Showing papers in "Theology in 2019"

Big data and the Facebook scandal: Issues and responses:

Abstract: The recent scandal over the appropriation of users’ data from the Facebook platform serves to surface wider concerns about ‘big data’, relating inter alia to the ways in which personal data are obt...

New directions in evangelical Christianities

Abstract: This article presents an analysis of some contemporary trends and developments in evangelical theologies and movements. This is of importance to members of Christian groups, Christian leaders and a...

Our common cosmos: an exercise in astrotheology:

Abstract: I’m no longer mediocre! In fact, we Homo sapiens are no longer mediocre. Goethe and Carl Sagan and all those naysayers triumphantly claimed that Copernican heliocentrism knocked the Earth out of the centre and left our humble planet in a state of cosmic mediocrity. It has been depressing. But, according to Harvard astrophysicist Howard Smith, ‘humanity is not mediocre’. Smith acknowledges the Anthropic Principle, according to which the Big Bang was so finely tuned that sentient and intelligent life such as we have on Earth was preplanned. Smith then invokes the Misanthropic Principle, according to which most every location in the cosmos is hostile to life, especially intelligent life. Homo sapiens are rare, perhaps unique. ‘Indeed, the evidence to date suggests we could be exceptional – at least as far as we will know for a very long time and, since we live in an aging universe in which galaxies are moving apart at an accelerating rate, perhaps forever.’ I refer to this kind of thinking as astrotheology. Astrotheology, combined with astroethics, provides the meeting point for theologians and astrobiologists. We find astrobiology along with theological reflection on our planet, our solar system and our cosmos in Our Common Cosmos, edited by Zoë Lehmann Imfeld and Andreas Losch, who participated in Princeton’s CTI (Center of Theological Inquiry) programme in astrobiology, co-funded by NASA and the John Templeton Foundation. This collection of essays prepares us for a specific interaction between science and theology, an interaction between questions regarding known life on Earth and unknown mysteries in space. In this book, interaction is prompted by the theologian. The editors tell the reader: ‘Theology can . . . play a part in scientific imagination, providing good (or Theology 2019, Vol. 122(5) 363–367 ! The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0040571X19858951 journals.sagepub.com/home/tjx

A Hebrew Exegesis Of Isaiah 62:1-5 The Restoration Of Zion

Abstract: In this study, spiritual, social-ethic and political background will be scrutinized to assist to understand Isaiah chapter 62 comprehensively Spiritual life of God’s people is declined in the book of Isaiah because of idolatries and nations Hebrew people make idols out of trees and worship pagan wooden idols (40:18-20; 44:9-20) Isaiah employs prophetic images for the covenant-breaking idolatry and worship of other gods by adultery and illicit sexual intercourse It is clear that Isaiah is not exclusively interested in the interpersonal and social relationship structures within Israel He is also concerned with the broader canvas of international politics

The Effect of Church Community Development and Pastoral Services on The Growth of The Congregation of The Bethel Indonesia Church, Family Blessing Surabaya

Abstract: The existence of the church in this world is God's plan and will. Like a plant, which naturally grows and develops; as is the case with the existence of the church, God desires that His church grow and develop both in quality and quantity. There are various factors that influence the growth of the church, including the presence of church members and good pastoral care for the people. This research to describe the influence of church building and pastoral care on the growth of the congregation of the Bethel Indonesia Church “Family Blessing” Surabaya. Apart from that, to find out how much influence each independent variable has on the dependent variable. The approach used in this research is quantitative; where the population which is the object of this research is 400 members of the Bethel Indonesia Church “Family Blessing” Surabaya. The sample is taken from a population of 24% or 96 people who can represent the population with a simple random sampling technique. The data collection technique uses an instrument in the form of a questionnaire to collect data on three variables, namely: (1) fostering church members, (2) pastoral care, and (3) church growth. The results of the study showed: (1) the influence of coaching church members on the growth of the congregation of the Bethel Indonesia Church “Family Blessing” Surabaya was in the medium category. (2) the influence of pastoral care on the growth of the congregation of the Bethel Indonesia Church “Family Blessing” Surabaya in the medium category. And (3) the influence of coaching church members and pastoral care together on the growth of the congregation of the Bethel Indonesia Church “Family Blessing” Surabaya is also in the medium category. Based on the findings in this research, several suggestions were suggested as follows: (1) The formation of church members, with three dimensions, namely Coinonia, Diakonia and Marturia had influence in the medium category. It is recommended that it be maintained, even if the implementation is increased. Because through these three dimensions the resources of the people are included in the ministry. (2) As with the formation of church members, pastoral care also influences the moderate category of church growth, therefore it is recommended that the implementation be increased so that through direct contact with the life of the congregation it will strengthen the spirituality of the church.

