Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

Paul Tillich And The Possibility Of Revelation Through Film, Kutter Callaway

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Paul Tillich and the Possibility of Revelation through Film by Jonathan Brant.

Thomas Hooker, Martin Luther, And The Terror At The Edge Of Protestant Faith, Baird L. Tipson

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Unlike their Roman Catholic counterparts, early Protestants insisted that individual Christians could be certain that they personally enjoyed God’s favor and would be saved. Their faith in Christ’s redeeming work would give them “assurance of salvation,” and their ministers insisted that every Christian ought to feel that assurance. This article argues that Protestant assurance did not – and could not – banish believers’ anxiety that God’s saving promises had never been meant for them. “Behind” the God who promised salvation lurked a “hidden God” who had decided the ultimate fate of every individual before the beginning of time. Even the …

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum: October 2015, Julius T. Medenblik, John W. Cooper, Jeffrey A.D. Weima, Arie C. Leder

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum (2002- )

Biblical and Hermeneutical Reflections on Same-Sex Relationships

Articles
3 - Entering the Conversation by Jul Medenblik
5 - Not Like Women in Office: Scripture, Hermeneutics, and Same-Sex Relations by John W. Cooper
9 - Same-Sex Activity: What Does the New Testament Say? by Jeffrey A.D. Weima
13 - Until my Body Finds its Rest in You, O Lord by Arie C. Leder
17 - From Dream to Forum Editorial from the Inaugural Issue by David E. Holwerda

Called to Serve
18 - Calvin Seminary’s Certificate for Hispanic Ministry Program
19 - 2015 Convocation Address excerpts from Professor Mary Vanden Berg …

Kerux - Vol. 49, No. 5, Calvin Theological Seminary

Kerux

Inside This Issue

• Cover Cont'd Page 3
• North Philly Needs Something Page 5
• Book Review: Shades of White Flight Page 8
• Empathy: Grace to Change the World Page 9
• Space to Wonder Page 10
• Mid-Summer Nights in California Page 11
• Change the World? Page 12
• Book Review: Where the Cross Meets the Street Page 13
• My Experience with CPE Page 14
• The Daily Struggle of Formation Page 15

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2015, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• The State of Religious Freedom in the World (Katrina Lantos Swett)
• Messages from the Tiger Mother (Amy Chua)
• Gratitude for Our Rights (Justin Collings)
• On Justice, Mercy, and the Atonement (David G. Campbell)

The Roots Of Despair, Rebecca Konyndyk Deyoung

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

This paper is an exploration of the Thomistic vice of despair, one of two vices opposed to the theological virtue of hope. Aquinas’s conception of despair as a vice, and a theological vice in particular, distances him from contemporary use of the term “despair” to describe an emotional state. His account nonetheless yields a compelling psychological portrait of moral degeneration, which I explain via despair’s link to its “root,” the capital vice of sloth. Cases in which sloth and its offspring vices progress into full-fledged despair raise interesting issues about whether and how despair might be remediable. I conclude by …

Paralysis And Sexuality In Medical Literature And The 'Acts Of Peter', Meghan Henning

Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This paper focuses on the story of Peter’s daughter that is found in the Berlin Coptic papyrus BG 8502.4 and is associated with the apocryphal Acts of Peter. Research on the story of Peter’s daughter has primarily focused on its interpretation of the theme of chastity, or whether the story was originally included in the Acts of Peter. In the course of these investigations, scholars have taken for granted the curious assumption of the text that paralysis renders Peter’s daughter unfit for marriage, and thus safe from Ptolemy’s unwanted advances.

