New Titles Tuesday, April 5

Here is a selection of titles added to the collection in the past week.

 Afflicting the comfortable, comforting the afflicted: a guide to law and gospel preaching /Glenn L. Monson ; foreword by Craig Alan Satterlee. A classic theology and a contemporary school of preaching come together in this new work.  Monson has taken the substantial concerns of Law and Gospel theologians and combined them with the insights of the New Homiletic School to come up with a guide to sermon development that helps any preacher deliver Law and Gospel sermons in a contemporary way. The author leads the reader through a step-by-step process in thinking about Law and Gospel preaching from exegesis through sermon design to manuscript writing. Multiple examples from assigned lectionary texts are included, and several sermons are analyzed in detail. This book will be an invaluable friend of any lectionary preacher for whom Sunday is always coming and who longs to preach classic Law and Gospel sermons in a new and fresh way.

 Alexander or Jesus?: the origin of the title Son of God /W.E.L. Broad ; foreword by William R. Telford. This book explores the reasons why such a comparatively obscure person should be called’Son of God’soon after his death. William Broad sets stories of Jesus against the backdrop of the religions of the time and shows how St. Paul in Greece chose the mythical title’son of a god’for Jesus as being one that would attract the attention of his Gentile hearers and reveal his great significance. However, Broad notes that Jesus was not the first historical person to have been called a son of god. Alexander the Great had been so titled 350 years before. Alexander or Jesus? explores stories of this remarkable king and shows that these tales significantly affected the way the Gospels declared the Divine Sonship of Jesus. It further reveals that Jesus’birth and his epiphany are not the unique events that many believe.

 Biblical narrative learning: teaching adequate faith in the Gospel of John /Tung Chiew Ha. Biblical narrative learning is a non-critical educational approach for Christian communities with diverse learning backgrounds, involving three sets of movement: inquire and invent, interpret and imagine-inspire, and imitate and impart. It is grounded in humankind’s universal capacity to teach and learn through stories and built on practices in narrative learning, along with biblical narratives. The Gospel of John provides a model for this interpretive process that continues the teaching of living in a loving relationship with God and one another.

 Christian Zionism: navigating the Jewish-Christian border /Faydra L. Shapiro ; foreword by Brad H. Young. Christian Zionism has received no small amount of criticism from observers who take issue with the movement’s pro-Israel politics or its theology. What if we listened seriously to what Christian Zionists and Jewish partners said about Jews, Judaism, and Israel?

 Church planting in Europe: connecting to society, learning from experience /edited by Evert Van de Poll, Joanne Appleton. Church Planting in Europe helps to answer the question of how churches can become more relevant to the societies in which they exist. From biblical and missiological reflections to case studies and practical examples, the book gives insights into many of the key issues that church planters and those concerned with ‘missionary’ renewal of existing churches are grappling with. Special attention is paid to the sociocultural and religious characteristics of Europe, which is marked by secularization, new forms of spirituality, and a unique Christian heritage. The contributors represent a wide variety of backgrounds and contexts across Europe and this is reflected in the breadth of topics covered.

 Did Jesus speak Greek?: the emerging evidence of Greek dominance in first-century Palestine  /by G. Scott Gleaves ; foreword by Rodney Eugene Cloud. Traditionally, the authenticity of Jesus’s teaching has been linked to the recovery of the original Aramaic that presumably underlies the Gospels. The Aramaic Hypothesis infers that the Gospels represent theological expansions, religious propaganda, or blatant distortions of Jesus’s teachings. Consequently, uncovering the original Aramaic of Jesus’s teachings will separate the historical Jesus from the mythical personality. G. Scott Gleaves, in Did Jesus Speak Greek?, contends that the Aramaic Hypothesis is inadequate as an exclusive criterion of historical Jesus studies and does not aptly take into consideration the multilingual culture of first-century Palestine. Evidence from archaeological, literary, and biblical data demonstrates Greek linguistic dominance in Roman Palestine during the first century CE. Such preponderance of evidence leads not only to the conclusion that Jesus and his disciples spoke Greek but also to the recognition that the Greek New Testament generally and the Gospel of Matthew in particular were original compositions and not translations of underlying Aramaic sources.

