LITMIR.BIZ

"As it is written, 'Our God is a consuming fire' (Heb. 12:29); so we also must kindle the divine fire in ourselves through tears and hard work." –Amma Syncletica, fourth century.
What could be more natural and timely than …
Spiritual wisdom drawn from a woman's world; word paintings expressed in the poetry of mother-daughter dialogue?
Home and hearth lessons in eternal truth, firmly grounded in day-to-day experience?
Small scenarios of inquiry and response, deep questioning and fledgling faith, that reverberate with quiet insight?
Dialogues that reflect modern levels of questioning; knots of paradox that require a woman's patient attention and inner care to tease out true, gentle wisdom?
A poetic exploration of the large and the small issues of women's life-nested, braided, interwoven, never fully unraveled-in precise language that retains the mystery but awakens the soul?
Enter into the world of Becoming Flame: Uncommon Mother-Daughter Wisdom
Dialogues with questions at the end for individual and group study.

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In this monograph, Adam Winn proposes that the ancient Greco-Roman literary practice of imitation can and should be used when considering literary relationships between biblical texts. After identifying the imitative techniques found in Virgil's Aeneid, Winn uses those techniques as a window into Mark's use of the Elijah-Elisha narrative of 1 and 2 Kings. Through careful comparisons between numerous pericopes of both respective narratives, Winn argues that the Markan evangelist has, at many points, clearly and creatively imitated the Elijah-Elisha narrative and has relied on this narrative as a primary source.

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Oedipus in Jerusalem begins with the unexpected meeting of the blinded Oedipus and the biblical prophet Nathan outside of Thebes. As the play unfolds, Nathan brings Oedipus to the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem for a formal trial with regard to his actions of patricide and his subsequent incest with his mother. The author of this play uses the characters and facts that exist in Oedipus Rex, the Athenian tragedy by the Greek playwright Sophocles, but employs the Sanhedrin to reach a dramatically different conclusion with implications for present times. Sophocles himself serves as accuser while Nathan defends Oedipus, who insists he is guilty. Oedipus in Jerusalem highlights the differences in Greek and Judaic worldviews, especially regarding determinism versus free will, the essence of moral behavior, and the actual concrete way in which Oedipus' «fate» unfolds. As a side note, Oedipus in Jerusalem suggests that the so-called oedipus complex, first described by Sigmund Freud, is actually somewhat of a misnomer when applied to Oedipus himself, and obscures the deeper meaning of his story.

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One of the major shifts in OT studies over the past half of a century has been the move away from studies dominated by diachronic matters toward more text-immanent, synchronic approaches. In Psalter studies, one can see such a shift on two levels. First, on the level of the individual psalm, there has been a general trend to focus on the literary and linguistic features as the proper means for discerning the meaning of the poem. Second, on the level of the Psalter as a whole, scholars have devoted significant attention to its canonical shape and the role of adjacent psalms in the interpretation of each individual psalm. In Remember, O Yahweh, Todd approaches Psalms 135–137 on both of these levels. After a detailed poetic analysis of each psalm, he proposes that Psalms 135–137 serve as a bridge between the Songs of Ascents (Pss 120–134) and the Last Davidic Psalter (Pss 138–145). As such, this group highlights Yahweh's past acts of deliverance as the basis for the post-exilic community's prayer for Yahweh to remember his people's lowly condition.

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The poems in Things Not Seen are by turns playful, witty, and serious. Ranging widely from rock concert to communion, from the stray dog of faith to the results of a mammogram, sewing to shooting stars, Schrodinger's cat to Lazarus, they address issues of doubt and longing, the desire for certainty, the presence of mystery, and the struggle in, of, and for faith. After examining sources of false confidence along with failures to see, the poems explore conflicting ways of knowing and being, gradually turning toward an increased willingness to accept limitation, and finally reaching toward tentative affirmations. The final section, a series of poems written in response to icons, charts a struggle toward vision and understanding, an effort to see with the eyes of faith.

