Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

Herman Bavinck's Contribution To Christian Social Consciousness., John Bolt

CTS Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Calvin's Defense And Reformulation Of Luther's Early Reformation Doctrine Of The Bondage Of The Will, Kiven S. Choy

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation finds that Calvin's reformulation of the doctrine of free choice reflects his convictions of the early Reformation heritage, his learning of the tradition from the early church fathers and especially from Augustine, the influences generated by his continuous dialogues with the development of the formulations among the Reformers in the second phase of the Reformation, and his personal theological convictions. Calvin formulated his defense as a Reformer of the second phase of the Reformation defending the early Reformation formulation set by Luther. The early Reformers used various necessitarian arguments to argue their cases. The Reformers in the second …

What About The Children? Benjamin And Arendt: On Education, Work, And The Political, Jules Simon

Departmental Papers (Philosophy)

This article is a rough draft of an article that I contributed to an edited volume of articles dealing with progressive education theory. I reflect on articles that Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin wrote that deal with educational reform and innovation, both political in nature.

The Stromata Vol. 51, No. 1, Calvin Theological Seminary

Stromata (1956-2020)

Inside This Issue

1- The Guys by Walter Miedema

3- A Fool’s Race by Jennifer Holmes

9- Irresponsible Grace by Ruth Lemmen

17- Via Media or Tertium Quid?: A Critical Examination of Meredith G. Kline’s Interpretation of rûaḥ elōhîm in Genesis 1:2 by Laurence R. O'Donnell III

37- History and Theology: A Reflection on Ernst Troeltsch’s Historical Critical by Method Reita Yazawa

46- Finding Freedom in Forgiveness: Exploring the Cost of Miroslav Volf’s Free of Charge by Heather Stroobosscher

54- John Calvin’s Commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia: A Reception Study by Kory Plockmeyer

70- The Meaning of “A Kingdom of …

Book Notes, Kenneth J. Collins

The Asbury Journal

William B. Lawrence

Methodism in Recovery: Renewing Mission, Reclaiming History, Restoring Health

2008. Nashville: Abingdon Press

Charles Yrigoyen, John G. McEllhenney, and Kenneth A. Rowe

United Methodism at Forty: Looking Back Looking Forward

2008. Nashville: Abingdon Press

Scott J. Jones

Staying at the Table: The Gift of Unity for United Methodists

2008. Nashville: Abingdon Press

Justification By The Faithfulness Of Jesus Christ, Chad Harrington

The Asbury Journal

This essay focuses on Paul's description of justification by faith in Galatians 2:16. Scholars such as J.D.G. Dunn and N.T. Wright have recently challenged more traditional perspectives on justification. This essay appropriates some of these challenges to Paul's letter to the Galatians. The problem for Paul is that some Christians are distorting the gospel (Gall:7) and excluding Gentiles Christians (2:12-13). Paul's solution is gospel reorientation. Instead of being a Torah-focused church, he instructs the Galatian church to be Christ-centered. This essay examines justification, works of law, and faith/fulness to reveal Paul's rhetorical purposes by analyzing socio-rhetorical backgrounds and literary, grammatical, …

Journal In Entirety

The Asbury Journal

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial
Terry C. Muck

Justification by the Faithfulness of Jesus Christ
Chad Harrington

From "Cults" to Cultures: Bridges as a Case Study in a New Evangelical Paradigm on New Religions
John W Morehead

The Most Indispensable Habits of Effective Theological Educators: Recalibrating Educational Philosophy, Psychology, and Practice
Mark A. Lamport

Bridging the Gap: Understanding Knowledge of God in Gregory of Nyssa'sCommentary on the Song of Songs
Nathan Crawford

John Wesley's Question: "How Is Your Doing?"
David Werner

Book Notes
Kenneth Collins

Review Essay
Kenneth M. Loyer

Book Reviews
Michael Matlock and Bradley Johnson
Charles Meeks
Amos …

John Wesley's Question: "How Is Your Doing?", David Werner

The Asbury Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Notes, Kenneth Collins

The Asbury Journal

James L. Schwenk
Catholic Spirit: Wesley, Whitefield, and the Quest for Evangelical Unity in Eighteenth-Century British Methodism
2008. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press

Scott Kisker
Mainline or Methodist: Discovering Our Evangelistic Mission
2008. Nashville: Discipleship Resources

L. Faye Short and Kathryn D. Kiser
Reclaiming the Wesleyan Social Witness: Offering Christ.
2008. Franklin, Tennessee: Providence House Publishers

Book Reviews, Michael Matlock, Bradley Johnson, Charles Meeks, Amos Yong, Joseph Okello, Kandace Brooks, J. Ellsworth Kalas

The Asbury Journal

BibleWorks. DVD-ROM and CD-ROM, version 8 2009. BibleWorks, LLC. $349
Reviewed by Michael D. Matlock and Bradly T. Johnson

Paul A. Hartog, ed.
The Contemporary Church and the Early Church: Case Studies in Ressourcement
Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010
Reviewed by Charles Meeks

Gary B. McGee
Miracles, Missions, and American Pentecostalism
American Society of Missiology series 45
2010. Maryknoll: Orbis Books
Reviewed by Amos Yong

John R. Levison
Filled with the Spirit
Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2009.
Reviewed by Joseph B. O. Okello

Constance M. Cherry
The Worship Architect: A Blueprint for Designing Culturally Relevant and …

The Israel Of God: A Literary-Historical And Sociological Examination Of Paul's Use Of Israel, Thomas Joshua Whitley

MA in Religion Theses

This paper attempts to test the hypothesis that the meaning of the term "Israel" actually was open to debate and that Paul was not the only one who defined "Israel" in such a way as to endorse a particular understanding of the term. This paper further examines whether there was literary precedence for Paul's use of Israel. These claims are examined how the use of "Israel" expanded during the relatively short period of time between the appearance of post-exilic Israelite literature and Paul's writings. This is accomplished by citing various examples of Jewish and Christian literature during this time period.

