What do a five year old and a ferryman have in common? What does a goddess have to do with a golf course? What's with all the artifacts in Hell? And what business could a seraph possibly have down there? To find the answers, you have to start with a beautiful, bored angel sneaking out of Heaven and wandering into the one dive bar in Purgatory. Add abduction courtesy of a devious demonic Duchess with a checkered past looking to expand her wardrobe. Call in the Cavalry in the form of one powerful Transporter demon with interesting tattoos, an active libido, and a nagging conscience. Toss in a colorful cast of characters, including a violet haired vixen with a mind-bending condo near the beach, a cigar smoking witch and one amazing little boy, for good measure. Season the mixture liberally with science, laughter and magic. Stir until trouble rises, skip the ice and let it all boil over into the wildest party Hell has ever known.
The Old English Genesis is the sole illustrated Anglo-Saxon poem. In full appreciation of this unique concurrent execution of visualization and versification in a single manuscript, this multidisciplinary work explores the pictorial (Vol. 1) and the metrical (Vol. 2) organization from both synchronic–structural and diachronic–comparative perspectives. Among the most significant findings of each volume are: The first twenty-two images in the Old English Genesis originated on the whole from the Touronian Bibles; and the underlying classical Old English and Old Saxon meters were interactively reshaped through mutual adaptation and recomposition aimed at their firm integration into a synthesized Old English Genesis. While each part is solidly embedded in the respective scholarly tradition and pursues its own disciplinary concerns and problematics, vigorous formal and cognitive reasoning and theorizing run commonly through both. By way of mutual corroboration and integration, the twin volumes eventually converge on the hypothesis that the earliest portion of the extant Old English Genesis (lines 1–966) derived from the corresponding episodes of an illustrated Touronian Old Saxon Genesis in both pictorial and metrical terms.
A member of the mysterious angelic race of Seraphim journeys to earth, where he befriends two orphaned children caught up in a cosmic battle against evil to save a city.
Foreign correspondent Jenny Claiborne, undercover FBI agent Ernesto Cruz, and veteran CIA operative Mitch Garvey, Jr. (each representing an individual in the biblical parable of the sower) have been selected for a special, divinely appointed test, a test on a scale and magnitude not seen since the days of Job. In their own way, each will play a pivotal role in hastening or delaying the rise of the Antichrist; gaining the attention of both the Angels of Light and the Angels of Darkness. In a desperate race against time, the Angels of Darkness gain permission from the Godhead for one last test of faith; a grand spiritual challenge between the forces of good and the forces of evil with the salvation of millions hanging in the balance. Behind the Veil: Angels of the Apocalypse examines the end of days from the perspective of the angels tasked with carrying out the signs and wonders to be wrought upon the Earth as the Rapture approaches. It is a fictional work based on biblical concepts, and takes an innovative approach to exploring the intriguing life and work of Gods silent sentinels.
It is a time of war. Veriteria has been devastated by a continental war, waged by the ruthless Bieracunian Dominion, hell-bent on establishing a new empire. They are led by the mysterious prophet of Okera, who has sworn to establish a new order. The Ardo-Gelican Alliance is the only united front, which stands against this Dominion, with seemingly limitless troops and endless resources. In Ardonei two young soldiers, Jonah and Felix brothers, will join the fight against the Dominion. Jonah travels as a member of the A.R.A.C., the Ardonein Royal Assassin Corps, leading a squad of five, in the name of the enigmatic assassins. Under his command is the skilled Katherine, the courageous Leon, the soft-spoken but deadly Jade, and the mysterious Jack a sharpshooter with a secret past. Meanwhile, his brother Felix carries the war as a lieutenant in the White Knights' Division, as he leads a squadron of cavalry knights. An unlikely ally will join his squadron in their fight against the followers of Okera. Felix will travel with The Second Army of Ardonei, to besiege Naghury, the Dominion’s seat of western power. Fly into a fantastic journey filled with lore, peril, intrigue, romance, and heartbreak as these two warriors fight to protect their homeland from this threat.
Too often the doctrine of creation has been made to serve limited or pointless ends, like the well-worn arguments between science and faith over the question of human and cosmic origins. Given this history, some might be tempted to ignore the theology of creation, thinking it has nothing new or substantive to say. They would be wrong. In this stimulating volume, Ian A. McFarland shows that at the heart of the doctrine of creation lies an essential truth about humanity: we are completely dependent on God. Apart from this realization, little else about us makes sense. McFarland demonstrates that this radical dependence is a consequence of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing. Taking up the theological consequences of creation--theodicy and Providence--the author provides a detailed and innovative constructive theology of creation. Drawing on the biblical text, classical sources, and contemporary thought, From Nothing proves that a robust theology of creation is a necessary correlate to the Christian confession of redemption in Jesus Christ.
2000 Catholic Press Association Award Winner! The claim has been made that we are gripped today in an aesthetic crisis" with considerable theological ramifications. Aesthetics, which has existed since the first human heart was moved by the influence of the beautiful, has played a major role, both implicit and explicit, in theological reflection. In The Community of the Beautiful Alejandro Garcia-Rivera draws from the North American philosophical tradition and Hispanic theological thought to propose a new aesthetic principle: a redemptive building of the community of the beautiful. The Community of the Beautiful focuses on the premise that religion and beauty go together. Yet today hundreds of theological treatises continue to speak solely of the "truth" of their claims. The Community of the Beautiful addresses this silence with a proposal about the relationship between God and the beautiful. It asks the question: How can the finite human creature name the nameless, perceive the imperceptible, make visible the invisible? The answer is what Hans Urs von Balthasar called a theological aesthetics. The Community of the Beautiful is not simply an analysis of Balthasar's theology; there exists a more personal and concrete reason for a reconsideration of the connection between God and the beautiful. The experience of a particular living ecclesial tradition, the Latin Church of the Americas, may be a guide to a world that lost its confidence in the religious dimensions of the beautiful. Garcia-Rivera recasts the question of theological aesthetics posed above in light of the religious experience of the Latin Church of the Americas so that the question becomes: What moves the human heart? To answer that question, Garcia-Rivera draws on along-ignored philosophical tradition. The philosophical semiotics of Charles Peirce and Josiah Royce enter into dialogue with the theological aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar to describe the traditional transcendentals, the True and the Good, as communities. The final transcendental, the beautiful, enters into conversation with the semiotic aesthetics of Jan Mukarovsky and the religious experience of the Latin American Church to become the dazzling Vision of the community of the beautiful, God's community. Chapters are "Pied Beauty," "A Different Beauty," "Seeing the Form," "The Community of the True," "The Community of the Good," "The Community of the Beautiful," and "Lifting up the Lowly." Alejandro R. Garcia-Rivera, a Roman Catholic lay theologian, received his doctorate in theology from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and holds degrees in physics from Ohio State University and Miami University. The author of numerous articles and winner of a Catholic Press Association award, he is assistant professor of systematic theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. "
"Selecting novels representative of distinct phases in Muriel Spark's career, Rodney Stenning Edgecombe explores their themes, style, and structure in a detailed way for the first time. Edgecombe's approach brings to life the delicate nuances, rich allusions, and complicated ironies of Spark's fiction. His careful reading of the novels makes this a penetrating assessment of an important writer."--Publishers website.
