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Anthony Thwaite (1930-2021) was one of the most formidable voices in postwar English letters. Deeply esteemed by fellow poets and critics for his original and technically controlled poetry, Thwaite composed in traditional forms, with orderly stanzas, rhyme schemes, and metrical lines that scan. His voice was highly personal, cautiously intimate, and often witty, and he wrote with a gratifying clarity and freedom from abstraction, making him among the most accessible of modern poets. At the Garden's Dark Edge is a collection of a hundred of Thwaite's poems, selected from a span of more than sixty years, exploring his major themes and recurring topics--among them, the consolations of domestic life, the pleasures of language and creativity, and the many humans and other animals in his life. He was inspired by travel and life abroad--most notably Libya, Japan, and the American South--and his poems deeply engage the individuals and cultures he encountered. A lifelong archaeologist, Thwaite also explored the ruins of the past and what we may recover by exploring it. Intriguingly, his work also faces life's most vexing questions from the perspective of a serious Christian faith.This volume contains several poems that have never been reprinted or collected, and one that has never before been published. By making his work more accessible than ever before, At the Garden's Dark Edge aims to introduce Anthony Thwaite to a new generation of readers and preserve his legacy for future generations. A preface by playwright and novelist Michael Frayn accompanies an editor's introduction.

In Openings, award-winning author Michael Hyde provides a fascinating meditation on the ethical dimensions of human communication. With the breadth and depth of learning for which Hyde has become renowned, Openings engages philosophy, science, the arts, theology, and popular culture, all to demonstrate the profound importance of the possibility of openness to the human experience. In every situation, Hyde contends, this posture of conscious openness to the individuals, events, and places that surround us has noticeable effects on the way we--and others--experience the reality of existence. Hyde skillfully illustrates this way of being through abundant references to the larger culture and persuasively shows that by living with intention, and elevating practices such as acknowledgment and confession while rejecting seclusion and neglect, we human beings are enabled to engage fully and fruitfully the world in which we live.

A biblical understanding of redemption requires the sacrificial death of Jesus. In the post-Christian world envisioned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Enlightenment contemporaries, the Christ-centric source of redemption disappears, though the human need for salvation remains. Redemption in Poetry and Philosophy explores how this need for redemption is realized in the post-Christian poetics of William Wordsworth and philosophical imagination of Immanuel Kant. Simon Haines critiques the secular modes of salvation articulated by each figure to illustrate the shortcomings of modern, post-Christian imagination. Redemption in Poetry and Philosophy highlights the ways in which prose allegedly serves as a redemptive agent for nonbelievers in the modern age, but also engenders dangerous notions of self-redemption in contemporary Christians.

G. K. Chesterton is often praised as the "Great Optimist"--God's rotund jester. In this fresh and daring endeavor, Ralph Wood turns a critical eye on Chesterton's corpus to reveal the beef-and-ale believer's darker vision of the world and those who live in it. During an age when the words grace, love, and g ospel, sound more hackneyed than genuine, Wood argues for a recovery of Chesterton's primary contentions: First, that the incarnation of Jesus was necessary reveals a world full not of a righteous creation but of tragedy, terror, and nightmare, and second, that the problem of evil is only compounded by a Christianity that seeks progress, political control, and cultural triumph.Wood's sharp literary critique moves beyond formulaic or overly pious readings to show that, rather than fleeing from the ghoulish horrors of his time, Chesterton located God's mysterious goodness within the existence of evil. Chesterton seeks to reclaim the keen theological voice of this literary authority who wrestled often with the counterclaims of paganism. In doing so, it argues that Christians may have more to learn from the unbelieving world than is often supposed.