This paper explores the underlying understandings of paralysis and sexuality …

Review: 'Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction', Mark Ryan

Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

One of the central aims of the work of Stanley Hauerwas has been to combat the tendency of modem academic theology to see the tasks of theology and of Christian ethics as fundamentally separate in their nature. This separation results in abstraction on both sides, with theology addressing itself to a set of disembodied beliefs and ethics cataloguing behaviors that are perfectly intelligible without God as their backdrop. Nicholas Healy’s book can be viewed and assessed as a kind of grappling with this basic Hauerwasian motive, and its manifest ramifications in Hauerwas's writings, including the latter’s rhetorical style, occasionalism, engagements …

Mere Christian Theism And The Problem Of Evil: Toward A Trinitarian Perichoretic Theodicy, Ronnie Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

There is perhaps no problem confronting Christian theism more than that of the problem from evil. Evil in the world is not merely a problem for the Christian worldview, however, but also for various other metaphysical systems. This project takes up a comparative analysis of four major worldviews—naturalism, pantheism, process panentheism, and theism—and argues that of the four, theism provides not only the best explanation for the phenomena of evil in the world but it also gives an overall thicker worldview response to the challenges that evil presents. But theism in-and-of-itself is not enough. A specific form of theism is …

An Examination Of The Prosperity Gospel: A Plea For Return To Biblical Truth, Aaron Phillips

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The prosperity gospel teaches that the Bible promises health, wealth and uncommon success to all believers. A problem surfaces when the prosperity that is promised does not materialize to all members of the congregation. In examining the validity of this teaching, extensive writings, books, articles and sermons by leading proponents, have been reviewed. Additionally, interviews with at least one hundred pastors inform this writing. The purpose of the research is to furnish contemporary, active insight to this project. The conclusion of this writer is that the prosperity gospel offers an unbalanced application of scripture, which results in a departure from …

The Word Became Flesh: An Exploratory Essay On Jesus’S Particularity And Nonhuman Animals, Andy Alexis-Baker

Dissertations (1934 -)

In this exploratory work I argue that Jesus’s particularity as a Jewish, male human is essential for developing Christian theology about nonhuman animals. The Gospel of John says that the Word became “flesh” not that the Word became “human.” By using flesh, John’s Gospel connects the Incarnation to the Jewish notion of all animals. The Gospel almost always uses flesh in a wider sense than meaning human. The Bread of Life discourse makes this explicit when Jesus compares his flesh to “meat,” offending his hearers because they see themselves as above other animals. Other animals are killable and consumable; humans …

The Conceptual Priority Of The Perfect, Matthew Peter Zdon

Dissertations (1934 -)

The doctrine of the conceptual priority of the perfect (CPP) is the claim that the concept of the perfect is prior to that of the imperfect insofar as possessing the latter presupposes a grasp of the former, but not vice versa. The goals of this study are to provide an account and defense of the Cartesian argument for CPP, to determine the consequences of this priority for the relationship between our concepts of human and divine properties, and to explore its implications for bottom-up accounts of theological concept formation. I argue that the predicates “perfect” or “infinite” in Descartes’ version …

Renovatio: Martin Luther's Augustinian Theology Of Holiness (1515/16 And 1535-46), Phillip L. Anderas

Dissertations (1934 -)

In this book I argue that much of mainstream Luther scholarship (and Lutheran theology) is quite wrong to think that Martin Luther downplayed, denied, derided, or just plain ignored “the holiness without which no one shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). In fact, from the first inklings of his “Augustinian turn” c. 1514 to his death in 1546, Luther held and taught a robust theology of progressive renewal in holiness, carefully calibrated to the sober reality of residual sin and the astonishing gospel of grace in Jesus Christ. As it is set forth in the works that embody his most …

Walking Together: Living Fearlessly, Loving Boldy, Anna M. Malone

Student Publications

In this paper, I give an account of my capstone for the Religious Studies major. I tell about the research project-turned-applied-learning, and how my research as a Mellon Summer Scholar ’15 led me to start a prison ministry between Gettysburg students and the Adams County Adult Correctional Complex. I reflect on what I have done, how God has worked, and what I have learned. This is far from a typical research paper; then again, this was far from a typical research project.

