LITMIR.BIZ

Metrospiritual: The Geography of Church Planting is about church planting in the city. There is an outpouring of new expressions of church being started throughout metro areas across North America. Where are these new churches being started? Maybe a more subterranean question is, «Why»? Why are churches being started where they are and why is there is a bias towards one part of the city and an overall neglect of other parts? Metrospiritual explores these questions and more as it builds off of recent research and surveys of hundreds of church planters in seven large cities in the United States and Canada. There is a deeper look at pivotal issues such as gentrification, the Creative Class, community transformation, urban renewal, and the role new churches play in all of these.

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". . . that you may become partakers in the divine nature" 2 Peter 1:4
"The theme of deification intimately touches on human identity and the actualization of humanity's ultimate purpose. It is predominantly an anthropological and soteriological expression of Christian theology. At the same time, it testifies to the identity of a Christian God, divine universal design, and God's economy, where the trinitarian and christological apprehension receives the central place. Theosis, both on an individual and cosmic scale, is not exiguous in its eschatological perspective, either. The testimony of theosis is testimony to the inexplicable mystery of divine intimacy. Deification penetrates all spheres of human existence, and can be seen as an answer to most pending ultimate questions. It is essentially practical in its manifestation and uplifting in its content, but nevertheless, always evasive and arcane in its comprehension." From the Introduction
This book contains biblical and historical-theological essays that offer innovative approaches to the issue of theosis. The interconnections between the theology of deification and the doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, anthropology, protology, hamartiology, soteriology, and eschatology are made manifest in these fascinating new studies. It is aimed both at those who are already students of theosis and at those who are looking for an introductory text. It also contains a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography for those seeking further resources on the theme.

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"I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Echoing Hosea, Jesus defends his embrace of the «unclean» in the Gospel of Matthew, seeming to privilege the prophetic call to justice over the Levitical pursuit of purity. And yet, as missional faith communities are well aware, the tensions and conflicts between holiness and mercy are not so easily resolved. At every turn, it seems that the psychological pull of purity and holiness tempts the church into practices of social exclusion and a Gnostic flight from «the world» into a «too spiritual» spirituality. Moreover, the psychology of purity often lures the church into what psychologists call «The Macbeth Effect,» the psychological trap that tempts us into believing that ritual acts of cleansing can replace moral and missional engagement. Finally, time after time, wherever we see churches regulating their common life with the idiom of dirt, disgust, and defilement, we find a predictable wake of dysfunction: ruined self-images, social stigma, and communal conflict. In an unprecedented fusion of psychological science and theological scholarship, Richard Beck describes the pernicious (and largely unnoticed) effects of the psychology of purity upon the life and mission of the church.

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This book focuses on worship in the letters of Paul in an effort to shed some light upon this key theme and bring the various dimensions of its significance into the foreground of Pauline studies. Each of the thirteen New Testament letters attributed to Paul are treated exclusively from the aspect of worship, as understood in its most comprehensive sense in the biblical tradition, with the liturgical and the ethical facets of worship held in dynamic interrelationship. The result is a fresh way of reading and listening to the letters of Paul for a deeper appreciation of their original purpose and message.

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Doing Justice: Knowing God represents a fundamentally new departure in ethical theory. Drawing on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, John Milbank, and Franklin Gamwell, it argues that that modern and postmodern moral theory is fundamentally inadequate, and that the current crisis of values can be resolved only on the basis of a substantive vision of the Good. But it goes beyond these thinkers to argue that such a vision must be grounded metaphysically in a revitalized doctrine of Being. The result is a radically historicized natural-law ethics. This ethics argues that not only human individuals but human societies and indeed the universe as a whole grow and develop toward God. The fundamental moral law is to act in such a way as to promote this development. The book draws out the implications of this insight for our understanding of the virtues as well as for social justice.

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What is the spiritual condition of infants? According to the Augustinian-Calvinist view, all people inherit from the first Adam both a sinful nature and his guilt. The result is that all infants are subject to the judgment of God against their nature before they knowingly commit any sinful actions. But is this the clear teaching of Scripture? In The Spiritual Condition of Infants, Adam Harwood examines ten relevant biblical texts and the writings of sixteen theologians in order to clarify the spiritual condition of infants. Although no passage explicitly states the spiritual condition of infants, each text makes contributions by addressing the doctrines of man, sin, the church, and salvation. If this biblical-historical analysis exposes the traditional Augustinian-Calvinist view to be inadequate, then is it possible to construct an alternate view of the spiritual condition of infants? Such a view should remain faithful to the biblical emphasis on humankind's connection to Adam and his sin but also recognize the guilt and condemnation of an individual only in the manner and time that God does in Scripture. That is the aim of this book.

