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The Protestant Reformation emphasized the centrality of scripture to Christian life; the twentieth-century liturgical movement emphasized the Bible's place at the heart of liturgy. But we have not yet explored the place of the Bible as the subject of critical exegesis in contemporary liturgy, argues Gordon W. Lathrop. He seeks to remedy that lack because it is critical historical scholarship that has shown us the grounding of the text in the life of the assembly and the role of intertextuality in its creation. "Saving" and revitalizing images of the past are at the heart of scripture and are the work of the gathered community. Lathrop finds patterns in biblical narratives that suggest revising our models of the "shape" of liturgy (Dix and Schmemann) and our understanding of baptism, preaching, Eucharist, and congregational prayer. He lifts up the visual imagery at the Dura Europos house church and elsewhere as a corrective to the supersessionist impulse in much Christian typology. He identifies the liturgical imperative as seriousness about the present rather than an effort to dwell in an imagined past. Saving Images is a call for a new, reconceived biblical-liturgical movement that takes seriously both biblical scholarship and the mystery at the heart of worship.

The virgin birth is a much-loved story in the Christian tradition. It is the standard "origin story" of Jesus, marking the incarnation of the Son of God. Today, however, many theologians dispute the tradition of the virginal conception on both historical and scientific grounds.

The Gospel and Epistles of John are often overlooked in discussions of New Testament ethics; indeed, it has been asserted that the Fourth Gospel is of only limited value to such discussions--even that John is practically devoid of ethical material. Representing a range of viewpoints, the essays collected here by prominent scholars reveal the surprising relevance and importance of the Johannine literature by examining the explicit imperatives and the values implicit in the Gospel narrative and epistles. The introduction sets out four major approaches to Johannine ethics today. Essays in subsequent sections evaluate the directives of the Johannine Jesus (believe, love, follow), tease out the implicit ethics of the Gospel's narrative (including its fraught and apparently sectarian representation of hoi Ioudaioi as Jesus's opponents), and propose different approaches for advancing the discussion of Johannine ethics beyond the categories now dominant in critical scholarship. In a concluding essay, the editors take stock of the book's wide-ranging discussion and suggest prospects for future study. The sum is a valuable resource for the student as well as the scholar interested in the question of Johannine ethics.

Throughout the two-thousand-year span of Christian history, believers in Jesus have sought to articulate their faith and their understanding of how God works in the world. How do we, as we examine the vast and varied output of those who came before us, understand the unity and the diversity of their thinking? How do we make sense of our own thought in light of theirs? The Christian Understandings series is an exciting new series that seeks to illuminate precisely these questions. Short, concise, orienting-volumes in the Christian Understandings series "fill in the gaps" for readers as they dive into the exciting and stimulating story of Christian thought.

Helmut Gollwitzer was a direct heir of the theological legacy of the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth. Yet, Gollwitzeræs work is perhaps least appreciated and studied, especially in English, of all of Barthæs immediate "descendants." A Protestant theologian and member of the Confessing Church movement in World War II-era Germany, Gollwitzer studied under Karl Barth at the Universities of Bonn and Basle and was professor of Protestant theology at the University of Berlin. Deeply influenced by his mentor, Gollwitzer appropriated the methodological principles of Barthæs theology and developed in new and particularly contextual directions one of Barthæs most penetrating constructive insights in the doctrine of God. At the same time, Gollwitzer, more than any of Barthæs other interpreters, embraced and extended the sociopolitical impulses and implications within Barthæs theology. In this, Gollwitzer embodies a salient alternative for theological and political discourse, one especially needed in the American context of increasingly intertwined theological and political discourses. This volume, the first book-length study of Gollwitzer available in English, provides a helpful introduction to the life, theology, and political thought of this crucial theologian and public intellectual and makes clear Gollwitzeræs importance to the North American context.

Wolfhart Pannenberg is one of the most important theologians of the second half of the twentieth century. This volume offers the first full historical and thematic survey of Pannenberg's corpus, from his early work on the theology of revelation and Christology, to his writings on anthropology, theology and the university, and the pivotal achievement of his systematic theology. In the process of this survey, it identifies the broad, consistent development in his work across his career, as well as several significant revisions to his positions. As such, the project makes a significant contribution to the theological assessment of his career and will be a useful text for students and scholars in modern and contemporary theology.

