Download or read book Mimetic Theory and Biblical Interpretation written by Michael Hardin and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For close to two thousand years, Christian theology has been captivated by a sacrificial rendering of the Gospel that renders God as retributive, arbitrary, and Janus-faced. In the past fifty years a non-sacrificial way of perceiving the Gospel, God, and the mission and message of Jesus has challenged this sacrificial hegemony. Now what began as a trickle in the 1960s has burst the dam and the Gospel is on a collision course with Christianity. What are some of the implications of this moment? What is the integral cohesion in a non-sacrificial theology, ethics, and spirituality? What does Christian doctrine look like if one removes retributive economies of exchange?
Download or read book All Set Free written by Matthew J. Distefano and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the ending to the human drama? Will all be reconciled to God in the end? Does God demand an altar, a corpse, and blood? Or, rather, is the Christian God set apart from all the other gods throughout history? All Set Free sets out to answer some of the more difficult questions Christians today are faced with. It will challenge the Augustinian understanding of hell and the Calvinist understanding of the atonement; replacing them with a more Christ-centered understanding of both doctrines. This book will also use the work of Rene Girard in order to reshape how many understand "what it means to be human." Then and only then should we ask: "Who is God?" Come explore what has become Matthew's theological pilgrimage to this point. Come discover the God of peace.
Download or read book Reading the Bible with Rene Girard written by Michael Hardin and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-01-14 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading the Bible with Rene GirardWhen René Girard introduced the Bible back into conversation with anthropology in 1978, it was all a bit scandalous. Here, for the first time, Girard weaves his life story and that of the mimetic theory with his own faith reflections and interpretation of Scripture. These interviews are a great introduction for the person new to Girard's writings and will delight Girardian scholars and aficionados alike."One of the many gifts of René Girard is his ability to unfold his theory in interviews...many of these dialogues open new perspectives on mimetic theory. Reading the Bible with Rene Girard is a wonderful example of this" ~ Wolfgang Palaver, Universität Innsbruck, Austria, past COV&R President"Reading the Bible with René Girard is an important contribution both to understanding the Bible as a "work in progress" that continues into our own lives and to introducing the ground-breaking insights of René Girard on the human condition and the love of God that breaks through to us in the historical process." ~ James G. Williams, Syracuse University, past COV&R President"This is a wonderful introduction to René Girard's work. Through it one can follow the unfolding of his theory in the context of his life. We are lucky to have this!" Jeremiah Alberg, International Christian University, Tokyo, COV&R President"Very often René Girard is at his best when he talks freely in a relaxed interview style. Reading the Bible With Rene Girard provides the master of mimetic theory with one more chance to show this strength. It is indeed hearing the master's voice." ~ Niki Wandinger, University of Innsbruck"One comes away from Reading the Bible with René Girard unable to view the Bible-or the modern world that has been so decisively shaped by it-in quite the same way ever again." ~ George A. Dunn, University of Indianapolis "Clear, conversational, and as always brilliantly insightful. There are few more accessible introductions as this little gem." ~ Jarrod McKenna Australian peace award-winning pastor, cofounder of First Home Project "In this excellent book, you are invited to sit in on a series of conversations with one of the leading thinkers of our time, concerning matters of the utmost philosophical, theological, and practical significance. This is a very important volume indeed." ~ Dr Chris Fleming, University of Western Sydney
Download or read book Ren Girard Unlikely Apologist written by Grant Kaplan and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2016-08-20 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 1970s, theologians have been attempting to integrate mimetic theory into different fields of theology, yet a distrust of mimetic theory persists in some theological camps. In René Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology, Grant Kaplan brings mimetic theory into conversation with theology both to elucidate the relevance of mimetic theory for the discipline of fundamental theology and to understand the work of René Girard within a theological framework. Rather than focus on Christology or atonement theory as the locus of interaction between Girard and theology, Kaplan centers his discussion on the apologetic quality of mimetic theory and the impact of mimetic theory on fundamental theology, the subdiscipline that grew to replace apologetics. His book explores the relation between Girard and fundamental theology in several keys. In one, it understands mimetic theory as a heuristic device that allows theological narratives and positions to become more intelligible and, by so doing, makes theology more persuasive. In another key, Kaplan shows how mimetic theory, when placed in dialogue with particular theologians, can advance theological discussion in areas where mimetic theory has seldom been invoked. On this level the book performs a dialogue with theology that both revisits earlier theological efforts and also demonstrates how mimetic theory brings valuable dimensions to questions of fundamental theology.
Download or read book Biblical Interpretation written by W. Randolph Tate and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive exploration of the interpretive process, now available in paperback, has served as a successful textbook. It focuses on the three "worlds" of biblical interpretation--the world of the author, the world of the text, and the world of the reader--to help students develop an integrated hermeneutical strategy. The book offers clear explanations of interpretive approaches, which are supported by helpful biblical examples, and succinct synopses of various interpretive methods. Pedagogical aids include end-of-chapter review and study sections with key terms, study questions, and suggestions for further reading.
