The nineteenth century Eucharistic controversy between Charles Hodge and John Williamson Nevin is an important episode in the history of American Christianity. Hodge and Nevin battled over issues that lie at the heart of Christian faith and piety, such as: Why did God become man? What bearing does the incarnation of Christ have on the redemption of the world? How are believers on earth united with the ascended Christ who is in heaven? Is Christ ...
There is a gridlock in churches today regarding the role of women. This debate extends beyond the relationship between men and women. In 1 Corinthians 11:3, when Paul says, «the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God,» he is drawing a parallel between the relationship of men and women and the relationship of the Father and the Son within the Trinity. This book explores the controversial theological premise that, while maintaining eq ...
To witness effectively and powerfully to Christian testimonies of care and compassion, of justice and mercy, of healing and wholeness, it is necessary to foster awareness of the realities of the present system of retributive justice if there is to be any hope of transformation to a system of justice which is restorative. Forget Them Not provides a history of the prison system as a means of punishment contrasting it with the relatively recent but ...
The contemporary church exhibits an elasticity and diversity of doctrine that at times sits oddly with biblical foundations. The presuppositions that God is and that God has spoken too often give place to the assumed priority of the explanatory competence of human reason. In that, the theology of the church is captive to the thought forms of an Enlightenment rationalism on one hand, or the looseness of postmodernist assumptions of indiv ...
Since the sixteenth century, the Protestant tradition has been divided. The Reformed and Lutheran reformations, though both committed to the doctrine of the sinners justification by faith alone, split over Zwingli and Luther's disagreement over the nature of the Lord's Supper. Since that time, the Reformed and Lutheran traditions have developed their own theological convictions, and continue to disagree with one another. It is incumben ...
A Journey In Imagination offers the hope of an alternative to a world convulsed by hostility and violence. Through an imaginative journey into Bible stories, incidents, and verses, the possibility of reversing hostility in both personal and communal life is explored. Biblical hospitality is neither a head in the sand nor a pie in the sky pleasantry. Instead it is the daring and challenging work of reversing hostility through seeing the 'oth ...
This reading guide to some of the philosophical and theological literature on universalism offers practical help in providing informed material on a topic that is often treated in a superficial and unenlightened manner. The reader may be surprised to learn that universalism was the predominant belief in the early centuries, and that it has always been present in the Christian tradition. Spurred on by Von Balthasar's book, Dare We Hope That ...
The book represents a personal quest in what Anselm referred to as faith seeking understanding. The primary focus centers on proposing an interpretation of the nature and function of the human spirit and its relationship to the divine spirit and the living of a godly Christian life. Thus the book has a dual concern; namely, an academic one and a spiritual one. The undergirding premise is that apart of the human spirit the divine spirit is person ...
If theology at its best is knowing God and all things in the light of his reality, what is the nature of that knowledge? Of what can we be sure? Are there boundaries we must respect in pursuit of such understanding? To what extent can we know God, and what is the impact of that knowing? Little attention has been given in recent scholarship to the work of Emil Brunner (1889-1966), a Swiss pastor, professor, missionary, and theologian whos ...
