Download or read book The Widening of God s Mercy written by Christopher B. Hays and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh, deeply biblical account of God’s expanding grace and mercy, tracing how the Bible’s narrative points to the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in Christian communities Discussions of the Bible and human sexuality often focus on a scattered handful of specific passages. But arguments about this same set of verses have reached an impasse, two leading biblical scholars believe; these debates are missing the forest for the trees. In this learned and beautifully written book, Richard and Christopher Hays explore a more expansive way of listening to the overarching story that scripture tells. They remind us of a dynamic and gracious God who is willing to change his mind, consistently broadening his grace to include more and more people. Those who were once outsiders find themselves surprisingly embraced within the people of God, while those who sought to enforce exclusive boundaries are challenged to rethink their understanding of God’s ways. The authors—a father and son—point out ongoing conversations within the Bible in which traditional rules, customs, and theologies are rethought. They argue that God has already gone on ahead of our debates and expanded his grace to people of different sexualities. If the Bible shows us a God who changes his mind, they say, perhaps today’s Christians should do the same. The book begins with the authors’ personal experiences of controversies over sexuality and closes with Richard Hays’s epilogue reflecting on his own change of heart and mind.
Download or read book A Wideness in God s Mercy written by Clark H. Pinnock and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 1992 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers "new possibilities of interpretation for religious pluralism." Covers topics like God's global reach in salvation, a Christology of Grace, and how Scripture views other religions.
Download or read book Filled to Be Emptied written by Brandan J. Robertson and published by Presbyterian Publishing Corp. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself . . ." (Philippians 2:5–7a) These ancient words offer a guide for modern Christians wrestling with their privileged place in an unequal and unjust world. The Kenosis Hymn (as this passage quoted by the apostle Paul is known) celebrates Jesus for his willingness to forego the divine glory that he is due, instead humbling himself to serve the oppressed and outcast of his society. Through a combination of in-depth Bible study and social analysis, Filled to Be Emptied invites readers to explore the hymn verse by verse and see Jesus' self-emptying example as a model for privileged people to see their advantages not “as something to be exploited” but as something to be laid aside to seek the good of others. Brandan J. Robertson walks readers through a step-by-step process of identifying their privilege, exploring their privilege, and ultimately leveraging their privilege as a tool for the liberation and redemption of the world. Filled to Be Emptied is an essential book for all followers of Christ who are seeking to live lives of justice.
Download or read book Human Freedom Divine Knowledge and Mere Molinism written by Timothy A. Stratton and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-10-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does humanity possess the freedom to think and act, or are we always caused and determined to think and act—exactly how we think and act—by things outside of our control? If we are always causally determined to think and act by things outside of our control, then how can humans be genuinely responsible for any of our thoughts or following actions? However, if humanity is genuinely free and responsible for at least some of our thoughts and actions, then how can the Christian rationally affirm the doctrine that God is totally sovereign and predestines all things? In Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism, Timothy A. Stratton surveys the history of theological thought from Augustine to Edwards and reaches surprising historical conclusions supporting what he refers to as “limited libertarian freedom.” Stratton goes further to offer multiple arguments appealing to Scripture, theology, and philosophy that each conclude humanity does, in fact, possess libertarian freedom. He then appeals to the work of Luis de Molina and offers unique arguments concluding that God possesses middle knowledge. If this is the case, then God can be completely sovereign and predestine all things without violating human freedom and responsibility.
Download or read book On Living Well written by Eugene H. Peterson and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these never-before-published stories, sayings, and biblical teachings, the beloved author and translator of The Message Bible shows us how the wisdom of deep faith helps us live well. “Calming, encouraging, and profound.”—Matt Chandler, lead pastor of The Village Church “Jesus’ words bring us the news of an expanded world, a bright world, a full-dimensioned world, a world in which God rules, mercy is common experience, and love is the daily working agenda.” Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) was one of the most beloved authors, pastors, poets, and professors of our time. While millions have read his bestselling paraphrased Bible translation, The Message, far fewer have heard his direct practical insights and wisdom about how to live well. Eugene knew the extraordinary spirituality of ordinary life. He understood that we actually become more, not less, human as we grow to live like Jesus. And living like Jesus means living well. On Living Well collects some of Eugene’s best never-before-published short writings to help you walk in the way of Jesus with a little more courage, passion, and hope—by offering new ways to practice generosity, community, prayer, simplicity, worship, inner peace, and so much more . . . even with the challenges of today. This book is a rich feast for the soul, ideal as a daily spiritual touchpoint or simply to nourish a heart hungry for pastoral wisdom. It is your invitation to enter into the meaningful simplicity of life with Jesus in a world of immense beauty, real difficulty, and endless wonder.
Download or read book A Severe Mercy written by Sheldon Vanauken and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beloved, profoundly moving account of the author's marriage, the couple's search for faith and friendship with C. S. Lewis, and a spiritual strength that sustained Vanauken after his wife's untimely death.
