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Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of Our Lives invites readers into the lives of twenty women for whom Jewish language and texts provide a lens for understanding their experiences. The authors don't just use religious words (texts, theologies, or liturgies) like a cookbook. Instead they serve readers something closer to a real meal, prepared with love and intention.
Each essay shares one piece of its writer's heart, one chapter of experience as refracted through the author's particular Jewish optic. The authors write about being daughters, mothers, sisters, partners, lovers, and friends. They share their experiences of parenting, infertility, and abortion. One describes accompanying her young husband through his life-threatening illness. Another tells of her daughter's struggle with an eating disorder. Still another reflects on long decline of a parent with Alzheimer's.
All these writers wrestle with Jewish texts while growing as rabbis, as feminists, and as interfaith leaders. They open their hearts and minds, telling when Jewish tradition has helped make meaning and, on occasion, when it has come up empty. The results are sometimes inspiring, sometimes provocative. Readers will find new insights into God, into Judaism, and into themselves.

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Embedded in modern print culture, biblical scholars have been projecting the assumptions and concepts of print culture onto the texts they interpret. In the ancient world from which those texts originate, however, literacy was confined to only a small number of educated scribes. And, as recent research has shown, even the literate scribes learned texts by repeated recitation, while the nonliterate ordinary people had little if any direct contact with written scrolls.
The texts that had taken distinctive form, moreover, were embedded in a broader and deeper cultural repertoire cultivated orally in village communities as well as in scribal circles. Only recently have some scholars struggled to appreciate texts that later became «biblical» in their own historical context of oral communication.
Exploration of texts in oral performance–whether as scribal teachers' instruction to their proteges or as prophetic speeches of Jesus of Nazareth or as the performance of a whole Gospel story in a community of Jesus-loyalists–requires interpreters to relinquish their print-cultural assumptions. Widening exploration of texts in oral performance in other fields offers exciting new possibilities for allowing those texts to come alive again in their community contexts as they resonated with the cultural tradition in which they were embedded.

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The Apostle Paul, in exercising his ineffable wisdom, draws this magnificent letter to a close in an extraordinary manner. Certainly, he could have concluded it after telling the masters and servants how to treat one another. But, no, he did not. He proceeded to challenge them to become Christ's Ambassadors and to be proficient in this high calling, despite the daily obstacles, pressures, and temptations. What does Paul boldly state after having told Christ's followers, [t]hat we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight (trickery) of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive? That they will have a life of ease, no problems or worries, and no challenges, disappointments, or hardships? No! But, he did tell them how to conduct themselves in all of life's different phases. Further, that they were to walk in love, as Christ hath also loved us, and that not everyone hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Paul, contra to the practice today of many preachers, teachers, and church officers, knew the problems that Christ's followers faced and he boldly addressed them. He unequivocally stated that there were things appointed for them to do. Knowing these things and the difficulties encountered in following Christ, he issued a battle call to each and every follower, saying, take (up) unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Paul was forthright in describing the benefits and challenges of Walking With Jesus as well as the attitude, conduct, and conversation precluding one from entering the kingdom of Christ and God. If we are to be Christ's Ambassadors, whether it be preacher, teacher, church officer, or professing Christian, we are to know our duties and carry them out resolutely. What are they? They include, but are not limited to: discharging their duties honorably; being loyal subjects; following instructions; knowing the Word; and obeying Christ's commands. May we, along with Paul, pray the following with humility and sincerity: For which I am an ambassador . . . that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak as one of His ambassadors

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Two trends in the early twenty-first-century intersect to give this volume immediate relevance: 1) The emerging postmodern ethos in North America is calling into question many things we have taken for granted, including the purposes of the church; and 2) our time is increasingly fractious as groups with distinct worldviews become polarized and often antagonistic.
Eleven noted contributors join a growing current that sees conversation as an image to refresh our thinking about the nature and purpose of the church, and as a process in which individuals and communities with different perspectives come together for real understanding. Under the Oak Tree employs the image of Sarah and Abraham greeting three visitors under the Oaks of Mamre as an image for the church as a community of conversation, a community that opens itself to the otherness of the Bible, voices in history and tradition, others in the contemporary social and ecological worlds. Furthermore, the book shows how conversation can lead the church to action.
The book takes a practical approach by exploring how conversation can shape key parts of the church's life. Topics include preaching, worship, formation, evangelism, pastoral care, mission and ecumenism, social witness, and the relationship of Christianity to other religions. Foundational chapters consider God as conversational, the church as community of conversation, and the minister as conversation leader.

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Skepticism, Relativism, and Religious Knowledge examines the challenges of skepticism and relativism to religious knowledge after the demise of classical foundationalism. Whereas skepticism doubts our capacity to know truth, relativism doubts whether we can find a sufficiently objective perspective to adjudicate strong disagreement about truth. Thus relativism involves skepticism about rationality rather than truth. In developing a critique of responses to these challenges by Karl Barth and Reformed epistemology, Michael G. Harvey develops a Kierkegaardian perspective on religious knowledge informed by Wittgenstein's philosophy. This perspective is based on a hermeneutical model of rationality that appeals to what we hold in common rather than private and parochial foundations in order to settle disagreement. Although doubt is necessary to produce more truth-preserving beliefs, we must scrutinize our doubts as well as beliefs in order to prevent the belief-forming mechanism of doubt from degenerating into a general mood of skepticism about rationality and truth. More fundamentally, we must realize that skepticism and relativism are rooted in attitudes of alienation. Whereas epistemology aims at a non-alienated view of the world, Christianity aims at a non-alienated way of living through faith that enables both our beliefs and lives to correspond with the truth.

