Denuded Devotion to Christ
Denuded Devotion to Christ

Author: Larry D Harwood

Publisher: James Clarke & Company

Published: 2013-05-30

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 022790186X

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Much of the emerging protestantism of the sixteenth century produced a Reformation in conscious opposition to formal philosophy. Nevertheless, sectors of the Reformation produced a spiritualizing form of Platonism in the drive for correct devotion. Out of an understandable fear of idolatry or displacement of the uniquely redemptive place of Christ, Christian piety moved away from the senses and the material world - freshly uncovered in the Reformation. This volume argues, however, that in the quest for restoring true religion, sectors of the Protestant tradition impugned too severely the material components of prior Christian devotion. Larry Harwood argues that a similar spiritualizing tendency can be found in other Christian traditions, but that its applicability to the particulars of the Christian religion is nevertheless questionable. Moreover, in that quest of a spiritualizing Protestant true religion, the Christian God could shade toward the conceptual god of the philosophers, with devotees construed as rationalist philosophers. Part of the paradoxical result was to propel the Protestant devotee toward a denuded worship for material worshipers of the Christian God who became esh.

The Theater of God's Glory
The Theater of God's Glory

Author: W. David O. Taylor

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2017-08-21

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1467447919

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A theological framework for the liturgical arts rooted in John Calvin Both detractors and supporters of John Calvin have deemed him an enemy of the physical body, a pessimist toward creation, and a negative influence on the liturgical arts. But, says W. David O. Taylor, that only tells half of the story. Taylor examines Calvin's trinitarian theology as it intersects his doctrine of the physical creation in order to argue for a positive theological account of the liturgical arts. He does so believing that Calvin's theology can serve, perhaps surprisingly, as a rich resource for understanding the theological purposes of the arts in corporate worship. Drawing on Calvin's Institutes, biblical commentaries, sermons, catechisms, treatises, and worship orders, this book represents one of the most thorough investigations available of John Calvin's theology of the physical creation—and the promising possibilities it opens up for the formative role of the arts in worship.

God's Beauty-in-Act
God's Beauty-in-Act

Author: Stephen M. Garrett

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2013-07-24

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1610977300

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Jurgen Moltmann and others contend that Christian theology and the church face a dual crisis--one of relevance and the other of identity. Despite making this pronouncement nearly forty years ago, the church in the West continues to struggle with this crisis. Several proposals have been espoused, from the way of wisdom to the way of ecclesial praxis. Yet, little attention is given in Protestant theological discourse to the role God's beauty plays in bringing theology and ethics together. By neglecting God's beauty for theological discourse, we risk diminishing Christian worship, witness, and wisdom. God's Beauty-in-Act addresses these issues, in part, by arguing that the redemptive-creative suffering and glorious resurrection of Christ are the nexus of God's being, beauty, and Christian living. God's beauty, understood as the fittingness of the incarnate Son's actions in the Spirit to the Father's will, radiates God's glory and draws perceivers into the dramatic movements of God's triune life. These movements serve as the patterns that shape the imagination, enabling participants to perform their parts creatively and fittingly in God's drama of redemption. In doing so, human beings flourish as they jettison false identities and realities of their own making that are incommensurate with God's purpose found in Christ by the Spirit.

Divine Presence as Activity and the Incarnation
Divine Presence as Activity and the Incarnation

Author: Alexander S. Jensen

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-22

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1040091296

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This book offers an original perspective on the doctrine of incarnation through a discussion of divine presence and action, arguing for the plausibility of Chalcedonian Christology. It draws on a range of theological and philosophical sources, from St. Athanasius of Alexandria’s approach regarding the presence of the logos asarkos in the world to the relational understanding of personhood put forward by John Zizioulas, Christos Yannaras and others. The suggestion is that divine presence needs to be understood in consistently Trinitarian terms and the book sets out the possibility of a theology of presence which understands God as present and immanent in the world, while, at the same time, remaining transcendent and ineffable. Alexander Jensen maintains that the classical understanding of divine presence, which sees God as being present according to God’s activity, is much more useful in Christology than today’s predominant modern notion of presence as occupying space, and combines this with an ontological understanding of personhood. The book gives an account of the person and work of Christ that takes seriously the insights of historical research and critical biblical interpretation. It takes seriously the full humanity of Jesus of Nazareth and asserts that in this man we encounter God. It will be of particular interest to systematic theologians, as well as those concerned with the history of Christian theology and philosophical theology.

Participating Witness
Participating Witness

Author: Anthony G. Siegrist

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2013-08-21

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1620324881

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At a time when the fractious legacy of the Protestant Reformation is coming under new scrutiny, Anthony Siegrist explores the implications of ecumenism for believers' baptism. Writing from within the tradition of the Radical Reformation, he challenges dominant ecclesiological assumptions and argues that this central practice needs to be reconstrued. Siegrist works constructively to develop a concrete account of believers' baptism that attends closely to the dynamics of divine initiation. Siegrist deliberately stretches the traditional Anabaptist conversation to include not just expected voices like Yoder and Marpeck, but also luminaries from the broader Christian tradition; Barth, Bonhoeffer, and a variety of ancient sources are creatively engaged. The intent of Participating Witness is eminently practical, but its argumentation is carried out with theological rigor.

