Search results for ""Baylor University""

Anne was one of five women who reported to police that they were either raped or assaulted -- in incidents from October 2009 to April 2012 -- by a single university football player, who was convicted on two counts of sexual assault in January 2014. Indeed, it was only the beginning of what would become the worst scandal in recent college sports history.This university's sexual assault crisis does not stand alone in what is becoming one of the biggest crises in American culture-rape and violence against women on college campuses. But not until now has a sexual assault scandal stripped a celebrated head coach and university president of their jobs. Through previously unpublished interviews with victims, assailants, attorneys, university officials, players, coaches, and nationally recognized experts on sexual assault and campus safety, CROSS TO BEAR is an eye-opening, blow-by-blow account of the genesis and fallout of the football scandal, and tells a story that will leave readers pondering what they really know about the culture of college football and what transpires after dark at college campuses across the country.

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A Little Bear Counting Book! Featuring bright, colorful illustrations, 1, 2, 3 Baylor is the first board book designed especially for the littlest of Bears. Babies and toddlers can get to know Baylor University before they can even speak! It's as easy as 1, 2, 3!

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Vicki Tolar Burton argues that John Wesley wanted to make ordinary Methodist men and women readers, writers, and public speakers because he understood the powerful role of language for spiritual formation. His understanding came from his own family and education, from his personal spiritual practices and experiences, and from the evidence he saw in the lives of his followers. By examining the intersections of literacy, rhetoric, and spirituality as they occurred in early British Methodism-and by exploring the meaning of these practices for class and gender-the author provides a new understanding of the method of Methodism.

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The past fifty years have seen powerful shifts in the methods and objectives of Biblical Studies. The study of the Johannine Literature, in particular, has seen a proliferation of new approaches, as well as innovative exegetical and theological conclusions. This volume surveys the emerging landscape from the perspective of scholars who have shaped the field. Written in a conversational and reflective tone, the articles offer an excellent overview of major issues in the study of the Fourth Gospel and 1-2-3 John.

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A trial lawyer by trade, a Christian by heart—author Mark Lanier has trained in biblical languages and devoted his life to studying and living the Bible. Living daily with the tension between the demands of his career and the desire for a godly life, Lanier recognizes the importance and challenge of finding daily time to spend in God's Word. He has discovered in the Minor Prophets a storehouse of wisdom and inspiration essential for his continued growth in faith, obedience, and understanding.In Minor Prophets for Living, Lanier takes us to a portion of the Bible often overlooked in devotional and inspirational literature, showing how the prophets of Israel and Judah have much to teach us today. For each day of the year, Lanier reflects on the words of these ancient prophets, relates their messages to the struggles facing Christians today, and concludes with a prayer connected to the day's insights. His engagement with the Minor Prophets offers fellow Christians the opportunity to receive the gifts of grace and guidance that come from daily immersion in Scripture.

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For some, the Bible and literature are at odds. The Bible, it is argued, is not properly literature but a piece of outmoded fiction that ought not to be studied or taken seriously. However, the relationship of the Bible with literature as well as its continuing cultural impact cannot be overlooked. The Bible is an ever-fruitful source for creativity that has contributed to all the great achievements of Western thought, writing, and artistry for the last two millennia.With Scripture and Literature, David Jasper has compiled forty years of his writings on the relationship between the Bible, literature, and art. These writings are interdisciplinary in nature and are not the work of a specialist in biblical scholarship. Rather, while acknowledging the Bible as a sacred text in more than one religious tradition, they recognize the Bible as literature in conversation with other literary works and traditions as well as the visual arts. During the forty years which these essays span, enormous changes have taken place in our world. Postmodernism has come and gone; issues in feminism and gender are now acutely, and properly, with us; and the world has become much more of a global village, despite its many divisions. On the other hand, and at the same time, it is remarkable how little has changed, and the reader will find that some older pieces remain relevant and necessary today.Parts of the book deal broadly with questions of translation, rhetoric, war, and evil, while others focus on specific writers and artists, from J. M. W. Turner to the English novelist Jim Crace. Yet behind Scripture and Literature lies a lifetime of careful thought and teaching of the Bible and literature. In the end, Jasper synthesizes his work, offering some reflections on pedagogy and the changes that have occurred from the 1980s up to the present day.

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Christians in the United States and around the world are politically polarized today, unable to speak to one another across deep divisions regarding urgent social issues. Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times: Justification and the Pursuit of Justice addresses this dire reality by offering a theological framework for Christian justice-seeking. Amy Carr and Christine Helmer draw on Paul's theology to center the idea of justification by faith in Christ as the primary ground of Christian belonging and community.This approach yields a theology of ordinary faith that resists the temptation to equate Christian identity with the performance of a heroic "here I stand" posture against moral and political positions felt to be inimical to a properly Christian life. An ordinary faith situates Christian identity on a baptismal belonging to Christ. Baptism draws Christians into the messy process of discerning together the shape of justice in and through the Beloved Community. With justification by faith as the touchstone of Christian unity, Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times reveals how Christians who inhabit different ethical and political positions can navigate the disorientations and reorientations that arise when they debate what justice-seeking looks like from within the body of Christ.Carr and Helmer articulate ways that justification by faith grounds Christian practices of affective listening and storytelling, even on the most contentious ethical questions today, with the hope that mutual conversation in and through the Beloved Community can get Christians who disagree oriented towards each other again for the good of the world.

