Theology (Exegetical Historical Practical etc.)
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Believing In Jesus Christ
$17.00Add to cartThis book is a clear treatment, in nontechnical language, of the person and work of Jesus Christ, especially focusing on the nature of atonement. The chapters are arranged around several central questions: Who is Jesus? What do the Bible and the church tell us about him? Just what is in the nature of the salvation he offers, and how does it work? Most of all, what difference do the answers to these questions make for the church and for the world?
The Foundations of Christian Faith series enables readers to learn about contemporary theology in ways that are clear, enjoyable, and meaningful. It examines the doctrines of the Christian faith and stimulates readers not only to think more deeply about their faith but also to understand their faith in relationship to contemporary challenges and questions. Individuals and study groups alike will find these guides invaluable in their search for depth and integrity in their Christian faith.
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Reverberations Of Faith
$49.00Add to cartPastors, scholars, and thoughtful laypeople seeking a deeper understanding of God’s Word need look no further. Going beyond dictionary definitions, Brueggemann expounds upon the characterizations, complexities, and interrelatedness of 100 Old Testament terms and themes from “Ancestors” to “YHWH”—then goes on to discuss their practical significance to the 21st-century church.
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Masters Indwelling : There Is A Life Of Abundance And Joy
$16.99Add to cartYou’ve accepted Him as Savior and you’re doing everything in your power to live the good Christian life. You go to church, you read your Bible, you pray. You’re doing all the things a Christian should do. You’re living in Christ. But is He living in you? Has He swept and cleared out every cobweb in your life? Or are you tightly gripping the broom yourself? Is your Christian walk just a performance, an act that masks the emptiness inside? He’s called us to more than a game of charades. He’s invited us to taste the joy in the Christ-filled life. You’re already in Christ; now let Him be in you. It’s time for The Master’s Indwelling.
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Thanksgiving : An Investigation Of A Pauline Theme
$28.99Add to cartSeries Preface
Author’s Preface
Abbreviations1. Thanksgiving As God-Centeredness
2. Thanksgiving Within The Covental Traditions
3. Thanksgiving And Covenantal History
4. A Life Of Thanksgiving
5. Thanksgiving And The Future
6. IngratitudeAppendix: Pauline Thanksgiving And The Greco-Roman Benefaction System
The Greco-Roman Patron-Client Network
Gratitude In The Patron-Client Relationship
Pauline Thanksgiving And The Patronage ModelBibliography
Index Of Modern Authors
Index Of Biblical References And Ancient Sources
Index Of SubjectsAdditional Info
“Be thankful” (Colossians 3:15) is a recurring exhortation in the letters of the apostle Paul. No other New Testament writer gives such a sustained emphasis on thanksgiving-and yet, major modern studies of Paul fail to wrestle with it.David Pao aims to rehabilitate this theme in this comprehensive and accessible study, a New Studies in Biblical Theology volume. He shows how, for Paul, thanksgiving is grounded in the covenantal traditions of salvation history. To offer thanks to God is to live a life of worship and to anticipate the future acts of God, all in submission to the lordship of Christ. Ingratitude to God is idolatry. Thanksgiving functions as a link between theology, including eschatology, and ethics.
Here Pao provides clear insights into the passion of an apostle who never fails to insist on the significance of both the gospel message and the response this message demands.
Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.
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Many Faces Of Christology
$43.99Add to cartThis book surveys the landscape of traditional and contemporary thought about Jesus. Inbody first grounds his survey in a concise discussion of research into Jesus as a historical person and explores the implications and relevance of that research for contemporary christological thought. In chapter two he outlines classical Christology and Trinitarian thought and then provides a preliminary sketch of a contemporary Trinitarian Christology that emphasizes relationship more than understanding the exact nature of God. In chapters three, four, and five, Inbody surveys the basic positions and contributions of evangelical, liberal/process and postliberal (including liberationist), and feminist/womanist christologies. In his final three chapters, Inbody uses Christology to answer three key questions: is atonement theology nothing more than “divinely sanctions abuse?”; what is the relationship of Christianity to Judaism?; and is Christianity the one true path? This critical, mainstream survey provides pastors and seminarians an authoritative and comprehensive volume on the subject.
