Bøger udgivet af Baylor University Press

Our faith is centered around giving and offering support, yet our belief about those who need "e;help"e; must be reexamined. Philanthropy is steeped in myths that hurt communities of color rather than help them. Many current philanthropic strategies fail because they neglect the experience, wisdom, and gifts of those receiving "e;help,"e; and prioritize and perpetuate false myths. These myths fuel deficit-based models of philanthropy that do not work and will not change poverty.Froswa' Booker-Drew offers a solution that transforms philanthropy at individual and collective levels. Eliminating common myths and misinterpretations can bring about a more effective model of philanthropy-one that relies on a community's social, human, and cultural capital and champions the insights and strengths of those being served. In addition, the voices of those most impacted by philanthropy must be included in board membership, program development, leadership in nonprofits, and charitable giving. Empowering Charity serves as a catalyst and conversation starter for authentic inclusion in our workplaces, organizations, and communities. Booker-Drew supplies tools for involving those who are often unknown, overlooked, or viewed as "e;other,"e; strategies that will have a collective impact in the community of God and transform philanthropy to highlight God's love for all people and effect real change.

Provides a foundational analysis of the Greek text of 2 Maccabees. Seth Ehorn explains the form and syntax of the biblical text, offers guidance for deciding between competing semantic analyses, engages important text-critical debates, and addresses questions relating to the Greek text that are frequently overlooked by standard commentaries.

Written in the style of the children's classic Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Waco highlights all the exciting and enchanting landmarks of the sweetest little town on the 'banks of the Brazos'.

In our fraught global environment, when political and ideological lines are drawn ever sharper and old allegiances are increasingly strained, love for neighbor as both individual and societal obligation needs to be thematized and justified anew. At the same time, the New Testament call to love one's enemies forms a sharp point of contrast to the current non-culture of hatred for all things different and foreign.Oda Wischmeyer's Love as Agape: The Early Christian Concept and Modern Discourse, the ninth volume in the Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity series, aims to bring the New Testament concept of love into conversation with the current discussion about love. Wischmeyer investigates the commandment tradition of love for God and for neighbor, the ways in which the Septuagint and Plutarch speak of love, and the innovative concepts of love developed by Paul and John. She also presents an exegetically informed construction of the New Testament concept of love that is sharpened through a penetrating comparison with counter-, parallel, and alternative concepts from the ancient world. The book brings this holistic biblical vision forward into critical and constructive dialogue with key contemporary visions of love, including those of Julia Kristeva, Martha Nussbaum, Pope Benedict XVI, and Simon May. The tension that emerges stresses the need for fresh conceptualizations of ancient Jewish-Christian understandings, giving rise to the concluding question of the profile, limits, and impulses of the agape concept for present challenges.Through this academically rigorous and pastorally sensitive exploration, Wischmeyer points to the great love story between God and humanity, which realizes itself in the figure of Jesus Christ. This divine romance places love as the most intense, affirming, and life-creating relationship in God's own self, a relationship into which human beings are drawn and by which they obtain special dignity when God's love becomes their life.

From the early days of the Christian faith, the relationship between the twin realities of Jesus' historical particularity and universal presence has been a theological puzzle. The apparent dichotomy of the two leads Christ-followers to ponder some difficult questions: Who is Jesus to those who do not know him? Who are those who do not know him to those who do? Do "e;we"e; who follow Jesus meet him in "e;those"e; who do not?Contemporary debates concerning Christian theology of religions have been profoundly shaped by Alan Race's threefold typology of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Scholars increasingly recognize the insufficiency of this typology, and a consensus about how to replace it remains elusive. With The Unique and Universal Christ, Drew Collins argues that an alternative theological approach to the relation between the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the universality of God's presence can be gleaned from the theology of Hans Frei and his fivefold typology of Christian theology. With Frei's model as an interpretive lens, Collins examines the various ecumenical movements of the twentieth century and their conversations around theological authority in connection to Christianity's relationship with other faith traditions. A new paradigm emerges for conceptualizing Christian faith amid the rich diversity of our world. Reconsidered in this light, the Christian theology of religions ceases to be a combative venture that pits a Christian faith committed to the scandalous particularity of Jesus Christ's identity as the Son of God against a faith open to the possibility of encountering the divine presence in the world at large. Instead, it becomes a mode of exploration, hoping for such encounters with the universal presence of Christ because of the uniqueness of Jesus.