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Most Baptists today have adapted rather well to the modern world—that is, they worship as they live, in ways that don't much deviate from the general cultural milieu. It was not always so. In the past, the ways of Baptists were eccentric, their children were sometimes embarrassed by them, and their grandchildren were astonished by many features of their communal Christian life and practice, some of which now seem hilarious. Yet David Lyle Jeffrey shows that in their firm faith and strong character, these forebears still have much to teach. The legacy of "old-time" Baptists is rich: in ways we might not recognize, we are still living on spiritual capital they built up a century ago.In this fast-paced and thought-provoking memoir, Jeffrey recalls growing up in the "old-time" Scottish Baptist tradition in rural Canada. With nostalgia, good humor, and sometimes lament, he considers his own theological and spiritual formation in a nearly vanished variety of Christian culture. Jeffrey reflects on events and customs that today may seem esoteric or quaint, perhaps even comical. Along the way, he considers the lessons a fading brand of Baptist life may hold for Baptists in the twenty-first century. Jeffrey offers witty and insightful commentary on theological matters such as sin, salvation, and grace, and practices like baptism, worship, and Sabbath-keeping.The Baptists of Jeffrey's youth encouraged abstinence from pleasures most folks took for granted. Their churches were often small, but they were the vital, stable hub of family and communal life through good times and bad, and had an extraordinary missional and evangelistic impact that belied their marginal status. This confessional recollection of a world of weird and wonderful "peculiar people" is an expression of Jeffrey's gratitude to the ones he knew.

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In the 1990s, Christian colleges and universities experienced a record boom in students and employees. However, less than twenty years later Christian institutions experienced new challenges spurred on by four major changes: first, the "Great Recession" of 2008 and widespread debt; second, declining birthrates in certain regions of the United States; third, the passing of the Affordable Care Act, which raised the question of whether Christian institutes were required to cover contraceptives; and fourth, the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage, which brought issues of employment to the forefront at certain Evangelical institutions. Yet despite mounting challenges, most Christian colleges and universities are still stronger now than at any point in their respective histories by almost any measure.With The Anxious Middle, Todd C. Ream and Jerry Pattengale engage the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a model for navigating our tumultuous times. The authors argue that if the present age is defined by what Bonhoeffer calls in Creation and Fall the "anxious middle"—somewhere between Eden and the Apocalypse—the challenges faced by Christian higher education must be recognized as both existential and practical. To confront them while still embracing any opportunities afforded by occasional cross breezes, Christian colleges and universities would be wise to employ a fourfold approach to planning informed by Bonhoeffer's work as well as historic and contemporary examples: institutions should be articulate about their missions, imaginative in advancing them, collaborative in deploying them, and strategic in sharing them. Trustees, administrators, faculty members, and others concerned with the future of Christian colleges and universities will find in The Anxious Middle a planning process applicable to organizational levels ranging from the campus-wide to the departmental or the programmatic. The result is an understanding of Christian higher education not merely focused on surviving but thriving between Eden and the Apocalypse.

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In Acts 1–14: A Handbook on the Greek Text, Martin Culy, Mikeal Parsons, and Josiah Hall provide a foundational examination of the Greek text of Acts. The analysis is distinguished by the detailed yet comprehensive attention paid to the text. The authors' exposition is a convenient pedagogical and reference tool that explains the form and syntax of the biblical text, offers guidance for deciding between competing semantic analyses, engages important text-critical debates, and addresses questions relating to the Greek text that are frequently overlooked or ignored by standard commentaries. Beyond serving as a succinct and accessible analytic key, Acts also reflects the most up-to-date advances in scholarship on Greek grammar and linguistics. This handbook proves itself an indispensable tool for anyone committed to a deep reading of the biblical text. This revised and expanded handbook on the Greek text of Acts, unlike its predecessor, includes comments on the grammar and syntax of every word in the text and incorporates insights from the Editio Critica Maior, now the standard critical Greek text for the Acts of the Apostles.

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God is unbounded. God became flesh. While these two assertions are equally viable parts of Western Christian religious heritage, they stand in tension with one another. Fearful of reducing God's majesty with shallow anthropomorphisms, philosophy and religion affirm that God, as an eternal being, stands wholly apart from creation. Yet the legacy of the incarnation complicates this view of the incorporeal divine, affirming a very different image of God in physical embodiment. While for many today the idea of an embodied God seems simplisticâeven pedestrianâChristoph Markschies reveals that in antiquity, the educated and uneducated alike subscribed to this very idea. More surprisingly, the idea that God had a body was held by both polytheists and monotheists. Platonic misgivings about divine corporeality entered the church early on, but it was only with the advent of medieval scholasticism that the idea that God has a body became scandalous, an idea still lingering today. In God's Body Markschies traces the shape of the divine form in late antiquity. This exploration follows the development of ideas of God's corporeality in Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions. In antiquity, gods were often like humans, which proved to be important for philosophical reflection and for worship. Markschies considers how a cultic environment nurtured, and transformed, Jewish and Christian descriptions of the divine, as well as how philosophical debates over the connection of body and soul in humanity provided a conceptual framework for imagining God. Markschies probes the connections between this lively culture of religious practice and philosophical speculation and the christological formulations of the church to discover how the dichotomy of an incarnate God and a fleshless God came to be. By studying the religious and cultural past, Markschies reveals a Jewish and Christian heritage alien to modern sensibilities, as well as a God who is less alien to the human experience than much of Western thought has imagined. Since the almighty God who made all creation has also lived in that creation, the biblical idea of humankind as image of God should be taken seriously and not restricted to the conceptual world but rather applied to the whole person.

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John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost consciously seeksto "justify the ways of God to men." The Apostle Paul's magisterialletter to the Romans does not so much intend to defend God's ways as to declare God's Wordâa Word made public in thegospel. InRomans 9â11this declaration occurs within the context ofGod's troubled relationship with Israel, both past and future. God and Israel traces the ways in which providence and purpose are realized as God's Word to and about Israel in Romans 9â11. Written by gifted and tested Pauline interpreters, the volume offers a fresh reading of this vexed and vexing part of Paul in the context of Romans and the Pauline witness. God and Israel squarely tackles the questions ofPaul's understanding of salvation-historical time (L. Ann Jervis); the faithfulness and sovereignty of the covenantal God (Michael Wolter); Paul's mythic rhetoric of "ingrafting" (Davina C. Lopez); the disputed relation between Israel and her "enemies," the Gentiles (J. Ross Wagner); the role of Christ in God's purposes and his relation to the nation of Israel (Simon Gathercole); and, finally, the unfailing eschatological hope for Israel's full inclusion (Jonathan A. Linebaugh). If only simple solutions are sought for the challenges Paul's gospel and his letters pose,frustration will result. But if readersfollow the Apostle to theGentilesas he wrestles with ultimate questions of God's purposesin his own anguish over kith and kin,then wisdom will befound.

