LITMIR.BIZ

What do Robben Island, Colonel Gadaffi, the earthquake in Haiti, the riots in London, credit crunch, child abuse, and the death of Christ have in common? They are all linked by the common thread of violence. Tom Stuckey reexamines the traditional theories of atonement, which he argues are contextual and utilitarian, as he searches for meaning and hope in these contemporary events.
In The Wrath of God Satisfied?, Tom Stuckey argues that because we live in a violent world, we should not dismiss the idea of the wrath of God or the disturbing metaphors of blood, debt, satisfaction, and sacrifice. While not subscribing to the theory of penal substitution, he does not dismiss it. Within a dynamic interpretation of the Trinity, the author draws on the insights of Athanasius, Anselm, Abelard, Luther, Calvin, Julian, Girard, Augustine, Barth, and contemporary theologians to show how divine wrath «being satisfied» poses the question of God in its most acute form. Stuckey sees God's wrath as a necessary shadow cast by the powerful light of hope and argues that wrath cannot be dismissed if justice is to be restored.

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A respected lecturer and author, the Rev. Dr. Peter Toon (1939-2009) was born in Yorkshire, England, and graduated from King's College, University of London. Ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1973, he taught theology in both England and America, and was a visiting professor and guest lecturer at a variety of seminaries and universities in Asia, Europe, and Australia. Through his engagement in debates about all matters Anglican, he became the foremost exponent of «the Anglican Way,» a path both Reformed and Catholic. A self-identified evangelical, he brought an evangelical fervor to his love of the church and the gospel, and he has influenced a generation of priests around the world.
This volume of essays, collected in his honor, furthers the work that Dr. Toon started, defending the continuing importance of the theology of the English Reformation and Anglican worship. Essays included discuss Thomas Cranmer, the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the legacy of Dom Gregory Dix. The authors include Roger Beckwith, Bryan Spinks, Rudolph Heinze, Joan Lockwood O'Donovan, Gillis Harp, Graham Eglington, and Ian Robinson.

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What Think Ye? Essays for 21st-Century Leaders, Pastors, and Church Musicians has short, to-the-point chapters dealing with important leadership issues for the twenty-first century. The book contains advice, «food for thought,» and ministry leadership «shortcuts» that will be of value to church and school musicians, pastors, church staff, and lay people who are involved in leadership. The book is an «easy» read, but will take some digestion time to ponder the subject matter. It is also an excellent book for colleges, universities, seminaries, and others that teach classes in Church Music Ministry.

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Sex is worth celebrating. It is one of God's loveliest gifts to the human race. But the loveliness of sex is ruined whenever it is found outside the proper context of marriage. And God knows what powerful temptations come our way in the area of sex.
The Song of Solomon is a celebration of sex and love within marriage, as this book explains. Jonathan Bayes draws out the practical advice implicit in the Song for husbands, for wives, and for courting couples. He points out the warnings in the Song against sex outside the context of marriage.
The Song of Solomon has often been read as an allegory of the relationship between Christ and his people. Jonathan Bayes does not see this as the main purpose of the Song, but agrees that human relationships are a reflection of that highest love of all. In Sex, Love, and Marriage–A Celebration, Bayes brings out the interplay between heaven and earth. We are directed upwards from human love to learn about that «Love divine, all loves excelling.» Then we are brought back down to earth to make God's love for us in Christ the model, which we seek to imitate in our human relationships.

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The Iraq War caused emotional, physical, psychiatric, relational, and spiritual challenges to an untold number of military reservists and their families. This book takes you through the war's critical stages of pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment. Reservists' families, usually living far from military bases with professional staffing, are often among the most affected wounded of the Iraq War. Injured reservists often return home to discover that civilian medical resources are insufficient and civic organizations unequipped to help manage the range of combat-related wounds and psychiatric trauma, especially post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. The lack of needed services causes alienation between reservists and their families in relation to the civilian communities in which they live. Using a practical theological method, this book analyzes the various impacts of the Iraq War and recommends a soul care approach for chaplains and pastors to use in support of reservists and their families suffering from their experiences of the Iraq War, and to guide any persons interested in participating in such support.

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Most Christians are unaware that there is such a thing as a biblical cosmology. That is, we do not have a clear idea of the whole of creation, both visible and invisible, its parts and realms, and how they fit together. We live by bits and pieces of conflicting notions supplied by the Bible and the secular world, and there is little comprehension of the overall design of reality and the all-embracing vision of creation that the Bible provides and the Church has taught for centuries. The matter seems too complex for the typical contemporary Christian and so the matter is dropped as irrelevant. The consequences are deadly; ignorance breeds arrogance, indifference, and finally spiritual death.
The Little Book of Big Frontiers intends to make the complex issue of cosmology understandable. Vivid and ordinary stories and images are used to illustrate extremely difficult concepts that will open up new frontiers for the reader. Readers will come away with a whole new understanding of the cosmos and how it works, integrating the interior realties of the soul with the world around them, rediscovering realms that were once known to the early Christians but, alas, are now lost within the secularization of our culture.

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Every year, thousands of young people die, leaving in their wake circles of grieving friends in need of support. Many look to how clergy understand loss but few religious traditions have a defined mourning process–or even a role in mourning–for non-family members. Faith Unravels speaks to the profound pain experienced by a forgotten mourner, not by making an argument about God or by offering a recipe of rituals, but by sharing a profound story of faith lost and regained anew.

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This third volume of Sermons by Jonathan Edwards on the Matthean Parables contains a previously unpublished series of sermons by Edwards on Jesus' Parable of the Net, as found in Matthew 13. Edwards preached these sermons in 1746, after the major phase of the Great Awakening had passed in New England and during the very months he was completing and publishing A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, his masterful statement on the true and false signs of true grace. Therefore, this series is significant for its place in Edwards' rich and evolving view of the nature of religious experience. To assist the reader, preceding the series are two introductions that describe Edwards' preaching style and method, and provide an historical context. Prepared from the original manuscripts by the staff of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, this series represents a significant addition to the available Edwards corpus that will be of interest to scholars, religious leaders, and general readers.

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Saint Paul declares, «Live by the Spirit» (Gal 5:6). This means our way of living ought to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Through a series of theoretical reflections, questions, and directed activities, this activity book will help you understand the relationship between spirituality and ethics, provide you some theoretical tools and practices for doing ethics and living spiritually, and encourage you to clarify your own manner of approaching ethical questions, founding moral values, and theological positions that undergird ethics and spirituality. Your moral imagination will be stimulated. Have fun!

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For many Christians, spirituality and ethics are in separate mental and experiential compartments. Spirituality may be understood as an inner experience, while ethics is focused on decisions or positions on issues. Both of these views reduce spirituality and morality in Christian faith and practice, and ignore the centrality of desire for God and the things of God as key focal points for spiritual and moral formation. These aspects of Christian formation must be located in their scriptural and theological contexts in order to understand more fully what God desires for human life. This focus on desire provides content and context to Christian spirituality and morality. We are drawn outward to focus on God and the good of others while we learn to embody virtues, such as compassion, courage, self-control, gratitude, humility, and hope. Practices are crucial ways by which we learn to incarnate our ultimate desire of love for God and for what God desires in the pursuit of justice and goodness for all creation. In so doing, practices enable us to more fully integrate spiritual and moral growth in the processes of our desire for God and the things of God.

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