Download or read book The Social Triumph of the Ancient Church written by Shirley Jackson Case and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Excellent Empire written by Jaroslav Pelikan and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-04-21 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable account by an award-winning historian details the responses to the fall of Rome by the church fathers, who set the pattern for interpreting this momentous event for all succeeding centuries. "To speak about the decline and fall of the Roman empire as 'the social triumph of the ancient church' is to look at the events associated with that 'memorable revolution' . . . through the eyes of the victors," writes the author. "The thoroughness of the victors has often seen to it that there remains no other way for us to view those events. Not only are we--for this period as for so many others throughout most of human history--denied access to the mind of the common people as they watched this history in the making, such that we are forced to depend on the documents provided by various of the elites of the fourth and fifth centuries; but among the documents of those elites, only some have been permitted to survive." Jerome, Christian humanist and translator of the Bible into Latin, represents an apocalyptic view of the crisis. Eusebius, court theologian and founder of church history, saw the fall of Rome as the sign of a new order, the "Christian Empire." And Augustine, fountainhead of much of Western thought during the millennium that followed, used it as the basis for his City of God. The unifying theme in this historical panorama is the final revisionist view of the fall by its greatest historian, Edward Gibbon. All of these interpretations of the fall of Rome continue to live today and deeply influence our understanding of Western culture.

Download or read book Trial and Triumph written by Richard M. Hannula and published by Canon Press & Book Service. This book was released on 1999 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: for saxophone quartetA slow movement which explores the beautiful sonorities of saxophones played softly.

Download or read book The Triumph of Christianity written by Bart D. Ehrman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Christianity become the dominant religion in the West? In the early first century, a small group of peasants from the backwaters of the Roman Empire proclaimed that an executed enemy of the state was God’s messiah. Less than four hundred years later it had become the official religion of Rome with some thirty million followers. It could so easily have been a forgotten sect of Judaism. Through meticulous research, Bart Ehrman, an expert on Christian history, texts and traditions, explores the way we think about one of the most important cultural transformations the world has ever seen, one that has shaped the art, music, literature, philosophy, ethics and economics of modern Western civilisation.

Download or read book Of Widows and Meals written by Reta Halteman Finger and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2007-05-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though "community" has become a common byword in the contemporary Western church, the practice of communal sharing has effectively fallen by the wayside. Unfortunately, it is often the poor who are left wanting because we no longer come together. Reta Halteman Finger finds a solution to this modern problem by learning from the ancient Mediterranean Christian culture of community. In the earliest Jerusalem church, in holding the responsibility for preparing and serving communal meals, women were given a place of honor. With the table fellowship and goods sharing of the early church, Luke says, "there were no needy persons among them" (Acts 4:34). Finger thoroughly examines this agape-meal tradition, challenging traditional interpretations of the "community of goods" in the Jerusalem church and proving that the communal sharing lasted for hundreds of years longer than previously assumed. Of Widows and Meals begins a discussion of need in community that can revolutionize the contemporary church's interaction with the world at large.

Download or read book History Making History written by William D. Dean and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book recognizes that the postmodern "new historicism" leads to a value-neutral relativism and leaves theology with an impossible choice. Dean argues that the postmodern challenge is incoherent and ineffective unless it is reinterpreted in terms of its classical American roots. Before offering a third option, Dean defends the neopragmatism of Richard Rorty, Richard Bernstein, Nelson Goodman, Hilary Putnam, Cornel West, and Jeffrey Stout; the deconstructivism of Jacques Derrida and Mark Taylor; and the recent theology of Gordon Kaufman. The third option, opening up a new possibility for American theology, is the radical empiricism of William James and John Dewey and the precedent of the "Chicago School."

Download or read book The Wisdom of the Cross written by Stanley Hauerwas and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2005-05-26 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few recent Christian thinkers have been as widely influential as John Howard Yoder (1927-1997). Encompassing a teaching career of more than thirty years and such landmark publications as 'The Politics of Jesus', Yoder's life and thought have profoundly impacted students and colleagues from a broad range of disciplines. In the words of Stanley Hauerwas, Yoder is probably the major theologican/ethicists of this half-century in America and certainly the leading Mennonite theologian of the twentieth century. 'The Wisdom of the Cross' is the only book to provide valuable secondary essays engaging Yoder's central theological concerns, together with a biographical reflection on his life and legacy. Written by scholars both from within and outside of Yoder's Mennonite community, these essays develop the most significant aspects of Yoder's thought - from his powerful defense of Christian pacifism to his seminal analysis of the politics of Jesus to his challenging contributions to Christian social ethics, ecclesiology, and theological method. The book also includes a previously unpublished essay on moral absolutes by Yoder himself. A fitting tribute to Yoder's distinguished career, this volume will be useful to readers new to Yoder's work and to those wishing to probe more deeply into the implications of his thought.

