of styles, repetition, duplication, and seemingly distracted structures that are difficult to discern. Sourcebook of the Structures and Styles in John 1-10 is designed to scrutinize the structures and styles in John 1-10, reading John according to John's way, with the following integrated points of view: First, this reading is indebted to both diachronic and synchronic approaches. Second, macro structure and micro style are treated together and interactively. Third, specific and overall analyses are made together. Fourth, grammatical and relational considerations are brought together. Fifth, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relations are considered all together. Sixth, both parallelisms and chiasms (including their variations) are examined, whether in macro structure or in micro style, without excluding either. Seventh, all types of parallelisms and chiasms are examined, whether simple or complex. Eighth, ancient and modern ways in writing-reading processes complement each other. Ninth, Western and Eastern perspectives become complementary. Tenth, the Greek text and its English version (by the author) are used interactively. Eleventh, analysis and discussion are brought to complement one another.
What if the sanctification of war and contempt for women are both grounded in a fear that breeds hostility, and a hostility that rationalizes conquest?
The anti-Gospel Christian history of war-loving and women-hating are not merely similar but two aspects of the same dynamic, argues Stan Goff, in an «autobiography» that spans millennia. Borderline is the historical and conceptual autobiography of a former career army veteran transformed by Jesus into a passionate advocate for nonviolence, written by a man who narrates his conversion to Christianity through feminism.
This book explores the introduction and transplantation of Calvinism to the Dutch East Indies in the seventeenth century through close analysis of the earliest Malay translations of Reformed catechisms and printed sermons written by Dutch ministers working in the archipelago. This book shows how these ministers introduced, taught, and explained the main teachings of Calvinism to the people of the Dutch East Indies in a language they could understand, as well as the challenges these ministers encountered as they moved forward in their efforts to spread the gospel to the people.
In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center probes the relationship between Scripture and culture in twentieth-century US theology and biblical studies. It points to the necessity of turning to what Karl Barth has referred to as «the strange new world within the Bible» for any revitalization of mainline Protestantism in the tradition of the Protestant Reformers in critical dialogue with serious evangelical theology. The study includes a historical overview underlying what Demetrion refers to as the «fundamentalist/modernist great divide,» which continues to resonate powerfully in contemporary US Protestant thought and culture. Demetrion offers an in-depth exploration of four representative twentieth-century Protestant theologians and biblical scholars, spanning from the conservative evangelical theology of J. I. Packer to the postliberal dialectical theology of Walter Brueggemann. The book includes a chapter on the neo-orthodox legacy as a mediating resource in bringing evangelical and postliberal theology into dialogue with the core issues of theology, biblical hermeneutics, and religious culture. Demetrion concludes with a critically empathetic review of the postliberal dialectical theology of Douglas J. Hall and the evangelical narrative theology of Richard Lints. In linking evangelical, postliberal, and neo-orthodox theology to a common search for a vital Protestant center, this book will facilitate fruitful dialogue among divergent schools of Protestant thought and culture.
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.
Acting on Principles, the product of over thirty years of teaching, gives a comprehensive overview of the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, placing it in dialogue with contemporary ethical theory and developments in Catholic theology since the Second Vatican Council. Suitable for students of ethics and moral theology, and general readers seeking Christian guidance in the formation of conscience and moral decision making, it presents the classical Catholic ethical tradition in a clear and lively style.
C. S. Lewis was concerned about an aspect of the problem of evil he called subjectivism: the tendency of one's perspective to move towards self-referentialism and utilitarianism. In C. S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil, Jerry Root provides a holistic reading of Lewis by walking the reader through all of Lewis's published work as he argues Lewis's case against subjectivism. Furthermore, the book reveals that Lewis consistently employed fiction to make his case, as virtually all of his villains are portrayed as subjectivists. Lewis's warnings are prophetic; this book is not merely an exposition of Lewis, it is also a timely investigation into the problem of evil.
Kevin Twain Lowery believes that two of John Wesley's most distinctive doctrines–his doctrines of assurance and Christian perfection–have not been sufficiently developed. Rather, these doctrines have either been distorted or neglected. Lowery suggests that since Wesleyan ethics is centered on these two doctrines, they need to be recast in a schema that emphasizes the cognitive aspects of religious knowledge and moral development. Salvaging Wesley's Agenda constructs such a new framework in three stages. First, Lowery explores Wesley's reliance upon Lockean empiricism. He contends that Wesleyan epistemology should remain more closely tied to empirical knowledge and should distance itself from mystical and intuitionist models like Wesley's own «spiritual sense» analogy. Second, examining the way that Wesley appropriates Jonathan Edwards's view of the religious affections, Lowery shows that Wesleyan ethics should not regard emotions as something to be passively experienced. Rather, emotions have cognitive content that allows them to be shaped. Third, Lowery completes the new framework by suggesting ways to revise and expand Wesley's own conceptual scheme. These suggestions allow more of Wesley's concerns to be incorporated into the new schema without sacrificing his core commitments. The final chapter sketches the doctrines of assurance and perfection in the new framework. Assurance is based on religious faith and on self-knowledge (both empirical and psychological), and perfection is understood in a more teleological context. The result is a version of Wesleyan ethics more faithful to Wesley's own thought and able to withstand the scrutiny of higher intellectual standards.