A Preface to Romans: Notes on the Epistle in its Literary and Cultural Setting

 

Christopher Bryan

Oxford University Press, 2000-06-15 - 278 pages

Bryan approaches St. Paul's letter to the Romans with a number of aims in view. First, he wants to show which literary type or genre would have been seen by Paul's contemporaries as being exemplified in the letter. He also attempts to determine what we can surmise of Paul's attitude and approach to the Jewish bible. The study involves discussion of and comparison with other literature from Paul's time, place and milieu --- including other writings attributed to Paul.

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Aquinas

Eleonore Stump

Psychology Press, 2003-05-23 - 611 pages

Few philosophers or theologians exerted as much influence on the shape of medieval thought as Thomas Aquinas. He ranks amongst the most famous of the Western philosophers and was responsible for almost single-handedly bringing the philosophy of Aristotle into harmony with Christianity. He was also one of the first philosophers to argue that philosophy and theology could support each other. The shape of metaphysics, theology, and Aristotelian thought today still bears the imprint of Aquinas' work. In this extensive and deeply researched study, Eleonore Stump examines Aquinas' major works, Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles, and clearly assesses the vast range of Aquinas' thought. Philosophers, theologians, and students of the medieval period alike will find this unrivalled study an indispensable resource in researching and teaching Aquinas.

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Commentaries on Aristotle's "On Sense and What is Sensed" and "On Memory and Recollection"

 

Saint Thomas (Aquinas), Kevin White, E. M. Macierowski

CUA Press, 2005-01-01 - 268 pages

A translation of Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle's work regarding the senses and the role of 'common sense, ' and his work regarding memory and recollection

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Aquinas on God: The 'Divine Science' of the Summa Theologiae

 

Rudi te Velde

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006 - 192 pages

Aquinas on God presents an accessible exploration of Thomas Aquinas' conception of God. Focusing on the Summa theologiae - the work containing Aquinas' most systematic and complete exposition of the Christian doctrine of God - Rudi te Velde acquaints the reader with Aquinas' theological understanding of God and the metaphysical principles and propositions that underlie his project. Readers interested in Aquinas, historical theology, metaphysics and metaphysical discourse on God in the Christian tradition will find this new contribution to the studies of Aquinas invaluable.

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Aquinas on Mind

Anthony Kenny

Psychology Press, 1994-09-21 -192 pages

Aquinas' mature works, though theological in intent, contain much material which is philosophical in the sense that it is not in any way dependent on beliefs which are specifically Christian. His philosophical psychology, or philosophy of mind, was not taken seriously by secular thinkers, with one or two exceptions, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries because of the dominance of ideas deriving from Descartes. In the present century many philosophers have come to regard the Cartesian system as quite exploded, and it can now be seen that Aquinas' philosophy of mind has a great contemporary interest. This book makes accessible those parts of Aquinas' system which are of enduring value. The kernel of the work is a close reading of the sections of Summa Theologiae which are devoted to human intellect and will and to the relationship between soul and body. It presupposes no knowledge of Latin or of medieval history, and relates Aquinas' system to a tradition of philosophy of mind inaugurated in the Anglo-American community by Wittgenstein and Ryle. Anthony Kenny is unusually qualified to bring together the medieval and modern philosophical insights, since he was trained in scholastic philosophy at the Gregorian University in Rome and has taught analytic philosophy in Oxford for many years.

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Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes

 

Gregory T. Doolan

CUA Press, 2008-04-01 - 277 pages

Gregory T. Doolan provides here the first detailed consideration of the divine ideas as causal principles. He examines Thomas Aquinass philosophical doctrine of the divine ideas and convincingly argues that it is an essential element of his metaphysics.

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Aquinas on the Emotions: a Religious-Ethical Inquiry

Diana Fritz Cates

Georgetown University Press, 2009-12-15 - 288 pages

All of us want to be happy and live well. Sometimes intense emotions affect our happiness -- and, in turn, our moral lives. Our emotions can have a significant impact on our perceptions of reality, the choices we make, and the ways in which we interact with others. Can we, as moral agents, have an effect on our emotions? Do we have any choice when it comes to our emotions? In Aquinas on the Emotions, Diana Fritz Cates shows how emotions are composed as embodied mental states. She identifies various factors, including religious beliefs, intuitions, images, and questions that can affect the formation and the course of a person's emotions. She attends to the appetitive as well as the cognitive dimension of emotion, both of which Aquinas interprets with flexibility. The result is a powerful study of Aquinas that is also a resource for readers who want to understand and cultivate the emotional dimension of their lives.