A Saint Of One’S Own: Emmanuel Levinas, Eliezer Ben Hyrcanus, And Eulalia Of Mérida, Virginia Burrus

Religion - All Scholarship

Shame and sanctity are intimately related in ancient "lives" of Jewish sages and Christian ascetics. Infinitely other, saints (from Eliezer to Eulalia) are also infinitely seductive in the audacity of their willful abjection. Drawing desire beyond law, hagiography evokes "not ethics alone," but "le saint, la sainteté du saint" (Levinas).

Introduction To America's Four Gods: What We Say About God And What That Says About Us, Paul Froese, Christoper Bader

Sociology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Despite all the hype surrounding the "New Atheism," the United States remains one of the most religious nations on Earth. In fact, 95% of Americans believe in God--a level of agreement rarely seen in American life. The greatest divisions in America are not between atheists and believers, or even between people of different faiths. What divides us, this groundbreaking book shows, is how we conceive of God and the role He plays in our daily lives.

America's Four Gods draws on the most wide-ranging, comprehensive, and illuminating survey of American's religious beliefs ever conducted to offer a systematic exploration of …

The Desert Of The Real: Christianity, Buddhism & Baudrillard In The Matrix Films And Popular Culture, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The movie The Matrix and its sequels draw explicitly on imagery from a number of sources, including in particular Buddhism, Christianity, and the writings of Jean Baudrillard. A perspective is offered on the perennial philosophical question ‘What is real?’, using language and symbols drawn from three seemingly incompatible world views. In doing so, these movies provide us with an insight into the way popular culture makes eclectic use of various streams of thought to fashion a new reality that is not unrelated to, and yet is nonetheless distinct from, its religious and philosophical undercurrents and underpinnings.

Priming God-Related Concepts Increases Anxiety And Task Persistence, Tina M. Toburen, Brian P. Meier

Psychology Faculty Publications

Research on the relationship between religiosity and anxiety has been mixed, with some studies revealing a positive relation and other studies revealing a negative relation. The current research used an experimental design, perhaps for the first time, to examine anxiety and task persistence during a stressful situation. Christians and Atheists/Agnostics/Others were primed with God-related or neutral (non-God related) concepts before completing an unsolvable anagram task described as a measure of verbal intelligence. The results revealed that the God-related primes increased both task persistence and anxiousness, which suggests that experimentally induced God-related thoughts caused participants to persist longer on a stressful …

Unlocking Catholic Social Doctrine: Narrative Is Key, William J. Wagner

Scholarly Articles

The argument of the present essay is that the pragmatic pressures of contemporary circumstances that lead to Catholic social doctrine – as set out in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, for example, – to being strongly emphasized in Catholic law schools should not be permitted to create a doctrinal hegemony severing doctrine from the contextualization from which it draws its meaning. Catholic social doctrine depends, for its coherence and truth, as do all of the doctrinal formulations within Catholicism, on its relation to both philosophical and theological understanding and, for the purposes of my present …

Cosmic Conflict As A Hermeneutical Framework For Mission Theology In The Old Testament, Cristian Dumitrescu

Dissertations

This research aims to rediscover mission as taught by the Old Testament and to show how that mission is consistent with God's loving and just character as reflected in the whole Bible. Toward this end, the research surveys assumptions that influence Old Testament mission theology and evaluates ways in which current theologies of mission and theological currents relate to the unity and continuity of the Bible. With this background, the study then proposes a comprehensive theological framework that preserves the unity of God's character and his mission.

Chapter 1 shows how the traditional understanding of centrifugal and centripetal mission is …

Agape And Personal Knowledge, Peter Eric Bergeron

Dissertations

The aim of this dissertation is to explore the connection between love and personal knowledge and what Jesus' life and teaching reveal about the relationship between these. I want to distinguish that form of love or caring that makes relationships personal from those forms, like benevolence or compassion, where the concern is impersonal. It is commonly thought in contemporary Western culture that the autonomy necessary for mature moral agency or for the realization of one's unique personal identity is diminished by the influence of other persons. In contrast, I argue that the relational image of love, or agape, in the …

Identity Formation For Conciliatory Existence: How We Perceive The Other, Chris Kiesling, Lalsangkima Pachuau

The Asbury Journal

In this article we interface mission, theology and psychology in an exploration of what hinders and what enables conciliatory existence. Whereas common approaches to reconciliation focus on redressing past wrongs, we propose identity formation that would prevent such wrongs. We consider how people integrate elements of their social context into a social identity that influences how they perceive "the other."

Understanding this to be divine action that transforms psychological processes, we draw from all three disciplines to understand the dynamics of how we come to see the other.

Biblical theology provides penetrating narratives into the nature of fallen humanity and …

Communally Discerning A Covenant Of Hospitality For The Care Of Children At Westview Boys' Home, Ron Bruner

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This project addressed the lack of a covenant defining the practice of hospitality towards children for team members of Westview Boys’ Home. The purpose of the project was to facilitate the creation of such a covenant. The Westview ministry team already claimed hospitality as a strength; the hope was that reframing the ministry around this strength would improve the quality of care for children and the quality of life for the community. Invited into a communal discernment process (the methodology), the ministry team invested weeks in the examination of biblical texts, theological tradition, personal and communal narratives, cultural trends, psychological …