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This book records a set of dialogues between scientists, theologians, and philosophers on what can be done to prevent a global slide into ecological collapse. It is a uniquely multidisciplinary book that exemplifies the kinds of cultural and scholarly dialogue urgently needed to address the threat to the earth represented by our super-industrial civilization. The authors debate the conventional account of nature conservation as protection from human activity. In contrast to standard accounts, they argue what is needed is a new relationship between human beings and the earth that recovers a primal respect for all things. This approach seeks to recover forgotten resources in ancient cultures and in the foundational narratives of Western civilization contained in the Bible and in the culture of classical Greece.

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The Shape of Participation is a work of constructive theology addressed to theologians, seminarians, and thoughtful pastors. Owens engages and deepens recent popular discussions of church practices by approaching practices from the church Fathers' understanding of the church's participation in God. Through a wide-ranging engagement with theologians, both ancient and contemporary–including Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Herbert McCabe–Owens argues that the embodied practices of the church are the church's participation in the life of God, making the church Jesus' own continued, peaceable embodiment in and for the world. This book is for theologians, pastors, and anyone who wants a deeper understanding of how the visible presence of God's church is extraordinarily good news in a violent world.

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This volume of ecumenical documents, key texts, and critical essays is the first collection of its kind exclusively dedicated to Pentecostalism and its contributions to Christian unity. In the first part, a cadre of internationally renowned scholars addresses the ecumenical heritage and perspectives of the Pentecostal movement since the early twentieth century. Part 2 offers a collection of final reports from international dialogues with Pentecostal participation. The final part contains programmatic essays in response to The Nature and Mission of the Church, a major study on the doctrine of the church published by the World Council of Churches. Most of these essays were first presented by the ecumenical-studies group of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, currently the only organized ecumenical think tank among Pentecostals in North America. Since its formation in 2001, the group has encouraged Pentecostal participation in ecumenical concerns, has hosted Roman Catholic-Pentecostal conversations at the annual meeting of the Society, has invited international scholarly debates on ecumenical matters, and has engaged in the study of ecumenical consensus statements. The essays and documents in this collection model the dedication and commitment among Pentecostals today that engage the challenges and opportunities of Christian unity from the perspective of a tradition that has often been falsely accused of being anti-ecumenical. This collection presents an invaluable resource for teachers, scholars, and pastors interested in engaging the global Christian arena from the worldwide and ecumenical image of Pentecostalism.
Contributors Carmelo E. Alvarez Harold D. Hunter Douglas Jacobsen Veli-Matti Karkkainen Frank D. Macchia Raymond R. Pfister Cecil M. Robeck Jr. Paul van der Laan Wolfgang Vondey

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In this important contribution to post-colonial theological studies, the argument is made that religious practices and teachings imposed on colonized peoples are transmuted in the process of colonization. The very theological discourse that is foisted on the colonized people becomes for them, a liberating possibility through a process of theological transformation from within. This is offered as an explanation of the mechanisms which have brought about the emergence of the current post-colonial consciousness. However, what is distinctive and unique about this treatment is that it pursues these questions with two basic assumptions. The first is that the religious expressions of colonized people bear the outward marks of the hegemonic theological discourse imposed on them, but change its content through a process called «transfiguration.» The second is that the crises of Western Christianity since the Reformation and the Conquest of the Americas enunciates the very process through which post-colonial religious hybridity is made possible.
This book unfolds in three parts. The first (the «pre-text») deals with the colonial practice of the missionary enterprise using Latin America as a case study. The second (the «text») presents the crisis of Western modernity as interpreted by insiders and outsiders of the modern project. The third (the «con-text») analyses some discursive post-colonial practices that are theologically grounded even when used in discourses that are not religious.
Some of the questions that this project engages are: Is there a post-colonial understanding of sin and evil? How can we understand eschatology in post-colonial terms? What does it mean to be the church in a post-colonial framework? For those interested in the intersection of theology and post-colonial studies, this book will be important reading.

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This collection of essays was originally presented at the St. Margaret's Consultation on Doctrine, Liturgy, and Preaching held at St. Margaret's Anglican Church in Winnipeg, Canada in 2008. They consider human sexuality and marriage from a distinctly theological rather than polemical standpoint, aiming to avoid frequently polarized debates. The interesting commonality indicated in the articles is that sex and marriage are not about self-fulfillment, but are outwardly directed, aimed toward the other person, toward growth, maturity, and deepened spirituality, for the benefit of the church, for productive good, and for children. The first section explores theological and ethical issues surrounding human sexuality and aims toward understanding the nature of relationships in these contexts. The second section explores the spiritual nature of marriage and the history of thinking on marriage and family within Christian theology. For those interested in pursuing truly theological engagement with marriage and sexuality, this collection is required reading.