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Healing A Broken World
$23.00Add to cartWhile spirituality is still thought to be primarily a personal quest for holiness and religious experience, it might be thought mere narcissim in an era of widespread need. Moe-Lobeda shows how the advent of globalization places a new horizon on the spiritual quest but, at the same time, has caused an enervation of people’s sense of moral agency. What can I, one person, do to affect such a massive and systemic shift? Far from being a flight from the world, she argues, the classic Christian contemplative tradition can ignite critical vision and creative resistance to the seemingly inevitable march of globalization.
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Biblical Theology Of Exile
$29.00Add to cartSmith-Christopher analyzes the theological significance of the Babylonian exile by taking the Hebrew texts seriously as authentic witnesses to Israel’s experience of exile. In doing so, he seeks to move toward the construction of a “diasporic Christian theology,” which ascribes a more important role to the theme of exile in Christian theology.
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Justification Reader
$19.50Add to cartOden uses a broad brush to paint his narrowly focused subject—salvation by grace through faith. Athanasius, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Basil, Jerome, and Augustine are just some of the figures Oden cites—church fathers whose teachings were restated nearly verbatim by 16th-century Reformers. An accessible and detailed search for the core of this theological linchpin.
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Ancient And Postmodern Christianity
$35.99Add to cartIVP Print On Demand Title
The consensual roots of Christianity found in the common understanding of the faith among the early church fathers is the foundation on which the church can and should build in the twenty-first century. Edited by Kennth Tanner and Christopher A. Hall, the eighteen essays found in this volume span theological and ecclesiastical perspectives that emphasize what the various Christian traditions hold in common. This shared heritage is applied to a wide range of topics–from worship and theology to ethics and history and more–that point the way for the people of God in the decades ahead. Ancient & Postmodern Christianity is created in honor of Thomas C. Oden, who has done much in recent decades to promote these ideas with such signal publications as After Modernity . . . What? and the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, which was launched under his editorial direction. Contributing scholars include Richard John Neuhaus, Alan Padgett, J. I. Packer, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Carl Braaten, Stanley Grenz, Bradley Nassif, Thomas Howard and more. Here is a volume that will set a course needed for succeeding generations to restore and renew a living orthodoxy.
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Intelligent Design : The Bridge Between Science And Theology
$32.99Add to cart“Mathematician-philosopher Dembski is author of the acclaimed Design Inference. The present book is a more accessible statement of the argument for nonspecialists. Of particular interest are Dembski’s responses to the objections raised to his arguments. An important book,”—First Things
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When God Says War Is Right
$11.99Add to cart176 pages
Additional Info
Across the centuries, how have Christians who follow the Prince of Peace responded to the recurring reality of war? And what guidance do they offer for believers today in the midst of global conflict?In When God Says War Is Right, Dr. Darrell Cole offers thorough and highly readable answers. His expert examination focuses on these topics:
*Relating the character of God with the use of force
*Determining when and how Christians ought to fight
*Understanding why Christian virtues are vital when using force
*Using nuclear weapons for deterrence
*Learning lessons from World War II, Vietnam, and the 1991 Gulf War
*Responding to today’s war against terrorismDr. Cole focuses on Romans 13, where Paul commands us to do what is righ” (or good or noble) in regard to our governing authorities, who have legitimate war-making authority. In the case of war, what is right for the Christian? This book answers that essential question. In today’s war-stricken world, Dr. Cole provides timely, trustworthy, and vitally needed guidance for Christians.
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Jesus Attitude Towards The Law
$51.50Add to cartThis book provides a critical reassesment and fresh analysis of Jesus’ attitude towards the Law as portrayed in each of the canonical Gospels, Q, Thomas, and the apocryphal Gospels. Representing William Loader’s definitive work on the subject, this comprehensive study presents a clearer picture of Jesus and his message.
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Land : Place As Gift Promise And Challenge In Biblical Faith – Second Editi (Rep
$29.00Add to cartThe Promised Land has played an important role in Jewish life from the days of Abraham to the rise of modern Zionism. Brueggemann elaborates on major Old Testament themes—land as gift, as temptation, as task, and as threat—plus tackles how to view the Babylonian exile and the Diaspora.
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United Methodist Doctrine
$35.99Add to cartThroughout this book, Scott J. Jones insists that for United Methodists the ultimate goal of doctrine is holiness. Importantly, he clarifies the nature and the specific claims of “official” United Methodist doctrine in a way that moves beyond the current tendency to assume the only alternatives are a rigid dogmatism or an unfettered theological pluralism. In classic Wesleyan form, Jones’ driving concern is with recovering the vital role of forming believers in the “mind of Christ,” so that they might live more faithfully in their many settings in our world.
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Quest For Plausible Jesus
$65.00Add to cartShould the dissimilarity between Jesus and early Christianity or between Jesus and Judaism be the central criteria for the historical Jesus? Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter argue that the criterion of dissimilarity does not do justice to the single most important result of more than two-thousand years of Jesus research, that the historical Jesus belongs to both Judaism and Christianity. The two authors propose a criterion of historical plausibility so that historical phenomenon under question can be considered authentic so long as it can be plausibly understood in its Jewish context and also facilitates a plausible explanation for its later effects in Christian history. This book is a cooperative project between Dagmar Winter and Gerd Theissen and represents the fruit of many years of their research on the historical Jesus.
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Judaism When Christianity Began
$39.00Add to cartA systematic, holistic introduction to rabbinic Judaism. Offering an illuminating look at beliefs, ritual, symbols, and theology, Neusner’s discussion of revelation and Scripture, the doctrine of God, definition of the holy, chain of tradition embodied in the written and oral Torah, sacred space, and other topics makes first-century Judaism accessible to both scholars and general readers.
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Prayer (Anniversary)
$24.00Add to cartPrayer is one of the central activities of the Christian life. This anniversary edition of Karl Barth’s lectures on the Lord’s Prayer, along with supplementary essays by three Barth scholars, introduces us to what he had to say about this important Christian practice. For Barth, the ultimate aim of all theology is worship, and here he mines the theological and spiritual wisdom of Luther, Calvin, and the Heidelberg Catechism urging us to participate in the work of God through prayer.
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Supreme Harmony Of All
$24.50Add to cartJonathan Edwards lived in an age in which the doctrine of the Trinity was sometimes openly repudiated and more often quietly ignored. But as this important book shows, Edwards in fact took care to creatively fashion the Trinity into the centerpiece of his Christian life and work. Through her pursuit of Edwards’s writings, especially his lifelong intellectual diary, Amy Plantinga Pauw traces the way Edwards established the basic outlines of his trinitarian thought when he was only twenty years old, and how the doctrine continued to run like a subterranean river throughout his famed career as a pastor and teacher. Recognizing the centrality of the Trinity in Edwards’s thought both nuances our understanding of his Puritan inheritance and challenges the narrowness of Edwards’s enduring legacy as the preacher of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
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Didache : Its Jewish Sources And Its Place In Early Christianity And Judais
$58.00Add to cartThis latest addition to the monumental Compendia series offers original thinking and impressive erudition about the Didache. The early Christian manual for baptismal catechesis focuses a valuable lens on the nascent Christian community and early Judaism. In the document’s rules for church morals, ritual, and discipline, Huub van de Sandt and the late, great scholar David Flusser find clues to the evolution of Christianity and Judaism from a shared heritage in Jewish sources. The authors hypothesize that an initial Jewish tractate (the so-called Two Ways tractate) evolved into a composite Judaeo-Christian text (independently circulating until Medieval times) and then into its final form as the Didache in an anti-Jewish, gentile church.
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Theologies In The Old Testament
$39.00Add to cartInternationally renowned scholar Erhard Gerstenberger here offers a radical departure from traditional treatments. Rather than a systematic approach to theological topics in the Old Testament, Gerstenberger discusses its various theological voices rooted in different social settings within ancient Israel: the family and clan, the village, the tribal group, and the kingdom. Further, he discusses the variety of Israel’s views concerning the divine_polytheism, syncretism, and monotheism. Gerstenberger concludes with his reflections on how contemporary theology is informed by the biblical witness and how it must be contextual and ecumenical in order to be authentic.
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Protestant Theology In The 19th Century (Reprinted)
$58.99Add to cartIntroduction by Colin E. Gunton
Interest in Karl Barth is running at unprecedented levels in the English-speaking world, and it is high time that his excellent survey of formative eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Protestant thinkers be made available again to theological students and general readers.
Featuring an extensive introduction by Colin E. Gunton that recontextualizes and reintroduces Barth’s work for a new generation, this book provides a superb review of the shapers of modern Protestant thought and practice. Barth offers insightful readings of all the most significant figures of the modern period – Rousseau, Lessing, Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Feuerbach, Ritschl, and others – as well as several lesser-known thinkers. Also included here are Barth’s preface to the original 1946 German edition and a translation of his hard-to-find essay “On the Task of a History of Modern Protestant Theology.”
In addition to providing insight into some of the church’s seminal theologians, this volume offers an excellent look at Barth himself. In capturing Barth’s personal views on doctrine, the church, and intellectual history, the book also provides valuable background reading for those studying Barth’s own theology.
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Introduction To Christian Theology
$23.99Add to cartStudents preparing for ministry, both in traditional M.Div. programs and non-traditional certification or training programs, all share a common need for grounding in the theological traditions of the Christian faith. Yet the days when instructors could assume that students arrive in their classrooms with that theological ground already in place are over. Discussion of the two basic building blocks of theological study – the content of the core Christian beliefs, and the tools and methods of “thinking theologically” – requires more and more time when students have little or no prior exposure to them.
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Now My Eyes Have Seen You
$28.99Add to cartSeries Preface
Author’s Preface
Abbreviations1. Speaking What Is Right
2. An Advocate In Heaven?
3. The Tragic Creator
4. The Raging Sea
5. The Shadowlands
6. Yahweh, Mot And Behemoth
7. The Ancient Prince Of Hell
8. Drawing Out Leviathan
9. The Vision GloriousAppendix: Job And Cannanite Myth
The Significance Of Ugarit For Old Testament Studies
The Relevance Of The Baal Sagas
Theological SignificanceBibliography
Index Of Modern Authors
Index Of Scriptural References
Index Of Ancient SourcesAdditional Info
‘Now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42:5)Few biblical texts are more daunting, and yet more fascinating, than the book of Job-and few have been the subject of such diverse interpretation.
For Robert Fyall, the mystery of God’s ways and the appalling evil and suffering in the world are at the heart of Job’s significant contribution to the canon of Scripture. This New Studies in Biblical Theology volume offers a holistic reading of Job, with particular reference to its depiction of creation and evil, and finds significant clues to its meaning in the striking imagery it uses.
Fyall takes seriously the literary and artistic integrity of the book of Job, as well as its theological profundity. He concludes that it is not so much about suffering per se as about creation, providence and knowing God, and how-n the crucible of suffering-these are to be understood. He encourages us to listen to this remarkable literature, to be moved by it, and to see its progress from shrieking protest to repentence and vision.
Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.
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Introduction To Theology (Reprinted)
$45.95Add to cartThis classic introduction to theology from an Anglican perspective has been completely revised and updated for this third edition. Organized around the topics of systematic theology, Introduction to Theology begins with an exploration of Scripture, then moves through history and tradition to contemporary debates and reconstructions. As a textbook for introductory courses in seminaries of the Episcopal Church, this book also includes references to The Book of Common Prayer, which Anglicans consider a primary source for theology.
This new edition pays detailed attention to the many developments in theology since its last revision twenty years ago: the emergence of new perspectives such as womanist, mujerista, narrative, and post-modern theology; the shift in theological methods to incorporate the human sciences, recent critical philosophies, and recent developments in the physical sciences; the ongoing revisions of The Book of Common Prayer and resultant shifts in Anglican identity; and the globalization of theological education, specifically the focus on the Episcopal Church as part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. -
Sacrificing The Self
$63.00Add to cartDescription
Acts of martyrdom have been found in nearly all the worlds major religious traditions. Though considered by devotees to be perhaps the most potent expression of religious faith, dying for ones god is also one of the most difficult concepts for modern observers of religion to understand. This is especially true in the West, where martyrdom has all but disappeared and martyrs in other cultures are often viewed skeptically and dismissed as fanatics. This book seeks to foster a greater understanding of these acts of religious devotion by explaining how martyrdom has historically been viewed in the worlds major religions. It provides the first sustained, cross-cultural examination of this fascinating aspect of religious life. Margaret Cormack begins with an introduction that sets out a definition of martyrdom that serves as the point of departure for the rest of the volume. Then, scholars of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam examine martyrdom in specific religious cultures. Spanning 4000 years of history and ranging from Saul in the Hebrew Bible to Sati immolations in present-day India, this book provides a wealth of insight into an often noted but rarely understood cultural phenomenon. -
Screening Scripture
$59.95Add to cartThis unique book opens up new ways to see movies in their relationship to sacred texts-not just the Bible, but apocryphal, heretical, and non-western scriptures as well. The writers serve as creative viewers, making original connections between the texts and some of today’s most popular and provocative films, which include: Pleasantville, Total Recall, The Prince of Egypt, Dracular, Patch Adams and many others.
