The Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet provides a much needed accessible introduction to the philosophical and theological foundations of Chauvet's sacramental theology. Particular attention is given to his appropriation of Heidegger and use of the Social Sciences to elucidate the nature of the symbolic exchange that lies at the heart of the sacramental tradition. This book highlights the prophetic, deconstructive and even iconoclastic message for contemporary society and the church implicit in the Eucharistic liturgy. Common conceptions of God's presence and sacrifice are critically analyzed and the connection between sacramental worship and ethics is emphasized.

This collection of essays by distinguished authors explores the present-day field of theological aesthetics: from von Balthasar's contribution and parallel developments to correctives and alternatives to his approach. A tribute to von Balthasar's own project expands into a dialogue with ancient and medieval traditions in search of revelatory aesthetics. The contributors outline challenges to his approach (including Protestant perspectives) and introduce new ways of viewing the field of theological aesthetics, which ultimately opens up to the idea of concrete cultural contexts and practical human needs determining the use of the arts and aesthetic sensibilities in theology.

Over the last four decades, the focus of M. Douglas Meeks's work has placed him at the centre of many of the most important developments in theological reflection and education. As a political, ecclesial, and metaphorical theologian, Meeks has given witness to the oikonomia of the triune God, the Homemaker who creates the conditions of Home for the whole of creation, in critical conversation with contemporary economic, social, and political theory. The essays of this volume were written to honour Meeks, Cal Turner Chancellor Professor Emeritus of Theology at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, by addressing the theme of God's economy of salvation from biblical, historical, ecclesial, and theological perspectives. In an age of ecological devastation and economic injustice, Meeks teaches us how to place our hope - as disciples of Jesus, as members of local congregations, as stewards of institutional life, and as global citizens - in God's power for life over death through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. These essays will serve to enliven and clarify this hope for the sake of the world God so loves.

A must-read for church leaders and members alike, this book outlines 9 essential marks that distinguish a healthy, biblical church. This classic book is now revised with a new preface and additional content on prayer and missions. Fourth edition.

The wellspring of Thomas Hardy and Religion is the recognition that Thomas Hardys two late great novels, Tess of the dUrbervilles and Jude the Obscure, are dominated, respectively, by two religious traditions of nineteenth-century Anglicanism: Evangelicalism and Anglo-Catholicism. Placing those movements in their historical context alongside other Victorian religious traditions, the author explores the development of Hardys religious beliefs and ideas up till the 1880s. Evangelicalism in Tess is discussed through an analysis of the principal characters, Angel Clare and his father, Parson Clare, Alec dUrberville and Tess herself, leading to a consideration of why this form of Christianity looms so large in that novel. Not unexpectedly, the reasons for this are linked to Hardys personal and intellectual biography, especially his religious upbringing and experience of and involvement in these religious traditions. This applies to both novels. The sources of Jude the Obscure in Hardys life and thought, and their links to Anglo-Catholicism, are revealed in the context of the influence of that tradition on the narrative and characters, in particular Judes sense of vocation, the importance of the university town of Christminster and issues associated with marriage, divorce and sexuality. Throughout his analysis of both novels the author demonstrates how Hardy lambasts the way in which these religious traditions and the conventional Victorian morality they bolstered undermine human flourishing. Thomas Hardy and Religion concludes by considering the place these two novels have in the continuing trajectory of Hardys theological ideas, underlining the critical importance of understanding his religious concerns and reflecting on the way in which his critique of religion is important to people of faith.

Innocence is a rich and emotive idea, but what does it really mean? This is a significant question both for literary interpretation and theology-yet one without a straightforward answer. This volume provides a critical overview of key issues and historical developments in the concept of innocence, delving into its ambivalences and exploring the many transformations of innocence within literature and theology. The contributions in this volume, by leading scholars in their respective fields, provide a range of responses to this critical question. They address literary and theological treatments of innocence from the birth of modernity to the present day. They discuss major symbols and themes surrounding innocence, including purity and sexuality, childhood and inexperience, nostalgia and utopianism, morality and virtue. This interdisciplinary collection explores the many sides of innocence, from aesthetics to ethics, from semantics to metaphysics, examining the significance of innocence as both a concept and a word. The contributions reveal how innocence has progressed through centuries of dramatic alterations, secularizations and subversions, while retaining an enduring relevance as a key concept in human thought, experience, and imagination.

The philosophy of religion and theology are related to the culture in which they have developed. These disciplines provide a source of values and vision to the cultures of which they are part, while at the same time they are delimited and defined by their cultures. This book compares the ideas of two contemporary philosophers, John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, on the issues of religion, religions, the concept of the ultimate reality, and the notion of sacred knowledge. On a broader level, it compares two world-views: the one formed by Western Christian culture, which is religious in intention but secular in essence; the other Islamic, formed through the assimilation of traditional wisdom, which is turned against the norms of secular culture and is thus religious both in intention and essence.

