Constantine Revisited
Constantine Revisited

Author: John D. Roth

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2013-06-27

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1610978196

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This collection of essays continues a long and venerable debate in the history of the Christian church regarding the legacy of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. For some, Constantine's conversion to Christianity early in the fourth century set in motion a process that made the church subservient to the civil authority of the state, brought a definitive end to pacifism as a central teaching of the early church, and redefined the character of Christian catechesis and missions. In 2010, Peter J. Leithart published a widely read polemic, Defending Constantine, that vigorously refuted this interpretation. In its place, Leithart offered a thoroughgoing rehabilitation of Constantine and his legacy, while directing a rhetorical fusillade against the pacifist theology and ethics of the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. The essays gathered here in response to Leithart reflect the insights of eleven leading theologians, historians, and ethicists from a wide range of theological traditions. They engage one of the most contentious issues in Christian church history in irenic fashion and at the highest level of scholarship. In so doing, they help ensure that the Constantinian Debate will continue to be lively, substantive, and consequential.

Constantine Revisited
Constantine Revisited

Author: John D. Roth

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2013-06-27

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1621897540

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This collection of essays continues a long and venerable debate in the history of the Christian church regarding the legacy of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. For some, Constantine's conversion to Christianity early in the fourth century set in motion a process that made the church subservient to the civil authority of the state, brought a definitive end to pacifism as a central teaching of the early church, and redefined the character of Christian catechesis and missions. In 2010, Peter J. Leithart published a widely read polemic, Defending Constantine, that vigorously refuted this interpretation. In its place, Leithart offered a thoroughgoing rehabilitation of Constantine and his legacy, while directing a rhetorical fusillade against the pacifist theology and ethics of the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. The essays gathered here in response to Leithart reflect the insights of eleven leading theologians, historians, and ethicists from a wide range of theological traditions. They engage one of the most contentious issues in Christian church history in irenic fashion and at the highest level of scholarship. In so doing, they help ensure that the "Constantinian Debate" will continue to be lively, substantive, and consequential.

Defending Constantine
Defending Constantine

Author: Peter J. Leithart

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2010-09-24

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 0830827226

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Peter Leithart weighs what we've been taught about Constantine and claims that in focusing on these historical mirages we have failed to notice the true significance of Constantine and Rome baptized. He reveals how beneath the surface of this contested story there lies a deeper narrative--a tectonic shift in the political theology of an empire--with far-reaching implications.

John Howard Yoder
John Howard Yoder

Author: J Denny Weaver

Publisher: Lutterworth Press

Published: 2015-03-26

Total Pages: 535

ISBN-13: 0718843800

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'John Howard Yoder: Radical Theologian' shows that for John Howard Yoder both theology (in particular Christology) and ethics are expressions of the meaning of the narrative of Jesus. All such statements are relative to a particular context, so thattheology and ethics are subject to reaching back to the narrative in order to restate the meaning in new and ever-changing contexts. This methodology is visible in Yoder's 'Preface to Theology', which has been little used in most treatments of Yoder's thought. Yoder has been characterised as standing on Nicene orthodoxy, criticised for rejecting Nicene orthodoxy, called heterodox, and designated a postmodern thinker to be interpreted in terms of other such thinkers. None of these characterisations adequately locates the basis of his methodology in the narrative of Jesus. Thus 'John Howard Yoder: Radical Theologian' aims to go beyond or to supersede existing treatments with its demonstration that Yoder is a radical theologian in the historical meaning of radical - that is, as one who returns to the root - but also relates his theology to the personal accusations that clouded his later years. For Christian faith, this root is Christ. Parts II and III of the book explore the sources of Yoder's approach, and its application in several contemporary contexts.

The Mammoth Book of British Kings and Queens
The Mammoth Book of British Kings and Queens

Author: Mike Ashley

Publisher: Robinson

Published: 2012-06-07

Total Pages: 805

ISBN-13: 1472101138

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This book includes more than 1000 monarchs who have at some time ruled all or part of Britain. This includes the host of tribal and Saxon rulers prior to 1066 as well as famous monarchs such as Richard III, Elizabeth I and Charles II and all the rulers of Scotland and Wales. The book gives full details of the lives of the rulers as well as their wives, consorts, pretenders, usurpers and regents and is a geographical guide to where all Britain's monarchs lived, ruled and died including their palaces, estates and resting places.

