Search

"What Is a Gospel?" by Francis Watson is a collection of fourteen essays that challenge the traditional understanding of gospel literature. Watson argues that we should not read the canonical four gospels as categorically different from other non-canonical gospels. He emphasizes the continuity between the canonical and non-canonical gospels and explores the composition and reception of gospel literature. While Watson's methodological approach is important, there are still unanswered historical questions and some of his proposals seem unnecessarily complicated. Overall, "What Is a Gospel?" is a valuable resource for anyone studying the New Testament and the early Jesus movement. [Extracted from the article]

"Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity" by Helen Rhee explores how early Christians incorporated and reinterpreted Greco-Roman medicine and health care. Rhee argues that this appropriation of medical practices influenced the formation of early Christian identity, particularly during the fourth century when the status of the church within the Roman Empire changed. The book examines a wide range of primary sources, including Greco-Roman and Christian texts, and incorporates insights from medical anthropology to provide a nuanced understanding of health, illness, and care in early Christianity. Rhee's interdisciplinary approach and attention to detail make this book a valuable resource for scholars studying early Christianity and the intersection of medicine and religion. [Extracted from the article]

This article interrogates the arbitrary distinctions made between "anti‐Judaism" and "anti‐Semitism" by contextualizing the treatment of Jews in Roman late antiquity within the broader framework of premodern critical race studies. It illustrates the value of employing models such as racialization and monstrification when reconstructing the various iterations of anti‐Jewish prejudice that populate the long history of Christianity. More specifically, it outlines the modes of racialization utilized in two fourth‐century Christian writings: Eusebius's two‐part apology and the Pseudo‐Hegesippus. While Eusebius's work serves as an example of the racialization of Jews through ethnographic mythmaking, the so‐called Pseudo‐Hegesippus demonstrates the use of monstrification in the service of creating an affective culture of fear and hatred toward Jews. Such examples of Christian race‐making in late antiquity contribute to the task of tracing the developments of premodern race beyond the medieval period and disrupts the arbitrary and limiting distinctions made between anti‐Judaism and anti‐Semitism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides a list of recently published books in the field of religion and theology. The books cover a range of topics, including Islam and women, the wisdom of Corinthians, Paul and imperial divine honors, Martin Luther's Bible, female disciples in the Gospel, the Pentecostal gender paradox, gospel media, encountering the parables, evangelism, the afternoon of Christianity, vivid rhetoric and visual persuasion, Israel's Scriptures in early Christian writings, Christian doctrine, Eckhart's apophatic theology, contemporary Aristotelian ethics, the nature of Christian doctrine, Origen of Alexandria and the theology of the Holy Spirit, new perspectives on ritual in the biblical world, method, context, and meaning in Testament studies, and women of the Bible. The books are published by various publishers and cover a wide range of perspectives and approaches to these topics. [Extracted from the article]

This article offers an introduction to the study of magic in early Christian literature. In the first part of the article, I discuss the types of evidence scholars of early Christian texts often use to "reconstruct" ancient magic, as well as the methodological problems associated with these scholarly reconstructions. In the second part, I argue for the rehabilitating "magic" as a critical category in the study of early Christian literature despite the problems outlined throughout this article. Ultimately, I claim that the modern conceptual baggage associated with magic has resistive potential in undermining dominant historiographical narratives of how Christianity developed as something wholly distinct from magic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of the antichrist has filled Jewish and especially Christian thinkers with variations of dread, terror, and curiosity for millennia. Third, the two distinguishing motifs of antimessianism include the antichrist's violent conflict with the messiah and mimetic rivalry between the messiah and antichrist. Although their studies of the antichrist were not univocal, both scholars were influential for studies of the topic in the years following, and both argued that a Jewish antichrist myth fused with other traditions to make its way into Christian eschatology. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on specific ways in which those writers made use of classical sources which reveal about the rhetorics and agenda which shaped their narratives in chroniclers Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc, Fernando Alva Ixtlilxochitl and Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin. It mentions European antiquarian learning as part of a strategic design to assert the significance of the Mexican past and early Christian literature.

Nasrallah's latest monograph is a journey into the world of Pauline studies that pays special attention to the local contexts of some of the undisputed epistles. The monograph's framework consists of a series of connections between Pauline epistles and material culture that may have been of significance to Paul's audiences. The author successfully highlights the relevance of these sites, inscriptions, and literary works to the examined epistles, making an important contribution to the study of the undisputed Paulines. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, the author talks about his research in the history and literature of early Christianity and the Greco-Roman context. It mentions that Christian and Jewish writers in the Second Temple period articulate their identity in response to the social and cultural factors present in this environment. It also mentions that Christian identity developed from preexisting elements present in their social and cultural contexts.