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Countless books have been written about the impending death of the institutional church, but this one both celebrates the resurrection that will follow and lights the way toward a new kind of spiritual community. The Way of Jesus identifies seven principles upon which authentic and vibrant Christian communities can be built in today's diverse and ever shrinking world. Toby Jones traveled across the country, from San Francisco's Glide Memorial Church to New York's Church of the Holy Apostles, and from Chicago's Wicker Park Grace to Minneapolis's Solomon's Porch. He sojourned with seven communities in all and conducted in-depth interviews with their leaders and participants to reveal what distinguishes resurrection communities from those in precipitous decline. In The Way of Jesus, Jones draws both from the scriptures and from such fresh thinkers as Brian McLaren, Dallas Willard, Doug Pagitt, and Shane Claiborne, offering genuine hope and practical direction to the millions of spiritually homeless. But just as importantly, The Way of Jesus offers a clear path to struggling, shrinking congregations who desire to re-form themselves in a way that is both more faithful to the Gospel and compelling to post-modern generations, who have long since abandoned the institutional church.

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Christians of all backgrounds agree that the Bible is the unique sourcebook for our understanding and knowledge of God. Yet reading the Bible is often as neglected in believers' homes as amongst the skeptics. Moreover, there is much evidence that the Bible is as often misread in the modern church as we suppose it to have been widely misunderstood in the darkest days of Medieval superstition. It would be an enormous help to sit with a deeply learned scholar–one devoted to the historic Christian faith, who yet taught with the common touch–to help us mature in our reading of Scripture. Such tutorials might rekindle our desire to read the Bible more skillfully with the humble discipline of daily practice. C. S. Lewis has inspired a generation of readers, both skilled and beginner, to deepen their understanding and enjoyment of Scripture. Perhaps Lewis's unique contribution to reading Scripture is his disciplined use of the imagination as the forgotten cognitive tool of our day. This kind of reading attends to the text's emotional tone alongside the conceptual content in order to engender not just more knowledge about Scripture nor mere entertainment for dulled sensibilities, but to enable a knowledge of God: a reading for discipleship. This is the kind of reading I hope to support in these chapters.

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The purpose of this book is to present a comprehensive review of deception, its essential component of neurolinguistic dialectics, and how it is used by Satan to corrupt the human mind from devotion to Jesus Christ. These theological subjects are explored in an interdisciplinary fashion in an attempt to reveal historical knowledge of religious and secular developments of the ages needed to understand spiritual failure, deception, sin, apostasy, the role of the human mind as the venue or battlefield of deception, and how faith in God becomes weak and susceptible to doubt. Always at issue here is «why humanity replicates behavior that regresses to the same results of apostasy and utter spiritual failure induced by deception?» This interdisciplinary approach eludes the prototypical, one-dimensional approach to understanding deception and sin and presents the reader with a «how to» methodology that will hopefully defeat deception and sin. It also shows how deception results from heretical doctrine advanced by false prophets and preachers. Moreover, this book will help readers hone their skills necessary to examine issues of contemporary life with critical thinking in the context of religious and human history that facilitates their becoming better human beings.

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Through the Church Door illuminates the relevance and importance of the church in today's society. Through personal experiences as both a university professor of literature and an ordained minister, Simonson shows us that the church serves those both within and outside its doors.
The church door presents a metaphor for the paradoxes of life: entrance/exit, outside/inside, secular/sacred, closed in tradition/opened in Christ. Simonson explores these with informal style and anecdotes threaded with ruminations. Allusions span literary as well as theological and biblical references.

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An elderly peasant woman lives with her coffin in the kitchen. An American teacher is «adopted» by a village family. An eccentric grandfather teaches Chinese to his American student by jumping around the room and other perilous pantomimes. China is a vast and populous nation which demands our understanding. But while newspaper headlines commonly focus on politics and economics, Saving Grandmother's Face, written by Christian university teachers in China, recounts their experiences in the classroom and in the countryside, celebrating a child's birth and mourning a child's death, grading papers and discussing Chinese literature. Through these stories you will see a side of China often left out-the human side.

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