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The church is in need of a thoroughly developed understanding of human experience in relation to the divine to deal successfully with the complex issues that are part of life in today's world. Contributors to this timely volume speak to that need as they explore the meaning of the soul and spirit in light of contemporary scientific and medical understandings about human life in a pluralistic society.
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Bernadette Höfer's innovative and ambitious monograph argues that the epistemology of the Cartesian mind/body dualism, and its insistence on the primacy of analytic thought over bodily function, has surprisingly little purchase in texts by prominent classical writers. In this study Höfer explores how Surin, Molière, Lafayette, and Racine represent interconnections of body and mind that influence behaviour, both voluntary and involuntary, and that thus disprove the classical notion of the mind as distinct from and superior to the body. The author's interdisciplinary perspective utilizes early modern medical and philosophical treatises, as well as contemporary medical compilations in the disciplines of psychosomatic medicine, neurobiology, and psychoanalysis, to demonstrate that these seventeenth-century French writers established a view of human existence that fully anticipates current thought regarding psychosomatic illness.
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"Christians are being called upon increasingly to care, counsel, and cure across cultural boundaries," writes the author. Of course foreign missionaries counsel people from other cultures, but so do many pastors - particularly those in urban settings. Because Christian counseling theory presupposes that counselor and counselee share the same culture, the insights of this discipline must be brought together meaningfully with the cross-cultural perspectives of missiology. Counseling Cross-Culturally pioneers this new field. After surveying approaches to counseling in the West and those in the non-Western world, the author develops a theory of Christian cross-cultural counseling. The final part...
When Jesus ministered, he often used touch. Yet this human act makes many people uneasy. In this helpful book, Zach Thomas provides fresh perspectives on the practical meanings of touch for the faith community. He criticizes the church for its mind/body split and suggests a more wholesome path to using healing touch.
"In Overture to Practical Theology, Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner takes a new route to introduce theology students and others to the field of practical theology. Although she is certainly aware of relatively recent efforts to show the academic credentials of practical theology through careful definition (citing that of David Tracy), analysis of components, and linkages to other disciplines within and without the overall framework of theology, she proceeds by means of a double analogy, rather than abstract academic precision, to illumine practical theology. Actual case studies also helpfully illumine aspects of her work." From the Foreword by James N. Lapsley. The book examines biblical foundations, historical roots, and current manifestations of social justice ministry. Stevenseon-Moessner shows how practical theology addresses racism, sexism, violence, anti-Semitism, ecological imbalance, and life at the margins of society--the vexing issues of today's ministry.
In March 2012 a small consultation convened on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary, where James E. Loder Jr. had served for forty years as the Mary D. Synnott Professor of the Philosophy of Christian Education. Members from the Child Theology Movement had begun to read Loder's work and they wanted to go further. So they invited former students of Loder's to meet with them for conversations about things that really mattered to them and to Loder: human beings (and especially children), the church's witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and discerning the work of Spiritus Creator in the postmodern world. The conversations proved rich and rewarding and some would even say they took on a life of their own - serious scholarship set to the music of the Spirit's communion-creating artistry forming new relationships, inspiring new ideas, and sustaining all of it amid much laughter, joy, and hope. These essays, taken from the papers delivered at the consultation, are offered as a means of extending that conversation inspired by Loder's interdisciplinary practical theological science and his discernment of the
Adolescence is a time of individuation--children are slowly finding their identity as adults, separate from their parents and other adult influences. Such a critical time of psychological development is complicated by cultural influences that shape their expectations of adulthood and color how they relate to other people and even God. The task of the youth pastor becomes to help adolescents navigate this often treacherous journey, helping young people reconcile their experience of childhood to the reality of their impending adulthood, and rooting and establishing them in a faith that can sustain them through their adult journey as well. Drawing on the insights of sociology and psychology, Jacober reveals youth ministry to be an act of practical theology, and helps youth pastors find their footing as they guide young people through adolescence.