 Evangelism and social concern in the theology of Carl F.H. Henry /Jerry M. Ireland. Henry’s regenerational model of evangelism and social concern stands on the shoulders of Augustine and many others, and offers what may be the best way forward. This book explores Henry’s thoughts on this subject and sets him in dialogue with numerous others who have written on these topics. Thus it will prove a valuable resource for all interested in this topic.

 Expressing theology: a guide to writing theology that readers want to read /Jonathan C. Roach, Gricel Dominguez. Expressing Theology challenges writers of theology to craft engaging, compelling, and beautiful prose that grabs readers’ attention and makes reading a pleasure. Expressing Theology provides writers of theology–academics, aspiring, and published–with perspectives and writing techniques to write theology that readers want to read.

 From suffering to solidarity: the historical seeds of Mennonite interreligious, interethnic, and international peacebuilding /edited by Andrew P. Klager, foreword by Marc Gopin. TWU Author.  From Suffering to Solidarity explores the historical seeds of Mennonite peacebuilding approaches and their application in violent conflicts around the world. The authors in this book first draw out the experiences of Anabaptists and Mennonites from the sixteenth-century origins through to the present that have shaped their approaches to conflict transformation and inspired new generations of Mennonites to engage in relief, development, and peacebuilding to alleviate the suffering of others whose experiences today reflect those of their ancestors.

 In defense of the eschaton: essays in Reformed apologetics /William D. Dennison ; edited by James Douglas Baird ; foreword by Lane G. Tipton ; preface by Mark A. Garcia. An anthology of Dennison’s essays on the Reformed apologetics of Cornelius Van Til. Written over the course of Dennison’s many years of study, the chapters in this volume investigate Van Til’s theory of knowledge, revelation, common grace, antithesis, Christian education, and the history of ideas, as well as examine key Scriptures to identify the redemptive-historical structure of a biblical apologetic method. In the end, Dennison finds that Reformed apologetics must take eschatology seriously.

 Indigenous peoples in Canada /Darion Boyington, John Roberts. This is a concise overview of Indigenous Peoples from pre-contact to the 21st century. The book is intended for any overview course in Native Studies. It examines key topics such as treaty processes, land claims, and contemporary socio-economic issues and features an emphasis on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report and its calls to action.

 Is the atheist my neighbor?: rethinking Christian attitudes toward atheism /Randal Rauser. For the last three centuries Christians have widely assumed that atheism is always a result of a rebellious, sinful rejection of God. According to this view, at some level atheists really do know there is a God, but they sinfully suppress this knowledge because they want to live independently of God. But what if some folks are atheists not because they’re sinful and foolish but because they’ve thought hard, they’ve looked carefully, and they have simply not found God?

 Jesus and jihad: reclaiming the prophetic heart of Christianity and Islam /Robert F. Shedinger. Jesus and Jihad argues that in early Muslim sources jihad stood for the struggle to transform a violent and unjust pre-Islamic world.

 Listening to the neighbor: from a missional perspective of the other /Byungohk Lee. Lee contends the church has to embrace the dialogical dimension in missional terms because the triune God is the subject of mission. In contrast, for many churches in Asia, including Korea, mission has generally tended to be practiced in a monological, rather than dialogical, manner. The neighbor has not been regarded as a conversational partner of the church, but only as the object for its mission. In Listening to the Neighbor, Lee shows that some local churches have participated in God’s mission by listening to their neighbors. He argues that listening is not a technique, but a multifaceted learning process in missional terms. .

