Download or read book Love Violence and the Cross written by Gregory Anderson Love and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does God use violence to redeem us? What is the relationship between divine love and violence in regard to the saving significance of the cross of Christ? In Love, Violence, and the Cross, Gregory Love dialogues with two responses to this question, while presenting a third alternative in which Jesus's death is simultaneously a crime and an element of God's saving actions. Through familiar stories in history, literature, and film, Love presents five constructive models that cumulatively affirm God's saving act in the person and work of Christ while letting go the myth of redemptive violence. They affirm redemption, but one with a different shape: Instead of exacting the absolute punishment, God redeems by "making good" God's promise to humanity to secure human life. Love argues that God is nonviolent, while retaining the core idea presented in the New Testament witnesses: that reconciliation occurs in the work of Christ, and that the cross plays a role in that divine work.
Download or read book The Violence of Love written by Romero, Oscar and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These selections from the sermons and writings of Archbishop Oscar Romero shared the message of a great holy prophet of modern times. Three short years transformed Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, from a conservative defender of the status quo into one of the church's most outspoken voices of the oppressed. Though silenced by an assassin's bullet, his spirit and the challenge of his life lives on.
Download or read book Cross Vision written by Gregory A. Boyd and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned pastor-theologian Gregory A. Boyd tackles the BibleÕs biggest dilemma. Ê The Old Testament God of wrath and violence versus the New Testament God of love and peaceÑitÕs a difference that has troubled Christians since the first century. Now, with the sensitivity of a pastor and the intellect of a theologian, Gregory A. Boyd proposes the Òcruciform hermeneutic,Ó a way to read the Old Testament portraits of God through the lens of JesusÕ crucifixion. Ê In Cross Vision, Boyd follows up on his epic and groundbreaking study, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. He shows how the death and resurrection of Jesus reframes the troubling violence of the Old Testament, how all of Scripture reveals GodÕs self-sacrificial love, and, most importantly, how we can follow JesusÕ example of peace.
Download or read book Violence Hospitality and the Cross written by Hans Boersma and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2006-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a new model for understanding the atonement, sensitive to both the Christian tradition and its postmodern critics.
Download or read book How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian written by John Dominic Crossan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed Bible scholar and author of The Historical Jesus and God & Empire—“the greatest New Testament scholar of our generation” (John Shelby Spong) —grapples with Scripture’s two conflicting visions of Jesus and God, one of a loving God, and one of a vengeful God, and explains how Christians can better understand these passages in a way that enriches their faith. Many portions of the New Testament, introduce a compassionate Jesus who turns the other cheek, loves his enemies, and shows grace to all. But the Jesus we find in Revelation and some portions of the Gospels leads an army of angels bent on earthly destruction. Which is the true revelation of the Messiah—and how can both be in the same Bible? How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian explores this question and offers guidance for the faithful conflicted over which version of the Lord to worship. John Dominic Crossan reconciles these contrasting views, revealing how different writers of the books of the Bible not only possessed different visions of God but also different purposes for writing. Often these books are explicitly competing against another, opposing vision of God from the Bible itself. Crossan explains how to navigate this debate and offers what he believes is the best central thread to what the Bible is all about. He challenges Christians to fully participate in this dialogue, thereby shaping their faith by reading deeply, reflectively, and in community with others who share their uncertainty. Only then, he advises, will Christians be able to read and understand the Bible without losing their faith.
Download or read book Love Violence and the Cross written by Gregory Anderson Love and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does God use violence to redeem us? What is the relationship between divine love and violence in regard to the saving significance of the cross of Christ? In Love, Violence, and the Cross, Gregory Love dialogues with two responses to this question, while presenting a third alternative in which Jesus's death is simultaneously a crime and an element of God's saving actions. Through familiar stories in history, literature, and film, Love presents five constructive models that cumulatively affirm God's saving act in the person and work of Christ while letting go the myth of redemptive violence. They affirm redemption, but one with a different shape: Instead of exacting the absolute punishment, God redeems by "making good" God's promise to humanity to secure human life. Love argues that God is nonviolent, while retaining the core idea presented in the New Testament witnesses: that reconciliation occurs in the work of Christ, and that the cross plays a role in that divine work.