Surprisingly little scholarly attention has been focused on inheritance as a unique and crucial concept for Israelite and Jewish religious life and belief. This paucity of attention extends to Matthew's Gospel, where inheritance terms appear on four occasions. Daniel Daley argues that these passages play a vital role in Matthew's overall narrative.

Through a curated set of exegetical comparisons, each between a christological text and one or two messianic texts, Ruben Buhner reveals to what extent Second Temple messianism is the primary context for the high Christologies of the New Testament.

Across lines of tradition and denomination, many Christians express a purely propositional sense of belief, focused primarily on the existence of God and facts about Christ, contributing to a transactional approach to salvation. But belief is about more than the simple fact of God's existence. Augustine provides a starting point for restoring the relational sense of belief encapsulated in the phrase "e;believing into Christ."e; In Believing into Christ, Natalya Cherry explores this unique, grammatically awkward phrase that Augustine recognized and identified in his preaching as describing Christianity's distinct contribution to human flourishing. Around this idea, Augustine established and systematized a three-part formula for belief, one which his theological successors treated as defining Christian faith. Cherry tracks the origins of "e;believing into Christ"e; and its loss in translation. She then crafts a constructive theology that addresses how to restore the phrase and all it entails. Such a view of belief involves transforming catechesis and sacramental practices that can equip believers to overcome oppression and social barriers in contemporary ecclesial communities and the world they inhabit.Questions regularly arise about how one can believe in a loving God while being complicit with, or actively participating in, systems of violence and oppression. Christian faith informs our resistance against those systems when we practice the bold surrender engendered by believing into Christ. In this way, Cherry challenges us to consider the relational sense of belief, clinging to Christ by means of the Holy Spirit in a way that directs every relationship toward human flourishing, as the heart of Christian faith.

The Letter to Philemon has been read by generations of interpreters, including towering figures such as John Chrysostom, as having to do with Paul returning the fugitive slave Onesimus to his master. Hence the letter, at best, was made complicit in the institution of slavery and, at worst, was foundational for the view that slavery was God ordained. This oppressive interpretation still holds sway in the academy and church alike.In his interdisciplinary study, Stephen E. Young sets a new trajectory for understanding this unassuming epistle. Our Brother Beloved: Purpose and Community in Paul's Letter to Philemon opens with a case study on the use of the Letter to Philemon in the debates surrounding slavery and fugitive slaves in antebellum America. The book then analyzes the major background stories that have been used as keys to interpret the letter, showing that past and present oppressive uses of the Letter to Philemon are due not to the letter's contents but to the persistence of erroneous readings. Young provides a new interpretation that accounts for every element of the Letter to Philemon while also addressing many shortcomings of previous interpretations. In so doing he pioneers the use of Positioning Theory, from the field of social psychology, as an analytical approach, opening up a new avenue for the study of ancient texts.That texts shape the identity of readers is widely recognized, but biblical scholars tend to disregard the process by which that influence unfolds. Young demonstrates how the Letter to Philemon sought to shape the identity of its readers within their sociocultural context by molding them into a community of deliverance, one that could receive Onesimus no longer as a slave but as a brother and fellow worker in the gospel. Such a fresh reading carries strong implications for the ongoing cause of social justice.

Traces the visual and textual depictions of the Good Shepherd motif from its early iterations as a potent symbol of kingship, through its reimagining in biblical figures, such as the shepherd-king David, and onward to the shepherds of Greco-Roman literature.

Employing social memory theory and insights from a thorough analysis of ancient ideology concerning beheading, A Dangerous Parting explores the communicative impact of the tradition of John the Baptist's decapitation in the first three centuries of the Common Era.

Tells the stories of how the biblical texts modelled the relationship between God and foreign kings at critical junctures in the history of Judah and the development of this discourse across nearly six centuries.