Terrence Malick is one of the most important and controversial filmmakers of the last few decades. Yet his renown does not stem from box office receipts, but rather from his inimitable cinematic vision that mixes luminous shots of nature, dreamlike voiceovers, and plots centered on enduring existential questions. Although scholars have thoroughly examined Malick's background in philosophy, they have been slower to respond to his theological concerns. This volume is the first to focus on the ways in which Malick integrates theological inquiries and motifs into his films. The book begins with an exploration of Malick's career as a filmmaker and shows how his Heideggerian interests relate to theology. Further essays from established and up-and-coming scholars analyze seven of Malick's most prominent films - Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), The New World (2005), The Tree of Life (2011), To the Wonder (2012), and Knight of Cups (2015) - to show how his cinematic techniques point toward and overlap with principles of Christian theology. A thorough study of an iconic filmmaker, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars in the emerging field of religion and film.

Kierkegaard has always enjoyed a rich reception in the fields of theology and religious studies. This reception might seem obvious given that he is one of the most important Christian writers of the nineteenth century, but Kierkegaard was by no means a straightforward theologian in any traditional sense. He had no enduring interest in some of the main fields of theology such as church history or biblical studies, and he was strikingly silent on many key Christian dogmas. Moreover, he harbored a degree of animosity towards the university theologians and churchmen of his own day. Despite this, he has been a source of inspiration for numerous religious writers from different denominations and traditions. Tome I is dedicated to the reception of Kierkegaard among German Protestant theologians and religious thinkers. The writings of some of these figures turned out to be instrumental for Kierkegaard's breakthrough internationally shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Leading figures of the movement of 'dialectical theology' such as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann spawned a steadily growing awareness of and interest in Kierkegaard's thought among generations of German theology students. Emanuel Hirsch was greatly influenced by Kierkegaard and proved instrumental in disseminating his thought by producing the first complete German edition of Kierkegaard's published works. Both Barth and Hirsch established unique ways of reading and appropriating Kierkegaard, which to a certain degree determined the direction and course of Kierkegaard studies right up to our own times.

Drawing on contemporary sources, the text unfolds Hildegard's life from the time of her entrance into an anchoress's cell--where a woman would remain in pious isolation--to her death as a famed visionary and writer, abbess and confidante of popes and kings, more than seventy years later. Against this background the author explores Hildegard's vast creative work, encompassing theology, medicine, natural history, poetry, and music.

The gifts of the Spirit can destroy any force the devil might use against Christians. You are a candidate for the gifts of revelation, power, and inspiration. They will function anywhere-right where you are now!

Dr. Sumrall discusses subjects including:

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@lt;DIV@gt;This volume focuses on a central question: What does a person need to know for developing a theology? In other words, this book will not only answer objections lodged against the study of theology, but will explain to students, pastors, and laypersons alike what a theologian actually does. It will also present different approaches to the study of theology and review the present status of theological reflection in various Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic traditions. In the first section of the book evangelical Protestant scholars describe the contributions various disciplines make to the study of theology. In the next section, evangelical Protestant scholars explain the distinctives of their approaches to doing theology. In the third part, theologians who do not identify with evangelical Protestant convictions seek to explain the distinctives of their approaches to doing theology. In the final section, Dr. Kantzer provides a summary analysis of how he does theology and interacts critically with a number of essays in this volume.@lt;/div@gt;

To suppose that God has a providential plan based on a special covenant with Israel and realised in the atonement presents us with a moral problem. In Ruin and Restoration David Martin sketches a radical naturalistic account of the atonement based on the innocent paying for the sins of the guilty through ordinary social processes. An exercise in socio-theology, the book reflects on the contrast between 'the world' governed by the dynamic of violence as analysed by the social sciences, including international relations, and the emergence in Christianity (and Buddhism) of a non-violent alternative. A 'governing essay' fuses frameworks drawn from Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Jaspers, Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber and explores the relation between the cultural sciences, especially sociology, and theology treated as another but very distinctive cultural science. Six commentaries then deal with the atonement in detail; with the nature of Christian language and grammar, and with its characteristic mutations due to necessary compromises with 'the world'; with sex and violence; and with the liturgy as a concentrated mode of reconciliation.

This book revisits the tradition of Western religious cinema in light of scholarship on St. Paul's political theology. The book's subtitle derives from the account in the Book of Acts that St. Paul was temporarily blinded in the wake of his conversion on the road to Damascus. In imitation of Paul, the films on which Sean Desilets's analysis hinges (including those of Carl-Th. Dreyer, Robert Bresson, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Carlos Reygadas) place a god-blind mechanism, the camera, between themselves and the divine. Desilets calls the posture they adopt "hermeneutic humility": hermeneutic in that it interprets the world, but humble in that it pays particular-even obsessive-attention to its own limits. Though these films may not consciously reflect Pauline theology, Desilets argues that they participate in a messianic-hermeneutic tradition that runs from Paul through St. Augustine, Blaise Pascal, Karl Barth, and Walter Benjamin, and which contributes significantly to contemporary discussions in poststructuralist literary theory, political theology, and religious studies. Desilets's insightful explication of Jean-Luc Nancy's deconstruction of Christianity and Georgio Agamben's recent work on religion makes a substantial contribution to film philosophy and emerging critical trends in the study of religion and film. This book puts forward a nuanced theoretical framework that will be useful for film scholars, students of contemporary political theology, and scholars interested in the intersections of religion and media.

