Southwestern Journal of Theology 2022 Book of the Year Award (Honorable Mention, Theological Studies) This introduction traces the origins, development, and divergent streams of atonement theology throughout the Christian tradition and proposes key criteria by which we can assess their value. The authors introduce essential biblical terms, texts, and concepts of atonement; identify significant historical figures, texts, and topics; and show how various atonement paradigms are expressed in their respective church traditions. The book also surveys current "hot topics" in evangelical atonement theology and evaluates strengths and weaknesses of competing understandings of atonement.

This volume contains the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on "Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) in Medicine" held in Evian, France, October 14- 26, 1990. The program committee of the institute consisted of H.K. Huang (Director), Osman Ratib, Albert Bakker, and Gerd Witte. This institute brought together approximately 90 participants from 15 countries. These proceedings are the accumulation of eight years of research and development results in PACS by various dedicated groups throughout the world. The purpose of this institute was to review the most recent technology available for PACS and some clinical results. The readers should notice the remarkable advances in this field by comparing the contents in these proceedings with those in a previous institute on "Pictorial Information Systems in Medicine" held August 27 - September 7, 1984 in Braunlage/Harz, Federal Republic of Germany, and published as Vol. 19 in this series. The institute was organized according to four categories: PACS components and system integration, PACS and related research in various countries and manufacturing companies, clinical experience and research support, and participants' scientific communications. In PACS components, we included image acquisition, workstations, data storage and networking. In system integration, topics on interfaces between Hospital Information System (HIS), Radiology Information System (RIS) and PACS, clinical reports, the ACR/NEMA standard, databases, reliability, and system integration were discussed. This lecture series emphasized the technical detail and "how to" aspects.

How do we take stock of the state and direction of the world’s environment, and what can we learn from the experience? Among the myriad detailed narratives about the condition of the planet, the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) reports—issued by the United Nations Environment Programme—stand out as the most ambitious. For nearly three decades the GEO project has not only delivered iconic global assessment reports, but through its multitude of contributors has inspired hundreds of similar processes worldwide from the regional to the local level. This book provides an inside account of the evolution of the GEO project from its earliest days. Building on meticulous research, including interviews with former heads of the United Nations Environment Programme, diplomats, leading contributing scientists, and senior leaders of collaborating organizations, the story is told from the perspective of five GEO veterans who all played a pivotal role in shaping the periodic assessments. The GEO’s history provides striking insights and will save valuable time to those who commission, design and conduct, as well as critique and improve, assessments of environmental development in the next decade.

The gradual secularization of European society and culture is often said to characterize the development of the modern world, and the early Italian humanists played a pioneering role in this process. Here Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, with Elizabeth B. Welles, have edited and translated seven primary texts that shed important light on the subject of "civic humanism" in the Renaissance.Included is a treatise of Francesco Petrarca on government, two representative letters from Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni's panegyric to Florence, Francesco Barbaro's letter on "wifely" duty, Poggio Bracciolini's dialogue on avarice, and Angelo Poliziano's vivid history of the Pazzi conspiracy. Each translation is prefaced by an essay on the author and a short bibliography. The substantial introductory essay offers a concise, balanced summary of the historiographcal issues connected with the period.

The pastoral office is one of the most critical in Christianity. Historically, however, Christians have not been able to agree on the precise nature and limits of that office. A specific area of contention has been the role of women in pastoral leadership. In recent decades, three broad types of arguments have been raised against women's ordination: nontheological (primarily cultural or political), Protestant, and Catholic. Reflecting their divergent understandings of the purpose of ordination, Protestant opponents of women's ordination tend to focus on issues of pastoral authority, while Catholic opponents highlight sacramental integrity. These positions are new developments and new theological stances, and thus no one in the current discussion can claim to be defending the church's historic position. Icons of Christ addresses these voices of opposition, making a biblical and theological case for the ordination of women to the ministerial office of Word and Sacrament. William Witt argues that not only those in favor of, but also those opposed to, women's ordination embrace new theological positions in response to cultural changes of the modern era. Witt mounts a positive ecumenical argument for the ordination of women that touches on issues such as theological hermeneutics, relationships between men and women, Christology and discipleship, and the role of ordained clergy in leading the church in worship, among others. Uniquely, Icons of Christ treats both Protestant and Catholic theological concerns at length, undertaking a robust engagement with biblical exegesis and biblical, historical, systematic, and liturgical theology. The book's theological approach is critically orthodox, evangelical, and catholic. Witt offers the church an ecumenical vision of ordination to the presbyterate as an office of Word and Sacrament that justifiably is open to both men and women. Most critically Witt reminds us that, as all Christians are baptized into the image of the crucified and risen Christ, and bear witness to Christ through lives of cruciform discipleship, so men and women both are called to serve as icons of Christ in service of the gospel.

