Author: David G. Hunter
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506446000
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity is part of Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, a series designed to present ancient Christian texts essential to an understanding of Christian theology, ecclesiology, and practice. The books in the series make the wealth of early Christian thought available to new generations of students of theology and provide a valuable resource for the church. Developed in light of recent patristic scholarship, the volumes provide a representative sampling of theological contributions from both East and West. The series provides volumes that are relevant for a variety of courses: from introduction to theology to classes on doctrine and the development of Christian thought. The goal of each volume is not to be exhaustive but rather to be representative enough to denote for a nonspecialist audience the multivalent character of early Christian thought, allowing readers to see how and why early Christian doctrine and practice developed the way it did.
Author: David Wheeler-Reed
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300231318
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
A New Testament scholar challenges the belief that American family values are based on “Judeo-Christian” norms by drawing unexpected comparisons between ancient Christian theories and modern discourses Challenging the long-held assumption that American values—be they Christian or secular—are based on “Judeo-Christian” norms, this provocative study compares ancient Christian discourses on marriage and sexuality with contemporary ones, maintaining that modern family values owe more to Roman Imperial beliefs than to the bible. Engaging with Foucault’s ideas, Wheeler-Reed examines how conservative organizations and the Supreme Court have misunderstood Christian beliefs on marriage and the family. Taking on modern cultural debates on marriage and sexuality, with implications for historians, political thinkers, and jurists, this book undermines the conservative ideology of the family, starting from the position that early Christianity, in its emphasis on celibacy and denunciation of marriage, was in opposition to procreation, the ideological norm in the Greco-Roman world.
Author: Rob Yule
Publisher: WestBow Press
ISBN: 151278088X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Romance and sexual intimacy are among lifes highest joys. How we handle our sexuality is an ultimate challenge, particularly in todays sexualised global culture. Rob Yule looks at a fascinating selection of romantic relationships from throughout Christian history, from Augustine, Abelard and Helose, and the Luthers to Billy and Ruth Graham and Pope Saint John Paul II. Illustrating how challenging and far-from-straightforward the relationship of men and women is in real life, he draws many insights for relationships and marriage today. A Terrifying Grace explores the romantic relationships of leading Christians throughout history and how they handled sex and marriage. What were their relationships and marriages like? What did they believe or teach about sexuality and marriage? Did their marriages or celibate lives live up to their professed beliefs? How did they handle the joys, pains, temptations, and responsibilities of their intimate relationships, alongside their public life and witness? Even great Christians have struggled to handle their intimate relationships. We can learn much from them how to live with integrity in todays hypersexualised culture.
Author: Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113476121X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World is the first global survey of such for the early modern period. Merry Wiesner-Hanks assesses the role of personal faith and the church itself in the control and expression of all aspects of sexuality. The book ranges over developments within Europe and beyond to the European colonies including Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Goa, which were establishing themselves around the world. Christian missionaries and rituals and structures accompanied all of the imperial powers and the control of the sexuality of both indigenous peoples and colonists was an essential part of policy. The book is introduced with a clear, original and engaging account of the central concepts in the study of sexuality in Christianity, such as shame, sin, the body, marriage and gender. Drawing on diverse evidence including literary, medical and historical the following sections chart changes in Western Christianity in the Late Middle Ages, Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe, Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe and Russia, and finally the Spanish, Portuguese, English and Dutch Colonies. Merry Wiesner-Hanks exciting book covers both the ideas and effects in each period. Christianity and Sexuality in the early Modern World includes discursive bibliographies which discuss major books and articles at the end of each chapter.
Author: David G. Hunter
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
ISBN: 9780800626525
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 157
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Book Description
Recent attention to early Christian attitudes toward the body and gender has focused on asceticism and renunciation. This volume collects newly translated texts on marriage and sexuality. Spanning the New Testament era through the sixth century and both Greek and Latin writers, Hunter demonstrates the ways in which Christian commitment was actually lived and our own theological heritage forged.
