Ringleaders of Redemption

Ringleaders of Redemption
Author: Kathryn Dickason
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2021-01-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0197527272

In popular thought, Christianity is often figured as being opposed to dance. Conventional scholarship traces this controversy back to the Middle Ages. Throughout the medieval era, the Latin Church denounced and prohibited dancing in religious and secular realms, often aligning it with demonic intervention, lust, pride, and sacrilege. Historical sources, however, suggest that medieval dance was a complex and ambivalent phenomenon. During the High and Late Middle Ages, Western theologians, liturgists, and mystics not only tolerated dance; they transformed it into a dynamic component of religious thought and practice. This book investigates how dance became a legitimate form of devotion in Christian culture. Sacred dance functioned to gloss scripture, frame spiritual experience, and imagine the afterlife. Invoking numerous manuscript and visual sources (biblical commentaries, sermons, saints' lives, ecclesiastical statutes, mystical treatises, vernacular literature, and iconography), this book highlights how medieval dance helped shape religious identity and social stratification. Moreover, this book shows the political dimension of dance, which worked in the service of Christendom, conversion, and social cohesion. In Ringleaders of Redemption, Kathryn Dickason reveals a long tradition of sacred dance in Christianity, one that the professionalization and secularization of Renaissance dance obscured, and one that the Reformation silenced and suppressed.

The Gospel of Luke

The Gospel of Luke
Author: Joel B. Green
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 1036
Release: 1997-10-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780802823151

This highly original commentary, part of the New International Commentary, is unique for the way it combines concerns with first-century culture in the Roman world with understanding the text of Luke as a wholistic, historical narrative.

Freedom, Necessity, and the Knowledge of God

Freedom, Necessity, and the Knowledge of God
Author: Paul D. Molnar
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2021-12-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567700178

Paul D. Molnar discusses issues related to the concepts of freedom and necessity in trinitarian doctrine. He considers the implications of “non-conceptual knowledge of God” by comparing the approaches of Karl Rahner and T. F. Torrance. He also reconsiders T. F. Torrance's “new” natural theology and illustrates why Christology must be central when discussing liberation theology. Further, he explores Catholic and Protestant relations by comparing the views of Elizabeth Johnson, Walter Kasper and Karl Barth, as well as relations among Christians, Jews and Muslims by considering whether it is appropriate to claim that all three religions should be understood to be united under the concept of monotheism. Finally, he probes the controversial issues of how to name God in a way that underscores the full equality of women and men and how to understand “universalism” by placing Torrance and David Bentley Hart into conversation on that subject.

Finding God among Our Neighbors

Finding God among Our Neighbors
Author: Kristin Johnston Largen
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2013-08-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1451430906

Students of theology live in a world defined by interreligious dialogue. This supplemental theology text prepares students for the real task of understanding and articulating their Christian beliefs in a religiously and culturally diverse world. Concentrating on the anchoring subjects of God, creation, and humanity, she explores these loci in the broader context of interreligious dialogue with Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam to better understand the Christian tradition.

Oasis of Imagination

Oasis of Imagination
Author: Ted Turnau
Publisher: Inter-Varsity Press
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2023-07-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1789744776

What should the church's cultural witness be? Too often, it has been marked by political strong-arming or fearful withdrawal into the "Christian bubble." There is another way: creative cultural engagement, using our imaginations to plant oases in the desert, breathable spaces that refresh, challenge, and draw together Christians and non-Christians alike. Oases refresh the soul, provoke discussion, challenge assumptions, and lead the imagination to a new place. In Oasis of Imagination, Ted Turnau lays out the Biblical mandate for engaging culture, and why the imaginative path holds promise. He explores the nature of the imagination from both Scripture and nature. He asks, "What makes a Christian imagination that resonates with non-Christians different?" He explores examples of Christian creativity done well from video games to movies to music to The Lord of the Rings. He challenges the church, artist and non-artist alike, to be intentional about their own imaginative lives, how artists and non-artists can support each other, as they together engage in building bridges and being cultural ambassadors to the wider community. In-depth and wide-ranging, Oasis of Imagination equips and encourages Christians, whatever their calling, to consider how to imaginatively enter into the broader cultural conversation, beyond the culture-warring and Christian bubbles. It seeks to provoke a conversation within the church between its artists and non-artists about how best to unleash our God-given creativity to shine light into the broader culture.

