This book presents a unique effort to create a new understanding of the Christian sign of the cross. At its core, it traces the conscious and unconscious influence of this visual symbol through time. What began as the crucifixion of a Jewish troublemaker in Roman-occupied Judea in the first century eventually gave rise to a broad spectrum of readings of the instrument used to accomplish such a punishment, a cross. The author argues that Jesus was a provocative, grandiose masochist whose suffering and death initially signified redemption for believers. This idea gradually morphed into a Christian sense of freedom to persecute and wage war against non-believers, however, as can be seen in the Crusades ("wars of the cross"). Many believers even construed the murder of their savior as a crime perpetrated by "the Jews," and this paranoid notion culminated in the mass murder of European Jews under the sign of the Nazi hooked cross (Hakenkreuz). Rancour-Laferriere's book is expertly written and argued; it will be readable to a large audience because it touches on many areas of controversy, interest, and scholarship. The work is critical, but not unfair; it employs psychoanalysis, art history (the study of the symbol of the cross in works of art), religion and religious texts, and world history generally. The interweaving of these various themes is what gives this work its ability to draw in readers and will ultimately be what keeps the reader interested through the conclusion.

This is a new edition of the 1963 classic which gave Christological thought a new direction. As far back as his first major book Schillebeeckx propounded an anthropological approach to the sacraments. In " Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God," he draws on theologically fruitful work by phenomenological anthropologists like Merleau-Ponty, Buytendijk and Binswanger. That makes Schillebeeckx's distinctive idiom and modern approach appealing even today. He rediscovers, as it were from within, the notions forged by scholastic theology, and thus restores to us a theology of the sacraments rooted in the biblical and patristic soil from which they first sprang. Schillebeeckx's speculative synthesis of this quest still has a fresh ring to it. He describes Christ as the primordial sacrament in a reflection on his public ministry, death and resurrection inspired by the universal human search for such a 'sacrament'. He concludes that the church's sacraments have to be an earthly extension of the liberation brought by Christ's story. Schillebeeckx ends by describing sacraments as grace made visible that gives crowning moments in Christian life a mystical quality. "Edward Schillebeeckx Collected Works" bring together the most important and influential works of the Dutch Dominican and theologian Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009) in a reliable edition. All translations have been carefully checked or revised, some texts are presented in English for the first time. The page numbers of earlier editions are included. Each volume carries a foreword by an internationally renowned Schillebeeckx expert. This edition makes Schillebeeckx available for a new generation of scholars and students.

This book is a comprehensive historiographical survey on Christian penance and confession from the early sixteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. The author charts the change from medieval practices of penance to the modern rites of penance. The book's title refers to the latin phrase medici et medicamenta, or, "spiritual doctors and medicines," to indicate a unifying theme of this study.

John Chryssavgis explores the sacred dimension of the natural environment, and the significance of creation in the rich theological history and spiritual classics of the Orthodox Church, through the lens of its unique ascetical, liturgical and mystical experience. The global ecological crisis affecting humanity's air, water, and land, as well as the planet's flora and fauna, has resulted in manifest fissures on the image of God in creation. Chryssavgis examines, from an Orthodox Christian perspective, the possibility of restoring that shattered image through the sacramental lenses of cosmic transfiguration, cosmic interconnection, and cosmic reconciliation. The viewpoints of early theologians and contemporary thinkers are extensively explored from a theological and spiritual perspective, including countering those who deny that God's creation is in crisis. Presenting a worldview advanced and championed by the Orthodox Church in the modern world, this book encourages personal and societal transformation in making ethical and economic choices that respect creation as sacrament.

This study investigates the procedural techniques, significance, and the tangible effects of the laying on of hands in the New Testament. The author investigates the background of the New Testament practice by conducting investigation in the Old Testament and contemporary Judaism and the Graeco-Roman and Near-Eastern literature. The main chapters are exegetical, each discussing a particular use of the laying on of hands in the New Testament: for blessing, healing, reception of the Spirit and ordination. A special attention is given to the inner process of transfer of power through physical contact. It is the author's conclusion that in the New Testament the gesture always signifies transfer of some positive materia: blessing, 'life-force', the Spirit and charismata. In the final section, an attempt is made to gauge the possibility of any uniformity in the significance of the various New Testament uses of the laying on of hands.

