Bøger af James A Fowler

Jim Fowler has cast the entire Christian message into a dramatic form with seven acts. Beginning in the inner sanctum of the loving interactions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the drama procedes to consider the creation of the angelic and human orders, the fall of man, the redemptive and restorative acts of Jesus Christ, spiritual regeneration and eternal life.

Just as every coin has two sides, every topic within Christian thought also has at least two contrasting perspectives. These contrasts form both/and dialectics necessitating a balanced tension of complementarity between the two tenets. Western thinkers often have a difficult time accepting two truths to be equally valid though contradictory in light of Aristotle's rule of logic, "the law of non-contradiction," indicating that two contradictory truths cannot both be true. It is possible and necessary, however, to recognize that the Theo-logic of God's revelation supersedes the natural human logic and wisdom of human thought. At the heart of Christian thought is the duo-form dialectic of the Person of Jesus Christ. Unique to the Christian revelation is the declaration that Jesus is both deity and humanity, God and man, simultaneously. By accepted Aristotelian logic such an assertion would be unacceptable and invalid. The Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451, determined that humanity and deity were conjoined in the hypostatic union of the individual Person of Jesus Christ, and this assertion has been regarded as intrinsic to orthodox Christian faith since that time. In this volume author Jim Fowler seeks to illustrate the dialectic formatting in various categories of Christian thought by utilizing one hundred and thirty dialectic charts.

From the beginning of time mankind has asked such questions as: What is man? Who am I? Why do I exist? How am I supposed to function? These are basic questions that every person must answer in order to provide meaning and purpose in life. Jim Fowler provides an overview of Biblical Theology from an anthropological perspective. In so doing the basic questions asked above are answered in a comprehensive and understandable way.

A commentary on the final book of the New Testament, the Revelation of John. This volume is part of the Christocentric Commentary series published by CIY Publishing. The commentary is subtitled, Jesus Christ - Victor Over Religion, for the antagonist and adversary of the risen Lord Jesus throughout the imagery of Revelation is regarded to be Satan's enterprise of "religion."

Jim Fowler explains that Christianity is not a book-religion, not a belief-system, not morality, not role-playing, not social problem-solving, not an ideological option, and not an ...ism, before concluding with the positive emphasis that Christianity IS Christ.

Sometime after Paul had departed from the cities of Galatia, some other teachers arrived with a modified belief-system that inculcated adherence to the Judaic Law of the old covenant. It is difficult to reconstruct the precise identity of these interlopers, but it is obvious that they were advocating the necessity of religious observances (4:10), as well as male circumcision (5:2; 6:12), and attempting to seduce these new Christians into legalistic old covenant concepts (3:2; 4:21). The author believes that "Galatianism" is pervasive and prevalent in the churches today, as religious legalists have duped Christians with the didactic declarations of "how-to" Christian religion in prescribed procedures, formulas, techniques and duties which allegedly determine the distinguishing marks of a true disciple. The Church today is in dire need of the message of "grace and liberty.

"The Epistle to the Hebrews has long suffered from anonymity. There is anonymity of both author and recipients because these details are not included in the text of the letter. Such anonymity makes the document suspect in the minds of some for it provides no specificity of its intended meaning within a given context." James A. Fowler concludes that the evidence overwhelming points to the traditional explanation of the Apostle Paul writing from Rome to the Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem, Fowler interprets the text of the Epistle accordingly, allowing for an historically based interpretation that provides definitive specificity to the text. The Epistle to the Hebrews "comes alive" in this commentary.

Throughout Christian history Christians have had diverse attitudes about the remembrance and celebration of the advent of Jesus. Even today some Christians find great joy in celebrating Christmas and its remembrance of Jesus' birth, while other Christians reject such celebration, reminding us that the Christians of the first three centuries did not do so. In Christmas: Its History and Meaning, Jim Fowler considers the historical background of Jesus' incarnation, the theological implications of "the Word became flesh," the cultural origins of modern Christmas celebrations, and the personal, spiritual intents of Jesus' birth and life.

Christian teaching on the Trinity has been both confusing and controversial. This is partially due to early Christian thinkers developing their thought on the basis of Greek philosophy rather than on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Jim Fowler commences this study with theologia, the historical processes by which human beings formulate their considerations of the Being of the Christian Triune God. Since humans can only know God to the extent that God has chosen to reveal Himself, the second section of the book deals with oikonomia, the administration of God's work in revealing Himself in the Son, Jesus Christ, and by the Holy Spirit. These objective categories then lead to the subjective personal experience of koinonia, involving fellowship and participation of a Christian individual with the Triune God and with other believers in the Body of Christ, the Church.

The extent and efficacy of the life and work of Jesus Christ is best viewed in the context of a balanced tension of a both/and dialectic between the objective-universal "all" of humanity at large and the subjective-particular wherein "not all" will choose to individually and personally respond to Jesus Christ. Over-emphasis on the subjective-particular that diminishes or denies the objective-universal leads to aberrant extremisms of particularism, either objective particularism or subjective particularism. Over-emphasis on the objective-universal that diminishes or denies the subjective-particular leads to extremisms of universalism, either general universalism or deterministic universalism.