The Trinitarian Dance

The Trinitarian Dance
Author: Sharon Tam
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2015-02-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1625645570

The Trinitarian Dance presents a model of leadership development based on the Holy Trinity. Part one analyzes the present state of the cultural and ecclesiastical situation in Canada, identifying specific trends and aspects relating to the need for development of effective leadership in the church. This section sets the stage for Part two, where a theology of trinitarian leadership is developed based on the dynamic of perichoresis, with the motif of a dance used to present a paradigm of transformational leadership. Part three offers church-based strategies for leadership development, concluding with a creative application of the doxological formula that captures the thrust of the entire book and leads it to a finale that includes a benediction of hope for the church through this leadership model.

God and Nature

God and Nature
Author: Curtis L. Thompson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2012-03-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441189149

The current religion and science dialogue begs for greater clarity on the relation of God to nature. In God and Nature two scholars who embrace contemporary insights from science and religion explore the complexities of this debate. As the narrative unfolds, classical and contemporary thinkers are engaged as discussion partners in articulating a philosophical theology of nature. Conceptual pairs, in which two concepts play off of each other, provide the structure for each of the seven chapters, with usually the first concept being more scientific in character and the second more religious in tone. These pairs of concepts-from chronology and creation to creativity and creator-help to thematize and structure the progressing narrative. Within each chapter the two concepts are first investigated independently, then interdependently, and finally in relation to the divine. At the story's completion nature has emerged as alive with possibility that is as alluring as the actuality it evokes. Envisioned is a divine Creator who works in and through the possibility of creation to lure it into fuller manifestations via creative transformation.

Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity

Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity
Author: Paul D. Molnar
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 617
Release: 2017-02-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567657418

Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity is widely acclaimed by scholars in the field of Christian systematic theology. Molnar's quest to place the doctrine of the immanent Trinity on the agenda of the Christian doctrine of God has proven to be a signal contribution to the debate in contemporary Christian theology. The material in this second edition has been thoroughly updated: it contains a new preface and a new introduction, as well as a revised bibliography. The book includes a brand new chapter titled 'Divine Freedom Revisited' which addresses those questions that have arisen in connection with Molnar's original presentation of the divine freedom. Molnar re-visits here his discussion of the Logos Asarkos, the theologies of Karl Rahner and Wolfhart Pannenberg. He sheds new light on Rahner's and Torrance's discussions of the Resurrection; and incorporates modern discussions by contemporary theologians to offer new insights into Eberhard Jüngel's thinking.

Quest for the Living God

Quest for the Living God
Author: Elizabeth A. Johnson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2011-07-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441142665

'Since the middle of the twentieth century,' writes Elizabeth Johnson, 'there has been a renaissance of new insights into God in the Christian tradition. On different continents, under pressure from historical events and social conditions, people of faith have glimpsed the living God in fresh ways. It is not that a wholly different God is discovered from the One believed in by previous generations. Christian faith does not believe in a new God but, finding itself in new situations, seeks the presence of God there. Aspects long-forgotten are brought into new relationships with current events, and the depths of divine compassion are appreciated in ways not previously imagined.' This book sets out the fruit of these discoveries. The first chapter describes Johnson's point of departure and the rules of engagement, with each succeeding chapter distilling a discrete idea of God. Featured are transcendental, political, liberation, feminist, black, Hispanic, interreligious, and ecological theologies, ending with the particular Christian idea of the one God as Trinity.