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God and the Body addresses the challenges to traditional Christianity by gay and lesbian Christians and their critics within the church. This controversial book will be welcomed for the radical new insights it provides into Christian arguments about the body.
This much-needed volume draws on a wide range of resources and some of the freshest talent in the field to examine debates about theology and sexuality. Material is drawn from a variety of ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary texts to provide readers with a broad perspective on the issues discussed.
In the spring of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic disrupted classrooms around the world, teachers scrambled to convert their lectures and presentations into a format more conducive to online and distance learning. For Eugene Rogers, this meant transcribing as closely as possible the spoken lectures that have made his Introduction to Christian Thought course at UNC Greensboro, a course he has taught some forty times, justly famous. The result is this book: an insightful, winsome, and engaging introduction to the history of Christian thought by a teacher at the height of his craft. For Rogers, the history of Christian thought is the story of a language--it's "Christianese," if you will--that participants use to frame their agreements and their disagreements alike. From Anselm to Wyschogrod, Rogers introduces us to the most interesting speakers of Christianese and their importance, enabling us to both listen in on and take part in the living conversation about God's activity in and for our world.
Beginning with the Church Fathers and moving right through to the present day, The Holy Spirit offers a theologically informed, international collection of the most important texts relating to Christians' understanding of the Holy Spirit. A new volume of texts and readings offering a chronologically-organized selection of the most important and interesting writings on the Holy Spirit Considers how the Holy Spirit has always been an integral part of both Christian belief and systematic theology - from the Church Fathers through to the present day Each set of readings is prefaced by an introduction from the editor, drawing out the main themes and important historical points, and linking the readings to what has gone before Tackles the disagreements over the role of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity, and how it was a contributing factor in the split between the Western and Eastern Church Opens with a newly-commissioned essay describing the importance of the Holy Spirit in the theology of the last one hundred years, and in particular in relation to the revival of Trinitarian theology
The unsettling language of blood has been invoked throughout the history of Christianity. But until now there has been no truly sustained treatment of how Christians use blood to think with. Eugene F. Rogers Jr. discusses in his much-anticipated new book the sheer, surprising strangeness of Christian blood-talk, exploring the many and varied ways in which it offers a language where Christians cooperate, sacrifice, grow and disagree. He asks too how it is that blood-talk dominates when other explanations would do, and how blood seeps into places where it seems hardly to belong. Reaching beyond academic disputes, to consider how religious debates fuel civil ones, he shows that it is not only theologians or clergy who engage in blood-talk, but also lawmakers, judges, generals, doctors and voters at large. Religious arguments have significant societal consequences, Rogers contends; and for that reason secular citizens must do their best to understand them.
In this title the author contends that whilst in classical Christian discourse, the Holy Spirit "pours out on all flesh", in modern theology and worship the Holy Spirit has tended to float free of bodies and that the result of such disembodiment, is that talk about the Spirit has become flat and uninspiring. The Eastern Christian tradition, by contrast, has usually linked the Holy Spirit with holy places, holy people, and holy things. Taking his cue from this tradition, Rogers locates the Spirit in the Gospel stories of the annunciation, Jesus' baptism, the transfiguration, and the resurrection. These stories offer illuminating glimpses into both the Spirit's connection with the tangible world and the Spirit's distinctive place in relation to the other persons of the Trinity. "After the Spirit" weaves together patristic, medieval, Russian, and Syriac sources. Rogers's witty and passionate prose is illustrated by the inclusion of eight color plates.
This book is a work of systematic theology that provides a fresh interpretation of Aquinas on the nature of theology, and uncovers and explores theological affinities between Aquinas and Protestant theologian Karl Barth.
The Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality, and Gender presents an unrivalled overview of the theological study of sexuality and gender. These topics are not merely contentious and pervasive: they have escalated in importance within theology. Theologians increasingly agree that even the very doctrine of God cannot be contemplated without a prior grappling with each. Featuring 41 newly-commissioned essays, written by some of the foremost scholars in the discipline, this authoritative collection presents and develops the latest thinking in these areas. Divided into eight thematic sections, the Handbook explores: methodological approaches; contributions from neighbouring disciplines; sexuality and gender in the Bible, and in the Christian tradition; controversies within the churches, and within four of the non-Christian faiths; and key concepts and issues. The final, extended section considers theology in relation to married people and families; gay and lesbian people; bisexual people; intersex and transgender people; disabled people; and to friends. This volume is an essential reference for students and scholars, which will also stimulate further research.
The contributors explore how the theological tradition of the Social Gospel, born within the social and cultural dislocations of late 19th-century America, relates to the dislocations of the current American scene. The contributors argue that America's only indigenous theological tradition remains powerfully relevant to mainline churches and to the scholars who work out of these institutions.
A major new biography, illuminating the great mystery of Benjamin Franklin’s faith Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other eighteenth-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the “thorough deist” who emerges in his autobiography. As Thomas Kidd reveals, deist writers influenced Franklin’s beliefs, to be sure, but devout Christians in his life—including George Whitefield, the era’s greatest evangelical preacher; his parents; and his beloved sister Jane—kept him tethered to the Calvinist creed of his Puritan upbringing. Based on rigorous research into Franklin’s voluminous correspondence, essays, and almanacs, this fresh assessment of a well-known figure unpacks the contradictions and conundrums faith presented in Franklin’s life.