God is all-powerful. God is all-knowing. God is ever-present. But is God humble?Though the answer may seem obvious, humility is rarely identified as one of God's attributes. Christianity has traditionally emphasized an array of divine attributes centering around omnipotence. In Divine Humility, Matthew Wilcoxen attempts to supplement traditional study of the godhead by focusing on God's humility. Wilcoxen first examines how to refer properly to God's being. Contending with those who say that human concepts cannot communicate God's being at all, Wilcoxen articulates an account of theological concepts that holds together simultaneously both God's objectivity--that he is "for us"--and God's subjectivity--that he remains yet totally free. Wilcoxen argues that the concept best positioned to achieve this objective is humility, which, in the Christian tradition, has been considered the paragon of virtues and should thus fittingly be attributed to God's character.Wilcoxen next explores divine humility through the work of three different theologians--Augustine, Karl Barth, and Katherine Sonderegger. Augustine, Wilcoxen argues, ascribes humility to God in a tantalizing way, but fails to explain further its doctrinal implications. Karl Barth articulates a more developed doctrine of divine humility by linking God's divine being to his redemptive work. But Barth's account ultimately suffers because it flatly equates humility with obedience and divides the divine will into the separate entities of the Father and the Son. It is the recent work of Katherine Sonderegger that best articulates an account of divine humility that carries forward Augustine's mantle and overcomes the problems in Barth's account. By connecting God's humility to divine energy, Sonderegger shows how God can be near to creation without overwhelming it.Ultimately, Wilcoxen contends that humility's importance as a divine attribute indicates that it should be fully considered in any Christian doctrine of God. Divine Humility serves as an important reminder to Christians that God, as powerful as He is, is also a God of great magnanimity and love.

Argues that while humans must acknowledge the unique and incomparable dimensions of God's creative activity, the biblical theology of creation encourages rather than prohibits human creativity within a language of creation.

How can we know about God? That question increasingly bothered scientists and philosophers in the modern period as they chipped away at previously imagined "certainties." They refused to take on trust the "special revelation" of the Christian Bible, trying instead to argue up to God from the "natural" world. That is the theme of the Gifford Lectures, inaugurated over 130 years ago.This natural theology has usually bracketed out the Bible and Jesus--and with them, usually, the scholars who study them. History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology represents the first Gifford delivered by a New Testament scholar since Rudolf Bultmann in 1955. Against Bultmann's dehistoricized approach, N. T. Wright argues that, since the philosophical and cultural movements that generated the natural theology debates also treated Jesus as a genuine human being--part of the "natural world"--there is no reason the historical Jesus should be off-limits. What would happen if we brought him back into the discussion? What, in particular, might "history" and "eschatology" really mean? And what might that say about "knowledge" itself?This lively and wide-ranging discussion invites us to see Jesus himself in a different light by better acquainting ourselves with the first-century Jewish world. Genuine historical study challenges not only what we thought we knew but how we know it. The crucifixion of the subsequently resurrected Jesus, as solid an event as any in the "natural" world, turns out to meet, in unexpected and suggestive ways, the puzzles of the ultimate questions asked by every culture. At the same time, these events open up vistas of the eschatological promise held out to the entire natural order. The result is a larger vision, both of "natural theology" and of Jesus himself, than either the academy or the church has normally expected.

Why is the broad avenue leading to St. Peter's called the Street of Reconciliation? What does the Via dei Fori Imperiali--where the ancient imperial forums lie--have to do with Mussolini? How does the name Piazza Navona disclose what is hidden under the square? Via Roma tells Rome's secrets one street at a time.In this brilliant guide, Willemijn van Dijk takes readers across time and place as they wander along the roads of the ancient Italian capital. Street by street, fifty of them, van Dijk allows the stones to reveal their origins, their makers, the significance of their names, and the history they continue to echo. Caesars, popes, dictators, mafia dons, generals, philosophers, and artists. Architecture, ideas, romance, food, and intrigue. Rome is the eternal city to which all roads lead, and van Dijk unfolds the city's rich past through those roads. Via Roma is an indispensable book for any and every inquisitive lover, and visitor, of the city along the Tiber.

