Love, freedom and evil : does authentic love require free will? /
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The defining premise of the Relational Free Will Defense is the claim that authentic love requires free will. Many scholars, including Gregory Boyd and Vincent Brümmer, champion this claim. Best-selling books, such as Rob Bell's Love Wins , echo that love "cannot be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide." The claim that love requires free will has even found expression in mainstream Hollywood films, including Frailty , Bruce Almighty , and The Adjustment Bureau . The analysis shows convincingly that the claim that authentic love requires free will, does not meet the criteria of consistency, compatibility with Scriptural sources, and the demands of concrete encounter with problems of moral evil.
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1 online resource (203 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-198) and index. :
9789401200585 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Mapping gender in ancient religious discourses /
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This collection of essays focuses on issues related to gender at the intersection of religious discourses in antiquity. To that end, an array of traditions is analyzed with the aim of more fully situating the construction and representation of gender in early Christian, Jewish and Greco-Roman argumentation. Taken as a whole, these essays contribute to the goal of displaying the wide range of options that are available for examining the interconnection of gender, rhetoric, power, and ideology, especially as they relate to identity formation in the ancient world during the early centuries of the common era. The focus on ancient conceptions of gender makes this collection particularly useful not only for biblical scholars, but also for classicists and researchers working in the field of gender studies, as well as for those interested in exploring similar issues in other religious traditions or in Western religious traditions of different time periods.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [511]-545) and indexes. :
9789047411260 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Taking on Practical Theology.
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In Taking on Practical Theology , Courtney T. Goto explores the regnant paradigm that shapes knowledge production and that preserves power, privilege, and historic communal injury even as scholars intend to enlighten and transform communities. Approaching "context" as a case study, Goto illumines how this commonly used, taken-for-granted concept is "idolized." Though practical theologians are sensitive to context, researchers often fail to consider how their own assumptive world dictates and influences their practices of research, teaching, and engaging in scholarly conversations. These practices unwittingly validate scholars who enjoy the most social capital while inflicting harm on both communities they research and on colleagues and students who do not fit (or fit less well) the norms of the majority.
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1 online resource. :
9789004376076
Religious perspectives on religious diversity /
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Religious Perspectives on Religious Diversity addresses fundamental and controversial questions raised by religious diversity. What are members of religious traditions to say about outsiders, their views, and their salvific status? And what are they to say about the religions of outsiders - about, say, whether those religions are inspired or salvifically effective or worthwhile or legitimate? Discussion of some Muslim, Christian, and Jewish perspectives is combined with more methodological work. The authors of these ground-breaking and original, yet readable and accessible, essays include established scholars and younger scholars whose reputation is growing. Contributors are: Imran Aijaz, David Basinger, Paul Rhodes Eddy, Jerome Gellman, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Eugene Korn, Daniel A. Madigan, Robert McKim, John Sanders, and Diego R. Sarrió Cucarella. \'Judaism, Christianity and Islam's attitudes to other religions are thoughtfully examined in this collection, both with fine historical sensibility as well as original constructive contributions from leading scholars in the field. A series of helpful meta-reflections follow on: typologies in theology of religions; the act of comparison between traditions; and a plea for informed tolerance when difference is confronted. A rare treat: an edited collection that is of uniformly high quality, throwing immense light on the subject. It will help specialists and undergraduate students approaching the subject of religious pluralism.\' - Professor Gavin D'Costa, University of Bristol, September 2016.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004330436 :
2452-2953 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religious identity and national heritage : empirical-theological perspectives /
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In some parts of our world, religion is on the wane, losing its thrust of doctrinal authority and communal bonds. In other regions, it is gaining public significance as a powerful social, cultural and political force. Secularization theories are less successful in accounting for these differences in religion's role. Other theories describe religion in terms of social capital to be invested whenever it offers certain personal, social or political benefits and market opportunities allow smart choices. Still other theories simply hold that religion corresponds to an inborn need or stable disposition that guarantees a culture's identity and reflects a natural equilibrium of social cohesion. There are also critical theories that point to the intrinsic relationship of religion with power and identify it as a major cause of tension and conflict. In this book distinguished scholars reflect on these questions and present empirical research about religious identity and national heritage.
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Description based upon print version of record. :
1 online resource (320 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004228788 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Orthodoxy, liberalism, and adaptation : essays on ways of worldmaking in times of change from biblical, historical, and systematic perspectives /
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How does religion cope with changing situations? Are orthodoxy and liberalism really competing strategies? The essays in this volume argue three views. (1)Orthodoxy is not to be seen as the real and original form of a given religion, but as an idealized original form that should be construed as a construction in reaction to changes in time. (2) Over the ages, liberalism - despite its laudable strive for adaptation - has been less successful than generally assumed. This lesson from history can be quite important in view of the adaptation processes for Muslims in Western Europe. (3) Of great importance for the survival of religion seems to be a clear definition of the boundaries of religiously informed practices and ethics. Their recognisability and authenticity shall - when combined with a due lack of obtrusion - be of great influence for the ongoing acceptance of religion(s) in the public domain.
