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Ron Highfield traces the genealogy of the modern self from Plato, Descartes and Locke to Charles Taylor's landmark Sources of the Self. What emerges is a stark portrait of the modern ideal of self-governance and the crisis it provokes for a Christian view of human identity, freedom and dignity found in God.
Have you ever found yourself repeating expressions such as “Jesus saves” or “Jesus died for our sins” without really understanding them? When popular speakers “explain” how Jesus’s death satisfied God’s wrath so you could be forgiven, do you ever think to yourself, “I don’t get it”? If so, you’re not alone, you’re not dumb, and the problem is not with you. Ron Highfield reframes Christian teaching about the atonement so that it comes alive with fresh meaning. Drawing on biblical and traditional sources, Highfield explains why our frustration in trying to understand how Jesus’s death satisfies God’s judicial wrath is inevitable . . . because the idea doesn’t ma...
Questions about divine providence have preoccupied Christians for generations: to what degree does God concern himself with and intervene in the affairs of everyday life? This book introduces readers to four prevailing views on divine providence, with particular attention to the questions of human free will, the problem of evil, and God's perception of time. Volume contributors and their basic viewpoints are: Paul Helseth - God causes every creaturely event that occurs. William Lane Craig - through his "middle knowledge," God controls the course of worldly affairs without predetermining any creatures' free decisions. Ron Highfield - God controls creatures by liberating their decision-making....
In Rethinking Church, veteran church leader, theologian, and professor Ron Highfield tells the story of how he came to the conclusions that most institutions we call "churches" are really parachurch organizations, much of the "church work" we do focuses on making something happen on Sunday mornings, and much of the money we give goes to pay staff to keep the parachurch functions running. Highfield writes for older believers who feel burned out and disillusioned by years of institutional maintenance. He addresses young people who have never seen the relevance of institutional churches to their lives. To all who view institutional churches as self-serving, hypocritical, money grubbing, growth ...
In keeping with the classic Christian tradition, Great Is the Lord sets out the doctrine of God in a way that illumines the mind, moves the heart, and stirs the soul to praise the triune God. Ron Highfield introduces students, ministers, and others to the "traditional" doctrine of God held by the majority of the church from the second to the twentieth century: God is triune, loving, merciful, gracious, patient, wise, one, simple, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, omnipresent, immutable, impassible, and glorious. Irenically challenging open theism and process theology, Highfield shows that the classical doctrine of God actually preserves our confidence in God's love and his liberating action better than its opponents do. This traditional doctrine, Highfield argues, grounds our dignity and freedom in the center of reality, the trinitarian life of God. Highfield's work maintains the highest intellectual standards throughout even as it offers a true theology for the praise of God.
Many writers are calling on conservative churches to appoint women as preachers, elders, and bishops-positions traditionally reserved for men. Are these proposals inspired by a deeper understanding of the gospel as their defenders claim or by secular philosophies as their opponents allege? Highfield explores these and other questions.
In this book Paul Contino offers a theological study of Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. He argues that incarnational realism animates the vision of the novel, and the decisions and actions of its hero, Alyosha Fyodorovich Karamazov. The book takes a close look at Alyosha’s mentor, the Elder Zosima, and the way his role as a confessor and his vision of responsibility “to all, for all” develops and influences Alyosha. The remainder of the study, which serves as a kind of reader’s guide to the novel, follows Alyosha as he takes up the mantle of his elder, develops as a “monk in the world,” and, at the end of three days, ascends in his vision of Cana. The study attends also to Alyosha’s brothers and his ministry to them: Mitya’s struggle to become a “new man” and Ivan’s anguished groping toward responsibility. Finally, Contino traces Alyosha’s generative role with the young people he encounters, and his final message of hope.
This illuminating study of the doctrine of sin compares the thought of two of the most influential thinkers of our time, the Reformed theologian, Karl Barth (1886-1968), and the Roman Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner (1904-1984). The author succeeds in balancing scientific rigor with ecumenical sensitivity in his effort to discover areas of real convergence between Barth and Rahner. Uncovering hitherto hidden congruity, Dr. Highfield proposes a way for Roman Catholics and Protestants to recognize their fundamental agreement on the doctrine of sin.
Over the last fifty years, pseudoscience has crept into nearly every facet of our lives. Popular sciences of everything from dating and economics, to voting and artificial intelligence, radically changed the world today. The abuse of popular scientific authority has catastrophic consequences, contributing to the 2008 financial crisis; the failure to predict the rise of Donald Trump; increased tensions between poor communities and the police; and the sidelining of nonscientific forms of knowledge and wisdom. In We Built Reality, Jason Blakely explains how recent social science theories have not simply described political realities but also helped create them. But he also offers readers a way out of the culture of scientism: hermeneutics, or the art of interpretation. Hermeneutics urges sensitivity to the historical and cultural contexts of human behavior. It gives ordinary people a way to appreciate the insights of the humanities in guiding decisions. As Blakely contends, we need insights from the humanities to see how social science theories never simply neutrally describe reality, they also help build it.
Calvinist theology has been debated and promoted for centuries. But is it a theology that should last? Roger Olson suggests that Calvinism, also commonly known as Reformed theology, holds an unwarranted place in our list of accepted theologies. In Against Calvinism, readers will find scholarly arguments explaining why Calvinist theology is incorrect and how it affects God’s reputation. Olson draws on a variety of sources, including Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience, to support his critique of Calvinism and the more historically rich, biblically faithful alternative theologies he proposes. Addressing what many evangelical Christians are concerned about today—so-called “new Calvinism,” a movement embraced by a generation labeled as “young, restless, Reformed” —Against Calvinism is the only book of its kind to offer objections from a non-Calvinist perspective to the current wave of Calvinism among Christian youth. As a companion to Michael Horton’s For Calvinism, readers will be able to compare contrasting perspectives and form their own opinions on the merits and weaknesses of Calvinism.