Download or read book Jesus the Bible and Homosexuality written by Jack Bartlett Rogers and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sure-to-be controversial book, former seminary professor and church official Jack Rogers argues unequivocally for the ordination of homosexuals and for the extension of full and equal rights in society to all people who are homosexual. Christianity, he observes, has moved through history in the direction of ever-greater openness and inclusiveness. Today's church is led by many of those who were once cast out: people of color, women, and divorced and remarried people. It is inevitable, he believes, that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people will one day walk in the same steps as other Christian leaders. Rogers, an evangelical, begins by discussing his own personal change of heart and mind on the issue, a change that has moved him into the middle of this controversy in his own church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He examines how the church misused the Bible to justify slavery and the denial of rights to women, and links these efforts to efforts today to use biblical texts to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians. He shows how neither the Bible nor the Confessions are opposed to homosexuality and debunks frequently used fundamentalist stereotypes and myths about gays and lesbians. Rogers concludes with his thoughts on how the church can heal itself and move forward.
Download or read book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Revised Edition written by John Piper and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Guide to Navigate Evangelical Feminism In a society where gender roles are a hot-button topic, the church is not immune to the controversy. In fact, the church has wrestled with varying degrees of evangelical feminism for decades. As evangelical feminism has crept into the church, time-trusted resources like Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood help remind Christians of what the Bible has to say. In this edition of the award-winning best seller, more than 20 influential men and women such as John Piper, Wayne Grudem, D. A. Carson, and Elisabeth Elliot offer thought-provoking essays responding to the challenge egalitarianism poses to life in the church and in the home. Covering topics like role distinctions in the church, how biblical manhood and womanhood should work out in practice, and women in the history of the church, this helpful resource will help readers learn to orient their beliefs with God's unchanging word in an ever-changing culture.
Download or read book Enjoying the Bible written by Matthew Mullins and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Christians view the Bible as an instruction manual. While the Bible does provide instruction, it can also captivate, comfort, delight, shock, and inspire. In short, it elicits emotion--just like poetry. By learning to read and love poetry, says literature professor Matthew Mullins, readers can increase their understanding of the biblical text and learn to love God's Word more. Each chapter includes exercises and questions designed to help readers put the book's principles and practices into action.
Download or read book Jesus and John Wayne How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation written by Kristin Kobes Du Mez and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.
Download or read book With All the Fullness of God written by Jared Ortiz and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians confess that Christ came to save us from sin and death. But what did he save us for? One beautiful and compelling answer to this question is that God saved us for union with him so that we might become “partakers of the divine nature” (1 Pet 2:4), what the Christian tradition has called “deification.” This term refers to a particular vision of salvation which claims that God wants to share his own divine life with us, uniting us to himself and transforming us into his likeness. While often thought to be either a heretical notion or the provenance of Eastern Orthodoxy, this book shows that deification is an integral part of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and many Protestant denominations. Drawing on the resources of their own Christian heritages, eleven scholars share the riches of their respective traditions on the doctrine of deification. In this book , scholars and pastor-scholars from diverse Christian expressions write for both a scholarly and lay audience about what God created us to be: adopted children of God who are called, even now, to “be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19).
Download or read book Why Does God Allow Evil written by Clay Jones and published by Harvest House Publishers. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you are looking for one book to make sense of the problem of evil, this book is for you." Sean McDowell Grasping This Truth Will Change Your View of God Forever If God is good and all-powerful, why doesn't He put a stop to the evil in this world? Christians and non-Christians alike struggle with the concept of a loving God who allows widespread suffering in this life and never-ending punishment in hell. We wrestle with questions such as... Why do bad things happen to good people? Why should we have to pay for Adam's sin? How can eternal judgment be fair? But what if the real problem doesn't start with God...but with us? Clay Jones, an associate professor of Christian apologetics at Biola University, examines what Scripture truly says about the nature of evil and why God allows it. Along the way, he'll help you discover the contrasting abundance of God's grace, the overwhelming joy of heaven, and the extraordinary destiny of believers.
Download or read book Divine Scripture in Human Understanding written by Joseph K. Gordon and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In six closely-reasoned chapters, Joseph Gordon presents a detailed account of a Christian doctrine of Scripture in the fullest context of systematic theology. Divine Scripture in Human Understanding addresses the confusing plurality of contemporary approaches to Christian Scripture—both within and outside the academy—by articulating a traditionally grounded, constructive systematic theology of Christian Scripture. Utilizing primarily the methodological resources of Bernard Lonergan and traditional Christian doctrines of Scripture recovered by Henri de Lubac, it draws upon achievements in historical-critical study of Scripture, studies of the material history of Christian Scripture, reflection on philosophical hermeneutics and philosophical and theological anthropology, and other resources to articulate a unified but open horizon for understanding Christian Scripture today. Following an overview of the contemporary situation of Christian Scripture, Joseph Gordon identifies intellectual precedents for the work in the writings of Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine, who all locate Scripture in the economic work of the God to whom it bears witness by interpreting it through the Rule of Faith. Subsequent chapters draw on Scripture itself; classical sources such as Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas; the fruit of recent studies on the history of Scripture; and the work of recent scholars and theologians to provide a contemporary Christian articulation of the divine and human locations of Christian Scripture and the material history and intelligibility and purpose of Scripture in those locations. The resulting constructive position can serve as a heuristic for affirming the achievements of traditional, historical-critical, and contextual readings of Scripture and provides a basis for addressing issues relatively underemphasized by those respective approaches.