This publication is a useful confirmation register for use in churches around the UK.

The call to care for creation is a central part of our discipleship as followers of Jesus Christ. However, language and imagery of the earth is often absent in our worship services. This book helps reconnect our commitment to creation care with our life of discipleship. The process includes helping congregational members name ways that they are involved in caring for creation and encourage them to see ways that these practices are related to Christian faith. Nurturing the life of our communities is a vital way to fostering our identity as those who care for the earth. At the heart of this process is the importance of discovering and developing biblical imagery and language that will support and foster our care of creation and shape our prayers. As our actions are more closely connected to the language of our prayers, praying and acting will inform each other. In addition, the book includes liturgies that highlight earth care prepared for the major festivals of the church year.

This book explores sacramental poetics through the lens of moderate realism in the thought and work of Anglican theologians Richard Hooker (c. 1554-1600) and George Herbert (1593-1648). It does this in relation to the Christian sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist and as a way of exploring the abundance of God. Brian Douglas begins in chapter 1 with a general discussion of a sacramental poetic and sacramentality in the Anglican tradition and proceeds to a more detailed examination of the writings of both Hooker (chapter 2) and Herbert (chapter 3). Each writer explores, in their own way, abundant life, found as participation in and relationship with Christ, and expressed as a sacramental poetic based on moderate realism. Douglas goes on in chapter 4 to explore the idea of conversation and dialogue as employed by Hooker and Herbert as part of a sacramental poetic. The book concludes in chapter 5 with a more general discussion on the abundance of God and living of the good and abundant life and some of the issues this involves in the modern world.

Writing in the middle of the twentieth century, G.W. Bromiley was acutely aware of the renewal of debates surrounding baptism taking place within the Anglican church and elsewhere. These debates, which are still the cause of denominational division, can be best understood by tracing them back to their origins in the sixteenth century. Analysing the Anglican Reformers' views on baptism's sacramental status, its liturgical format and its theological substance, Bromiley places the current diversity of positions in its proper context. The legitimacy of infant baptism, the authority of ministers and the efficacy of grace are all discussed. Whether a scholar of ecclesiological and doctrinal history, or of the current debate within and between churches, this study is essential reading on the question of baptism past and present.

Despite the importance of the subject to contemporaries, this is the first monograph to look at the institution of godparenthood in early modern English society. Utilising a wealth of hitherto largely neglected primary source data, this work explores godparenthood, using it as a framework to illuminate wider issues of spiritual kinship and theological change. It has become increasingly common for general studies of family and religious life in pre-industrial England to make reference to the spiritual kinship evident in the institution of godparenthood. However, although there have been a number of important studies of the impact of the institution in other periods, this is the first detailed monograph devoted to the subject in early modern England. This study is possible due to the survival, contrary to many expectations, of relatively large numbers of parish registers that recorded the identities of godparents in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By utilising this hitherto largely neglected data, in conjunction with evidence gleaned from over 20,000 Wills and numerous other biographical, legal and theological sources, Coster has been able to explore fully the institution of godparenthood and the role it played in society. This book takes the opportunity to study an institution which interacted with a range of social and cultural factors, and to assess the nature of these elements within early modern English society. It also allows the findings of such an investigation to be compared with the assumptions that have been made about the fortunes of the institution in the context of a changing European society. The recent historiography of religion in this period has focused attention on popular elements of religious practice, and stressed the conservatism of a society faced with dramatic theological and ritual change. In this context a study of godparenthood can make a contribution to understanding how religious change occurred and the ways in which popular religious practice was affected.

In Finding All Things In God, Hans Gustafson proposes pansacramentalism as holding the potential to find the divine in all things and all things in the divine. Such a proposition carries significant interreligious implications, particularly in the practice of theology. Presupposing theological practice as divorced from spirituality (lived religious experience), Gustafson presents pansacramentalism as a bridge between the two. In so doing, Gustafson offers a history of spirituality, sketching the foundations of a classical approach to sacramentality (through Aquinas) as well as a contemporary approach to the same (through Rahner and Chauvet). Through three fascinating case studies, this book presents particular instances of sacramentality in lived religious experience. Gustafson offers an exciting method of 'doing theology', one which is entirely compatible with the interdisciplinary field of interreligious studies.