Intertextual Reception: Re-Thinking The Concept Of Revelation In Light Of Divine Immanence And The Dignity Of The Person And The Cosmos, Thomas Hughson

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Canonical Development And The Early Church Fathers: Establishing The Validity And Elevating The Weight Of Accurate Textual Citations, Chris Davis

Masters Theses

The predominant theory of textual criticism known as “reasoned eclecticism” often engages the NT manuscripts in a manner that is not truly eclectic. Instead, the modus operandi is often to overlook textual witnesses from manuscript families that do not agree with the favored Alexandrian text-type. At the same time, in cases where the early church fathers seem to cite passages from these other known families, their words are often discounted and removed as evidence for a particular reading. This thesis deals predominantly with the second issue, and it addresses a number of foundational issues that lead to such a flawed …

An Organic Model Of Leadership Development For The Rural, Traditional Church, Douglas Brooks

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This thesis project examines the nature of leadership development relating to an organization known as the local body of Christian believers. This study reveals that the average believer lacks confidence in his or her ability to clearly define what it means to be a Christian, what is required of a believer in the areas of discipleship and leadership, and how to be a disciple maker. Pursuant to completion of this thesis project, the pastor will progressively develop each member of the local body of believers at Woodland Trails Baptist Church into servant leaders who make disciples. The questionnaire results of …

Our Technological Past And Future: From Predigital To Postdigital Apocalypses, Michael J. Paulus Jr.

SPU Works

An exploration of technological hopes and fears in apocalyptic literature.

Theologian Of Sin And Grace, Robert Kolb

Concordia Journal

This volume is a must for anyone seeking an understanding of the transition from the Wittenberg Reformation to seventeenth-century Lutheran theology as well as the developments in hermeneu- tics, history, and biblical exegesis shaped by this unique figure, Matthias Flacius, the Illyrian.

Proper 23 • Hebrews 3:12–19 • October 11, 2015, Joel Okamoto

Concordia Journal

The promise is eschatological, a promise of life with God and all his people in the new creation, enjoying the life of the age to come.

Proper 23 • Hebrews 3:12–19, Joel Biermann

Concordia Journal

Sin becomes altogether too common and familiar and so “safe.” The writer to the Hebrews screams the contrary alert: Sin kills.

Proper 22 • Hebrews 2:1–13 (14–18), Charles Arand

Concordia Journal

Not only did God honor us with the role of being responsible over creation, he now honors us by becoming a human creature so that in him, that right dominion would be restored.

Proper 18 • James 2:1–10, 14–18, Joel Fritsche

Concordia Journal

For faith alone can justify; Works serve our neighbor and supply The proof that faith is living.

Proper 15 • Ephesians 5:6–21, Joel Fritsche

Concordia Journal

The Christian Life, A Wake up Call.

Sanctification, David Scaer

Concordia Journal

Sanctification and the Third use of the Law.

Who Is The Church?: An Ecclesiology For The Twenty-First Century. By Cheryl M. Peterson, Theodore Hopkins

Concordia Journal

Peterson appropriates insights from communion ecclesiology, the missio Dei movement, and the Lutheran tradition, particularly Luther’s Large Catechism, in order to offer an account of the church’s identity for this time after Christendom.

A Christian In Toga: Boethius— Interpreter Of Antiquity And Christian Theologian. By Claudio Moreschini, Robert Kolb

Concordia Journal

How the world of thought fostered by Neoplatonists, pagan and Christian, was being integrated into theology by leading Christian thinkers of the early sixth century, among whom Boethius’s works have won him high standing.

Pentecost • Acts 2:1–21 • May 24, 2015, Kent Burreson

Concordia Journal

The gift of the resurrection comes to fruition in the Gentile Pentecost as peoples of all the nations die and rise in the baptismal bath of the Holy Spirit.

Easter 7 • 1 John 5:9–15 • May 17, 2015 Testifying In The Courtroom, Leopoldo Sánchez

Concordia Journal

In true Johannine fashion, the apostle offers us a contrast between two opposing principles at war with each other, namely, the way of the Son that leads to life and the way of the world that leads to death.

Can Anything Good Come Out Of _____? Come And See! Faithful Witness In Marginality And Hospitality, Leopoldo Sánchez

Concordia Journal

Christ who is suffering with us becomes a sign that, in light of the Latin American experience of suffering, reminds an often individualistic North American church that is more focused on victories than bearing crosses to embody a ministry of accompaniment with those who experience hostility and alienation.