LITMIR.BIZ

What Jesus began on and around the Sea of Galilee, Paul continued on and around the Mediterranean Sea. With Acts as the stage, the biblical narrative shifts from land to sea. Paul is the central actor in this part of the drama. Luke, the playwright, traveling with Paul on portions of his journeys, was deeply impressed by Paul's challenges and his creative engagement with both the pagans and the Jews living in the Roman Empire.
In With Paul at Sea, Linford Stutzman, himself an accomplished sailor, relates key highlights of his personal experience of sailing Paul's voyages two thousand years later. Including examples of discoveries in the cities and harbors of Acts, combined with historical, archeological, and biblical evidence, Stutzman demonstrates the contribution and relevance of Paul for Christians in the twenty-first century. Portraying the modern world as a sea, the church as a ship, and a life of faith as sailing, With Paul at Sea is an invitation for today's Christians to travel with Paul.

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The question of religious pluralism is the most significant yet thorniest of issues in theology today, and John Hick (1922-2012) has long been recognized as its most important scholar. However, while much has been written analyzing the philosophical basis of Hick's pluralism, very little attention has been devoted to the theological foundations of his argument. Filling this gap, this book examines Hick's theological attempts to systematically deconstruct the church's traditional incarnational Christology. Special attention is given to evaluating Hick's foundational theses «that Jesus himself did not teach what was to become the orthodox Christian understanding of him» and «that the dogma of Jesus' two natures . . . has proved to be incapable of being explicated in any satisfactory way.» By elucidating the ways in which Hick's arguments fail, David Nah demonstrates that Hick was unwarranted in breaking away from the church's incarnational Christology that has been at the core of Christianity for almost two thousand years.

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River of God is an introduction to world missions aimed at undergraduate students. However, the readers will soon discover that the book is rich in its content far beyond the editors' original plan. It serves as a reader for people with various levels of missiological interest and competence and deals with cutting-edge issues in missions. This book introduces a new paradigm, Kingdom Missiology, which builds on shalom in the Old Testament and as Jesus applied to the Kingdom of God in the New Testament.
The first half of the book looks at Kingdom Missiology from the biblical, historical, and cultural dimensions. The second half of the book describes helpful strategies in the implementation of this paradigm. The importance of urban ministry is woven throughout the book.

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In his teaching and his writing, Paul L. Holmer (1916-2004), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota (1946-1960) and Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School (1960-1987), made many important contributions to recent American theology. One of the most insightful American students of Kierkegaard of his generation, Holmer perceived early on Wittgenstein's importance for theology, and employed both thinkers to inspire his own fresh consideration of perennial issues in philosophical theology: understanding, belief, faith, the emotions, and the importance of the virtues.
While best known for his essays in The Grammar of Faith (1978), Holmer penned numerous other interesting and original essays, some published but many unpublished, which circulated widely in typescript during his tenure at Yale. Following his death, the Holmer family in 2005 donated his papers to the Yale Divinity School Library; in reviewing Holmer's papers, the editors have chosen a selection of his most seminal essays, beyond those in The Grammar of Faith, demonstrating the breadth and range of his contributions.
In this, the second volume of The Paul L. Holmer Papers, the editors present pieces that illuminate four significant areas of Holmer's contributions: essays on Kierkegaard; essays on Wittgenstein; Theology, Understanding, and Faith; and Emotions, Passions, and Virtues. Taken together, these essays invite in-depth exploration of the thought of this important American philosophical theologian.
This is the second volume of The Paul L. Holmer Papers, which includes also volume 1, On Kierkegaard and Truth: Selected Essays, and volume 3, Communicating the Faith Indirectly: Selected Sermons, Addresses, and Prayers.

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The human spirit seems incapable of being stagnant, ever pushing the boundaries of knowledge and experience. We try to understand life through questions regarding our own existence, the nature of the universe, and the nature of God. The question of our collective heart is the external manifestation of an internal longing–a quest, if you will. This thirst to understand reality can be seen in superstructures that are scientific, social, political, and especially religious.
When considering the doctrines, institutions, and rituals of religions, we observe certain core aspirations expressed by the people of these communities. These aspirations generate from an underlying quest which seeks a way out of our perceived predicament: a salvific quest. Regardless of whether we view ourselves as religious, pre-religious, post-religious, or non-religious, we find ourselves involved in such a quest; it seems to be an integral part of our human personhood.
Using a unique framework of analysis, this book explores Christ's relevance to the quest expressed by the communities of eight major living religions–a relevance that neither degrades Christ nor demeans other «saviors.» Christ is not part of the human quest, but is well equipped to satisfy that quest.

