Download or read book Early Christian Commentary of the Sermon on the Mount written by Elliott Nesch and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What the world needs today is not a new definition of Christianity, but a present-day demonstration of Christianity. Rather than re-define Christianity to accommodate our present generation, we must re-discover Christianity from the apostolic generation. In this regard, the early Christian writings are a helpful tool.During the first three centuries of Christian history, many books, commentaries, letters and sermons were being circulated among the ancient Church. Many of these writings have survived until our own time. Capturing the true essence of apostolic Christianity, the early disciples provide an extremely valuable post-New Testament history and commentary on the New Testament Scriptures. Today, their writings provide us a record of primitive Christianity during the time period directly following Jesus Christ and the Apostles. The beliefs and practices found within modern Christendom most often part ways with early Christianity when it comes to interpretation of the Lord's sayings in the Sermon on the Mount and participation in the divine life. Moreover, there are men of education and expertise, esteemed widely as safe and sound expositors of Scripture, who make it their business to hinder the disciples of Christ who would go up the mountain where Christ's own words are to be heard. A substantial number of the early Christians-Barnabas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Apollonius, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Methodius, and Origen-died as martyrs. Like the apostles, the early Christians were willing to die for their beliefs. Therefore we ought to seriously consider what they have to say to us today, especially when it comes to their understanding of history's greatest sermon ever preached. May the reader be edified and blessed as we ascend the mountain together with the early Christians to hear the words of eternal life from our Lord Jesus Christ. . . .

Download or read book Early Christian Writings written by and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1987-04-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writings in this volume cast a glimmer of light upon the emerging traditions and organization of the infant church, during an otherwise little-known period of its development. A selection of letters and small-scale theological treatises from a group known as the Apostolic Fathers, several of whom were probably disciples of the Apostles, they provide a first-hand account of the early Church and outline a form of early Christianity still drawing on the theology and traditions of its parent religion, Judaism. Included here are the first Epistle of Bishop Clement of Rome, an impassioned plea for harmony; The Epistle of Polycarp; The Epistle of Barnabas; The Didache; and the Seven Epistles written by Ignatius of Antioch - among them his moving appeal to the Romans that they grant him a martyr's death.

Download or read book The Life of Christians During the First Three Centuries of the Church a Series of Sermons written by Christian Ludwig Couard and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-08-16 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of the original, first published in 1841.

Download or read book Augustine s Theology of Preaching written by Peter T. Sanlon and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarship has painted many pictures of Augustinethe philosophical theologian, the refuter of heresy, or contributor to doctrines like Original Sinbut the picture of Augustine as preacher, says Sanlon, has been seriously neglected. When academics marginalize the Sermones ad Populum, the real Augustine is not presented accurately. In this study, Sanlon does more, however, than rehabilitate a neglected view of Augustine. How do the theological convictions that Augustine brought to his preaching challenge, sustain, or shape our work today? By presenting Augustine's thought on preaching to contemporary readers Sanlon contributes a major new piece to the ongoing reconsideration of preaching in the modern day, a consideration that is relevant to all branches of the twenty-first century church.

Download or read book The Myth of Persecution written by Candida Moss and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors. According to cherished church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today. Moss, however, exposes that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these martyrdom stories provide.

Download or read book Cold Case Christianity written by J. Warner Wallace and published by David C Cook. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an L. A. County homicide detective and former atheist, Cold-Case Christianity examines the claims of the New Testament using the skills and strategies of a hard-to-convince criminal investigator. Christianity could be defined as a “cold case”: it makes a claim about an event from the distant past for which there is little forensic evidence. In Cold-Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace uses his nationally recognized skills as a homicide detective to look at the evidence and eyewitnesses behind Christian beliefs. Including gripping stories from his career and the visual techniques he developed in the courtroom, Wallace uses illustration to examine the powerful evidence that validates the claims of Christianity. A unique apologetic that speaks to readers’ intense interest in detective stories, Cold-Case Christianity inspires readers to have confidence in Christ as it prepares them to articulate the case for Christianity.

