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In Balanced Living: Don't Let Your Strength Become Your Weakness, Robert Knight develops the theme of balance as central to good mental health, to moral and spiritual health, to emotional well-being, and to social functioning. This theme emerges from his more than thirty years of experience as a Christian minister, as a counselor, as a teacher and clinical supervisor of counselors, as well as from experience as a management and human-relations consultant. According to Knight, when we are failing or falling, it isn't always because of some inadequacy or limitation; it is rather because we have taken a strength (or it has taken us) too far–a strength that has become a weakness. The signature chapter, «Balanced Living,» addresses such common tensions as success and failure. It asks: How seriously do you take yourself? What time is it in your life? Following chapters cover balanced families, balance and personality type (using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), and balanced religion (achieving healthy moral and spiritual balance). Based on common questions, the chapter on «Counseling and Psychotherapy» guides consumers of professional counseling services. Topics include the various types of mental health service providers and theoretical approaches to counseling. The final chapter discusses human developmental models (in particular that of Erik Erikson), addresses certain values implicit in the counseling process, and treats certain theological assumptions from a Hebrew-Christian perspective. Mental health professionals, pastors, and others involved in helping people (as well as students preparing for such vocations) will find this book informative and challenging, perhaps even confirming. The book also engages laypersons–consumers of professional counseling and related mental, emotional, moral, spiritual, and relational health services. Of particular value are the case studies, examples, and illustrations presented in Balanced Living: Don't Let Your Strength Become Your Weakness.

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Writing with the pastor and student in mind, Walter Brueggemann provides guidance for interpreting Old Testament texts. He offers both advice for the interpreter as well as examples of working with different sorts of passages: from narratives, prophecies, and Psalms. He also demonstrates how to work thematically, drawing together threads from different traditions. His goal is to work through the rhetoric of these passages to reach toward theological interpretation. These investigations indicate Brueggemann's conviction that the process of moving from text to interpretive outcome is an artistic enterprise that can be learned and practiced.

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Prison is a strange land, a land of deep heartache and sadness. Over two million people are serving prison time in America. Millions more are carrying the mark of prison as those who were formerly incarcerated, including large numbers of men and women who have been released on parole. In the midst of such human misery, when «loosened tongues» are freed to sing of God's redemptive love, grief is diminished and the prison loses its power.

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In this thought-provoking book, born-again Christian Denis O. Lamoureux argues that the God of the Bible created the universe and life through evolution–an ordained, sustained, and design-reflecting natural process. In other words, evolution is not the result of blind chance and our creation is not a mistake. Lamoureux challenges the popular assumption that God disclosed scientific facts in the opening chapters of Scripture thousands of years before their discovery by modern science. He contends that in the same way the Lord meets us wherever we happen to be in our lives, the Holy Spirit came down to the level of the inspired biblical writers and used their ancient understanding of origins in order to reveal inerrant, life-changing Messages of Faith. Lamoureux also shares his personal story and struggle in coming to terms with evolution and Christianity.

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As a historical inquiry and synthesis, this intellectual history is the first study to apply the ideal-type or model-building methodology of Otto Hintze (1861-1940) to Western historical thought or to what R. G. Collingwood called «The Idea of History,» for it contains succinct and useful models for seeing and teaching classical, Christian, and modern professional historiography. Religion and the Rise of History is also the first work to suggest that, in addition to his well-known paradoxical, simul, and/or «at-the-same-time» way of thinking and viewing life, Martin Luther also held to a way that was deeply incarnational, dynamic, and/or «in-with-and-under.» This dual vision and «a Lutheran ethos» strongly influenced Leibniz, Hamann, and Herder, and was therefore a matter of considerable significance for the rise of a distinctly modern form of historical consciousness (commonly called «historicism») in Protestant Germany. Smith's essay suggests a new time period for the formative age of modern German thought, culture, and education: «The Cultural Revolution in Germany.» This age began in the early 1760s and culminated in 1810 with the founding of the University of Berlin, the first fully «modern» and «modernizing» university. This university first became the recognized center for the study of history, however, through the work of Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886). Here the story shows how a young Ranke derived his individualizing way of thinking and viewing life mainly from Luther, how his life-work is the best example in Western literature of the rise of history from a calling to a profession, and how the three-way discussion between Troeltsch, Meinecke, and Hintze concerning the nature of modern historical thought was of central importance for the reorientation of Western social-historical thought in the twentieth century.