The impact of Aramaic (especially Syriac) on the Qur'ān has long been a matter of debate among scholars, especially among those of the western academe but also within circles of traditional Muslim scholarship. Central to this discussion is the language and audience of the Qur'ān. Studies on the Qur'ān's foreign vocabulary gradually gave way to more in depth analyses on the text's relationship to Syriac Christian literature as well as debates surrounding the Jewish-Christian dimensions, the text's audience. The textual theories employed in studying the Qur'ān's relationship to the Syriac language and Biblical canon contain the strongest debate concerning the impact of Aramaic (especially Syriac) on the Qur'ān. These textual theories have been given consideration in recent scholarship, which reads the Qur'ān in light of the Aramaic translations of the Gospels, as well as the Syriac translation of the Didascalia Apostolorum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Vita Gangulfi prima, a text which was frequently copied and widely circulated in the Middle Ages. It argues that the text can be understood as an ironic discourse on miracle stories in hagiographical texts: the central message of the Vita is that meek and penitential living leads to sanctity, and not the enjoyment of stories about miracles. At the same time, the Vita presents the reader to some extent with a performance of this idea. The reader who sees through to the Vita's ironic intent is encouraged to laugh at the saint and thereby comes to comprehend the very sin for which the various characters in the Vita are punished, while the text simultaneously depicts penitence as the way out of this sinfulness. The Vita's critique of miracle stories made an eccentric contribution to a discourse which was also carried on in a number of other hagiographical texts of the early tenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the substantial Aboriginalist literature on Christianity, Aboriginal Australia has been largely peripheral to the emerging subfield 'the anthropology of Christianity.' In the introduction to this collection of essays, we argue that the reasons for its exclusion include Christianity's late arrival, its limited fortune in the colonial encounter, and its continued marginal role in organising the values of Aboriginal life. However, it is precisely because of the rather unremarkable history of conversion in Aboriginal Australia that our volume can inform current debates in the general anthropological literature on Christianity. As the essays concentrate on Protestant forms of Christianity in remote Australia, we address the ways in which Aboriginal converts experience what are often argued to be the common features of modern Protestantism, namely, transcendence, rupture and belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay examines Hans Urs von Balthasar's little-known Foreword to the Christian esoteric text, Meditations on the Tarot by Valentin Tomberg. It argues that von Balthasar respected and advocated this ostensibly occult text because he found its capacious understanding of Christian faith as true gnosis similar to his own. The essay explains that both Tomberg and von Balthasar practice a rule-governed Christian esotericism whose goal is support for a fruitful ecclesial spirituality and resistance to non-ecclesial esoteric Gnosticism. Both Tomberg and von Balthasar believe that esotericism without prayer and institutional grounding can become narcissistic and self-righteous to the point of megalomania, and consequently it tends to become manipulative and coercive to the point of violence. Both authors maintain that authentic esotericism, by contrast, is marked by radical humility and non-violence; it is biblical, ecclesial, and committed to the unity of metaphysical reason and prayerful faith. The essay also draws attention to Tomberg's innovatively irenic approach to Christian anti-Gnosticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are various odd features about the initial reception of the Corpus Dionysiacum in the sixth century. The reception was, at first, slow and mainly concerned the few, controversial Christological assertions of the CD. The influence of the CD was mediated through a single edition, complete with introduction, variant readings, and scholia, all furnished by John of Scythopolis. The initial reception of the CD in the Syriac world seems very different: independent (at least to begin with) of Scythopolis’ edition, and deeply Origenistic. Yet, in other ways, the CD reflects the kind of historical interests we find elsewhere in the sixth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a tribute to the academic work of priest John L. Russell. It highlights the features of Russell's literary activity, and cites some of his works that are relevant in the study of the relationship between science and religion. Those works include the articles "The Scientific Best Seller" published in "Scrutiny" and the "St. James the Great and Anglican orders" published in "The Heythrop Journal."