Download or read book A History of Preaching Volume 2 written by Rev. O.C. Edwards JR. and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 941 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of Preaching brings together narrative history and primary sources to provide the most comprehensive guide available to the story of the church's ministry of proclamation. Bringing together an impressive array of familiar and lesser-known figures, Edwards paints a detailed, compelling picture of what it has meant to preach the gospel. Pastors, scholars, and students of homiletics will find here many opportunities to enrich their understanding and practice of preaching. Ecumenical in scope, fair-minded in presentation, appreciative of the contributions that all the branches of the church have made to the story of what it means to develop, deliver, and listen to a sermon, A History of Preaching will be the definitive resource for anyone who wishes to preach or to understand preaching's role in living out the gospel. Volume 2 contains primary source material on preaching drawn from the entire scope of the church's twenty centuries. The author has written an introduction to each selection, placing it in its historical context and pointing to its particular contribution. Each chapter in Volume 2 is geared to its companion chapter in Volume 1's narrative history. Volume 1, available separately as 9781501833779, contains Edwards's magisterial retelling of the story of Christian preaching's development from its Hellenistic and Jewish roots in the New Testament, through the late-twentieth century's discontent with outdated forms and emphasis on new modes of preaching such as narrative. Along the way the author introduces us to the complexities and contributions of preachers, both with whom we are already acquainted, and to whom we will be introduced here for the first time. Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Bernard, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, Rauschenbusch, Barth; all of their distinctive contributions receive careful attention. Yet lesser-known figures and developments also appear, from the ninth-century reform of preaching championed by Hrabanus Maurus, to the reference books developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the mendicant orders to assist their members' preaching, to Howell Harris and Daniel Rowlands, preachers of the eighteenth-century Welsh revival, to Helen Kenyon, speaking as a layperson at the 1950 Yale Beecher lectures about the view of preaching from the pew. "...'This work is expected to be the standard text on preaching for the next 30 years,' says Ann K. Riggs, who staffs the NCC's Faith and Order Commission. Author Edwards, former professor of preaching at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, is co-moderator of the commission, which studies church-uniting and church-dividing issues. 'A History of Preaching is ecumenical in scope and will be relevant in all our churches; we all participate in this field,' says Riggs...." from EcuLink, Number 65, Winter 2004-2005 published by the National Council of Churches

Download or read book The Witness of History to Christ written by Frederic William Farrar and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs written by David W. Bercot and published by Hendrickson Publishers. This book was released on 2021-04-18 with total page 1305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in the ways of the early church has never been more intense. What did early Christians believe about the divinity of Christ? What were the beliefs of those who sat at the feet of Jesus’ disciples? Now, for the first time, a unique dictionary has been developed to allow easy access to the ancient material and furnish ready answers to these questions and others like them. David W. Bercot has painstakingly combed the writings of these early church leaders and categorized the heart of their thinking into more than 700 theological, moral, and historical topics to create A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs. Wonderfully suited for devotional or thematic study as well as sermon illustration, this resource offers a window into the world of the early church and affords special opportunity to examine topically the thoughts of students of the original apostles, as well as other great lights in the life of the early church. Collects relevant comments on key Christian concepts from prominent figures such as Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Rome, and Hippolytus Includes key biblical verses associated with a given topic Offers brief definitions of unfamiliar terms or concepts, allowing easy access to the ancient material Provides a “who’s who” of ante-Nicene Christianity to put in context the ancient Christian writers Discusses more than 700 key theological, moral, and historical topics Gives strategic cross-references to related topics Functions as a topical index to the writings of Ante-Nicene Fathers