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Did Jesus claim to be the «bridegroom»? If so, what did he mean by this claim? When Jesus says that the wedding guests should not fast «while the bridegroom is with them» (Mark 2:19), he is claiming to be a bridegroom by intentionally alluding to a rich tradition from the Hebrew Bible. By eating and drinking with «tax collectors and other sinners,» Jesus was inviting people to join him in celebrating the eschatological banquet. While there is no single text in the Hebrew Bible or the literature of the Second Temple Period which states the «messiah is like a bridegroom,» the elements for such a claim are present in several texts in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea. By claiming that his ministry was an ongoing wedding celebration he signaled the end of the Exile and the restoration of Israel to her position as the Lord's beloved wife. This book argues that Jesus combined the tradition of an eschatological banquet with a marriage metaphor in order to describe the end of the Exile as a wedding banquet.

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What is grace? And more important, what difference do the «comfortable words» of grace make in the lives of everyday people? These are the questions to which Paul F. M. Zahl has devoted his life, and this book is a collection of essays written in honor of him that seeks to answer these great questions. From literary theory to exegesis to systematic theology, these essays are representative of the breadth and depth of the influence Dr. Zahl has had on a variety of scholars, and reflect his emphasis on the relationship between theology as an academic discipline and the pastoral impact of «one-way love» on everyday people. Contributors include: C. FitzSimons Allison, Todd Brewer, George Carey, James D. G. Dunn, Susan G. Eastman, Mark Mattes, Geiko Muller-Farenholz, Justin S. Holcomb, John D. Koch Jr., Lauren Larkin, Jonathan A. Linebaugh, Jurgen Moltmann, Heinz-Dieter Neef, J. Ashley Null, Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Dylan D. Potter, Justyn Terry, Tullian Tchividjian, Jonathan K. M. Wong, Paul F. M. Zahl, and Simeon Zahl.

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David Bosch (1929-1992) was one of the foremost mission theologians of the twentieth century, at once a prolific scholar, committed church leader, and active participant in the global conciliar and evangelical mission movements. Less well known is Bosch's distinctive role in the South African church's struggle against apartheid.
After reviewing Bosch's background and exploring key themes in his understanding of mission and evangelism, Livingston explores Bosch's legacy from the perspective of the missionary nature of the church. The church is God's kingdom community, acting as a witness to and instrument of the coming reign of God. The church is God's alternative community, simultaneously set apart from the world but also for the sake of the world, exemplifying the radical implications of Christ's new community. The church is God's reconciled and reconciling community, serving as a sign and embodiment of God's love in Christ.
For those acquainted with Bosch only as the author of his magisterial Transforming Mission, Livingston shows how Bosch integrated his theology and practice in a faithful, contextually relevant way within South Africa and the global church.

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Many philosophers since Hegel have been disturbed by the thought that philosophy inevitably favors sameness over otherness or identity over difference. Originally published at a time when the issue was not so widely discussed in the English-speaking world, William Desmond here offers a constructive and positive approach to the problem of difference and otherness. He systematically explores the question of dialectic and otherness by analyzing how human desire inevitably seeks immanent wholeness in a manner that opens it to irreducible otherness. He faces the difficulties bequeathed to Continental thought by Hegelian dialectic and its tendency to subordinate difference to identity, whether appropriately or not. Unlike many recent critics of Hegel, he argues that we must preserve what is genuine in dialectic. Granting the positive power of dialectic, Desmond offers his first articulation of a further philosophical possibility–what he terms the Metaxological–a discourse of the «between,» a discourse doing justice to desire's search for wholeness without any truncating of its radical openness to otherness. In a wide-ranging yet unified discussion, Desmond tackles such issues as the nature of the self, the ambiguous restlessness and inherent power of being revealed by human desire, desire's relation to transcendence, its openness to otherness in agapeic good will and in relation to the sublime as an aesthetic infinitude. Finally, Desmond brings this metaxological understanding to bear on the metaphysical question of the ultimate origin.
This book is a remarkable introduction to Desmond's metaxological philosophy, prefiguring many of the ideas with which his later thought is associated. This second edition contains a substantial new preface and an afterword to each chapter in which Desmond reflects on the material from the standpoint of his current thinking.

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The response of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches to those suffering in their midst has generally been to seek the intervention of the Holy Spirit to bring about healing and transformation, or perhaps, education. But what happens when the suffering continues, it appears to be innocent and meaningless, and God seems to be absent? This study, drawing on Kevin Vanhoozer's «dramatic» approach to theology, argues that the way God calls us to «perform» as we seek to communicate with him amidst such situations is to lament, and to do so with the aid of the Holy Spirit. Rather than offering such an approach purely in opposition to the more «triumphalistic» responses common in Pentecostal/Charismatic theology and practice, this book seeks to show how a performance of lament is conducive to such theology and practice while acting as a much-needed corrective to certain aspects of it. What is provided here is therefore relevant reading for both scholars and pastors alike, particularly of Pentecostal/Charismatic church tradition, who grapple with the realities of suffering and the questions such realities produce.

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