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Sacro-Egoism: The Rise of Religious Individualism in the West discusses the relationship between secularization, participation in religious practices and belief, and the emergence of radical individualized expressions of faith in the West. Using McMinnville, Oregon, as a case study, it presents the data collected and analyzed from several churches, denominations, and spiritual settings in that unassuming town, and compares it to the results of Heelas and Woodhead's «Spiritual Revolution» project, arriving at a provocative conclusion. Rather than abandoning Christianity for alternative spirituality practices, McMinnville citizens still feel strongly about their Christian faith, taking their spiritual walk to a more personal level than ever before in church history. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative research, along with personal stories of faith and exploration from McMinnville residents themselves, Sacro-Egoism: The Rise of Religious Individualism in the West tells a story of radical individualists who have become the highest religious authority in their lives–even over the church, the Bible, and traditional Christian society.

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In Behold the Pierced One, Joseph Ratzinger recounts how the composition of a 1981 paper on the Sacred Heart of Jesus had led him to «consider Christology more from the aspect of its spiritual appropriation» than he had done previously. Upon realizing that this same year was the 1300th anniversary of the Third Council of Constantinople, he decided to study the pronouncements of this Council, and came to believe «that the achievement of a spiritual Christology had also been the Council's ultimate goal.» Ratzinger's conclusion in attempting to define a spiritual Christology was that «the whole of Christology–our speaking of Christ–is nothing other than the interpretation of his prayer: the entire person of Jesus is contained in his prayer.» The spiritual Christology subsequently developed by Ratzinger is one of communio. Indeed, it is one of theosis. Through a personal and ecclesial participation in the prayer of Jesus, exercised in purity of heart, and consummated in the eucharistic celebration, one comes into communion with Jesus Christ and all the members of his Body, so that eventually one can say truly, «It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me» (Gal 2:20).

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What is the church? What is its mission in the world? Modern Protestantism's inability to provide a clear answer to these seemingly simple questions has resulted in vast confusion amongst pastors about the nature of their calling and has left congregations languishing without a clear reason for existence. Many of the voices and allegiances competing for the churches' attention have rushed in to fill the void, with the result that the church in modernity has frequently found itself captive to the prevailing culture. Yet from within the belly of highly culturally accommodated churches, both the German pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the American theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas were able to articulate compelling visions of churches freed from their cultural captivity in order to truly and freely serve God and neighbor. Against the complex and confusing backdrops of Nazi Germany and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century America respectively, Bonhoeffer and Hauerwas sought to recover the ethical and political character of the Christian faith through recalling the church back to the christological center of its faith. Together they provide a rich set of complementary, and at times mutually correcting, resources for the contemporary church as it seeks to faithfully bear witness to Christ amidst the ruins of Christendom.

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Methexiology is not a particular theory, but rather a general philosophical orientation. Therefore, in Methexiology: Philosophical Theology and Theological Philosophy for the Deification of Humanity, Nicolas Laos elucidates the significance of methexiology for the study of ontology, epistemology, ethics, philosophical psychology, theory of justice, philosophy of history, and philosophy of religion. Laos argues that, faced with the modern and the postmodern crises of meaning, we need a new myth, a new spiritual formula, for the resacralization of humanity and the cosmos, without restoring defunct totems, without using tales as «cheap» substitutes for the lack of a life-giving myth, and without negating history. In his Methexiology, Laos studies the «genealogy» of the modern and the postmodern crises of meaning, and, based on his new interpretation of classical Greek philosophy and Hesychasm, proposes methexiology as a way of overcoming the crises of meaning and as a way of resacralizing humanity and the cosmos through a new metaphysically grounded humanism.

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Luke-Acts is an impressive two-volume narrative seeking to convince and engage readers regarding the spiritual impact of Jesus of Nazareth on the Jewish people and other nations. To this end, Luke employs an impressive arsenal of literary and narrative techniques. This book focuses on a motif and its performance, the thoroughfare motif, which includes those figurative and concrete expressions involving ways, roads, city streets, and country paths. This study traces this motif's performance within the unfolding plot asking what difference the motif makes–progressively and cumulatively–to the reader's encounter with the story's emphasis on salvation. For example, why does Luke take pleasure in describing transformational events on or in relation to thoroughfares? What are the connections between expressions like «the way of peace,» «the way of salvation,» and «the way of God/Lord»? Why does Luke use such an unusual expression like «the Way» to describe Jesus' followers? How do such expressions contribute to the spiritual landscape of Luke-Acts, the intermingling of concrete and figurative uses of physical imagery? Like an instrument in an orchestra, the thoroughfare motif works together with other motifs and themes to create a captivating exploration of spiritual transformation, received and opposed.