For centuries, particular readings of the biblical text have shaped the course of Western history. Scripture, used as a political totem for those in power, gives divine weight to political agendas. This trajectory is particularly evident in the fiery career of Billy Graham, "e;America's evangelist."e; Graham's rhetoric, steeped in his political appropriation of Scripture, ultimately motivated the insertion of "e;under God"e; into the pledge of allegiance: his message of national repentance made its way to President Dwight Eisenhower, who converted it into legislation and changed history. America became self-consciously a nation under God, over against the world. One Nation under Graham investigates how one man's interpretation of the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation has impacted how the United States sees itself on a global and cosmic scale. Jonathan Redding argues that Graham rode the wave of American xenophobia to rebrand evangelical patriotism as essential to national stability and cosmic balance. A survey of Graham's influences reveals that, while Graham was far from the only Christian leader to preach gloom and doom, he was one of the first to make the theme publicly and profoundly American. Graham's influence and drive to make America a nation "e;under God"e; ensured that, with the recitation of the American pledge, his reading of Scripture would endure. Redding further shows the continued capacity of "e;under God"e; to equip contemporary leadership to leverage Christian faith for personal gain with a political base.Graham's response to major political and global events created a thoroughly American apocalyptic lens that continues to be used to give life and potency to biblical interpretations. In the same way that Daniel and Revelation warned of the dangers of unchecked political power and misplaced priorities, One Nation under Graham uses Graham's interpretations to urge all of us to consider under whom we serve and under what flag we kneel.

Christian philosophy and philosophy of religion tend to be dominated by analytic approaches, which have brought a valuable logical rigor to the discussion of matters of belief. However, the perspectives of continental philosophy-in particular, the continental emphasis on embodied forms of knowing-still have much to offer to the conversation and our understanding of what it means to be both rational and faithful in a postmodern world. The Nicene Option represents the full sweep of James K. A. Smith's work in continental philosophy of religion over the past twenty years. Animated by the conviction that a philosophy of religion needs to be philosophical reflection on the practice of religion, as a "e;form of life"e; (as Wittgenstein would say), this book makes the case for the distinct contribution that phenomenology-as a philosophy of experience-can make to philosophy of religion and Christian philosophy. Engaging a range of philosophers in this tradition, including Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Luc Marion, Richard Rorty, and Charles Taylor, Smith's constructive proposal coheres around what he describes as "e;the logic of incarnation,"e; a "e;Nicene option"e; in contemporary philosophy of religion. By grounding philosophy of religion in the doctrinal heart of Christian confession, Smith gestures toward a uniquely robust Christian philosophy. Besides issuing a clarion call for the renaissance of continental philosophy of religion, The Nicene Option also offers a glimpse behind the scholarly curtain for a wider audience of readers familiar with Smith's popular works such as Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?, Desiring the Kingdom, Imagining the Kingdom, and You Are What You Love-all of which are tacitly informed by the phenomenological approach articulated in this book. As an extended footnote to those works-which for many readers have been gateways to philosophy- The Nicene Option presents an invitation to a new depth of reflection.

Archetypes of race loom large within the Western imagination. The Black population, in particular, has often been pictured as inherently disordered, and their presence thought to have a disordering effect-indeed, their presence has been seen as a threat to civilized society. It is this perceived threat of blackness that has fueled America's long history of discrimination and oppression.At the heart of this racialized way of seeing is a significant theological assertion: that one's internal state can be discerned through the external attributes of the body. In the Byzantine era, the holy icon was thought to reflect the proper order of God; those who rejected the icon rejected God's order. The supposedly deficient bodies of those who rejected the holy order of God functioned as a warning sign. Using the framework of icon theology, Disordered explores the relationship between non-white, as well as non-masculine, bodies and civilized society at key moments in the development of modernity. Jessica Wai-Fong Wong demonstrates how the archetype of (male) whiteness has come to define proper social order. The veneration of the white man as holy ideal wields significant power over the formation of subjects and the shaping of society. In this case, worship of whiteness in general, and white masculinity in particular, functions as the sacred ground upon which the oppressive structures of Western society are built.The iconic reading of race offered here not only creates an opportunity for analysis but also opens up a space for constructive christological intervention that confronts the troubled practices at the heart of racialized sight. Jesus invites all people into a different way of seeing, one that shatters the distorting and destructive assumptions embedded within the dominant racial logic. By learning to see Jesus, the true icon of God, we learn to see rightly. And, when we see rightly, the order defining our identity and relationality is redeemed.

