Reading the Bible in a Secular Age

Reading the Bible in a Secular Age PDF Author: Julius-Kei Kato
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725277743
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
In a secular age which dismisses once-revered matters such as Bible reading, is there still a point to reading and studying Christianity’s foundational text? This book will answer an unequivocal “Absolutely[!].” Why? For us located in the West, the Bible is a vital part of our “spiritual ancestry,” a dominant idea of the book. Hence, learning how to read and interpret the Bible properly (particularly, the New Testament) is like getting to know our spiritual ancestry better. The main strategy that this work will suggest is to treat the New Testament as a metaphorical textual village where some of our most important spiritual ancestors continue to live. If we learn some good strategies to communicate with them, we will be able, as it were, to visit this village, have meaningful conversations with our spiritual ancestors and, thus, become better grounded in our spiritual ancestry here in the West. With that, we can return to our secular context, better equipped both to embrace and wrestle with that spiritual ancestry. Hopefully, that will also help us to create for ourselves a meaning-system or spirituality that would be appropriate for our present world while being well grounded in our spiritual tradition.

Reading the Bible in a Secular Age

Reading the Bible in a Secular Age PDF Author: Julius-Kei Kato
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725277743
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
In a secular age which dismisses once-revered matters such as Bible reading, is there still a point to reading and studying Christianity’s foundational text? This book will answer an unequivocal “Absolutely[!].” Why? For us located in the West, the Bible is a vital part of our “spiritual ancestry,” a dominant idea of the book. Hence, learning how to read and interpret the Bible properly (particularly, the New Testament) is like getting to know our spiritual ancestry better. The main strategy that this work will suggest is to treat the New Testament as a metaphorical textual village where some of our most important spiritual ancestors continue to live. If we learn some good strategies to communicate with them, we will be able, as it were, to visit this village, have meaningful conversations with our spiritual ancestors and, thus, become better grounded in our spiritual ancestry here in the West. With that, we can return to our secular context, better equipped both to embrace and wrestle with that spiritual ancestry. Hopefully, that will also help us to create for ourselves a meaning-system or spirituality that would be appropriate for our present world while being well grounded in our spiritual tradition.

Reading the Bible in a Secular Age

Reading the Bible in a Secular Age PDF Author: Julius-Kei Kato
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725277727
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
In a secular age which dismisses once-revered matters such as Bible reading, is there still a point to reading and studying Christianity’s foundational text? This book will answer an unequivocal “Absolutely[!].” Why? For us located in the West, the Bible is a vital part of our “spiritual ancestry,” a dominant idea of the book. Hence, learning how to read and interpret the Bible properly (particularly, the New Testament) is like getting to know our spiritual ancestry better. The main strategy that this work will suggest is to treat the New Testament as a metaphorical textual village where some of our most important spiritual ancestors continue to live. If we learn some good strategies to communicate with them, we will be able, as it were, to visit this village, have meaningful conversations with our spiritual ancestors and, thus, become better grounded in our spiritual ancestry here in the West. With that, we can return to our secular context, better equipped both to embrace and wrestle with that spiritual ancestry. Hopefully, that will also help us to create for ourselves a meaning-system or spirituality that would be appropriate for our present world while being well grounded in our spiritual tradition.

The Good Book

The Good Book PDF Author: A. C. Grayling
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802778380
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, the literary skill, and-yes-the audacity to conceive of a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A.C. Grayling has done by creating a non-religious Bible, drawn from the wealth of secular literature and philosophy in both Western and Eastern traditions, using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic religions. The Good Book consciously takes its design and presentation from the Bible, in its beauty of language and arrangement into short chapters and verses for ease of reading and quotability, offering to the non-religious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of secular humanist traditions that are older, far richer and more various than Christianity. Organized in 12 main sections----Genesis, Histories, Widsom, The Sages, Parables, Consolations, Lamentations, Proverbs, Songs, Epistles, Acts, and the Good----The Good Book opens with meditations on the origin and progress of the world and human life in it, then devotes attention to the question of how life should be lived, how we relate to one another, and how vicissitudes are to be faced and joys appreciated. Incorporating the writing of Herodotus and Lucretius, Confucius and Mencius, Seneca and Cicero, Montaigne, Bacon, and so many others, The Good Book will fulfill its audacious purpose in every way.