The pastoral office is one of the most critical in Christianity. Historically, however, Christians have not been able to agree on the precise nature and limits of that office. A specific area of contention has been the role of women in pastoral leadership. In recent decades, three broad types of arguments have been raised against women's ordination: nontheological (primarily cultural or political), Protestant, and Catholic. Reflecting their divergent understandings of the purpose of ordination, Protestant opponents of women's ordination tend to focus on issues of pastoral authority, while Catholic opponents highlight sacramental integrity. These positions are new developments and new theological stances, and thus no one in the current discussion can claim to be defending the church's historic position. Icons of Christ addresses these voices of opposition, making a biblical and theological case for the ordination of women to the ministerial office of Word and Sacrament. William Witt argues that not only those in favor of, but also those opposed to, women's ordination embrace new theological positions in response to cultural changes of the modern era. Witt mounts a positive ecumenical argument for the ordination of women that touches on issues such as theological hermeneutics, relationships between men and women, Christology and discipleship, and the role of ordained clergy in leading the church in worship, among others. Uniquely, Icons of Christ treats both Protestant and Catholic theological concerns at length, undertaking a robust engagement with biblical exegesis and biblical, historical, systematic, and liturgical theology. The book's theological approach is critically orthodox, evangelical, and catholic. Witt offers the church an ecumenical vision of ordination to the presbyterate as an office of Word and Sacrament that justifiably is open to both men and women. Most critically Witt reminds us that, as all Christians are baptized into the image of the crucified and risen Christ, and bear witness to Christ through lives of cruciform discipleship, so men and women both are called to serve as icons of Christ in service of the gospel.

AT SOME POINT in January or early February of 1347, Petrarch briefly visited the remote Carthusian monastery of Montrieux, where, four years before, his beloved brother, Gherardo, had pledged himself to live in perpetuity as a renditus, one who took the same vows as a monk but who was not cloistered. In the day and night he spent at Montrieux, Petrarch spoke privately with Gherardo, had lively discussions with other residents, and attended religious services celebrated by the brothers with "angelic singing." Unwilling to disturb the rigid discipline of the monastery longer, he reluctantly departed the next morning accompanied by the prior and the brothers to the limits of their property and he imagined them continuing to watch him until he disappeared from view. Returning to the Vaucluse, still "mindful of that whole blessed sweetness which I drank in with you," and troubled that in the course of the hasty visit he had not been able to say many things that he would like to have said, he decided "to express in writing what I was not able to do in person." The body of the work that was to become the De otio religioso was composed sometime during Lent or between February 11 and March 29 of that year. Not untypically, however, Petrarch continued to add to the text as late as 1356, and the finished treatise was probably not dispatched to Gherardo until 1357. This first English translation by Susan S. Schearer faithfully and elegantly presents Petrarch's exordium to the life of contemplation and offers the reader a fresh view into the spiritual world of fourteenth-century humanism. Ronald G. Witt's introduction places the work into its historical and intellectual context, discusses its structure and development, and examines Petrarch's characteristic synthesis of Christian and classical sources. First English translation. Introduction, Notes, Bibliography, Index of Citations, General Index.

This book traces the intellectual life of the Kingdom of Italy, the area in which humanism began in the mid-thirteenth century, a century or more before exerting its influence on the rest of Europe. Covering a period of over four and a half centuries, this study offers the first integrated analysis of Latin writings produced in the area, examining not only religious, literary, and legal texts. Ronald G. Witt characterizes the changes reflected in these Latin writings as products of the interaction of thought with economic, political, and religious tendencies in Italian society as well as with intellectual influences coming from abroad. His research ultimately traces the early emergence of humanism in northern Italy in the mid-thirteenth century to the precocious development of a lay intelligentsia in the region, whose participation in the culture of Latin writing fostered the beginnings of the intellectual movement which would eventually revolutionize all of Europe.

These essays are concerned with the nature of early renaissance political thought and the relationship between humanism and medieval rhetoric. One group traces the influence of medieval political thought on the rise of the modern conception of republicanism; others focus on the medieval art of letter writing and its place in the medieval cultural context; while still others analyse the often contradictory thought of the early humanist, Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406), who struggled to reconcile his classical learning with his medieval allegiances. In the collection as a whole humanism emerges as a literary movement drawing as heavily on patristic and medieval culture as on antiquity. Awareness of its various debts permits recognition of what humanism itself contributed to the development of western thought and ethics.