This lively study of the problems of Christian baptism traces issues arising from the New Testament in the traditions of the churches and provides an ecumenical conspectus of the continuous debate on Christian baptism. Wainwright surveys the positions of different churches on baptism and confirmation, and relates them to the New Testament treatment. He shows that the New Testament's apparent favouring of different views of the relation between grace and faith in baptism gives a basis for an ecumenical pattern of Christian initiation.

The authoritative treatment of the doctrine of baptism within the broad context of the theology of justification and grace. Marcel's vindication of the doctrine of infant baptism is considered the more impressive as it relies upon the evidence of Scripture rather that the archeological of patristic evidence of the Early Church.

This book is about that treasured doctrine of Pentecostalism: baptism in the Holy Spirit, understood as a work subsequent to conversion to Christ. Since the British theologian James Dunn's publication of his influential work Baptism in the Holy Spirit, there has been heated response from Pentecostals in defense of the doctrine. Key players are Roger Stronstad, Howard Ervin, David Petts, James Shelton, Robert Menzies, and ex-Pentecostal Max Turner. This book reviews Pentecostal criticisms of Dunn with respect to Luke-Acts, concluding that Pentecostals are right: for Luke, receiving the Spirit was not the inception of new covenant life. It was a powerful enabling for prophecy and miracles; for the church's outward mission and its internal life. After placing Luke-Acts in a wider canonical context, the book closes with some practical lessons from Luke-Acts for today's Pentecostal churches.

The discovery by Charles Darwin of natural selection as the principal mechanism of biological evolution sharpened the classical theological issue of suffering in the natural world. Darwin's discovery revealed predation and starvation to be the engine of biological development. Theological responses to evolution within the Christian tradition have typically failed to come to terms with these features of biological evolution, focusing instead on romantic notions of nature or assumptions about the benefits of progress. As a result, many doctrines of creation have operated with a limited understanding of the created world that is their subject. As Joel C. Daniels shows, however, this shortcoming can be remedied by utilizing the ancient resources of dramatic tragedy in a theological vein. By drawing together a theological interpretation of tragedy and a scientifically accurate understanding of nature, a realist doctrine of creation can achieve a high degree of realism with regards to suffering, respecting the unique characteristics of individual experiences while situating them in a theologically meaningful frame of reference. The theological category of tragedy does not solve the problem of natural evil. However, it has the double virtue of attending closely to the specifics of the natural world and maintaining a principled tension between experiences of suffering and Christian claims about the possibility of redemption. This book thus makes a unique contribution to Christian theology by drawing on multiple disciplines to address this issue of existential importance.

'Our notion of calling or vocation has become very narrow, and is often taken only to mean the calling to be an ordained minister. I want to rescue the idea from all those assumptions because I believe that God calls every human being to some particular self-giving task at each stage of their life'. Francis Dewar. Written for all lay people, including those considering ordination, this new edition, which takes into account changes since the ordination of women to the priesthood, is itself a call for everyone to discover their unique journey.

Existing books on Christian ritual and the sacraments tend to presuppose a good acquaintance with Roman Catholic thought and practice. Today, however, even at Catholic institutions students tend to lack even a basic knowledge of Christian ritual. Moreover, for many modern people the word "ritual" carries negative connotations of rigidity and boredom. In this accessibly-written book two noted authors offer an engaging introduction to this important topic. Their goal is first to demonstrate that celebration, ritual and symbol are already central to the readers' lives, even though most do not see their actions as symbolic or ritualistic. Once this point has been made, the book connects central Christian symbols to the symbols and rituals already present in the readers' lives. The Christian theology of symbol, ritual, and sacrament is thus placed in the context of everyday life. The authors go on to discuss such questions as how rituals establish and maintain power relationships, how "official" rituals are different from other "popular" Christian rituals and devotions, and how Christian rituals function in the process of human "salvation." Their lively yet solidly grounded work will appeal to intelligent lay readers and discussion groups, as well as being useful for courses in ritual and the sacraments at the undergraduate and seminary level.

A short, attractive, full-colour guide to the Anglican wedding service aimed at couples planning to get married. It uses the words and the actions of the marriage service to enable couples to explore the big questions of life, relationships, commitment, God, family and more.