LITMIR.BIZ

Why did Jesus die on the cross? Does the atonement have any spiritual significance? This book is a bold and imaginative endeavor to make atonement theology rational, in a fresh way, in our interreligious world. Seeking connections between Christian and Hindu thinking in order to create hermeneutical bridges, Godfrey Kesari aims to open up creative ways of reimagining the doctrine of the atonement, which is so central to the Christian message. Kesari retains the particularity of the unique events embracing the life, suffering, and death of Christ while linking clearly to the more universal considerations that are encountered within Visistadvaitic Hinduism. These explorations in turn contribute to a new way of seeing the Christian revelation. This is a ground-breaking work that attempts to find a way of treating and defending the centrality and theological significance of the atonement with contextual relevance.

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How can we be just and merciful? Are justice and mercy in conflict? Or are they aspects of the same truth?
Christians in America are presented with two conflicting versions of justice and mercy.
One version comes from the dominant secular narrative of America. Justice and mercy are contradictions. Mercy is devalued and discouraged.
But within the counter narrative of God revealed through Torah, the prophets, and particularly through the life and parables of Jesus, justice and mercy are aspects of the same truth and way of God. There is no justice without mercy. There is no mercy without justice.
In this book, Rev. Brooks Harrington draws on more than 40 years' experience as a criminal prosecutor, a pastor of an inner-city church in an impoverished neighborhood, and the founder of a legal ministry protecting indigent victims of family violence and child neglect and abuse. Through moving stories of women and children he has encountered, he shows the terrible toll of the dominant narrative's version of justice and mercy. And he offers Christians hope with new and startling insights into God's justice and mercy revealed in the parables of Jesus.

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Language is the gift by which we shape our understanding and tell our story. But if we cannot see ourselves and our context in our language, our lives can be confused and our witness weakened through a kind of cognitive dissonance created when the only vocabulary available to us fails to match our lived situation. Urban and suburban congregations live this disconnect when the language and imagery often employed in hymns, prayers, imagery, and liturgies reflect a rural ideal far from the experience of believers. The irony is revealed when we recognize that the Bible is a book deeply and profoundly urban in nature. Christianity's earliest history gives both authorization and resources for helping urban and suburban congregations find their unique voice.

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In this fallen world, Christians often suffer due to no fault of their own. Imagine a loving spouse who suffers the pains of marital unfaithfulness, or loving Christian parents who suffer the loss of their child. Now, imagine that you can overcome the pain and instead experience a «joy unspeakable» (1 Pet 1:8). That is the message of this book. It teaches that to experience righteous suffering is to «fellowship with Christ in his sufferings» (1 Pet 4:13). We desire to know the glory of Christ, but that is only half of what he experienced. Unless we know Jesus' suffering, we will never know the whole Jesus. And to know Jesus is the greatest joy of a believer, a «joy unspeakable.»

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Have you ever wondered what Jesus saw, heard, and did during his so-called «silent years» between his birth in Bethlehem, after his trip to Egypt, and before his baptism at the Jordan River? The only mentioned event in the Gospels from that time frame was being forgotten in Jerusalem by his parents at the age of twelve, as recorded by Luke. Barry Blackstone takes you on an imaginative journey, an inspiring jaunt into those days of Jesus as he remembers his own boyhood and early childhood experiences in the tiny farming village of Perham, Maine, a hamlet similar in size and nature to the Nazareth of Jesus' day. After visiting an archeological site in Nazareth in 2010, Blackstone realized the parallels between his obscure upbringing and the quiet years of the Savior in his boyhood home. It is the wish of the author that his reader might see through a morning dew, a blossoming flower, a blue sky, a gentle rain, a brilliant rainbow, a crowing rooster, a loving sister, and a father's carpenter's shop into the life of the boy Jesus. Blackstone attempts to fill in some of the gaps in the story of Jesus by sharing his barnyard memories with an application to the teaching of the adult Jesus. Can one see insights into what Jesus experienced in the lessons, parables, and teachings of his adult ministry?

