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Embedded Faith explores the way Christian faith journeys of young adults are embedded within church communities. It discusses why young adults go to church, why they change churches, why some are involved in the practice of church two-timing, and what they are looking for in a church. Embedded Faith also provides valuable insight into the relationship between geographic mobility and belonging to a faith community in a transient age. Embedded Faith discusses areas where young adults are engaging and disengaging with church life, such as preaching and worship. It addresses how stage of life transitions and life experience impact on one's experience and involvement in church. This book will enable anyone working with young adults in a church context to give shape to a ministry that is more sensitive and connected to the realities faced by young adults, and will call you to the importance of listening to the lived experience of young adults as it relates to faith and church.

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From early Jewish-Christian texts such as the Didache, which present well-defined catechetical programs, to contemporary authors such as Dallas Willard, who offer in-depth insights into the transformations of one's heart and soul, systematic texts on spiritual formation in the Western Christian tradition abound. These texts can offer ministers, researchers, and laypersons much clarity and guidance for their craft. However, the spiritual formation systems that we use are also always contextually influenced; such contextual factors may make them difficult to adapt to one's local work. Rather than turning to only a single text or community, then, it can be helpful for practitioners and theorists to look to a broader set of systematic presentations of spiritual formation. By turning to a group of specific individuals and communities in each era of Western Christian history, this book will help those working in this field to better understand how personal spiritual formation has been conceptualized and embodied. Such an exploration will help us not only to compile a more complete history of spiritual formation at the level of the individual but also to glean a better understanding of personal transformation so that we might engage this craft in more informed and systematic ways.

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This book argues that a primary purpose of theological discourses is to construct piety or spirituality. If this is the case, theologians need to constantly inquire into the kind of piety or spirituality which their work may construct. Drawing from some important moments in the development of Christian theology, such as the development of the Christian doctrine of God in the early church, the role of material things in the Christianity of medieval Europe, some elements of contemporary postliberal theology, and the theology of inculturation in Africa, the book argues that theological discourses that appear to be orthodox and innocuous may actually construct forms of piety that may diminish human flourishing. The book therefore calls for an ethics of theology intended to ensure that the theologies we construct help in developing a piety that is conducive to human flourishing in the modern world, especially for Africans, who have suffered and continue to suffer unspeakable dehumanization. The book proposes that a theology that may contribute to the flourishing of Africans in the modern world is one that constructs an interdisciplinary spirituality that takes both the spiritual and the scientific seriously.

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The Bible's Prophets: An Introduction for Christians and Jews introduces the reader to the world of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and the literary prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, plus the twelve «minor» prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. These books form the second section of the Hebrew Bible–the Prophets/Neviim.
Features: Introduction to the Bible; Introduction to the Prophets; and Do the Prophets predict the coming of the Messiah?
Each chapter covers one particular biblical book. Chapter divisions: 1, 2Introduction with chapter-by-chapter analyses or section-by-section analyses / geo-political and historical background / significant events / personalities / concepts and divisions. 3. The biblical book and the Christian Scriptures. 4. The biblical book in rabbinic literature. How did the rabbis utilize quotations from the Prophets to teach their values? Extensive quotations. 5. Text study.
An excellent source for Christian, Jewish, or interfaith study of the Bible's Prophets.

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In an age of tolerance and moral laxity, the implementation of church discipline is often looked upon with disdain, fear, or incredulousness. However, there is clear biblical precedent for the practice of discipline within a local church context. While many are aware of several passages in Scripture that speak to this reality, in this work, Jeremy Kimble calls readers to observe clear biblical mandates, historic precedent, as well as theological and practical implications for the practice of church discipline.
Seeking to venture past the pragmatic discussions surrounding church discipline, Kimble articulates for his readers a lucid theological presentation of this topic. He argues that discipline serves as a warning of potential end-time judgment. As such, discipline also serves as a means to the sinner's repentance and the perseverance of the saints within that local church. This theological understanding of discipline calls pastors and congregations to faithfulness. There is a seriousness to church discipline that cannot be ignored, and likewise discipline must also be viewed as a mercy, knowing it is a means to repentance and enduring in one's faith.

