Divine Discourse
Divine Discourse

Author: Nicholas Wolterstorff

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1995-10-05

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1107393450

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Prominent in the canonical texts and traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is the claim that God speaks. Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that contemporary speech-action theory, when appropriately expanded, offers us a fascinating way of interpreting this claim and showing its intelligibility. He develops an innovative theory of double-hermeneutics - along the way opposing the current near-consensus led by Ricoeur and Derrida that there is something wrong-headed about interpreting a text to find out what its author said. Wolterstorff argues that at least some of us are entitled to believe that God has spoken. Philosophers have never before, in any sustained fashion, reflected on these matters, mainly because they have mistakenly treated speech as revelation.

Imprecation as Divine Discourse
Imprecation as Divine Discourse

Author: Kit Barker

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9781575064444

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Christian readers of the Hebrew Bible are often faced with a troubling tension. On the one hand, they are convinced that this ancient text is relevant today, yet on the other, they remain perplexed at how this can be so, particularly when parts of it appear to condone violence. Barker's volume seeks to address this tension in two parts: (1) by defending a particular form of theological interpretation and (2) by applying this interpretive method to the imprecatory psalms. Barker suggests that the goal of theological interpretation is to discover God's voice in the text. While he recognizes that this goal could encourage a subjective methodology, Barker offers a hermeneutic that clearly locates God's voice in the text of Scripture. Utilizing the resources of speech act theory, Barker notes that texts convey meaning at a number of literary levels and that God's appropriation of speech acts at these levels is not necessarily uniform for each genre. He also discusses how the Christian canon alters the context of these ancient speech acts, both reshaping and enabling their continued function as divine discourse. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of this hermeneutic, Barker offers theological interpretations of Psalms 69 and 137. He demonstrates how christological fulfilment and the call to forgive one's enemies are determinative for a theological interpretation of these troubling psalms, concluding that they continue to form an essential part of God's voice that must not be ignored.

Preaching as the Word of God
Preaching as the Word of God

Author: Sam Chan

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1498220258

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According to the Reformers, preaching is the word of God. As the word of God, preaching is a foundation for the church. It is also vital for the personal growth of a Christian. But Christians are poorly equipped to understand how preaching is the word of God. Some Christians look for preaching that closely reproduces the text in the Bible. Other Christians look for preaching that creates maximal emotional and existential impact. And there is a lot of name-calling with Christians accusing preachers of "not preaching the word." But what type of preaching is the word of God? The purpose of this book is to equip Christians to understand how preaching can be God speaking. It accomplishes this with a survey of the problem in the history of the church, a detailed overview of key biblical texts, and finally the application of the contemporary philosophical tool of speech act theory.

Word and Supplement
Word and Supplement

Author: Timothy Ward

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780199244386

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What are Christians saying when they call the Bible the Word of God? How is that statement to be understood in relation to postmodernity's suspicion of meaning? Word and Supplement tackles these questions by bringing the post-modern theory of Derrida (from whom the idea of "supplement" is borrowed), Barth, Fish, Gadamer, and many others into critical dialogue with the often-neglected doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.

Words of Life
Words of Life

Author: Timothy Ward

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2014-06-18

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 0830898344

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Timothy Ward offers an excellent, lucid exposition of the nature and function of Scripture, expressed in a form appropriate for the tweny-first century, grounded in the relevant scholarship, and standing firmily in line with the best of the theological traditions.

The Wisdom Pyramid
The Wisdom Pyramid

Author: Brett McCracken

Publisher: Crossway

Published: 2021-01-15

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1433569620

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We're facing an information overload. With the quick tap of a finger we can access an endless stream of addictive information—sports scores, breaking news, political opinions, streaming TV, the latest Instagram posts, and much more. Accessing information has never been easier—but acquiring wisdom is increasingly difficult. In an effort to help us consume a more balanced, healthy diet of information, Brett McCracken has created the "Wisdom Pyramid." Inspired by the food pyramid model, the Wisdom Pyramid challenges us to increase our intake of enduring, trustworthy sources (like the Bible) while moderating our consumption of less reliable sources (like the Internet and social media). At a time when so much of our daily media diet is toxic and making us spiritually sick, The Wisdom Pyramid suggests that we become healthy and wise when we reorient our lives around God—the foundation of truth and the eternal source of wisdom.

Imprecation as Divine Discourse
Imprecation as Divine Discourse

Author: Kit Barker

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2016-10-28

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1575064456

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Christian readers of the Hebrew Bible are often faced with a troubling tension. On the one hand, they are convinced that this ancient text is relevant today, yet on the other, they remain perplexed at how this can be so, particularly when parts of it appear to condone violence. Barker’s volume seeks to address this tension in two parts: (1) by defending a particular form of theological interpretation and (2) by applying this interpretive method to the imprecatory psalms. Barker suggests that the goal of theological interpretation is to discover God’s voice in the text. While he recognizes that this goal could encourage a subjective methodology, Barker offers a hermeneutic that clearly locates God’s voice in the text of Scripture. Utilizing the resources of speech act theory, Barker notes that texts convey meaning at a number of literary levels and that God’s appropriation of speech acts at these levels is not necessarily uniform for each genre. He also discusses how the Christian canon alters the context of these ancient speech acts, both reshaping and enabling their continued function as divine discourse. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of this hermeneutic, Barker offers theological interpretations of Psalms 69 and 137. He demonstrates how christological fulfilment and the call to forgive one’s enemies are determinative for a theological interpretation of these troubling psalms, concluding that they continue to form an essential part of God’s voice that must not be ignored.

Promise and Prayer
Promise and Prayer

Author: Anthony C. Thiselton

Publisher:

Published: 2020-11-12

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 9781725253612

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In the Bible, promise and prayer are essential and connected components of the inter-personal relationship between God and his people. And both promise and prayer are kinds of action undertaken by means of speaking, utterances philosophers refer to as speech acts. In the case of promises this is clear: they constitute firm commitments to act in certain ways under appropriate conditions. This book considers biblical examples of divine promise, from both Old and New Testaments. All speech acts depend upon institutional facts, and Thiselton argues that in the biblical writings Divine promises are based on the prior institution of God's covenant. That same covenant forms the institutional context of prayer. Thiselton shows how different kinds of prayer--blessing, thanksgiving and praise, petition and intercession--count as speech acts in different ways and to different degrees.

The Word of God for the People of God
The Word of God for the People of God

Author: J. Todd Billings

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0802862357

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This book fills a real need for pastors and students. Though there is currently a large body of material on the theological interpretation of Scripture, most of it is highly specific and extremely technical. J. Todd Billings here provides a straightforward entryway for students and pastors to understand why theological interpretation matters and how it can be done. / A solid, constructive theological work, The Word of God for the People of God presents a distinctive Trinitarian, participatory approach toward reading Scripture as the church. Billings's accessible yet substantial argument for a theological hermeneutic is rooted in a historic vision of the practice of scriptural interpretation even as it engages a wide range of contemporary issues and includes several exegetical examples that apply to concrete Christian ministry situations.

Speech and Morality
Speech and Morality

Author: Terence Cuneo

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-08-07

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0191053686

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Terence Cuneo develops a novel line of argument for moral realism. The argument he defends hinges on the normative theory of speech, according to which speech acts are generated by an agent's altering her normative position with regard to her audience, gaining rights, responsibilities, and obligations of certain kinds. Some of these rights, responsibilities, and obligations, Cuneo suggests, are moral. And these moral features are best understood along realist lines, in part because they explain how it is that we can speak. If this is right, a necessary condition of being able to speak is that there are moral rights, responsibilities, and obligations of a broadly realist sort.