Download or read book Beyond East and West written by John C.H. Wu and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2018-02-28 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When John C. H. Wu’s spiritual autobiography Beyond East and West was published in 1951, it became an instant Catholic best seller and was compared to Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain, which had appeared four years earlier. It was also hailed as the new Confession of St. Augustine for its moving description of Wu’s conversion in 1937 and early years as a Catholic. This new edition, including a foreward written by Wu’s son John Wu, Jr., makes this profoundly beautiful book by one of the most influential Chinese lay Catholic intellectuals of the twentieth century available for a new generation of readers hungry for spiritual sustenance. Beyond East and West recounts the story of Wu’s early life in Ningpo, China, his family and friendships, education and law career, drafting of the constitution of the Republic of China, translation of the Bible into classical Chinese in collaboration with Chinese president Chiang Kai-Shek, and his role as China’s delegate to the Holy See. In passages of arresting beauty, the book reveals the development of his thought and the progress of his growth toward love of God, arriving through experience at the conclusion that the wisdom in all of China’s traditions, especially Confucian thought, Taoism, and Buddhism, point to universal truths that come from, and are fulfilled in, Christ. In Beyond East and West, Wu develops a synthesis between Catholicism and the ancient culture of the Orient. A sublime expression of faith, here is a book for anyone who seeks the peace of the spirit, a memorable book whose ideas will linger long after its pages are closed.
Download or read book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes written by E. Randolph Richards and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brandon O'Brien and Randy Richards shed light on the ways that Western readers often misunderstand the cultural dynamics of the Bible. Identifying nine areas where commonplaces of modern Western thought diverge with the text, the authors ask us to reconsider long-held opinions about our most beloved book.
Download or read book A History of the Bible written by John Barton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A literary history of our most influential book of all time, by an Oxford scholar and Anglican priest In our culture, the Bible is monolithic: It is a collection of books that has been unchanged and unchallenged since the earliest days of the Christian church. The idea of the Bible as "Holy Scripture," a non-negotiable authority straight from God, has prevailed in Western society for some time. And while it provides a firm foundation for centuries of Christian teaching, it denies the depth, variety, and richness of this fascinating text. In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be read in its historical context--from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries. It is a book full of narratives, laws, proverbs, prophecies, poems, and letters, each with their own character and origin stories. Barton explains how and by whom these disparate pieces were written, how they were canonized (and which ones weren't), and how they were assembled, disseminated, and interpreted around the world--and, importantly, to what effect. Ultimately, A History of the Bible argues that a thorough understanding of the history and context of its writing encourages religious communities to move away from the Bible's literal wording--which is impossible to determine--and focus instead on the broader meanings of scripture.
Download or read book Come Out My People written by Wes Howard-Brook and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling view of two competing religious visions---one of "creation" and the other of "empire"---that run throughout the Bible. "A remarkable offering for those who care about the interface of power and faith with all the threats and seductions that go with it. . . As I read, I felt overwhelmed, both by the mass of data and by the cunning of interpretation. I could not put it down, and expect to continue to be instructed by it.---Walter Brueggemann "Howard-Brook undertakes what few dare anymore: an introductory primer for the whole Bible...This book invites disciples to `connect the dots', in order to recover our ancient, anti-imperial identity, and to embrace a radical faith and practice that are personal and politica."---Ched Myers "Howard-Brook illuminates how ancient empires exercised control and manipulation of people not simply by political and military means, but also through the religion of empire. Throughout he makes clear that the core message of the God of creation is to call people out of empire, to refuse to cooperate with the forces of destruction and domination today."---Richard Horsley "Will become a classic for communities that seek first to receive the gracious gift of God's alternative future to Empire."---Jarrod McKenna "If we who sojourn in America are to be a community that can both name and resist the lure of Empire, we need a story more powerful than the story called America. Wes Howard-Brook knows than the Bible tells such a story. May its story be ours as we're set free from our imperial imaginations to dream with our Creator of a new world here and now."---Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Download or read book Whose Religion Is Christianity written by Lamin Sanneh and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2003-10-09 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the growth of global Christianity.
Download or read book Beyond the Tyranny of the Text written by James Henry Harris and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preachers and students of preaching need help communicating hope! They want their sermons to communicate the promises of scripture, so that people can envision a new world in which their lives will be transformed. Preachers want to experience a new sense of freedom in their preaching, and to extend liberation based on their reading and interpretation of the scripture. James Henry Harris introduces interpretation theory and continental philosophy as a resource for preachers to resist and overcome interpretive oppression, and lays out a new theory of scriptural interpretation. He analyzes philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics as a helpful guide for modern preachers, and incorporates in his analysis of the lived experience of the Black church. Harris highlights the preaching of several 19th and 20th century Black women, including Jarena Lee, Maria Stewart, and Mary Evans. Beyond the Tyranny of the Text develops a five-part method for preaching that stretches from preparation to proclamation, and demonstrates how this method for interpretational creativity emerges from fidelity to the text. Harris demonstrates his method with sermonic exegesis of the Book of Jonah. With this new process of reading, rereading, un-reading, writing, and un-writing the text, the author offers wisdom and tools for reflection and illumination. At its core, Beyond the Tyranny of the Text challenges the field of homiletics and all preachers to un-write like Jesus Christ: to get in front of the text, to understand preparation and preaching as a creative and transformative enterprise.