 Orange proverbs and purple parables: the enterprise of reading the holy scriptures as scripture /W.R. Brookman. Orange Proverbs & Purple Parables is a book about reading the Bible. This book explores wide-ranging approaches and considerations germane to the enterprise of reading. It weaves through a labyrinth of characters and disciplines as it explores this enterprise of reading the Holy Scriptures. The likes of Chomsky, Augustine, neuroscience, Barth, linguistics, theological interpretation, Origen, metaphor theory, devotional reading, and Jerome, along with many more people and fields of inquiry, are all garnered to encourage the reader in an exploration of the enterprise of reading the Holy Scriptures.

 Salvation for the sinned-against: Han and Schillebeeckx in intercultural dialogue /Kevin P. Considine ; foreword by Robert J. Schreiter. Salvation for the Sinned-Against attempts to suggest a renewed understanding of God’s salvation for the victims of sin within the intercultural and globalizing context of the twenty-first century. It offers a thorough treatment of Schillebeeckx, intercultural hermeneutics, and the Korean concept of han, and brings them into dialogue with the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et spes. This book is the first in-depth study of han from a Roman Catholic perspective and the first to attempt to integrate han into Roman Catholic theology in order to begin to envision salvation for the sinned-against creature.

 Shadow of Oz: theistic evolution and the absent God /Wayne D. Rossiter. In the century and a half since Darwin’s Origin of Species, there has been an ongoing–and often vociferously argued–conversation about our species’ place in creation and its relationship to a Creator. A growing number of academic professionals see no conflict between Darwin’s view of life and the Christian faith. Dubbed theistic evolution, this brand of Christianity holds that God has used processes like Darwinian evolution to achieve his creation. But is that true? Can Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection acting on chance mutations be reconciled with God’s intentionality?

 Shaken faith: what you don’t know (and need to know) about faith crises and how they affect spiritual growth /Sanejo I. Leonard ; foreword by Gary Black Jr. This book takes an honest and in-depth look at faith crises experiences from interviews with sixty people, and five biblical narratives, addressing head-on the issues of doubt and times of questioning one’s faith. Shaken Faith outlines a biblical perspective and a fresh way of viewing doubt, the questions Christians experience in their faith, and faith crisis moments. In order for faith to be real, it must be challenged and shaken, so that the depth of the faith can be rooted in an unshakable God.

 Soul mentoring: discover the ancient art of caring for others /David Robinson. Soul Mentoring draws upon the wisdom of Gregory the Great (540-604) from his Pastoral Care, one of the most widely read books on mentoring from the ancient world. Gregory has ancient wisdom applicable to mentoring in our time, both for mentors and mentees, friends and family, coaches and teachers, clergy and spiritual directors, among other people looking for guidance in the ancient art of caring for souls.

 That he might be revealed: water imagery and the identity of Jesus in the gospel of John /Rhonda G. Crutcher. Water is a core symbol in the Gospel of John and is particularly prevalent in passages that involve the revelation of Jesus’s identity. Using Richard Bauckham’s category of a Christology of Divine Identity, That He Might Be Revealed explores the way the Fourth Evangelist plays on the memory of the major water events of Israel’s history and mythology in order to incorporate Jesus into the divine identity.

 The Brancacci Chapel, Florence /Andrew Ladis.  Book features the fresco paintings on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel in Florence Italy. Painted by Masaccio in the early Renaissance period. Over 60 color illustrations of the fresco paintings and details of the works. Includes notes and bibliography.

 The Lord’s prayer: confessing the new covenant /J. Warren Smith. The Lord’s Prayer: Confessing the New Covenant is not a Bible study in the traditional sense. It challenges us to think about the Lord’s Prayer anew by understanding it as a confession of the New Covenant that Christ makes with us when we are made children of God in baptism. In hearing these familiar words afresh we learn to remember our baptismal covenant so that we might live more fully into that new relationship with God and with one another.