Download or read book Pluralism Comes of Age written by Charles H. Lippy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-20 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This acclaimed work surveys the varied course of religious life in modern America. Beginning with the close of the Victorian Age, it moves through the shifting power of Protestantism and American Catholicism and into the intense period of immigration and pluralism that has characterized our nation's religious experience.

Download or read book Politics and Piety written by Aaron Menikoff and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-05-29 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have painted a picture of nineteenth-century Baptists huddled in clapboard meetinghouses preaching sermons and singing hymns, seemingly unaware of the wider world. According to this view, Baptists were "so heavenly-minded, they were of no earthly good." Overlooked are the illustrative stories of Baptists fighting poverty, promoting abolition, petitioning Congress, and debating tax policy. Politics and Piety is a careful look at antebellum Baptist life. It is seen in figures such as John Broadus, whose first sermon promoted temperance, David Barrow, who formed an anti-slavery association in Kentucky, and in a Savannah church that started a ministry to the homeless. Not only did Baptists promote piety for the good of their churches, but they did so for the betterment of society at large. Though they aimed to change America one soul at a time, that is only part of the story. They also engaged the political arena, forcefully and directly. Simply put, Baptists were social reformers. Relying on the ideas of rank-and-file Baptists found in the minutes of local churches and associations, as well as the popular, parochial newspapers of the day, Politics and Piety uncovers a theologically minded and controversial movement to improve the nation. Understanding where these Baptists united and divided is a key to unlocking the differences in evangelical political engagement today.

Download or read book Sociology of Religion written by Joachim Wach and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-20 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 1947, presents the then-new subject of sociology of religion in systematic and historical theology and in the science of religion, in political theory and the social sciences, in philosophy and psychology, in philology and anthropology. Its intention is to bridge the gulf between the study of religion and the social sciences, an exercise that draws strongly upon cultural anthropology.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the New Testament written by Patrick Gray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion volume offers a concise and engaging introduction to the New Testament. Including twenty-two especially-commissioned essays, written by an international team of scholars, it examines a range of topics related to the historical and religious contexts in which the contents of the Christian canon emerged. Providing an overview of the critical approaches and methods currently applied to the study of biblical texts, it also includes chapters on each of the writings in the New Testament. The volume serves as an excellent resource for students who have some familiarity with the New Testament and who wish to gain a deeper understanding of the state of academic discussion and debate. Readers will also gain a sense of the new research questions that are emerging from current scholarship.

Download or read book The Pauline Churches written by Margaret Y. MacDonald and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-02 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author claims that development can be traced since we have not only letters from Paul himself, but also the Pastoral epistles from the beginning of the second century, as well as Ephesians and Colossians, writings which are characteristic of the ambiguous period following the disappearance of the earliest authorities.

Download or read book The First World War and the Mobilization of Biblical Scholarship written by Andrew Mein and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating collection of essays charts, for the first time, the range of responses by scholars on both sides of the conflict to the outbreak of war in August 1914. The volume examines how biblical scholars, like their compatriots from every walk of life, responded to the great crisis they faced, and, with relatively few exceptions, were keen to contribute to the war effort. Some joined up as soldiers. More commonly, however, biblical scholars and theologians put pen to paper as part of the torrent of patriotic publication that arose both in the United Kingdom and in Germany. The contributors reveal that, in many cases, scholars were repeating or refining common arguments about the responsibility for the war. In Germany and Britain, where the Bible was still central to a Protestant national culture, we also find numerous more specialized works, where biblical scholars brought their own disciplinary expertise to bear on the matter of war in general, and this war in particular. The volume's contributors thus offer new insights into the place of both the Bible and biblical scholarship in early 20th-century culture.

Download or read book The Fathers Refounded written by Elizabeth A. Clark and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-02-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early twentieth century, a new generation of liberal professors sought to prove Christianity's compatibility with contemporary currents in the study of philosophy, science, history, and democracy. These modernizing professors—Arthur Cushman McGiffert at Union Theological Seminary, George LaPiana at Harvard Divinity School, and Shirley Jackson Case at the University of Chicago Divinity School—hoped to equip their students with a revisionary version of early Christianity that was embedded in its social, historical, and intellectual settings. In The Fathers Refounded, Elizabeth A. Clark provides the first critical analysis of these figures' lives, scholarship, and lasting contributions to the study of Christianity. The Fathers Refounded continues the exploration of Christian intellectual revision begun by Clark in Founding the Fathers: Early Church History and Protestant Professors in Nineteenth-Century America. Drawing on rigorous archival research, Clark takes the reader through the professors' published writings, their institutions, and even their classrooms—where McGiffert tailored nineteenth-century German Protestant theology to his modernist philosophies; where LaPiana, the first Catholic professor at Harvard Divinity School, devised his modernism against the tight constraints of contemporary Catholic theology; and where Case promoted reading Christianity through social-scientific aims and methods. Each, in his own way, extricated his subfield from denominationally and theologically oriented approaches and aligned it with secular historical methodologies. In so doing, this generation of scholars fundamentally altered the directions of Catholic Modernism and Protestant Liberalism and offered the promise of reconciling Christianity and modern intellectual and social culture.