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Are our pains and sufferings preordained and fixed by God, or are they the consequences of man's actions? Can the immutable Lord ever change his mind in response to our prayers? This dilemma of God's sovereignty and man's free will has been a quandary for the church for nearly two thousand years. Previous solutions (Calvinism, Arminianism, Molinism, and Open Theism) have not been successful in deciphering the enigma. The problem is now resolved by exposing the fallacies in man's claim that he is given no other choice but to do whatever the Lord foreknew and foreordained. Using the analogy of the dual nature of light, the «quantum proposal» affirms that man has alternative options that were created and foreknown by God within his predetermined boundaries. From Adam's fall in Genesis to Paul's ministry in the New Testament, alternative possibilities have always been offered. Men are free to choose among the given options and must live with the consequences, whether good or evil. This groundbreaking work is a must-read for all Christians who struggle with the dilemma of divine sovereignty and humans responsibility.

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In 1054 CE, the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity occurred, and the official break of communion between the two ancient branches of the church continues to this day. There have been numerous church commissions and academic groups created to try and bridge the ecumenical divides between East and West, yet official communion is still just out of reach. The thought of St. Maximus the Confessor, a saint of both churches, provides a unique theological lens through which to map out a path of ecumenical understanding and, hopefully, reconciliation and union. Through an exposition of the intellectual history of Maximus' theological influence, his moral and spiritual theology, and his metaphysical vision of creation, a common Christianity emerges. This book brings together leading scholars and thinkers from both traditions around the theology of St. Maximus to cultivate greater union between Eastern and Western Christianity.

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John's portrait of Jesus is breathtaking yet bewildering. In the first verse he's called «God.» At the climax of the book he's worshiped as Lord and God (20:28). On the other hand, he says he can't do a thing without the okay of his Father (5:19, 30). How are we to understand this profound yet puzzling figure?
Uniquely equipped as both a New Testament scholar and engaging pastoral communicator, Randy Rheaume shows how the contrasts in John's portrait of Jesus (especially his deity and his sonship) fit together and are meaningful and helpful for the Christian life. Is Jesus really God? If so, what difference does it make? How can he be God and yet in submission to God? Why didn't he ever say, «I am God! Worship me!»? How does the Son's role differ from the Father's? If God is more than one person, how do prayer and worship work? How can I know God better? What will make eternity with God so fun that we'll never get bored? Is the Trinity truly biblical? And where does the Holy Spirit come into the picture? Rheaume's exploration probes John's Gospel and provides profound insight into these and related questions.

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Israel's election, calling, and history make up a big part of Scripture. It could be said that they belong to the «DNA of the Bible.» But why is it then that the Christian narrative about the Messiah, Israel, and the nations, often seemed to have and sometimes even still has a different «genetic structure»? Does Israel–together with its election and promises–leave God's stage through a side door, when Jesus appears on stage? Does a changing of roles take place, within a different story? Does the Messiah function within it as some kind of «black hole» in which the eternal election and calling of Israel disappear? How do we read God's way? The Holocaust made us realize that our de-Jew-ized reading and preaching of Scripture contributed in various ways to this catastrophe. And we find ourselves confronted by the question: How does the narrative of the Bible then look when the whole of Scripture plays a decisive role, and the faithfulness of God toward Israel stays in the center? This book presents an answer to these questions, calling us to learn to read God's way anew, and to walk in it.

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What does it mean, as a person of faith, to maintain and even strengthen one's physical body? What does it mean to «glorify God in your body» (1 Corinthians 6:20) in a time when bodily perfection is popularly defined by advertising firms, while food degradation has led to the worldwide obesity epidemic? This work addresses those questions and many others through theological engagement with fitness and sport, offering a critical examination of the two and their theological intersections. Where is God in sport and fitness? What value might sport and fitness have for the Christian Church? Is there a good to be found?

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