As the first volume in a set of three interrelated theological works, The Long Battle for the Human Soul examines major historical developments that have led to our contemporary confusion - so that we might chart a way forward.

Offers streamlined access to seminal passages from some of the most important texts in human history - texts that have inspired and informed enduring questions related to the pursuit of wisdom and worldview, religious faith, historical and moral reflection, and civic and political life.

Conceives of theology as 'thinking with testimonies of Christian faith', offering new students and seasoned practitioners alike a 'new departure' for Christian discourse. The book restructures the sources of theology to make space for the integration of new voices alongside a thoughtful reading of Scripture and classic texts of the tradition.

Recently the scholarly community and popular media have highlighted the denial of science by conservative Christians, linking a low view of scientific expertise to the United States' current cultural turmoil. Various theories are offered to explain such Christians' persistent denialism: cognitive mechanisms that short-circuit human reasoning, manipulation by media companies for profit, or a cult-like willingness of believers to accept whatever their faith leaders assert. Critics contend that the religious impulse to believe blindly without evidence is the main obstacle to a more just and sustainable world. Redeeming Expertise: Scientific Trust and the Future of the Church argues against this diagnosis, suggesting that however misguided individual conclusions about science may be, most Christians reason their way to those conclusions in the same way that non-Christians do: they rely upon trusted sources of information to guide them through an overwhelmingly expansive information landscape. Rather than heaping derision on the uneducated or unenlightened believer, Josh Reeves offers a sympathetic account of the average Christian in the pew and explains the reasons why skepticism toward mainstream science is compelling to many conservative Christians. The second part of the book then proposes a uniquely Christian defense of taking scientific expertise "e;seriously."e; Trusting experts plays an important role in a healthy intellectual life, and believers must learn how to make discerning choices. Redeeming Expertise presents a middle-ground that avoids the extremes of allowing "e;experts to rule"e; or of foregrounding populist positions that champion the intellectual superiority of laypersons. Christians who dismiss what communities of experts have discovered about our universe do so at their own peril. Unless the church can trust the best knowledge of the modern world, that same modern world will not trust the church.

This ethic of resistance not only indicted the church of the German Volk, but continues to shape the nature of Christian discipleship today.--Courtney H. Davis, St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry "Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics"

The Johannine literature has inspired the Church's christological creeds, prompted its Trinitarian formulations, and resourced its ecumenical and social movements. However, while confessional readers find in these texts a divine love for "e;the world,"e; biblical scholars often detect a dangerous program of harsh polemics arrayed against "e;the other."e; In this frame, the Johannine writings are products of an anti-society with its own anti-language articulating a worldview that is anti-ecclesiastical, anti-hierarchical, and, more seriously, anti-Jewish and even anti-Semitic. In New Testament studies, the prefix "e;anti-"e; has become almost Johannine. In John and the Others, Andrew Byers challenges the "e;sectarian hermeneutic"e; that has shaped much of the interpretation of the Gospel and Letters of John. Rather than "e;anti-Jewish,"e; we should understand John as opposed to the exclusionary positioning of ethnicity as a soteriological category. Neither is this stream of early Christianity antagonistic towards the wider Christian movement. The Fourth Evangelist openly situates his work in a crowded field of alternative narratives about Jesus without seeking to supplant prior works. Though John is often regarded as a "e;low-church"e; theologian, Byers shows that the episcopal ecclesiology of Ignatius of Antioch is compatible with Johannine theology. John does not locate revelation solely within the personal authority of each believer under the power of the Spirit, and so does not undercut hierarchical leadership. Byers demonstrates that the "e;Other Disciple"e; is actually a salutary resource for a contemporary world steeped in the negative discourse of othering. Though John's social vision entails othering, the negative "e;other"e; in John is ultimately cosmic evil, and his theological convictions are grounded in the most sweeping act of "e;de-othering"e; in history, when the divine Other "e;became flesh and dwelled among us."e; This early Christian tradition certainly erected boundaries, but all Johannine walls have a "e;Gate"e;-Jesus, the Lamb of God slain for the sin of the world that God loves.

