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Although biblical interpreters often frame divine anthropomorphism as a problem to be overcome, biblical texts themselves typically do not betray any embarrassment over divine anthropomorphism. Instead, biblical texts depict the [...]

Many feminist conversations about the ethics of citation begin by asking, Where are all the women? Sometimes this question is an innocent inquiry, but more frequently it signals suspicion, frustration, [...]

With recourse to some relevant postmodern sensibilities--especially the pertinence of peripheries and the value of plurality--this article examines the occurrences of mountain(s) in Micah with a view to highlighting the [...]

In this essay I look at a group of texts written in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, which were initially circulated in manuscript as contributions to the 'Lollard' [...]

A well-used, devotional book with two names inscribed and the print of a miraculous image of Christ crucified pasted in next to the first page of text is examined for [...]

Abstract: This review highlights ten publications that focus on intergenerational ministry which hare been published in the last decade. Books from North American and British authors from a variety of [...]

Lutheran Theology as Troubling Field of Mission? The Lutheran contribution to mission has been oftentimes unattended. The Reformer's understanding of the missional church is not adequately interpreted and appreciated in [...]

In recent years, the writings of Ambrose of Milan have enjoyed a revival of interest in historical and theological circles. The work of scholars like Christoph Markschies, Neil McLynn, Daniel [...]

The reading and interpretation of texts from another tradition is becoming a more familiar practice in both ecumenical and interreligious circles, yet the use of intuition and imagination to cross religious boundaries raises ethical and theological as much as hermeneutical questions about the interpretation of unfamiliar worlds of discourse. This essay looks at two important dialogical practices--Comparative Theology and Scriptural Reasoning--to explore the implications of the 'logic of scripture' for interreligious relations. By distinguishing between scripture as an exemplary text and the pedagogy intrinsic to religious or 'reverential' reading, the essay argues for more careful theological attention to the process rather than to the content of such textual reading., In recent years, two important interreligious practices, Comparative Theology (CT) and Scriptural Reasoning (SR), have generated a great deal of interest. They have different roots and, in some ways, different [...]

EVER SINCE 9/11 AMERICANS HAVE GROWN EVER more interested in the origins and beliefs of Islam, most notably the contents of its holy book, the Qur'an. If we are, indeed, [...]

Scholastic theology first saw the light of day among the masters in the twelfth-century schools of Europe. Chief among the masters of theology was Peter Lombard, whose Sentences became the textbook in the universities of Europe until the 16th century. This article studies the theology of sex and marriage in Book 4 of the Sentences against the background of the long and difficult road marriage travelled from a familial and secular event to the sacramental worm of the church., SEX AND MARRIAGE DOMINATE headlines and media coverage, even when the subject is health-care reform. This fact calls for a long, hard look, one that involves millennia, history, and documents. [...]

The writings of women that have come down to us from the medieval and early modern periods are growing, and promise to challenge the historical silence of women. This paper [...]

Introduction As a historical phenomenon, Islam is a post-Christian religion, one that sought to honor previous revelations of God, including those vouchsafed to the prophets and apostles Moses and Jesus, [...]

The monk of Bury St. Edmunds named Herman chronicled the miracles performed by St. Edmund to portray him as a national saint. His accounts of those miracles during the 1090's are further discussed.

RICHARD Greenham, rector from 1570 to 1591 at Dry Dayton Church outside of Cambridge, England, once preached a sermon based on Thessalonians 5:19 ('Quench not the spirit'). Not one to [...]

Four Daoist texts illustrate the dynamic image of the Daoist immortal world on which a Daoist environmental ethics can be built. The first text is the Daodejing with two of the oldest commentaries. The second is Tao Hongjing's Diagram of Rank and Functions of True Spirits. The third is the collection of poems by Immortal Changchun, titled Panxiji. The fourth is the Morning and Evening Liturgical Prayer Book of the Quanzhen Order, which represents Daoist ecological concerns for the natural world. Daoism not only accords with the impetus and spirit of environmental ethics but can also make a concrete contribution to its implementation.

The publication of nine ever-expanding unabridged folio editions of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments of the English Martyrs (1563-1684) indicates that this iconic book exerted a powerful appeal for the [...]

In the first lecture we looked at the state of the Bible today, focusing on its loss of authority because of the influence of a particular kind of historical criticism [...]

In the second of this year's Hein Fry lectures I was asked to consider what the state of the Bible in the twenty-first century might mean for the Lutheran Church--a [...]

In the Jewish calendar, the Lament of Rachel (Jer 31:15) is read on Rosh Hashanah 2, the beginning of the year. For Christians it is at the end of the [...]

At the dawn of Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary, the Gospel lessons return to Matthew. (1) Unfortunately, the manner in which the lectionary orders the forty-eight to fifty [...]

