Description: For decades, post-independence Africa has been marked by conflicts, violence, and civil wars leading to a displacement of civilian populations and numerous humanitarian crises. For example, the Somali war, the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the Darfur conflict in Western Sudan illustrate this phenomenon. In these situations, protecting the basic human rights of security, subsistence, the liberties of social participation, and the physical movement of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs)--particularly women, children, and young people--has been seen as inadequate. This...

Description: This volumes explores the shape pneumatology takes when we develop the theology of the Holy Spirit within an eschatological framework that has a universal scope and an unlimited history. When we do so, we find that pneumatology deriving from questions about what the Spirit does for us needs to give way to pneumatology that derives from questions about how the Spirit can draw us into the saving history of the triune God. Endorsements: ""Beck gives us two books for the price of one. He builds on a detailed study of the Apostle's eschatological framework in pneumatology and allows...

Description: Recognized as a leading interpreter of major movements in American Christianity such as Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and the Holiness movement, Donald W. Dayton has produced a body of work spanning four decades and diverse areas of inquiry. In From the Margins, friends and colleagues respond to major essays by Dayton (several published here for the first time) so as to celebrate and reflect on this diverse and rich body of work. The essays highlight the breadth of Dayton's contribution while also revealing a methodological core. The latter could be described as Dayton's...

Description: The advances of geologic science, Darwinism, theological liberalism, and higher textual criticism converged in the nineteenth century to present an imposing challenge to biblical authority. The meteoric rise in secular knowledge exerted tremendous pressure on the Protestant theological elite of the time. Their ruminations, conversations, quarrels, and convictions offer penetrating insight into their world--into their perspective on Scripture and authority and how their outlook was challenged, defended, and sometimes changed across time. Moreover, the nineteenth-century imbroglios...

Description: ""The divine mystery, as interpreted by Paul, offers transformation. The believer who identifies with the death and resurrection of Christ by putting to death the old way of life (Rom 6:5-11; Gal 2:20) enters into a new sphere of influence characterized by intimate fellowship with Christ. One who is in this sphere is free from the snare of Adam and the world and is no longer bound by the power of sin and death. The divine mystery also offers a new source of power by the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Spirit brings gifts to those in Christ that enable them to function as community....

Description: ""'Deification' refers to the transformation of believers into the likeness of God. Of course, Christian monotheism goes against any literal 'god making' of believers. Rather, the NT speaks of a transformation of mind, a metamorphosis of character, a redefinition of selfhood, and an imitation of God. Most of these passages are tantalizingly brief, and none spells out the concept in detail. ""Deification was an important idea in the early church, though it took a long time for one term to emerge as the standard label for the process. That term was qe/wsij, theosis, coined by the...