Download or read book Still Time to Care written by Greg Johnson and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the start of the gay rights movement in 1969, evangelicalism's leading voices cast a vision for gay people who turn to Jesus. It was C.S. Lewis, Billy Graham, Francis Schaeffer and John Stott who were among the most respected leaders within theologically orthodox Protestantism. We see with them a positive pastoral approach toward gay people, an approach that viewed homosexuality as a fallen condition experienced by some Christians who needed care more than cure. With the birth and rise of the ex-gay movement, the focus shifted from care to cure. As a result, there are an estimated 700,000 people alive today who underwent conversion therapy in the United States alone. Many of these patients were treated by faith-based, testimony-driven parachurch ministries centered on the ex-gay script. Despite the best of intentions, the movement ended with very troubling results. Yet the ex-gay movement died not because it had the wrong sex ethic. It died because it was founded on a practice that diminished the beauty of the gospel. Yet even after the closure of the ex-gay umbrella organization Exodus International in 2013, the ex-gay script continues to walk about as the undead among us, pressuring people like me to say, "I used to be gay, but I'm not gay anymore. Now I'm just same-sex attracted." For orthodox Christians, the way forward is a path back to where we were forty years ago. It is time again to focus with our Neo-Evangelical fathers on care--not cure--for our non-straight sisters and brothers who are living lives of costly obedience to Jesus. With warmth and humor as well as original research, Still Time to Care will chart the path forward for our churches and ministries in providing care. It will provide guidance for the gay person who hears the gospel and finds themselves smitten by the life-giving call of Jesus. Woven throughout the book will be Richard Lovelace’s 1978 call for a "double repentance" in which gay Christians repent of their homosexual sins and the church repents of its homophobia--putting on display for all the power of the gospel.
Download or read book Everyday Glory written by Gerald R. McDermott and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we know and speak about God's relation to this world? Does God reveal himself through his creation? This book recaptures a Christian vision of all reality: that the world is full of divine signs that are openings into God's glory. Bringing together insights from some of the tradition's greatest thinkers--Edwards, Newman, and Barth--Gerald McDermott resurrects a robust theology of creation for Protestants. He shows how and where meaning can be found outside the church and special revelation in various realms of creation, including nature, science, law, history, animals, sex, and sports.
Download or read book Theology Music and Modernity written by Jeremy Begbie and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theology, Music, and Modernity addresses the question: how can the study of music contribute to a theological reading of modernity? It has grown out of the conviction that music has often been ignored in narrations of modernity's theological struggles. Featuring contributions from an international team of distinguished theologians, musicologists, and music theorists, the volume shows how music--and discourse about music--has remarkable powers to bring to light the theological currents that have shaped modern culture. It focuses on the concept of freedom, concentrating on the years 1740-1850, a period when freedom--especially religious and political freedom-became a burning matter of concern in virtually every stratum of Western society. The collection is divided into four sections, each section focusing on a key phenomenon of this period--the rise of the concept of 'revolutionary' freedom; the move of music from church to concert hall; the cry for eschatological justice in the work of black hymn-writer and church leader Richard Allen; and the often fierce tensions between music and language. There is a particular concern to draw on a distinctively 'Scriptural imagination' (especially the theme of New Creation) in order to elicit the key issues at stake, and to suggest constructive ways forward for a contemporary Christian theological engagement with the legacies of modernity today.
Download or read book Paul Among the Gentiles A Radical Reading of Romans written by Jacob P. B. Mortensen and published by Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. This book was released on 2018-08-13 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exciting new interpretation of Pauls Letter to the Romans approaches Pauls most famous letter from one of the newest scholarly positions within Pauline Studies: The Radical New Perspective on Paul (also known as Paul within Judaism). As a point of departure, the author takes Pauls self-designation in 11:13 as apostle to the gentiles as so determining for Pauls mission that the audience of the letter is perceived to be exclusively gentile. The study finds confirmation of this reading-strategy in the letters construction of the interlocutor from chapter 2 onwards. Even in 2:17, where Paul describes the interlocutor as someone who calls himself a Jew, it requests to perceive this person as a gentile who presents himself as a Jew and not an ethnic Jew. If the interlocutor is perceived in this way throughout the letter, the dialogue between Paul and the interlocutor can be perceived as a continuous, unified and developing dialogue. In this way, this interpretation of Romans sketches out a position against a more disparate and fragmentary interpretation of Romans.