Imagine pulling up a chair to the Luther family table after a fine dinner.Imagine being invited to ask Martin Luther questions about . . . almost anything. Imagine Luther talking about his early life, his education, his decision to become a monk, his rediscovery of the gospel, his attacks on scholasticism and the papacy, his journey to the Diet of Worms where he was ordered tobut refused torecant his teaching, his marriage to Katherine von Bora, and much more.Because Luthers friends took notes of many private conversations around the Luther family table, you dont have to imagine Luthers answers. This newly abridged edition of Martin Luthers Table Talk serves up a rich sampling of Luthers wide ranging thoughts on biblical exposition, doctrinal teaching, ministry, the church and the sacraments, pastoral counsel, and life as a Christian. You will also learn much about the political, economic and social world that Luther lived ina world unlike our own.The theological convictions of Luther and other early reformers that shaped the Reformation are often referred to as The Five Pillars of the ReformationWord alone, Faith alone, Grace alone, Christ alone, and Glory to God alone. In the table talks in this volume, you will find these themes woven over and over again into the mealtime conversations around Luthers table. Pull up a chair and spend some time with the great reformer. This volume provides access to selections from Martin Luthers Table Talk, Volume 54 of Luthers Works.Editor Henry F. French has carefully chosen some of the best of Luthers conversations with many guests who frequented the dinner table in the home of Martin and Katie Luther.

As various events have focused attention on Islam, the often-misunderstood faith of one billion people, westerners have shown a new curiosity about it and other religions. This is perhaps in part because religion is such an important factor in geopolitics. Islam needs to be understood on its own terms, apart from extreme expressions, John Kaltner argues. This edition offers information about Islam in an accessible presentation and presents Islam as first and foremost a religion of practices. Showing the deep humanism of Islam and its commitments, Kaltner presents Islam through assertions that counter frequent misconceptions of the faith.

Jason Micheli was diagnosed with a bone cancer so rare and deadly that his doctors didn't classify it with one of the normal four stages. But Micheli wasn't going to let the cancer kill his spirit, his faith, or his sense of humor. This is a funny, no-holds-barred, irreverent-yet-faithful take on the disease that has touched every family.

The End of Theology generates a discussion of the nature of theology and how it is most meaningfully constructed to offer a truly interdisciplinary perspective on theology and mission. The volume highlights perspectives of contextual and systematic theology, as well as missiology, world Christianity and history, biblical studies and hermeneutics, ethnography, pastoral practice, and social justice. It also pays keen attention to matters on the ground with a profound desire to relate questions of evangelical identity including ministry practice and mission to the wider tradition.

Hans Urs von Balthasar (19051988) sets out to reunite Truth and holiness by returning the saints to their proper place at the heart of philosophy, theology, and metaphysics. Love Itself is Understanding is one of the first systematic treatments of Balthasars theology of the saints. Matthew Rothaus Moser presents Balthasar as an alternative to Idealist philosophy, a thinker who develops a religious metaphysics in which the saints practices of prayer and contemplation are the chief mode of knowing that the Truth of Being is divine love. Love Itself is Understanding casts new light on dominant themes in Balthasars thought and invites a renewed vision of the theological and metaphysical significance of the spiritual practices of prayer, obedience, and charity.

Of the world's three major religions, only Christianity holds to a doctrine of original sin. Ideas are powerful, and they shape who we are and who we become. The fact that many Christians believe there is something in human nature that is, and will always be, contrary to God, is not just a problem but a tragedy. So why do the doctrine's assumptions of human nature so infiltrate our pulpits, sermons, and theological bookshelves? How is it so misconstrued in times of grief, pastoral care, and personal shame? How did we fall so far from God's original blessing in the garden to this pervasive belief in humanity's innate inability to do good? In this book, Danielle Shroyer takes readers through an overview of the historical development of the doctrine, pointing out important missteps and overcalculations, and providing alternative ways to approach often-used Scriptures. Throughout, she brings the primary claims of original sin to their untenable (and unbiblical) conclusions. In Original Blessing, she shows not only how we got this doctrine wrong, but how we can put sin back in its rightful place: in a broader context of redemption and the blessing of humanity's creation in the image of God.

