Christification

Christification
Author: Jordan Cooper
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2014-07-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 162564616X

The doctrine of theosis has enjoyed a recent resurgence among varied theological traditions across the realms of historical, dogmatic, and exegetical theology. In Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis, Jordan Cooper evaluates this teaching from a Lutheran perspective. He examines the teachings of the church fathers, the New Testament, and the Lutheran Confessional tradition in conversation with recent scholarship on theosis. Cooper proposes that the participationist soteriology of the early fathers expressed in terms of theosis is compatible with Luther's doctrine of forensic justification. The historic Lutheran tradition, Scripture, and the patristic sources do not limit soteriological discussions to legal terminology, but instead offer a multifaceted doctrine of salvation that encapsulates both participatory and forensic motifs. This is compared and contrasted with the development of the doctrine of deification in the Eastern tradition arising from the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius. Cooper argues that the doctrine of the earliest fathers--such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Justin--is primarily a Christological and economic reality defined as "Christification." This model of theosis is placed in contradistinction to later Neoplatonic forms of deification.

Christ's Will

Christ's Will
Author: Samael Aun Weor
Publisher: Glorian Publishing
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2020-03
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9781943358090

"Throughout the aeons, fear and the longing for security enslaved the body of will, turning it into a personal, defensive barrier. Fear and the longing for security have transformed human will into a wretched victim... The moment has arrived to liberate your human will from the horrible prejudices and tenebrous, ancestral fear and tendencies. Rejoice, oh buddha, since now your human will shall become Christ's will... Christ's will is heroic. Christ's will only bows and kneels before the will of the Father." --Samael Aun Weor Those who have completed the first four Initiations of Major Mysteries must begin the fifth, the creation of the causal body, which is related with willpower. Through the first four initiations, the initiate raised the kundalini in the physical body, vital body, astral body, and mental body, making the Innermost a Buddha. Now, with the fifth serpent of fire, the will of the Human Soul (Tiphereth) must reflect the will of the Father (Chesed), so that the will of Christ can be finally emerge. As the kundalini rises through each vertebra of the spinal column, the initiate must pass tests that are symbolized in the first thirty-three arcana of the Tarot. When completed, the human will becomes Christ's will. Then one is prepared for the incarnation of Christ and the entrance into the straight path (the path of the bodhisattva), upon which, as Christ's will, one performs greats sacrifices for suffering humanity. "The fundamental objective of our esoteric studies is to reach Christification... The inner Christ is what counts. Unfortunately, people only think about an historical Christ, and this is how they separate themselves from reality. They forget that Christ is what is, which always has been, and what will always be. They forget that Christ is the life that beats in each atom, as it beats in each Sun. They forget that Christ vibrates from instant to instant, from moment to moment. To incarnate Christ is fundamental." --Samael Aun Weor

Faith, Reason, and Theosis

Faith, Reason, and Theosis
Author: Aristotle Papanikolaou
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2023-10-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1531503039

Theosis shapes contemporary Orthodox theology in two ways: positively and negatively. In the positive sense, contemporary Orthodox theologians made theosis the thread that bound together the various aspects of theology in a coherent whole and also interpreted patristic texts, which experienced a renaissance in the twentieth century, even in Orthodox theology. In the negative sense, contemporary theologians used theosis as a triumphalistic club to beat down Catholic and Protestant Christians, claiming that they rejected theosis in favor of either a rationalistic or fideistic approach to Christian life. The essays collected in this volume move beyond this East–West divide by examining the relation between faith, reason, and theosis from Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives. A variety of themes are addressed, such as the nature–grace debate and the relation of philosophy to theology, through engagement with such diverse thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, John Wesley, Meister Eckhart, Dionysius the Areopagite, Symeon the New Theologian, Panayiotis Nellas, Vladimir Lossky, Martin Luther, Martin Heidegger, Sergius Bulgakov, John of the Cross, Delores Williams, Evagrius of Pontus, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. The essays in this book are situated within a current thinking on theosis that consists of a common, albeit minimalist, affirmation amidst the flow of differences. The authors in this volume contribute to the historical theological task of complicating the contemporary Orthodox narrative, but they also continue the “theological achievement” of thinking about theosis so that all Christian traditions may be challenged to stretch and shift their understanding of theosis even amidst an ecumenical celebration of the gift of participation in the life of God.

Christification

Christification
Author: Jordan Cooper
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2014-07-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1630873586

The doctrine of theosis has enjoyed a recent resurgence among varied theological traditions across the realms of historical, dogmatic, and exegetical theology. In Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis, Jordan Cooper evaluates this teaching from a Lutheran perspective. He examines the teachings of the church fathers, the New Testament, and the Lutheran Confessional tradition in conversation with recent scholarship on theosis. Cooper proposes that the participationist soteriology of the early fathers expressed in terms of theosis is compatible with Luther's doctrine of forensic justification. The historic Lutheran tradition, Scripture, and the patristic sources do not limit soteriological discussions to legal terminology, but instead offer a multifaceted doctrine of salvation that encapsulates both participatory and forensic motifs. This is compared and contrasted with the development of the doctrine of deification in the Eastern tradition arising from the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius. Cooper argues that the doctrine of the earliest fathers--such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Justin--is primarily a Christological and economic reality defined as "Christification." This model of theosis is placed in contradistinction to later Neoplatonic forms of deification.