Theology After Christendom
Theology After Christendom

Author: Joshua T. Searle

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2018-02-14

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1532617305

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Christianity must be understood not as a religion of private salvation, but as a gospel movement of universal compassion, which transforms the world in the power of God’s truth. Amid several major global crises, including the rise of terrorism and religious fundamentalism and a sudden resurgence of political extremism, Christians must now face up fearlessly to the challenges of living in a “post-truth” age in which deceitful politicians present their media-spun fabrications as “alternative facts.” This book is an attempt to enact a transformative theology for these changing times that will equip the global Christian community to take a stand for the gospel in an age of cultural despair and moral fragmentation. The emerging post-Christendom era calls for a new vision of Christianity that has come of age and connects with the spiritual crisis of our times. In helping to make this vision a reality, Searle insists that theology is not merely an academic discipline, but a transformative enterprise that changes the world. Theology is to be experienced not just behind a desk, in an armchair, or in a church, but also in hospitals, in foodbanks, in workplaces, and on the streets. Theology is to be lived as well as read.

Living Traditions
Living Traditions

Author: Kimberlynn McNabb

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2019-05-01

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1532659814

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How has the Christian movement grown and changed in the last five hundred years? From Luther to Tillich and the Virgin Mary, from Protestant initiatives and Catholic dialogues, from Charles Taylor to progressive Christianity, this book runs the gamut. The urgency of ecology, the sacramentality of foot-washing, the complexities of biblical interpretation, the theology of the cross, and the ongoing work of reformation are all under the microscope. A distinctively ecumenical project, this book presents a variety of perspectives on these pressing questions, drawing together authors from the Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, United Church of Canada traditions, and more. Each contributor provides unique insights into Christianity's ongoing processes of re-forming as contexts and circumstances change. Readers will find resonances of the familiar interwoven with new research about the project of ecumenical Christianity.

Second Tolstoy
Second Tolstoy

Author: Steve Hickey

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-11-12

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1725285355

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Very few if any have devoted more years to practicing and teaching others to practice the precepts of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount than Leo Tolstoy. He stands apart in the history of interpretation and has had enormous influence on others and other countries. Yet, Gandhi or others often get the glory. Tolstoy is remembered as a great writer, but his religious and philosophical works are by and large unknown or disparaged, even in scholarly Tolstoyan circles. His contribution is substantially under-appreciated and misunderstood. In Second Tolstoy: The Sermon on the Mount as Theo-tactics, Steve Hickey captures the particulars and dynamics of Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount from a deliberately sympathetic vantage point. Underlying this project is shared belief with Tolstoy that the Sermon on the Mount is liveable and to be lived. While from the vantage point of traditional orthodoxy Tolstoy got much wrong, there remains a lack of appreciation for what he got right—radical obedience to the teachings of Jesus. A new vocabulary is proposed to more precisely capture Tolstoyan lived theology, namely the political and social expressions of Tolstoyan Christianity, with the hope that these theories and practices will gain a wider consideration, understanding, and following.

The Distinctive Identity of the Church
The Distinctive Identity of the Church

Author: Jeppe Bach Nikolajsen

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2015-03-20

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1498202071

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An increasing number of theologians believe that the Western world has moved from an era of Christendom to an era of post-Christendom. This book goes to the heart of the debate related to this shift, asking, How are we to understand the distinctive identity of the church with special reference to its role in a post-Christendom society? It then presents an analysis of the work of the English Reformed theologian Lesslie Newbigin and the American Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, both of whom reflect on how we should understand this important question. At the end of The Distinctive Identity of the Church, the charge of sectarianism is discussed. It is argued that a missionary God sends the church to the world and, consequently, this sending should fundamentally determine its existence in the world. The book argues that the task that lies before the church in the Western world is not to bypass its distinctiveness with accusations of sectarianism, but to recapitulate an understanding of its own distinctiveness that should be seen as a precondition for its engagement in society. Such an ecclesiological position holds important potential for an understanding of the role of the church in pluralistic Western cultures.

Vietnamese Evangelicals and Pentecostalism
Vietnamese Evangelicals and Pentecostalism

Author: Vince Le

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-11-05

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 9004383832

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This book offers an analysis of the historical, theological, and social conditions that give rise to the growth of pentecostalism among contemporary Vietnamese evangelicals. Emerging from the analysis is an understanding of how underprivileged evangelicals have utilized the pentecostal emphasis on divine intervention in their pursuit of the betterment of life amid religious and ethnic marginalization. Within the context of the global growth of pentecostalism, Vietnamese Evangelicals and Pentecostalism shows how people at the grassroots marry the deeply local-based meaning dictated by the particularity of living context and the profoundly universal truth claims made by a religion aspiring to reach all four corners of the earth to enhance life.