Author: Joris Geldhof
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009007041
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
In line with a profound theological understanding of liturgy as the Church at prayer (ecclesia orans), the focus of this Element is the variegated ways in which Christians address, turn to, and worship God in their central rituals and celebrations. Surveying a representative sample of official liturgical sources from different Christian Churches, the question is asked how 'pure' the monotheism expressed in them is. For one could argue that there is some ambiguity involved, especially with respect to (i) the peculiar position of Christ, the Son of God, and God the Father in liturgical prayers, and (ii) regarding the veneration of the saints. The essential key to unlock this complex and multi-layered reality is a meticulous study of the essential doxological nature of Christian liturgy, both from a phenomenological point of view and on the basis of fine textual analyses.
Author: James F. McGrath
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252091892
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 171
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Book Description
Monotheism is a powerful religious concept shaped by competing ideas and the problems they raised. Surveying New Testament writings and Jewish sources from before and after the rise of Christianity, James F. McGrath argues that even the most developed Christologies in the New Testament fit within the context of first century Jewish monotheism. McGrath pinpoints when the parting of ways took place over the issue of God's oneness, and explores philosophical ideas such as "creation out of nothing" which caused Jews and Christians to develop differing concepts and definitions about God.
Author: Larry W. Hurtado
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802847492
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 154
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Book Description
"At the Origins of Christian Worship" can deepen readers' understanding of early Christian worship by setting it within the context of the Roman world in which it developed. Hurtado highlights the two central characteristics of earliest Christian worship: its exclusive rejection of the ancient-world gods and its inclusion of Christ with God as the focus of devotion.
Author: Jason Slone
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198044283
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 164
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Book Description
Why do religious people believe what they shouldn't -- not what others think they shouldn't believe, but things that don't accord with their own avowed religious beliefs? D. Jason Slone terms this phenomenon "theological incorrectness." He argues that it exists because the mind is built in such a way that it's natural for us to think divergent thoughts simultaneously. Human minds are great at coming up with innovative ideas that help them make sense of the world, he says, but those ideas do not always jibe with official religious beliefs. From this fact we derive the important lesson that what we learn from our environment -- religious ideas, for example -- does not necessarily cause us to behave in ways consistent with that knowledge. Slone presents the latest discoveries from the cognitive science of religion and shows how they help us to understand exactly why it is that religious people do and think things that they shouldn't.
Author: Lenn Evan Goodman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195359461
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
This cogently argued and richly illustrated book rejects the dichotomy between the God of Abraham and the God of the philosophers to argue that the two are one. In God of Abraham, one of our leading philosophers of religion shows how human values can illuminate our idea of God and how the monotheistic idea of God in turn illuminates our moral, social, cultural, aesthetic, and even ritual understanding. Throughout Goodman draws on a wealth of traditional, philosophical, historical, and anthropological materials, and particularly on a wide range of Jewish sources. He demonstrates how an adequate understanding of the interplay of values with monotheism dissolves many of the longstanding problems of natural theology and ethics and guides us toward a genuinely humanistic moral and social philosophy.
Author: Sarah Iles Johnston
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674015173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 750
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Book Description
This groundbreaking, first basic reference work on ancient religious beliefs collects and organizes available information on ten ancient cultures and traditions, including Greece, Rome, and Mesopotamia, and offers an expansive, comparative perspective on each one.
Author: Crispin Fletcher-Louis
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1620328895
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 389
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Book Description
This is the first of a four-volume groundbreaking study of Christological origins. The fruit of twenty years research, Jesus Monotheism lays out a new paradigm that goes beyond the now widely held view that Paul and others held to an unprecedented "Christological monotheism." There was already, in Second Temple Judaism and in the Bible, a kind of "christological monotheism." But it is first with Jesus and his followers that a human figure is included in the identity of the one God as a fully divine person. Volume 1 lays out the arguments of an emerging consensus, championed by Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, that from its Jewish beginnings the Christian community had a high Christology and worshipped Jesus as a divine figure. New data is adduced to support that case. But there are weaknesses in the emerging consensus. For example, it underplays the incarnation and does not convincingly explain what caused the earliest Christology. The recent study of Adam traditions, the findings of Enoch literature specialists, and of those who have explored a Jewish and Christian debt to Greco-Roman Ruler Cult traditions, all point towards a fresh approach to both the origins and shape of the earliest divine Christology.
Author: Scott Aniol
Publisher: Joshua Press
ISBN: 9781774840498
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
Through tracing the liturgical history of the Christian faith from its foundation in Old Testament Israel through the early church, middle ages, Reformation, to the present, this book demonstrates that liturgy forms religion and religion forms liturgy. One of the best ways to truly understand what lies at the core of the Christian faith is by studying its worship, for corporate worship does something far more significant than many Christians recognize-public worship both reveals belief and forms belief. How a community worships-its content, its liturgy, and its forms of expression-reveals the underlying religious commitments of those who plan and lead the worship. Conversely, corporate worship forms the beliefs of the worshipers. Public worship is not simply about authentic expression of the worshipers; rather, how a church worships week after week progressively shapes their beliefs since those worship practices were cultivated by and embody certain beliefs. This is why it is so important for church leaders, and indeed all Christians, to carefully identify what kinds of beliefs have shaped their various worship practices so that they will choose to worship in ways that best form their minds and hearts consistent with their theological convictions. That is the goal of this book: studying worship in the Old and New Testaments will reveal how God deliberately prescribed worship that would form his people as he desires, and tracing the evolution of Christian worship from after the close of the New Testament to the present day will help elucidate how theological beliefs affected the worship practices Christians have inherited.
Author: James D. G. Dunn
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 1611640709
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
To answer the title question effectively requires more than the citing of a few texts; we must first acknowledge that the way to the answer is more difficult than it appears and recognize that the answer may be less straightforward than many would like. The author raises some fascinating yet vexing questions: What is worship? Is the fact that worship is offered to God (or a god) what defines him (or her) as "G/god?" What does the act of worship actually involve? The conviction that God exalted Jesus to his right hand obviously is central to Christian recognition of the divine status of Jesus. But what did that mean for the first Christians as they sought to reconcile God's status and that of the human Jesus? Perhaps the worship of Jesus was not an alternative to worship of God but another way of worshiping God. The questions are challenging but readers are ably guided by James Dunn, one of the world's top New Testament scholars.
Author: Linda Woodhead
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199687749
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 145
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Book Description
This is a short, accessible analysis of Christianity that focuses on its social and cultural diversity as well as its historical dimensions.
