This is a sequel to Richard Viladesau's well-received study, The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts from the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance. It continues his project of presenting theological history by using art as both an independent religious or theological "text" and as a means of understanding the cultural context for academic theology. Viladesau argues that art and symbolism function as alternative strands of theological expression sometimes parallel to, sometimes interwoven with, and sometimes in tension with formal theological reflection on the meaning of crucifixion and its role in salvation history.
This book examines the two great revolutionary movements that gave birth to the modern West: the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. This period was eventful for both theology and art, and thus particularly fruitful for Viladesau's project.
Using individual works of art, over sixty of which are reproduced in this book, to epitomize particular artistic and theological models, he explores the contours of each paradigm through the works of representative theologians as well as liturgical, poetic, artistic, and musical sources. To name a few examples, the theologies of Savonarola, Luther, Calvin, and the Council of Trent, are examined in correlation to the new situation of art in the era of Fra Angelico, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Durer, Cranach, and the Mannerists.
In this book, Viladesau continues to deepen our understanding of the foremost symbol of Christianity.

Combining vivid ethnographic storytelling and incisive theoretical analysis, New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism introduces readers to the fascinating and unexplored terrain of neo-monastic evangelicalism. Often located in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, new monastic communities pursue religiously inspired visions of racial, social, and economic justice-alongside personal spiritual transformation-through diverse and creative expressions of radical community For most of the last century, popular and scholarly common-sense has equated American evangelicalism with across-the-board social, economic, and political conservatism. However, if a growing chorus of evangelical leaders, media pundits, and religious scholars is to be believed, the era of uncontested evangelical conservatism is on the brink of collapse-if it hasn't collapsed already. Wes Markofski has immersed himself in the paradoxical world of evangelical neo-monasticism, focusing on the Urban Monastery-an influential neo-monastic community located in a gritty, racially diverse neighborhood in a major Midwestern American city. The resulting account of the way in which the movement is transforming American evangelicalism challenges entrenched stereotypes and calls attention to the dynamic diversity of religious and political points of view which vie for supremacy in the American evangelical subculture. New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism is the first sociological analysis of new monastic evangelicalism and the first major work to theorize the growing theological and political diversity within twenty-first-century American evangelicalism.

Evangelicals are increasingly turning their attention toward issues such as the environment, international human rights, economic development, racial reconciliation, and urban renewal. This marks an expansion of the social agenda advanced by the Religious Right over the past few decades. For outsiders to evangelical culture, this trend complicates simplistic stereotypes. For insiders, it brings contention over what "true" evangelicalism means today. The New Evangelical Social Engagement brings together an impressive interdisciplinary team of scholars to map this new religious terrain and spell out its significance. The volume's introduction describes the broad outlines of this "new evangelicalism." The editors identify its key elements, trace its historical lineage, account for the recent changes taking place within evangelicalism, and highlight the implications of these changes for politics, civic engagement, and American religion. Part One of the book discusses important groups and trends: emerging evangelicals, the New Monastics, an emphasis on social justice, Catholic influences, gender dynamics and the desire to rehabilitate the evangelical identity, and evangelical attitudes toward the new social agenda. Part Two focuses on specific issues: the environment, racial reconciliation, abortion, international human rights, and global poverty. Part Three contains reflections on the new evangelical social engagement by three leading scholars in the fields of American religious history, sociology of religion, and Christian ethics.

Although puritans in 17th-century New England lived alongside both Native Americans and Africans, the white New Englanders imagined their neighbors as something culturally and intellectually distinct from themselves. Legally and practically, they saw people of color as simultaneously human and less than human, things to be owned. Yet all of these people remained New Englanders, regardless of the color of their skin, and this posed a problem for puritans. In order to fulfill John Winthrop's dream of a "city on a hill," New England's churches needed to contain all New Englanders. To deal with this problem, white New Englanders generally turned to familiar theological constructs to redeem not only themselves and their actions (including their participation in race-based slavery) but also to redeem the colonies' Africans and Native Americans. Richard A. Bailey draws on diaries, letters, sermons, court documents, newspapers, church records, and theological writings to tell the story of the religious and racial tensions in puritan New England.

