This work demonstrates the significance of Karl Barth's Christology by examining it in the context of his orientation toward the classical tradition - an orientation that was both critical and sympathetic. To compare this Christology with the doctrine's history, Sumner suggests first that the Chalcedonian portrait of the incarnation is conceputally vulnerable at a number of points. By recasting the doctrine in actualist terms - the history of Jesus' lived existence as God's fulfillment of His covenant with creatures, rather than a metaphysical uniting of natures - Barth is able to move beyond problems inherent in the tradition. Despite a number of formal and material differences, however, Barth's position coheres with the intent of the ancient councils and ought to be judged as orthodox. Barth's great contribution to Christology is in the unapologetic affirmation of 'the humanity of God'.

This textbook assists students, teachers, and scholars in understanding and articulating major themes and issues arising from Spirit Christology, an interdisciplinary and international area of study. In the last half century, Spirit Christology has developed into a critical and productive theological framework for reading Scripture, mining the implications of Christ's person and work, thinking about God, and laying out the shape of the Spirit's works in the life of the church and in the world. Highlighting voices from many countries and theological traditions, the book chapters are structured to show how various authors engaging Spirit Christology have contributed compelling answers to critical questions raised in biblical studies, church history, systematic theology, and practical theology. Topics include the role of the Spirit of God in the gospels' descriptions of Jesus, the place of the anointing of Jesus in the history of the church, the relationship between Logos (two-natures) and Spirit Christologies in contemporary theology, and the productivity of Spirit Christology as a lens for reflecting on and fostering spiritual practices/disciplines and ethical engagement in the world. This textbook offers pedagogical features: - Study questions for discussion - Glossary of terms

In this handbook Peter Scazzero provides all you need to know for starting and leading an evangelistic Bible study. He discusses how to invite people, how to get them talking, how to help them understand what they read, and many other practical concerns. He even includes six Bible studies (with leader's notes) you can use with your group.

Based on case studies, the book creates a multidisciplinary conversation on the gendered vulnerabilities resulting from extractive industries and toxic pollution, and also charts the resilience and courage of women as they resist polluting industries, fight for clean water and seek to protect the land. While ecumenical in scope, the book takes its departure from the concept of integral ecology introduced in Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’. The first three sections of the book focus on the social and ecological challenges facing minoritized women and their communities that are related to mining, pollutants and biodiversity loss, and toxicity. The final section of the book focuses on the possibilities and obstacles to global solidarity. All chapters offer a cross disciplinary response to a particular local situation, tracing the ways ecological destruction, resulting from extraction and toxic contamination, affects the lives of women and their communities. The book pays careful attention to the political, economic, and legal structures facilitating these life-threatening challenges. Each section concludes with a response from a ‘practitioner’ in the field, representing an ecclesial organization or NGO focused on eco-justice advocacy in the global South, or minority communities in the global North.

This is a crucial volume exploring the relationship between the disciplines of Religious Studies and Theology."Theology and Religious Studies" seeks to explore the relationship between the disciplines of Religious Studies and Theology. In particular, it aims to examine whether the two disciplines are strange bedfellows sharing little in common but bedding together out of sheer habit, or whether there is something that the two share in an organic sense, which sustains the link between them.These questions have important implications not just for how the respective disciplines define themselves and their boundaries, but also for their place in the secular context of higher education in modern universities. The question of how the two are related is one that concerns all scholars of religion, since it has important implications for approach and method in the study of religions. Particularly relevant are questions to do with subjectivity, objectivity, and reflexivity in the study of religion; 'insider' and 'outsider' approaches; 'scientific' and 'theological' methodologies; and 'public'/'private' dichotomies in defining the 'secular' and the 'religious'.This volume is based on a seminar series conducted over 2005-06 in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, at the University of Wales, Lampeter, UK. It brings together papers presented by leading scholars of Theology and Religious Studies on various aspects of their respective disciplines. These include origins; history; founding premises; orientations; methodology; engagement with feminist and post-colonial critiques; and shifts in theoretical paradigms over time. The intended result is the generation of dialogue between the two disciplines, and a self-reflexive examination of what each is about. There is very little available literature attempting such a dialogue between Theology and Religious Studies, and this book will fill a crucial gap in this area.

Scholars have long noted the prevalence of praise of God in Luke-Acts. This monograph offers the first comprehensive analysis of this important feature of Luke's narrative. It focuses on twenty-six scenes in which praise occurs, studied in light of ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman discourse about praise of deity and in comparison with how praise appears in the narratives of Tobit and Joseph and Aseneth. The book argues that praise of God functions as a literary motif in all three narratives, serving to mark important moments in each plot, particularly in relation to the themes of healing, conversion, and revelation. In Luke-Acts specifically, the plot presents the long-expected visitation of God, which arrives in the person of Jesus, bringing glory to the people of Israel and revelation to the Gentiles. The motif of praise of God aligns closely with the plot's structure, communicating to the reader that varied (and often surprising) events in the story - such as healings in Luke and conversions in Acts - together comprise the plan of God. The praise motif thus demonstrates the author's efforts to combine disparate source material into carefully constructed historiography.