Download or read book The Magnificent Mays written by John Herbert Roper, Sr. and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012-08-15 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive biography of a dedicated civil rights activist and distinguished South Carolinian Civil rights activist, writer, theologian, preacher, and educator, Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894-1984) was one of the most distinguished South Carolinians of the twentieth century. He influenced the lives of generations of students as a dean and professor of religion at Howard University and as longtime president of Morehouse College in Atlanta. In addition to his personal achievements, Mays was also a mentor and teacher to Julian Bond, founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; future Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson; writer, preacher, and theologian Howard Washington Thurman; and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. In this comprehensive biography of Mays, John Herbert Roper, Sr., chronicles the harsh realities of Mays's early life and career in the segregated South and crafts an inspirational, compelling portrait of one of the most influential African American intellectuals in modern history. Born at the turn of the century in rural Edgefield County, South Carolina, Mays was the youngest son of former slaves turned tenant farmers. At just four years of age, he experienced the brutal injustice of the Jim Crow era when he witnessed the bloody 1898 Phoenix Riot, sparked by black citizens' attempts to exercise their voting rights. In the early 1930s Mays discovered the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi and traveled to India in 1938 to confer with him about his methods of nonviolent protest. An honoree of the South Carolina Hall of Fame and recipient of forty-nine honorary degrees, Mays strived tirelessly against racial prejudices and social injustices throughout his career. In addition to his contributions to education and theology, Mays also worked with the National Urban League to improve housing, employment, and health conditions for African Americans, and he played a major role in the integration of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). With honest appreciation and fervent admiration for Mays's many accomplishments and lasting legacy, Roper deftly captures the heart and passion of his subject, his lifelong quest for social equality, and his unwavering faith in the potential for good in the American people.

Download or read book Paul s Language of Grace in its Graeco Roman Context written by James R. Harrison and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul’s Language of Grace in Its Graeco-Roman Context was originally published by Mohr Siebeck in 2003 and is now reprinted by Wipf and Stock with a new introduction by its author, James R. Harrison. The book was the first major investigation of charis (‘grace’, ‘favor’) in its social, political, and religious context since G. P. Wetter’s pioneering 1913 monograph on the topic. Focusing on the evidence of the inscriptions, papyri, philosophers, and Greek Jewish literature, Harrison examined the operations of the eastern Mediterranean benefaction system, probing the dynamic of reciprocity between the beneficiary and benefactor, whether human or divine. Before Paul’s converts were first exposed to the gospel, they would have held a variety of beliefs regarding the beneficence of the gods. The apostle, therefore, needed to tailor his language of grace as much to the theological and social concerns of the Mediterranean city-states in his missionary outreach as to the variegated traditions of first-century Judaism. In terms of human grace, although Paul endorses the reciprocity system, he redefines its rationale in light of the gospel of grace and transforms its social expression in his house churches. The explosion of ‘grace’ language that occurs in 2 Corinthians 8–9 regarding the Jerusalem collection is unusual in its frequency in comparison to the honorific inscriptions, underscoring the apostle’s distinctive approach to giving. Regarding divine beneficence, Paul accommodates his gospel to contemporary benefaction idiom. But he retains a distinctiveness of viewpoint regarding divine charis: it is non-cultic; it is mediated through a dishonored and impoverished Benefactor; it overturns the do ut des expectation (‘I give so that you may give’) regarding divine blessing in antiquity. Harrison’s book still remains the authoritative coverage of the Graeco-Roman context of charis.

Download or read book Practices Politics and Performance written by Michael G. Cartwright and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the hermeneutical reflections of John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Mikhail Bakhtin, Cartwright challenges the way twentieth-century American Protestants have engaged the Òproblem of the use of scripture in Christian ethics, and issues a summons for a new debate oriented by a communal approach to hermeneutics. By analyzing particular ecclesial practices that stand within living traditions of Christianity, the Òpolitics of scriptural interpretation can be identified along with the criteria for what a Ògood performance of scripture should be. This approach to the use of scripture in Christian ethics is displayed in historical discussions of two Christian practices through which scripture is read ecclesiologically: the Eastern Orthodox liturgical celebration of the Eucharist and the Anabaptist practice of Òbinding and loosing or Òthe rule of Christ. When American Protestants consider Òperformances of scripture such as these alongside one another within more ecumenical contexts, they begin to confront the ecclesiological problem with their attempts to Òuse the Bible in Christian ethics: the relative absence of constitutive ecclesial practices in American Protestant congregations that can provide moral orientation for their interpretations of Christian scripture.