Throughout the history of Christianity, there have been theological disputes that caused fissures among the faithful. There were the major ruptures of the Great Schism of 1054 and the Protestant Reformation. Since the Reformation, though, there has been an eruption of new denominations. The World Christian Database now list over 9000 worldwide. And new denominations are created every day, often when a group splits off from an established church because of a dispute over doctrine or leadership. With such a proliferation of denominations, could there possibly be one core Christian message that all churches share?
That's the question that Ted Campbell sets out to answer in this book. He begins his examination of Christian doctrine where it started: in the gospels. He then shows how the gospel has been received and professed by Christian communities through the centuries, from the first "proto-Orthodox" Christian communities right through the modern evangelical, Pentecostal, and ecumenical movements. Campbell shows that, despite all the divisions, there is indeed a single unifying core of the faith that all Christians share. In the process, he offers a brief, well-written, and acceptable history of Christian doctrine that will be ideal for courses in the history of Christian thought.

Reggie Peace was 13 jaar oud toe hy by die kinderhuis se voordeur gaan aanklop het. Die kinderhuis bied hom stabiliteit en gou begin Reggie presteer. Maar hy bly ontevrede met homself - hy sug voordurend na erkenning en aanvaarding. Tot hy besef dat hy ʼn keuse het: Kies die lewe, óf kies ’n stadige dood. Reggie se verhaal is een van hoop. Sy storie is een van swaarky, maar ook van uitdagings wat oorkom kan word en hoe om met Christus aan jou sy sterker anderkant uit te kom.

Heidri Mittendorf is 'n bekende en ervare blokkiesraaiselkenner en -opsteller. Die Bybelblokraaie 2 bevat 65 blokraaie wat opgelos word met leidrade wat uit die Bybel nageslaan kan word asook 6 woordsoeke en 4 woordspeletjies gebaseer op temas uit die Bybel. Al die antwoorde word ook verskaf. Dit sal ure se blokraaigenot verskaf aan blokraailiefhebbers.

Leiers kan nie op hulle eie die leierskapspad kan aandurf nie. Hulle het wysheid, perspektief, insig en liefde nodig. Hierdie boek illustreer op 'n praktiese manier hoe tydlose beginsels en waardes steeds toepaslik is in die ongenaakbare sakewêreld en dat indien hierdie waardes die onderbou van 'n besigheid se kultuur verteenwoordig, die kans op volhoubare sukses soveel groter is. Hierdie boek bevat ook gevallestudies wat die voordele van beginselvaste, waardegebaseerde leierskap uitbeeld.

Most of Bonhoeffer's books are now widely known. Premature as his death was, thoughtful people recognize in him one of the most original thinkers of our time. His spiritual legacy-the most striking part of it the result of his meditations in prison under the Nazis -has begun to influence the preaching of the Universal Church. Plainly, such a theologian deserves a full and first-class study. This is now provided by Professor Godsey, who analyses and comments on all the Bonhoeffer books, including some not yet available in English, and on many of the occasional writings, setting them in the context of Bonhoeffer's life and interpreting their intellectual and spiritual significance.

Cardinal Francis E. George, O.M.I., was a model pastor and a heroic disciple of Christ. A native Chicagoan, he was told as a young man that he would never be a priest in Chicago because of a physical disability resulting from polio. He went on to be ordained a priest with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1963. He was appointed as Archbishop of Chicago in 1997, created a cardinal in 1998, and served in Chicago until 2014, just months before his death at the age of 78.
Cardinal George's many gifts — including his superior intellect — made him a pivotal player in Church affairs nationally and internationally. He governed during difficult and challenging times, yet he always attempted to lead with the heart of Christ, living out his episcopal motto, "To Christ be glory in the Church."
A man of pastoral availability, Cardinal George poured out his life in service to Christ and the Church, always attentive to the poor and those on the margins. Universally admired for his pursuit and proclamation of the truth, and his personal witness to the Gospel, Cardinal George remains a model for discipleship and leadership. By the time of his death in 2015, Cardinal George was regarded as one of the most respected bishops in American Catholic history. His fascinating and inspiring story reminds us that God's ways are always better than our own.

