You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
description not available right now.
Christian communities today face enormous challenges in the new contexts and teachings that try to redefine what churches should be. Christians look to the New Testament for a pattern for the church, but the New Testament does not present a totally uniform picture of the structure, leadership, and sacraments practiced by first-century congregations. There was a unity of the Christian communities centered on the teaching that Jesus is the Christ, whom God has raised from the dead and has enthroned as Lord, yet not every assembly did exactly the same thing and saw themselves in exactly the same way. Rather, in the New Testament we find a collage of rich theological insights into what it means to be the church. When leaders of today see this diversity, they can look for New Testament ecclesiologies that are most relevant to the social and cultural context in which their community lives. This volume of essays, written with the latest scholarship, highlights the uniqueness of individual ecclesiologies of the various New Testament documents and their core unifying themes.
This survey of the history of critical scholarship on the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles draws particular attention to the interpretation of Luke's treatment of Jews and Judaism. It notes that the Holocaust was a major turning point in the history of New Testament scholarship.
Luke's christology is carefully designed. Luke portrays the exalted Jesus as God's co-equal by the kinds of things he does and says from heaven. Through the Holy Spirit, the divine name and personal manifestations, Jesus behaves toward people in Luke-Acts as does Yahweh in the Old Testament. His power and knowledge are supreme. Jesus sovereignly reigns over Israel, the church, the powers of darkness and the world. Luke deepens this portrait by depicting Jesus as deity who by nature behaves as servant: the earthly Jesus acted among his people as one who serves; the exalted Jesus continues serving his people by strengthening and encouraging them in their witness of him to the world. That the believers in Acts resemble the way Jesus behaved in the Gospel means that they too are now imaging some of his servant-like character in their witness of him.
Portland is now part of the city of Saint John.
description not available right now.
description not available right now.