This story-oriented recovery book unfolds the back-story of redemption in Exodus to show how Jesus redeems us from the slavery of abuse and addiction and restores us to our created purpose, the worship of God.
Political constitutions are compromises with injustice. What makes the U.S. Constitution legitimate is Americans’ faith that the constitutional system can be made “a more perfect union.” Balkin argues that the American constitutional project is based in hope and a narrative of shared redemption, and its destiny is still over the horizon.
This monumental new study of the book of Revelation, part of The New International Greek Testament Commentary, will be especially helpful to scholars, pastors, students, and others who wish to interpret the Apocalypse for the benefit of the church.
To find out why Pope Francis is making Oscar Romero a saint, read the words that cost him his life. "A church that does not provoke crisis, a gospel that does not disturb, a word of God that does not touch the concrete sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed - what kind of gospel is that?" Three short years transformed El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero from a defender of the status quo into one of the most outspoken voices of the oppressed. An assassin's bullet ended his life, but his message lives on. In March 2018 Pope Francis announced that the Catholic Church would canonize Oscar Romero, acknowledging that he is indeed a saint who was martyred for proclaiming the gospel, and that the political and social implications of that message, which so scandalized the powerful, flowed directly from Romero's faithfulness to the teachings of Jesus. These selections from Romero's diaries and radio broadcasts invite each of us to align our own lives with the way of Jesus that lifts up the poor, welcomes the broken, wins over enemies, and transforms the history of entire nations.
Diana Butler Bass, one of contemporary Christianity’s leading trend-spotters, exposes how the failings of the church today are giving rise to a new “spiritual but not religious” movement. Using evidence from the latest national polls and from her own cutting-edge research, Bass, the visionary author of A People’s History of Christianity, continues the conversation began in books like Brian D. McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity and Harvey Cox’s The Future of Faith, examining the connections—and the divisions—between theology, practice, and community that Christians experience today. Bass’s clearly worded, powerful, and probing Christianity After Religion is required reading for anyone invested in the future of Christianity.
2018 Book Award Winner, The Gospel Coalition (Academic Theology) A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2019 Will all evil finally turn to good, or does some evil remain stubbornly opposed to God and God's goodness? Will even the devil be redeemed? Addressing a theological issue of perennial interest, this comprehensive book (in two volumes) surveys the history of Christian universalism from the second to the twenty-first century and offers an interpretation of how and why universalist belief arose. The author explores what the church has taught about universal salvation and hell and critiques universalism from a biblical, philosophical, and theological standpoint. He shows that the effort to extend grace to everyone undermines the principle of grace for anyone.
Theology is inherently theatrical, rooted in God's performance on the world stage and oriented toward faith seeking performative understanding in the theatre of everyday life. Following Hans Urs von Balthasar's magisterial, five-volume Theo-Drama, a growing number of theologians and pastors have been engaging more widely with theatre and drama, producing what has been recognized as a "theatrical turn" in theology. This volume includes thirteen essays from theologians and pastors who have contributed in distinct ways to this theatrical turn and who desire to deepen interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and theatre. The result is an unprecedented collection of essays that embodies and advances theatrical theology for the purpose of enriching theological reflection and edifying the church.
You can’t. God can. Life never lacks for improvement—in ourselves, in our relationships, in just about everything. But all our brave stabs at getting better, if they ever change anything, are incomplete at best, complete failures at worst. Sometimes much worse. Unless . . . The gospel of Jesus Christ is the great “unless” of life—both for those who already believe (but can’t believe the messes they’re still capable of making), as well as those who don’t yet believe but just know their way isn’t working. Recovering Redemption, written with a pastor’s bold intensity and a counselor’s discerning insight, takes you deeply into Scripture to take you deeply inside yourself, discovering that the heart of all our problems is truly the problem of our hearts. But because of what God has done, and because of what God can do, the most confident, contented person you know could actually be you—redeemed through Jesus Christ. None of us, really, can do what’s required to change our lives for the better, taking what’s persistently frustrating and making it perfectly satisfying. Yet as hopeless as that may sound, it is the flat-line truth in which good news comes to life . . . to your life. For just as what’s lost can be found, what’s wrong can—even now—be recovered.