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Designed primarily for the layperson, The Catholic Imagination is a journey through the liturgical year by way of weekly reflections on the life of the church. Through reading, thinking, and discussion, the religious imagination is stimulated and structured so the reader can reflect and act upon the richness of our faith to enter into a relationship with God. Reflections on the lives of the saints, their writings, their meaning for our times, the importance and value of creation and the natural world, the significance of the sacraments, sacramental devotions, and the timelessness of the gospel message encourage the reader to coordinate their actions with the weekly topic. Ideas on the church's artistic environment and related Scripture enhance the written materials. Special supplements are provided for Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, due to their importance in the life of the church. Just as we repeat the themes of the liturgical year over and over again, simple little lessons and readings like this go a long way in the continuing education of the lay Catholic with their straightforward message and inspirational writing style that capture the faith.

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When we read old family letters or hear stories about our great-grandparents, they hold our attention in a particular way. Events from long before we were born are about us: they tell us something important about who we are. If there's a story about great-aunt Mildred on the Oregon Trail as a young child, we want to know that story, because it affects who we are today.
Commonly we read the Bible as a historical text, making it a source of facts or doctrines: useful information, but perhaps not very personal. Yet the narratives in early chapters of the Bible need to be understood not as ancient history, but as part of the story of our family. Again and again, for example, the people of Israel of later generations were reminded, «Remember that you were slaves in Egypt»–they must understand that the story of the deliverance is not distant history, but their own reality.
<i>From the Mists of Eden</i> retells eleven key stories, from Genesis through Joshua, as family stories: Aunt Hagar and Aunt Sarai, Uncle Joshua, and Uncle Red and Uncle Jacob and Uncle Joe.

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This first volume of Sermons by Jonathan Edwards on the Matthean Parables contains a previously unpublished series by Edwards on Jesus' Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, as found in Matthew 25. Edwards preached these sermons in 1737-38, in the lull between the Connecticut Valley Revival of 1734-35 and the Great Awakening, which started in Massachusetts in late 1740. Not only does this series have significance for its place in the Protestant evangelical awakening of the eighteenth century, but it is also an important index of Edwards' developing thought on the nature of sainthood and related topics of theoretical and practical Christianity, particularly in the context of widespread spiritual renewal. To assist the reader, preceding the series are two introductions that describe Edwards' preaching style and method and provide an historical context for the series itself. Prepared from the original manuscripts by the staff of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, this series represents a significant addition to the available Edwards corpus that will be of interest to scholars, religious leaders, and general readers.

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In A Faith Not Worth Fighting For, editors Justin Bronson Barringer and Tripp York have assembled a number of essays by pastors, activists, and scholars in order to address the common questions and objections leveled against the Christian practice of nonviolence. Assuming that the command to love one's enemies is at the heart of the Gospel, these writers carefully, faithfully–and no doubt provocatively–attempt to explain why the nonviolent path of Jesus is an integral aspect of Christian discipleship. By addressing misconceptions about Christian pacifism, as well as real-life violent situations, this book will surely challenge the reader's basic understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

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An essential part of Christian orthodoxy is the belief that Jesus died at a particular point in human history. But it is not that Jesus died that has caused Christians to grapple with their understanding of faith; it is why he died that creates the struggle.
For centuries Christian thinkers have wrestled with the concept of the atonement. How the death of Jesus would result in the reconciling of the world to God is no simple puzzle. Yet, this complex topic is often viewed through certain doctrinal filters that reduce the richness of the atonement into single concrete, culturally based images. The New Testament, however, offers multiple metaphors in describing the atoning work of God in Christ.
Returning to the stories of the earliest witnesses to Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and ascension–the ground zero of our faith–offers the opportunity to suspend, if only briefly, our doctrinal preferences and step into the shoes of those who saw Jesus die and later return to them as their resurrected Lord. In doing so, we open the possibility of seeing the atonement with fresh eyes, recognizing the broad reach of God's love and learning to communicate that love in new ways.

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