Böcker utgivna av Pickwick Publications

Late twentieth-century Jesus novels carve out a completely new picture of Jesus. Those written by Norman Mailer, Jose Saramago, Michele Roberts, Marianne Fredriksson, and Ki Longfellow, among others, provide inversive revisions of the canonical Gospels. Their adaptations often turn into a critique of the whole of Christian history.The contrast novels investigated in this study end up with appropriations that are based on prototypical rewriting. They aim at the rehabilitation of Judas, and some of them make Mary Magdalene the key figure of Christianity. Saramago describes God as a bloodthirsty tyrant, and Mailer makes God battle the devil in a ""Manichaen"" sense as with an equal.The main result of this intertextual analysis is that these authors have adopted Nietzschean ideas in their writing. An attack on the so-called biblical slave morality and violent concept of God deprives Jesus of his Jewish messianic identity, makes Old Testament law a contradiction of life, calls sacrificial soteriology a violent paradigm supporting oppression, and presents God as a cruel monster.As a result, Jewish faith appears in a negative light. Apparently, Western culture still harbours anti-Judaic attitudes, albeit hidden beneath sentiments of equality and tolerance. Timo Eskola skillfully shows that despite the evident post-Holocaust consciousness present in the novels, they actually adopt an arrogant and ironic refutation of Jewish beliefs and Old Testament faith.

This book aims to examine the importance of Christian philosophy in theological education through the prism of the life and teachings of Emile Cailliet. The book's primary focus is on his years of teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary, to which all the authors are connected. This work examines Cailliet as a believer, teacher, scholar, and philosopher. Although Cailliet wrote over twenty books, none of them articulated his formal position on the nature of theological education. However, it is clear from his teaching at seminary and his writings on philosophy, especially Pascal, that he saw philosophy as an integral part of seminary training. We want to preserve his work because he was a seminal but neglected thinker whose influence extends from science to literature and from philosophy to spirituality and theology. We believe that Emile Cailliet was one of the most influential Christians of the twentieth century. We invite the reader to stand in the long shadow of Cailliet and consider how his life and thought can help us tackle some of the knotty questions that face us today.

This book is an attempt at a critical, constructive, and creative theological praxis of social transformation in Africa. The authors apply a multi-disciplinary approach to examining how Christianity in Africa is engaging the problems of Africa's challenging social context. This is a prophetic work that applies the symbols of ""salt"" and ""light"" as ecclesiological images for reenvisioning the path towards procuring abundant life for God's people in the African continent through the agency of African Christianity. The contributors to this volume ask these fundamental questions: What is the face of Jesus in African Christianity? What is the face and identity of the Church in Africa? How can one evaluate the relevance of the Church in Africa to African Christians who enthusiastically embrace and celebrate their Christian faith? In other words, what positive imprint is Christianity leaving on the lives and societies of African Christians? Does the Christian message have the potential of positively affecting African civilization as it once did in Europe? What is the relevance and place of African Christianity as a significant voice in shaping both the future of Africa and that of world Christianity?

Secularization and the Working Class brings together contributions from thirteen Central European historians who have taken a long-term interest in the issue of the secularization of modern society and social issues affecting the working class. By using contemporary historical methods they have researched the theoretical aspects of secularization theories as well as individual cases which illustrate Czech developments within the framework of the Austrian monarchy. These cases touch upon working conditions, working-class organizations and political parties, cultural life and means of communication. Among other things they present the conflicts that led to rifts within society. This representative collection of texts is will appeal to historians of modern history interested in the fascinating issues of European development, all those who are interested in the living conditions of the working class in the 19th and 20th centuries.

""Religion and ecology"" has arrived. What was once a niche interest for a few academics concerned with environmental issues and a few environmentalists interested in religion has become an established academic field with classic texts, graduate programs, regular meetings at academic conferences, and growing interest from other academics and the mass media. Theologians, ethicists, sociologists, and other scholars are engaged in a broad dialogue about the ways religious studies can help understand and address environmental problems, including the sorts of methodological, terminological, and substantive debates that characterize any academic discourse.This book recognizes the field that has taken shape, reflects on the ways it is changing, and anticipates its development in the future. The essays offer analyses and reflections from emerging scholars of religion and ecology, each addressing her or his own specialty in light of two questions: (1) What have we inherited from the work that has come before us? and (2) What inquiries, concerns, and conversation partners should be central to the next generation of scholarship?The aim of this volume is not to lay out a single and clear path forward for the field. Rather, the authors critically reflect on the field from within, outline some of the major issues we face in the academy, and offer perspectives that will nurture continued dialogue.