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Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good

Mary M. Keys

Cambridge University Press, 2006 - 255 pages

Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good claims that contemporary theory and practice have much to gain from engaging Aquinas's normative concept of the common good and his way of reconciling religion, philosophy, and politics. Examining the relationship between personal and common goods, and the relation of virtue and law to both, Mary M. Keys shows why Aquinas should be read in addition to Aristotle on these perennial questions. She focuses on Aquinas's Commentaries as mediating statements between Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics and, Aquinas's own Summa Theologiae, showing how this serves as the missing link for grasping Aquinas's understanding of Aristotle's thought, in relation to Aquinas's own considered views. Keys argues provocatively that Aquinas's Christian faith opens up new panoramas and possibilities for philosophical inquiry and insights into ethics and politics. Her book shows how religious faith can assist sound philosophical inquiry into the foundation and proper purposes of society and politics.

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God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition

Alasdair C. MacIntyre

Rowman & Littlefield, 2011-06-16 - 193 pages

'What does it mean to be a human being?' Given this perennial question, Alasdair MacIntyre, one of America's preeminent philosophers, presents a compelling argument on the necessity and importance of philosophy. Because of a need to better understand Catholic philosophical thought, especially in the context of its historical development and realizing that philosophers interact within particular social and cultural situations, MacIntyre offers this brief history of Catholic philosophy. Tracing the idea of God through different philosophers' engagement of God and how this engagement has played out in universities, MacIntyre provides a valuable, lively, and insightful study of the disintegration of academic disciplines with knowledge. MacIntyre then demonstrates the dangerous implications of this happening and how universities can and ought to renew a shared understanding of knowledge in their mission. This engaging work will be a benefit and a delight to all readers.

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Middle Judaism: Jewish thought, 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E.

 

Gabriele Boccaccini

Fortress Press, 1991 - 289 pages

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Recent Catholic philosophy: The Nineteenth Century

Alan Roy Vincelette

Marquette University Press, 2009 - 413 pages

Catholic thinkers contributed extensively to philosophy during the Nineteenth Century. Besides pioneering the revivals of Augustinianism and Thomism, they also helped to initiate such philosophical movements as Romanticism, Traditionalism, Semi-Rationalism, Spiritualism, Ontologism, and Integralism. Unfortunately the exceptional diversity and profoundness of this epoch in Catholic thought has all too often been underappreciated. This book consequently traces the work of sixteen leading Catholic philosophers of the Nineteenth-Century so as to make evident their seminal offerings to philosophy, namely: Bautain, Blondel, Bonald, Brownson, Chateaubriand, Gratry, Gunther, Hermes, Kleutgen, Lequier, Mercier, Newman, Olle-Laprune, Schlegel, Ravaisson-Mollien, and Rosmini-Serbati.

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Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine

 

James H. Charlesworth, Casey Deryl Elledge, J. L. Crenshaw

Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006 - 250 pages

Resurrection is the central feature of the New Testament gospels and also lies at the centre of many of Paul's letters. This collection explores the idea of resurrection, which appears not only in the New Testament texts, but also in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the pseudepigraphal Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and in contemporary theology.

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Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas

Daniel Westberg

Clarendon Press, 1994 - 283 pages

This book is a study of the role of intellect in human action as described by Thomas Aquinas. One of its primary aims is to compare the interpretation of Aristotle by Aquinas with the lines of interpretation offered in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship. The book seeks to clarify the problems involved in the appropriation of Aristotle's theory by a Christian theologian, including such topics as the practical syllogism and the problems of akrasia. Westberg argues that Aquinas was much closer to Aristotle than is often recognized, and he puts forward important new interpretations of the relation of intellect and will in the stages of intention, deliberation, decision, and execution. In the concluding section of the book, he shows how this new interpretation yields fruitful insights on a range of theological topics, including sin, law, love, and the moral virtues.

