Creation Stories in Dialogue: The Bible, Science, and Folk Traditions
Creation Stories in Dialogue: The Bible, Science, and Folk Traditions

Author: Jan G. van der Watt

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-11-02

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9004306676

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This book is about creation stories in dialogue, not only between different religious views, but also between current day scientific perspectives. International specialists, like Alan Culpepper, David Christian, John Haught, Randall Zachman, Ellen van Wolde from various disciplines are reflecting on the interface between science and religion relating questions of creation and origin. This multi-disciplinary discussion by some of the leading exponents in this field makes the book unique, not only in its depth of discussion, but also in it wide ranging interdisciplinary discussion. The point of departure of all the contributions is the prestige lecture by Alan Culpepper where he argues for bringing Biblical material into discussion with modern scientific insights relating to creation and origin.

Theologies of Failure
Theologies of Failure

Author: Robert Sirvent

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2020-01-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0227177134

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What does failure mean for theology? In the Bible, we find some unsettling answers to this question. We find lastness usurping firstness, and foolishness undoing wisdom. We discover, too, a weakness more potent than strength, and a loss of life that is essential to finding life. Jesus himself offers an array of paradoxes and puzzles through his life and teachings. He even submits himself to humiliation and death to show the cosmos the true meaning of victory. As David Bentley Hart observes, “most of us would find Christians truly cast in the New Testament mold fairly obnoxious: civically reprobate, ideologically unsound, economically destructive, politically irresponsible, socially discreditable, and really just a bit indecent.” By incorporating the work of scholars working with a range of frameworks within the Christian tradition, Theologies of Failure aims to offer a unique and important contribution on understanding and embracing failure as a pivotal theological category. As the various contributors highlight, it is a category with a powerful capacity for illuminating our theological concerns and perspectives. It is a category that frees us to see old ideas in a brand-new light, and helps to foster an awareness of ideas that certain modes of analysis may have obscured from our vision. In short, this book invites readers to consider how both theology and failure can help us ask new questions, discover new possibilities, and refuse the ways of the world.

Designs for the Church in the Gospel of John
Designs for the Church in the Gospel of John

Author: R. Alan Culpepper

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2021-07-16

Total Pages: 800

ISBN-13: 3161602625

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The essays in this volume, which span four decades, represent sustained reflection on the historical setting, narrative devices, and theology of the Gospel of John. Methodologically, the essays develop a narrative-critical approach to the Gospel, producing insights that have implications for historical and theological issues. Thematically, many of the essays explore the Gospel's ecclesiology, especilly its vision for the church and its mission. As a collection, this volume provides an introduction to the Fourth Gospel, analyses of major issues (including John's anti-Judaism, relationship to 1 John, irony, imagery, creation ethics, evil, and eschatology), and in-depth exploration of key texts, especially John 1:1-18, 2:20; 4:35-38; 5:1-18; 5:21-30; 10:1-18; 12:12-15; 13:1-20; 19:16-30; 20:19-23; and chapter 21.

A Poetics of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism
A Poetics of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism

Author: Aliou Cisse Niang

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2019-12-18

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1532617291

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Telling in current biblical postcolonial discourse that draws insights from the works of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and postcolonial theorists is the missing contribution of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the architect of Négritude. If mentioned at all, Senghor is often read through conclusions drawn by his critics or dismissed altogether as irrelevant to postcolonialism. Restored to its rightful place, Senghorian Negritude is a postcolonial lens for reading Scripture and other faith traditions with a view to reposition, conscientize, liberate, and rehabilitate the conquered, and enable them to reclaim their faith traditions and practices that once directed a mutual relationship between God, human, and nature—a delicate symbiosis before the French colonial advent in West Africa. A keen eye for cross-cultural analysis and contextualization enriched this volume with an intriguing reading of scripture, Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman texts in conversation with other faith traditions, particularly Senegalese Diola Religion. As a Poetics of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism, Negritude is an optic through which people of faith may look around themselves, critically reread their sacred texts, reassess their vocation, and practice mutuality with God and nature on the heels of chilling climate change. Enshrined in this innovative argument is a call for introspection and challenge for people of faith to assume their vocation—human participatory agency.