It has been almost fifty years since theological educators first began talking about contextual theology. Today, in every country of the global South, their home schools require them to contextualize theological education and construct contextual theologies that would be helpful for their local churches. In spite of this expectation there are few helps available. The expectation is clear, but an understanding of the process by which this may occur is lacking. Educators often complain that they are led to adapt Western theology to their context rather than developing theology for their churches. Arguments for contextual theology are proposed often, but there has been little debate explaining and defending the methods involved. This book is intended to enter that debate and invite others who should help appreciate the gravity of our situation and join the conversation. The epicenter of Christianity has shifted to the global South. Yet, contextual theology, which seeks to preserve the integrity of the faith, has not been met with generosity among scholars in the US and Europe. This book intends to forge helpful bridges that encourage mutual regard to develop among scholars across the globe. The bubble of the Western academy needs to be breached.

Even under the best circumstances in life, we all suffer psychological injuries to our self. These injuries from others can range from passive hurtful comments to intentional abusive assaults. The end result is that our sense of being a cohesive and secure self is threatened. We may begin to experience degrees of vulnerability and self-doubts, or of rage and desire for revenge. We may even feel as if we were ""falling apart."" In all cases these self-injuries chip away at our self-cohesion and self-esteem.Grace for the Injured Self helps us to better understand the significance of these injuries to our self, as well as how these injuries can be healed through the self psychology approach of Heinz Kohut. Throughout its pages, this book emphasizes the empathic presence of another as a source of grace. Empathy is the most powerful means by which the self is reassured, strengthened, and ultimately restored. It is this empathic responsiveness of others that holds our self together and helps us daily maintain our self-cohesion and self-esteem. The self psychology perspective of Heinz Kohut, who many consider the most significant psychoanalyst since Sigmund Freud, is made available here as a primary means by which clergy and other helping professionals can provide a healing context for the restoration of injured selves.

Vincent Donovan is best known as the author of the influential bestseller, Christianity Rediscovered (1978). This new book contains the monthly letters he wrote home from Tanzania between 1957 and 1973. These letters give us previously unknown stories: how Donovan met Julius Nyerere, first prime minister of Tanzania; how a group of Protestants attempted to kill him; of his early disastrous attempt to hear confession in Swahili; of the relationship between Donovan's work and Vatican II; and much about the mysterious Sonjo tribe, among whom Donovan spent his last years in Tanzania. They also give insights, from the hilarious to the poignant, into Donovan the man in relationship to his family, his missionary colleagues, and the Maasai. Copies of original photographs are also included.Most significantly, the letters show Donovan's evolution over the years from a young missionary who was passionate about acquiring land for church buildings, into a mature visionary convinced that the only job of the missionary is to preach the gospel.A concluding essay looks at the legacy of Donovan, thirty-five years later, with contributions from three Spiritan missionaries who continue to live out his legacy in Tanzania and elsewhere today. Finally, the essay looks at Donovan's continuing influence on contemporary renewal movements in North America and in Britain. Those who have been inspired by Christianity Rediscovered--missiologists, church renewal leaders, and students of Gospel and culture--will find much here to delight and to challenge.

Concerned that American Catholic theology has struggled to find its own voice for much of its history, William Portier has spent virtually his entire scholarly career recovering a usable past for Catholics on the U.S. landscape. This work of ressourcement has stood at the intersection of several disciplines and has unlocked the beauty of American Catholic life and thought. These essays, which are offered in honor of Portier's life and work, emerge from his vision for American Catholicism, where Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience are distinct, but interwoven and inextricably linked with one another. As this volume details, such a path is not merely about scholarly endeavors but involves the pursuit of holiness in the ""real"" world.

In the face of today's unprecedented ecological crisis, Christianity is often seen not only as sharing in the guilt of causing this crisis, but also as unwilling and incapable of providing any help in re-envisioning the required new way of life on earth. This view is justified when we consider how modern Christian theology has tended to denigrate the natural world and how the prevalent world-deserting Christian eschatology forms a spirituality that is fundamentally insensitive and indifferent to nature. In light of this, a meaningful Christian contribution to today's world of enormous ecological suffering must lie in envisioning a fundamentally new ecological vision of humanity's relationship to nature as well as providing an ethical energy to transform our current path of self-destruction. In this book, Bryan J. Lee finds, in Jurgen Moltmann's eschatological panentheism, a viable pathway toward a Christian ecological re-envisioning of the relationship between God and humanity and between humanity and nature. Furthermore, Lee demonstrates in a persuasive way how Christian worship can and should be the epicenter of ecological transformation of the society, emphatically interpreting Christian worship as an ecological-eschatological anticipation of God's cosmic perichoresis.

