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Greening the Children of God uncovers the theological roots of the growing ethical imperative to reconnect children to their natural environment. In their different traditions, theologians, environmental educators and psychologists all affirm that knowing their place in the natural environment helps a child develop an intersubjective ‘ecological’ identity that nurtures virtues of mutuality and care. During the Scientific Revolution this ethical harmony was threatened as science and moral theology began to adopt different epistemological methods, something the Anglican priest and poet Thomas Traherne was all too aware of. Traherne insisted that education should promote a child’s attenti...
Kenosis, or self-emptying, poses a fundamental question to any theological discussion about Jesus Christ: “In becoming human, did God empty himself of any divine qualities?” Many variations on kenotic Christology have emerged over the past 200 years, most of them claiming to both preserve and highlight the true humanity and ecclesial significance of Jesus Christ. While there is much to commend in these efforts, Samuel Youngs contends that nearly all such kenotic attempts have, against their best intentions, fallen into an echo chamber of abstraction and metaphor, rendering their talk about Jesus Christ and analysis of the Gospels fundamentally “unreal” and lacking in material signifi...
“The world’s fair beauty set my soul on fire.” In this first study of the full range of Traherne’s poetry Richard Willmott explains his ‘metaphysical’ poetry to all who are attracted by the beauty of his language, but puzzled by his meaning. He offers guidance both for the student of English, uncertain about Traherne’s theological ideas, and the student of theology, put off by seventeenth-century poetic conventions and diction. Using a wealth of quotation, he examines Traherne’s verse alongside that of a variety of his contemporaries, including Andrew Marvell, Lucy Hutchinson, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor. Central to Traherne’s poetry and generous theology is his delig...
An investigation into the remarkable "poetics of the atom" in English literary texts from the mid to late seventeenth century. The early modern "atom" - understood as an indivisible particle of matter - captured the poetic imagination in ways that extended far beyond the reception of Lucretius and Epicurean atomism. Contrarily to fears of atomisation and materialist threat, many poets and philosophers of the period sought positive, spiritual motivation in the concept of material indivisibility. This book traces the metaphysical import of these poetic atoms, teasing out an affinity between poetic and atomic forms in seventeenth-century texts. In the writings of Henry More, Thomas Traherne, Ma...
The doctrine of glorification is a biblical teaching that has been neglected within the Protestant church and, therefore, underdeveloped in our day. For whatever reason that may be, glorification is a doctrine that will affect every aspect of one’s overarching theology, especially the doctrine of soteriology. What one ultimately believes about the future will significantly impact their present. This book shows that this neglect or lack of development has not always been the case within the church, especially within Reformed Protestantism. Looking at one of the most influential second-generation reformers and theologians of the English Reformation, William Perkins (1558–1602), it becomes evident that embedded within the Reformed Scholastic tradition lays a robust development and understanding of the doctrine of glorification. Perkins formulated and wrote a great deal on the final state of the believer in Christ, what his rewards are in Christ, and, ultimately, his complete and final transformation and conformity into his image. This book is a historical and systematic treatment of William Perkins’s celebrated hope, eschatological glory.
The term “public theology” was introduced by Martin E. Marty in a 1974 article. Since then, scholarly discussions on public theology have become more popular in academic circles. This book, however, is about the invitation for moving beyond the academy. It provides two reasons for doing so. First, an overtly academic public theology is in crisis today. Although public theology may be flourishing in the academy, its relevance for real life is limited. Second, there is the “ecclesial flourishing” among grassroots Christian communities across Asia who witness to their lived faith in public and hidden life. Their voices are largely unheard due to the gaps between the academy and the church. This volume argues that we should consider their voices as key sources for developing a relevant lived Asian public theology. The author makes the case for reimagining the paradigm shifts in lived Asian public theology of religions and for bridging the unhappy gaps between the academic and grassroots voices.
Why does the church worship as it does? Worship is central to the life and vocation of the church. Yet the church's understanding of worship is more often connected to practicalities and a congregation's likes or dislikes. This book seeks to take the reader beyond the practical; to explore where God is in worship and the impact worship should have on the life of the church. Through a historical narrative of the evolution of worship in a British Free Church (the United Reformed Church and its antecedents, the Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of England), freedom, order, and participation are identified as the key elements of worship. Investigation into their interrelationship develops a theology of worship that is applicable not only to churches of the Free Church tradition in Britain, but potentially to the universal church.
How can an ancient text, written far from a contemporary Christian in time and space, be taken up as life-transforming Scripture today? This book seeks to address that question in a study of Proverbs 8, a passage that was central to the Christological debates of the fourth century, but for many contemporary Christians seems remote and irrelevant. In the course of the study, the instincts and insights of pre-modern Christians and modern critical methods are taken up to understand the passage. Additionally, the text is placed in conversation with contemporary philosophical reflection on the nature of reading and meaning. In this latter endeavor, Charles Taylor, Paul Ricoeur, Nicholas Lash, and George Lindbeck are all drawn into engagement with the passage. Emerging from this conversation is a sense of Wisdom in the world, beckoning the Christian into a particular mode of being-in-the-world.
God's world was created "very good," Genesis chapter 1 tells us, and in this book Jon Garvey rediscovers the truth, known to the Church for its first 1,500 years but largely forgotten now, that the fall of mankind did not lessen that goodness. The natural creation does not require any apologies or excuses, but rather celebration and praise. The author's re-examination of the scriptural evidence, the writings of two millennia of Christian theologians, and the physical evidence of the world itself lead to the conclusion that we, both as Christians and as modern Westerners, have badly misunderstood our world. Restoring a truer vision of the goodness of the present creation can transform our own lives, sharpen the ministry of the church to the world of both people and nature, and give us a better understanding of what God always intended to bring about through Christ in the age to come.
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