Description: ""We offer this collection as a token of our affection and admiration of our friend and colleague James Weldon Thompson. . . . His studies of the letter to the Hebrews and of Paul in their intellectual contexts (especially Middle Platonism) have contributed significantly to the ongoing quest for placing the New Testament in its socio-intellectual setting. Although his publications in this area date back more than thirty years, his best work is occurring now, and we may anticipate path-breaking contributions ahead. His more recent work on preaching and pastoral care in Paul both...

Description: Harry S. Guntrip was best known for his affiliation with two famous psychoanalysts from what is known as the British Independent tradition of psychoanalysis in England: Ronald Fairbairn and Donald Winnicott. This book traces the various influences on the development of his clinical and theological thinking in context of the historical tension between religion and psychoanalysis. The central feature of his development will be demonstrated as a series of polarities, both theoretical and personal, conflicts with which he wrestled theologically, psychologically, and interpersonally...

Description: Enigmas and Powers is a celebration and engagement of the work of the noted author, biblical scholar, peace activist, pastor, speaker, and workshop leader, Walter Wink. Among Wink's numerous influential works are The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of the Man, The Bible in Human Transformation, Homosexuality and Christian Faith, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way, and The Powers trilogy (Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, and Engaging the Powers). This is the only volume devoted to responses by Walter's colleagues and students to the entire range of his work...

Description: Kevin Twain Lowery believes that two of John Wesley's most distinctive doctrines--his doctrines of assurance and Christian perfection--have not been sufficiently developed. Rather, these doctrines have either been distorted or neglected. Lowery suggests that since Wesleyan ethics is centered on these two doctrines, they need to be recast in a schema that emphasizes the cognitive aspects of religious knowledge and moral development. Salvaging Wesley's Agenda constructs such a new framework in three stages. First, Lowery explores Wesley's reliance upon Lockean empiricism. He...

Description: Although covenant is a major theme in Hebrews, Morrison contends all mention of covenant can be deleted without damaging the coherence of the epistle or its christological conclusions. What role, then, does the covenant motif have in the epistle? The arguments in Hebrews are aimed at a Jewish audience--they ignore the needs and religious options relevant to Gentiles. For the readers, the Sinai covenant was the only relevant conceptual competitor to Christ. First-century Jews looked to the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants as the basis of their obligations to God and God's promises...

Description: Evangelicals in nineteenth-century America had a headquarters at Princeton. Charles Hodge never expected that a former student of Princeton and his own replacement during his hiatus in Europe, John W. Nevin, would lead the German Reformed Church's seminary in a new, and in his mind, destructive direction. The two, along with their institutions, would clash over philosophy and religion, producing some of the best historical theology ever written in the United States. The clash was broad, influencing everything from hermeneutics to liturgy, but at its core was the philosophical...

Description: Luther's theology of the cross is a direct critique of oppressive power relationships in his day. Luther's early thought challenges specific economic, political, social, ideological, and religious power dynamics; the cross confronts those who enjoy power, prestige, pomp, and profits at the expense of the poor. Ruge-Jones maps the power relationships that Luther's theology addressed and then turns to specific works that challenge established structures of his world. Luther's Latin texts undermine the ideological assumptions and presumptions that bolstered an opulent church and...

Description: The Diffusion of Ecclesiastical Authority explores the leadership of the church in Acts from a sociological perspective. Two primary models emerge from a sociologically informed investigation of first-century Greco-Roman and Jewish religious leadership: ""manager-leader"" and ""innovator-leader."" An examination of seven passages in Acts reveals that the leaders of the early church, although initially conforming to cultural expectations, are best described as innovator-leaders whose counter-cultural actions resulted in the empowerment of new leaders and the advancement of the...