Schleiermacher's Influences on American Thought and Religious Life, 1835-1920
Schleiermacher's Influences on American Thought and Religious Life, 1835-1920

Author: Jeffrey A. Wilcox

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2014-10-23

Total Pages: 1118

ISBN-13: 1606080059

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Here freshly researched, unprecedented stories regarding modern American thought and religious life show how the scholar Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) provides ongoing influence still. They describe his influence on universal rights, American religious life, theology, philosophy, history, psychology, interpretation of texts, community formation, and interpersonal dialogue. Schleiermacher is an Einstein-like innovator in all these areas and more. This work contrasts chiefly "evangelical liberal" figures with others (between circa 1835 and the 1920s). It also looks ahead to several careers extended well into the twentieth century and offers numerous characterizations of Schleiermacher's thought. In six tightly organized parts, fourteen expert historians chronologically discuss the following: (1) Methodist leaders (1766-1924); (2) Stuart, Bushnell, Nevin, and Hodge; (3) Restorationists, Transcendentalists, women leaders, Schaff, and Rauschenbusch; (4) Clarke, Mullins, Carus, and Bowne; (5) Dewey, Royce, Ames, Knudson, Brown, Fosdick, Cross, Jones, and Thurman--within contemporary contexts. Unexpectedly, John Dewey lies at the epicenter of the narrative, and Harry Emerson Fosdick and Howard Thurman bring it to its climax. Recently, evidence displays a broadening influence advancing rapidly. The sixth part of the book surveys modern historiography, Schleiermacher on history and comparative method and on psychology as a basic scientific and philosophical field. That section also provides a critical survey of histories of modern theology and offers concluding questions and answers. The three editors contribute twenty of the thirty-one chapters.

The Place of the Spirit
The Place of the Spirit

Author: Sarah Morice-Brubaker

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2013-09-17

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1621898806

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Is there any way to talk theologically about the Trinity and place? What might the "placedness" of creation have to do with God's triunity? In The Place of the Spirit, Sarah Morice-Brubaker considers how anxieties about place have influenced Trinitarian theology--both what it is asked to do and the language in which it is expressed. When one is nervous about collapsing God into created horizons, she suggests, one is apt to come up with a model of trinity that refuses place. Distance becomes a primary way of situating the divine persons in relation to each other. Conversely, those theologians who wish to avoid a too-remote God likewise recruit Trinitarian language to suit that purpose. They, too, give that language a placial gloss, expressing triunity in terms of coinherence and mutual indwelling. And yet, suggests Morice-Brubaker, the question, "What is place, and how can one talk about God and place?" is underdetermined within much contemporary Trinitarian thought. Thankfully, this question has received full-on attention in other areas of ethics, philosophy, and systematic theology. This book calls for Trinitarian thought to avail itself of those insights and offers some ways in which it may do so.

Medieval Civilization
Medieval Civilization

Author: Larry D. Harwood

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2016-03-02

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 1498234887

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Providing an overall view of the medieval period of Western history, this book maintains a balanced approach to an age that has been romanticized as well as vilified. Written with an eye toward modern readers, who may be perplexed by the hazy Middle Ages, Medieval Civilization provides illuminating details that enable the reader to enjoy a fascinating overview of this stretch of a thousand years. Rather than maintaining a dismissive attitude toward this presumed dark and dank period of human failings, the author banters about and responds to some criticisms of the medieval world by modern critics alongside his telling of the medieval story. Religious presences loom large in this book written about an age of religion and things religious in a way largely foreign to the modern world. The medieval period breathes in this tale of peasants, priests, and kings rather than being autopsied as a museum piece. Terms like scholastic, gothic, mendicant, monk, stigmata, and others are put into medieval contexts for ease of understanding, while a huge slice of Western history, usually looked at suspiciously by modern people, is presented as preparation for understanding much of the modern world.

Transgressive Devotion
Transgressive Devotion

Author: Natalie Wigg-Stevenson

Publisher: SCM Press

Published: 2021-02-28

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 033405947X

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Academic theology is in need of a new genre. In "Transgressive Devotion" Natalie Wigg-Stevenson articulates a theological vision of that genre as performance art. She argues that theology done as performance art stops trying to describe who God is, and starts trying to make God appear. Recognising that the act of studying theology or practicing ministry is always a performance, where the boundaries between what we see, feel, experience and learn are not just blurred but potentially invisible, Wigg-Stevenson brings together ethnographic theological fieldwork, historical and contemporary Christian theological traditions, and performance artworks themselves. A daring vision of theology which will energise anybody feeling ‘boxed in’ by the discipline, Transgressive Devotion blurs borders between orthodoxy, heterodoxy and heresy to reveal how the very act of doing theology makes God and humanity vulnerable to each other. This is theology which is a liturgy of Divine incantation. In other words: this is theology which is also prayer.

Closet Devotions
Closet Devotions

Author: Richard Rambuss

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13:

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Religion and sex, body and soul, sacred and profane: In Closet Devotions, Richard Rambuss traces the relays between these cultural formations by examining the issue of "sacred eroticism," the literary or artistic expression of devotional feelings in erotic terms that has repeatedly occurred over the centuries. Rather than dismissing such expression as mere convention, Rambuss takes it seriously as a form of erotic discourse, one that gives voice to desires that, outside the sphere of sacred rapture, would otherwise be deemed taboo. Through startling rereadings of works ranging from the devotional verse of the metaphysical poets (Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Traherne) to photographer Andres Serrano's controversial "Piss Christ," from Renaissance religious iconography to contemporary gay porn, Rambuss uncovers the highly charged erotic imagery that suffuses religious devotional art and literature. And he explores one of Christian culture's most guarded (and literal) closets--the prayer closet itself, a privileged space where the vectors of same-sex desire can travel privately between the worshiper and his or her God. Elegantly written and theoretically astute, Closet Devotions illuminates the ways in which sacred Christian devotion is homoeroticized, a phenomenon that until now has gone unexplored in current scholarship on religion, the body, and its passions. This book will attract readers across a wide array of disciplines, including gay and lesbian studies, literary theory and criticism, Renaissance studies, and religion.