This study investigated whether audience characteristics identified as important in the conversion and religious recruitment literature could predict reaction to a Christianity-themed recruitment message. More specific goals involved (a) comparing the impact of potential recruits' dispositional attributes and personal motivations versus their situational availability on the persuasive effect of religious recruitment messages; and (b) rank ordering the audience characteristics examined based on their predictive power. Results indicated that dispositional and motivational considerations were more reliable predictors of receivers' responses to the recruitment message than were situational factors. Specifically, five of the six dispositional and motivational variables (i.e., loneliness, perceived childhood attachment history, meaning and purpose, other-orientation, and problem-solving perspective) were—at least under certain conditions—related to participants' interest in the church. The two variables representing situational availability, free time and membership status, however, were either unrelated to interest in the church or related to participants' reactions, but in the opposite direction of what was expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bethge was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's closest friend and confidant during the last ten years of Bonhoeffer's life. Bonhoeffer held him in high esteem, and he regarded no one better able to understand and clarify his thought. Anticipating his own death, Bonhoeffer designated Bethge to care for his legacy and write his biography, responsibilities Bethge later fulfilled with remarkable dedication and erudition. In the process he produced a significant number of interpretative essays, becoming internationally respected for his historical and theological scholarship, as well as his own engagement with church and social issues. Without Bethge, Bonhoeffer's legacy would not have become as well or as widely known as it did, or interpreted in the way that it has. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the account in the work of Karl Barth of the concursus Dei– that part of the doctrine of providence which deals with the fatherly lordship of God as it accompanies the free activity of the creature. In recent Barth literature, the term ‘Chalcedonian’ has regularly been used to describe Barth's construal of the concursus Dei, on the basis of the christocentric derivation of his doctrine of providence. Nevertheless, this article suggests that this particular use of christological vocabulary is unhelpful, and concludes that, on historical, material and methodological grounds, the term ‘Chalcedonian’ in this context should be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dyothelite Christology of Maximus the Confessor provides a basis for countering modern worry that an Augustinian doctrine of the bondage of the will undermines human integrity. Modern discomfort with Augustine presupposes an anthropology that equates genuine agency with freedom of choice. In defending the principle that Christ has a fully human will, Maximus challenges this presupposition by denying that a human agent's willing is to be identified with choosing. Thus, while Maximus does not share Augustine's doctrine of original sin, he offers a framework within which to explore possible convergence between Eastern and Western understandings of the will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article, Karen Kilby expresses the concern that some contemporary Thomistic theologians have, despite themselves, fallen into a form of theological rationalism. Kilby suggests that in fact some statements, while necessary for trinitarian grammar, are as unintelligible to theologians as to common believers. In dialogue with Kilby's critique, the present article suggests that the theology of friendship illumines how Augustine and Aquinas, like many other patristic and medieval theologians, offer their trinitarian theology as a ‘spiritual exercise’, and thereby indicates why their approaches do not constitute trinitarian theologians as a particular elite above all others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent consensus holds that the deposition of Charles the Simple by Robert of Neustria in 922 was the result of a sudden deterioration in their relationship that had nothing to do with any earlier hostilities. A close examination of contemporary diplomas suggests a very different story. In 898, Charles did not faithfully implement the agreement he had made with Robert's brother Odo that gave him the succession and he resisted recognizing Robert's lay abbacies, in particuar that of Saint-Denis. These grievances shaped the entirety of the reign, and their memory remained quite alive at the time of the deposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI contains many surprises, not least among which are observations about the nature of justice, the limits of the state, and the purpose and character of charitable organisations. This article analyses the encyclical by highlighting some of its underlying theological and philosophical influences as well as its practical implications for how Christians think about approaching poverty and the political order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-Western Christianity engages with capitalist development and ideas of modernization from multiple and competing perspectives. In this article, 1 argue that as researchers we can weave together disparate theoretical strands attempting to explain the appeal of Christianity-particularly its Pentecostal and charismatic forms-by examining indigenous notions of "salvation" that have often been overlooked in the literature. To illustrate, I examine millennial Christianity among the lpili of Papua New Guinea, demonstrating how their understandings of "heaven" and their desire for the Second Coming articulate with a concern regarding how social relations are spatialized through engagement with capitalist mining development, evangelical Christianity, and traditional spirits responsible for maintaining the world's integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to teach theological reflection well, it is necessary to teach students how to write it well. This paper probes the writing of theological reflection as a rhetorical process and a theological practice by (1) situating theological reflection broadly within a “correlation” model, adapted for theological writers; (2) identifying two “generic” styles of theological reflection papers, the pastoral reflection paper and the systematic reflection paper; (3) following a writer's progress as she writes a one-page pastoral reflection paper and constructs a working theology in the process of writing it. In conclusion, the correlation-based “Reflecting on Paper” process provides a pedagogical bridge between the writing and teaching of “pastoral” and “systematic” theological reflection, and exemplifies the dynamic interplay between teaching theological reflection and reflecting on writing as a theological practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the text of the sermon delivered by Steven McKinley at the funeral of theologian Tim Lull on May 25, 2003 which deals with death in relation to Christian faith.