"I have come not to bring peace, but a sword." These words of Christ echo in our current times. In recent years, a growing number of commentators have decried a lack of civility in public discourse. Considered in isolation this concern is innocent enough, but no call for civility happens in a vacuum, and there is good reason to be suspicious of civility in our current political context. Calls for civility can encourage passivity and blunt prophetic action against injustice; truly heinous policies can be pursued under the guise of civility. And yet civility should not be dismissed outright, especially as presented by its more nuanced defenders--when it is presented as a limited good in a pluralist society.In The End of Civility, Ryan Andrew Newson analyzes the development of the concept of "civility" as we know it in modern discourse and names some of the criteria Christians can use to judge between healthy and toxic appeals to civility. The challenge, Newson contends, is discerning when civility is called for and when its pursuit becomes vicious. Pleas for civility cannot be assessed without considering the context in which they are made. Some appeals to civility merely seek to lessen conflict, even conflict necessary in the struggle for a more just world. But when issued by people struggling for justice on the margins of society, calls for civility can name the types of conflict that might lead to liberation.One must be attentive to what counts as "civil" in the first place and who gets to make that determination. Which bodies are considered civil and "ordered," and which people are under suspicion of being "uncivil" before they ever say a word? For Christians, civility can never be an ultimate good but remains subordinate to the call to follow Christ--in particular, the Christ who is not always "civil" but who calls people to an ethic of resistance to injustice and solidarity with people who are suffering.

The Kaleidoscopic City explores the development of Pentecostalism in Hong Kong between 1907 and 1942. Focusing primarily on Pentecostal missionaries and the Chinese leaders who worked alongside them, Alex R. Mayfield analyzes how changes within the social structures and ideological frameworks of global Pentecostalism dramatically impacted the movement within the colony. As such, Mayfield helps us to better understand both the spread of Pentecostalism in China and the evolution of global Pentecostalism in the first half of the twentieth century. Throughout the book, Mayfield delves into specific facets of Pentecostalism's development in the colony. First, he explores how Pentecostals' changing relationship to the space of Hong Kong reflected both historical happenstance and deep-rooted evangelical narratives. Second, Mayfield traces how the move from faith mission models to denominational models in Hong Kong marked a dramatic shift in Pentecostal aims, identities, and approaches. Third, he examines the ways Pentecostal evangelistic practices remained, for the most part, "un-Pentecostal" in their conformity to evangelical missionary norms. Fourth, Mayfield considers how Pentecostal spirituality gradually evolved to better respond to the competitive religious marketplace of Hong Kong. Finally, he studies the important roles of Chinese and Western Pentecostal women in Hong Kong and how their perceptions and enactments of gender changed as they fulfilled those roles.With each turn of the kaleidoscope a different vision comes into view. In some places, Pentecostalism looked like standard evangelicalism; in others, it was a radical, ecstatic departure. It was urban one moment and rural the next; it was liberating for women but also not; it was a move of the Spirit, and it was careful planning. This unique volume marks a step forward in the attempt to make sense of the paradoxical early Pentecostal movement in China concentrated in the vibrant colonial city of Hong Kong.

Sunni and Shia in Iran, Iraq, or Syria. Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Afrikaners and black churches in South Africa. The rising tide of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia across Europe. Israelis and Palestinians in the Holy Land. The fear of immigrants and those who are different. The surge of nationalism. Violence, religious violence, violence done in the name of religion.Religious violence must be understood--its history, its relationship to sacred texts and communities, and its consequences. Religious violence must also be confronted. Another story must be told, a different story, a counternarrative other than the one that grips the world today.In Confronting Religious Violence, twelve international experts from a variety of theological, philosophical, and scientific fields address the issue of religious violence in today's world. The first part of the book focuses on the historical rise of religious conflict, beginning with the question of whether the New Testament leads to supersessionism, and looks at the growth of anti-Semitism in the later Roman Empire. The second part comprises field-report studies of xenophobia, radicalism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia surrounding the conflicts in the Middle East. The third part reflects on moral, philosophical, legal, and evolutionary influences on religious freedom and how they harm or help the advancement of peace. The final part of the volume turns to theological reflections, discussing monotheism, nationalism, the perpetuation of violence, the role of mercy laws and freedom in combating hate, and practical approaches to dealing with pluralism in theological education.Edited by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Richard Burridge, Confronting Religious Violence contains insights from international experts that form essential reading for politicians, diplomats, business leaders, academics, theologians, church and faith leaders, commentators, and military strategists--anyone concerned with a harmonious future for human life together on this planet.