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Barna research suggests just over half of Americans who profess to be transformed by Christ believe God expects them to be holy and only a third consider themselves to be holy. This is disconcerting. Many of these same believers hold that Adam's sin and overwhelming fleshly desires are at the root of their personal sins. The purpose of this book is to re-examine Adam's legacy, the flesh, what sin really is, and God's holiness expectations of us. Do Adam's sin and fleshly desires force every person on this earth to sin in his likeness? Is sinning daily in thought, word, and deed our highest expectation? Can we love God in such a way that we can consistently obey his commands? We will discover that the impediments to a holy life may be fewer than we think and that what God commands of us we really can do!

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The purpose of this book is a search for understanding of Paul's witness about the distinction between the Word of God as Law, and the Word of God as Gospel. To some this may sound strange. But the Letter to the Galatians, direct from the Apostle to one of the churches he founded, manifests the tension between law and gospel, along with their respective functions and unique purposes in the life of the church. The tension comes to light in Galatians 2:19. Paul preaches the tension's result, cast in terms of dying in relation to one side of the tension (law), and living in relation to the other (gospel). The Apostle's instruction responded to the conflicted life of the Galatian church. Now his message about the supremacy of God's redemptive act in the crucified Christ comes to us in our own time and throughout our own conflicted journey. Paul's message is a word on target for people whose religious struggle is, at bottom, theological and spiritual. This is the focal point of the book, Dying and Deliverance. Grace and peace to you in your study, and most of all, deliverance!

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Due to the complexity of the speech-cycles in the book of Job, scholars have struggled to resolve interpretive tensions in the author's characterization of Job's three friends. This book focuses on the significance of the ancient Near Eastern social and wisdom contexts for understanding the role that Eliphaz, the leading sage-counselor, fulfills in Job. Given the likely Edomite provenance of Eliphaz and the archaeological evidence linking the respective Israelite and Edomite schools of wisdom, Eliphaz articulates a polished wisdom tradition, the epitome of a worldview shared by Job prior to his calamity. Beyond a simplistic retribution perspective, Eliphaz draws from and refines each of the established sources of wisdom–experience, tradition, and revelation–to ground his counsel and censure of Job. Although Eliphaz is expected to exemplify the role of distinguished counselor-advocate in leading Job out of suffering into reconciliation with God, his ineffectual efforts highlight a significant purpose for the book of Job. The Joban author masterfully undermines conventional wisdom theodicy by exposing its inadequacy to reconcile the suffering of the righteous with divine compassion and sovereignty.

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The first fruits of the literary career of St. Augustine, the great theologian and Christian philosopher par excellence, are the dialogues he wrote at Cassiciacum in Italy following his famous conversion in Milan in 386 AD. These four little books, largely neglected by scholars, investigate knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, the problem of evil, and the intriguing relationship of God and the soul. They also take up the ancient philosophical project of identifying the principles and practices that heal human desires in order to attain happiness, renewing this philosophical endeavor with insights from Christian theology. Augustine's later books, such as the Confessions, would continue this project of healing desire, as would the writings of others including Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas. Mark Boone's The Conversion and Therapy of Desire investigates the roots of this project at Cassiciacum, where Augustine is developing a Christian theology of desire, informed by Neoplatonism but transformed by Christian teaching and practices.

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In an age of theological innovation and doctrinal discount, the heritage of evangelical Reformed theology is in increasing danger of betrayal. Old established understandings of «the faith once delivered to the saints» are under attack, disturbing the peace of the church, tarnishing its witness, and challenging its purity. Against the pressures of newer fashions in thought, Douglas Vickers here returns to the seventeenth-century confessions of faith and illustrates from successive chapters common to three of those confessions the ways in which, and the reasons why, traditional beliefs and doctrinal constructions are to be preserved.
Among questions examined with biblically informed insight are the relation between eternity and time and its significance for the gospel of redemption, the meaning and function of saving faith, the accomplishment of redemption by the incarnate Christ, the significance of his heavenly high priestly office, the high doctrine of the Christian believer's union with Christ, and the implications these doctrinal realities hold for the Christian life.
In a discussion of contemporary theologies, When God Converts a Sinner examines such innovations as the New Perspective on Paul, Federal Vision theology, Shepherdism, and other attempts to effect a paradigm shift in historically received theology.

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