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Speaking the Incomprehensible God: Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology

Gregory P. Rocca

CUA Press, 2004 - 412 pages

How can the Church speak of the God who transcends all thought and speech? This book is a comprehensive retrieval of Thomas Aquinas's theological epistemology of the divine names, which is his profound contribution to that perennial question. His theology of the divine names is a rich and complex tapestry that weaves together the twin themes of negative and positive theology. Tempering any extreme agnosticism, Aquinas sets out a multi-layered negative theology respectful of God's incomprehensibility, while he also proposes a view of theological analogy that places it at the heart of his positive theology. Finally, he grounds his epistemology in the fundamental theological truth that God is the infinitely perfect and self-subsistent Creator.
Gregory Rocca's nuanced discussion prevents Aquinas's thought from being capsulized in familiar slogans and is an antidote to unilateralist or monochrome views about God-talk. Rocca laces Aquinas's negative and positive theology together, because only thatintertwining can do justice to the mystery of God. This study finds that, contrary to the views of some, Aquinas's analogy is more a matter of judgment and truth than of concept and meaning; despite his own presuppositions, Aquinas bases his theological analogy more on the insights of faith than those of reason.
Aquinas's theology of the divine names encourages contemporary dialogue to keep the tensioned truth of God in view and to remember that only a fruitful interplay of positive and negative theology can do justice to the Elusive One who evades our linguistic capture and yet desires to be acknowledged and worshiped as Creator and Sustainer. The book will prove helpful to specialists inAquinas and to others who are interested in the God-talk dialogue and can profit from an in-depth retrieval of Aquinas.
Gregory P. Rocca, O.P., is Professor of Philosophy and Theology and currently President of the Domin

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The Background and Content of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors

Stephen Finlan

BRILL, 2004-12-30 -  264 pages

This examination of Gentile and Jewish religious and literary descriptions of sacrificial and expulsion rituals provides a useful background to the study of Paul's metaphorical use of sacrifice and scapegoat to characterize the significance of the death of Jesus. In addition to offering an overview of Paul's use of cultic metaphors and an assessment of Paul's synthesis of martyrology and cultic metaphor, this work shows how Paul uses still other metaphors (acquittal, reconciliation, adoption) to picture the beneficial after-effects of that death.

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The Four Stages of Rabbinic Judaism

 

Jacob Neusner

Routledge, 2002-01-01 - 256 pages

This comprehensive book provides a lucid introduction to Rabbinic Judaism, defined as the Judaism built on the story of God's revelation to Moses of the Torah at Sinai.
Jacob Neusner outlines and examines the four stages in which the initial period of the historical development of Rabbinic Judaism divides, beginning with the Pentateuch and ending with its definitive and normative statement in the Talmud of Babylonia. He traces the development of Rabbinic Judaism by exploring the relationships between and among the cognate writings which embody its formative history.

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The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Being-in-the-World: A Confrontation Between St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Heidegger

Caitlin Smith Gilson

Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010-02-01 - 219 pages

The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Being-in-the-World brings St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Heidegger into dialogue and argues for the necessity of Christian philosophy. Through the confrontation of Heideggerian and Thomist thought, it offers an original and comprehensive rethinking of the nature of temporality and the origins of metaphysical inquiry. The book is a careful treatment of the inception and deterioration of the four-fold presuppositions of Thomistic metaphysics: intentionality, causality, finitude, ananke stenai. The analysis of the four-fold has never before been done and it is a central and original contribution of Gilson's book. The four-fold penetrates the issues between the phenomenological approach and the metaphysical vision to arrive at their core and irreconcilable difference. Heidegger's attempt to utilize the fourfold to extrude theology from ontology provides the necessary interpretive impetus to revisit the radical and often misunderstood metaphysics of St. Thomas, through such problems as aeviternity, non-being and tragedy.

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The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus

 

Richard Cross

Oxford University Press, 2005-05-26 - 358 pages

The period from Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus is one of the richest in the history of Christian theology. Cross aims to provide a thorough examination of the doctrine in this era, making explicit its philosophical and theological foundations.

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The Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Qumran Community

 

Russell C. D. Arnold

Brill, 2006 - 267 pages

This volume analyzes the wide variety of the Qumran community's liturgical practices in light of their social and ideological structures, discussing their implications for community identity formation, boundary formation, and instruction of new members.