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As an introduction to Christian systematic theology, this volume treats all the main theological topics-from God to last things-seeking to explicate critically the understanding of them implicit in Christian faith itself in terms at once appropriate to Jesus Christ and credible to human existence. Its criteria, accordingly, are the ultimate criteria of on the one hand, specifically Christian experience of Jesus as expressed by the apostolic witness, and on the other hand, generically human experience of existence as expressed by a sound philosophy. And, as befits an introduction, it employs these same criteria to clarify the process of actually doing Christian systematic theology. Thus it begins by explaining both what such a theology has to do and how it is to do it, and ends by considering what it means to do theology as a Christian calling, particularly as a professional theologian.

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If prophets are called to unveil and expose the illegitimacy of those principalities masquerading as «the right» and purportedly using their powers for «the good,» then Will D. Campbell is one of the foremost prophets in American religious history. Like Clarence Jordan and Dorothy Day, Campbell incarnates the radical iconoclastic vocation of standing in contraposition to society, naming and smashing the racial, economic, and political idols that seduce and delude.
Despite an action-packed life, Campbell is no activist seeking to control events and guarantee history's right outcomes. Rather, Campbell has committed his life to the proposition that Christ has already set things right. Irrespective of who one is, or what one has done, each human being is reconciled to God and one another, now and forever. History's most scandalous message is, therefore, «Be reconciled!» because once that imperative is taken seriously, social constructs like race, ethnicity, gender, and nationality are at best irrelevant and at worst idolatrous.
Proclaiming that far too many disciples miss the genius of Christianity's good news (the kerygma) of reconciliation, this Ivy League-educated preacher boldly and joyfully affirms society's so-called least one, cultivating community with everyone from civil rights leaders and Ku Klux Klan militants, to the American literati and exiled convicts. Except for maybe the self-righteous, none is excluded from the beloved community.
For the first time in nearly fifty years, Campbell's provocative Race and Renewal of the Church is here made available. Gayraud Wilmore called Campbell's foundational work «an unsettling reading experience,» but one that articulates an unwavering «confidence in the victory which God can bring out of the weakness of the church.»

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No discipline has been more uniformly derided for a longer period than metaphysics. Of the ancient and medieval sciences now in disrepute, even astrology and alchemy get better press. The most devastating–and currently the most influential–attack on metaphysics has come from a broad spectrum of thinkers including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Levinas, Derrida, and Milbank, who have argued that metaphysics is the root of modern nihilism and totalitarianism.
Anthony Mansueto puts this claim to the test, developing a historical sociology of metaphysics that analyzes the social basis and political valence of metaphysical systems. Mansueto does this globally and cross-culturally, engaging not only the Hellenic tradition and its extension into medieval Christendom and Dar-al-Islam, but also the Indian and Chinese traditions. Specifically, Mansueto argues that far from representing the roots of nihilism or modern state terror, metaphysics emerges (and continues to be necessary) as a way to ground meaning and value in societies–especially in market societies in which these have become problematic. Metaphysics tends to restrain exploitation and to encourage the redirection of surplus toward activities that promote development of human capacities.
Knowing God: The Journey of the Dialectic concludes with an outline of a new dialectical metaphysics that reconciles a Buddhist metaphysics of interdependence in the Hua-yen tradition with a historicized metaphysics of Esse, yielding results that look startlingly like the dao xue, or neo-Confucianism of Song China. Mansueto shows how such a metaphysics can ground meaning and value while answering postmodern concerns to safeguard difference.

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Michael Haneke is one of Europe's most successful and controversial film directors. Awarded the Palme d'Or and numerous other international awards, Haneke has contributed to and shaped contemporary auteur cinema and is becoming more and more popular among academics and cinephiles. His mission is as noble as it is provocative: he wants «to rape the audience into independence,» to wake them up from the lethargy caused by the entertainment industry. The filmic language he employs in this mission is both highly characteristic and efficient, and yet his methods are open to criticism for their violence toward and manipulation of the audience. The aim of this book is to analyze critically Haneke's aesthetics, his message, as well as his ethical motivation from an interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective. Contributors to the book come from a variety of academic disciplines and cultural backgrounds-European and North American.

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The Reformer Martin Luther is the source of endless fascination and dispute. Not only his antagonists but also his supporters have created a host of representations of his thought. On the one hand, Catholic and other similar voices have accused Luther of being the major agent in the birth of modern secularism. On the other hand, Lutherans themselves are divided on the meaning of Reformation. In view of all these interpretations and dismissals of Luther and the Lutheran Reformation, it requires a certain boldness to claim that Luther's theology is intellectually fascinating and contains exceptional resources. This is precisely what the present volume claims. The studies collected in this volume aim at showing in which sense Luther remains a fully Catholic and genuinely Augustinian theologian who is not so much a forerunner of problematic modernity as a representative of classical Christianity. At the same time, Luther's theology contains ideas that can be made fruitful in dialogue with currents like communitarianism or Radical Orthodoxy. The volume consists of articles written by scholars affiliated with the project known as «the New Finnish Interpretation of Luther.» The topics include Luther's theological anthropology, Trinity, christology, sacraments, faith, theology of the cross, the Virgin Mary, sexuality, music, and the spiritual reading of the Holy Scriptures.

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