Offers an account of the dynamics that shape the role of immigrant churches in the United States. Migrational Religion acts as a case study of a network formed by communities of Brazilian immigrants who, although affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, formed a distinctive ethnic association.

How is life possible in a world of evil, suffering, and chaos? Christians have historically been inept at offering adequate answers as to why people's lives are derailed by sudden chaos and, even worse, at equipping people to live in the throes, or aftermath, of that same chaos. Underlying this confusion is an assumption that evil is a formidable chink in the armor of God's creation. The book of Job challenges such thinking, but its meaning often remains hidden because of a long-standing belief in Christian hermeneutics that the book is about why bad things happen to good people, or about why suffering happens. This is not the case.With In a Vision of the Night Philip Thomas offers a fresh perspective into the book of Job by reading it alongside the fiction of Cormac McCarthy. While some critics have previously identified Joban overtones in McCarthy's work, Thomas argues for something far stronger: a recurrent Joban resonance throughout McCarthy's works. McCarthy's rejection of philosophical theodicy, his anti-anthropocentric vision of the world, his assumed presence of chaotic figures, and the quietly persistent note of hope that runs throughout his books reveal the Joban influence. Thomas contends that knowledge of the book of Job gives insight into McCarthy's literary output; conversely, reading Job through a McCarthyite lens enables proper apprehension of the scriptural text.Through a thematically based theological reading of McCarthy and Job, In a Vision of the Night draws out often overlooked aspects of the book of Job. Further, it reveals that McCarthy, like the Joban author, constructs a theodicy that both rejects the easy stance of a detached and generalized answer to the question of why chaos comes and advances the more pressing question of how life continues in the face of chaos.

God calls humans to be creative. The human drive to represent transcendent truths witnesses to the fact that we are destined to be transfigured and to transfigure the world. It is worth asking, then, what truthful representations, whether in art, spirituality, or theology, teach us about the one who is our truth, the one who made us and the one in whose image we are made. All Things Beautiful: An Aesthetic Christology is an experimental and constructive aesthetic Christology sourced by close readings of a wide array of artistic works, canonical and popular-including poems, films, essays, novels, plays, short stories, sculptures, icons, and paintings-as well as art criticism and passages from the Christian Scriptures. From first to last, these readings engage in conversation with the deep, broad wisdom of the Christian theological tradition. The liturgical calendar guides the themes of the book, beginning with Advent and Christmas; carrying through Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, and Ascension; and ending with Pentecost and Ordinary Time.Chris Green brings together these readings to create a mosaic-like impression of Jesus as the one through whom God graces and gives nature to all things, his life and death redeeming the whole creation, including human creativity and artistic endeavor, and transfiguring it into the full, free flourishing that God has purposed. This vision of Christ holds promise for artists and theologians, as well as preachers and teachers, revealing how our compulsions to create-and the meanings with which we endow our creations-become a site of the Spirit's presence, opening us to the goodness and wildness of God.

No contemporary form of pop culture has as large a social impact as video games, an entertainment industry whose yearly revenues continue to rise. Gamergate rocked the gaming industry when isolated incidents of male gamers threatening female game developers and critics grew into a sustained campaign of harassment against minorities and the historically marginalized. These events negatively revealed the political, ethical, and theological meaning latent within video games and gaming communities, but constructive reactions to the situation showed that video game creators and consumers were interested in thinking about games differently. In the wake of Gamergate, the voices of those marginalized and ignored as the "e;other"e; became louder, and alternative gaming experiences reflecting their perspectives more commonplace. Playing as Others traces the development of video game culture in response to marginalization and explores the ways in which the content of video games can generate theological insight and positive ethical impact. Benjamin Chicka shows how the interactivity and compelling narratives provided by emerging styles of video games can provide powerful lessons in listening to, accepting, and helping those often harmed or outright neglected by society. Bringing Paul Tillich's theology of culture into conversation with Emmanuel Levinas' ethical concept of responsibility toward the other, Chicka shows that video games as art form aid in the overcoming of estrangement.If culture, art, and technology have the power to reveal divine depth, video games offer a unique opportunity to foster redemptive face-to-face encounters in a way that is impossible for even the most practical discussions of philosophy and theology. With their fully formed characters and morally challenging stories, the games considered here, such as Gone Home; Papers, Please; and 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, can become a means to personal fulfillment and a desire for justice. For nonmarginalized players, virtual encounters are opportunities to listen to the call of the other and carry that lesson into the real world.