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On the north end of Londonliesan old nonconformistburial ground named Bunhill Fields. Bunhill becamethefinal resting place for some of the most honored names of English Protestantism. Burialoutside the city walls symbolized that thoseinterredat Bunhill lived and died outside the English body politic.Bunhill, its location declares,isthe properhome for undomesticateddissenters. Amongmore than 120,000 graves, three monuments stand in the central courtyard: one for John Bunyan (1628â1688), a second for Daniel Defoe (1660?â1731), and a third for William Blake (1757â1827). Undomesticated Dissent asks, "why these three monuments?" The answer, as Curtis Freeman leads readers to discover, is anidea as vitalandtransformative for public life today as itwasunsettling and revolutionary then. To telltheuntoldtaleof the Bunhill graves,Freeman focuseson the three classic texts by Bunyan, Defoe, and Blakeâ The Pilgrim's Progress , Robinson Crusoe , and Jerusalem âas testaments of dissent. Their enduring literary power, as Freeman shows,derives from theiroriginal political and religious contexts.But Freeman also traces theabidingpropheticinfluenceof these texts,revealingthe confluence of great literature and principled religiousnonconformityin the checkered story of democraticpoliticalarrangements. Undomesticated Dissent provides a sweeping intellectual history of the public virtue of religiously motivated dissent from the seventeenth century to the present, by carefully comparing, contrasting, and then weighing the various types of dissentâevangelicaland spiritual dissent (Bunyan), economic and social dissent (Defoe),radical andapocalyptic dissent (Blake). Freemanoffersdissentingimaginationasagenerative source for democracy, as well as a force forresistancetothe coercivepowers of domestication.By placing Bunyan, Defoe, and Blake within an extended argument about the nature and ends of democracy, Undomesticated Dissent reveals howthese three mentransmittedtheirdemocratic ideas across the globe,hidden within the text of their stories. Freemanconcludes thatdissent, so crucial to the establishing of democracy, remainsequally essential for its flourishing. Buried deep intheirfull narrative of religion and resistance, the three monuments at Bunhill together declare that dissent is not disloyalty, and that democracy depends on dissent.

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James Wm. McClendon, Jr. was the most important ""baptist"" theologian of the twentieth century. McClendon crafted a systematic theology that refused to succumb to the pressures of individualism, grew out of the immediacy of preaching the text, and lamented the stunted public witness of a fractured Protestant ecclesiology.This two-volume set mixes previously unpublished and published lectures and essays with rare and little known works to form a representative collection of the essential themes of McClendon's work. The first volume focuses on the philosophical and theological shifts leading to McClendon's articulation of the baptist vision. The second volume specifically elucidates the more philosophical themes that informed McClendon's work, including ways in which these themes had immediate theological import. Taken together, the set provides the most comprehensive presentation of McClendon's work now available, revealing the sustained and systematic character of his vision over the course of his life. These two volumes will provide scholars, preachers, and students with McClendon's radical, narrative, and connective theology.

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Fides quaerens intellectum is the idea that living faith naturally seeks a more complete understanding of God in relation to his creation. It has motivated Christian education from the very start. Although Ars quaerens intellectum--“art seeking understanding”--is by contrast a contemporary locution, in the Christian context of this volume it is a parallel to the more familiar phrase. “Art” here includes human making of the sort associated with any craft; this volume focuses on those usually called “fine” arts, namely poetry, painting, sculpture, and musical composition. The contributors to Art Seeking Understanding contend that art in almost any medium is typically born of a desire for some kind of understanding--perhaps of the potential in their medium, an aspect of the external world, or of the artist’s own compulsion to create. An artwork may be prompted by a desire for greater understanding of transcendent realities. A distinctive value of the collaboration represented in this book is thus the reflection of artists themselves set alongside remarks by philosophers, theologians, literary critics, art historians, and musicologists. Together, these authors argue that there is a tacit if not explicit theological dimension to art-making that reveals itself readily in religious art but also in works that may have no such conscious motivation. The artist, like all human creatures, is made in the image of God (imago Dei), but as both Scripture and tradition suggest, may in fact realize more intensively than the rest of us an aspect of the divine Maker. In turn, those who appreciate art may come to acquire an understanding of the nature of the Original Artist indirectly through allowing the works of gifted artists to spark their imaginative reflection. In this way, art “speaks” to us theologically in ways that substantially enrich our knowledge of our Creator and his creation. This volume invites readers to consider how God speaks, his characteristic poetic voice, and the influence of that voice on our knowledge of the holy.

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From the early days of the Christian faith, the relationship between the twin realities of Jesus' historical particularity and universal presence has been a theological puzzle. The apparent dichotomy of the two leads Christ-followers to ponder some difficult questions: Who is Jesus is to those who do not know him? Who are those who do not know him to those who do? Do "we" who follow Jesus meet him in "those" who do not?Contemporary debates concerning Christian theology of religions have been profoundly shaped by Alan Race's threefold typology of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Scholars increasingly recognize the insufficiency of this typology, and a consensus about how to replace it remains elusive. With The Unique and Universal Christ, Drew Collins argues that an alternative theological approach to the relation between the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the universality of God's presence can be gleaned from the theology of Hans Frei and his fivefold typology of Christian theology. With Frei's model as an interpretive lens, Collins examines the various ecumenical movements of the twentieth century and their conversations around theological authority in connection to Christianity's relationship with other faith traditions. A new paradigm emerges for conceptualizing Christian faith amid the rich diversity of our world. Reconsidered in this light, the Christian theology of religions ceases to be a combative venture that pits a Christian faith committed to the scandalous particularity of Jesus Christ's identity as the Son of God against a faith open to the possibility of encountering the divine presence in the world at large. Instead, it becomes a mode of exploration, hoping for such encounters with the universal presence of Christ because of the uniqueness of Jesus.

