Presents an insightful approach to the sacraments from the perspective and actual practice of Latinos over the centuries. This work offers a distinctive take on the belief and enculturation of the sacraments in the Latino experience and context. It is suitable for theology courses, as well as directors of ministerial programs and their students.
Surveying the barriers that contemporary thinking has erected between the natural and the supernatural, between earth and heaven, Hans Boersma issues a wake-up call for Western Christianity. Both Catholics and evangelicals, he says, have moved too far away from a sacramental mindset, focusing more on the "here-and-now" than on the "then-and-there." Yet, as Boersma points out, the teaching of Jesus, Paul, and St. Augustine -- indeed, of most of Scripture and the church fathers -- is profoundly otherworldly, much more concerned with heavenly participation than with earthly enjoyment. In Heavenly Participation Boersma draws on the wisdom of great Christian minds ancient and modern -- Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, C. S. Lewis, Henri de Lubac, John Milbank, and many others. He urges Catholics and evangelicals alike to retrieve a sacramental worldview, to cultivate a greater awareness of eternal mysteries, to partake eagerly of the divine life that transcends and transforms all earthly realities.
"What Christ Jesus taught is not what is most important, but rather what he has given humanity. His resurrection is the birth of a new faculty within human nature." -- Rudolf Steiner There are many books on sacramental theology --some of which focus on a specific denomination, while others aspire to rigorous academic objectivity. Some also serve as an introduction to a particular branch of Christianity, and Michael Debus's book serves that purpose well. Nevertheless, the author's integration of theological developments through the centuries with a discussion of the evolution of consciousness makes this book unique. He addresses the fact that anyone looking for a new or renewed relationship to Christian religiosity must come to understand the center of religious cognitive consciousness and practical life --the sacraments. Is baptism merely a symbolic act, or is it a reality that affects one's life? Does a final unction affect a person's future stages of destiny? How should we understand the transformation of bread and wine? What spiritual processes are expressed in "rituals"? The Christian Community --working since 1922 as a conscious movement for religious renewal --offers answers to these and other crucial questions. Michael Debus speaks to readers who wish to understand more deeply the spiritual foundations of The Christian Community and its place in theological history and its role in Christianity today. In Sacramental Theology for a Modern and Future World, Michael Debus makes complex topics and concepts accessible to all who wish to understand the background and sacraments of The Christian Community and the Movement for Christian Renewal. This book is a translation of Auferstehungskräfte im Schicksal: Die Sakramente der Christengemeinschaft (Urachhaus, 2011). Cover Image: Ascension, 45 cm x 45 cm watercolor painting by Ninetta Sombart, used with the kind permission of Raffael Verlag and the artist's family (photograph copyright by Thomas Spalinger).
Christians tend to divide into three camps: evangelical, sacramental, and pentecostal. But must we choose between them? Drawing on the New Testament, Christian history, and years of experience in Christian ministry, Gordon T. Smith argues that the church not only can be all three, but in fact must be all three in order to truly be the church.
Both resistance to and renewed interest in the sacraments mark current theological thought. This work acknowledges human limitations of the sacraments but stresses that God's relationship to human beings cannot be other than sacramental." Sacramental structures and events constitute salvation history, and thus permeate all theology. What makes this sacramental view comprehensible is faith; faith is an indispensable precondition for a sacramental theology. Therefore, the author first demonstrates the preconditions of faith on which sacramental theology rests, and what place it holds within the whole of theology. Following this, he briefly presents the concept of sacraments and the history of that concept, the teachings of Church tradition on sacraments in general, and the basic features of a sacramental theology. Next, he explains from a theological perspective the traditional sacraments of the Catholic Church, including related topics such as indulgences and sacramentals.
In a sacramental ecology, divine grace is to be found in the evolutionary emergence of life. The ‘Epic of Evolution’ is the scientific story that reveals that we live in an approximately 14 billion year old universe on a planet that is approximately 4.6 billion years old and that we are a part of the ongoing process of life that has existed on Earth for roughly 4 billion years. Nature's Sacrament focuses on the religious and ecological significance of the evolutionary epic in an effort to seamlessly connect the ecological value attributed as a part of an understanding of the evolutionary connectedness of life on Earth, with the Divine grace understood to be present in Christian sacramental worship. David C. McDuffie is a faculty member in the Religious Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where his primary teaching schedule includes courses in World Religions, Religion in America, Christian History, Religion and Environment, and Religion and Politics. Broadly, his research and teaching interests involve the subject area of Religion and Culture, which includes but is not limited to the relationships between religion and politics, science, and health care. This is his first book.
In the decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council, the movement of nouvelle théologie caused great controversy in the Catholic Church and remains a subject of vigorous scholarly debate today. In Nouvelle théologie and Sacramental Ontology Hans Boersma argues that a return to mystery was the movement's deepest motivation. Countering the modern intellectualism of the neo-Thomist establishment, the nouvelle theologians were convinced that a ressourcement of the Church Fathers and of medieval theology would point the way to a sacramental reintegration of nature and the supernatural. In the context of the loss suffered by both Catholics and Protestants in the de-sacramentalizing of modernity, Boersma shows how the sacramental ontology of nouvelle théologie offers a solid entry-point into ecumenical dialogue. The volume begins by setting the historical context for nouvelle théologie with discussions of the influence of significant theologians and philosophers like Möhler, Blondel, Maréchal, and Rousselot. The exposition then moves to the writings of key thinkers of the ressourcement movement including de Lubac, Bouillard, Balthasar, Chenu, Daniélou, Charlier, and Congar. Boersma analyses the most characteristic elements of the movement: its reintegration of nature and the supernatural, its reintroduction of the spiritual interpretation of Scripture, its approach to Tradition as organically developing in history, and its communion ecclesiology that regarded the Church as sacrament of Christ. In each of these areas, Boersma demonstrates how the nouvelle theologians advocated a return to mystery by means of a sacramental ontology.
"Based on the Duffy Lectures, a yearly lecture series at Boston College, this short book explores the theme of 'Deep Incarnation' as a way of making connections between incarnation and the whole of creation, including the costs built into our evolutionary world. The key question of 'Deep Incarnation,' for Edwards, is: 'What relationship is there between the wider natural world, the world of galaxies and stars, mountains and seas, bacteria, plants and animals, and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?'"