Clarity of vocational practice is key to clergy health. The center of clergy practice is the ministry of Word and Sacrament. What takes place at the pulpit, font or pool, and table is the divine intent and extent of ministry. While this may sound in-house and parochial in the extreme, it is both priestly and prophetic.John Weborg's argument in this book is that the clergy can be made healthy in ministry for ministry by maintaining vocational clarity. The priestly and prophetic acts of Word and Sacrament address the clergy before they address the congregation. Hence what is offered here is a spirituality through practices-the clergy are hearers before preachers, baptized before baptizers, communicants before celebrants.Neither a how-to book nor a work of pastoral theology, Made Healthy in Ministry for Ministry is aimed toward helping clergy appropriate the gifts and graces of the practices they are called and authorized to carry out.

What makes us authentically human? According to Maurice Friedman, world-renowned Martin Buber scholar, translator, and biographer, it is genuine dialogue. "When there's a willingness for dialogue," Friedman says, "then one must 'navigate' moment-by-moment. It's a listening process." Friedman addresses our humanity in ever-unique ways through his dialogue with philosophy, literature, religion, and psychotherapy. At least two things make this book new. Friedman presents his wide-ranging thought directly in five original essays forming an "intertextual compass," which is then elaborated upon by colleagues familiar with his work. Second, a special feature of this book is found at the end of each part which invites readers to engage with questions drawn from and pointing toward Friedman's writing. The book's intended audience includes teachers, scholars, and students interested in dialogical approaches to any of the human sciences. In a time when we are in danger of losing our human birthright, Friedman's interdisciplinary insights point us again to "the touch of the other."

This is the twelfth volume of the hard-copy edition of a journal that has been published online (www.jgrchj.net) since 2000. Volume 1 was for 2000, Volume 2 was for 2001-2005, Volume 3 was for 2006, Volume 4 was for 2007, Volume 5 was for 2008, Volume 6 was for 2009, Volume 7 was for 2010, Volume 8 was for 2011-2012, Volume 9 was for 2013, Volume 10 was for 2014, Volume 11 was for 2015 and Volume 12 is for 2016. As they appear, the hard-copy editions will replace the online materials. The scope of JGRChJ is the texts, language and cultures of the Greco-Roman world of early Christianity and Judaism. The papers published in JGRChJ are designed to pay special attention to the 'larger picture' of politics, culture, religion and language, engaging as well with modern theoretical approaches.

In January 2017 Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, said that it looks as if the world is preparing for war. And Pope Francis noted that war is already being fought piecemeal around the world. In this book we argue that since violence begets violence, we must privilege soft power over military might, if we are to have peace on earth. Gandhi used soft power in India overcame British military might, and King used it to bring about integration in the 1960s. Soft power brought about the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the Kyoto climate agreement, and Iran's agreement to refrain from making nuclear weapons. Soft power involves both dialogue between world leaders and conflict resolution, and privileges diplomacy over war. As General James Mattis said in 2013, "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition."

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, modern thinkers came to believe that our notion of truth should be objective, certain, and precise. Mathematics became the model for how truth should be conceptualized, and we sought to eliminate ideas that were vague, ambiguous, or contradictory. This inevitably led to our belief that the truth of the Gospel must be conceptualized in the same way, and much of modern theology saw the defense of the Gospel in these terms as its task. The teachings of Jesus, however, are often vague, ambiguous, and even contradictory. Fortunately, a twenty-first century understanding of the human condition has debunked the modern notion of truth, showing it to be truncated at best. Truth, at least as we have access to it, is very different from what our early modern ancestors imagined. This is especially good news since the truth of the Gospel was never compatible with modernity's notion of truth as objective, certain, and precise. Consequently, we are now free to rethink our notion of truth in a way that is compatible with the things that Jesus said and did, and equally compatible with what we now know to be our access to truth given the limits of our human condition. This volume sets out to explore these issues in depth and examine what it might mean for us to speak of the truth of the Gospel in a twenty-first century context.