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The Good of Recognition analyzes the polysemy of recognition operative in the thought of two contemporary French thinkers, Emmanuel Lévinas (1906–1995) and Paul Ricœur (1913–2005). Author Michael Sohn shows that recognition—a concept most often associated with Hegel’s works—appears prominently throughout the works of Lévinas and Ricœur, which exist at the intersection of phenomenology, ethics, politics, and religion. Sohn situates recognition in the sociopolitical context of Lévinas and Ricœur and excavates the philosophical and religious sources that undergird the two thinkers’ use of recognition before contextualizing recognition within the broader themes of their thought.By reflecting on phenomenology, ethics, and religion in The Good of Recognition, Sohn not only shows how Lévinas and Ricœur articulated a response to the pervasive problems of nonrecognition and misrecognition in their day but also suggests how their thought can contribute to a better understanding of our contemporary social and political landscape.

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At first glance it may seem that the Hebrew prophets offer little resolution on contemporary concerns of inclusivity and defense for persons deemed "other." Bound by their time and culture, the prophets' message seems obscure and irrelevant. However, on closer look, we see that the prophets offer a call to justice for those who are wrongly oppressed and marginalized, those on the fringes of society—the downcast and the disabled.In Prophetic Disability, Sarah Melcher opens our eyes to the prophetic corpus' ongoing theological relevance in the first book-length treatment of disability in the Bible's prophetic literature. Melcher takes a deep exegetical dive into Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve, analyzing passages that mention disability explicitly and those that offer complementary relevance. With careful and detailed exegetical work, she shows us the profound relationship between disability and the sovereignty of God, the latter being the dominant theme shaping all other motifs in the prophets. Influenced by the prominent work in disability studies by Tom Shakespeare's critical realism, she sets forth her own method in conversation with rhetorical and literary criticism. Melcher's engagement with these ancient texts is informed throughout by a respect for the context and circumstances that generated the texts relevant to disability, as well as a sensitivity to the lived experiences of people with disabilities.To that end, Prophetic Disability maintains the central theme from Shakespeare: that labels describe, but do not "constitute," disease. Who we are is a reality beyond our distinct experience with disability and impairment. What emerges from Melcher's analysis are ways in which the theological implications arising from the prophetic corpus might guide us toward more ethical practice in our encounters with disabilities.

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This third volume in the Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible series provides expert, comprehensive guidance in answering significant questions about the Hebrew text. While reflecting the latest advances in scholarship on Hebrew grammar and linguistics, the work utilizes a style that is lucid enough to serve as a useful agent for teaching and self-study.

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The Christian sermon--once the chief symbol of authority in Western culture--often appears in the postmodern imagination as synonymous with irrelevancy, biased judgment, and a rejection of absolute truth. While Christian preachers mourn the cultural disintegration of their hallowed practice, Lance B. Pape believes this modern turn enables the preacher to rediscover the sermon. Proclaiming the gospel, he contends, lies not in the cultural acceptance of the message but in God's free act of self-communication. Using Karl Barth's theology of the Word, Hans Frei's hermeneutical method, and, chiefly, Paul Ricoeur's theory of narrative as threefold mimesis, Pape develops a homiletic that recaptures the scandalous intent of the gospel. The Scandal of Having Something to Say then casts the post-liberal preacher as a ""surrogate reader"" of the biblical text on behalf of the congregation and opens new avenues for practice through the analysis and critique of two sermons.

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Films are the lingua franca of western culture; for decades they have provided viewers with a universal way of understanding the human experience. And film music, Kutter Callaway demonstrates, has such a profound effect on the human spirit that it demands theological reflection. By engaging scores from the last decade of popular cinema, Callaway reveals how a musically aware approach to film can yield novel insights into the presence and activity of God in contemporary culture. And, through conversations with these films and their filmmakers, viewers can gain a new understanding of how God may be speaking to modern society through film and its transcendent melodies.

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The "rule of law" stands at the heart of the American legal system. But the rule of law does not require judges slavishly to follow the letter of the law, unaffected by political or social influences. Because following the rule of law absolutely is impossible, it is dismissed by the public as a myth and judges are vilified. Judging Judges refocuses and elevates the debate over judges and the rule of law by showing that personal and professional values matter. Jason E. Whitehead demonstrates that the rule of law depends on a socially constructed attitude of legal obligation that spawns objective rules. Intensive interviews of judges reveal the value systems that uphold or undermine the attitude of legal obligation so central to the rule of law. This focus on the social practices undergirding these value systems demonstrates that the rule of law is ultimately a matter of social trust rather than textual constraints. Whitehead's unique combination of philosophical and empirical investigation is a major advance because it moves beyond the dichotomy of law or politics and shows that the rule of law is a shared social enterprise involving all of societyâjudges, politicians, scholars, and ordinary citizens alike. Judging Judges ' attention to judicial values establishes judges' true worth in a liberal democracy.

