In this collection of non-fiction narratives Steve Doughty offers an evocative exploration of contemporary spiritual seeking. The figures in these stories are as varied as a Muslim woman and Christian couple meeting at a peace vigil, a minister dazzled by photos from the Hubble telescope, a Native American stone carver, a miner receiving his last communion, and two attorneys risking their lives to defend victims of political violence in Colombia ...
Death in Second-Century Christian Thought explores how the meaning of death was conceptualized in this crucial period of the history of the church. Through an exploration of some key metaphors and other figures of speech that the early church used to talk about this interesting but difficult topic, the author argues that the early church selected, modified, and utilized existing views on the subject of death in order to offer a distinctively Chr ...
Making sense of Paul's arguments in 1 Corinthians 11-14 regarding both the role of women in public worship and the value of tongues and prophecy for the unbeliever has long posed challenges for any lay reader or scholar. Despite numerous explanations offered over the years, these passages remain marked by inconsistencies, contradictions, and puzzles. Lucy Peppiatt offers a reading of 1 Corinthians 11-14 in which she proposes that Paul is in ...
Spirituality is a hot topic in today's culture. Spirituality is essentially how one's beliefs and experiences influence the way one lives their life. Such influences for living are of critical importance to one's faith within the Christian community. What role does the Bible play in developing an expressed spirituality among the Christian community? How do one's religious traditions, cultural influences, and personal prefere ...
A classic theology and a contemporary school of preaching come together in this new work. Glenn Monson, an active Lutheran preacher, has taken the substantial concerns of Law and Gospel theologians and combined them with the insights of the New Homiletic School to come up with a guide to sermon development that helps any preacher deliver Law and Gospel sermons in a contemporary way. The author leads the reader through a step-by-step process in t ...
The well known Austrian poet and spiritual writer, Rainer Maria Rilke encouraged his young friend not to be a «waster of sorrows,» but to use them in a positive way as a means to help him grow in holiness. And isn't this the challenge for all of us? Everyone has sorrows in life. The important question is: what can we do with them so that we don't waste them? Whether our sorrows are personal or communal, how can we share our mut ...
Vatican II's Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate) transformed the Catholic view of the Jewish people and the Jewish religious tradition. Asserting that the Church discovers her link to the «stock of Abraham» when «searching her own mystery,» Nostra Aetate intimated that the mystery of Israel is inseparable from the mystery of the Church. As interlocking mysteries, each community requires the o ...
On the edge of medieval maps, monsters roam. In the west, pilgrims take well-traveled roads to Rome and Compostela. In the east, Old Testament history unfolds. And at the center, in the city of Jerusalem, Jesus saves the world. In A World Transformed, Lisa Deam takes us on an incredible journey through medieval maps. Despite their curious appearance, these maps, as Deam shows, are surprisingly modern. In their monstrous, marvelous sights ...
In this project, Baiyu Andrew Song explores the mentorship of China's first ordained indigenous evangelist, Liang Fa (1789-1855), by Scottish Presbyterian missionary William Milne (1785-1822) in the early nineteenth century. The biblically and contextually informed model of mentorship Milne employed is examined in detail, which is placed in the historical setting of Milne and Liang's time. This project is particularly important in that ...