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Proceedings of a symposium held in Feb. 2008 at the Conference Centre "Bovendonck" in southern Netherlands. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. :
9789004209848 :
1566-208X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Pathways for Theology in Peacebuilding : Ecumenical Approaches to Just Peace /
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The ambivalent role of religions in contemporary conflicts has generated an increasing call for faith-based peacebuilding endeavours. In Pathways for Theology in Peacebuilding: Ecumenical Approaches to Just Peace, Sara Gehlin discusses the ways theology can provide essential resources for such peacebuilding pursuits. The pathways for theology in peacebuilding are investigated with regard to a recent faith-based peace endeavour, namely the creation of an international ecumenical declaration on just peace. In the book, Gehlin explores the meaning of a just peace from the perspectives of theological ethics, biblical interpretation, spirituality, and ecumenical vision. On the basis of this exploration, the book maps out theological resources for peace in our time.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004426993
9789004425354
Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and interreligious hermeneutics
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Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Interreligious Hermeneutics: Ways of Seeing the Religious Other , edited by Emma O'Donnell Polyakov, examines the hermeneutics of interreligious encounter in contexts of conflict. It investigates the implicit judgments of Judaism and Islam that often arise in response to these conflicts, and explores the implications of these interpretations for relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Addressing antisemitism and Islamophobia through the tools of interreligious hermeneutics, this volume brings together three distinct discourses: the study of ancient and new tropes of antisemitism as they appear in today's world; research into contemporary expressions of fear or suspicion of Islam; and philosophical reflections on the hermeneutics of interreligious encounters.
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1 online resource. :
9789004381674
Presbyterian reformers in Central Africa : a documentary account of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and the human rights struggle in the Congo, 1890-1918 /
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This volume contains 123 documents which illustrate the early history of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and its struggle for human rights in the Congo from 1890-1918. The documents, many of which have never previously been published, are crucial to a full understanding of both the work of the Presbyterian Mission and its impact on the social, political, and religious life of the Congo. The book is divided into four parts. Part One documents the founding and early history of the Presbyterian Mission from 1890 to 1898. Part Two documents the deterioration of social conditions in the Congo under King Leopold, and the reform campaigns initiated by the American Mission in Britain and the United States. Part Three consists of documents related to the 1909 libel trial of William M. Morrison and William H. Sheppard, the principal leaders of the American Mission. Part Four documents the Mission's reaction to continuing human rights abuses, particularly religious persecution, under Belgian rule to 1918. The documents are annotated and the volume contains an introduction and an index.
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Collection of documents translated from French. :
1 online resource (xxii, 580 pages, [15] pages of plates) : illustrations, map. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004318144 :
0924-9389 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Marriage in the Western Church : the Christianization of marriage during the patristic and early medieval periods /
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Marriage in the Western Church examines how marriage acquired a specifically Christian identity in the Western Church from the patristic through Carolingian periods. It shows how theologians came to regard marriage as an ecclesiastical institution and how they developed a Christian theology of marriage. The first part of the book deals with marriage and divorce in Roman and Germanic law. Other parts deal with marriage and divorce in ecclesiastical law, with the Latin Fathers' distinction between the divine and human laws of marriage, and with the customary stages by which persons became married. Several chapters are devoted to Augustine's views on marriage and sexuality. The author shows how the doctrine of indissolubility became the West's chief means of christianizing marriage, and how theologians found here their preferred arguments for affirming the holiness and the 'sacramentality' of marriage. The author argues that the Western regime of indissolubility was the product of a fourth century reform movement. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
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1 online resource (xxx, 436 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 420-427) and index. :
9789004312913 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Ubuntu, migration, and ministry : being human in a Johannesburg church /
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Ubuntu, Migration and Ministry invites the reader to rethink ubuntu (Nguni: humanness/humanity) as a moral notion in the context of local communities. The socio-moral patterns that emerge at the crossroads between ethnography and social ethics offer a fresh perspective to what it means to be human in contemporary Johannesburg. The Central Methodist Mission is known for sheltering thousands of migrants and homeless people in the inner city. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, primarily conducted in 2009, Elina Hankela unpacks the church leader's liberationist vision of humanity and analyses the tension between the congregation and the migrants, linked to the refugee ministry. While relational virtues mark the community's moral code, various regulating rules and structures shape the actual relationships at the church. Here ubuntu challenges and is challenged. Winner of the 2014 Donner Institute Prize for Outstanding Research into Religion.
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1 online resource (pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004274136 :
1876-1518 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Coping with Evil in Religion and Culture : Case Studies /
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The various Christian, Muslim, traditional (African), and secular (Western) ways of imagining and coping with evil collected in this volume have several things in common. The most crucial perhaps and certainly the most striking aspect is the problem of defining the nature or characteristics of evil as such. Some argue that evil has an essence that remains constant, whereas others say its interpretation depends on time and place. However much religious and secular interpretations of evil may have changed, the human search for sense and meaning never ends. Questions of whom to blame and whom to address-God, the devil, fate, bad luck, or humans-remain at the center of our explanations and our strategies to comprehend, define, counter, or process the evil we do and the evil done to us by people, God, nature, or accident. Using approaches from cultural anthropology, religious studies, theology, philosophy, psychology, and history, the contributors to this volume analyze how several religious and secular traditions imagine and cope with evil.