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Things Revealed: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian Literature in Honor of Michael E. Stone

Michael E. Stone, Esther G. Chazon, David Satran, Ruth Clements

BRILL, 2004 - 405 pages

This rich collection of articles dedicated to Michael E. Stone by his colleagues and students honors his contributions to the study of Judaism and Christianity. Many of the articles discuss apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works stemming from Jewish or Christian authors and transmitted primarily but not exclusively by Christian scribes. Particularly well-represented are the earliest books of 1 Enoch and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. A number of articles introduce newly available material from the Dead Sea Scrolls while others deal with Philo, Hellenistic Judaism, and early Christianity. Issues of biblical interpretation, tradition-history, literary transmission, and social context figure prominently. This book is a companion to the study of apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, early Judaism, and early Christianity.

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Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa theologiae 1a, 75-89

Robert Pasnau

Cambridge University Press, 2002 - 500 pages

This is a major new study of Thomas Aquinas, the most influential philosopher of the Middle Ages. The book offers a clear and accessible guide to the central project of Aquinas' philosophy: the understanding of human nature. Robert Pasnau sets the philosophy in the context of ancient and modern thought, and argues for some groundbreaking proposals for understanding some of the most difficult areas of Aquinas' thought: the relationship of soul to body, the workings of sense and intellect, the will and the passions, and personal identity. Structured around a close reading of the treatise on human nature from the Summa theologiae and deeply informed by a wide knowledge of the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophy, this study will offer specialists a series of novel and provocative interpretations, while providing students with a reference commentary on one of Aquinas' core texts.

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Tradition in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre: Relativism, Thomism, and Philosophy

Christopher Stephen Lutz

Rowman & Littlefield, 2009-08-28 -  217 pages

Tradition in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre presents a stimulating intellectual history and expertly reasoned defense of this towering figure in contemporary American philosophy. Drawing on interviews and published works, Christopher Lutz traces MacIntyreOs philosophical development and refutes the criticisms of the major thinkers_including Martha Nussbaum and Thomas Nagel_who have most vocally attacked him. Permanently shifting the debate on MacIntyreOs oeuvre, Lutz convincingly demonstrates how MacIntyreOs neo-Aristotelian ethical thought provides an essential corrective to the contemporary discussions of relativism and ideology, while successfully drawing on the objectivity of Thomistic natural law.

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Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology

Gerard Loughlin

Wiley-Blackwell, 2004 - 306 pages

Gerard Loughlin is one of the leading theologians working at the interface between religion and contemporary culture. In this exceptional work, he uses cinema and the films it shows to think about the church and the visions of desire it displays.

• Discusses various films, including the Alien quartet, Christopher Nolan’s Memento, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth and Derek Jarman’s The Garden.
• Draws on a wide range of authors, both ancient and modern, religious and secular, from Plato to Levinas, from Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar to André Bazin and Leo Bersani.
• Uses cinema to think about the church as an ecclesiacinema, and films to think about sexual desire as erotic dispossession, as a way into the life of God.
• Written from a radically orthodox Christian perspective, at once both Catholic and critical

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Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church

 

John Zizioulas

St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985 - 269 pages

A systematic contemporary presentation of Orthodox ecclesiology. Significant chapters on Eucharist and catholicity, apostolic continuity and succession, ministry and communion, and the local church.

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Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt

 

Stephen J. Davis

Oxford University Press, 2008-05-15 - 371 pages

Coptic Christology in Practice forges a new path in the study of ancient and medieval Christology. Employing a range of interdisciplinary methods derived from the fields of social history, discourse theory, ritual studies, and the visual arts, Stephen J. Davis demonstrates how Christian identity in Egypt was shaped by a set of replicable "christological practices." He thus enables readers to trace the fascinating lines of the Coptic church's theological and cultural transition from late antiquity to Dar al-Islam.

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James

Richard Bauckham

Routledge, 2002-01-01 - 256 pages

In the history of interpretation the letter of James has been marginalized and compared unfavorably with the writings of Paul. "James" argues for an important canonical role for James, not subordinate to Paul, but a complementary scriptural voice. Richard Baukham explores the historical and literary context of the text, discussing the significance of James as the brother of Jesus and leader of the early Jerusalem church.
Major themes of James--wholeness, poverty, speech, ethics and prayer--are explored in relation to the current contexts of the contemporary reader of James.