In The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Kenneth Baxter Wolf offers a study and translation of the testimony given by witnesses at the canonization hearings of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who died in 1231 in Marburg, Germany, at the age of twenty-four. The bulk of the depositions were taken from people who claimed to have been healed by the intercession of this new saint. Their descriptions of their maladies and their efforts to secure relief at Elizabeth's shrine in Marburg provide the modern reader not only with a detailed, inside look at the genesis of a saint's cult, but also with an unusually clear window into the lives and hopes of ordinary people living in Germany at the time.
Beyond testimony about her miracles, the papal commissioners also heard witnesses speak to the holiness of Elizabeth's life. Four women who knew Elizabeth from her arrival at the Wartburg castle in Thuringia as the future wife of Landgrave Ludwig IV to her death as a caregiver in the hospital that she founded in Marburg provide vivid vignettes about her life. Together with the testimony of Elizabeth's confessor and guardian, Conrad of Marburg, they capture in words the Hungarian princess's tireless, creative efforts to "cure" her life of privilege with its opposite: a life of voluntary deprivation and direct service to the poor and sick.

The contributors to this symposius are scholars of high distinction: Thorleif Boman, Paul S. Minear, Amos N. Wilder, Markus Barth, Frederick C. Grant, James M. Robinson, Floyd V. Filson, N. A. Dahl, Rudolf Bultmann, Eduard Schweizer, K. H. Rengstorf, Leonhard Coppelt, C. K. Barrett, Johannes Munck and Krister Stendahi. The book was planned in honour of Dr Otto Piper, who was driven by the Nazis from his chair at Munster and has been a Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary since 1937. His writings are listed. Explaining the wide range of subjects covered (from Ontology to Gnosticism), Dr James McCord writes that Dr Piper 'has lived in an age that has been forced to rediscover the living centre of the Christian faith, Jesus Christ, and that has begun to move out from this centre to engage the various issues confronting modern man.' Thus this book provides the student of theology, the preacher or the interested layman with an opportunity to survey the world of New Testament scholarship in action today.

Winner of the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise
Matthew Thiessen offers a nuanced and wide-ranging study of the nature of Jewish thought on Jewishness, circumcision, and conversion. Examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity, he gives a compelling account of the various forms of Judaism from which the early Christian movement arose.
Beginning with analysis of the Hebrew Bible, Thiessen argues that there is no evidence that circumcision was considered to be a rite of conversion to Israelite religion. In fact, circumcision, particularly the infant circumcision practiced within Israelite and early Jewish society, excluded from the covenant those not properly descended from Abraham. In the Second Temple period, many Jews began to subscribe to a definition of Jewishness that enabled Gentiles to become Jews. Other Jews, such as the author of Jubilees, found this definition problematic, reasserting a strictly genealogical conception of Jewish identity. As a result, some Gentiles who underwent conversion to Judaism in this period faced criticism because of their suspect genealogy.
Thiessen's examination of the way in which Jews in the Second Temple period perceived circumcision and conversion allows a deeper understanding of early Christianity. Contesting Conversion shows that careful attention to a definition of Jewishness that was based on genealogical descent has crucial implications for understanding the variegated nature of early Christian mission to the Gentiles in the first century C.E.

The fifteen essays were written by leading biblical scholars in Europe between 195o and 196o. The editor is a Professor at Heidelberg, and author of a recent book on 'our time in the Old Testament', A Thousand Tears and a Day (us). As he points out, the contributors agree that the Old Testament must be allowed to tell its own story. They are all concerned, however, with the relation between Israel's religious self-interpretation and its history as the research of our time sees it, and they seek valid ways of connecting the two Testaments which together constitute the Christian Bible. The whole intensive discussion shows that Old Testament commentary and Christian theology are no longer kept separate. The contributors include Gerhard von Rad and Walther Eichrodt on the typological interpretation of the Old Testament, Rudolf Bultmann and Walther Zimmerli on prophecy and fulfilment, Martin Noth on the 'representation' in proclamation, J. J. Stamm on Jesus Christ and his Scripture, and Th. C. Vriezen on the biblical doctrine of salvation. There is a bibliography.

The End of an Elite is the first scholarly study in English of the bishops of the French church at the outbreak of the French Revolution. The 130 members of the episcopate formed an elite within an elite, the First Estate of France. Nigel Aston explores the role of the episcopate in national and provincial politics in the last years of the ancien regime. He traces the policies and patronage of episcopal ministers such as Lomienie de Brienne and J.-M. Champion de Cice, who were as much politicians as pastors, and examines their relationships with their fellow bishops. Dr Aston emphasizes the leading role of the bishops in the Assemblies of Notables and offers a fresh interpretation of clerical elections to the Estates-General of 1789. This is an intensively researched and immensely readable account, which will be invaluable to all historians of late eighteenth-century France.

