LITMIR.BIZ

Although the Apostle John endorses «Lamb» twenty-nine times in his Apocalypse and employs a term that is used only one other time in the New Testament to this end, this unique title and its sophisticated christological implications has only received cursory attention both historically and more recently. Even then, incomplete/monochromatic interpretations of the unique verbiage John employs to describe Christ are reached. After identifying this clearing that exists in the christological forest, this book reaches a robust understanding of Revelation's Lamb by means of a contextual-grammatical-canonical-historical hermeneutic. Ultimately, this monograph concludes that the apostle's use of Lamb throughout his Apocalypse promotes a multifaceted christological presentation of John's protagonist that is dependent on the paradoxical theme of glory in humility–a theme that is introduced when the Lamb first emerges in Revelation 5 and is then reiterated every time the title is used thereafter. In so doing, this work offers students and scholars alike a better understanding of who is coming in the end and what this means for the church at present.

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In today's church, use of the term transformation has become commonplace. Various perspectives are offered on what a Christian view of transformation is–and on how it may be achieved. These often-conflicting views suggest an ecclesial landscape characterized by pluralism, division, fragmentation, confusion, relativism, individualism, pragmatism, and subjectivism. Despite the current interest in transformational theology, the absence of a common, coherent, and integrated vision (and the lack of transformation) is often accepted and affirmed. 
Re-Envisioning Transformation looks at the possibility of moving toward a vision of transformational theology that is cohesive, unified, broad, effectual, and distinctly Christian. In this book, the contributions of two radically different"theologians of the Christian life" are examined. This provides the basis from which to develop a comprehensive and integrated framework of transformational theology–pointing God's people toward the need to express and live out a distinctly Christian vision.

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By the time of his death in 1933 Henri Bremond, priest and member of the elite Academie francaise, had established himself in France, and increasingly in England and the United States, as a distinguished historian of Christian spirituality and as a Catholic modernist who helped to shake the church out of its dogmatic slumbers by embracing «pure love,» artistic-poetic expression, and mystical prayer as the privileged manifestations of spiritual truth. Drawing on substantial new scholarship in France, that has resuscitated and reinterpreted Bremond's work for our own times, and that sees Bremond as an important precursor of current trends in literary interpretation as well as spirituality, Gorday surveys the entirety of Bremond's corpus of writing, setting his work in its context of his personal struggles, as well as the wider setting of French historical and cultural development.

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This book doesn't endorse any systematic theology; rather, it's about how we theologize. Why do two equally trained theologians, studying the same book and loving the same Lord, arrive at such different conclusions? This theological disagreement, at times becoming personal, spills over from the academia to seminaries and churches. And if history is any indicator, this always weakens the unity of the church. Who needs unity when correct doctrines are at stake, right? But, is the defense of all doctrines worth foregoing the unity of the church, despite Jesus' prayer that «they may be one even as we are one»? At bottom, our theological contentiousness stems from not recognizing that the way biblical revelation is framed is not designed to be handled the way seminaries typically do. Regardless, we strive for the rightness of our tidy theology, even disowning those who disagree while doing so. The disavowal of continuationists by the Strange Fire crowd is the most recent instance in a long line of placing doctrinal purity over the unity of the body. This book uncovers how Scripture is really structured and how, therefore, we need to theologize differently so that we may grow spiritually in Word and Spirit.

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In light of the numerous challenges posed by globalization, living together as humanity on one planet needs to be reinvented in the twenty-first century. To create a new, peaceful, just, and sustainable world order is vital to the survival of us all. In this regard, humankind will have to expand the limited scope of its moral imagination beyond the borders of family, tribe, class, religion, nation, and culture. Will the cultivation of compassion, as scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Karen Armstrong, and religious leaders like the Dalai Lama maintain, contribute to a more just world? A global movement to cultivate and extend compassion beyond the immediate circle of concern may indeed find inspiration from many different religious traditions.
The question at the heart of this book is whether the Christian legacy provides us with sources of moral imagination needed to guide us into the global era. Can the Christian practice of faith contribute to a more compassionate world? If so, how? And is it true that compassion is what we need, or do we need something else (justice, for example)? In Considering Compassion, colleagues from different theological disciplines at Stellenbosch, South Africa, and Groningen, Netherlands, take up these challenging questions from a variety of interdisciplinary angles.

