Böcker utgivna av Augsburg Fortress Publishers

R. A. Martin is the author of James and John H. Elliott is the author of I-II Peter/Jude.

Why do we all like a good story? Stories give us joy, hope, visions of wonderful grace at work, says William White. But how can we learn to tell Christian stories? How can we find good story ideas? How can we make our stories interesting? Speaking in Stories is full of practical ideas on how to begin, what to avoid, how to use stories in classrooms, camps, churches. White's many examples of stories -- from the Bible, folktales, modern parables, for Christmas -- serve as a valuable resource as you weave your tales.

Few would doubt that this is a time of transition in our understanding of human sexuality. The confusion about sexual morals and mores is the more obvious evidence of this. But there is something else. For too long the bulk of Christian reflection about sexuality has asked an essentially one-directional question: what does Christian faith have to say about our lives as sexual beings?- from the Preface

This book about Luther's theology is written out of a two-fold conviction. First, that many of our problems have arisen because we have not really understood our own traditions, especially in the case of Luther; and second, that there is still a lot of help for us in someone like Luther if we take the trouble to probe beneath the surface. It is an attempt to interpret Luther's theology for our own day.The fundamental theme of the book is the "down-to-earth" character of Luther's theology. In using this theme, Forde points out that we have failed to understand the basic thrust or direction of Luther's theology and that this failure has caused and is still causing us grief. Modern scholarship has demonstrated that Luther simply did not share the views on the nature of faith and salvation that subsequent generations have foisted upon him and used to interpret his thinking. This book attempts to bring the results of some of that scholarship to light and make it more accessible to those who are searching for answers today.The central questions of Christianity are examined in this fresh restatement of Luther's thoughtthe God-man relationship, the cross, the sacraments, this world and the next, and the role of the church. The author presents the "down-to-earth" character of Luther's theology in the hope that it will help individual Christians today to be both faithful to God and true to their human and social responsibilities.

What difference would it make for Old Testament theology if we turned our attention from the more dramatic, forceful mighty acts of God to the more subdued, but more realistic themes of later writings in the Hebrew Bible? The result, Mark McEntire argues, would be a more mature theology that would enable us to respond more realistically and creatively to the unprecedented challenges of the present age.

Adele Reinhartz offers a thorough reconsideration of Caiaphas in the Gospels and other ancient texts as well as in subsequent visual arts, literature, film, and drama. The portrait that emerges challenges long-held beliefs about this New Testament figure by examining the background of the high priesthood and exploring the relationships among the high priest, the Roman leadership, and the Jewish population.Reinhartz does not seek to exonerate Caiaphas from culpability in the crucifixion, but she does expand our understanding of Caiaphass complex religious and political roles in biblical literature and his culturally loaded depiction in ongoing Jewish-Christian dialogue.

The Texts @ Contexts series gathers scholarly voices from diverse contexts and social locations to bring new or unfamiliar facets of biblical texts to light. Joshua and Judges focuses attention on themes and tensions at the beginning of Israels story in the Bible. How do these books represent conquest, war, trauma, violence against women and their marginalization? How does God appear to relate to these realities? And what do contemporary men and women do with biblical ambivalence?Like other volumes in the Texts @ Contexts series, these essays de-center the often homogeneous first-world orientation of much biblical scholarship and open up new possibilities for discovery.

The Texts @ Contexts series gathers scholarly voices from diverse contexts and social locations to bring new or unfamiliar facets of biblical texts to light. Leviticus and Numbers focuses attention on practices and ideals of behavior in community, from mourning and diet to marriages licit and transgressive, examining all of these from a variety of global perspectives and postcolonial and feminist methods. How do we deal with the apparent cultural distances between ourselves and these ancient writings; what can we learn from their visions of human dwelling on the earth?

The Texts @ Contexts series gathers scholarly voices from diverse contexts and social locations to bring new or unfamiliar facets of biblical texts to light. Matthew sheds new light from new perspectives on themes in the Gospel including community; land, labor, and Empire; children, parents, and families; health and disabilities; and border-crossings. The authors challenge us to consider how we deal with cultural distances between ourselves and these ancient writingsand between one another in the contemporary world.