Download or read book The Crucifixion of the Warrior God written by Gregory A. Boyd and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2017-04-17 with total page 1487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dramatic tension confronts every Christian believer and interpreter of Scripture: on the one hand, we encounter images of God commanding and engaging in horrendous violence: one the other hand, we encounter the non-violent teachings and example of Jesus, whose loving, self-sacrificial death and resurrection is held up as the supreme revelation of God’s character in the New Testament. How do we reconcile the tension between these seemingly disparate depictions? Are they even capable of reconciliation? Throughout Christian history, many different answers have been proposed, ranging from the long-rejected explanation that these contrasting depictions are of two entirely different ‘gods’ to recent social and cultural theories of metaphor and narrative representation. The Crucifixion of the Warrior God takes up this dramatic tension and the range of proposed answers in an epic constructive investigation. Over two volumes, renowned theologian and biblical scholar Gregory A. Boyd argues that we must take seriously the full range of Scripture as inspired, including its violent depictions of God. At the same time, we must take just as seriously the absolute centrality of the crucified and risen Christ as the supreme revelation of God. Developing a theological interpretation of Scripture that he labels a “cruciform hermeneutic,” Boyd demonstrates how Scripture’s violent images of God are completely reframed and their violence subverted when they are interpreted through the lens of the cross and resurrection. Indeed, when read through this lens, Boyd argues that these violent depictions can be shown to bear witness to the same self-sacrificial character of God that was supremely revealed on the cross.
Download or read book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God written by Brian Zahnd and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pastor Brian Zahnd began "to question the theology of a wrathful God who delights in punishing sinners, and has started to explore the real nature of Jesus and His Father. The book isn’t only an interesting look at the context of some modern theological ideas; it’s also offers some profound insight into God’s love and eternal plan." —Relevant Magazine (Named one of the Top 10 Books of 2017) God is wrath? Or God is Love? In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Puritan revivalist Jonathan Edwards shaped predominating American theology with a vision of God as angry, violent, and retributive. Three centuries later, Brian Zahnd was both mesmerized and terrified by Edwards’s wrathful God. Haunted by fear that crippled his relationship with God, Zahnd spent years praying for a divine experience of hell. What Zahnd experienced instead was the Father’s love—revealed perfectly through Jesus Christ—for all prodigal sons and daughters. In Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, Zahnd asks important questions like: Is seeing God primarily as wrathful towards sinners true or biblical? Is fearing God a normal expected behavior? And where might the natural implications of this theological framework lead us? Thoughtfully wrestling with subjects like Old Testament genocide, the crucifixion of Jesus, eternal punishment in hell, and the final judgment in Revelation, Zanhd maintains that the summit of divine revelation for sinners is not God is wrath, but God is love.
Download or read book The Violence of the Biblical God written by L. Daniel Hawk and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we make sense of violence in the Bible? Joshua commands the people of Israel to wipe out everyone in the promised land of Canaan, while Jesus commands God’s people to love their enemies. How are we to interpret biblical passages on violence when it is sanctioned at one point and condemned at another? The Violence of the Biblical God by L. Daniel Hawk presents a new framework, solidly rooted in the authority of Scripture, for understanding the paradox of God’s participation in violence. Hawk shows how the historical narrative of the Bible offers multiple canonical pictures for faithful Christian engagement with the violent systems of the world.
Download or read book A Violent Grace written by Michael Card and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2012-11-14 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this richly designed book, Michael Card reflects on what it means for Christians that we meet our savior at a cross. Card combs the Old Testament prophecies and Gospel accounts of Jesus? self-sacrifice, seeking a renewed vision of the cross—the inconceivable meeting place of violence and grace.
