Modern theology is a maze of conflicting beliefs. In fact, the shape of contemporary theology has changed so much in this century--and especially since the 1960s-- that it''s hard to make sense of it all. Of not only what the various belief systems mean, but how we came to be where we are within those systems.In The End of Liberal Theology, respected theological lecturer and author Peter Toon introduces evangelicals to modern forms of doctrine and theology--both Protestant and Roman Catholic. He does so by discussing the basics of orthodoxy, by speaking to the various points of accommodation that have resulted in new forms of theology, and by dissecting liberalism and its effect on evangelicalism. This book is thus a ""family tree"" of modern theology, showing how the various contemporary forms, and those that preceded them, are related to each other.With its comprehensive analysis, The End of Liberal Theology is destined to be a yardstick by which critical evaluations of current doctrines--both old and new, liberal and conservative--will be made.
""Inevitably there comes a crisis, sooner or later . . .in which we are brought to the appalling sense of our own . . . weakness. That is a great hour."" -- G. Campbell MorganG. Campbell Morgan''s life was one of passion and devotion to teaching God''s Word. He had a vital ministry that touched both sides of the Atlantic, and his meditations on Scripture were both well known and sought after.In the Shadow of Grace brings together some of G. Campbell Morgan''s unpublished writings on dealing with confrontation in life with real events in his own life. Covering subjects from shattered dreams to the deaths of friends and family, rejection to facing the end of life, this tender and hopeful book will encourage you in your own difficulties and strengthen you to face trials with courage and fortitude.
When much of modern devotionals tends to be man-centered, with a pre-occupation with individual and world problems, Alive to God Through Praise restores a Biblical perspective and balance with the superb blending of words from the Bible and devotional classics, brimming with God-directed, joyful praise. A contemporary flavor permeates each page. Each Scripture passage and quote from classic devotional statements is delightfully paraphrased by the author into immediate English. The most eloquent expressions of praise from God''s Word and Church history, are blended with the fresh touch of contemporary language.To the unquestioned wealth of the Scriptures is added the golden statements of Thomas a Kempis, Andrew Murray, William Temple, Edward Reynolds, St. Augustine, St. Patrick, Walter Hilton, A. W. Tozer, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and John Newton.
This book is a commentary on all the major biblical texts dealing with the Spirit, from Genesis to Revelation. It is an invaluable reference book for students, teachers, ministers, Bible study groups, or anyone interested in the Person and work in the Holy Spirit. It perhaps found its widest use during the Charismatic renewal among both Protestants and Catholics, and has remained a classic ever since. The author, George T. Montague, has not only provided a rich and thoughtful commentary on individual passages, but he has, by the nature of this work, offered a multifaceted overview of the growth of the biblical doctrine on the Spirit covering many centuries. From the time of the Yahwist, when the Spirit was pictured as God''s breath of life, to the personalized understanding of the Spirit in the Fourth Gospel, the biblical doctrine of the Spirit has evidenced steady development. Using the findings of reliable scholarship, but never burdening the reader with academic trivialities, Professor Montague places a wealth of theological knowledge within the grasp of persons seeking to learn more about the Holy Spirit and striving to enrich their own spirituality.
A fair and balanced treatment of the doctrines of biblical inspiration and authority that should find a wide readership in American Christianity.
The Mishnah is the first canonical writing of Judaism after the Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel (the Old Testament) and the foundation of the two Talmuds and of all Judaism thereafter. According to eminent religion scholar Jacob Neusner, the key to understanding the Mishnah is to read it as philosophy, in accord with the generally accepted understanding of philosophy in its time and place. In ''Judaism as Philosophy'', Neusner studies a large sample of evidence, meticulously translated and carefully explained, and identifies the philosophical side of the Mishnah''s system, method, and message alike.The philosophical tradition in which the Mishnah takes its place, Neusner explains, utilizes the Aristotelian method of hierarchical classification to demonstrate the proposition (important to Middle Platonism and profoundly expressed by Plotinus) that many things really form a single thing: many species, a single genus; many genera, an encompassing, well-crafted and cogent whole. Through the systematic and orderly hierarchical classification of the things of nature, the framers of the Mishnah illustrate the ultimate unity of all being emanating from the One on high. Arguing that the document''s writers chose a legal form for a philosophical proposition, this book completely changes a centuries-old way of reading the Mishnah. Judaism emerges as a sustained demonstration of the unity of all being under one God.
