Behram is the mysterious narrator of this strange tale of one mans search for divine understanding. He tells about the truth of sinand the sin of the truthin his life while discussing not only Islam but also God as an all-powerful entity. Behram travels and meets others on the path to enlightenment, but he might not find what he seeks. He continues to search, although he does not know exactly what he searches foror what pursues him. He chases and looks, knowing that the day he discovers what he seeks will be the day he becomes a poet, a madman, or a prophet, but a prophet without God. Behram grows to hate God as much as he hates Satan but also loves God as he loves Satan. What horrible, beautiful realization awaits the seeker when truth is ultimately revealed?
Augustine's Early Thought on the Redemptive Function of Divine Judgement considers the relationship between Augustine's account of God's judgment and his theology of grace in his early works. How does God use his law and the penal consequences of its transgression in the service of his grace, both personally and through his 'agents' on earth? Augustine reflected on this question from different perspectives. As a teacher and bishop, he thought about the nature of discipline and punishment in the education of his pupils, brothers, and congregants. As a polemicist against the Manichaeans and as a biblical expositor, he had to grapple with issues regarding God's relationship to evil in the world, the violence God displays in the Old Testament, and in the death of his own Son. Furthermore, Augustine meditated on the way God's judgment and grace related in his own life, both before and after his conversion. Bart van Egmond follows the development of Augustine's early thought on judgment and grace from the Cassiacum writings to the Confessions. The argument is contextualized both against the background of the earlier Christian tradition of reflection on the providential function of divine chastisement, and the tradition of psychagogy that Augustine inherited from a variety of rhetorical and philosophical sources. This study expertly contributes to the ongoing scholarly discussion on the development of Augustine's doctrine of grace, and to the conversation on the theological roots of his justification of coercion against the Donatists.
From the Preface: Reader, the Author preached and printed the Works out of which this is extracted, many many years ago, and by them, he, though dead, yet speaketh. And however strange the Doctrine herein contained, may be, {to those who build their hopes upon inherent righteousness, } yet it is none other than the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Doctrine of the Reformation, and the only Doctrine that tends {contrary to the judgment of carnal reason} to uprightness of heart and life, and whoever conceives otherwise of this Doctrine understands it not. It is founded upon this principle, that we must discover God's Love to us in Christ Jesus, that he has already saved us, before we can truly love God or our Neighbor. This our Saviour inculcates to Simon the Pharisee in the Parable of the two Debtors, Luke 7:41, and in many other Places of Scripture. May he sprinkle this with his Blood; and explain it by his Spirit to the Heart of every Reader
Dangerous Speech is the first systematic treatment of blasphemous speech in colonial Mexico. This engaging social history examines the representation of blasphemy as a sin and a crime, and its repression by the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish colonists viewed blasphemy not only as an insult against God but also as a dangerous misrepresentation of the deity, which could call down his wrath in a ruinous assault on the imperial enterprise. Why then, asks Villa-Flores, did Spaniards dare to blaspheme? Having mined the period’s moral literature—philosophical works as well as royal decrees and Inquisition treatises and trial records in Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. archives and research libraries—Villa-Flores deftly interweaves images of daily life in colonial Mexico with vivid descriptions of human interactions to illustrate the complexity of a culture profoundly influenced by the Catholic Church. In entertaining and sometimes horrifying vignettes, the reader comes face to face with individuals who used language to assert or manipulate their identities within that repressive society. Villa-Flores offers an innovative interpretation of the social uses of blasphemous speech by focusing on specific groups—conquistadors, Spanish settlers, Spanish women, and slaves of both genders—as a lens to examine race, class, and gender relations in colonial Mexico. He finds that multiple motivations led people to resort to blasphemy through a gamut of practices ranging from catharsis and gender self-fashioning to religious rejection and active resistance. Dangerous Speech is a valuable resource for students and scholars of colonialism, the social history of language, Mexican history, and the changing relations of gender, class, and ethnicity in colonial Latin America.
Set aside ineffective practices, such as scolding, ignoring the offense, or merely administering punishment. Ginger Hubbard, the bestselling author of Don’t Make Me Count to Three!, lays out a simple, Bible-based strategy for parents to help their kids tame their tongues and walk in the transforming power of Christ. Are you ever embarrassed or shocked by what comes out of your child’s mouth? Do you raise your voice, threaten, and coerce, but find yourself frustrated because nothing seems to work? In I Can’t Believe You Just Said That!, Ginger Hubbard provides a practical, three-step plan to reach beyond the behaviors of tongue-related struggles—such as lying, tattling, and whining—to address your child’s heart. After all, as Matthew 12:34 tells us, “the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”