Every problem is an opportunity. So says a business dictum that has made America great. I suggest that Christian teachers and preachers can apply this dictum to seven real or [...]

Matthew's plot is an act of imperial negotiation. Unfolding through six stages, its central dynamic comprises conflict between Jesus and the Rome-allied (Jerusalem-based) leaders. It ends with God raising Jesus, [...]

The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross. By Vitor Westhelle. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. xii and 180 pages. Paper. $22.00. Vitor Westhelle's The Scandalous God might be entitled [...]

Sokolowski, R. (2006). Christian faith & human understanding: Studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, and the human person. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. This volume points back to the [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Prologue to John's Gospel (1:1-18) is regarded by many not only as the greatest and seminal piece of theological writing in Christianity but also as the key […]

Heracleon was a great second-century Christian thinker, and the author of the first known commentary on a New Testament text, the Gospel of John. Although we do not have Heracleon's [...]

Hilary of Poitiers begins his treatise De Trinitate with autobiographical narration of his journey to Christian faith and identifies the authority for discussing who God is, role of faith and reason in theological inquiry, the correct way to interpret scripture and soteriological context of discussion on the mystery of God. These reflections guide through HilaryEs treatise and make it important to understanding his purpose in De Trinitate.

Gregory of Nyssa's 'The Life of Moses' is a paradigmatic example of premodern Christian exegesis confounded in contemporary notion is piety. Gregory's systematically explains both his exegesis and spiritual guidance in discovering the essence of God.

A score owned by James Harris of Salisbury, an associate of Handel, is included in the manuscript score of Handel's Messiah which was copied by John Matthew and now is a part of Archbishop Marsh's Library, Dublin. The 'Salisbury' partbook, one of the source references of Matthew proves to have greater authority than music of Messiah as published from a correspondence between Harris and Handel's principal music copyist, John Christopher Smith.

Amidst Nazi persecution, Edith Stein discovered in the biblical images of God a mystical path of identity formation leading to a transformative union with Christ., As Edith Stein (1891-1942) recalls in her unfinished autobiography, her older sisters often found her expression inscrutable and teased her, calling her 'a book sealed with seven seals.' (1) Biblical [...]

John Locke is famous for his liberal and tolerationist works, published in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, which attacked the belligerent intolerance of the Restoration Church of England. But his early writings, the Two tracts on government, were composed in the period between 1660 and 1662 when the details of the church settlement were the subject of heated debate. The thought of the young Locke defended an uncompromising settlement which would rigidly enforce uniformity in religious worship and secure the restored monarchy from clerical subversion. Whilst scholars have previously focused on the changes in Locke's thought from royalist Anglicanism to whig toleration, this article focuses on the Tracts in their own right. By placing them in the context of the Restoration debate on adiaphora, ceremonial 'matters indifferent', the typicality or otherwise of Locke's early thought can be discerned. This article argues that the legalistic understanding of adiaphora meant that this debate touched on political authority and obedience as well as theological question, not least because matters indifferent fell under the purview of the monarch as supreme governor of the church.

To compose a Christian book on exemplary Christian living, Ambrose appropriates and criticizes Cicero's book on 'duties,' De officiis. In many passages within the moral part of his Summa of Theology, Thomas Aquinas incorporates quotations from both Cicero and Ambrose. Comparison of the three texts raises issues about the relation of genres to terms, arguments, rules, and ideals in religious teaching. Genre becomes a useful category for analyzing religious rhetoric only when it is conceived as a set of persuasive or pedagogical relations below a text's surface disposition. KEY WORDS: moral rhetoric, genre, Cicero, Ambrose, Aquinas

Philip Melanchthon designated his will that his 'Responsiones ad articulos Bavaricae inquisitionis' should be regarded as his final confession of faith, the day before his death. This document demonstrated how Melanchthon's teaching on justification by faith, essentially in the form set down in the Augsburg Confession (1530) remained the guiding principle of his theology.

Johann Brandmuller's Funeral Sermons was a theological collection devoted to scripture passages deemed appropriate for funerals. About 180 sermons covered topics that could be preached at the funerals of people from all estates and applied to a variety of circumstances related to their death. Brandmuller's work was an attempt to teach the skills of pastoral care for the bereaved that had no precise counterpart in either Lutheran or Reformed churches.

The three weeks known as Bein HaMeitzarim, twenty-one days between 17th of Tamuz and 9th of Av, are marked by abstaining from wedding ceremonies, dance-music, and for the more observant: [...]

1. I think this is a wonderful theme--'The Challenge of Living with Multiple Identities'--and as soon as I heard it I thought of this quotation from a contemporary novelist and [...]