Religious freedom as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains a perennial concern across the globe. Over the centuries many evangelicals have not enjoyed this right in practice, but they have generally advocated its acceptance, especially to allow the spread of the gospel. Not always, however, have they supported freedom for religious groups besides themselves, and sometimes they have endorsed discrimination against other bodies. The Gospel and Religious Freedom explores the complex relationship in theory and practice between evangelicals and religious freedom, covering periods from the eighteenth century to the present. The volume includes studies of the intellectual lineage of asserting the free exercise of religion, of evangelicals in the United States who endorsed religious liberty in the early twentieth century, and of recent American evangelical political pressure on behalf of freedom of religion at home and abroad. Other contributions address the evangelical defense of the cause in British territories in the age of William Wilberforce, the apparent threat to religious liberty by Roman Catholics throughout the world, an evangelical attempt to restrain Muslim laws in Nigeria, and the persecution of believers by Communists in Eastern Europe and China.Evangelical Christians emerge as preeminently concerned with evangelism, but in other respects they are diverse in their responses to challenges in various global regions. This volume is designed to demonstrate something of the significance of the evangelical movement in the history of the modern world.

How to live a life of wisdom and fulfillment in a far-from-perfect world? Philosopher Menachem Fisch and artist Debra Band together probe Qohelet's inquiry into the value of life "under the sun" in this brilliant work--the first illuminated manuscript of the entire biblical text, the first philosophical analysis tracing the coherent path of this biblical thinker's full argument. Whereas modern readers influenced by the famous declaration "vanity, vanity, all is vanity" from the 1611 King James Bible have commonly understood that Qohelet found only futility and hopelessness in human life, Fisch restores the literal meaning, "vapor," to Qohelet's key word, hevel, with implications that reveal Qohelet's path to wisdom and even serenity. Through linguistic precision and careful unfolding of the book's philosophical argument, Fisch uncovers Qohelet's twin concerns: life is short, and situated as we are, far below the heavens, we can never be assured of comprehending our world, or understanding divine will and intent. He reveals Qohelet's understanding that since we can never fully predict or understand our fortunes or the heritage we leave behind us, the best we can do is to live our lives fully, relating to others attentively, always aware of the limits of human life.In her glowing, immersive, and discursive illuminated paintings of the entire text, Band imagines Qohelet's teachings, employing the grandest of palaces, the Alhambra, as the central metaphor for the beauty and impermanence of human life and accomplishments. She fills its halls and gardens with often surprising imagery, symbolism, and related poetry, creating a visual midrash that reveals the relationship of Qohelet's thought to other biblical texts and Jewish lore and its reverberations across the centuries and cultures of Western civilization, from ancient Israel to today's America. Each illuminated page is complemented by lucid commentary explaining its full meaning. Renowned scholars Ellen F. Davis and Moshe Halbertal crown the work with a penetrating foreword and preface."Illuminated manuscripts have a rich tradition to which this gem adds creatively. Not only does Debra Band's exquisite micrography, calligraphy, and artwork invite us to marinate in and meditate on Qohelet's suggestive composition, Menachem Fisch adds a unique and penetrating philosophical analysis. This work takes us from the ancient world of the Bible through medieval traditions of illumination and into a reading of Qohelet as a harbinger of post-modern thinking."--Peter A. Pettit, Teaching Pastor, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Davenport, Iowa"'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, ' wrote the mysterious author of the biblical Qohelet--Ecclesiastes, in English, from the Greek. 'There is nothing new under the sun.' For generations, the meaning of this haunting outlier text seemed clear and even merciless: in its endless cycling, nothing in the cosmos lasts, so nothing matters. Even if God is real, human life is in the end unreal and can have no real purpose. Resignation is the only valid response: at best, 'living for the moment;' at worst, existential despair. But what if there were something new under the sun? In this fresh approach to Qohelet, philosopher Menachem Fisch and scholar-artist Debra Band radically re-vision a text whose interpretation was 'settled.' Through exciting exposition that ranges from the history of rabbinical thought to analytical philosophy to the pain of personal loss, and illumined by Band's glowing paintings, the authors return us to the original Hebrew word on which Qohelet pivots: hevel. When hevel is not read 'figuratively' but is restored to its literal meaning as 'vapor' or 'mist, ' an unexpected theology is revealed. What if the text were never a meditation on absurdity after all, but instead 'a vivid portrayal of the limits of human knowledge?' These limits can inspire us to return to our deepest human challenge: how should we live? Fisch and Band show how we can take up the question again in fascination--and even more, in hope. An unforgettable book."--Kimberley C. Patton, Professor of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion, Harvard Divinity School