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For centuries Christians believed that God granted humanity dominion over the animal kingdom, meaning that we had a moral right to kill, manage, and eat animals including wildlife. Recently, however, environmental and animal rights activists have assaulted this traditional perspective. They argue that dominion as expressed in meat eating and hunting has resulted in species extinction and environmental degradation. Christian Animal Rights (CAR) activists suggest that the church must reevaluate its traditional beliefs in light of the fact that God's original creation was free of human on animal violence. God, they argue, did not want man's dominion to be expressed through trapping, killing, and eating of animals. These violent activities only came about after the Fall, as God condescended to our hardness of heart. CAR activists point to Christ's sacrificial work of reconciliation as a model for modern Christian behavior: as Christ sacrificed for us, we should avoid eating meat and hunting as ways we can participate in Christ's non-violent work of reconciling creation to himself. In this book, Stephen Vantassel investigates the biblical, ethical, and scientific arguments employed by the CAR movement concerning human-wildlife relations. In this regard, the book engages in practical theology by addressing several important questions: How should Christians treat our wildlife neighbors? Has the Church been wrong in its understanding of human dominion? Does God want Christians to avoid hunting, trapping, fishing, and adopt a vegetarian lifestyle? This book provides answers to these questions by detailing a theology the author calls, «Shepherdism.»

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Wesleyans and Wesleyan theology have long been interested in the sciences. John Wesley kept abreast of scientific developments in his own day, and he engaged science in his theological construction. Divine Grace and Emerging Creation offers explorations by contemporary scholars into the themes and issues pertinent to contemporary science and Wesleyan Theology. In addition to groundbreaking research by leading Wesleyan theologians, Jurgen Moltmann contributes an essay. Moltmann's work derives from his keynote address at the joint Wesleyan Theological Society and Society for Pentecostal Studies meeting on science and theology at Duke University. Other contributions address key contemporary themes in theology and science, including evolution, ecology, neurology, emergence theory, intelligent design, scientific and theological method, and biblical cosmology. John Wesley's own approach to science, explored by many contributors, offers insights for how two of humanity's central concerns–science and theology–can now be understood in fruitful and complementary ways.

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While the Reformed tradition originated with Huldrych Zwingli and was more fully developed with John Calvin, it was John Knox who made significant contributions to this movement as it unfolded in Scotland. John Knox: An Introduction to His Life and Works traces the life and thought of John Knox in a succinct and readable way. While a number of biographies tell the story of the famous Scottish reformer, professors Kyle and Johnson take the reader in a different direction, offering an interpretation of his writings. They take a chronological approach to his works–leading the reader through his early years, his exile, and his return to Scotland–allowing them to speak for themselves, an approach that also tells the story of Knox's life and ideas.

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In the mid nineteenth century, Reformed churchmen John Nevin and Philip Schaff launched a fierce attack on the reigning subjectivist and rationalist Protestantism of their day, giving birth to what is known as the «Mercersburg Theology.» Their attempt to recover a high doctrine of the sacraments and the visible Church, among other things, led them into bitter controversy with Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary, as well as several other prominent contemporaries. This book examines the contours of the disagreement between Mercersburg and Hodge, focusing on four loci in particular-Christology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, and church history. W. Bradford Littlejohn argues that, despite certain weaknesses in their theological method, the Mercersburg men offered a more robust and historically grounded paradigm for the Reformed faith than did Hodge. In the second part of the book, Littlejohn explores the value of the Mercersburg Theology as a bridgehead for ecumenical dialogue, uncovering parallels between Nevin's thought and prominent themes in Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox theology, as well as recent debates within Reformed theology. This thorough study of one of the most creative movements in American theology offers an alluring vision of the quest for Reformed catholicity that is more relevant today than ever.

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The premise of Why Christians Should Not Tithe is simple: God, having freed his people from the Law through faith in Jesus Christ, does not place on them a burden from the Law. The thesis is equally as simple: Christian giving is not a tithe. Christ challenges the believer to give himself and his possessions to the gospel cause, but the tithe fixes a limit and implies nothing more is needed. Why Christians Should Not Tithe is a thorough discussion of the four tithes in Moses' Law, Jesus' comments on tithing, and the twenty-one principles of giving developed by the apostles' in Acts and the epistles. Included is a brief review of the history of tithing from post-apostolic times to the present. The book concludes with a new paradigm for giving not based on the tithe, but on the apostles' doctrine of Christian giving. Should Christians tithe to support the gospel? Here is a study that will help every Christian discover the biblical answer for him or her self.

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