Lukes two-volume work contains the only narrative depictions of Jesus ascent into heaven in the New Testament. The significance of the event at the end of the Gospel and the beginning of Acts have long been recognized. While select studies have focused on particular aspects of these accounts, however, the importance of the ascension to Luke-Acts calls for renewed attention to the narratological and theological significance of these accounts. Here, leading scholars discuss the ancient, literary and theological contexts of the ascent-into-heaven accounts for the next generation of interpreters.

Donald M. MacKinnon has been one of the most important and influential of the post-World War British theologians, significantly impacting the development and subsequent work of the likes of Rowan Williams, Nicholas Lash and John Milbank, among many other notable theologians. A younger generation largely emerging from Cambridge, but with influence elsewhere, has more recently brought MacKinnons eclectic and occasionalist work to a larger audience worldwide. In this collection, MacKinnons central writings on the major themes of ecclesiology, and especially the relationship of the church to theology, are gathered in one source. The volume will feature several of MacKinnons important early texts. These will include two short books published in the Signposts series during World War II, and a collection of later essays entitled The Stripping of the Altars.

Dietrich Bonhoeffers work has persistently challenged Christian consciousness due to both his death at the hands of the Nazis and his provocative prison musings about Christian faithfulness in late modernity. Although understandable given the popularity of both narrative trajectories, such selective focus obscures the depth and fecundity of his overall corpus. Bonhoeffers early work, and particularly his Christocentric anthropology, grounds his later expressed commitments to responsibility and faithfulness in a world come of age. While much debate accompanies claims regarding the continuity of Bonhoeffers thought, there are central motifs which pervade his work from his doctoral dissertation to the prison writings. This book suggests that a concern for otherness permeates all of Bonhoeffers work. Furthermore, Clark Elliston articulates, drawing on Bonhoeffer, a Christian self-defined by its orientation towards otherness. Taking Bonhoeffer as both the origin and point of return, the text engages Emmanuel Levinas and Simone Weil as dialogue partners who likewise stress the role of the other for self-understanding, albeit in diverse ways.

Scholars of early Christianity are awakening to the potential of Pompeiis treasures for casting light on the settings and situations that were commonplace and conventional for the first urban Christians. The essays of this book explore different dimensions of Pompeiis potential to refine our lenses for interpreting the texts and situations of early Christianity. The contributors to this book (including Carolyn Osiek, David Balch, Peter Oakes, Bruce Longenecker, and others) demonstrate that it is an exciting time to explore the interface between the Vesuvian contexts and the early Jesus-movement.

A Generous Symphony offers a balanced appraisal of Balthasars literary achievement and explicates Balthasars literary criticism as a distinctive theology of revelation, which offers possibilities for understanding how divine presence may be manifested outside the canonical boundaries of Christian tradition. The structure of A Generous Symphony is a chronological presentation of the Balthasarian canon of imaginative literature, which allows readers to see how social and historical interests guide Balthasars readings in the pre-Christian, medieval, and modern eras. While other books have examined the systematic theology of Balthasar, this book will examine the important question of how students of literature, like Balthasar, can be transformed into theologians by attending to the implicit presence of Christ in what Gerard Manley Hopkins poem As kingfishers catch fire . . . called the ten thousand places. Balthasars deep investment in the uniqueness of Christian revelation is underlined, while, at the same time, his aesthetic sympathies cause him to invest literature with quasi-sacramental status.

Throughout the two-thousand-year span of Christian history, believers in Jesus have sought to articulate their faith and their understanding of how God works in the world. How do we, as we examine the vast and varied output of those who came before us, understand the unity and the diversity of their thinking? How do we make sense of our own thought in light of theirs? The Christian Understandings series offers to help. In this crisp and engaging volume Amy Frykholm offers a tour through more than two millennia of Christian thought on the future. Starting with the contexts of the Hebrew Bible and moving forward, Frykholm outlines the enduring fascination believers have had with future events and the myriad ways they have articulated their beliefs about what the future holds. From the imperial contexts of the book of Revelation to the end times prophecy of Harold Camping, Frykholm presents a thoughtful and insightful tour. - back of the book.