'Communication and Exegesis' helps to demystify communication theory in such a way as to encourage biblical scholars and students to open their minds to new ideas about how humans attempt to communicate with one another. It shows how much exegesis in intuitive and gives a theoretical account and support for the processes which we engage in as we attempt to analyse a text. Contextual presuppositions and biases are also considered and factored into the interpretive process. By using Relevance Theory consistently, rather than employing the eclectic method favoured by some scholars who have dabbled in one linguistic theory or another, the book provides a sound theoretical basis on which to build interpretation of text without demanding a new range of competencies from the reader. 'Communication and Exegesis' does not claim to solve all problems but rather to encourage readers to develop a keener awareness of what communication means. Cognitive approaches are now in the forefront of both anthropological and linguistic studies, and have the potential to be extremely beneficial to biblical studies by opening up new areas for research and reinvestigating some issues perceived as problems in the past.

What is the significance of the body? What might phenomenology contribute to a theological account of the body? And what is gained by prolonging the overlooked dialogue between St. John Paul II and Emmanuel Levinas? Nigel Zimmermann answers these questions through the agreements and the tensions between two of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. John Paul II, the Polish pope, philosopher, and theologian, and Emmanuel Levinas, the French-Jewish philosopher of Lithuanian heritage, were provocative thinkers who courageously faced and challenged the assumptions of their age. Both held the human person in high regard and did their thinking with constant reference to God and to theological language. Zimmermann does not shirk from the challenges of each thinker and does not hide their differences. However, he shows how they bequeath a legacy regarding the body that we would overlook at significant ethical peril. We are called, Zimmermann argues, to face the other. In this moment God refuses a banal marginalisation and our call to responsibility for the other person is issued in their disarming vulnerability. In the body, philosophy, theology, and ethics converge to call us to glory, even in the paradox of lowly suffering.

This is the first of a four-volume ground-breaking study of Christological origins. The fruit of twenty years' research, Jesus Monotheism lays out a new paradigm that goes beyond the now widely held view that Paul and others held to an unprecedented 'Christological monotheism'. There was already, in Second Temple Judaism and in the Bible, a kind of 'christological monotheism'. But it is first with Jesus and his followers that a human figure is included in the identity of the one God as a fully divine person. Volume I lays out the arguments of an emerging consensus, championed by Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, that from its Jewish beginnings the Christian community had a high Christology and worshipped Jesus as a divine figure. New data is put forward to support that case. But there are weaknesses in the emerging consensus. For example, it underplays the incarnation and does not convincingly explain what causes the earliest Christology. The recent study of Adam traditions, the findings of Enoch literature specialists, and of those who have explored a Jewish and Christian debt to Greco-Roman Ruler Cult traditions, all point towards a fresh approach to both the origins and shape of the earliest divine Christology.

To suppose that God has a providential plan based on a special covenant with Israel and realised in the atonement presents us with a moral problem. In Ruin and Restoration David Martin sketches a radical naturalistic account of the atonement based on the innocent paying for the sins of the guilty through ordinary social processes. An exercise in socio-theology, the book reflects on the contrast between 'the world' governed by the dynamic of violence as analysed by the social sciences, including international relations, and the emergence in Christianity (and Buddhism) of a non-violent alternative. A 'governing essay' fuses frameworks drawn from Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Jaspers, Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber and explores the relation between the cultural sciences, especially sociology, and theology treated as another but very distinctive cultural science. Six commentaries then deal with the atonement in detail; with the nature of Christian language and grammar, and with its characteristic mutations due to necessary compromises with 'the world'; with sex and violence; and with the liturgy as a concentrated mode of reconciliation.

The Burden Of Freedom explains that too many people use past oppression to remain mired in hatred and irresponsibility today. The spirit of oppression has specific telltale effects on individuals, communities, and nations. These are identified by Myles Munroe as a hatred for work, laziness, fear, low self-esteem, selfishness, lack of creativity, low initiative, and distrust of those in authority. To break free from these self-replicating cycles of oppression there must be a mental transformation. Paradoxically, freedom requires the need to impose control on self, require more responsibility than slavery, and the decision to accept a destiny of freedom, recognizing the process and discipline that personal and political freedom require. Simply put, The Burden Of Freedom should be available to every citizen and on the shelves of every high-school, college, and community library in the country.