Compares the image of the Prophet Muhammad as expressed in the writings of Christian missionaries Thomas Patrick Hughes and Elwood Morris Wherry. Examination of initial writings; Reactions to positive assessments of the character of Muhammad by other European writers; Theological prepositions that pre-determined Muhammad's image; Changes in perception that occurred in their later writings.

Focuses on the document on 'Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry' (BEM) for the achievement of ecumenical convergence of churches. Advice to churches in Italy for the study on BEM; Criteria for interpretation of BEM; Legitimate plurality in the unity of the church; Concerns over the issue of sacramentality.

Focuses on collections of ecumenical archives of the Library of the Ecumenical Center in Geneva, Switzerland. Faith and Order archives since 1910; Life and Work archives since 1925; International Missionary council archives from the year 1910 to 1961; Archives of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches from 1906-1948.

Focuses on the problem of use of force among Christians. Comparison of documents by the World Council of Churches and the Evangelical Church in Germany; Types of forces for protection from violence; Restriction on Christians from the system of nuclear deterrence; Christ's objection to hatred and the use of force.

Focuses on interpretations of the covenant of life between God and Adam in an effort to answer the theological question relating to the worth of human life in the world of death and violence. Desire of God for the development and growth of human life; Duties assigned by the God to humans under the covenant; Expectations of God from humans.

Reports the accomplishments of the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 1980 to 1981. Highlights of consultation meetings in 1981; Reduction of deficit of WCC for 1980; Completion of study projects; Plan of publishing WCC publications in different languages; Formation of committees for planning tasks for the sixth assembly of WCC in Vancouver.

Presents a survey on the concept of conversion in the ecumenical movement. Restriction of conversion in Christianity; Literature on the doctrine of conversion; Lack of difference between spiritual illumination and commitment to a just society; Ability of the ecumenical movement to stress on the inter-relationship between conversion traditions.

Analyzes the World Council of Churches (WCC) literature in Christian social ethics and varieties of moral discourse. Characteristics of prophetic moral discourse; Uses and functions of narrative discourse; Distinction between wants and needs-based view of distributive justice.

The text of "The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians," is one of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament to be published. The text was published by Patrick Young, a Royal Librarian in 1633. The Epistle marks a crucial moment in the fortunes of the phoenix, since it is the first document to put this pagan bird to Christian use. It also shows the seventeenth century as a turning point, when the learned world was casting off residual obscurantism and replacing it with scientific rationalism.

The article focuses on poet John Milton's poem "Hymn of the Morning of Christ's Nativity." The poem proceed from divine inspiration. The terms of Milton's reference to the prophetic writings are significant in that they bring together poet, scholar and musician. He names the source of his own inspiration as the "Heavenly Muse." Milton has named his muse in such a way as to evoke both the mythology and the Christian tradition. The music in Milton's poem becomes a powerful metaphor for the love of God, newly evident at the birth of Christ.

The article discusses the influence of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, a collection of Early Christianity writing, on the theological views of English poet John Milton. It focuses on Milton's view of the Holy Trinity, which he saw heavily favoring God over Jesus Christ and even more so over the Holy Spirit. References to the Holy Spirit and other Christian themes are examined in the work of Milton, specifically the poems "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" and the prose "De Doctrina Christiana."

This article focuses on religion and the informing of culture. Theological sophistication or awareness is not acceptable as a measure of religion's informing culture. Despite some nostalgia for the era of Bible-toting and quoting, the fact must be that, absolutely and proportionately, more people today know more theology. Simply the relative number of persons attending college and the number of theological-type paper-back books purchased support the contention. The philosophical or artistic excellence of theology also lends connotation to religion and the informing of the culture. Religion fails to inform when the quality of its theology declines. One of those who claims that "God is dead," however, claims that such excellence is here. Certainly a reasonable meaning of religion and informing of the culture suggests the possible general influence religion has had and is having on the affairs of man. But what person is prepared to argue that the Judaic-Christian tradition generally and the Protestant tradition specifically, are not observable in the U.S.