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I have come not to bring peace, but a sword." These words of Christ echo in our current times. In recent years, a growing number of commentators have decried a lack of civility in public discourse. Considered in isolation this concern is innocent enough, but no call for civility happens in a vacuum, and there is good reason to be suspicious of civility in our current political context. Calls for civility can encourage passivity and blunt prophetic action against injustice; further, truly heinous policies can be pursued under the guise of civility. And yet civility should not be dismissed outright, especially as presented by its more nuanced defenders--when it is presented as a limited good in a pluralist society.In The End of Civility, Ryan Andrew Newson analyzes the development of the concept of "civility" as we know it in modern discourse and names some of the criteria Christians can use to judge between healthy and toxic appeals to civility. The challenge, Newson contends, is discerning when civility is called for and when its pursuit becomes vicious. Pleas for civility cannot be assessed without considering the context in which they are made. Some appeals to civility merely seek to lessen conflict, even conflict necessary in the struggle for a more just world. But when issued by people struggling for justice on the margins of society, calls for civility can name the types of conflict that might lead to liberation.One must be attentive to what counts as "civil" in the first place and who gets to make that determination. Which bodies are considered civil and "ordered," and which people are under suspicion of being "uncivil" before they ever say a word? For Christians, civility can never be an ultimate good but remains subordinate to the call to follow Christ--in particular, the Christ who is not always "civil" but who calls people to an ethic of resistance to injustice and solidarity with people who are suffering.

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In Scripture, a number of individuals are raised from the dead prior to Jesus Christ. Whereas these were once interpreted as prefigurations of that climactic event, a series of challenges in the modern period led to the dismissal of the accounts of the widow's son at Nain, Lazarus, and others as irrelevant to a theology of resurrection. For "they would die again," as scholars as diverse as Karl Barth and N. T. Wright have argued. With Refiguring Resurrection, Steven Edward Harris contests this position by drawing on recent literary and theological interpretation of the Bible, as well as the deep wells of premodern exegesis and theology, to demonstrate how Scripture itself views these events as dialectical signs, shadows, or figures of Christ's resurrection--and humanity's own future. Furthermore, Harris develops a comprehensive eschatology in which the figural character of these earlier resurrections is taken into account while considering the four last things of Christ's return, final resurrection, last judgment, and new creation. An eschatology thus emerges that sets a new direction for theology in several areas of recent discussion: inaugurated eschatology, the figural reading of Scripture, puzzle cases regarding resurrection in analytic theology, whether believers can properly be said to "go to heaven" when they die, and the debate between narratival and apocalyptic interpretations of the apostle Paul. Refiguring Resurrection offers a robust, canonically holistic "figural eschatology" that has not been defended in three centuries. By being more faithful to Christian Scripture, this is an approach more theologically promising than any offered in the modern era, including the twentieth century "rediscovery of eschatology.

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The Letter to Philemon has been read by generations of interpreters, including towering figures such as John Chrysostom, as having to do with Paul returning the fugitive slave Onesimus to his master. Hence the letter, at best, was made complicit in the institution of slavery and, at worst, was foundational for the view that slavery was God ordained. This oppressive interpretation still holds sway in the academy and church alike.In his interdisciplinary study, Stephen E. Young sets a new trajectory for understanding this unassuming epistle. Our Brother Beloved: Purpose and Community in Paul's Letter to Philemon opens with a case study on the use of the Letter to Philemon in the debates surrounding slavery and fugitive slaves in antebellum America. The book then analyzes the major background stories that have been used as keys to interpret the letter, showing that past and present oppressive uses of the Letter to Philemon are due not to the letter's contents but to the persistence of erroneous readings. Young provides a new interpretation that accounts for every element of the Letter to Philemon while also addressing many shortcomings of previous interpretations. In so doing he pioneers the use of Positioning Theory, from the field of social psychology, as an analytical approach, opening up a new avenue for the study of ancient texts.That texts shape the identity of readers is widely recognized, but biblical scholars tend to disregard the process by which that influence unfolds. Young demonstrates how the Letter to Philemon sought to shape the identity of its readers within their sociocultural context by molding them into a community of deliverance, one that could receive Onesimus no longer as a slave but as a brother and fellow worker in the gospel. Such a fresh reading carries strong implications for the ongoing cause of social justice.

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With Radiant Hope is a collection of thirty-four messages that George W. Truett wrote at the close of each year to his congregation while serving as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Truett's famed ministry at the now well-known church extended from 1897 to 1944; the messages contained in this volume span the period from 1910 to 1944. The abiding value of these magnanimous missives, from beginning to end, is their pastoral tone, literary quality, biblical basis, and theologically robust character.There is, of course, no single right way to read the messages that comprise this collection. Some will want to read them from beginning to end in swift succession, perhaps in a single sitting. Others will want to savor them, reading one a day, or a handful a day, over a stretch of time. Beginning during Advent and continuing through Christmastide holds promise for being an especially meaningful way to use this book. Although Truett's letters are situated at year's end, they are for all seasons and offer an edifying read time and time again.

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When talking about the relationship between religion and flourishing, the first task is to frame the question theologically and philosophically, and this entails taking seriously the potential challenges latent in the issue. These challenges includeâbeyond the contested definitions of both "religion" and "flourishing"âthe claims of some faith traditions that true adherence to that tradition's goals and intrinsic goods can be incompatible with self-interest, and also the fact that religious definitions of health and wholeness tend to be less concrete than secular definitions. Despite the difficulties, research that considers uniquely religious aspects of human flourishing is essential, as scholars pursue even greater methodological rigor in future investigations of causal connections. Religion and Human Flourishing brings together scholars of various specializations to consider how theological and philosophical perspectives might shape such future research, and how such research might benefit religious communities. The first section of the book takes up the foundational theological and philosophical questions. The next section turns to the empirical dimension and encompasses perspectives ranging from anthropology to psychology.The third and final section of the book follows in the empirical mold by moving to more sociological and economic levels of analysis. The concluding reflection offers a survey of what the social scientific research reveals about both the positive and negative effects of religion. Scholars and laypeople alike are interested in religion, and many more still are interested in how to lead a meaningful lifeâhow to flourish. The collaborative undertaking represented by Religion and Human Flourishing will further attest to the perennial importance of the questions of religious belief and the pursuit of the good life, and will become a standard for further exploration of such questions.