Download or read book Compassion Or Apocalypse written by James Warren and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ren Girard s thesis that culture and religion arose from an original act of scapegoating murder gained international scholarly attention in the early seventies with his publication in France of Violence and the Sacred. A few years later, with Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Girard made it clear that his basic insights derived of all places from the Bible. Those insights are finally escaping the confines of academia, and coming to the awareness of a broader, theologically minded public. Many people are beginning to find in Girard answers to troublesome questions such as: Is God violent? Is there a necessary relationship between violence and religion? Why are there so many violent stories in the Bible? Why did Jesus have to die? Are we living in the end times? In clear, understandable prose, Compassion or Apocalypse shows how the Girardian perspective answers such questions, making Girard s mimetic theory and its application to biblical interpretation available to those who have little or no familiarity with Girard s work. To read the Bible from a Girardian point of view is to discover the radical message of God s nonviolent love in its historical wrestling with human violence, and its immanent confrontation with the gathering human apocalypse. ,
Download or read book I See Satan Fall Like Lightning written by Ren Girard and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rene Girard holds up the gospels as mirrors that reveal our broken humanity, and shows that they also reflect a new reality that can make us whole. Like Simone Weil, Girard looks at the Bible as a map of human behavior, and sees Jesus Christ as the turning point leading to new life. The title echoes Jesus' words: "I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven". Girard persuades us that even as our world grows increasingly violent the power of the Christ-event is so great that the evils of scapegoating and sacrifice are being defeated even now. A new community, God's nonviolent kingdom, is being realized -- even now.
Download or read book Ren Girard and Secular Modernity written by Scott Cowdell and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis, Scott Cowdell provides the first systematic interpretation of René Girard’s controversial approach to secular modernity. Cowdell identifies the scope, development, and implications of Girard’s thought, the centrality of Christ in Girard's thinking, and, in particular, Girard's distinctive take on the uniqueness and finality of Christ in terms of his impact on Western culture. In Girard’s singular vision, according to Cowdell, secular modernity has emerged thanks to the Bible’s exposure of the cathartic violence that is at the root of religious prohibitions, myths, and rituals. In the literature, the psychology, and most recently the military history of modernity, Girard discerns a consistent slide into an apocalypse that challenges modern ideas of romanticism, individualism, and progressivism. In the first three chapters, Cowdell examines the three elements of Girard’s basic intellectual vision (mimesis, sacrifice, biblical hermeneutics) and brings this vision to a constructive interpretation of “secularization” and “modernity,” as these terms are understood in the broadest sense today. Chapter 4 focuses on modern institutions, chiefly the nation state and the market, that function to restrain the outbreak of violence. And finally, Cowdell discusses the apocalyptic dimension of Girard's theory in relation to modern warfare and terrorism. Here, Cowdell engages with the most recent writings of Girard (particularly his Battling to the End) and applies them to further conversations in cultural theology, political science, and philosophy. Cowdell takes up and extends Girard’s own warning concerning an alternative to a future apocalypse: “What sort of conversion must humans undergo, before it is too late?”
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion written by James Alison and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion draws on the expertise of leading scholars and thinkers to explore the violent origins of culture, the meaning of ritual, and the conjunction of theology and anthropology, as well as secularization, science, and terrorism. Authors assess the contributions of René Girard’s mimetic theory to our understanding of sacrifice, ancient tragedy, and post-modernity, and apply its insights to religious cinema and the global economy. This handbook serves as introduction and guide to a theory of religion and human behavior that has established itself as fertile terrain for scholarly research and intellectual reflection.
Download or read book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World written by René Girard and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting an original global theory of culture, Girard explores the social function of violence and the mechanism of the social scapegoat. His vision is a challenge to conventional views of literature, anthropology, religion and psychoanalysis. Rene Gerard is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford University, USA.
Download or read book Ren Girard s Mimetic Theory written by Wolfgang Palaver and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic introduction into the mimetic theory of the French-American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist René Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars (mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and the Biblical “difference”) with the help of examples from literature and philosophy. This book also offers an overview of René Girard’s life and work, showing how much mimetic theory results from existential and spiritual insights into one’s own mimetic entanglements. Furthermore it examines the broader implications of Girard’s theories, from the mimetic aspect of sovereignty and wars to the relationship between the scapegoat mechanism and the question of capital punishment. Mimetic theory is placed within the context of current cultural and political debates like the relationship between religion and modernity, terrorism, the death penalty, and gender issues. Drawing textual examples from European literature (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kleist, Stendhal, Storm, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Proust) and philosophy (Plato, Camus, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, Vattimo), Palaver uses mimetic theory to explore the themes they present. A highly accessible book, this text is complemented by bibliographical references to Girard’s widespread work and secondary literature on mimetic theory and its applications, comprising a valuable bibliographical archive that provides the reader with an overview of the development and discussion of mimetic theory until the present day.