The Life of St Martin by Sulpicius Severus was one of the formative works of Latin hagiography. Yet although written by a contemporary who knew Martin, it attracted immediate criticism. Why? This study seeks an explanation by placing Sulpicius works both in their intellectual context, and in the context of a church that was then undergoing radical transformation. It is thus both a study of Sulpicius, Martin, and their world, and at the same time an essay in the interpretation of hagiography.

Afrikaanse Oudiobybel (1933/1953)(MP3 USB) - Die volledige Bybelteks in MP3-formaat op ’n geheuestokkie; enkelstemopname (nie gedramatiseer nie). Hierdie is waarlik vir almal, siggestremdes sowel as siende luisteraars.

In this cultural and intellectual history, David Burns contends that the influence of biblical criticism in America was more widespread than previously thought. Burns proves this point by uncovering the hidden history of the radical historical Jesus, a construct created and sustained by freethinkers, feminists, socialists and anarchists during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The result of this exploration is a new narrative revealing that Cyrenus Osborne Ward, Caroline Bartlett, George Herron, Bouck White, and other radical religionists had an impact on the history of religion in America rivaling that of recognized religious intellectuals such as Shailer Mathews, Charles Briggs, Francis Peabody, and Walter Rauschenbusch. The methods and approaches utilized by radical religionists were different from those employed by elite liberal divines, however, and part of a larger struggle over the relationship between religion and civilization. There were numerous reasons for this conflict, but, as Burns argues, the primary one was that radicals used Ernest Renan's The Life of Jesus to create an imaginative brand of biblical criticism that struck a balance between the demands of reason and the doctrines of religion. Thus, while radical religionists like Robert Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Eugene Debs were secular-minded thinkers who sought to purge Christianity of its supernatural dimensions, they believed the religious imagination that enabled modern day radicals to make common cause with an ancient peasant from Galilee was something wonderful. This provocative blend of reason and religion produced a vibrant countercultural movement that spanned communities, classes, and creeds and makes The Life and Death of the Radical Historical Jesus a book that deserves a wide readership in an era when public intellectuals and politicians on both the left and right draw rigid lines between the secular and the sacred.

Christian Doctrine and the Grammar of Difference argues that the most potent and resourceful theological response to the challenging questions of gender and difference is to be found in a retrieval of a doctrinal framework for feminist theology. In particular, it is suggested that a doctrinal narrative of creation, fall, and redemption - underpinned by the doctrinal grammar of the Trinity - provides resources to resolve the theological impasse of difference in contemporary feminist theology. The divine economy reveals a God who enters into history and destabilizes fixed binaries and oppressive categories. The biblical narrative discloses a subtle yet potent fluidity to the Triune relationships. As created subjects - precisely in our difference - we are sustained, affirmed, and drawn back into the Triune life. The subtleties of divine transgression are already recognized in the patterns of the liturgy, in prayer, and in practices of contemplation. Here, bodies not only encounter the transgressive love of God but are enabled to inhabit their differentiated humanity with distinctiveness and grace. The grammar of Christian faith cannot ultimately be uncovered except in prayer, opened beyond itself to a source of life and giving.

Long the dominant religion of the West, Christianity is now rapidly becoming the principal faith in much of the postcolonial world--a development that marks a momentous shift in the religion's very center of gravity. In this eye-opening book, Lamin Sanneh examines the roots of this "post-Western awakening" and the unparalleled richness and diversity, as well as the tension and conflict, it has brought to World Christianity.
Tracing Christianity's rise from its birth on the edge of the Roman empire--when it proclaimed itself to be a religion for the entire world, not just for one people, one time, and one place--to its key role in Europe's maritime and colonial expansion, Sanneh sheds new light on the ways in which post-Western societies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were drawn into the Christian orbit. Ultimately, he shows, these societies outgrew Christianity's colonial forms and restructured it through their own languages and idioms--a process that often occurred outside, and sometimes against, the lines of denominational control. The effect of such changes, Sanneh contends, has been profound, transforming not only worship, prayer, and the interpretation of Scripture, but also art, aesthetics, and music associated with the church. In exploring this story of Christianity's global expansion and its current resurgence in the non-Western world, Sanneh pays close attention to such issues as the faith's encounters with Islam and indigenous religions, as well as with secular ideologies such as Marxism and nationalism. He also considers the challenges that conservative, non-Western forms of Christianity pose to Western liberal values and Enlightenment ideas.
Here then is agroundbreaking study of Christianity's role in cultural innovation and historical change--and must reading for all who are concerned with the present and future of the faith.