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Here is a vivid, poetic, and evocative story of the painter Vincent van Gogh's struggle to become his true self. The author listens in on Vincent's most intimate, frequently startling thoughts on a host of topics, drawn from three volumes of his correspondence and his 900 extant paintings. What emerges is the portrait of an artist whose spiritual vision was borne of an agonizingly prolonged experience of the «dark night of the soul» through which his art dared to envision the triumph of joy over sorrow, of resurrection over suffering and death.
Readers will discover that in many ways Vincent's story is as much about us as about him. Tracing van Gogh's pilgrimage from being an apprentice art dealer to being called to minister, in self-renunciation and misery, among destitute coal miners, the narrative follows his winding, tortuous path into adulthood as he struggles with family, associates, lovers–and with himself. Constantly evidenced in Vincent's own eloquent words and paintings is his tussle with the mysterious presence and maddening absence of God. Vocation unveils as a process of summoning and birthing his own self, through an attempt to imitate Christ, calling forth van Gogh's extraordinary creative powers from deep within.
Adding choice supplies from other observers, Davidson here weaves his own exact, artful tapestry of interpretation, producing a suspenseful excursion into the life of van Gogh that offers profound meaning at every turn.

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Very few in the history of the church have not struggled with the dogma of the Trinity. Those who have not dismissed it as incomprehensible gibberish have found it a battlefield for division and misunderstanding. Even Christians, who adhere to the faith of the Creeds, have often found such dogma difficult to grasp. Richard of Saint Victor, a twelfth-century Scottish monk and Prior in the Abbey of Saint Victor, is emblematic in this struggle: «I have often read that there is . . . [only] one God . . . I have also read . . . that he is one and triune . . . But I do not remember having read anything on the evidences for these assertions.» Richard's theological response stems from a profoundly mystical life of prayer, which, in the Spirit, seeks to involve the mind, in continuation with the great Augustinian and Anselmian tradition. Ultimately, he presents a trinitarian model, intelligible to a Western context but which could also awake admiration from Greek theologians. Today Richard's dogmatics could represent a bridge for dialogue between different traditions. For the first time this theological masterpiece is being made available, unabridged, in English to allow a broader theological public to benefit from Richard's accomplishments. The translation offered here attempts to provide a clear and flowing text, while remaining as literally faithful as possible to the original Latin.

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Divine healing is commonly practiced today throughout Christendom and plays a significant part in the advance of Christianity in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Such wide acceptance of the doctrine within Protestantism did not come without hesitation or controversy. The prevailing view saw suffering as a divine chastening designed for growth in personal holiness, and something to be faced with submission and endurance. It was not until the nineteenth century that this understanding began to be seriously questioned. This book details those individuals and movements that proved radical enough in their theology and practice to play a part in overturning mainstream opinion on suffering.
James Robinson opens up a treasury of largely unknown or forgotten material that extends our understanding of Victorian Christianity and the precursors to the Pentecostal revival that helped shape Christianity in the twentieth century.

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From the first episode to the latest feature film, two main symbols provide the driving force for the iconic television series The X-Files: Fox Mulder's «I Want to Believe» poster and Dana Scully's cross necklace. Mulder's poster may feature a flying saucer, but the phrase «I want to believe» refers to more than simply the quest for the truth about aliens. The search for extraterrestrial life, the truth that is out there, is a metaphor for the search for God. The desire to believe in something greater than ourselves is part of human nature: we want to believe. Scully's cross represents this desire to believe, as well as the internal struggle between faith and what we can see and prove. The X-Files depicts this struggle by posing questions and exploring possible answers, both natural and supernatural. Why would God let the innocent suffer? Can God forgive even the most heinous criminal? What if God is giving us signs to point the way to the truth, but we're not paying attention? These are some of the questions raised by The X-Files. In the spirit of the show, this book uses the symbols and images presented throughout the series to pose such questions and explore some of the answers, particularly in the Christian tradition. With a focus on key themes of the series–faith, hope, love, and truth–along the way, this book journeys from the desire to believe to the message of the cross.

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