This volume highlights points of agreement and disagreement on the subject of religious pluralism. The dialogue partners in the discussion are Paul F. Knitter, Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions, and Culture at Union Theological Seminary, and Harold A Netland, professor of Mission and Evangelism and director of Intercultural Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

In this masterful volumethe culmination of his three-volume History of New Testament Research (vol. 1, From Deism to Tubingen, 1992; vol. 2, From Jonathan Edwards to Rudolf Bultmann, 2012)William Baird continues his insightful, balanced, and accessible survey of the major developments in New Testament scholarship. Volume 3 charts the dramatic discoveries and breakthroughs in method and approach that characterized the mid- and late twentieth century. Baird gives attention to the biographical and cultural setting of persons and approaches, affording both beginning student and seasoned scholar an authoritative account of the evolution of historical-critical study of the New Testament.

In this fully revised and expanded edition, Nickelsburg introduces the reader to the broad range of Jewish literature that is not part of either the Bible or the standard rabbinic works. This includes especially the Apocrypha (such as 1 Maccabees), the Pseudepigrapha (such as 1 Enoch), the Dead Sea Scrolls, the works of Josephus, and the works of Philo.

Peterson suggests that we understand the church as a people created by the Spirit to be a community, and that we must claim a narrative method to explore the churchs identityspecifically, the story of the churchs origin in the Acts of the Apostles. Finally, here is a way of thinking of church that reconciles the best of competing models of church for the future of mainline Protestant theology.

Cynthia Crysdale and Neil Ormerod here present a robust theology of God in light of supposed tensions between Christian belief and evolutionary science. Those who pit faith in an almighty and unchanging God over against a world in which chance is operative have it wrong on several accounts, they insist. Creator God, Evolving World clarifies a number of confused assumptions in an effort to redeem chance as an intelligible force interacting with stable patterns in nature.A proper conception of probabilities and regularities in the worlds unfolding reveals neither random chaos nor a predetermined blueprint but a view of the universe as the fruit of both chance and necessity. By clarifying terms often used imprecisely in both scientific and theological discourse, the authors make the case that the role of chance in evolution neither mitigates Gods radical otherness from creation nor challenges the efficacy of Gods providence in the world.

Third wave womanism is a new movement within religious studies with deep roots in the tradition of womanist religious thoughtwhile also departing from it in key ways.After a helpful and orienting introduction, this volume gathers essays from established and emerging scholars whose work is among the most lively and innovative scholarship today.The result is a lively conversation in which to question is not to disavow; to depart is not necessarily to reject and where questioning and departing are indications of the productive growth and expansion of an important academic and religious movement.

In this book Wes Allen draws together the strengths of two approaches into a new genre of homiletical and teaching resource with a focus on the Gospel according to Matthew. Matthew will not only be an essential classroom resource to help students learn to link text and sermon, it will also help congregational leaders develop exegetically informed cumulative preaching and educational experiences focused on but not limited to the lections in Matthew.

Nancy Pineda-Madrid re-conceives traditional Christian notions of salvation by closing attending to the experience of the embattled women of Ciudad Jurez in Mexico, where hundreds have been slain and where survivors have found healing and salvation in solidarity and community practices that resist rather than acquiesce in the violence.

The roots of antiJudaism and JewishChristian dialogue are examined in their historical contexts with a wide array of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian sources. This is Conzelmann's final academic masterpiece.

The self-emptying of Christ (kenosis) in Philippians 2 has long been the focus of attention by Christian theologians and interpreters of Pauls Christology. David E. Fredrickson sheds dramatic new light on familiar texts by discussing the centuries-old language of love and longing in Greek and Roman epistolary literature, showing that a physics of desire was related to notions of power and dominance. Pauls kenotic Christology challenged not only received notions of the power of the gods but of the very nature of love itself as a component of human society.

Israel Kamudzandu explores the legacy of how the Shona found in the figure of Abraham himself a potent resource for cultural resistance, and makes intriguing comparisons with the ways the apostle Paul used the same figure in his interaction with the ancestry of Aeneas in imperial myths of the destiny of the Roman people. The result is a groundbreak