After Paul: The Apostle's Legacy in Early Christianity focuses on the many ways Pauline thought and tradition were reinterpreted, reused, reframed, and reconstructed in the first centuries of Christianity. James W. Aageson contends that it is insufficient simply to focus on Paul or on his legacy in the Greco-Roman world; what is needed is a bifocal look at Paul with the reference points being both how Paul transformed his own thinking and later how Paul and his thought were transformed by others in the church.To speak of Paul's legacy implies more than the reception of his texts, his ideas, or his theology. It also implies more than the interpretive techniques or the references to Paul by early post-Paul writers. It refers to the apostle's wider impact, influence, and sway in the first centuries of the church as well. The questions he addressed, his impulse toward theological reflection and argumentation, and his approach to pastoral and ethical concerns undoubtedly influenced the future course of the Christ movement. Aageson's investigation takes up the issues of memory and metamorphosis, conflict and opposition, authority and control, legacy and empire, the church and the Jews, women and marriage, Paul in place, and church unity to pinpoint interrelationships and interactions among important strands in Paul's thought, persona, and authority as together they interfaced with the changing culture and social life of early Christianity. After Paul is not intended to be a history of the first centuries of Pauline Christianity nor an exhaustive account of everything that pertains to the early development of Paul's legacy. Rather, Aageson endeavors to plot connections, identify patterns, and develop a theoretical context for understanding Paul's legacy in early Christianity. The picture that emerges is one of continuity and discontinuity between Paul and Pauline tradition as the historical Paul became a figure of memory and remembrance, framed and reframed. This specific investigation offers a fresh entry point to understanding the larger question of how the Christian tradition came into its own as a social body and religious movement that could endure even after Paul.

In eleven short years, from 1918 to 1929, Faith Tabernacle Congregation, a small divine healing church in Philadelphia, spread over the Guinea Coast, garnering over 250 branches and nearly 11,000 members without ever sending missionaries from the United States. Communications were made solely through the exchange of literature, letters, money, and the occasional radiogram across the Atlantic. This rapid expanse constituted a great revival: the West African Revival.In The West African Revival, Adam Mohr compiles historical documents from Faith Tabernacle's archive in Philadelphia as well as several other churches that branched from Faith Tabernacle in West Africa (mainly Ghana and Nigeria) and the United States such as the First-Century Gospel Church, the Apostolic Church, the Christ Apostolic Church, and the Church of Pentecost. Writing for an audience of scholars from the fields of African Christianity, Global Christianity, and African Studies, Mohr engages literature from the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919, African Traditional Religion (predominantly anti-witchcraft cults), the relationship of capitalism to Christianity, political and social conflict, and early Pentecostalism in West Africa.Significantly, the West African Revival was the predecessor to Pentecostalism in West Africa-- Ghana and Nigeria particularly. Mohr's findings compel scholars to rethink the historical relationship of African indigenous churches to Pentecostalism in West Africa in addition to the historical relationship between South African Zionism and Nigerian Aladura.