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In an increasingly connected world, the question of how different religious traditions relate to one another is more urgent than ever. The study of interreligious encounters and relations, by no means a new endeavor, has recently emerged as a formal multi- and interdisciplinary academic field that seeks not only to understand how worldviews and ways of life interact and intersect, but also to suggest avenues of constructive dialogue. Interreligious Studies represents a milestone achievement, bringing together thirty-six scholars from four continents to produce "dispatches" on the current state of this burgeoning field. This volume probes the context, parameters, and contours of interreligious studies (IRS), including its relation to other disciplines, its promise as a field of research in secular and nonsecular contexts, its particular terminology and methodology, its civic agenda, and the various scholarly profiles of those who pursue it. Other topics taken up include historical examples of interfaith dialogue, theological and philosophical considerations of truth-seeking in interreligious encounter, and contemporary agendas such as the decolonization of the study of religion and the obligation to respond to anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenoglossophobia. Whatever possibilities IRS might hold, there first must be a working definition of the field and its praxis. Interreligious Studies points in this direction as it highlights the practical knowledge generated by IRS: how to cultivate empathy, make peace and build nations, promote scholarly activism, and foster meaningful interreligious relations. Scholars and students who are serious about engaging the many dynamic conversations blossoming within this nascent field will be well served by the contributions of this volume.

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Malkhaz Songulashvili, former Archbishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia (EBCG), provides a pioneering, exacting, and sweeping history of Georgian Baptists. Utilizing archival sources in Georgian, Russian, German, and Englishâtranslating many of these crucial documents for the first time into Englishâhe recounts the history of the EBCG from its formation in 1867 to the present. While the particular story of Georgian Baptists merits telling in its own right, and not simply as a feature of Russian religious life, Songulashvili employs Georgian Baptists as a sustained case study on the convergence of religion and culture. The interaction of Eastern Orthodox, Western Protestant, and Russian dissenting religious traditionsâmixed into the political cauldron of Russian occupation of a formerly distinct eastern European cultureâled to a remarkable experiment in Christian free-church identity. Evangelical Christian Baptists of Georgia allows readers to peer through the lens of intercultural studies to see the powerful relationships among politics, religion, and culture in the formation of Georgian Baptists, and their blending of Orthodox tradition into Baptist life to craft a unique ecclesiology, liturgy, and aesthetics.

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The grammar of Christian redemption cannot live solely in the future tense. Despite confidence about the effects of Jesus' resurrection in the present, Christians are tempted to depict salvation as a future accomplishment, rather than a present reality. No doubt this failing is well founded, for most Christians know all too well that the power of the past - particularly past suffering - shapes the present. But as Mindy Makant argues in The Practice of Story: Suffering and the Possibilities of Redemption, such reserve may cede too much to suffering and grant too little to redemption. Makant admits the horrors of suffering: that suffering damages and destroys, that past suffering renders one unable to live in the present, and that profound suffering can make it altogether impossible to imagine a future. Yet in the very midst of this impossibility, Makant shows how suffering, even extreme and profound suffering, does not have the final word. God does. The story of suffering is not the defining narrative. Redemption wields ultimate power to shape human identity. God has given the church gifts - specific ecclesial practices - necessary to bear witness to the story of God's redemptive activity in the world. These practices constitute the practices of story. They re-order the lives of Christians and make future redemption present despite the destructive power of the past.

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In this engaging study, James D. Ivy recovers an intriguing and neglected aspect of Texas cultural historyâthe confluence of social strategies that fueled the Texas prohibition movement. In particular, Ivy contends that Texas prohibitionists developed a southern strategy that characterized prohibition as a reform movement with southern roots in Texas soil. These prohibitionists overtly distanced themselves from northern evangelical reformers that had championed abolition, religious radicalism, or feminism in order to appeal to male voters anxious about their role in post-Reconstruction southern society. While their strategy succeeded insofar as it was able to gain the support of a majority of white males with close ties to the former Confederacy, it failed to persuade a majority of Texas voters to embrace prohibition.

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When Cone wrote Black Theology and Black Power, he signaled to the world that the American black faith tradition would no longer recognize the confines of the church walls as the extent of its purview in society. Cone liberated the Gospel of Christ from its institutionalized forms, unhinging it from oppressive and racist power structures in American society and releasing it to do its work in the public sphere. Black Faith and Public Talk continues Cone's theme of power in the public realm and examines the economic, political, cultural, gender, and theological implications of black faith and black theology.

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Throughout the Psalms we witness David cry out for deliverance in seasons of anguish and grief, seeking refuge and strength from the Lord. Likewise, Jesus petitioned God in the garden of Gethsemane for strength in a time of dire need. The cries from both David and Jesus to God reflect the forgotten spiritual discipline of lament. Lament is not sorrow without ultimate hope--that is despair. Rather, lament is trust in God despite and even by way of the experience of hopelessness.In Awake in Gethsemane Tim Judson envisions the place and meaning of lament for the Christian community through close engagement with the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. After documenting the historical decline and current lack of lament within much of the Western Church, Judson offers a threefold approach to the subject, arguing that a basis for lament is necessarily located in theology, ethics, and liturgy interdependently. This relationship frames the critical work carried out alongside Bonhoeffer, interpreting lament through his Christology, ecclesiology, and biblical exegesis. A constructive lamentology emerges, aimed to facilitate the church's engagement with some critical contemporary issues.Judson presents lament as a faithful aspect of the truly human life which, in and through Christ, is for and with others. Lament is a means by which disciples stay "awake with Christ in Gethsemane" in a wounded world where sin, suffering, and sorrow abide. Such an outlook challenges prevalent ideological horizons and common presuppositions about lament which preclude or distort this crucial spiritual discipline. Hence, Judson opens new imaginative possibilities for construing lament positively and creatively, witnessing to the reality that faithful freedom is embodied perfectly by the lamenting Jesus himself, who, by way of his own lament, is the salvation of the world.

