This book treats the three letters of John as a unified epistolary package. It proposes two new contributions to the study of 1-3 John. First, it presents new comprehensive chiastic structures for each of the three letters of John based on concrete linguistic evidence in the text. These chiastic structures serve as the guide for an audience-oriented exegesis of these letters. Secondly, it treats these letters from the point of view of their wors ...
There is no such thing as a naked spirituality. Our spirituality is always shaped by the clothes of our experience. The quest of Spirituality with Clothes On is to acknowledge that we do wear clothes; and, by examining them, we begin to understand ourselves and accept others who are wearing different outfits. We are what we wear: we cannot separate ourselves from our gender, personality, developmental stage, family, historical background, cultur ...
How should the Word of God be interpreted and applied today? Does our modern culture affect how we read the Bible? Can certain passages be interpreted in different contexts and in different ways, all the while acknowledging that God speaks with a clear and consistent voice? These are the enduring challenges of hermeneutics. In this volume, no less than sixteen Reformed scholars from four different countries join together to tackle the hard quest ...
The seven deadly sins are pride, envy, anger, sloth, gluttony, greed, and lust. The seven virtues are prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice, faith, hope, and love. This book brings all of them together and for the first time lays out their history in a collection of the most important philosophical, religious, literary, and art-historical works. Starting with the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian antecedents, this anthology of source do ...
The essays presented here represent over twenty-five years of thinking about the theology and life of the Apostle Paul who, as a «slave of Jesus Christ» (Rom 1:1), was a «servant of the new covenant» with a «ministry of the Spirit» (2 Cor 3:6, 8). Taking the questions raised by the history of scholarship since F. C. Baur as their starting point, Hafemann's exegetical studies focus on how Paul's self-understanding shaped his message, th ...
Ministry Makeover examines the decline within the church, especially the United Methodist Church (UMC), and some causes for this decline. It calls for a reforming of United Methodist structure and polity by drawing more attention to the value of the bi-vocational model of ministry and a re-visitation of the Wesleyan/United Brethren view and historical perspective. This book establishes a solid theological foundation upon which to build this shif ...
The Trinitarian Dance presents a model of leadership development based on the Holy Trinity. Part one analyzes the present state of the cultural and ecclesiastical situation in Canada, identifying specific trends and aspects relating to the need for development of effective leadership in the church. This section sets the stage for Part two, where a theology of trinitarian leadership is developed based on the dynamic of perichoresis, with the moti ...
In this moving spiritual memoir, Dr. William Thiele shares inspiring stories of the birthing of a monastery without walls among everyday women and men around New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Along the way, core contemplative attitudes, practices, and principles were discovered. He offers these stories of birthing a School for Contemplative Living as a challenging call to a frantic and polarized world. Readers will ...
No other book in the New Testament compares to John in its complexity of style and structure. So many factors confuse Johannine scholars, including the complexity of styles, repetition, duplication, and seemingly distracted structures that are difficult to discern. Sourcebook of the Structures and Styles in John 1-10 is designed to scrutinize the structures and styles in John 1-10, reading John according to John's way, with the following ...