The Routledge Companion to Big History
The Routledge Companion to Big History

Author: Craig Benjamin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 507

ISBN-13: 100018658X

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The Routledge Companion to Big History guides readers though the variety of themes and concepts that structure contemporary scholarship in the field of big history. The volume is divided into five parts, each representing current and evolving areas of interest to the community, including big history’s relationship to science, social science, the humanities, and the future, as well as teaching big history and ‘little big histories’. Considering an ever-expanding range of theoretical, pedagogical and research topics, the book addresses such questions as what is the relationship between big history and scientific research, how are big historians working with philosophers and religious thinkers to help construct ‘meaning’, how are leading theoreticians making sense of big history and its relationship to other creation narratives and paradigms, what is ‘little big history’, and how does big history impact on thinking about the future? The book highlights the place of big history in historiographical traditions and the ways in which it can be used in education and public discourse across disciplines and at all levels. A timely collection with contributions from leading proponents in the field, it is the ideal guide for those wanting to engage with the theories and concepts behind big history.

Science, Religion and Deep Time
Science, Religion and Deep Time

Author: Lowell Gustafson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-05

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 1000522946

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This book examines the meaning of religion within the scientific, evidence-based history of our known past since the big bang. While our current major religions are only centuries or millennia old, our volume discusses the origins and development of human religious practice and belief over our species’ existence of 300,000 years. The volume also connects the scientific approach to natural and social history with ancient truths of our religious ancestors using new lines of inquiry, new technologies, new modes of expression, and new concepts. It brings together insights of natural scientists, social scientists, philosophers, writers, and theologians to discuss narratives of the universe. The essays discuss that to apprehend religion scientifically, or to interpret and explain science theologically, the subject must be examined through a variety of disciplinary lenses simultaneously and raise several theoretical, philosophical, and moral problems. With a singular investigation into the meaning of religion in the context of the 13.8 billion-year history of our universe, this book will be indispensable for scholars and students of religious studies, big history, sociology and social anthropology, philosophy, and science and technology studies.

Reading Genesis Well
Reading Genesis Well

Author: C. John Collins

Publisher: Zondervan Academic

Published: 2018-11-13

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0310598583

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What does it mean to be a good reader of Genesis 1-11? What does it mean to take these ancient stories seriously and how does that relate to taking them literally? Can we even take any of this material seriously? Reading Genesis Well answers these questions and more, promoting a responsible conversation about how science and biblical faith relate by developing a rigorous approach to interpreting the Bible, especially those texts that come into play in science and faith discussions. This unique approach connects the ancient writings of Genesis 1-11 with modern science in an honest and informed way. Old Testament scholar C. John Collins appropriates literary and linguistic insights from C. S. Lewis and builds on them using ideas from modern linguistics, such as lexical semantics, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics. This study helps readers to evaluate to what extent it is proper to say that the Bible writers held a "primitive" picture of the world, and what function their portrayal of the world and its contents had in shaping the community.

The Voice of Public Theology
The Voice of Public Theology

Author: Ted Peters

Publisher: ATF Press

Published: 2022-11-07

Total Pages: 850

ISBN-13: 1922737674

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Public theologians are already thundering like prophets at climate change and racial injustice. But the gale force winds of natural science blow through society as well. The public theologian should be on storm watch.

Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels
Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels

Author: Thomas R. Hatina

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-03-19

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0567684113

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This volume is the fourth in a set of volumes, which together explore current approaches to the study of scripture in the Gospels. Thomas R. Hatina's latest edited collection begins with an introduction surveying methodological approaches used in the study of how scriptural allusions, quotations, and references function in John, with subsequent essays grouped into four categories that represent the breadth of current interpretive interests. The contributors begin with historical-critical approaches, before moving to rhetorical and linguistic approaches, literary approaches, and finally social memory approaches. Each study contains not only recent research on the function of scripture in John, but also an explanation of the approach taken, making the collection an ideal resource for both scholars and students who are interested in the complexities of interpretation in John's context as well as our own.

Anatomies of the Gospels and Beyond
Anatomies of the Gospels and Beyond

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-01-28

Total Pages: 521

ISBN-13: 9004373500

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Anatomies of the Gospels and Beyond is an edited volume structured around essays that focus on one of the four canonical Gospels (and Acts) and/or theoretical issues involved in literary readings of New Testament narrative. The volume is intended to honor the legacy of R. Alan Culpepper, Emeritus Professor and Former Dean at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology. The title of the volume (which alludes to the title of Culpepper’s ground-breaking monograph, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel) and the breadth of the essays are apt reflections of his research interests over his academic career of over forty years. The twenty-five contributors are internationally recognized experts in New Testament studies; thus, the essays represent a snapshot of current research.