Description: The connections between religion and violence are complex and multifaceted. From the conflicts in Middle East and the Balkans to those in Southeast Asia and beyond, religion frames and legitimates political violence. Moreover, in international relations since 9/11, religious language and metaphors have acquired a new significance. In this context the emerging consensus appears to be not only that violence is intrinsic to religion, but also that religions incite, legitimate, and intensify political violence. However, such an unambiguous indictment of religions is incomplete in...

Description: Hope is the leitmotiv of Jurgen Moltmann's theology. Not merely one aspect of his project, hope is the whole of it, the supreme doctrine interpenetrating all others. Indeed, hope is his method. The present study is both historical and developmental while also being analytical and interrogative. This chronological exploration seeks to show the nature, composition, and development of Moltmann's doctrine of hope, as the distinctive doctrine of his theology, implicating all others. Part I establishes Moltmann's doctrine of hope as grounded in God's faithfulness in the cross and...

Description: C. S. Lewis was concerned about an aspect of the problem of evil he called subjectivism: the tendency of one's perspective to move towards self-referentialism and utilitarianism. In C. S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil, Jerry Root provides a holistic reading of Lewis by walking the reader through all of Lewis's published work as he argues Lewis's case against subjectivism. Furthermore, the book reveals that Lewis consistently employed fiction to make his case, as virtually all of his villains are portrayed as subjectivists. Lewis's warnings are prophetic; this book is not merely an...

Description: This volume brings together twelve scholars from a variety of scholarly fields including biblical studies, history, theology, sociology, anthropology, and missiology in a multi-disciplinary exploration of themes related to women's leadership within the three branches of the renewal movement: Holiness, Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions. These scholars - women and men - from both within and outside the traditions, draw on various methodologies including hermeneutics, ethnography, critical theory, and historical analysis to explore the experiences and contributions of women...

Description: The Fourfold Gospel, most often associated with Albert B. Simpson, founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, which focuses on the doctrines of Christ as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King, has been identified as a key contributing factor to the birth and development of the modern Pentecostal movement. Through a close observation of the doctrinal themes of select and renowned Evangelical leaders in America (A. J. Gordon of Boston, D. L. Moody of Chicago, A. T. Pierson of Philadelphia/Detroit, and A. B. Simpson of New York), this work shows that the Fourfold Gospel...

Description: Reading Daniel as a Text in Theological Hermeneutics sets out to read the book of Daniel as a narrative textbook in the field of theological hermeneutics. Employing such disciplines as historical criticism, literary criticism, narrative theology, and hermeneutics, this work seeks to maintain an interdisciplinary outlook on the book of Daniel. Two inherently linked perspectives are utilized in this reading of Daniel. First is the perception that the character of Daniel is the paradigm of the good theological hermeneut; theology and hermeneutics are inseparable and converge in the...

Description: Now and then through the history of the church a great light appears, a prophet who calls the church back to its missional vocation. These reformers are lovers of God, mystics whose lives are utterly given to the divine vision. Yet as Jesus noted, a prophet is often without honor among her own people. In the case of Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874), honor was lost posthumously, for within a few decades after her death her name all but disappeared. Palmer's sanctification theology was separated from its apophatic spiritual moorings, even as her memory was lost. Throughout most of the...

Description: This book constitutes the first volume of a three-volume study of Christian testimonies to divine suffering: God's Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering, Divine Vulnerability and Creation. This study first develops an approach to interpreting the contested claims about the suffering of God. Thus, the larger study focuses its inquiry into the testimonies to divine suffering themselves, seeking to allow the voices that attest to divine suffering to speak freely, to discover and elucidate the internal logic or rationality of this family of testimonies,...

Description: Probing the Frontiers of Biblical Studies is a seventeen-chapter anthology on biblical studies. It has been crafted as an extended and respectful thank you note to one of the most insightful scholars of biblical studies, David J. A. Clines of Sheffield University in England. He is credited with providing guidance to, and shaping the thought of, two generations of scholars who focus on essential approaches to understanding the Bible, with particular attention given to the Old Testament and allied literature. The anthology is directed toward those readers with pastoral, analytical,...

Description: This essay on Soren Kierkegaard and economic matters from a theological perspective is well grounded in the Dane's journals. In these writings, the late nineteenth-century thinker shows his solidarity with rural residents (90 percent of the population) and urbanite menial workers. Topics include the option for the poor; the ideology of impotence; the denouncing of a competitive society; the correlation of wealth and poverty; media, church, university, and theater as social institutions shaping reality; Christendom; and the retribution doctrine. A Vexing Gadfly develops the...