Аннотация

Christology and Pneumatology have long been major preoccupations for theologians, and rightly so, but the work of God the Father has been surprisingly neglected.
Through a biblical and exegetical study of the Father's person and work (Paterology), this book argues that, among the persons of the Trinity, the Father is the initiator of all divine activity. Furthermore, it is in the context of a loving eternal relationship with the Son and Spirit that the Father has planned and purposed all things, creating through the Son and by the Spirit, promising and accomplishing redemption through the sending of the Son and the Spirit, and perfecting salvation by bringing about a new heavens and new earth through his Son and Spirit. The only proper response is a Trinitarian-shaped life of worship that worships our Triune God.

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Biblical Eschatology provides what is not found in any other single volume on eschatology: it analyzes all the major eschatological passages (including the Olivet Discourse and the book of Revelation), issues (including the second coming of Christ, the millennium, the rapture, and Antichrist), and positions (including all the major views of the millennium) in a clear, but not superficial, way. The book concludes with a chapter showing how eschatology is relevant for our lives.
Biblical Eschatology makes understanding eschatology easier by including chapters on how to interpret prophecy and apocalyptic literature, by showing the history of eschatological thought, and by placing eschatology in the context of the Bible's overall story line and structure. Clarity and understanding are enhanced by the use of comparative tables and appendices. Subject and Scripture indexes are included. The book interacts with the best of Evangelical and Reformed scholarship, and the extensive bibliography (which includes the web addresses of many online resources) provides an excellent source for the reader's further study. This is a perfect resource for intelligent Christians, including pastors, students, and teachers, who desire to understand eschatology and to see how it fits together with the rest of the Bible.

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The central aim of the Gospel of Mark is to introduce the reader to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In this book, MacDonald examines not just what the Gospel writer says, but also how he says it. When the Gospel of Mark is examined as a complete work, and the motifs of allegiance, opposition, and misunderstand are traced through the narrative, Mark is seen to be a rather sophisticated literary work. The Gospel writer is not simply a compiler of tradition, but one who shaped his narrative for specific rhetorical aims, namely, that his audience–both ancient and modern–would recognize Jesus as the Son of God and respond to him with allegiance.

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The New Monastic Movement is a vibrant source of renewal for the church's life and mission. Many involved in this movement have quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer's conviction that the church must recover ancient spiritual disciplines if it is to effectively engage «the powers that be.» Melodies of a New Monasticism adopts a musical metaphor of polyphony (the combination of two or more lines of music) to articulate the way that these early Christian virtues can be woven together in community. Creatively using this imagery, this book draws on the theological vision of Bonhoeffer and the contemporary witness of George MacLeod and the Iona Community to explore the interplay between discipleship, doctrine, and ethics. A recurring theme is the idea of Christ as the cantus firmus (the fixed song) around which people perform the diverse harmonies of God in church and world, including worship, ecumenism, healing, peace, justice, and ecology.

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How can Christianity continue to rejoice over a redemption that came at the cost of the violent suffering and death of Jesus Christ? In the wake of increasing revulsion toward oppression and abuse–both historic and contemporary–traditionally Protestant and evangelical theology is in the precarious position of defending one of its cardinal doctrines amidst a host of compelling critiques and alternatives. In I Will Repay, Dennis Oh explores how soteriology rooted in Scripture and resonant with tradition can also be conversant with the cinematic experience offered by popular films. It proposes a narrative reenvisioning of the mechanism of atonement that both supports and extends traditional theological categories and vocabularies while retaining the cross-centered conviction of an evangelical gospel.

Аннотация

This book explores the impact of contextualized worship arts on the development of church ministry and missions in urban churches in Beira, Mozambique. This applied research, which took place over the course of two years, focuses on expanding the song-writing workshop model in an effort to enhance culturally appropriate worship in the local church. Results of this study include increased use of local hymnody, intentional use of worship to teach theological truths, engaged pastors and empowered worship leaders, and a greater missional involvement through the use of contextualized worship arts. This book clearly demonstrates the necessity of contextualized worship arts as a key component of local church growth and the development of its members, encouraging personal discipleship, growing local ministry, and empowering for mission.

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John Wesley and George Whitefield were in many ways larger-than-life figures during their own lifetimes and continue to be so today. Yet our ability to appreciate their abiding influence on contemporary Evangelical theology and practice is lacking if we consider them in isolation from one another. Our understanding of Wesley and the legacy of his public ministry is impoverished apart from considering Whitefield (and vice versa). This collection of essays explores the complex dynamics at work in the Wesley-Whitefield relationship, spanning a variety of theological, historical, and pastoral facets of their full-orbed public ministries. They serve as an invitation to grow in our awareness of their undoubted affinities and significant differences, all the while resisting the potential allure of either uncritically ecumenical «Wesley and» or uncharitably partisan «Whitefield versus» narratives.

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How should we attempt to understand the relationship between theology and science in the twenty-first century? In this book, I will attempt to answer this question by examining several previous attempts to classify this relationship. I also develop my personal view of the relation, thereafter discussing some Catholic contributions to this project, and then revisit some of my previously published material, highlighting the role of panentheism therein, and noting an emergent implication from the literature: the resultant possibilities for God–an implication that creates space for a broadly relational perspective of the process of emergence. These movements allow me to argue that kenosis and emergence can add to the discussion of understanding the theology and science relationship. Herein, I advocate a monistic process-based view of the overlapping relationship between theology and science.

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Jesus is a revered messenger of God for Muslims and Lord and Savior for Christians. How can Muslims and Christians relate to each other when this figure from the past attracts them yet drives them apart? Jesus is the very center of the Christian faith, but for Muslims he is a faithful witness to God, who is central to Islam. In the twenty-first century, is it possible for Muslims and Christians to relate to each other around him?
This book is an attempt to bring together two representative voices from Muslim and Christian communities to talk about Jesus. Ibrahim is a Sunni Sufi Muslim who has studied Christianity and has been active as an academic in the Western world. Paul is an Evangelical Protestant who has lived in the Muslim world and has been engaged in teaching religious studies in the West. The conversation begins with the conception of Jesus and ends with his return from heaven and deals with his earthly work in between. His miraculous activity, his teaching, and the titles he has been given are considered in detail, and differences over the ending of Jesus' life are debated.

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The Christian faith stands or falls with the confession that Jesus Christ is risen. While that assertion itself is perhaps uncontroversial, precisely what this confession means has been a subject of profound significance and immense controversy for centuries. Central to this discussion is the role of myth and history in the biblical witness and in the church's theological engagement with the confession that Jesus Christ is risen. This book traces key trajectories of German Protestant discussions of myth, history, and the resurrection from its earliest critical analysis in the work of Hermann Samuel Reimarus and David Friedrich Strauss to contemporary appraisals by Eberhard Jungel and Ingolf Ulrich Dalferth. At the center of this discussion stands Rudolf Bultmann, whose work on the resurrection sparked fierce debates that left a lasting impact on Protestant theology in Germany and beyond. The questions raised by these theologians continue to resonate in contemporary discussions of the nature and status of biblical texts, the integrity and truth of the Christian confession, and the meaning and significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for Christian faith and life at the beginning of the twenty-first century.