Lambeth 2020: Conference or council?:

Abstract: The future of the Anglican Communion – currently riven by opposing ideologies – hangs to a significant extent on the success or failure of the Lambeth Conference that will gather for the fifteenth ...

The Exegesis of The Parent’s Assessment On The Teachers Teaching Quality According to 2 Timothy 2:15-21

Abstract: Parents have the potential to doubt the the teacher’s quality in teaching the students, that is why a barometer or indicators are needed so that the teacher as an educator can be assessed objectively. Ideas built by the experts are needed as the best solution as well as biblical principles to find the right formula. This study uses the exegesis method which is seen through contextual analysis, syntactical analysis, verbal analysis, theological analysis and homiletical analysis. This study found what is meant by parents' assessment on the teachers’ teaching quality according to 2 Timothy 2:15-21 is the act of assessing the intelligence, the potential done by the father or the mother regarding good quality or services in facilitating the activities of learning or training through explanations, questions and answers, discussions, and expressing the opinions guided by competent educators or instructors, who are characterized by: teaching professionally (verse 15), teaching correctly in accordance with learning material (paragraph 15), teaching in accordance with learning objectives (verse 16-19), teaching with the right media (verse 20) and teaching with the right method (verse 21).

F. Scott Spencer (ed.), Mixed Feelings and Vexed Passions: Exploring Emotions in Biblical Literature:

Abstract: of individuals within any liturgical assembly. Cones uses a worked example, arguing for mutuality and participation in the Maundy Thursday foot washing. Burns starts with the image of ‘acts of uniformity’, echoing the English Reformation, and using the image to show the need to allow for variety and individuality within the assembly. Participation is a key word and there is reference to ‘dialogue sermons’. Section 2 focuses on sexual identity and variety within the liturgy. Rachel Mann’s essay speaks of the ‘erasure of difference’, notably in ontological approaches to worship and priesthood: Michael Ramsey and Steven Croft are marshalled as examples. Mann argues for provisional and multiple meanings, using the theologically adapted concept of ‘queerness’. Susannah Cornwall follows this with an impressive theological critique of Elizabeth Stuart’s feminist/queer theology. Cornwall argues for a recovery of the importance of difference. W. Scott Haldeman uses three contrasting models of wedding rite to indicate a sense of ‘queer’ in the liturgy, again looking to the significance of difference. Finally, Frank C. Senn talks of the shift in his views, whereby he officiated at his son’s non-religious same-sex wedding. In Section 3 there is perhaps the most diversity. Kristine Suna-Koro argues for a ‘magpie approach’ to liturgy and uses her own mixed experience as a Latvian American. Bruce T. Morrill offers an interesting analysis of the divine and human within the liturgy, based in his experience in Yukon, and again argues for inclusion. Michael Jagessar’s essay is interrogative in approach and it is difficult to identify the key focus of his argument. Finally, the book turns to mission and liturgy, with an outstanding sermon from Teresa Berger, ‘All are welcome?’ Ed Foley follows with an excellent essay on ‘liturgy and preaching as public theology’, while Miguel A. De La Torre’s closing essay largely focuses on the New Sanctuary Movement, although the implications for the liturgy are not clearly extrapolated. There are some gems here: some tentacles touch their target precisely, but others seem tangential to the focus of the book – as in most collections, some essays trump others. Certain concepts would benefit from further clarification: for example, does liturgical participation require every member of the assembly to speak or be part of the drama in an individualistic sense? Nonetheless, overall, liturgical specialists and theologians focusing on inclusion will be grateful for this volume.

Measuring the Quality of God's Servants According to Acts 6: 3 At the Surabaya City Tabernacle Pentecostal Church

Abstract: Research on the Implementation of the Qualifications of God's Servants According to Acts 6:3 In the Pentecostal Church of Surabaya City Secretariat, wanted to find out the whereabouts of God's servants in the study according to Acts 6:3, especially in the scope of the Pentecostal Church Surabaya City Tabernacle. Specifically chapter 6:3, explains the essence of the solution to the problem, namely the selection of 7 servants of God. Obviously Dr. Luke reveals the criteria of God's servant who can be the solution to the problems that occur. At present, most Churches of God are more concerned with the physical buildings, facilities and infrastructure of the Church rather than thinking about how to get God's servants who can answer the needs of the congregation and the challenges of the times. What is even more concerning is that many of the Churches of God are procuring servants of God who only look at the side that can increase the image and popularity of the Church. So often the Church is.