Untimely Christianity

Untimely Christianity PDF Author: Michael Edwards
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506480888
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Christianity is always untimely, always foreign to our beliefs and contrary to our desires. It was untimely in Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome when Jesus and his early followers were killed. It is just as untimely now. But we have become deaf to its otherness, to the disruptive strangeness of Christian faith. If we are to hear it again, we must traverse the distance between our comfortable and overly conceptual Christianity and the true Christianity that "turns the whole world upside down." In Untimely Christianity, acclaimed poet and literary scholar Michael Edwards calls for a countercultural Christianity that recovers the Bible's radical otherness and renews our habits of attention to its message--to its revelation of a God who is not merely a set of doctrines but a person, someone we can know. Edwards's work is an eloquent, prophetic effort to recapture the revolutionary power of the Bible to transform the way humans view the world and how they live in it. Rich in theology, philosophy, poetry, biblical interpretation, and cultural criticism, Untimely Christianity invites readers of all kinds to encounter the Bible anew, as "a continuous questioning of the reader and a prodigious expansion of reality."

Calvinism for a Secular Age

Calvinism for a Secular Age PDF Author: Jessica R. Joustra
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 1514001470
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Pastor, politician, and Dutch Neo-Calvinist theologian Abraham Kuyper's lectures on the role of Christian faith in politics, science, and art have become a touchstone of contemporary Reformed theology. Revisiting these lectures, Jessica and Robert Joustra bring together theologians, historians, scientists, and others to consider Kuyper's ongoing importance and complex legacy for today.

A Secular Age

A Secular Age PDF Author: Charles Taylor
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674986911
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 889

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Book Description
The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book

The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book PDF Author: Scott Hahn
Publisher: Emmaus Road Publishing
ISBN: 164585101X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
What is wrong with Scripture scholarship today? Why is it that the last place one should go to study the Bible is a biblical studies program at virtually any university? Why are so many faithful priests and pastors, and the people in their pews, unaware of the centuries-long effort to turn the sacred Word of God into just another secular text? In The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book, authors Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker trace the various malformations of Scripture scholarship that have led to a devastating loss of trust in the inspired Word of God. From the Reformation to the Enlightenment and beyond, Hahn and Wiker sketch the revolutions and radical figures that led to the emergence of the historical-critical method and the pervasive ill effects that are still being felt today.

The Congregation in a Secular Age

The Congregation in a Secular Age PDF Author: Andrew Root
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 9780801098482
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Churches often realize they need to change. But if they're not careful, the way they change can hurt more than help. In this culmination of his well-received Ministry in a Secular Age trilogy, leading practical theologian Andrew Root offers a new paradigm for understanding the congregation in contemporary ministry. He articulates why it is so hard for congregations to change and encourages an approach that doesn't fall into the negative traps of our secular age. Living in late modernity means our lives are constantly accelerated, and calls for change in the church often support this call to speed up. Root asserts that the recent push toward innovation in churches has led to an acceleration of congregational life that strips the sacred out of time. Many congregations are simply unable to keep up, which leads to burnout and depression. When things move too fast, we feel alienated from life and the voice of a living God. This book calls congregations to reimagine what change is and how to live into this future, helping them move from relevance to resonance.

The Good Book

The Good Book PDF Author: Andrew Blauner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476789967
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
"A collection of previously unpublished pieces by 32 of today's most prominent writers shares their thoughts about biblical passages they find personally meaningful, in a volume that includes contributions by such figures as Edwidge Danticat, Tobias Wolff and Ian Frazier, "--NoveList.

Prophecy in a Secular Age

Prophecy in a Secular Age PDF Author: David True
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532669399
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
The place of religion within a secular society has been much discussed in recent years, fueled in part by Charles Taylor's Secular Age (2007). The conversation surrounding Taylor's work suggests a widespread interest in religion in secular or post-secular contexts. Even as scholars have become increasingly interested in emerging and novel forms of religion, prophecy has continued to be depicted in traditional forms employed to further partisan agendas. In place of secularity as religious declension and culture clash, this volume explores prophetic works in a variety of forms, including satire, tragedy, the novel, Native American tradition, science fiction, the Bible, and higher education itself. Together the contributors demonstrate that there is much to learn from both religious and secular prophecy. The book is inspired by the idea that prophetic works are a promising subject area for a diverse audience in both higher education and the church. The volume's contributors demonstrate as much in that they work in a wide range of disciplines, including religious studies, biblical studies, theology, American studies, literature, philosophy, and political theory.