What, pray tell, does a faithful urban ministry require if not a triadic relationship of prayer, justice, and hope? Could such a theologically conjunctive relationship of prayer, justice, and hope fortify urban ministry and challenge students and practitioners to ponder and practice beyond the box? Frequently, justice is collapsed to charity, hope into wishful thinking or temporarily arrested despair, and prayer a grasp at quick-fix intervention ...
Luke-Acts is an impressive two-volume narrative seeking to convince and engage readers regarding the spiritual impact of Jesus of Nazareth on the Jewish people and other nations. To this end, Luke employs an impressive arsenal of literary and narrative techniques. This book focuses on a motif and its performance, the thoroughfare motif, which includes those figurative and concrete expressions involving ways, roads, city streets, and country path ...
The purpose of this book is a search for understanding of Paul's witness about the distinction between the Word of God as Law, and the Word of God as Gospel. To some this may sound strange. But the Letter to the Galatians, direct from the Apostle to one of the churches he founded, manifests the tension between law and gospel, along with their respective functions and unique purposes in the life of the church. The tension comes to light in G ...
J. Roswell Flower was adrift in his late teens. When he surrendered himself to Jesus Christ at age nineteen, his heart found a home in the Pentecostal Movement. Soon his mind was exhilarated by studying the Bible, church history, and theology. Slowly, he began to realize he was called to full time ministry. Attracted by the announcement of a convention to encourage greater cooperation among Pentecostal groups, he went to what proved to be the fo ...
Due to the complexity of the speech-cycles in the book of Job, scholars have struggled to resolve interpretive tensions in the author's characterization of Job's three friends. This book focuses on the significance of the ancient Near Eastern social and wisdom contexts for understanding the role that Eliphaz, the leading sage-counselor, fulfills in Job. Given the likely Edomite provenance of Eliphaz and the archaeological evidence link ...
Learn to paint, learn to see–it will change your life. On Sabbatical, Janice carries her art pack and folding stool into one of the most incredible landscapes on the planet: the canyons, deserts, mountains, and river valleys of the greater Southwest. Awed, amazed, inspired, and humbled by what she finds there, she sketches and paints en plein air. The family fishes, hikes, catches bugs, chases lizards, digs fossils, photographs, and studies pl ...
A spirit runs through the interdisciplinary essays of this book–a spirit that lives within them and hovers above them, at once intelligent and profoundly simple. Although each essay focuses on a certain topic, whether it is the Buddhist saint Milarepa, the prophet Jeremiah, or the Christian saint Teresa of Avila, whether it is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict or subtleties of the spirit, these essays have penetrable borders that dissolve at th ...
What the scientific community dismisses as a mental disorder, Christians have often labeled «demon possession.» While classifications may offer limited help in explanation, the Reverend Dr. Harold Ristau explores the nature and meaning of demonic activity by drawing from his own experiences with exorcism. Ristau shares life lessons, spiritual applications, and religious wisdom from his personal encounters with the dark realm. Primarily intended ...
The first fruits of the literary career of St. Augustine, the great theologian and Christian philosopher par excellence, are the dialogues he wrote at Cassiciacum in Italy following his famous conversion in Milan in 386 AD. These four little books, largely neglected by scholars, investigate knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, the problem of evil, and the intriguing relationship of God and the soul. They also take up the ancient philosophical project ...