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Davids Truth : In Israels Imagination And Memory – Second Edition (Student/Study
$22.00Add to cartIn this completely revised edition of a true classic, Walter Bruggermann thoughtfully examines four different sets of David narratives. Each narrative reflects a particular social context, a particualr social hope, and a particular community. Thus these stories offer a distinctly different “mode of truth” concerning this pivotal biblical figure. The tribe, the family, the state, and the assembly, each has a different agenda and thus draws a very different portrait of the one who helps define them and is defined by them.
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Evangelicalism And The Stone Campbell Movement 1
$35.99Add to cartThe Stone-Campbell Movement, also known as the Restoration Movement, arose on the frontiers of early nineteenth-century America. Like-minded Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians abandoned denominational labels in order to be “Christians only.” They called followers to join in Christian unity and restore the ideals of the New Testament church, holding authoritative no book but the Bible and believing no creed but Christ.
Modern-day inheritors of this movement, including the Churches of Christ (a cappella) and the Christian Churches (independent), find much in common with wider evangelical Christianity as a whole. Both groups are committed to the authority of Scripture and the importance of personal conversion. Yet Restorationists and evangelicals, separated by sociological history as well as points of doctrinal emphasis, have been wary of each other. Evangelicals have often misunderstood Restorationists as exclusivist separatists and baptismal regenerationists. On the other hand, Stone-Campbell adherents have been suspicious of mainstream denominational evangelicals as having compromised key aspects of the Christian faith.
In recent years Restoration Movement leaders and churches have moved more freely within evangelical circles. As a result, Stone-Campbell scholars have reconsidered their relationship to evangelicalism, pondering to what extent Restorationists can identify themselves as evangelicals. Gathered here are essays by leading Stone-Campbell thinkers, drawing from their Restoration heritage and offering significant contributions to evangelical discussions of the theology of conversion and ecclesiology. Also included are responses from noted evangelicals, who assess how Stone-Campbell thought both corresponds with and diverges from evangelical perspectives.
Along with William R. Baker (editor) and Mark Noll (who wrote the Foreword), contributors include Tom Alexander, Jim Baird, Craig L. Blomberg, Jack Cottrell, Everett Ferguson, Stanley J. Grenz, John Mark Hicks, Gary Holloway, H. Wayne House, Robert C. Kurka, Robert Lowery, Edward P. Myers and Jon A. Weatherly.
For all concerned with Christian unity and the restoration of the church, Evangelicalism & the Stone-Campbell Movement offers a substantive starting point for dialogue and discussion.
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Trinity And Subordinationism
$35.99Add to cartIVP Print On Demand Title
Subordination has been and still is a controversial subject within the church. The concept has been vigorously debated in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity since the fourth century. Certain New Testament texts have made it part of discussions of right relations between men and women. In recent years these two matters have been dramatically brought together. Indeed, today the doctrine of the Trinity is being used to support opposing views of the right relationship between men and women in the church. At the center of the debate is the question of whether or not the orthodox view of the trinitarian relations teach the eternal subordination of the Son of God. In this book Kevin Giles masterfully traces the historic understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity from the patristic age to our own times to help resolve this important question. But he does not stop there. Giles goes on to provide an illuminating investigation of a closely related question–whether or not women, even in terms of function or role, were created to be permanently subordinated to men. By surveying the church’s traditional interpretation of texts relating to the status of women and inquiring into the proper use of the doctrine of the Trinity, Giles lays out his position in this current debate.