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The early church, after several centuries of controversy, came to an uneasy consensus that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. In his divinity, orthodox Christianity claimed, he shared fully in the nature of the uncreated creator God. But was this doctrinal position crafted from whole cloth in the era of the great ecumenical councils? How did earlier Christ-followers understand Jesus in light of their convictions about the one supreme deity, and in the context of a cultural milieu saturated with gods?In Jesus among the gods Michael Bird gives renewed attention to divine ontology—what a god is—in relation to literary representations of Jesus. Most studies of the origins of early Christology focus on christological titles, various functions, divine identity, and types of worship. The application of ontological categories to Jesus is normally considered something that only began to happen in the second and third centuries as the early church engaged in platonizing interpretations of Jesus. Bird argues, to the contrary, that ontological language and categories were used to describe Jesus as an eternal, true, and unbegotten deity from the earliest decades of the nascent church.Through comparison with representative authors such as Philo and Plutarch, and a comprehensive analysis of Jesus and various intermediary figures from Greco-Roman religion and ancient Judaism, Bird demonstrates how early accounts of Jesus both overlapped with and diverged from existing forms of religious expression. However Jesus resembled the various divine agents of Greco-Roman religion and Second Temple Judaism, the chorus of early Christian witnesses held Jesus to be simultaneously an agent of and an analogue with the God of Israel. Among the gods, Jesus stood in clear relief, a conviction that may have been refined over time but that belongs to the emerging heart of Christian confession.

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Christianity's center of gravity has tilted from the Euro-American West to the global South. Driving this shift is the emergence of charismatic renewal movements among Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox churches. This reshaping of the theological landscape has inspired prominent theologian Amos Yong to construct a cutting-edge theology for the twenty-first century. Within a Pentecostal and evangelical framework, Yong's Renewing Christian Theology is a primer on how to think theologically in a global context.Students seeking an introduction to systematic theology will not only discover the treasures of the tradition but will also encounter a revolutionary pastoral theology that bridges Pentecostal, charismatic, evangelical, and ecumenical traditions. Yong's theological imagination prioritizes Christian hope, gifts of the Spirit, baptism, sanctification, and healing. Renewing Christian Theology unveils an inclusive theology conversant with contemporary theological movements - theology and science, contextual theologies, intercultural theologies, theology and disability, public theologies, theology and the arts, and theological aesthetics. Renewing Christian Theology is theology for the twenty-first-century church.

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Emotions are two-sided. They contain deep truths about what it means to be human, but they also deceive, mislead, and manipulate. They are celebrated for the insights they provide, but they also are denied, repressed, and dismissed. Though many institutions recognize and study the power of emotion, its potential has yet to be fully realized.Barbara J. McClure seeks to rectify this. In Emotions: Problems and Promise for Human Flourishing, she examines how emotions can be properly engaged for health and healing both individually and corporately. Starting with the current understandings of emotion, she notes the limitations of current thought. She then draws on significant emotions theories from ancient philosophy, Christian theology, natural sciences, psychology, social theory, and contemporary neuroscience to create a more well-rounded understanding of emotions and their place in Western society. Ultimately, McClure argues that emotions, if understood and engaged correctly, can be a source of guidance for flourishing and a resource for nurturing the common good.With this wide-ranging multidisciplinary approach, McClure proposes an understanding of emotions that allows for a new model of human flourishing: one that does not dismiss emotions but utilizes them properly to engage life's challenges. Emotions should not be censored, silenced, or sidelined - they are important tools for discerning and cultivating what is Good and resisting what is not.

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For more than three decades, American presidential candidates have desperately sought the conservative Evangelical vote. With an ever broadening base of support, the Evangelical movement in America may now seem to many a very powerful lobbyist on Capitol Hill. As Andrew Hogue shows, however, this was not always the case.In Stumping God Hogue deconstructs the 1980 presidential election, in which Ronald Reagan would defeat Jimmy Carter and John B. Anderson, and uncovers a disproportionately heavy reliance on religious rhetoric--a rhetoric that would be the catalyst for a new era of presidential politics. Until 1980, the idea that conservative politics was somehow connected with conservative theology was distant from the American imagination. Hogue describes the varying streams of influence that finally converged by the Reagan-Carter election, including the rapidly rising Religious Right. By 1980, candidates were not only challenged to appeal rhetorically to a conservative religious base, but found it necessary to make public their once-private religious commitments.In compelling and illuminating fashion, Stumping God explains the roots of modern religious politics and encourages readers to move beyond the haze of rhetorical appeals that--for better or worse--continually clouds the political process.

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After Paul: The Apostle's Legacy in Early Christianity focuses on the many ways Pauline thought and tradition were reinterpreted, reused, reframed, and reconstructed in the first centuries of Christianity. James W. Aageson contends that it is insufficient simply to focus on Paul or on his legacy in the Greco-Roman world; what is needed is a bifocal look at Paul with the reference points being both how Paul transformed his own thinking and later how Paul and his thought were transformed by others in the church.To speak of Paul's legacy implies more than the reception of his texts, his ideas, or his theology. It also implies more than the interpretative techniques or the references to Paul by early post-Paul writers. It refers to the apostle's wider impact, influence, and sway in the first centuries of the church as well. The questions he addressed, his impulse toward theological reflection and argumentation, and his approach to pastoral and ethical concerns undoubtedly influenced the future course of the Christ movement. Aageson's investigation takes up the issues of memory and metamorphosis, conflict and opposition, authority and control, legacy and empire, the church and the Jews, women and marriage, Paul in place, and church unity to pinpoint interrelationships and interactions among important strands in Paul's thought, persona, and authority as together they interfaced with the changing culture and social life of early Christianity. After Paul is not intended to be a history of the first centuries of Pauline Christianity nor an exhaustive account of everything that pertains to the early development of Paul's legacy. Rather, Aageson endeavors to plot connections, identify patterns, and develop a theoretical context for understanding Paul's legacy in early Christianity. The picture that emerges is one of continuity and discontinuity between Paul and Pauline tradition as the historical Paul became a figure of memory and remembrance, framed and reframed. This specific investigation offers a fresh entry point to understanding the larger question of how the Christian tradition came into its own as a social body and religious movement that could endure even after Paul.

