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Author: Keith Ward
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 178074465X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
The Christian faith is often charged with being outmoded and anachronistic. A monolithic institution rooted in the past, many critics have claimed that it lacks the resources to adapt to modern society's needs and advances. In "Rethinking Christianity", Keith Ward argues persuasively that this view is not only uncharitable, but refuted by historical evidence. Mapping the evolution of six major beliefs, from the Hellenistic restatement to the challenged of evolutionary theory, Ward demonstrates that Christianity has always been expressed in constantly changing ways in response to new knowledge and understandings of the world. Controversial, liberal, and confronting the principal questions facing Christianity today, Ward uses this basis to support the construction of his own ground-breaking theology: a 'systematic theology' for the post-scientific age.
Author: Keith Ward
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 178074465X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Christian faith is often charged with being outmoded and anachronistic. A monolithic institution rooted in the past, many critics have claimed that it lacks the resources to adapt to modern society's needs and advances. In "Rethinking Christianity", Keith Ward argues persuasively that this view is not only uncharitable, but refuted by historical evidence. Mapping the evolution of six major beliefs, from the Hellenistic restatement to the challenged of evolutionary theory, Ward demonstrates that Christianity has always been expressed in constantly changing ways in response to new knowledge and understandings of the world. Controversial, liberal, and confronting the principal questions facing Christianity today, Ward uses this basis to support the construction of his own ground-breaking theology: a 'systematic theology' for the post-scientific age.
Author: N. T. Wright
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0061551821
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
For years Christians have been asking, "If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?" It turns out that many believers have been giving the wrong answer. It is not heaven. Award-winning author N. T. Wright outlines the present confusion about a Christian's future hope and shows how it is deeply intertwined with how we live today. Wright, who is one of today's premier Bible scholars, asserts that Christianity's most distinctive idea is bodily resurrection. He provides a magisterial defense for a literal resurrection of Jesus and shows how this became the cornerstone for the Christian community's hope in the bodily resurrection of all people at the end of the age. Wright then explores our expectation of "new heavens and a new earth," revealing what happens to the dead until then and what will happen with the "second coming" of Jesus. For many, including many Christians, all this will come as a great surprise. Wright convincingly argues that what we believe about life after death directly affects what we believe about life before death. For if God intends to renew the whole creation—and if this has already begun in Jesus's resurrection—the church cannot stop at "saving souls" but must anticipate the eventual renewal by working for God's kingdom in the wider world, bringing healing and hope in the present life. Lively and accessible, this book will surprise and excite all who are interested in the meaning of life, not only after death but before it.
Author: Peter Enns
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062686771
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Controversial evangelical Bible scholar, popular blogger and podcast host of The Bible for Normal People, and author of The Bible Tells Me So and The Sin of Certainty explains that the Bible is not an instruction manual or rule book but a powerful learning tool that nurtures our spiritual growth by refusing to provide us with easy answers but instead forces us to acquire wisdom. For many Christians, the Bible is a how-to manual filled with literal truths about belief that must be strictly followed. But the Bible is not static, Peter Enns argues. It does not hold easy answers to the perplexing questions and issues that confront us in our daily lives. Rather, the Bible is a dynamic instrument for study that not only offers an abundance of insights but provokes us to find our own answers to spiritual questions, cultivating God’s wisdom within us. “The Bible becomes a confusing mess when we expect it to function as a rulebook for faith. But when we allow the Bible to determine our expectations, we see that Wisdom, not answers, is the Bible’s true subject matter,” writes Enns. This distinction, he points out, is important because when we come to the Bible expecting it to be a textbook intended by God to give us unwavering certainty about our faith, we are actually creating problems for ourselves. The Bible, in other words, really isn’t the problem; having the wrong expectation is what interferes with our reading. Rather than considering the Bible as an ancient book weighed down with problems, flaws, and contradictions that must be defended by modern readers, Enns offers a vision of the holy scriptures as an inspired and empowering resource to help us better understand how to live as a person of faith today. How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “being right” is the most important measure of faith, Enns’s freeing approach to Bible study helps us to instead focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our relationship with God—which is exactly what the Bible was designed to do.
Author: Sven E. Erlandson
Publisher: Variocity
ISBN: 1933037415
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
Erlandson articulates the growing frustration that many people have with Christianity and shows how a church is not needed to create a challenging and life-changing new path based on the simple call to love God and love one's neighbor.