Sets of seven. 666. The Whore of Babylon and the Seven-headed Beast. How would first-century readers have heard these things? One can get at an answer by asking, How does the Book of Revelation compare with contemporaneous Jewish apocalypses? God's Timetable unlocks the hitherto unseen Jewish background to the Apocalypse based on the seven weeks leading up to Pentecost, the Harvest Feast. The meaning of Revelation suddenly becomes clearer. Stramara situates the Book of Revelation in its original context as a prophetic work regarding the end of the world, the final harvest, and Jesus as the fulfillment of expectations.

Since its inception in 1968, the brain-death criterion for human death has enjoyed the status of one of the few relatively well-settled issues in bioethics. However, over the last fifteen years or so, a growing number of experts in medicine, philosophy, and religion have come to regard brain death as an untenable criterion for the determination of death. Given that the debate about brain death has occupied a relatively small group of professionals, few are aware that brain death fails to correspond to any coherent biological or philosophical conception of death. This is significant, for if the brain-dead are not dead, then the removal of their vital organs for transplantation is the direct cause of their deaths, and a violation of the Dead Donor Rule.This unique monograph synthesizes the social, legal, medical, religious, and philosophical problems inherent in current social policy allowing for organ donation under the brain-death criterion. In so doing, this bioethical appraisal offers a provocative investigation of the ethical quandaries inherent in the way transplantable organs are currently procured. Drawing together these multidisciplinary threads, this book advocates the abandonment of the brain-death criterion in light of its adverse failures, and concludes by laying the groundwork for a new policy of death in an effort to further the good of organ donation and transplantation.

What does the Wesleyan message have to say to the greater theological world? This is a question that Laurence Wood has taken up as his concern throughout his career. In order to honor his work, this collection takes up this question through a series of essays designed to show how Wesleyan Theology, while distinctive, has a continued relevance to the wider world of theological scholarship. This collection does this in two ways. First, by showing how the Wesleyan distinctives have been present throughout the history of theology. And secondly, the collection brings the Wesleyan distinctives into conversation with various contemporary theological conversations, ranging from theological hermeneutics and the science-religion dialogue to the practice of preaching and spirituality. The result is a volume that puts Wesleyan theology into continued dialogue with the broader theological world, showing its vitality and importance for the contemporary situation.

""For Thais, face is a fact,"" writes Flanders. However, ""whether in theology, evangelism, or issues involving sin, salvation, or atonement, Thai Christians and missionaries alike seem either uninterested in or possibly incapable of addressing issues related to face. This glaring incongruity between the value of face for Thais and the lack of intentional engagement within the Thai Christian community is deeply troubling.""Surely, such a lack of careful attention to face is a dangerous posture. Uncritical views of face, furtively attaching to the theology of the Thai church, are potentially detrimental for its life and mission. Such seems to be an unavoidable situation without proper attention to face. Additionally, to ignore face is to run the risk of missing valuable cultural resources, implicit in the Thai experience of face, for the critical task of authentic Thai theological reflection.""This lack of engagement with face raises critical issues with which we must wrestle. How is it that such a central sociocultural issue has not been a more significant part of the Thai Christian vocabulary or experience? How pervasive are these negative attitudes regarding face? What lies behind them? Might this lack of self-conscious engagement with face have any relationship to the persistent Thai perception of Christianity as a foreign, Western religion? How should Christians understand this notion of face and how it relates to the ways we understand and proclaim the gospel?""

Theologies of Power and Crisis provides a case study for Eric Wolf's research directive to better comprehend the interplay of cultural (webs of meaning) and material (webs of power) forms of social life. More specifically, the book demonstrates how theological discourse and practice engage with historical and material relations of power. It has been normative to speak of power in terms of political and economic processes and theology in terms of interpretive and symbolic experiences. This work breaks new ground by linking theological ideas with political-economic processes in terms of the structural relations of power.Ethnographically, this research investigates the theological processes of Hong Kong Chinese Christians during a period of significant social change and crisis, precipitated by the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It shows how local Christians and Christian institutions mediated the significant regional, national, and transnational forces of political-economic change by connecting theological practice to the structural relations of power. The Christian response was a contested process closely intertwined with the broader contested processes of social organization.This study develops an understanding of Christianity that goes beyond ecclesiastical hegemony to encompass struggles over human practice, meaning, and representation in relation to the changing political-economic context. These findings implicate religious ideas and practice as significant to an understanding of social inequalities and powerlessness by connecting ideologies to material conditions. Christian ideas may be used to legitimize an oppressive social order or they may be used to liberate those who are oppressed. Issues related to the policies and practice of development should take seriously the role of religious beliefs and practices.