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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Theology > General
Did Jesus want there to be a Church that would continue his work?
What is her message, what constitutes it? How should the Church
proclaim the gospel of Christ? What structure is there for the
sacred, the mystery? In this book Paul Avis presents his answer to
these questions as a fruit of more than twenty years of research
and reflection. He argues that there is something solid and
dependable at the foundation of the Church's life and mission. The
Church is often battered and divided, but at its core is a treasure
that is indestructible.Jesus did want a church in a sense, but not
as we know it. What is clear is that Jesus himself proclaimed the
gospel of the Kingdom and that his disciples proclaimed the gospel
whose content was Jesus Christ himself, the Kingdom in person. So a
chapter is devoted to the relationship between the Church and the
gospel that it confesses. A complementary approach to the mystery
of Christianity is the quest for the essence of Christianity, a
classic gambit of modern theology. The last major study of this
question was by Stephen Sykes in 1984 and that left several matters
hanging in the air. This quest brings us back to Jesus with the
formula, 'Christianity is Christ'. But this proves to be not the
simplistic slogan that it first appears, as it opens up into a set
of concepts that elucidate the structure of Christian belief, the
texture of faith. When these are articulated in a critical way,
they reveal the abiding structure of Christian theology, in which
certain polarities (nature and grace, reason and revelation,
immanence and transcendence) are inescapable. But the more we probe
these, the more we come up against the limits of human thought
about the divine, so the book concludes with a reflection on
paradox and mystery.
Winner of the 2022 Nautilus Book Award in Religion / Spirituality
of Western Thought (#24B) Mark Clavier examines a series of
paradoxes that lie at the heart of Christian faith: eternity and
time, silence and words, and wonder and the commonplace. In an
intellectual reflection on an overnight trek on Cadair Idris in
Wales and other wilderness walks, he explores the oft-hidden
connections between faith, society, and nature. Each reflection
ranges widely through history, folklore, poetry, philosophy, and
theology to consider what these paradoxes can teach us about God,
ourselves, and our world. Drawing on the recent upsurge in interest
in the personal experience of landscapes and memory, this book
invites readers to walk with Clavier in the Appalachians, Norway,
Iceland, the Alps, and around Britain as he discovers the ways in
which Christianity is profoundly earthed. By weaving together
nature-writing, memoir, social commentary, and theological
reflection A Pilgrimage of Paradoxes uses a memorable mountain
journey in the ancient landscape of Wales to draw readers into
reflecting about what it means to belong. Please find the study
guide for this book here:
https://convivium-brecon.com/a-pilgrimage-of-paradoxes/
What did Paul mean when he wrote that the foolishness of God is
wiser than human wisdom? Through close analysis of the
sixteenth-century reception of Paul's discourses of folly, this
book examines the role of the New Testament in the development of
what Erasmus and John Calvin refer to as the "Christian
philosophy." Erasmus and Calvin on the Foolishness of God reveals
the importance of Pauline rhetoric in the development of humanist
critiques of scholasticism while charting the formation of a
specifically affective approach to religious epistemology and
theological method. As the first book-length examination of
Calvin's indebtedness to Erasmus, which also considers the
participation of Bullinger, Pellikan, and Melanchthon in an
Erasmian exegetical milieu, it is a case study in the complicated
cross-confessional exchange of ideas in the sixteenth century. Kirk
Essary examines assumptions about the very nature of theology in
the sixteenth century, how it was understood by leading humanist
reformers, and how ideas about philosophy and rhetoric were
received, appropriated, and shared in a complex intellectual and
religious context.
This collection of essays focuses on sacrifice in the context of
Jewish and Christian scripture and is inspired by the thought and
writings of Rene Girard. The contributors engage in a dialogue with
Girard in their search for answers to key questions about the
relation between religion and violence. The book is divided into
two parts. The first opens with a conversation in which Rene Girard
and Sandor Goodhart explore the relation between imitation and
violence throughout human history, especially in religious culture.
It is followed by essays on the subject of sacrifice contributed by
some of the most distinguished scholars in the field, including
Bruce Chilton, Robert Daly, Louis Feldman, Michael Fishbane, Erich
Gruen, and Alan Segal. The second part contains essays on specific
scriptural texts (Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 and
the book of Job in the Jewish tradition, the Gospel and Epistles in
the Christian tradition). The authors explore new ways of applying
Girardian analysis to episodes of sacrifice and scapegoating,
demonstrating that fertile ground remains to further our
understanding of violence in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Contributors: Sandor Goodhart, Ann W. Astell, Rene Girard, Thomas
Ryba, Michael Fishbane, Bruce Chilton, Robert Daly, S.J., Alan F.
Segal, Louis H. Feldman, Erich S. Gruen, Stuart D. Robertson,
Matthew Pattillo, Stephen Stern, Chris Allen Carter, William
Morrow, William Martin Aiken, Gerard Rosse, Christopher S.
Morrissey, Poong-In Lee, Anthony Bartlett
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