This book offers the first full exploration of the religious, ethical, and social dimensions of Michael Polanyi''s philosophy, and its implications for the crisis of modern culture. Michael Polanyi developed a new way of understanding the process of discovering scientific knowledge - a theory which can alter our notions of ourselves and of existence. In ''The Way of Discovery'', Richard Gelwick, a former student of the renowned scientist-turned-philosopher, presents us with a comprehensive and documented introduction to Polanyi''s theory of knowledge.Michael Polanyi was born in Budapest in 1891. After a distinguished career as a physical chemist, he turned to philosophy, religion, and social sciences, becoming, by the time of his death in 1976, one of the greatest scientist-philosophers of our century. Polanyi maintained that three centuries of belief in scientific detachment had produced a crisis of culture. Working from his own experience as a scientist, and with an insight from Gestalt psychology, Polanyi asserted that objective scientific knowledge is at bottom personal knowledge - that scientists and artists establish meaning in basically the same way. His ideas call for a new way of thinking and pose a new frontier of thought, a new image of humanity
Too often, the same few faithful people end up volunteering their services in the church, while the majority seems content to watch the action - or lack thereof - from the sidelines. But there is hope for leaders who find themselves in this situation.''Volunteers for Today''s Church'' shows ministry leaders how to motivate the stand-by crowd to start playing the game. And although just getting players to sign up is a major task, seasoned coaches know that this is just the beginning. Determining the strengths of each volunteer is crucial for a strong team. Dennis Williams and Kenneth Gangel here provide practical advice on how to dovetail a volunteer''s gifts witha ministry that really fits. Included are tips on personal recruiting, teamwork, supervising, training, and keeping workers motivated.
...[C]oncern about the [inherited doctrine of vocation and its relevance for modern life] was generated out of the complexities and frustrations especially of industrial life, and it has produced a voluminous literature of a popular and semi-popular kind which has served to drive home the problem of daily work upon the conscience of contemporary Christians, and also to provide certain resources for handling it. In addition to this varied literature, the last years have also seen a very general discussion of the question at every level of church life: in ecumencal conferences, in the curricular material of the major denominations, and in conferences and study groups of all kinds. About the urgency and importance of the problem of vocation there is now no doubt. But now we find that the rather simple formulae in which we have been dealing with it do justice neither to the Biblical and Reformation inheritance, nor to the profound dilemmas that appear not only in industry, but in every area of professional and commercial life. The problem now is not only to equip our lay-people with fuller theological resources for the understanding of the meaning of discipleship, but to utilize their practical experience of day-to-day dilemmas and day to-day decisions. ...Gustaf Wingren''s conscientious analysis of Luther''s teaching on the matter...remains our prime resource for the understanding of the relation of faith and works. Nothing could exceed the patience and thoroughness with which Wingren has combed through the Luther corpus.... [I]t will serve to put the full range of Luther''s insight at the disposal of those who care for theology as part of their care of all the Churches. Alexander MillerStanford University
C. S. Lewis embodied the Christian mind because he saw the world as a coherent unity. His writing consistently pursued the good, the true, and the beautiful. He used nonfiction to point out the reasonableness of Christianity and used his fiction to create compelling illustrations that make faith in Christ an obvious and attractive conclusion.This book explores the Christian mind of C. S. Lewis across the spectrum of the genres he worked in. With contributors from diverse disciplines and interests, the volume illuminates the many facets of Lewis''s work. The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis assists readers to read Lewis better and also to read other works better. The overarching goal is, just as Lewis would have desired, to help people see Christ more clearly in the world and to be more like Christ.
Every church leader knows the necessity and difficulty of maintaining and enhancing morale. Visions of service, excellent programs, and capable personnel are not enough to keep the ship of the church on course if spirit is lacking. In ''Keeping the Dream Alive'', Robert D. Dale skillfully analyzes the various factors that determine congregational morale. Using the metaphor of weather, he discusses such subjects as steering currents, seeding the clouds, prevailing winds, and long-range forecasting. The result is a book characterized by depth and practicality. If you are struggling to keep your congregation on course in fulfilling its mission, this book will be an invaluable resource for ''Keeping the Dream Alive''.
