Outline: "A tour de force" Taking inspirations from Jonathan Edwards, Gerald McDermott traces the redeeming work of the Mesiah in the Bible and in Church history up through the new heavens and new earth.
Outline: Understanding how to think and write about history in light of God's providence. In every major and minor incident a part of God's overarching redemptive plan? Scripture is filled with commands to remember history and teach it to the next generation. Though many people are inclined to leave the past behind, exploring the meaning of these events helps us glorify God's lordship in all th…
The papers in this volume, written by specialists in several disciplines, explore the parameters and significance of magic in Byzantine society, from the fourth century to after the empire's fall. The authors address a wide variety of questions, some of which are common to all historical research into magic, and some of which are peculiar to the Byzantine context." "Among the topics discussed a…
In Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture, Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts assemble an international team of scholars whose work has focused on reconstructing the social matrix for earliest Christianity through the use of Greco-Roman materials and literary forms.
Augustine’s philosophy of life involves reviewing one’s past and exercises for self-improvement. Centuries after Plato and before Freud he invented a “spiritual exercise” in which every man and woman is able, through memory, to reconstruct and reinterpret life’s aims. Brian Stock examines Augustine’s unique way of blending literary and philosophical themes. He proposes a new interpr…
After first publishing this book in 1995, in subsequent reprintings I was able to correct a few errata, add a biblical index, and update the bibliography. For the present task of thoroughly revising the whole text, I need to take account of the numerous biblical, historical, and systematic studies of Jesus that have appeared in recent years. Many valuable, as well as some questionable, books an…
In this highly anticipated volume, N. T. Wright focuses directly on the historical Jesus: Who was he? What did he say? And what did he mean by it?Wright begins by showing how the questions posed by Albert Schweitzer a century ago remain central today. Then he sketches a profile of Jesus in terms of his prophetic praxis, his subversive stories, the symbols by which he reordered his world, and th…
Christianity has often understood the death of Jesus on the cross as the sole means for forgiveness of sin. Despite this tradition, David Downs traces the early and sustained presence of yet another means by which Christians imagined atonement for merciful care for the poor.
Outline: The relationship between the Christian and Muslim worlds has been a long and tortuous one. Over the course of centuries, the balance of power has swung in pendulum fashion - at times the initiative seems to have lain with the Muslim community, with the Christian world simply being compelled to react to developments outside itself; at other times Muslims have found themselves having to …
Outline: Multiplied millions of women all over the world are looking over the church's shoulder, longing to see the freedom Jesus purchased for them at Calvary. Millions more have found freedom in Jesus but are still bound by human ideas - ideas that pressure a woman to let culture, not God, determine her place in the Kingdom. While hurting men and women outside the church cry out, "Is there an…
Outline: For a generation, Barbara MacHaffie's fascinating Her Story : Women in Christian Tradition has enabled readers to enter into and recover the oft-ignored or submerged stories of women in the Christian tradition, from biblical times to now. MacHaffie's brief history is now fully updated and revised here and combined with her lively anthology of primary readings to offer unparalled access…
Outline: This book examines the roles and functions that women assumed in the early Christian communities from AD 33 to the Council of Nicaea. It surveys, too, the views about women held by various New Testament authors including Paul and the Evangelist. In a careful and judicious study, Ben Witherington III shows that early Christianity was neither unreservedly patriarchal nor adamantly femini…
Outline: How did early Christians remember Jesus - and how did they develop their own Christian identities and communities? In this revelatory book, the author explores how transgression contributed to early Christian identity in the Gospels, Acts, Letters of Paul, and Revelation. Examining Jesus as a friend of sinners, challenger of purity laws, transgressor of conventional masculine values…
This study presents the evidence, derived from letters and theological works, for theories of Christian friendship as they were developed by the leading fourth-century Church Fathers, both in East and West. The author attempts to find out how consistent and positive is the picture of friendship between Christians at the time, and considers friendship in the context of the relation between pagan…
Part 1: Paul and his world
Part 2: The mindset of the apostle
This highly anticipated two-book fourth volume in N. T. Wright's magisterial series, Christian Origins and the Question of God, is destined to become the standard reference point on the subject for all serious students of the Bible and theology. The mature summation of a lifetime's study, this landmark book pays a rich tribute to…
Part 3: Paul's theology
Part 4: Paul in history
This highly anticipated two-book fourth volume in N. T. Wright's magisterial series, Christian Origins and the Question of God, is destined to become the standard reference point on the subject for all serious students of the Bible and theology. The mature summation of a lifetime's study, this landmark book pays a rich tribute to the breadth…