Author: Martti Nissinen
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 157506572X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556
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Book Description
The title of this volume, Sacred Marriages, consciously plays with the traditional concept of sacred marriage, but the plural form, “sacred marriages,” gives the reader an idea that something more is at stake here than a monomaniacal idea of manifestations deriving from a single prototype. Following the guidelines of one of the contributors, Ruben Zimmermann, the editors tentatively define “sacred marriage” as a “real or symbolic union of two complementary entities, imagined as gendered, in a religious context.” “Sacred marriages” (plural), then, refers to various expressions of this kind of union in different cultures that seek to overcome, to cite Zimmermann again, “the great dualism of human and cosmic existence.” The subtitle indicates that the contributors are primarily interested in different aspects of the divine-human sexual metaphor—that is, the imagining and reenactment of a gendered relationship between the human and divine worlds. This metaphor, which is essentially about relationship rather than sexual acts, can find textual, ritual, mythical, and social expressions in different times and places. Indeed, the sacred marriage ritual itself should be considered not a manifestation of the “sacralized power of sexuality experienced in sexual intercourse” but one way of objectifying the divine-human sexual metaphor.
Author: Kyle Harper
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674074564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
The transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian is one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center was sex. Kyle Harper examines how Christianity changed the ethics of sexual behavior from shame to sin, and shows how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution.
Author: Saint Augustine (of Hippo)
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 9780813208671
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
Augustine of Hippo (b. A.D. 354) is considered the single most influential theologian in the history of the Church in the West. Among his many contributions, Augustine developed a sexual ethic that became decisive for all later teachings in the Christian West on issues of marriage, reproduction, and sexuality. Some of the most significant and representative passages on marriage and sexuality from his works are presented here. They recount Augustine's own struggle with sexuality, and stress the important role it played in his conversion to Christianity as well as its influence on his theological principles later in life. The passages in this collection are divided into four chapters which document the chronological development of Augustine's sexual ethic. The first chapter includes passages that pertain to Augustine's own life and illustrate some of his positive and negative models of marital relation. The second chapter recounts Augustine's responses to the Manichean teachings on the body, reproduction, and marriage, mostly from his early years as a Christian. The third chapter contains passages marking Augustine's reaction to the ascetic debates within late fourth-century Latin Christianity. And, finally, the fourth chapter illustrates Augustine's mature sexual and marital ethic, which he elaborated in the midst of--and in reaction to--arguments with Pelagian writers. In a separate introduction, Elizabeth Clark sets the development of Augustine's thought within the context of his own intellectual biography and views it against the background of related issues and movements in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, such as Manichaeism, Jovinianism, and Pelagianism. The selections she presents here offer a comprehensive and uncommonly well-balanced picture of Augustine and his work. St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality is the first in a projected series of volumes on various themes found in the writings of the church fathers. ABOUT THE EDITOR: Elizabeth Clark is John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion at Duke University. She is a past president of the American Academy of Religion and the North American Patristic Society, and a member of the editoral board of the Fathers of the Church series.
Author: W. David Buschart
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830898166
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Buschart and Eilers identify six critical areas—Scripture, theology, worship, spirituality, mission and culture—where contemporary Christians are retrieving aspects of our Christian past for life and thought today. The result is a fascinating tour and wise reflection on how Christians might receive, employ and transmit the treasures of their past.
Author: Jonathan Grant
Publisher: Brazos Press
ISBN: 1441227164
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
The digital revolution has ushered in a series of sexual revolutions, all contributing to a perfect storm for modern relationships. Online dating, social media, internet pornography, and the phenomenon of the smartphone generation have created an avalanche of change with far-reaching consequences for sexuality today. The church has struggled to address this new moral ecology because it has focused on clarity of belief rather than quality of formation. The real challenge for spiritual formation lies in addressing the underlying moral intuitions we carry subconsciously, which are shaped by the convictions of our age. In this book, a fresh new voice offers a persuasive Christian vision of sex and relationships, calling young adults to faithful discipleship in a hypersexualized world. Drawing from his pastoral experience with young people and from cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines, Jonathan Grant helps Christian leaders understand the cultural forces that make the church's teaching on sex and relationships ineffective in the lives of today's young adults. He also sets forth pastoral strategies for addressing the underlying fault lines in modern sexuality.