Throughout the Psalms we witness David cry out for deliverance in seasons of anguish and grief, seeking refuge and strength from the Lord. Likewise, Jesus petitioned God in the garden of Gethsemane for strength in a time of dire need. The cries from both David and Jesus to God reflect the forgotten spiritual discipline of lament. Lament is not sorrow without ultimate hope--that is despair. Rather, lament is trust in God despite, and even by way of, the experience of hopelessness.In Awake in Gethsemane Tim Judson envisions the place and meaning of lament for the Christian community through close engagement with the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. After documenting the historical decline and current lack of lament within much of the Western Church, Judson offers a threefold approach to the subject, arguing that a basis for lament is necessarily located in theology, ethics, and liturgy interdependently. This relationship frames the critical work carried out alongside Bonhoeffer, interpreting lament through his Christology, ecclesiology, and biblical exegesis. A constructive lamentology emerges, aimed to facilitate the church's engagement with some critical contemporary issues.Judson presents lament as a faithful aspect of the truly human life which, in and through Christ, is for and with others. Lament is a means by which disciples stay "awake with Christ in Gethsemane" in a wounded world where sin, suffering, and sorrow abide. Such an outlook challenges prevalent ideological horizons and common presuppositions about lament which preclude or distort this crucial spiritual discipline. Hence, Judson opens new imaginative possibilities for construing lament positively and creatively, witnessing to the reality that faithful freedom is embodied perfectly by the lamenting Jesus himself, who, by way of his own lament, is the salvation of the world.

The field of biomedical technology has experienced rapid growth in recent years. New technologies promise to diagnose, treat, and prevent human diseases. Increasingly, however, the ability of these technologies to "enhance" normal human functioning beyond what is necessary to restore or sustain health has raised considerable debate about the proper limits of biotechnology. Whereas the public-facing proponents of bioenhancements tend to come from privileged positions in society, Bioenhancement Technologies and the Vulnerable Body seeks to analyze the nuances of bioenhancement from the perspective of those who are often marginalized in bioethical discussions.Any moral assessment of technology must consider its effects on all people, principally those who have not benefited equally from technological advancements. From the premise that minority perspectives yield new insights into biomedical enhancements, this volume centers the bodies of persons who are vulnerable to health disparities--particularly persons with disabilities and persons of color. Contributors critically examine bioenhancement technologies with two key questions in mind: What does it mean to be human? and What does it mean to be vulnerable? Each chapter uses distinct Christian theological methods and ontological suppositions to reflect on the distinctiveness of human creatureliness in relation to technology and what difference bioenhancement might make for our conceptions of vulnerability. Bioenhancement Technologies and the Vulnerable Body is aimed primarily at Christian scholars and graduate students already conversant in bioethics but will also appeal to contextual theologians and others not well-versed in these debates.

The Scottish poet, author, and Christian minister George MacDonald is widely known as an inspiration for the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Lewis Carroll, among others. Nineteenth century photographs of MacDonald present a forbidding visage, embodying Victorian-era solemnity. Yet behind the facade, as Daniel Gabelman writes, lived a whimsical and fantastical muse. Indeed, MacDonald imbued theological weight through childlike lightheartedness. Gabelman ably reveals in MacDonald's writings a bridge between playfulness and seriousness in the modern imagination. George MacDonald delivers a balanced reading of its subject that ultimately lends a new theological and literary weight to whimsy.