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Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Ottoman Sephardic Culture

Matthias B. Lehmann

Indiana University Press, 2005 - 264 pages

In this pathbreaking book, Matthias B. Lehmann explores Ottoman Sephardic culture in an era of change through a close study of popularized rabbinic texts written in Ladino, the vernacular language of the Ottoman Jews. This vernacular literature, standing at the crossroads of rabbinic elite and popular cultures and of Hebrew and Ladino discourses, sheds valuable light on the modernization of Sephardic Jewry in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th century. By helping to form a Ladino reading public and imparting shape to its values, the authors of this literature negotiated between perpetuating rabbinic tradition and addressing the challenges of modernity. The book offers close readings of works that examine issues such as social inequality, exile and diaspora, gender, secularization, and the clash between scientific and rabbinic knowledge. Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Ottoman Sephardic Culture will be welcomed by scholars of Sephardic as well as European Jewish history, culture, and religion.

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Luke's Gospel

Jonathan Knight

Routledge, 1998-05-29 -  232 pages

Luke's Gospel provides a comprehensive and schematic reading of Luke's Gospel, one of the most important books detailing the life and works of Christ, in six main parts. Knight introduces the Gospel and the narrative theory on which the Gospel rests. He offers a detailed, chapter-by-chapter exposition of the Gospel and also alternative perspectives, such as feminism and deconstruction. He considers the principal motifs of the Gospel, particularly the theme of the temple, which has been previously overlooked in Luke scholarship, arguing that Jesus pronounces the present temple forsaken by God to introduce himself as the cornerstone of the eschatological temple. Finally, he examines earlier readings of Luke's Gospel.
Jonathan Knight presents an accessible and jargon-free introduction to the Gospel and makes a valuable addition to the New Testament Readings series.

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Mark's Gospel

John Painter

Psychology Press, 1997-05-23 - 245 pages

Mark's 'biography' of Jesus is the earliest of the four gospels, and influenced them all. The distinctive feature of this biography is the quality of 'good news', which presupposes a world dominated by the forces of evil. John Painter shows how the rhetorical and dramatic shaping of the book emphasises the conflict of good and evil at many levels - between Jesus and the Jewish authorities, Jesus and the Roman authorities, and the conflict of values within the disciples themselves. These matters of content are integral to this original approach to Mark's theodicy, while the stylistic issue raises the question of Mark's intended readership. John Painter's succinct yet thorough treatment of Mark's gospel opens up not only these rhetorical issues, but the social context of the gospel, which Painter argues to be that of the Pauline mission to the nations.

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Modelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in its Context

Philip Francis Esler

Routledge, 1995-12-22 - 349 pages

Modelling Early Christianity explores the intriguing foreign social context of first century Palestine and the Greco-Roman East, in which the Christian faith was first proclaimed and the New Testament documents were written. It demonstrates that a sophisticated analysis of the context is essential in order to understand the original meaning of the texts.
The contributors examine social themes such as early Christian group formation, the centrality of kinship and honour and the economic setting. They offer a wealth of novel and socially realistic interpretations which make sense of the texts. At the same time, Modelling Early Christianity contains significant new ideas on the relationship between social-scientific and literary-critical analysis, the theoretical justification for model-use and the way these new approaches can fertilise contemporary Christian theology.

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New Testament Apocrypha: Writings relating to the Apostles; Apocalypses and Related Subjects

Wilhelm Schneemelcher, R. McL. Wilson

Westminster John Knox Press, 2003-06-01 - 784 pages

This revised edition is a translation of the sixth German edition, just as the original English New Testament Apocrypha was a translation of the third German edition. The introductions to individual texts have been either completely rewritten or thoroughly revised. This book reflects current research findings. The bibliographical data in all sections has been updated as well. Some of the texts have been newly translated, some completely revised, and three completely new texts have been added. Indexes have been included in this volume that allow access to both volumes of the entire work.

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Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement

Michael Cannon Rea

Oxford University Press, 2009-04-25 - 384 pages

Over the past sixty years, within the analytic tradition of philosophy, there has been a significant revival of interest in the philosophy of religion. More recently, philosophers of religion have turned in a more self-consciously interdisciplinary direction, with special focus on topics that have traditionally been the provenance of systematic theologians in the Christian tradition. The present volumes Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology, volumes 1 and 2aim to bring together some of the most important essays on six central topics in recent philosophical theology. Volume 1 collects essays on three distinctively Christian doctrines: trinity, incarnation, and atonement. Volume 2 focuses on three topics that arise in all of the major theistic religions: providence, resurrection, and scripture.