Author: David Kinnaman
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1441213082
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Close to 60 percent of young people who went to church as teens drop out after high school. Now the bestselling author of unChristian trains his researcher's eye on these young believers. Where Kinnaman's first book unChristian showed the world what outsiders aged 16-29 think of Christianity, You Lost Me shows why younger Christians aged 16-29 are leaving the church and rethinking their faith. Based on new research, You Lost Me shows pastors, church leaders, and parents how we have failed to equip young people to live "in but not of" the world and how this has serious long-term consequences. More importantly, Kinnaman offers ideas on how to help young people develop and maintain a vibrant faith that they embrace over a lifetime.
Author: Bernard Lightman
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298704X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
The historical interface between science and religion was depicted as an unbridgeable conflict in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Starting in the 1970s, such a conception was too simplistic and not at all accurate when considering the totality of that relationship. This volume evaluates the utility of the “complexity principle” in past, present, and future scholarship. First put forward by historian John Brooke over twenty-five years ago, the complexity principle rejects the idea of a single thesis of conflict or harmony, or integration or separation, between science and religion. Rethinking History, Science, and Religion brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the forefront of their fields to consider whether new approaches to the study of science and culture—such as recent developments in research on science and the history of publishing, the global history of science, the geographical examination of space and place, and science and media—have cast doubt on the complexity thesis, or if it remains a serviceable historiographical model.
Author: Jonathan Leeman
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 1400207657
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
How can the church move forward in unity amid such political strife and cultural contention? As Christians, we’ve felt pushed to the outskirts of national public life, yet even within our congregations we are divided about how to respond. Some want to strengthen the evangelical voting bloc. Others focus on social justice causes, and still others would abandon the public square altogether. What do we do when brothers and sisters in Christ sit next to each other in the pews but feel divided and angry? Is there a way forward? In How the Nations Rage, political theology scholar and pastor Jonathan Leeman challenges Christians from across the spectrum to hit the restart button by shifting our focus from redeeming the nation to living as a nation already redeemed rejecting the false allure of building heaven on earth while living faithfully as citizens of a heavenly kingdom letting Jesus’ teaching shape our public engagement as we love our neighbors and seek justice When we identify with Christ more than a political party or social grouping, we can return to the church’s unchanging political task: to become the salt and light Jesus calls us to be and offer the hope of his kingdom to the nations.
Author: James Emery White
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1585580406
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Why is it important to rethink the church? Today many leaders focus on how their ministries can be run more efficiently. But the foundational question, according to James Emery White, should be Why do we have this ministry? and then, Why do we do this ministry the way we do? Is it effective? Rethinking the Church helps pastors and lay leaders work through questions that must be answered if a church is to rethink evangelism, discipleship, ministry, worship, community, and the structure of the church. Break old molds, check assumptions, and be sensitive, says White. He uses the language and aims of "seeker-targeted" churches but urges readers not to tie themselves to any model without understanding the individual purpose of their church. Now thoroughly revised and expanded, Rethinking the Church contains more emphasis and key material on how to move from rethinking to transition. White blends biblical reflection and hands-on experience and uses the early church as described in the Book of Acts as the ultimate example.
Author: Gerrie ter Haar
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812241738
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 136
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Book Description
While African Christianity has wholeheartedly appropriated the symbols, scriptures, and traditions of historic Christianity elsewhere, it has also built on the rich history of the continent's indigenous spiritual beliefs.
Author: Bonnie Kristian
Publisher: FaithWords
ISBN: 1478992107
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
BONNIE KRISTIAN shows that a vibrant diversity within Christian orthodoxy-which is simply to say a range of different ways to faithfully follow Jesus-is a strength of our faith, not a weakness. It is all too easy to fail to grasp the diversity of the Christian faith-especially for those who have grown up in one branch of the church and never explored another. We fail to realize how many ways there are to follow Jesus, convinced that our own tradition is the one Christian alternative to nonbelief. A FLEXIBLE FAITH is written for the convinced and confused believer alike. It is a readable exploration of the lively theological diversity that stretches back through church history and across the spectrum of Christianity today. It is an easy introduction to how Christians have historically answered key questions about what it means to follow Jesus. Chapters will include 17 big theological questions and answers; profiles of relevant figures in church history; discussion questions; single-page Q&As-profiles of more unusual types of Christians (e.g., a Catholic nun or a member of an Amish community); and a guide to major Christian denominations today. As Bonnie shares her wrestlings with core issues-such as who Jesus is, what place the Church has in our lives, how to disagree yet remain within a community, and how to love the Bible for what it actually is-she teaches us how to walk courageously through our own tough questions. Following Jesus is big and it is something that individual believers, movements, and denominations have expressed in uncountably different ways over the centuries. In the process of helping us sort things out, Bonnie shows us how to be comfortable with diversity in the Body. And as we learn to hold questions in one hand and answers in the other, we will discover new depths of faith that will remain secure even through the storms of life.