Download or read book The Lost Books of the Bible and The Forgotten Books of Eden written by Rutherford Hayes Platt and published by Nelson Bibles. This book was released on 1927 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presented here are two volumes of apocryphal writings reflecting the life and time of the Old and New Testaments. Stories told by contemporary fiction writers of historical Bible times in fascinating and beautiful style.
Download or read book Beyond the Bible Beyond the West written by Hanz Gutierrez Salazar and published by Mimesis. This book was released on 2023-12-01T00:00:00+01:00 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading can become the grave of meaning or the place of its resurrection. It becomes a tomb when meanings follow one another uninterruptedly, but in an automatic, mechanical, predictable and tautological way. It becomes a tomb when reading becomes calculation, when the result excludes and erases surprise and mystery. Instead, it’s the place of resurrection when meanings are not automatic, but intermittent, unpredictable, fragile and fragmentary; when reading becomes like childbirth, an experience marked by fatigue and suffering, but in the expectation of something new and unique. Our reflection is an essay of ontological hermeneutics: it is critical of “textual positivism”–which makes the univocity and clarity of a text the main goal of its task–and also of “cultural positivism”–a cultural matrix that elevates univocity and clarity as the ultimate goal of contemporary systems. This essay indirectly sketches a cultural critique and not only a theological one. Means, medium and guarantor of this ontological indelible reserve are ambivalence and paradox. We will try to follow the trace of these throughout the hermeneutic arc–and not only at its beginning.
Download or read book Summoned from the Margin written by Lamin Sanneh and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summoned from the Margin tells the story of Lamin Sanneh's fascinating journey from his upbringing in an impoverished village in West Africa to education in the United States and Europe to a distinguished career teaching at the Universities of Yale, Harvard, Aberdeen, and Ghana. He grew up in a polygamous household in The Gambia and attended a government-run Muslim boarding school. A chance encounter with Helen Keller's autobiography taught him that education and faith are the key to overcoming physical and personal hardship and inspired his journey. Burning theological questions about God's nature and human suffering eventually led Sanneh to convert from Islam to Christianity and to pursue a career in academia. Here he recounts the unusually varied life experiences that have made him who he is today. Watch the trailer:
Download or read book Reading the Bible from the Margins written by Miguel A. De La Torre and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction focuses on how issues involving race, class, and gender influence our understanding of the Bible. Describing how "standard" readings of the Bible are not always acceptable to people or groups on the "margins," this book afters valuable new insights into biblical texts today.
Download or read book Beyond the Obvious written by James B. De Young and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2004-03-18 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ...Bible students who have felt that earlier methods of interpreting the Bible, while orthodox and secure, result in rather unfruitful 'abstract meaning' will find exciting and challenging ideas in 'Beyond the Obvious'. Stephen A. Hayner, Peachtree Associate Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth, Columbia Theological Seminary Here is a stimulating, thoroughly evangelical, and orthodox challenge to the dominant evangelical paradigm of biblical interpretation known as the single meaning, authorial intent approach.... I believe the book is an impressive and convincing corrective to the one-sided emphasis of some evangelicals on single meaning authorial intent hermeneutics. Alan F. Johnson, Professor of New Testament and Christian Ethics, Wheaton College The authors offer a timely and vigorous challenge to the hermeneutical status quo among evangelicals.... The book will greatly clarify the issues in the current hermeneutical debate. David Fisher, Senior Minister of Colonial Church, Edina, MN This is a noteworthy and valuable effort for recognizing the implications of culture in hermeneutics. By making the Kingdom of God central, a whole Bible view of mission develops from this hermeneutic, deepening and broadening our understanding of God at work in the world. Donald K. Smith, Division of Intercultural Studies, Western Seminary
Download or read book Wonder Beyond Belief written by Navid Kermani and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when one of Germany's most important writers, himself a Muslim, immerses himself in the world of Christian art? In this book, Navid Kermani is awestruck by a religion full of sacrifice and lamentation, love and wonder, the irrational and the unfathomable, the deeply human and the divine – a Christianity that today’s Christians rarely speak of so earnestly, boldly and enthusiastically. With the open-minded curiosity of a non-believer – or rather a believer in another faith – Kermani engages with Christian art in its great richness and diversity. The result is an enchanting reflection which reinvests in Christianity both its spectacular beauty and its terror. Kermani struggles with the cross, falls in love at the sight of Mary, experiences the Orthodox Mass and appreciates the greatness of St Francis. He teaches us to see the questions of our present-day lives in the pictures of old masters such as Botticelli, Caravaggio and Rembrandt – not with lectures on art history or theology, but with an intelligent eye for the essential details and the underlying relations to seemingly remote worlds, to literature and to mystical Islam. Kermani's poetic school of seeing draws us in as we are carried along by his unique perspective on Christianity, rekindling our interest in great art at the same time. We are captivated by his unique and brilliant Islamic reading of the West.