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Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenber

 

Irena Dorota Backus

Oxford University Press, 2000-12-07 - 182 pages

In this study, Irene Backus examines the fate of the Apocalypse at the hands of early Protestants in three centers of the Reformation: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg. To do so, Backus systematically investigates sources and methods of the most important reformed and Lutheran commentaries of the Apocalypse from 1528-1584.

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Rethinking Contexts, Rereading Texts: Contributions From the Social Sciences to Biblical Interpretation

M. Daniel Carroll R.

Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000 - 273 pages

This volume brings together ten essays on the various contexts for texts that social-scientific approaches invoke. These contexts are: the cultural values that inform the writers of texts, the relationship between the text and the reader or community of readers, and the production of texts themselves as social artifacts. In the first, predominantly theoretical, section of the book, John Rogerson applies the perspective of Adorno to the reading of biblical texts; Mark Brett advocates methodological pluralism and deconstructs ethnicity in Genesis; and Gerald West explores the 'graininess' of texts. The second part contains both theory and application: Jonathan Dyck draws a 'map of ideology' for biblical critics and then applies an ideological critical analysis to Ezra 2. M. Daniel Carroll R. reexamines 'popular religion' and uses Amos as a test case; Stanley Porter considers dialect and register in the Greek of the New Testament, then applies it to Mark's Gospel. This is an original as well as wide-ranging exploration of important social-scientific issues and their application to a range of biblical materials.

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Targumic and Cognate Studies: Essays in Honour of Martin McNamara

 

Kevin J. Cathcart

Continuum International Publishing Group, 1996 - 250 pages

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The Atonement Debate: Papers from the London Symposium on the Theology of Atonement

David Hilborn, Derek Tidball, Justin Thacker

Zondervan, 2009-05-19 - 368 pages

Recent days have seen a debate among evangelicals over how the death of Christ is to be interpreted. When a popular British evangelical leader appeared to denounce the idea that God was punishing Christ in our place on the cross as a "twisted version of events," "morally dubious," and a "huge barrier to faith" that should be rejected in favour of preaching only that God is love, major controversy was stirred. Many thought the idea of penal substitution was at the heart of the evangelical understanding of the cross, if not the only legitimate interpretation of the death of Christ. Yet for some time less popular evangelical theologians had been calling this traditional interpretation of the atonement into question. So, is the traditional evangelical view of penal substitution the biblical explanation of Christ's death or one of many? Is it the non-negotiable heart of evangelical theology or a time-bound explanation that has outlived its usefulness? What does the cross say about the character of God, the nature of the law and sin, the meaning of grace, and our approach to missions? The public debate which resulted was often heated. In order to act as reconcilers, the Evangelical Alliance and the London School of Theology called for a symposium in which advocates of the different positions could engage with each other. The symposium, which was attended by some 200 participants, was held when the July 7th bombings took place in London and drew together many of Britain's finest evangelical theologians. This book contains the collection of papers given at the symposium, supplemented by a few others for the sake of rounding out the agenda, and grouped in convenient sections.

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The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation Between Judaism and Christianity

 

Magnus Zetterholm

Psychology Press, 2003-05-30 - 272 pages

One of the major puzzles of Western civilization is how early 2nd century Christianity was transformed into a non-Jewish, Gentile religion, when Christianity began as one of many Jewish factions in the diverse Judaism of the period. Zetterholm uses theoretical insights from the social sciences to deal with the complex issues raised by the parting of Judaism and Christianity, and the accompanying rise of Christian anti-Semitism in ancient Antioch. While previous attempts to solve this problem have focused mainly on ideology, his study emphasizes the interplay between sociological and ideological elements.

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The Gospel of Thomas

Richard Valantasis

Psychology Press, 1997-06-27 - 221 pages

How does the Gospel of Thomas represent an independent source for the study of early Christianity and the sayings of Jesus? For the first time,The Gospel of St. Thomasoffers a commentary of the Gospels of Thomas, previously only available to theologians and scholars. Richard Valantasis provides fresh translations of the Coptic and Greek text, with an illuminating commentary, examining the text line by line. A general introduction is provided, outlining previous scholarly debates and situating the Gospel in its historical and theological contexts.The Gospel of St. Thomaspresents Thomas' gospel as an integral part of the canon of Biblical writings, informing us further about the literature of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the study of early Christianity.

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