Laudato Si’: caring beyond limits with a cosmocentric world vision:

Abstract: The aim of this article is to reflect on the necessity of building a new approach to perceive nature from the perspective of a cosmocentric world in the light of the papal document Laudato Si’. Lau...

Immigration law: a theological response:

Abstract: This article presents the fruits of a dialogue between Christian ethics and immigration law found in the author’s recent book God and the Illegal Alien: United States immigration law and a theology...

The Catholic trouble with justification: comments on Scott Hahn’s Romans:

Abstract: Despite the Catholic–Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, justification by faith is a troublesome doctrine to Catholics. Scott Hahn’s Romans is used to illustrate four inade...

Mourning for forgiveness

Abstract: This article proposes a new understanding of unconditional forgiveness as a human moral act, based on brief considerations of Scripture and atonement theology, as well as attention to forgiveness a...

Cult books revisited: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man

Abstract: Teilhard’s The Phenomenon of Man was posthumously published and has been retranslated as The Human Phenomenon. It presents humankind in unity with an evolving world, locates parts in relation to th...

Cult books revisited: Frank Lake’s Clinical Theology:

Abstract: Frank Lake’s Clinical Theology: A Theological and Psychiatric Basis to Clinical Pastoral Care was published in 1966. It is a truly massive tome, consisting of 1,160 pages, a further 21 pages of app...

Timothy Larsen, John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life:

Abstract: given preference. A particular highlight of the volume is R. Ruard Ganzevoort and Marco Derks’ essay ‘Unnatural ties: how adoption queers the family’, in which they show persuasively that adoption is not just a case of assimilation of a child into a monolithic, unchanging wider family, but rather of a redefinition of family per se. As such, they conclude: ‘Adopted children are not the exception. They are prototypical for human family life . . .Adoption is constitutive for the family’ (p. 194). Furthermore, holds co-editor Brian Brock, ‘A child is a link or a door to others . . . not an object to be secured. Receiving, caring for, and ‘‘culture keeping’’ for a child might therefore be seen as one inflection of the human vocation to serve creation’s flourishing’ (p. 35). The book suffers from insufficient copyediting: errors of formatting, spelling and punctuation, missing references, and what seems to be auto-transliteration of some NT Greek script that has rendered it as gobbledegook unfortunately distract from the authors’ moving and stimulating contributions.

Graham Ward, Unimaginable: What We Imagine and What We Can’t:

Abstract: political or economic arrangement. In order to imagine an alternative, Hargaden turns to a series of parables that Jesus tells in the Gospel of Matthew and compares them with contemporary parables from the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger. Parables offer a powerful intervention in the narrative of neoliberal progress because parables are apocalyptic, helping us see the world in a new way altogether; they are revelation. Drawing on Karl Barth’s reading of the parable of the Rich Young Ruler in Mark 10, Hargaden argues that the emphasis is not on ‘sell what you own and give the money to the poor’ (v. 21, NRSV) but on ‘for God all things are possible’ (v. 27). We should not read Jesus’ command as an absolute ethical principle. Instead, we must stand under the judgement and the promise that Jesus renders: for wealthy Christians, it is almost impossible to be saved from our idolatry to Mammon, and yet ‘for God all things are possible’. The logic of this interpretation then leads Hargaden to read the parables of Matthew 25 as tales that push beyond the standard options of endorsing or rebelling against the status quo. Neither ‘compassionate capitalism’ nor ‘communism with a human face’ are what Jesus is about. Both of these turn out to be ways in which humans seek to squirm out from under the judgement of God. Only the grace of God itself can save us from our idolatries. When Jesus’ parables are compared with the parables of neoliberalism, we see more clearly that neoliberalism’s power lies in its ability to deceive us into believing that we can save ourselves. Hargaden’s reading of the parable of the Rich Young Ruler presses him to consider what it looks like for wealthy Christians to stand under the judgement of God without simply embracing their complicity in neoliberalism. In short, the answer is worship. The church at worship is the church that sits under the judgement of the Word of God every week. Thus, worship provides the opportunity for Christians to enter into a time and space that provide an alternative account of reality. This can only happen, Hargaden admits, when the church’s worship refuses to be domesticated by the consumptive tendencies of neoliberalism. Even so, when and where it happens, the people of God learn to see where and how to enact micro-aggressions against neoliberalism’s hegemonic logic. Only then do they confront the problem of their own wealth.

Human transcendence: the possibility of spiritual irredentism:

Abstract: The article is concerned with the project of spiritual irredentism; of reclaiming for humanity that which has been donated to God. It takes its rise from the view, particularly associated with Feue...