All religions face the challenge of explaining, in view of God's goodness, the existence of evil and suffering in the world. They must develop theories of the origin and the overcoming of evil and suffering. The explanations in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism of evil and suffering and their origin, as well as these world religions' theories of how to overcome evil and suffering, differ from one another, but are also similar in many respects. The human person is always considered to be the origin of evil, and also to be the focus of aspirations to be able to overcome it. The conviction that evil and suffering are not original and can be overcome is characteristic of and common to the religions. The explanations of the origin of evil are closely related to the explanations of the continuation and propagation of evil in human persons, in nature, and in our technology and culture that have been developed in the religions - in Christianity, for example, as the doctrine of original sin. Finally, the world religions are concerned with how to cope with suffering and offer guidance for overcoming evil and suffering. Leading scholars of five world religions, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, have created with this volume a first-hand source of information, which enables the reader to gain a better understanding of these religions' central teachings about the origin and the overcoming of evil and suffering.

Many interpreters read John 6 as a contrast between Jesus and Judaism: Jesus repudiates Moses and manna and offers himself as an alternative. In contrast, this monograph argues that John 6 places elements of the Exodus story in a positive and constructive relationship to Jesus. This reading leads to an understanding of John as an interpreter of Exodus who, like other contemporary Jewish interpreters, sees current experiences in light of the Exodus story. This approach to John offers new possibilities for assessing the gospela (TM)s relationship to Jewish scripture, its dualism, and its metaphorical language.

This volume consists of 12 essays published by the author between the years 1997-2007, a thirteenth paper read at a conference in 2006, and a long introduction prepared specifically for the collection. All of the essays deal with epistemological issues attendant on conceptualizing and defining religion, understanding what is likely to be involved in studying and discussing beliefs, and attempting to explain religion and religions by drawing on the contemporary cognitive and evolutionary sciences. The problem of how best to understand and represent the cultural sensitivities of others is addressed by considering the works of three predecessors, Edward Burnett Tylor, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, and A. Irving Hallowell.

Some say Christianity is white man's religion. . . . And it is true that there is a long and ugly history of abuse of African-Americans at the hands of Anglo Christians. Afrocentric interpretations of history often point to slavery, lynchings and the like as proof that Christianity is inherently antiblack. But Craig Keener and Glen Usry contend that Christianity can be Afrocentric. In this massively researched book, they show that racism is not unique to Christianity. More important, they show how "world history is also our history and the Bible is also our book." Black Man's Religion is one of the first of its kind, a pro-Christian reading of religion and history from a black perspective. Fascinating and compelling, it is must reading for all concerned for African-American culture and issues of faith.

This book offers an interpretation of the major logical, philosophical/theological, and poetic writings of Boethius, Abelard, and Alan of Lille. In this interdisciplinary study, Abelard and Alan of Lille are placed with Boethius as creatively reformulating the Boethian methods, vocabulary, and literary forms so influential in the 12th century. The author examines the theories of language of these thinkers and the ways in which those theories form part of their speculative projects and spiritual aspirations. What emerges are significant structural and narrative connections between the problems of how words illuminate things, how the mind comprehends God, and how the individual reaches beatitude.

The book deals with the relation between identity, ethics, and ethos in the New Testament. The focus falls on the way in which the commandments or guidelines presented in the New Testament writings inform the behaviour of the intended recipients. The habitual behaviour (ethos) of the different Christian communities in the New Testament are plotted and linked to their identity. Apart from analytical categories like ethos, ethics, and identity that are clearly defined in the book, efforts are also made to broaden the specific analytical categories related to ethical material. The way in which, for instance, narratives, proverbial expressions, imagery, etc. inform the reader about the ethical demands or ethos is also explored.

Colonial Contexts and Postcolonial Theology focuses on what postcolonial theologies look like in colonial contexts, particularly in dialogue with the First Nations Peoples in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. The contributors have roots in the Asia-Pacific, but the struggles, theologies and concerns they address are shared across the seas.

At the centre of John Miltona (TM)s epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) is a radical commitment to divine and human freedom. This study situates Paradise Lost within the context of post-Reformation theological controversy, and pursues the theological portrayal of freedom as it unfolds throughout the poem. The study identifies and explores the ways in which Milton is both continuous and discontinuous with the major post-Reformation traditions in his depiction of predestination, creation, free will, sin, and conversion. Miltona (TM)s deep commitment to freedom is shown to underlie his appropriation and creative transformation of a wide range of existing theological concepts.

Due to the scarcity of sources regarding actual Jewish and Muslim communities and settlements, there has until now been little work on either the perception of or encounters with Muslims and Jews in medieval Scandinavia and the Baltic Region. The volume provides the reader with the possibility to appreciate and understand the complexity of Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in the medieval North. The contributions cover topics such as cultural and economic exchange between Christians and members of other religions; evidence of actual Jews and Muslims in the Baltic Rim; images and stereotypes of the Other. The volume thus presents a previously neglected field of research that will help nuance the overall picture of interreligious relations in medieval Europe.

Faith, hope, and love embody the black theology of liberation, a movement created by a group of African- American pastors in the 1960s who felt that Christ's gospel held a special message of liberation for African- Americans, and for all oppressed people. Beginning with an intimate introduction, Hopkins writes of his mother's death, when he was nine, and reveals that his father's love for the poor influenced him to become a Minister and to pursue a life of service which required 'a compassionate intellect and an intellectual compassion. Hopkins asserts that in this post-Civil Rights, post-affirmative action era, that all people, regardless of race, must join together in forging a new common wealth. Offering a detailed perspective on a new racial, gender, and economic democracy in the United States, Hopkins illustrates that black theology can be the key to personal and global liberation.

This book contains a systematic description of the theologies of Colin E. Gunton (1941a '2003) and Oswald Bayer (b. 1939). Their use of the doctrine of creation in systematic theology has remarkable consequences for late-modern theological ethics. This book explores those consequences from the example of the theological doctrine of marriage. The author also contributes to the ecumenical debate by building on the Neo-Calvinist theological heritage.