The incarnation of God in Jesus poses numerous challenges for the historical consciousness. How does a particular human at a particular time embody the eternal? And how does that embodiment work itself out in faith across the centuries? A gulf would appear to stand between what Christians say about Christ and the historical event of the man Jesus; indeed, the true reality of the incarnation seems unspeakable. Unspeakable Cults considers the nature and potential resolution of the conflict between the relativistic assumptions of the modern historical worldview and the classical Christian assertion of the absolute status of Jesus of Nazareth as God's saving incarnation in history. Paul DeHart contends that an understanding of Jesus' history is possible, proposing a model of the relation of divine causation to historical causation that allows the affirmation of Jesus' divinity without a miraculous rupture of the world's immanent causal patterns. The book first identifies classic articulations of the conflict in nineteenth-century German thought (Troeltsch, D. F. Strauss), and then draws on the history of religions to suggest possible relevant motifs in first-century culture that mitigate the axiomatic "e;tension"e; between Jesus' humanity and his deified status in early Christianity. With a creative appropriation of Thomas Aquinas, the heart of the argument aims to understand the eternal Word's presence in a human being as a thoroughly cultural event, but one dependent on divine power conceived as quasi-formal rather than merely efficient cause.Such an approach undercuts any opposition between the absoluteness of Jesus and the relativism of historicism. DeHart ultimately confronts the resulting challenges to traditional belief resulting from this proposed model, including the irremediable ambiguity of Jesus' "e;miraculous"e; performances and the constitutively unfinished nature of his human identity. Rather than treating these as scandals of modern consciousness, Unspeakable Cults vindicates them as necessary aspects of the "e;offense"e; perennially confronting faith in the incarnation.

In the 1930s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to Union Theological Seminary looking for a "e;cloud of witnesses."e; What he found instead disturbed, angered, and perplexed him. "e;There is no theology here,"e; he wrote to a German colleague. The New York churches, if possible, were even worse: "e;They preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed... namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life."e; Bonhoeffer acts for American Protestantism as an Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America, a cultural and political analysis of the new republic, appeared a century prior. But what the Berlin theologian found was, if possible, more significant than the observations of the French aristocrat: Protestantism in America was a "e;Protestantism without Reformation."e; Bonhoeffer's America explicates these criticisms, then turns to consider what they tell us about Bonhoeffer's own theological commitments and whether, in fact, his judgments about America were accurate. Joel Looper first brings Bonhoeffer's reformational and Barthian commitments into relief against the work of several Union theologians and the broader American theological milieu. He then turns to Bonhoeffer's own genealogy of American Protestantism to explore why it developed as it did: steeped in dissenting influences, the American church became one that resisted critique by the word of God. American Protestantism is not Protestant, Bonhoeffer shows us, not like the churches that emerged from the Continental Reformation. This difference gave rise to the secularization of the American church.Bonhoeffer's claims against the church in the United States, Looper contends, hold strong, even after considering objections to this narrative-Bonhoeffer's experience with Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and the possibility that Bonhoeffer, during his time in Tegel Prison, abandoned the theological commitments that undergirded his critique. Bonhoeffer's America concludes that what Bonhoeffer saw in America, the twenty-first-century American church should strive to see for itself.

A focused and comprehensible guide that empowers students to become better readers and, thus, better writers by focusing on the practice of literary theory, the application of literary criticism, and the structuring of literary essays.

Gathers select articles from the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion that not only highlight the journal's wide-ranging and diverse scope, but also advance the field through a careful arrangement of topics with ongoing relevance, all treated with scientific objectivity and the respect warranted by matters of faith.