Setting the stage: liturgy and theatre:

Abstract: At the outset it is recognized that theatre is diverse and constantly evolving and therefore elusive in definition. Liturgical worship, similarly, presents itself in many forms. The constraints of ...

The Reconstruction Method of Hodayot Manuscripts

Abstract: Hodayot, in Hebrew means thanksgiving Psalms, is a collection of approximately thirty poems that give thanks to God. Hodayot is an important resource for understanding the piety and religious devotion of those who composed and recited them.In reconstructing of the original scroll, uses direct joins method, vertical alignment of material, horizontal alignment of material, and placement of fragments according to the Scribal Hands.The benefits of this reconstruction: Firstly, the accurate placing of adjacent fragments has enabled more portions of meaningful text to be recovered. Secondly, this method allows the original length of the scroll to be estimated as twenty-seven or twenty-eight columns of forty-one to forty-two lines each. The average length of lines is also known. Thirdly, it is now possible to investigate the overall structure of the collection, particularly when the data from the Cave 4 manuscripts is also considered. This group contains all of the compositions identified as Teacher Hymns and it strengthens the argument that they represent a distinct group by a single author.

Difficult texts: ‘I have set my bow in the clouds’ (Genesis 9.13):

Abstract: An analysis of the bow/rainbow in Genesis 9.13.

Thinking socially: why it matters:

Abstract: This article argues that a failure to draw on social and contextual perspectives, in both pastoral care and theological reflection, is behind failures in effective practice and theological reflecti...

Difficult texts: humility, difference and the global Christian in 1 Corinthians 9.20–21:

Abstract: A rigorous interrogation of the past and of personal humility is essential to being a global Christian.

A Wesleyan holiness theology and language world: a demonstration of holiness theology as a religious linguistic characteristic in the light of speech act theory:

Abstract: Holiness as the subject of Wesleyan holiness theology is not only God’s divine language but also an experiential language of humans. Despite this fact, research that considers the religious linguis...

John Swinton and Brian Brock (eds), A Graceful Embrace: Theological Reflections on Adopting Children:

Abstract: policies of short-stay and temporary migration. The main ethical challenge in the post-Brexit age, for both churches and politicians of good intent, is how to change the climate of the debate from one of fear to one of compassion. It is how to reassure those who are genuinely fearful for their livelihoods and identities and to show them that incomers to the country can bring benefits as well as threats and are thus deserving of welcome. The challenge is how to exorcise the spectre of Enoch Powell. To emphasize the humanity of each individual, as this book does, is a good starting point.

Jewish–Christian dialogue:

Abstract: It is impossible to do justice to this weighty and internally diverse book within a short review. Not only does it treat Barth in a variety of ways – whether with respect to his theology of Jews and Judaism, its biographical context, or the ‘Jewish’ character of his theology more broadly – but taking inspiration from Barth, it also sets an agenda for ‘post-supersessionist’ Christian theology and for Jewish–Christian dialogue. In terms of its agenda, most of the Christian authors in this volume broadly inhabit the conceptual space of Pope Paul VI’s 1965 Declaration Nostra Aetate. This dates their contributions, some of them being republications of essays written decades earlier (those by Hans Küng, C. E. B. Cranfield and T. F. Torrance). They agree in rejecting ‘replacement’ theology, according to which the Church replaces Israel as the people of God, instead affirming the eternal place of Israel in the purposes of God (Romans 11.28–29). But by and large they retain an old/new contrast, figuring Judaism as ‘old’ (albeit not as superseded). Cranfield and Torrance continue to work with a ‘hermeneutical Jew’, constructing Jews in the image of Christian scriptural self-understanding. There is little evidence of engagement with Jews in their own self-understanding, or with, say, rabbinic Judaism in its own terms. This allows Cranfield, in his reading of Romans 9—11, to retain caricatures (also present in Barth’s reading) such as ‘Israel’s stubborn perverseness’, which would be all but unacceptable if authored today (it is testimony to the robustness of, and trust within, the dialogue hosted by the conference on which the volume was based that such an essay can be included). George Hunsinger’s essay (originally published in 2015) offers a more nuanced version of what he names ‘soft supersessionism’, building on Barth, but in crucial ways moving beyond him. He loses the negative caricatures but retains the old/new contrast, understanding there to be one covenant in two forms: Judaism representing ‘the old form’ and Christianity ‘the new’ (p. 69). Insofar as God wills the Theology 2019, Vol. 122(4) 289–291 ! The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0040571X19843750 journals.sagepub.com/home/tjx

TheoArtistry: collaborations with Sir James MacMillan and Michael Symmons Roberts:

Abstract: Can the distance between the academic and the artist be overcome within the realm of theology? The TheoArtistry initiative within the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts answers with a...