The Third Reformation

The Third Reformation
Author: Carter Lindberg
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 1983
Genre: Lutheran Church
ISBN: 9780865540750

Union with Christ

Union with Christ
Author: Jordan Cooper
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-08
Genre:
ISBN: 9781952295454

The Christian's participatory union with Christ is a central element of salvation, both in Scripture and in the historic Christian tradition. In the early twentieth-century, however, this theme gradually began to diminish in its prominence within Lutheran theological writing. Due to a variety of philosophical and theological shifts, many Lutherans began to emphasize forensic justification to the exclusion of participationist motifs. That forensic exclusivism is challenged in this work. In this book, Jordan Cooper articulates an approach to union with Christ that is drawn from both Patristic theology, and the classical Lutheran tradition. Throughout this study, Cooper exposits union with Christ under three distinctive categories: the objective union of God and man through the Incarnation, the formal union of faith in which the believer is united to Christ's person and work, and the mystical union through which the Triune God dwells in the hearts of Christians. This book is the sixth volume in a series titled A Contemporary Protestant Scholastic Theology.

Modern Orthodox Theology

Modern Orthodox Theology
Author: Paul Ladouceur
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2019-02-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567664848

Modern Orthodox theology represents a continuity of the Eastern Christian theological tradition stretching back to the early Church and especially to the Ancient Fathers of the Church. This volume considers the full range of modern Orthodox theology. The first chapters of the book offer a chronological study of the development of modern Orthodox theology, beginning with a survey of Orthodox theology from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the early 19th century. Ladouceur then focuses on theology in imperial Russia, the Russian religious renaissance at the beginning of the 20th century, and the origins and nature of neopatristic theology, as well as the new theology in Greece and Romania, and tradition and the restoration of patristic thought. Subsequent chapters examine specific major themes: - God and Creation - Divine-humanity, personhood and human rights - The Church of Christ - Ecumenical theology and religious diversity - The 'Christification' of life - Social and Political Theology - The 'Name-of-God' conflict - The ordination of women The volume concludes with assessments of major approaches of modern Orthodox theology and reflections on the current status and future of Orthodox theology. Designed for classroom use, the book features: - case studies - a detailed index - a list of recommended readings for each chapter

Enneagram Theology

Enneagram Theology
Author: Rhenn Cherry
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2021-08-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666715956

The enneagram has become popular among evangelical Christians as a spiritualized personality typology that claims to help people better understand themselves and others. Several influential evangelical Christian leadership ministries have promoted the enneagram as a tool in forming and maintaining effective ministry teams, and the personality typology is now taught and embraced at several Christian universities. But uncertainty exists about the appropriateness of referring to the Enneagram as a Christian tool. Are pastors and Christian institutional leaders aware of the theology associated with the Enneagram? Enneagram Theology: Is It Christian? provides a biblical critique of the Enneagram’s underlying theology and exposes not only its foundational theological contradictions with orthodox evangelical theology but also some potential dangers to the church.

Becoming the Gospel

Becoming the Gospel
Author: Michael J. Gorman
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2015-05-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1467442984

The first detailed exegetical treatment of Paul’s letters from the emerging discipline of missional hermeneutics, Michael Gorman’s Becoming the Gospel argues that Paul’s letters invite Christian communities both then and now to not merely believe the gospel but to become the gospel and, in doing so, to participate in the life and mission of God. Showing that Pauline churches were active public participants in and witnesses to the gospel, Gorman reveals the missional significance of various themes in Paul’s letters. He also identifies select contemporary examples of mission in the spirit of Paul, inviting all Christians to practice Paul-inspired imagination in their own contexts.

The Oxford Handbook of Deification

The Oxford Handbook of Deification
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1307
Release: 2024-06-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0192634461

Modern theological engagements on deification have undergone two major paradigm shifts. First, the study of deification shifted from the periphery of theological discourse to its center. For Adolf von Harnack, deification was a pagan import that fatally corrupted and distorted the Gospel message of salvation. In response, the positive retrieval of the concept of deification belongs to the early years of the twentieth century. By the 1910s in Russian religious thought and by the 1930s in much Roman Catholic theology, deification had become a magnet concept attracting attention from many different viewpoints. The second important shift relates to how deification is characterized. Recent studies question the exclusively 'Eastern' character of deification and draw attention to the engagements of this theme in Latin patristic and later Western Christian sources. Reassessing the evidence for these two major shifts, The Oxford Handbook of Deification comprehensively explores the points of convergence and difference on the constitutive elements of deification in different traditions, and offers a foundation for ecumenical and interreligious dialogues. The Handbook's first part analyzes the cultural and scriptural roots of deification; the second part explores the most significant historical contributions to the understanding of deification in the early, medieval, and modern periods; the third part develops systematic connections. Readers will discover a surprizing breadth, depth, and diversity of theologies of deification in Christian traditions. Throughout the Handbook, leading scholars in the field of Deification Studies propose vital new insights from a variety of perspectives for this central mystery at the heart of the Christian faith.