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"This volume is part of the project on The problem of evil in religious traditions: origins, forms and coping, organized in cooperation with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Royal Tropical Institute at Amsterdam on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the Vrije Universiteit and the exhibition "Religion & evil" in the Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam Museum of Tropical Ethnology)"--Title page verso. :
1 online resource (266 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401205375 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Jerome of Stridon and the ethics of literary production in late antiquity /
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"This book becomes legible when light plays across a material substance, be it screen or page. Without the light and without the material, there is no book. To read the book, however, you must perceive meaning in the words before you and in the way that they sit relative to other words, words that are on this page or words that you know and have learned from elsewhere. Without this apprehension - which literary theorists call 'textuality' - there is no book. This book before you is about the interplay between the material and the textual.2 Without the two, it would not exist".
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Outgrowth of the author's thesis (Ph.D.)--Cardiff University, 2011, under the title: How those things which are invisible are known from the visible (Hier. Comm. ad Ephes. 1.1.9). :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004417458
Racial integration in the church of apartheid
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In Racial Integration in the Church of Apartheid Marthe Hesselmans uncovers the post-apartheid transformation of South Africa's Dutch Reformed Church. This church once constituted the religious pillar of the Afrikaner apartheid regime (1948-1994). Today, it seeks to unite the communities it long segregated into one multiracial institution. Few believe this will succeed. A close look inside congregations reveals unexpected stories of reconciliation though. Where South Africans realize they need each other to survive, faith offers common ground - albeit a feeble one. They show the potential, but also the limits of faith communities untangling entrenched national and racial affiliations. Linking South Africa's post-apartheid transition to religious-nationalist movements worldwide, Hesselmans offers a unique perspective on religion as source of division and healing.
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1 online resource. :
9789004385016
Time and eternity in Jewish mysticism : that which is before and that which is after /
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Time and eternity are concepts that have occupied an important place within Jewish mystical thought. This present volume gives pride of place to these concepts, and is one of the first works to bring together diverse voices on the subject. It offers a multivalent picture of the topic of time and eternity, not only by including contributions from an array of academics who are leaders in their fields, but by proposing six diverse approaches to time and eternity in Jewish mysticism: the theoretical approach to temporality, philosophical definitions, the idea of time and pre-existence, the idea of historical time, the idea of experiential time, and finally, the idea of eternity beyond time. This multivocal treatment of Jewish mysticism and time as based on variant academic approaches is novel, and it should lay the groundwork for further discussion and exploration.
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1 online resource (xi, 228 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004290310 :
1568-5004 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Jewish and Christian communal identities in the Roman world /
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Jews and Christians under the Roman Empire shared a unique sense of community. Set apart from their civic and cultic surroundings, both groups resisted complete assimilation into the dominant political and social structures. However, Jewish communities differed from their Christian counterparts in their overall patterns of response to the surrounding challenges. They exhibit diverse levels of integration into the civic fabric of the cities of the Empire and display contrary attitudes towards the creation of trans-local communal networks. The variety of local case studies examined in this volume offers an integrated image of the multiple factors, both internal and external, which determined the role of communal identity in creating a sense of belonging among Jews and Christians under Imperial constraints.
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"This volume presents revised versions of lectures given in October 2013 at a Jerusalem symposium on Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in Antiquity. The Hebrew University's Scholion Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and Jewish Studies together with the editorial board of Brill's Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity series kindly co-sponsored the symposium in memory of our colleague Friedrich Avemarie."--Preface. :
1 online resource (xi, 286 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004321694 :
1871-6636 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Parrhesia : ancient and modern perspectives on freedom of speech /
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Freedom of speech is a fundamental right in many societies, yet also highly contested. As a right, it can only be appreciated if its historical development is taken into account. Parrhesia offers case studies in freedom of speech, its understanding and exercise throughout history. They enable researchers and policymakers alike to gain an awareness of the complexities, challenges and benefits of freedom of speech. The cases that have been selected are from the field of religion and theology, yet exemplary in character and able to shed light on freedom of speech in other parts of society. Contributors are: Leon van den Broeke, Jan Krans, Silvia Castelli, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, Manfred Lang, Bastian Lemitz, Nils Neumann, Kyriakoula Papademetriou, Dirk Jan Schoon, and Peter-Ben Smit.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004376090 :
1566-208X ;
Faith and Ethnicity : Volume 2 /
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In writing 'In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek', the apostle Paul touched on a topic that still is hotly debated among Christians today: the relationship between faith and ethnicity. The Reformed Chuches, usually organised along regional or national lines, are no exception and wrestle world-wide with the issue. This volume offers more traditional Western, mostly European perspectives, exploring Western and Eastern European and North American contexts. Hermeneutics, church order and ecumenical aspects complement the theme. This and the previous volume of Studies in Reformed Theology contain contributions to the fourth international conference of the International Reformed Theological Institute (IRTI), held in Princeton, N.J., U.S.A. (2001), on the theme of Faith and Ethnicity.
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1 online resource :
9789004389144
9789021138947