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Individuals and groups reading the Scriptures for their own enrichment can find appropriate guides for Genesis and Exodus. Numbers is another matter. The complexities of ritual laws, holy days, moral codes, and conflicts experienced by Moses and the people during their forty years in the wilderness form a daunting maze. Average readers, especially Christians, are often unsure of the inner logic of the regulations or of how to apply the sound theology found therein.
This compact study starts with Numbers, following the story from exodus to the wilderness. The format is Socratic, asking as many step-by-step questions as seems reasonable and providing the answers at the back to encourage note taking and discussion beforehand.
The forty years of strife depict the deep spiritual stresses experienced by the Chosen People (and by God), and can serve our own understanding for surviving challenges as a people called by God. Another lesson is the significant role of ancient Jewish laypeople within their system of ritual and prayer. They did much more than simply watch priests handle altar sacrifices and incense. A better understanding of that ancient teamwork in worship can aid our own modern worship customs.

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The discussions about subject and validation in our late modernity tend to oscillate between the «weak» self of postmodernity («empty» or «rhetorical») and neo-Cartesian versions trying, as they do, to recover a discredited foundation. Correspondingly, the solutions advanced range from calls for a «New Enlightenment» (in the face of the resurgence of myth and «the irrational») to attempts to «re-enchant the world» (in the face of the growing threat of an impersonal instrumental Reason). The present study seeks to respond theologically to such a situation from the perspective of God's action in and towards the world by engaging two prominent philosophical/theological figures who continue to inform such discussions today, namely, Georg Friedrich Hegel and Paul Ricoeur. The upshot of this response points to a view of rationality that follows the drama of God's engagement with the world, thus involving both dying and resurrection, ascesis and abundance, suffering witness and eucharistic communion.

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The interpretation of any written discourse is problematic, which is the concern of this book. The relevant hermeneutical questions are: Do authors communicate their intention so that understanding of their intent is possible? Can a person other than an author speak through an author's text? Can individual meaning, which is personal, ever be regarded as equivalent to that of the author? Any assertion of God speaking in and through the biblical text must first deal with these hermeneutical questions. Questions of the existence and speaking of God are matters of belief. However, questions asking can a God who exists speak so that I understand His intention, and can my meaning be relative to His, these are matters of hermeneutics. The answer in contemporary philosophical approaches to texts has been to declare a resounding no, creating confusion for someone seeking to deal with God's intention for their lives in understanding biblical text. This must be addressed and not treated dismissively. When this is done a resounding yes is disclosed as valid hermeneutically, opening new horizons not only in dealing with biblical text but with any author's text. This is not Christianized hermeneutics but an answer for the Christian hermeneut.

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The Bible's Writings: An Introduction for Christians and Jews introduces the reader to the world of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles.
These books form the third section of the Hebrew Bible–the Writings/Ketuvim. Features: Introduction to the Bible; Introduction to the Writings; Women's Voices Today; Women's Voices Then; and Women's Voices: A Cautionary Note.
Each chapter covers one particular biblical book. Chapter divisions: 1, 2Introduction with chapter-by-chapter analyses or section-by-section analyses / geo-political and historical background / significant events / personalities / concepts and divisions. 3. The biblical book and the Christian Scriptures. 4. The biblical book in rabbinic literature. How did the rabbis utilize quotations from the Writings to teach their values? Extensive quotations. 5. Text study.
An excellent source for Christian, Jewish, or Interfaith Study of the Bible's Writings.

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Negating Negation critically examines key concepts in the corpus of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: divine names and perceptible symbols, removal and negation, hierarchy and hierurgy, ineffability and incomprehensibility. In each case it argues that the Dionysian corpus does not negate all things of an absolutely ineffable God; rather it negates few things of a God that is effable in important ways. Dionysian divine names are not inadequate metaphors or impotent attributes but transcendent divine causes. Divine names are not therefore flatly negated of God but removed as ordinary properties to be revealed as divine causes. The hierurgical rituals and hierarchical ranks of the church are also not negated or bypassed but serve as the necessary means of return to God. This Dionysian God is therefore not absolutely unknowable and ineffable but extraordinarily knowable and sayable as scripturally revealed and hierarchically conveyed. Negating Negation concludes that since the Dionysian corpus does not abandon all things to apophasis, it cannot be called to testify on behalf of (post)modern projects in religious pluralism and anti-ontotheology. Quite the contrary, the Dionysian corpus gives reason for suspicion of such projects, especially when they relativize or metaphorize religious belief and practice in the name of absolute ineffability.

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