The Quest for the Fictional Jesus

The Quest for the Fictional Jesus
Author: Margaret E Ramey
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2017-03-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0718845803

For almost two millennia, Jesus' story has been retold in various forms and fashions but in the last century a new way of reimagining the man from Galilee has sprung up in the form of novels about the life ofJesus. While the novels themselves are asvaried as their authors, this work aims to introduce readers to some common literary strategies and theological agendas found in this phenomenon by surveying a few prominent examples. It also explores the question of what happens when we examine theintertextual play between these reimaginings and their Gospel progenitors as we allow these contemporary novels to pose new questions to their ancient counterparts. An intriguing hermeneutical circle ensues as we embark on our quest for the fictional Jesus and accompany his incarnations as they lead us back to re-examine the canonical portraits of Jesus anew.

The Power of Silence

The Power of Silence
Author: Robert Sarah
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2017-03-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1681497581

Now with a new afterword by Pope emeritus Benedict XVI! In a time when technology penetrates our lives in so many ways and materialism exerts such a powerful influence over us, Cardinal Robert Sarah presents a bold book about the strength of silence. The modern world generates so much noise, he says, that seeking moments of silence has become both harder and more necessary than ever before. Silence is the indispensable doorway to the divine, explains the cardinal in this profound conversation with Nicolas Diat. Within the hushed and hallowed walls of the La Grande Chartreux, the famous Carthusian monastery in the French Alps, Cardinal Sarah addresses the following questions: Can those who do not know silence ever attain truth, beauty, or love? Do not wisdom, artistic vision, and devotion spring from silence, where the voice of God is heard in the depths of the human heart? After the international success of God or Nothing, Cardinal Sarah seeks to restore to silence its place of honor and importance. "Silence is more important than any other human work," he says, "for it expresses God. The true revolution comes from silence; it leads us toward God and others so as to place ourselves humbly and generously at their service."

Being the Church

Being the Church
Author: Edward Rommen
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2017-07-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498293158

If the divine liturgy really is as beautiful as we claim, wouldn’t more people attend? Wouldn’t the church grow? Driven by our desire for growth, we count, we analyze, we make charts, and we strategize, but often with few discernible results. That is probably the result of focusing on secondary aspects of church life. As we know, the very existence of a church is a gift of God’s presence and not the result of any particular actions taken by human beings. For that reason, church is primarily about being something rather than doing or achieving something. So the growth of the church is not reflected in ever-increasing numbers, dollars, and activities, but rather in steadily growing conformity to the divine ideal. So in order to evaluate ecclesial growth, we will first have to ask what the church is supposed to be. One answer to that question is captured in the four marks of the church given in the creed: Oneness, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity. These four characteristics serve as a matrix or framework within which we can focus on the primary aspects of ecclesial being and help it grow and become what it was intended to be.

The Primacy of God: The Virtue of Religion in Catholic Theology

The Primacy of God: The Virtue of Religion in Catholic Theology
Author: R. Jared Staudt
Publisher: Emmaus Academic
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1645851699

To contemporary minds, the notion of justice toward God is seldom considered and often foreign. Far more discussed is how God might either undermine or motivate social justice. The Primacy of God by R. Jared Staudt offers an important intervention. With the aid of St. Thomas Aquinas, Staudt argues that it is vital for both contemporary society and contemporary Catholic theology to return to the traditional view of God as the one to whom all human and social action must be ordered and to recover the virtue of religion as the virtue which orders all other virtues to God. Not only does Staudt helpfully remind readers of the ancient philosophical and biblical notion of worship as a dictate of the natural law, he also illuminates the way in which Christian liturgy, as an enactment of Christ’s high priesthood, is the great fulfillment of natural and biblical worship. Accordingly, Staudt secures religion as essential for the virtue of love. This brings Staudt to criticize modern theologians like Karl Barth, who claimed that religion is inherently idolatrous, as well as Karl Rahner, who claimed that love of neighbor is the highest moral act. Staudt also considers the question of religious truth in light of the plurality of religions, soliciting the assistance of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger, as well as the way in which religion relates to the development of culture, engaging the great Catholic social historian Christopher Dawson. The Primacy of God is a much-needed work that ought to set the agenda for Catholic theology in the twenty-first century.

Leviticus

Leviticus
Author: Mark Awabdy
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 491
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004409831

In Leviticus Awabdy offers the first commentary on the Greek version of Leviticus according to Codex Vaticanus (4th century CE), which binds the Old and New Testaments into a single volume as Christian scripture. Distinct from other LXX Leviticus commentaries that employ a critical edition and focus on translation technique, Greco-Roman context and reception, this study interprets a single Greek manuscript on its own terms in solidarity with its early Byzantine users unversed in Hebrew. With a formal-equivalence English translation of a new, uncorrected edition, Awabdy illuminates Leueitikon in B as an aesthetic composition that not only exhibits inherited Hebraic syntax and Koine lexical forms, but its own structure and theology, paragraph (outdented) divisions, syntax and pragmatics, intertextuality, solecisms and textual variants.

Through New Eyes

Through New Eyes
Author: James B. Jordan
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1999-07-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 172520620X

Killing from the Inside Out

Killing from the Inside Out
Author: Robert Emmet Meagher
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2014-09-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1630874523

Armies know all about killing. It is what they do, and ours does it more effectively than most. We are painfully coming to realize, however, that we are also especially good at killing our own "from the inside out," silently, invisibly. In every major war since Korea, more of our veterans have taken their lives than have lost them in combat. The latest research, rooted in veteran testimony, reveals that the most severe and intractable PTSD--fraught with shame, despair, and suicide--stems from "moral injury." But how can there be rampant moral injury in what our military, our government, our churches, and most everyone else call just wars? At the root of our incomprehension lies just war theory--developed, expanded, and updated across the centuries to accommodate the evolution of warfare, its weaponry, its scale, and its victims. Any serious critique of war, as well any true attempt to understand the profound, invisible wounds it inflicts, will be undermined from the outset by the unthinking and all-but-universal acceptance of just war doctrine. Killing from the Inside Out radically questions that theory, examines its legacy, and challenges us to look beyond it, beyond just war.