Download or read book The Song of Songs written by Jr. Norris, Richard A. and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2003-11-18 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Song of Songs, traditionally attributed to Solomon, is a collection of lyrics that celebrate in earthly terms the love of a bridegroom and a bride. Throughout the course of early Christian history, the Song of Songs was widely read as an allegory of the love of Christ both for the church and for its individual members. In reading the Song this way, Christians were following in the steps of Jewish exegetes who saw the Song as celebrating the love of God for Israel. In The Song of Songs, the inaugural volume of The Church's Bible, Richard A. Norris Jr. uses commentaries and sermons from the church's first millennium to illustrate the original Christian understanding of Solomon's beautiful poem. In recent times, the Song of Songs has been more a focus of literary than of religious interest, but Norris's work shows that for early Christians, this text was counted, with the Psalms and the Gospels, among those Scriptures that touched most deeply on the believer's relation to God. All in all, Norris's Song of Songs is a masterful work that aptly acquaints contemporary readers with the church's traditional way of discerning in this text a guide to the character of Christian belief and life. This volume -- and the entire Church's Bible series -- will be welcomed by preachers, teachers, students, and general readers alike.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon written by Peter McCullough and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-04 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarly interest in the early modern sermon has flourished in recent years, driven by belated recognition of the crucial importance of preaching to religious, cultural, and political life in early modern Britain. The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon is the first book to survey this rich new field for both students and specialists. It is divided into sections devoted to sermon composition, delivery, and reception; sermons in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; English Sermons, 1500-1660; and English Sermons, 1660-1720. The twenty-five original essays it contains represent emerging areas of interest, including research on sermons in performance, pulpit censorship, preaching and ecclesiology, women and sermons, the social, economic, and literary history of sermons in manuscript and print, and non-elite preaching. The Handbook also responds to the recently recognised need to extend thinking about the 'early modern' across the watershed of the civil wars and interregnum, on both sides of which sermons and preaching remained a potent instrument of religious politics and a literary form of central importance to British culture. Complete with appendices of original documents of sermon theory, reception, and regulation, and generously illustrated, this is a comprehensive guide to the rhetorical, ecclesiastical, and historical precepts essential to the study of the early modern sermon in Britain.

Download or read book In the Shadow of the Temple written by Oskar Skarsaune and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oskar Skarsaune gives us a new look into the development of the early church and its practice by showing us the evidence of interaction between the early Christians and rabbinic Judaism. He offers numerous fascinating episodes and glimpses into this untold story.

Download or read book The Early Christians in Their Own Words written by Eberhard Arnold and published by The Plough Publishing House. This book was released on 1997 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these firsthand accounts of the early church, the spirit of Pentecost burns with prophetic force through the fog enveloping the modern church. A clear and vibrant faith lives on in these writings, providing a guide for Christians today. Its stark simplicity and revolutionary fervor will stun those lulled by conventional Christianity.The Early Christians is a topically arranged collection of primary sources. It includes extra-biblical sayings of Jesus and excerpts from Origen, Tertullian, Polycarp, Clement of Alexandria, Justin, Irenaeus, Hermas, Ignatius, and others. Equally revealing material from pagan contemporaries - critics, detractors, and persecutors - is included as well.

Download or read book The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering written by Valeriy A. Alikin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research has made a strong case for the view that Early Christian communities, sociologically considered, functioned as voluntary religious associations. This is similar to the practice of many other cultic associations in the Greco-Roman world of the first century CE. Building upon this new approach, along with a critical interpretation of all available sources, this book discusses the social and religio-historical background of the weekly gatherings of Christians and presents a fresh reconstruction of how the weekly gatherings originated and developed in both form and content. The topics studied here include the origins of the observance of Sunday as the weekly Christian feast-day, the shape and meaning of the weekly gatherings of the Christian communities, and the rise of customs such as preaching, praying, singing, and the reading of texts in these meetings.

Download or read book Preacher and Audience written by Cunningham and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-12 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together thirteen studies on Greek-speaking preachers and audiences in a period from the beginning of the second century A.D. to the beginning of the tenth century which has largely been neglected in the modern literature. The chapters represent a collection of case studies of individual preachers or periods of homiletic activity and cover themes including the identity of Greek-speaking preachers, the circumstances of delivery, the different genres of homiletic, the adaptation of the tropes of Classical approaches, the preparation, redaction and transmission of sermons, and the interaction between preacher and audience. Each chapter is accompanied by a summary bibliography of the most important primary sources and secondary literature.

Download or read book Lectures on the Early History of Christianity in England with Sermons Delivered on Several Occasions written by Thomas Winthrop Coit and published by . This book was released on 1859 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Lectures on the History of Preaching written by John Ker and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: