Аннотация

The Apostles' Creed is the foundation of Christian faith. The interpretive version of the Apostles' Creed formulated by the Swiss reformer John Calvin in his Catechism has been the basis of Protestant theological education for centuries. In The Faith of the Church, Karl Barth, one of the powerful and enduring theologians of modern Protestantism, reinterprets the Apostles' Creed according to the Catechism of Calvin.
The theology of Karl Barth has been one of the mobilizing influences of modern religious thought. Repudiating as he does every theological accent which permits man either self-sufficiency or independence from the action and grace of God, Barth takes seriously (as few contemporary Protestant theologians have taken seriously) the meaning of the Catechism-which is to direct man to the knowledge of God. His interpretations of the Catechism, organized according to the Questions of the Catechism, are unimpaired by technical language or jargon. They are direct, moving, and exceedingly penetrating. This is not a work to employ the attentions of those indifferent to the heart of Christian faith. It is a work calculated, however, to disturb and deepen the faith of those who imagine themselves already Christian.

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In this essay, Barth discusses the relationship between Christ and Adam as understood by Paul. Moving beyond traditional exegetical and theological scholarship done on Romans 5, Barth offers an entirely new interpretation of the conception of humanity presented in Paul's view of the Christ-Adam relationship. A valid contribution to the interpretation of Romans 5, 'Christ and Adam' is also an example of Barth's exegetical method and provides insight into his broader theological project.

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Karl Barth was the master theologian of our age. Whenever men in the past generation have reflected deeply on the ultimate problems of life and faith, they have done so in a way that bears the mark of the intellectual revolution let loose by this Swiss thinker.
But his life was not simply one of quiet reflection and scholarship. He was obliged to do his thinking and writing in one of the stormiest periods of history, and he always attempted to speak to the problems and concerns of the time. In June 1933 he emerged as the theologian of the Confessional movement, which was attempting to preserve the integrity of the Evangelical Church in Germany against corruption from within and terror from without. His leadership in this struggle against Nazism also made it necessary for him to say something about the totalitarianism that the Soviet power was clamping down upon a large part of Europe. In this indirect way, a Barthian social philosophy emerged, and this theologian, who abjured apologetics and desired nothing but to expound the Word of God, was compelled by circumstances to propound views on society and the state that make him one of the most influential social thinkers of our time.
David Haddorff is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at St. John's University, New York. He is the author of several articles and reviews, and the book: Dependence and Freedom: The Moral Thought of Horace Bushnell (1994).
Table of Contents:
Introduction by David Haddorff – Karl Barth's Theological Politics 1
Gospel and Law 71
Church and State 101
The Christian Community and the Civil Community 149
Bibliography 191

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For 2000 years, most Christians have participated in the ritual of baptism. Yet for many people today, whether they are Christian or otherwise, baptism remains a mystery. What does it mean? Why do many Christians baptize their young children while others do not? Why do some fully immerse in water while others simply sprinkle it upon the head? Most importantly, how does the act of baptism lavish the grace of God upon us, and how is its symbol significant for those who walk the way of Jesus? Consider this work to be an exploration of these questions.

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In Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals, readers are urged to pastorally consider their own spiritual responsibilities toward students by taking more seriously six representative critical discoveries that students tend to make during the course of their higher education. By doing this, it is hoped that leaders and teachers might become more sensitive to the reality that younger evangelicals are not generally «already» convinced of the Bible's inerrancy and may even be secretly and frantically searching for existentially workable bibliological alternatives. It behooves evangelical leaders as responsible shepherds of God's people to give their students the social and spiritual room they need to breathe by offering them acceptably orthodox alternatives for understanding the inspiration and authority of the Bible.

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"These sermons were prepared from 1920 to 1924. Professor Barth preached some of them while he was minister of the Reformed congregation in Safenwil, Canton Aargau, Switzerland; others in the Reformed Church in Goettingen while he was professor of theology in the University. Pastor Thurneysen at that time preached to the congregation in Bruggen, near St. Gall, Switzerland. The sermons were written not for special occasions but for the regular Sunday morning service, and were addressed to such men and women as one will find in any village or city church–to men and women in the struggle for life, waiting and seeking for God. "Pastor Thurneysen selected the sermons and arranged them according to a scheme that may be indicated by the words Promise, Christ, Christian Living." –from the Translator's Preface

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"All of us ought to be ready to laugh at ourselves," wrote theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, «because all of us are a little funny in our foibles, conceits, and pretensions.» Yes, to a greater or lesser extent, we all belong to Hypocrites Anonymous. Laughter helps us to preserve sanity in a crazed world; provides the lubrication we so desperately need to deal with irritating people and situations. Furthermore, it accents our need for humility by pricking the balloons of vain pretension.
These vivid poems are thick with allusions to literature, theology, spirituality, history, and legend. They range from sentimental impressions of the Iowa State Fair to a fantasy visit to All Saint's Night in Dublin; from musings on the extinct dodo to a whimsical take on the pranks mischievous angels play; from a litany of the likely suspects in a murder mystery to a beatnik's view of the ascension.
In life, no doubt we will become the butt of many well-deserved jokes. As Don Quixote's sidekick, Sancho Panza, once acknowledged, «Master, I confess that all I need to be a complete ass is a tail.» Laughter, then becomes, in the words of Niebuhr, «a vestibule to the temple of confession.»

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Do bullies have free rein in our churches? Who are the bullies? What is scapegoating? Is it possible to practice the mercy and forgiveness demanded by Gospel ethics while also protecting people from emotional and professional damage? These are some of the questions that Stephen Finlan seeks to answer, looking for an ethic of behavior that is both spiritually valid and psychologically wise. He seeks responses to bullying that are both «wise» and «harmless» (Matt 10:16), that do not leave people helpless against the cruelty of church bullies. Bullying has become a major concern in schools and workplaces, but the church sometimes lags behind the secular workplace in its ethics.

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This work includes essays in preaching method and a series of sermons on Romans 10, a mini-treatise on preaching. It reflects on the tasks of preaching and teaching preaching as a form of communication that is critical to the life of the church. Despite the numerous existing volumes, useful texts are still needed. The quest is for methods of preparation that can be applied with consistency, and that suggest habits for labor, which can be tedious or cause tasteless outcomes.
The volume is intended as a contribution to replenishing voices that already have spoken ably and eloquently. It is located in the praxis of one who preaches with weekly regularity, while at the same time teaching homiletics. It aims at absorbing and synthesizing proven methods, while relating them to a generation that lives in the tensions of faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the decline of a Christian consensus in the culture, the rise of secularism, and competition from other religions. Added to that is the challenge of vying for space in the public sphere with countless social prophets, such as talk show hosts, radio commentators, screen writers, and entertainers with various agendas.
What one finds in the following pages is a venture of service to the newly called, the fledgling preachers, the veterans, as well as those who teach. It dares to challenge proverbs like, «It is better caught than taught,» or «Those who know don't tell, and those who tell don't know.» It risks a word in an attempt to speak reflectively about a task that is daunting to the novice and as near to a veteran as a second skin. It is a brazen attempt to step out of «comfortable skin» to tell another how it feels from the inside. It hazards a gesture to say how to do the work with confidence without becoming arrogant.
How do you scratch the pad or go to a blank computer screen from week to week? By what means does one glean and give a fresh word before the exhaustion of delivering the last word has abated? Web sites that supply sermons are in the public domain and can easily be discovered. The challenge for those who mount the pulpit from week to week does not relent.
The labor reflected in these pages is born of the bias that all preaching can be improved with study, reflection, and critical assistance.

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In this creative and original book, Paul S. Chung interprets Karl Barth as a theologian of divine action. Chung appreciates Barth's dogmatic theology as both contextual and irregular, and he retrieves the neglected sides of Barth's thought with respect to political radicalism, Israel, natural theology, and religious pluralism.