  The only sacrament left to us: the threefold Word of God in the theology and ecclesiology of Karl Barth /Thomas Christian Currie. The Only Sacrament Left to Us recovers Barth’s doctrine of the threefold Word of God and shows that it is at the heart of Barth’s ecclesiological commitments, and that Barth offers a distinct and robust doctrine of the church worthy to be carried forward into the twenty-first-century debates about the church’s place in God’s economy. The book explores the central role of the threefold Word of God in Barth’s theology of the church, explains its place in Barth’s later doctrine of reconciliation, and seeks to engage the field of Barth studies with contemporary ecclesiological questions.

 The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church /edited by Andrew Louth. Contains over 6,500 cross-referenced A-Z entries, and offers unrivalled coverage of all aspects of this vast and often complex subject. In this new edition, great efforts have been made to increase and strengthen coverage of on Christianity and the history of churches in areas beyond Western Europe. In particular, there have been extensive additions with regards to the Christian Church in Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Australasia. Significant updates have also been included on topics such as liturgy, Canon Law, recent international developments, non-Anglican missionary activity, and the increasingly important area of moral and pastoral theology, among many others.

 The trinitarian dance: how the Triune God develops transformational leaders /Sharon Tam ; foreword by Leighton Ford. The Trinitarian Dance presents a model of leadership development based on the Holy Trinity. Part one analyzes the present state of the cultural and ecclesiastical situation in Canada, identifying specific trends and aspects relating to the need for development of effective leadership in the church. In Part two,  a theology of trinitarian leadership is developed based on the dynamic of perichoresis, with the motif of a dance used to present a paradigm of transformational leadership. Part three offers church-based strategies for leadership development, concluding with a creative application of the doxological formula that captures the thrust of the entire book and leads it to a finale that includes a benediction of hope for the church through this leadership model.

 Why, God?: suffering through cancer into faith /Margaret Carlisle Cupit, with her grandfahter, Edward Hugh Harrison. As a  nineteen-year-old chemistry major at Cupit is selected to spend the summer after her freshman year doing research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Instead, she finds herself a patient there, fighting a life-threatening form of pediatric cancer and suffering through a year of aggressive chemotherapy and surgery. Refusing to believe what many tell her–that the cancer was all part of’God’s plan’–she finds solace in journaling and begins a discussion with her grandfather, a university professor specializing in philosophy of religion. Through her experiences and writing about them, Cupit discovers that she may be a person of faith after all–just not in the way she expected. Her grandfather, Harrison has selected and arranged the journal entries and their faith conversation and has commented on them in order to bring out the spiritual dimensions of her experience. The coauthors hope the book will help other sufferers recognize the presence of a loving God in the midst of pain, uncertainty and death.

 Women and worship at Corinth: Paul’s rhetorical arguments in 1 Corinthians /Lucy Peppiatt ; foreword by Douglas Campbell. Peppiatt offers a reading of 1 Corinthians 11-14 in which she proposes that Paul is in conversation with the Corinthian male leadership regarding their domineering, superior, and selfish practices, including coercing the women to wear head coverings, lording it over the ”have-nots” at the Lord’s Supper, speaking in tongues all at once, and ordering married women to keep quiet in church. Through careful exegesis and theological comment this reading not only brings internal coherence to the text, but paints a picture of the apostle gripped by a vision for a new humanity ”in the Lord, ” resulting in his refusal to compromise with the traditional views of his own society. Instead, as those who should identify with the crucified Christ, he exhorts the Corinthians to make ”love” their aim, and thus to restore dignity and honor to women, the outsider, and the poor.

 Women in ministry: questions and answers in the exploration of a calling /Shannon Nicole Smythe ; foreword by Robert W. Wall. In many Christian congregations and college classrooms, debates over the ordination and ministry of women create hurtful and debilitating divisions among believers. This new book by Shannon Smythe leans into those inhospitable places by inviting readers into a process of discernment that intends to lead them, and women especially, into a fresh awareness of their sacred calling to a ministry of the gospel. Smythe presents a carefully curated collection of thoughtful answers to common questions asked by those investigating this topic, inviting them to share in the communal practice of studying scripture together in dialogue with the church’s theological traditions and the testimonies of faithful women.