Throughout the two-thousand-year span of Christian history, believers in Jesus have sought to articulate their faith and their understanding of how God works in the world. How do we, as we examine the vast and varied output of those who came before us, understand the unity and the diversity of their thinking? How do we make sense of our own thought in light of theirs? The Christian Understandings series offers to help. In this exciting volume, Charlene Burns offers a brief but thorough tour through more than two millennia of thought on the nature of evil. Starting with the contexts of the Hebrew Bible and moving forward, Burns outlines the many ways that Christian thought has attempted to deal with the reality of evil and suffering. From a personal Satan and demonic activity, to questions of free will and autonomy, to the nature of God and Gods role in suffering, Burns offers a clear and compelling overview.

"Sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.": pages 345-346.

The profound ambivalence of the biblical portrayals of Hagar and Ishmaeldispossessed, yet protected; abandoned, yet given promises that rival those of the covenant with Abrahambelies easy characterizations of the Pentateuch''s writers. In particular, John T. Noble argues, conventional characterizations of the Priestly writers'' view of covenant have failed to take into account the significance of these two "non-chosen" figures.Noble carefully examines their roles and depictions in the P and non-P Genesis traditions, comparing them to other "non-chosen" figures and to patterns found in Exodus traditions and the patriarchal promises to Abraham, showing that Ishmael is clearly favored, though not chosen. Indeed, Noble argues, Ishmael must be seen as a key figure in the Priestly material, highlighting the relationship between Noahic and Abrahamic covenants. His ambiguous status calls for reconsideration of the goals and values of the Priestly work, which Noble sketches around themes of covenant, fertility, life, and the future of nations.

Beneath the commonplace affirmation that Jesus paid for our sins lie depths of implication: Did God demand a blood sacrifice to assuage divine anger? Is sacrifice (consciously or unconsciously) intended to induce the deity to show favor? What underlies the various metaphors for atonement used in the Bible?Here, Stephen Finlan surveys psychological theories that help us to understand beliefs about sacrifice and atonement and what they may reveal about patterns of injury, guilt, shame, and appeasement. Early chapters examine the language in both testaments of purity and the scapegoat, and of payment, obligation, reciprocity, and redemption. Later chapters review theories of the origins of atonement thinking in fear and traumatic childhood experience, in ambivalent or avoidant attachment to the parents, and in poisonous pedagogy. The theories of Sandor Rado, Mary Ainsworth, Erik Erikson, and Alice Miller are examined, then Finlan draws conclusions about the moral responsibility of appropriating or rejecting atonement metaphors. His arguments bear careful consideration by all who live with these metaphors and their effects today.

"The devil has fallen on hard times. Surveys say that even the majority of Christians doubt Satan's existence. Burdened by doubts, skeptical believers find themselves divorced from Jesus' dramatic confrontation with Satan in the Gospels and from the struggle that galvanized the early church. In [this book], ... blogger and theologian Richard Beck reintroduces the devil to the modern world with a biblical, bold, and urgent vision of spiritual warfare: we must resist the devil by joining the kingdom of God's subversive campaign to interrupt the world with love"--Amazon.com.

Archaeologists have disputed the scarce evidence claimed for the presence of Christians in Pompeii before the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Now, Bruce W. Longenecker reviews that evidence in comparison with other possible data of first-century Christian presence elsewhere in the Mediterranean and reaches the conclusion that there were indeed Christians living in the doomed city. The Crosses of Pompeii presents an elegant case for their presence, with photographic illustration of the available archaeological evidence.

Focusing on texts in the Hebrew Bible, and using feminist hermeneutics, Phyllis Trible brings out what she considers to be neglected themes and counter literature.After outlining her method in more detail, she begins by highlighting the feminist imagery used for God; then she moves on to traditions embodying male and female within the context of the goodness of creation. If Genesis 2-3 is a love story gone awry, the Song of Songs is about sexuality redeemed in joy. In between lies the book of Ruth, with its picture of the struggles of everyday life.

This volume offers two of Martin Luthers writings on prayer, excerpted from The Annotated Luther, volume 4. In Little Prayer Book (1522), Luther seeks to reform the theology and practice of prayer in clear and understable language for all people. In A Simple Way to Pray (1535), Luther offers readers insights into his own prayer life and organizes his comments around the seven petitions of the Lords Prayer.

The delay of the Parousia-the anticipated return of Christ-is an issue that has troubled theology since the late writings of the New Testament. This volume, arising from the Oxford Postdoctoral Colloquium on Eschatology, offers a constructive proposal on this issue in a truly interdisciplinary manner.