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Throughout the history of Christianity, the concept of the "kingdom of God" has been constructed and understood in a multiplicity of ways. From direct identifications of the kingdom with the church to purely eschatological notions to competing revolution-inspiring views of God's reign, differing understandings of the kingdom engendered a rich variety of ideological frameworks, social arrangements, and historical actions.The Baptist faith, with substantial worldwide numerical, cultural, social, and political power, has been the site of a number of approaches to the idea of the kingdom that informed its trajectory. Issues that transcended Baptist circles, such as slavery, foreign missions, and social activism, have significant connections to Baptist notions of God's will and work in the world. The essays in Baptists and the Kingdom of God, written by scholars from several countries and disciplinary perspectives, approach the question of the kingdom under four major themes: ecclesial, eschatological, social, and providential. Considered as a whole, the volume illuminates historic and contemporary views of Baptists wrestling with ideas surrounding the kingdom concept, providing a unique resource for students and scholars of Baptist heritage and thought.

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Joy, pain, celebration, and grief are constant companions on the journey of caregiving. While remaining detached might seem the preferable option, it is not possible to disentangle the threads of our interwoven stories. Our lives are shaped by each other. We are transformed by our encounters.In Formed Together, Keith Dow explores the questions of why we should, and why we do, care for one another. He considers what it means for human beings to be interdependent, created in the image of a loving God. Dow recounts personal experiences of supporting people with intellectual disabilities while drawing upon theological and philosophical sources to discover the ethical underpinnings of Christian care. Formed Together reveals that human beings care for one another not merely by choice, but because every person relies upon others. People are called together in mutually formative practices of care, and human flourishing means learning to care well. Dow suggests five virtues that mark ethical caregiving, such as humble courage and quiet attentiveness. These practices can help guide caregivers in responding to the divine call to care.Dow demonstrates that ethical practices of care do not depend upon intelligence or rational ability. Many are called to the vocation of tending to and being present in the needs of others. To be formed together in the divine image means that caregivers never entirely comprehend themselves, others, or God. Rather, caring well means that humans are to accompany one another in and through experiences of profound mystery and revelation.

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Salvation and human flourishingâa life marked by fulfillment and well-beingâhave often been divorced in the thinking and practice of the church. For the apostle Paul, however, the two were inseparable in the vision for the good life. Drawing on the revolutionary teachings and kingdom proclamation of Jesus, Paul and the early church issued a challenge to the ancient world's dominant narratives of flourishing. Paul's conviction of Jesus' universal Lordship emboldened him to imagine not just another world, but this world as it might be when transformed. With Paul and the Good Life , Julien Smith introduces us afresh to Paul's vision for the life of human flourishing under the reign of Jesus. By placing Paul's letters in conversation with both ancient virtue ethics and kingship discourse, Smith outlines the Apostle's christologically shaped understanding of the good life. Numerous Hellenistic philosophical traditions situated the individual cultivation of virtue within the larger telos of the flourishing polis . Against this backdrop, Paul regards the church as a heavenly commonwealth whose citizens are being transformed into the character of its king, Jesus. Within this vision, salvation entails both deliverance from the deforming power of sin and the re-forming of the person and the church through embodied allegiance to Jesus. Citizenship within this commonwealth calls for a countercultural set of virtues, ones that foster unity amidst diversity and the care of creation. Smith concludes by enlisting the help of present-day interlocutors to draw out the implications of Paul's argument for our own context. The resulting conversation aims to place Paul in engagement with missional hermeneutics, spiritual disciplines, liturgical formation, and agrarianism. Ultimately, Paul and the Good Life invites us to imagine how citizens of this heavenly commonwealth might live in the in-between time, in which Jesus's reign has been inaugurated but not consummated.

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The ancient world, much like our own, thrived on cultural diversity and exchange. The riches of this social reality are evident in the writings of Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Jewish authors drew on the wide range of Greek literary conventions and gave fresh expressions to the proud traditions of their faith and ethnic identity. They did not hesitate to modify and adapt the forms they received from the surrounding culture, but their works stand as legitimate participants in Greco-Roman literary tradition.In Greek Genres and Jewish Authors, Sean Adams argues that a robust understanding of ancient genre facilitates proper textual interpretation. This perspective is vital for insight on the author, the work's original purpose, and how the original readers would have received it. Adopting a cognitive-prototype theory of genre, Adams provides a detailed discussion of Jewish authors writing in Greek from ca. 300 BCE to ca. 135 CE - including New Testament authors - and their participation in Greek genres. The nine chapters focus on broad genre divisions (e.g., poetry, didactic, philosophy) to provide studies on each author's engagement with Greek genres, identifying both representative and atypical expressions and features.The book's most prominent contribution lies in its data synthesis to provide a macroperspective on the ways in which Jewish authors participated in and adapted Greek genres - in other words, how members of a minority culture intentionally engaged with the dominant culture's literary practices alongside traditional Jewish features, resulting in unique text expressions. Greek Genres and Jewish Authors provides a rich resource for Jewish, New Testament, and classical scholars, particularly those who study cultural engagement, development of genres, and ancient education.

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