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Nature Human Nature And God
$18.00Add to cartIn his latest work, the dean of religion and science tackles some of the thorniest issues posed by contemporary thought. Thoroughly conversant with current developments, Barbour offers astute analyses of the shape and import of evolutionary theory, indeterminacy, neuroscience, information theory, and artificial intelligence. He also addresses deeper philosophical issues and the idea of nature itself. Then with characteristic clarity and verve, Barbour advances to the interconnected religious questions at the core of contemporary debate: Are humans free? Does religion itself evolve? Are we immortal? Is God omnipotent? How does God act in nature? Barbour’s creative and constructive work offers hope that newer religious insights and imperatives occasioned by deep interaction with science can address the environmental and global challenges posed by science’s relentless advance.
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Scope And Authority Of The Bible
$35.99Add to cartThis volume brings together seven essays which are representative of the author’s style, approach to and outlook on contemporary biblical topics. Characterized throughout by openness of thought and iconoclasm, this collection serves as an introduction to one of the most important issues – the authority of the Bible – facing churches today, as well as the author’s thoughts as a whole.
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Love In Hard Places
$19.99Add to cartD.A. Carson focuses on the aspects of Christian love that are not easy, such as loving your enemies and forgiving those who have hurt you. Whether the wounds come at the hands of a stranger in a distant land, from the neigbor next door, or from someone inside your home, this book helps you understand what biblical love is… and is not. As the author sorts through the diverse ways in which Scripture speaks of Christian love, he shows how that love reflects God’s own love. You’ll see how to love wisely and well, faithfully and biblically in heartwarming situations – how to love even in the hardest places in life.
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What Is New Testament Theology
$17.00Add to cartDoes New Testament theology rightly deal with the documents of the New Testament or with something outside the text, such as the unfolding of early Christian religion, the events of salvation history, the historical Jesus in particular, or an understanding of human existence? Is New Testament theology a strictly historical project, a dialectical interaction between historical interpretation and hermeneutical concerns or solely hermeneutical program? This volume by a seasoned biblical scholar not only describes how New Testament theology has been done but provides critiques of the major approaches in the twentieth century as well as his own proposal.
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Redemptive Change
$59.95Add to cartModern culture fails to offer people the hope of meaningful and enduring change in their lives. Philosophers maintain that people are self-sufficient, that they don’t need God to complete their identities, and that whatever changes they experience are momentary and of no ultimate significance. R.R. Reno counters this modern philosophy, contending that the only meaningful change occurs in Christ. At the moment of atonement, people experience an enduring change that has momentous consequences for their lives. We matter, Reno says, only insofar as we are more dependnet upon and changed by Christ.
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Wesleyan Tradition : A Paradigm For Renewal
$33.99Add to cartIn these important essays, a distinguished group of interpreters of the Wesleyan tradition, identify the central convictions and practices of the Methodist movement. Their purpose in making this identification is twofold. First, they insist that these convictions and practices lie at the heart of what the Wesleyan/Methodist family is, and has been. Second, and more important, they claim that in these distinctive beliefs lies the future of the “people called Methodist.” If renewal and growth in witness and mission is to occur, the authors argue, it will come through a reclamation and reinterpretation of such central beliefs as salvation by grace through faith, the authority of Scripture, disciple-making within community, the vocation of Christian holiness, and the church’s mission to the world.
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4 Views On Eternal Security
$22.99Add to cartDoes the Bible support the concept of “once saved, always saved,” or can a person lose his or her salvation? How do the Scriptures portray the complex interplay between grace and free will? These and related questions are explored from different angles in this thought-provoking Counterpoints volume.
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Difficult But Indispensable Church
$19.00Add to cartWhy is it so difficult to be church today? Of course, Christian community is marked by ennobling worship, mutual care, and joyful celebration. But just as often it is marred by staid routine, insularity, and disagreement over leadership, budgets, ethical stances, or even the shape of congregational prayer itself. Alienation, blame, and power struggles ensue. Is church worth it? In this volume of fresh thinking about life in Christian community, twenty-one theologians from Wartburg Seminary strongly attest to Christ-centered community, offering new views of church as the indispensable site of radical Christian commitment and an essential healer for a hurting world. Reflective churchgoers will find here a virtual theological guide to church renewal. In part 1 the authors show how church can model an alternative vision of community, helping people achieve well-being and health, even as their differences are affirmed. Part 2 gets to the heart of Christian practice through creative discussions of belief, fellowship, encounters with Scripture, preaching, and moral deliberation. Part 3 finds the church in motion in new ways of understanding discipleship and mission near and far. Part 4 shows how a Christ-inspired openness can reveal new perspectives on tough issues of public policy, race and class, and ordination of gays and lesbians. Modeling what they espouse, the authors find unanimity in affirming the strengths of diversity, the unsuspected key to church renewal. Contributors include: James L. Bailey, Karen L. Bloomquist, Norma Cook Everist, Roger W. Fjeld, Ann L. Fritschel, Paul Hill, Peter L. Kjeseth, L. Shannon Jung, Duane H. Larson, Elizabeth A. Leeper, David J. Lull, Craig L. Nessan, James R. Nieman, Daniel L. Olson, Winston Persaud, Duane A. Priebe, Ralph W. Quere, David A. Ramse, Gwen B. Sayler, Thomas H. Schattauer, and H. S. Wilson.
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In Our Image
$24.00Add to cartIn Our Image is the first extensive theological engagement with the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Herzfeld probes this new field, which seeks to model human intelligence in computers, for its theological depth. She argues that “At the root of the fascination our current culture has with creating an image of ourselves in an intelligent computer lies a continuing problematic of defining … what it means to be truly human.” She shows how AI continues the classic Christian quest for defining the image of God in humans. Offering a smart, accessible history and typology of research in AI, Herzfeld shows how its rival schools parallel competing options in the theological anthropologies of Niebuhr, von Rad, and Barth. She probes our interest in AI and argues that a relational anthropology informs the best research and the many depictions of AI in science fiction and film. Herzfeld’s exciting work further develops this relational model, in which she finds a needed corrective to the individualistic and narcissistic tendencies of much recent spirituality and the seeds of a human/computer ethic.
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Making Of The Creeds
$28.99Add to cartIn lucid and non-technical prose, Young demonstrates how and why the two most familiar Christian creeds – the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed – came into being. She describes how creeds originated in instruction before baptism and have their roots in the New Testament itself. She then shows how the rise of Gnosticism and a tendancy towards fragmentation in the church made a clear statement of faith necessary, as well as outlining the various controversies which led to particular words and phrases being included in the creeds as we now have them. She then describes the construction of the great Christian doctrines of the Trinity and incarnation.
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Rhetorical Argumentation In Biblical Texts
$120.00Add to cartIn this volume, the contributors seek a better understanding of how various biblical authors present their arguments, support their claims, and attempt to persuade their readers. Essays in the volume examine rhetorical argumentation in the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, the pauline letters, and the Book of Revelation, offering striking new readings of these materials.
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Heavenly Trumpet : John Chrysotom And The Art Of Pauline Interpretation
$65.00Add to cartArguing that all Pauline interpretation depends significantly upon the ways in which readers formulate their own images of the apostle, Margaret M. Mitchell posits that John Chrysostom, the most profilic interpreter of the Pauline epistles in the early church, exemplifies this phenomenon. Mitchell brings together Chrysostom’s copious portraits of Paul – of his body, his soul, and his life circumstances – and for the first time analyzes them as complex rhetorical compositions built open well-known conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric. Two appendixes offer a fresh translation of Chrysostom’s seven homilies de laudibus sancti Pauli and a catalog of color plates of artistic representation that graphically represent the author/exegete dynamic this study explores.
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Divine Decision : A Process Doctrine Of Election
$50.00Add to cartDonna Bowman utilizes the work of process thinker Alfred North Whitehead to develop a doctrine of election that dialogues with the view of Reformed theologian Karl Barth. Taking seriously Barth’s contention that election is the best of all words that can be spoken about God, Bowman reinterprets Whitehead’s description of God’s provision of the initial aim to each entity as the central cosmological and theological fact of universal election. By combining Barth’s concerns with process categories, she concludes that both of the two systems are aimed at common theological and philosophical enemies.
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Preaching Is Believing
$28.00Add to cartThis practical handbook will help preachers equip congregations to grasp core Christian convictions so that the community can believe, live, and witness with integrity. Allen encourages preachers from the broad spectrum of theological families to bring their perspectives more boldly to the surface of the sermon. This volume does not so much advocate a special kind of preaching as it commends more conscientious and critical attention to systematic theology throughout the preparation and preaching of all sermons.
