No one can appreciate the size or shape of a forest without flying over top to view the big picture. The Bible is like a forest and individual books are similar to trees. Studying small portions of Scripture is worthwhile and necessary. Nevertheless one of the first steps of discipleship after salvation should be an understanding of the big picture in the Bible. God's Unfolding Story of Salvation teaches believers that the biblical storylin ...
"Walter Brueggemann is the master of finding fresh and compelling dimensions of meaning in texts so familiar they barely scratch the surface of our consciousness. In this exciting collection, Brueggemann finds that when we admit we are dust, we can be liberated. Why? Because we are free from acting like God. We are free to choose obedience to the one living, true Sovereign. The idols lose their grip on us and we live faithfully and in authe ...
Kierkegaard's Pastoral Dialogues takes a selection of Kierkegaard's most insightful spiritual writings and transforms them into a series of dialogues between two friends, a believer and a nonbeliever. In this way, some of Kierkegaard's complex religious thought is made accessible to a wider readership, so as to provide a resource for individual or group study in pastoral, counseling, or spiritual direction contexts. Each dialogue ...
Health is God's original created intent: whole persons, healthy relationships, a thriving environment, and ongoing interaction with himself. In the Bible, human health is body-based, community-based, and deeply integrated in a relationship with God's creating Spirit. The Pentateuch, prophets, writings, Gospels, and epistles all are deeply, if not primarily, concerned with the ongoing and ultimate health of God's good creation. Scr ...
A lot of mystery surrounds the book of Hebrews, especially regarding its authorship, date, and audience. But by asking the right kind of questions, one can move beyond the impasses typical of historical investigation. In this volume, David deSilva explores Hebrews through a social-scientific lens, asking one of the most important questions when interpreting letters and sermons: What was going on in the community to occasion such a response? DeSi ...
This is a chance to explore the meaning of Christian faith for those in and outside of churches: adults who left the church in their youth, the many religious refugees pushed out by churches, as well as those in churches looking for serious reflection. With short chapters written in conversational style, it refuses to dumb down the presentation or offer false promises. There are no tricks, no bait and switch. It simply gives an account o ...
Most New Testament scholars today agree that Jesus used an enigmatic self-designation, bar nasha («the Son of Man»), translated into Greek as ho huios tou anthropou in the Synoptic Gospels. In contrast, Paul, the earliest New Testament writer, nowhere mentions the phrase in his letters. Does this indicate that the Gospel writers simply misunderstood the generic sense of the Aramaic idiom and used it as a christological title in connection with D ...
This second volume of Sermons by Jonathan Edwards on the Matthean Parables contains a previously unpublished series of six sermons by Edwards on Jesus' parable of the Sower and the Seed, as found in Matthew 13:3-7. Edwards preached these sermons in 1740 immediately following the visit of George Whitefield to Edwards' church in Northampton, Massachusetts, in October of that year. Not only does this series have a historical significance ...
What modern church doesn't call itself a «community»? Yet for how many is it real? How many churches form disciples intimately connected enough to call themselves Christ's «body»? How many form disciples who know the relational arts that create a robust unity? How many form disciples practiced in the ways of sacrificial love? Pastor John Alexander, a thirty-year veteran of living in Christian communities, yearns for all the won ...
