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An Important Study on the Worship of the Early Church This introduction to the origins of Christian worship illuminates the importance of ancient liturgical patterns for contemporary Christian practice. Andrew McGowan takes a fresh approach to understanding how Christians came to worship in the distinctive forms still familiar today. Deftly and expertly processing the bewildering complexity of the ancient sources into lucid, fluent exposition, he sets aside common misperceptions to explore the roots of Christian ritual practices--including the Eucharist, baptism, communal prayer, preaching, Scripture reading, and music--in their earliest recoverable settings. Now in paper.
The early Eucharist has usually been seen as sacramental eating of token bread and wine in careful or even slavish imitation of Jesus and his earliest disciples. In fact the evidence suggests great diversity in its conduct, including the use of foods, in the first few hundred years. Eucharistic meals involving cheese, milk, salt, oil, and vegetables are attested, and some have argued that even fish was used. The most significant exception to using bread and wine, however, was a `bread-and-water' Christian meal, an ancient ascetic form of the Eucharist. This tradition also involved rejection of meat from general diet, and reflected the concern of dissident communities to avoid the cuisine - meat and wine - characteristic of pagan sacrifice. This study describes and discusses these practices fully for the first time, and provides important new insights into the liturgical and social history of early Christianity.
The cross is regarded as Jesus Christ’s great work of salvation. But is it also a work of creation? Excitingly plumbing Scripture and Christian tradition, Andrew McGowan shows that it is. “Each of Jesus’s seven words from the cross can be understood as a creative act, as a new divine work,” he writes. From the cross, Jesus works forgiveness, bestows Paradise, enacts human relationship, identifies completely with humanity, fulfills Scripture, and reenacts Sabbath. From early days, Christians—for good reason—linked the original seven days of creation with creation and re-creation at the apex of salvation. Seven Last Words recovers this linkage in all its power and perennial freshne...
While the diversity of early Christian thought and practice is now generally assumed, and the experiences and beliefs of Christians beyond the works of great theologians increasingly valued, the question of God is perennial and fundamental. These essays, individually modest in scope, seek to address that largest of questions using particular issues and problems, or single thinkers and distinct texts. They include studies of doctrine and theology as traditionally conceived, but also of understandings of God among the early Christians that emerge from study of liturgy, art, and asceticism, and in relation to the social order and to nature itself.
In this book, Marva Dawn insists that churches need to engage in a serious process of community discernment concerning worship in order to employ the best tools and forms, and she offers reflections to further the discussion. Each part of A Royal "Waste" of Time begins with a sample Scripture-based sermon since Dawn emphasizes that the church's worship must follow biblical guidelines and form a biblical people.--From publisher's description.
Describes how couples can work to save a relationship that might be suffering when a religious believer is with a nonreligious person, offering negotiation tips, strategies for dealing with extended families, and advice for handling holidays and rites.
The main concern of this book is with those aspects of Augustine's thought which help to answer questions about the purpose of human society.
A deadly political rivalry that ended in two brutal executions...An intricate love triangle that altered the course of history...A religious revolution that changed the world... THE TREASURE... For two thousand years, an undiscovered treasure rested in the rocky wilds of the French Pyrenees. A series of scrolls written in the first century by Mary Magdalene, these startling documents hold the power to redefine the events and characters of the New Testament. Protected by supernatural forces, the priceless cache can only be uncovered by a special seeker, one who has been chosen for the task by divine providence - The Expected One. THE CHOSEN ONE... When journalist Maureen Paschal begins the research for a new book, she has no idea that she is stepping into an ancient mystery so complex and dangerous that thousands of people have killed and died for it. As a long buried family scandal comes to light, she can no longer deny her own role in a deadly drama of epic international consequences.
A collection of essays mines the whole terrain of systematic theology to refresh, renew, and reform the church for its next season, featuring contributions from senior theologians like Gerald Bray, Henri Blocher, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and Stephen Williams among others. Original.
What was the impact of liturgy on the development of orthodox doctrine in the early Christian church? With renowned liturgical historian Maxwell E. Johnson as a guide, readers of Praying and Believing in Early Christianity will discover the important and sometimes surprising ways that worship helped to shape what was believed, taught, and confessed. In particular, Johnson considers this relationship in terms of soteriology: What is the role of grace in the process of salvation? Trinity: How did early devotion to Christ and the church's baptismal and eucharistic liturgies help shape the developing doctrine of the Trinity? Christ and Mary: What does the devotional and liturgical term theotokos say about them both? ethics: How does the liturgy contribute not only to doctrine but also to convictions about morality? Johnson also explores the ways this relationship worked in the opposite direction: How did doctrinal developments shape liturgical texts in the patristic period? This is an excellent text for beginning students in liturgical studies at the master's level.