-Smash the 80/20 barrier at your church-Unleash your laity to do the work of ministry-Transform your ministry to meet the needs of the 21st-century church-Empower and motivate your peopleThere''s no Z in Lay!Laypeople are not lazy, they just need purpose, motivation, and direction. Now the best-selling author of ''Can the Pastor Do It Alone?'' tells you how to make your ministry more effective by getting more of the congregation involved in the work of your church.Not just theories from a classroom, Dr. Melvin Steinbron''s principles are ministry-tested, biblical ideas that have helped hundreds of churches across the country and around the world.Shift your laity involvement from neutral to overdrive with wisdom from one of the pioneers of lay-driven ministry.
That miracles exist is an important part of the Christian tradition, yet a brief survey of modern thought reveals a marked prejudice against this notion. Here, Geisler shows how the laws of logic and science speak to the reasonableness of miracles. A dispassionate look at the facts and arguments demands that doubters question their own naturalistic assumptions. Geisler also describes signs, wonders, and power, contrasting what the Bible means by a miracle with bizarre stories of saints, faith healers, and occultists. A continuation of his work begun in ''Miracles and Modern Thought'', ''Miracles and the Modern Mind'' includes extensive revisions and additions.
A distinguished American theologian provides a firm theoretical basis for understanding the widespread quest for religious experience in the midst of a technological society. The book describes elements of experience common to people today and presents them as moments of possible awakening to a new quality of perception. Religion is the perennial striving of men and women for orientation in a world they experience as a field of assailing powers. Dr. Niebuhr interprets human faith as a sense of alignment with general patterns of action within thispower-world. In our electronically amplified age, we share in the experience of others to an extent that strains the resilience of the human spirit. Whatever else people in this age require, one is the capacity for inclusiveness or generosity on a new scale. Within this perspective, the author interprets the contemporary meaning of Jesus of Nazareth as a persuasive pattern of generous life manifesting the direction of true power.
""If anything, these prayers are plain. They are so because I discovered I could not pray differently than I speak. In other words, I thought it would be a mistake to try to assume a different identity when I prayed. I figured (Texans ''figure'') that God could take it, because God did not need to be protected. I think I learned this over the years by praying the Psalms in church. God does not want us to come to the altar different from how we live the rest of our lives. Therefore I do not try to be pious or use pious language in these prayers. I try to speak plainly, yet I hope with some eloquence, since nothing is more eloquent than simplicity.""So writes Stanley Hauerwas in the introduction to this collection of prayers, as inimitable as the widely respected (and argued with) theologian himself. Originally prayed in Hauerwas'' divinity school classroom - on a variety of occasions including war, births, Yom Kippur and the death of a beloved cat - they not only display an invigorating faith but demonstrate how late-modern Christians can pray with all the passion, turbulence and life of the ancient psalmists.
No Christian will dispute the importance of properly understanding the gospel. And throughout the centuries the function of theology has been to aid that understanding. In good part, as the author of this challenging study indicates, theology has turned to philosophy, history, sociology, or yet other disciplines in an effort to make its own message clear; that is, theology has used philosophical or historical or sociological concepts of reality, and has then attempted to impose upon reality (so defined) a deeper theological significance. But that effort, Robert Roth believes, can never be completely successful, since each of these disciplines -- valuable as they are in themselves -- are compelled by their nature to reduce both reality and theology to the level of what is human, thus leaving out the very thing that theology is all about: God. Roth contends that theology must use as its model what he terms story, the kind of large, comprehensive tale or myth that takes into account the basic facts of the universe and human existence. The nature of story, he tells us, is essentially dramatic, filled with tension between opposing forces. The conflict between good and evil, for example, or between hope and despair, has always characterized great literature. And it is precisely those same conflicts that characterize reality. Little wonder that God's account of reality -- the gospel -- is cast in story form. 'Story and Reality' is an exciting and unusual approach to the question of what constitutes God's message to humanity; it offers as well new insights into the nature of literature, and the role story can play in helping us properly apprehend reality. Roth demands an effort on the part of his readers; but it is an effort that will be richly repaid.