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Evangelical discourse on the role of arts in the church can be radioactive, and the twenty-one contributors to this book walk right into the «hot zone» to pick up on twenty contentious questions. The volume is a series of written dialogues, each one keyed to a cranky question, one that a skeptic might raise (hence the title). Herein, the gainsayers are taken seriously and given their voice. They even find support in some of the contributors' comments. But apologists for greater use of arts and artists in the church have their say, and things can get edgy.
Topics range from the biblically august (the Second Commandment; the regulative principle; Great Commission priorities) to the prudential (expense; «bohemian» influence; weaker brothers) to the programmatic (Christmas festivities; committee makeup). Some of the parties to the discussion are church staffers (pastors and ministers of music); some are professors; several are doctoral students; one is a college student; another, a gallery owner; yet another, a denominational ethicist; and there's a Canadian and a Korean in the mix. The collection of speakers and opinions is illuminating and bracing, and the fruit of their thinking makes for great reading and discussion.

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The intention of Trauma Sensitive Theology is to help theologians, professors, clergy, spiritual care givers, and therapists speak well of God and faith without further wounding survivors of trauma. It explores the nature of traumatic exposure, response, processing, and recovery and its impact on constructive theology and pastoral leadership and care. Through the lenses of contemporary traumatology, somatics, and the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy, the text offers a framework for seeing trauma and its impact in the lives of individuals, communities, society, and within our own sacred texts. It argues that care of traumatic wounding must include all dimensions of the human person, including our spiritual practices, religious rituals and community participation, and theological thinking. As such, clergy and spiritual care professionals have an important role to play in the recovery of traumatic wounding and fostering of resiliency. This book explores how trauma-informed congregational leaders can facilitate resiliency and offers one way of thinking theologically in response to traumatizing abuses of relational power and our resources for restoration.

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If the origin of the world is not a part of the world, what are the implications for our understanding of ourselves, the world, and its origin? In antiquity, both gentile and Christian authors agreed that the significance of this question could only be maintained by accepting the unbridgeable difference between the world and God. Not even Christology as the most ambitious attempt at developing a model for divine-human communication was allowed to undermine the principle of absolute divine difference. This changed with the modern emphasis on univocity and measurability as the defining aspects of knowledge. From the point of view of a philosophy of absolute difference, this appears as an arbitrary loss of perspective. By focusing on four authors–Cusanus, Luther, Hamann, and Kierkegaard–who have explored how the Christian and paradoxical understanding of Christ as eternal God and true human subverts the modern emphasis on unambiguity and definability, the present investigation makes an attempt to retrieve what has been lost. Classical Christology as interpreted by these authors thus appears as an indispensable tool for receiving and appreciating the gift of the world in a way that is not unduly limited by anthropocentric prejudice.

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What is union with Christ? What role does this theme play in the Epistle to the Romans? Does union with Christ have an Old Testament background or did Paul create the concept for his own theological purposes? These questions will be answered in this exegetical study of Romans. Special attention is given to Paul's use of Old Testament stories in relation to union with Christ. It will be shown that Paul understands union with Christ to be the climax of the human story–a story of creation and rebellion that includes all people, regardless of ethnic or social background. Those who believe in Jesus as the promised Messiah experience restoration as they move from union with Adam into union with Christ. United to Christ, the church finds unity in a new identity–as a new people in Christ.

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For Today: A Prayer When Life Gets Messy will introduce you to a profound daily prayer and various strategies and outlooks for getting through tough days–and on to higher ground. This is not a book to make someone an instant saint; it is for times when the ox is in the ditch or the seed corn is gone–a prayer when you are just trying to make it through the day and get back home before dark. With God's help, you will learn to be faithful in these hard times, and look forward to better days ahead. This unique book, combining rich personal stories and helpful spiritual reflections, can be used for personal devotionals or in small group discipleship/spiritual formation activities to unpack this powerful prayer line by line. In doing so, you will be challenged to deal with your difficulties gracefully and faithfully, just as God deals with all of us in tough and difficult times, bringing healing and hope to the mess we are in. Ultimately, the prayer brings us full circle–to be a cup of strength to other suffering souls who are in the midst of tough times, too.

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