Download or read book The Cross and Gendercide written by Elizabeth Gerhardt and published by IVP Academic. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence against women and girls is a pressing global problem. In this groundbreaking study, Elizabeth Gerhardt proposes a holistic theology of the cross as the basis for a prophetic response by the church to a problem that is not only moral and ethical, but also confessional.
Download or read book The Law of Love and The Law of Violence written by Leo Tolstoy and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-04-04 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This treatise articulates Tolstoy's famous dictum that it is morally superior to suffer violence than to do violence — a philosophy that has inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and countless others.
Download or read book I Love Jesus But I Want to Die written by Sarah J. Robinson and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.
Download or read book The Cross and the Lynching Tree written by James H. Cone and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark in the conversation about race and religion in America. "They put him to death by hanging him on a tree." Acts 10:39 The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and "black death," the cross symbolizes divine power and "black life" God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era. In a work that spans social history, theology, and cultural studies, Cone explores the message of the spirituals and the power of the blues; the passion and of Emmet Till and the engaged vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.; he invokes the spirits of Billie Holliday and Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Well, and the witness of black artists, writers, preachers, and fighters for justice. And he remembers the victims, especially the 5,000 who perished during the lynching period. Through their witness he contemplates the greatest challenge of any Christian theology to explain how life can be made meaningful in the face of death and injustice.
Download or read book Love Wins written by Rob Bell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions of Christians have struggled with how to reconcile God's love and God's judgment: Has God created billions of people over thousands of years only to select a few to go to heaven and everyone else to suffer forever in hell? Is this acceptable to God? How is this "good news"? Troubling questions—so troubling that many have lost their faith because of them. Others only whisper the questions to themselves, fearing or being taught that they might lose their faith and their church if they ask them out loud. But what if these questions trouble us for good reason? What if the story of heaven and hell we have been taught is not, in fact, what the Bible teaches? What if what Jesus meant by heaven, hell, and salvation are very different from how we have come to understand them? What if it is God who wants us to face these questions? Author, pastor, and innovative teacher Rob Bell presents a deeply biblical vision for rediscovering a richer, grander, truer, and more spiritually satisfying way of understanding heaven, hell, God, Jesus, salvation, and repentance. The result is the discovery that the "good news" is much, much better than we ever imagined. Love wins.
Download or read book God and Empire written by John Dominic Crossan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author and prominent New Testament scholar draws parallels between 1st–century Roman Empire and 21st–century United States, showing how the radical messages of Jesus and Paul can lead us to peace today Using the tools of expert biblical scholarship and a keen eye for current events, bestselling author John Dominic Crossan deftly presents the tensions exhibited in the Bible between political power and God’s justice. Through the revolutionary messages of Jesus and Paul, Crossan reveals what the Bible has to say about land and economy, violence and retribution, justice and peace, and ultimately, redemption. He examines the meaning of “kingdom of God” prophesized by Jesus, and the equality recommended to Paul by his churches, contrasting these messages of peace against the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision from the book of Revelations, that has been co-opted by modern right-wing theologians and televangelists to justify the United State’s military actions in the Middle East.
Download or read book Christus Victor written by Gustaf Aulen and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2003-09-05 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gustaf Aulen's classic work, 'Christus Victor', has long been a standard text on the atonement. Aulen applies history of ideas' methodology to historical theology in tracing the development of three views of the atonement. Aulen asserts that in traditional histories of the doctrine of the atonement only two views have usually been presented, the objective/Anselmian and the subjective/Aberlardian views. According to Aulen, however, there is another type of atonement doctrine in which Christ overcomes the hostile powers that hold humanity in subjection, at the same time that God in Christ reconciles the world to Himself. This view he calls the "classic" idea of the atonement. Because of its predominance in the New Testament, in patristic writings, and in the theology of Luther, Aulen holds that the classic type may be called the distinctively Christian idea of the atonement.