In this book we are trying to confess that the goals of the contemporary Church - that is to say, the church of St. John's by the Gas Station, the Christian college, the denominational and interdenominational seminary - the 'goals' of these Christian communities are blasphemous. The reconciliation the Church is seeking to accomplish today by these subterfuges has already been wrought. The brotherhood - the one blood of Acts 17, 26 - that the Church makes its goal today is already a 'fact'. And because this is so, that very fact judges our goals and our efforts to achieve brotherhood by social action as blasphemous, as trying to 'be' God. Instead of witnessing to Christ, the social action of the Church lends support to the totalitarianism of wars and political systems of the 20th century. By its social action, the Church permits and encourages the State and culture to define all issues and rules and fields of battle. The Church then tries to do what the State, without the Church's support, had already decided to do to solve all human problems by politics. And this is specifically the political messianism of contemporary totalitarianism and of Revelation 13. Politics by definition can only adjust and rearrange. It cannot - as politics - solve anything. But the Church's social action encourages the very movements in the contemporary political processes which are moving us straightaway into 20th-century totalitarianism.from the Foreword
This book is a reprint with revisions of one of Thomas Howard's earliest and most popular books. It is somewhat autobiographical, revealing the thoughts of a young man who has been seized by the love of Christ and, at first, sees dogmas and institutions as obscuring the terrible truth of God's love in Christ. But even at that earlier period, Howard showed his awareness that without those institutions there would be no way of encountering Christ the tiger.Howard is able to bring out the true vitality of what this faith is and should be, the radical nature of the Christian faith. This book powerfully presents who Christ is and what faith in him means.from 'Christ the Tiger':In the figure of Jesus we saw Immanuel, that is, God, that is, Love. It was a figure who, appearing so inauspiciously among us, broke up our secularist and our religious categories and beckoned us and judged us and damned us and saved us and exhibited to us a kind of life that participates in the indestructible. And it was a figure who announced the validity of our eternal effort to discover significance and beauty beyond inanition and horror by announcing to us the unthinkable: redemption.
First published in 1984 and recently revised and updated, this book deals with the problem of evil, or theodicy (God's justice). It contends that the process of evolution, particularly as it bears on the emergence of free will, rather than being a barrier to faith, gives us the key to understanding its greatest obstacle - the existence of so much suffering in the world. It further advances the still contested claim that God is truly our fellow sufferer in our struggle to overcome evil in all of its many forms.
Philosophy has given us insights into the reflections of thinkers on such subjects as God, mankind, the world, and the possibility of knowing ultimate reality. The processes of reasoning and the conclusions of logic are often intensely fascinating. Dr. Geisler reminds us, however, that the premises and the arguments of philosophy are often faulty, leading to a wholly inadequate view of knowledge and revelation. He reiterates Paul's warning to the Colossian Christians: See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy. The contributors to this volume show how the basic presuppositions of many philosophers lead to a denial of a divine, inerrant revelation. The views of some modern theologians regarding revelation find their roots in such deceptive philosophy.Chapter titles are:-'Inductivism, Materialism, and Rationalism: Bacon, Hobbes, and Spinoza' - Norman L. Geisler-'Skepticism: Hume' - Gary R. Habermas-'Agnosticism: Kant' - W. David Beck-'Transcendentalism: Hegel' - Winfried Corduan-'Existentialism: Kierkegaard' - E. Herbert Nygren-'Atheism: Nietzsche' - Terry L. Miethe-'Noncognitivism: Wittgenstein' - John S. Feinberg-'Mysticism: Heidegger' - Howard M. Ducharne, Jr.
One in every four Americans believes in reincarnation according to a recent Gallup poll. Why does our society have such a growing preoccupation with death and past-life experiences? Authors Norman L. Geisler and J. Yutaka Amano conclude that among the reasons for the popularity and influence of reincarnation philosophy are the rapid rise of the New Age Movement and society's fascination with Eastern thought. They examine cases of spontaneous past-life recall and point out alternative explanations for these phenomena. Ultimately, 'The Reincarnation Sensation' shows that the doctrine of reincarnation is contrary to the Bible's teaching about eternal life and incompatible with the Christian faith.
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