Download or read book Unfettered written by Mandy Smith and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Smith's sage advice will aid Christians in recognizing the simple joys of practicing their faith."--Publishers Weekly Western culture is in a tailspin, and Christian faith is entangled in it: we do kingdom things in empire ways. Western approaches to faith leave us feeling depressed, doubting, anxious, and burned out. We know something is wrong with the way we do faith and church in the West, but we're so steeped in it that we don't know where to begin to break old habits. Popular pastor and speaker Mandy Smith invites us to be unfettered from the deeply ingrained habits of Western culture so we can do kingdom things in kingdom ways again. She explores how we can be transformed by new postures and habits that help us see God already at work in and around us. The way forward isn't more ideas, programs, and problem-solving but in Jesus's surprising invitation to the kingdom through childlikeness. Ultimately, rediscovering childlike habits is a way for us to remember how to be human. Unfettered helps us reimagine how to follow God with our whole selves again and join with God's mission in the world. Foreword by Walter Brueggemann.
Download or read book Beyond Belief written by Elaine Pagels and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2004-05-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Beyond Belief, renowned religion scholar Elaine Pagels continues her groundbreaking examination of the earliest Christian texts, arguing for an ongoing assessment of faith and a questioning of religious orthodoxy. Spurred on by personal tragedy and new scholarship from an international group of researchers, Pagels returns to her investigation of the “secret” Gospel of Thomas, and breathes new life into writings once thought heretical. As she arrives at an ever-deeper conviction in her own faith, Pagels reveals how faith allows for a diversity of interpretations, and that the “rogue” voices of Christianity encourage and sustain “the recognition of the light within us all.”
Download or read book Making Sense of the Bible Leader Guide written by Adam Hamilton and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this six week video study, Adam Hamilton explores the key points in his new book, Making Sense of the Bible. With the help of this Leader Guide, groups learn from Hamilton as his video presentations lead groups through the book, focusing on the most important questions we ask about the Bible, its origins and meaning.
Download or read book The Cowboy Bible and Other Stories written by Carlos Velázquez and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The provocateur and cult sensation Carlos Velazquez has earned comparisons to Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski and William S. Burroughs, and has been called 'a grand storyteller' (Diario Jornada), 'an icon'(Frente) and 'one of the most original and entertaining voices of contemporary Mexican literature' (Revista Gatopardo). His English-language debut, a collection of seven surreal, unrelentingly ironic and unsettling tales, portrays the comedy and brutal tragedies of a region that occupies a unique place in the North American imagination.
Download or read book The Book that Made Your World written by Vishal Mangalwadi and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understand where we came from. Whether you're an avid student of the Bible or a skeptic of its relevance, The Book That Made Your World will transform your perception of its influence on virtually every facet of Western civilization. Indian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi reveals the personal motivation that fueled his own study of the Bible and systematically illustrates how its precepts became the framework for societal structure throughout the last millennium. From politics and science, to academia and technology, the Bible's sacred copy became the key that unlocked the Western mind. Through Mangalwadi's wide-ranging and fascinating investigation, you'll discover: What triggered the West's passion for scientific, medical, and technological advancement How the biblical notion of human dignity informs the West's social structure and how it intersects with other worldviews How the Bible created a fertile ground for women to find social and economic empowerment How the Bible has uniquely equipped the West to cultivate compassion, human rights, prosperity, and strong families The role of the Bible in the transformation of education How the modern literary notion of a hero has been shaped by the Bible's archetypal protagonist Journey with Mangalwadi as he examines the origins of a civilization's greatness and the misguided beliefs that threaten to unravel its progress. Learn how the Bible transformed the social, political, and religious institutions that have sustained Western culture for the past millennium, and discover how secular corruption endangers the stability and longevity of Western civilization. Endorsements: “This is an extremely significant piece of work with huge global implications. Vishal brings a timely message.” (Ravi Zacharias, author, Walking from East to West and Beyond Opinion) “In polite society, the mere mention of the Bible often introduces a certain measure of anxiety. A serious discussion on the Bible can bring outright contempt. Therefore, it is most refreshing to encounter this engaging and informed assessment of the Bible’s profound impact on the modern world. Where Bloom laments the closing of the American mind, Mangalwadi brings a refreshing optimism.” (Stanley Mattson, founder and president, C. S. Lewis Foundation) “Vishal Mangalwadi recounts history in very broad strokes, always using his cross-cultural perspectives for highlighting the many benefits of biblical principles in shaping civilization.” (George Marsden, professor, University of Notre Dame; author, Fundamentalism and American Culture)
