Human trafficking causes untold suffering to millions throughout the world. From a Christian perspective it should go without saying that we ought to work towards the eradication of this evil. The Bible, however, which all Christian traditions recognize as normative for faith and practice, reflects an era in which slavery was regarded as the norm. This raises a question: can it have anything to say to the church about human trafficking, or shoul ...
Because the Catholic Church, other Christian churches, and almost every national government permit exceptions to God's commandment that «you shall not kill,» Johannes Ude examines Catholic moral law to discern whether this commandment has absolute validity or may be modified so that in certain instances it is permissible to kill another human being. Written clandestinely during the Hitler regime, the book examines the generally accepted Cat ...
Practicing Pilgrimage: On Being and Becoming God's Pilgrim People explores both the theological, cultural, and spiritual roots of Christian pilgrimage, and is a «how-to» book on doing pilgrimage in our suburban backyards, city streets, rural roads, churches, retreat centers, and our everyday life. Brett Webb-Mitchell takes the ancient practice of Christian pilgrimage and applies it to our contemporary lives. ...
In this first of a three-volume work, Vicchio addresses the most ancient Hebrew text of Job in all its complexity, with particular emphasis on the problems of evil and suffering. But he follows this with the «reception history» of the text–how it was translated, read, and interpreted in other ancient works: the Septuagint, apocryphal books, early Christian writings, Talmud, Midrash, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Peshitta. Two appendices detail how Job h ...
Thomas Aquinas and William Langland inherited the dynamic metaphor of journeying as a fundamental concept of the Christian life and harnessed it to animate their magisterial texts: the Summa Theologiae and Piers Plowman. Christians' journey back to God consists in the way of charity, yet it is far from straightforward or sequential. Rather, it is impinged upon by epistemic ambiguity, our willful continued habits of resistance, and inherent ...
Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy provide the conceptual foundations of theocracy, which is to say religiously-based totalitarianism. These absolutist doctrines emerge for the very first time among the Victorians: they are not ancient beliefs at all. They appear in the 19th century, right alongside secular varieties totalitarian thought, and in response to all the same cultural anxieties. Reactionary religious leaders used these doctrin ...
In 2017 Christians around the world will mark the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. In the midst of many appeals for reformation today, a growing number of theologians, scholars, and activists around the world believe Reformation celebrations in 2017 and beyond need to focus now on the urgent need for an Eco-Reformation. The rise of industrial, fossil fuel-driven capitalism and the explosive growth in human population endanger the f ...
The nature of Jewish-Christian relations at the end of the first century has been a subject of serious study and considerable debate. The time between 70 and 150 CE is held to be a volatile time in that Jewish-Christian relations were quickly, although not uniformly, deteriorating. This is a time referred to as the «partings of the ways,» when the church was emerging as a religion apart from Judaism. Although it has often been neglected in this ...