Download or read book Mimetic Theory and Islam written by Michael Kirwan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the 'Mimetic Theory' of the cultural theorist René Girard and its applicability to Islamic thought and tradition. Authors critically examine Girard's assertion about the connection between group formation, religion, and 'scapegoating' violence. These insights, Girard maintained, have their source in biblical revelation. Are there parallels in other faith traditions, especially Islam? To this end, Muslim scholars and scholars of Mimetic Theory have examined the hypothesis of an 'Abrahamic Revolution.' This is the claim that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each share in a spiritual and ethical historical 'breakthrough:' a move away from scapegoating violence, and towards a sense of justice for the innocent victim.
Download or read book Battling to the End written by René Girard and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Battling to the End René Girard engages Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), the Prussian military theoretician who wrote On War. Clausewitz, who has been critiqued by military strategists, political scientists, and philosophers, famously postulated that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." He also seemed to believe that governments could constrain war. Clausewitz, a firsthand witness to the Napoleonic Wars, understood the nature of modern warfare. Far from controlling violence, politics follows in war's wake: the means of war have become its ends. René Girard shows us a Clausewitz who is a fascinated witness of history's acceleration. Haunted by the French-German conflict, Clausewitz clarifies more than anyone else the development that would ravage Europe. Battling to the End pushes aside the taboo that prevents us from seeing that the apocalypse has begun. Human violence is escaping our control; today it threatens the entire planet.
Download or read book Virtually Christian written by Anthony Bartlett and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-16 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the seminal anthropology of Rene Girard and drawing out its radical implications Virtually Christian reconfigures the traditional framework of theology. Gone are the heavenly otherworld and its metaphysical God. In their place is revealed a God deeply implicated in the human story and laboring with us for a transformed earth. The identity and mission of Jesus become fully understandable against this background. The consequences for teaching and practice are enormous and especially relevant for emerging church Christians. This book provides a vital contemporary reading of both the gospel message and classical Christian thought.
Download or read book Girardians written by James G. Williams and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2012 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents the story of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion (COV&R), founded at Stanford University in 1990. COV&R brings together international scholars and educators in various fields who are dedicated to the exploration, criticism, and development of Rene Girard's mimetic model of the relationship between violence and religion in the genesis and maintenance of culture. Girard's work has generated a diversity of interdisciplinary research programs. The book recounts the history of COV&R's meetings and the research of its members and friends that have had a special role in the adventure of ideas flowing from Girard's mimetic theory. (Series: Beitrage zur mimetischen Theorie. Religion - Gewalt - Kommunikation - Weltordnung - Vol. 32)
Download or read book Questioning the Human written by Lieven Boeve and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theological anthropology is being put to the test: in the face of contemporary developments in the spheres of culture, politics, and science, traditional perspectives on the human person are no longer adequate. Yet can theological anthropology move beyond its previously established categories and renew itself in relation to contemporary insights? The present collection of essays sets out to answer this question. Uniting Roman Catholic theologians from across the globe, it tackles from a theological perspective challenges related to the classical natural law tradition (part 1), to the modern conception of the subject (part 2), and to the postmodern awareness of diversity in a globalizing context (part 3). Its contributors share a fundamental methodological choice of a critical-constructive dialogue with contemporary culture, science, and philosophy. This collection integrates a wider range of approaches than one usually finds in theological volumes, bringing together experts in systematic theology and in theological ethics. Authors come from different American contexts, including Black and Latino, and from a European context that include both French and German. Moreover, the interdisciplinary insights upon which the different contributions draw stem from both the natural sciences (such as neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and ethology) and the humanities (such as cultural studies, philosophy, and hermeneutics). This volume will be essential reading for anyone seeking a state-of-the-art account of theological anthropology, of the uncertainties it is facing, and of the responses it is in the process of formulating. The shared Roman Catholic background of the authors of this collection makes this volume a helpful complement to recent publications that predominantly represent views from other theological traditions.
Download or read book Mimetic Theory and Biblical Interpretation written by Michael Hardin and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For close to two thousand years, Christian theology has been captivated by a sacrificial rendering of the Gospel that renders God as retributive, arbitrary, and Janus-faced. In the past fifty years a non-sacrificial way of perceiving the Gospel, God, and the mission and message of Jesus has challenged this sacrificial hegemony. Now what began as a trickle in the 1960s has burst the dam and the Gospel is on a collision course with Christianity. What are some of the implications of this moment? What is the integral cohesion in a non-sacrificial theology, ethics, and spirituality? What does Christian doctrine look like if one removes retributive economies of exchange?