In his collection of poems Black Hosts, Léopold Senghor, a leading figure in the Negritude movement and the first president of Senegal, offers the suffering and death of Africans, rather than that of Christ, as a site for the healing of a fractured and antagonistic world. Drawing from literature, history, political science, anthropology, and theology, David Tonghou Ngong's Senghor's Eucharist investigates the possibilities and perils of Senghor's offer. Ngong argues that, while Senghor might be accused of cheapening African suffering by offering an easy pardon to colonizers and others who have harmed Africans, his work should be situated within the Negritude movement and its intention to revalorize the lives of Africans in a world that often treats African lives as disposable. Indeed, by connecting the suffering of Africans to the central figure of the Christian faith, Jesus Christ, Senghor suggests that at the heart of Western Christianity lies a disturbing betrayal--the refusal of communion, to eat together, as dramatized in the Eucharist. Consequently, if critically engaged, Senghor's poetic challenge may open up not only avenues through which Eucharistic theology may inform African politics but also serve as a way for African political theology to enact a cosmopolitan vision that is sorely needed in our time. In an era of increasing global fragmentation along racial, ethnic, sexual, and other lines, reclaiming Senghor's Eucharistic African vision as found in "Black Hosts" may help us begin to reimagine a new life not only for Africans but also for the rest of humanity. Critically, Senghor urges us to recognize that the life of Africans is necessarily connected to the life of the world--indeed, that Africa itself in all its complexity, tragedy, and triumph is a cruciform vessel through which passes the earth's redemption and reconciliation.

To the modern ear, the concept of cursing sounds otherworldly, mystical, abhorrent. For some the idea may evoke images of terror--images not of God but of the devil. How then are Christians to understand the imprecatory psalms, which are violent and, for many, disturbing prayers for judgment that seem to contravene Christ's command to "love thy enemy"?Drawing together redemptive-historical biblical theology and narrative ethics, Trevor Laurence's Cursing with God assesses the imprecatory psalms and the viability of their performance by the Christian church. Laurence argues that prayerful enactment of the imprecatory psalms is an obligatory exercise of the church's God-given calling as a royal priesthood in God's story. This study evaluates the imprecations within their intertextually constructed narrative world, presenting a biblical theological reading of their petitions as the faithful prayers of the royal-priestly son of God whose vocation is to guard God's temple-kingdom from the forces that would defile it and to subdue the earth as sacred space. Attention to the New Testament's polyvalent interaction with the imprecatory psalms discloses how the New Testament narrates God's work in Christ with reference to the figures and structures of the imprecations.With the resultant biblical theological synthesis as a narrative framework for ethical reflection, Cursing with God culminates with a proposal for faithful Christian cursing that coheres with the church's royal-priestly vocation and inter-advent location in God's narrative and contends that imprecatory performance has the dynamic capacity to stimulate faith, hope, and love while galvanizing the church to work for a more just world. With scholars, students, and trained clergy in view, Cursing with God aims to generate a recovery of the imprecatory psalms in Christian worship and piety.

In Scripture, a number of individuals are raised from the dead prior to Jesus Christ. Whereas these were once interpreted as prefigurations of that climactic event, a series of challenges in the modern period led to the dismissal of the accounts of the widow's son at Nain, Lazarus, and others as irrelevant to a theology of resurrection. For "they would die again," as scholars as diverse as Karl Barth and N. T. Wright have argued. With Refiguring Resurrection, Steven Edward Harris contests this position by drawing on recent literary and theological interpretation of the Bible, as well as the deep wells of premodern exegesis and theology, to demonstrate how Scripture itself views these events as dialectical signs, shadows, or figures of Christ's resurrection--and humanity's own future. Furthermore, Harris develops a comprehensive eschatology in which the figural character of these earlier resurrections is taken into account while considering the four last things of Christ's return, final resurrection, last judgment, and new creation. An eschatology thus emerges that sets a new direction for theology in several areas of recent discussion: inaugurated eschatology, the figural reading of Scripture, puzzling cases regarding resurrection in analytic theology, whether believers can properly be said to "go to heaven" when they die, and the debate between narratival and apocalyptic interpretations of the apostle Paul. Refiguring Resurrection offers a robust, canonically holistic "figural eschatology" that has not been defended in three centuries. By being more faithful to Christian Scripture, this is an approach more theologically promising than any offered in the modern era, including the twentieth century "rediscovery of eschatology."