A Paradigm Of The Divine

For centuries mankind has been taught to view the divine from an established point of view to the extent that any attempt to explore the Divine from a totally different angle could be regarded as blasphemous. This book attempts to position the reader at an unusual angle to enable him to see the Divine from an unusual perspective. Viewing the Divine from such an unusual perspective, the reader would be able to see the errors in mankind's beliefs about the Divine as well as the hidden identities of such Divine personalities like the Prophet Elijah, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ; including secular personalities like Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. The errors in our beliefs about the Divine are expressed in satire and are meant to elicit humor, particularly for those who falsely claim Christhood. The book also attempts to bring out the common denominators between human and Divine endeavors.

Divine Paradigm highlights the difference a worldview makes when facing life's daily challenges. Part One defines what a worldview is, explains how a worldview provides a paradigm for all of life, and describes current worldviews vying for our embrace and allegiance. Part Two addresses specific topics that are in crisis in our current culture and that confront each of us daily. Each of the 19 topical chapters follows a pattern of identifying and describing the topic, and then presenting a biblical paradigm as a solution or, at the least, a consideration for the topic. Topics range from... vocations to making important decisions, education to dating, morality to marriage, parenting to dealing with illness and grief, and more. An interesting read. I enjoyed reviewing and working on it. Divine Paradigm is erudite in its content and style, yet accessible enough to appeal to a wide audience. The author demonstrates authority in the subject while remaining humble in tone, allowing him to connect with the reader in applying these biblical truths. At first glance, it's a powerful book that successfully combines biblical wisdom with life experience in a cohesive, convincing whole. Well done. -David, professional editor This book is intended for personal growth and is practical for small group use. William Bartlett has served as a parish pastor for 29 years and as the founding executive director of Crean Lutheran High School, Irvine, CA, for nine years. The common denominator of Pastor Bartlett's ministry in both congregation and school has been a love for Jesus Christ and the Bible - both of which reveal God's gift of salvation and His paradigm for life.

"What do you mean, nothing and transcendent? If nothing, what to transcend? The mind has a moment of Zen!" There is an ineffable mystery even in the reality of Nothing. Walking on the guiding thread of undeniable reality, we discover the endless savor of inner peace that reveals to us the Supreme Truth: We are Nothing! The book discusses a spiritual-scientific theory on the origins of the universe, preceding the Big Bang, and provides an answer to the Big Crunch questions. It is also an invitation to play, in the book are left white pages on which the reader can write his own revelations following the exercises proposed by the writer.

This book illuminates the experiential and theocentric dimensions of holiness theology. It acknowledges two strands of thought in current holiness theology--Wesley's Christian perfection and entire sanctification as propagated in the early days of the American Holiness Movement. It honors the contribution of both these strands by identifying the deep harmony in the holiness message of John Wesley and Phineas Bresee. Using insights from Wesley and Bresee, the author develops a paradigm for holiness theology from the standpoint of its transcendent goal. Called into Communion explicates entire sanctification as revelatory and salvific, a necessary threshold experience for complete openness to God. This approach illuminates the rootedness of holiness theology in the triune fellowship of holy love. The communion perspective affirms holiness theology as the underlying theological principle for a missional ecclesiology since participation in God characterizes the church as a doxological fellowship of holy love and determines the church's redemptive action. Seminarians and pastors will find in this book a new perspective on the holiness message. It extends the horizon of reflection to the grace that seeks out and enables human partners for a transformative fellowship of genuine reciprocity with God.

The Symposium is one of Plato’s most accessible dialogues, an engrossing historical document as well as an entertaining literary masterpiece. By uncovering the structural design of the dialogue, Plato’s Dialectic at Play aims at revealing a Plato for whom the dialogical form was not merely ornamentation or philosophical methodology but the essence of philosophical exploration. His dialectic is not only argument; it is also play. Careful analysis of each layer of the text leads cumulatively to a picture of the dialogue’s underlying structure, related to both argument and myth, and shows that a dynamic link exists between Diotima’s higher mysteries and the organization of the dialogue as a whole. On this basis the authors argue that the Symposium, with its positive theory of art contained in the ascent to the Beautiful, may be viewed as a companion piece to the Republic, with its negative critique of the role of art in the context of the Good. Following Nietzsche’s suggestion and applying criteria developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, they further argue for seeing the Symposium as the first novel. The book concludes with a comprehensive reevaluation of the significance of the Symposium and its place in Plato’s thought generally, touching on major issues in Platonic scholarship: the nature of art, the body-soul connection, the problem of identity, the relationship between mythos and logos, Platonic love, and the question of authorial writing and the vanishing signature of the absent Plato himself.

There are forms of knowing that seem either to come from a parting or to require one. Paradigmatically in Genesis, Adam parts from God in order to join in knowledge with his partner, the flesh of his flesh, and the result is a bereft but not unpromising knowledge, looking like a labor of love. Saint Augustine famously--some would say infamously--reads the Genesis paradigm of knowing as a story of original sin, where parting is both damnable and disfiguring and reuniting a matter of incomprehensible grace. Roughly half the essays in this collection engage directly with Augustine's theological animus and follow his thinking into self-division, perversity of will, grief, conversion, and the aspiration for transcendence. The remaining ones, more concerned with grace than with sin, bring an animus more distantly Augustinian to the preemption of forgiveness and the persistence of hell, morality and its limits, sexual piety, strange beauty, and a philosophy that takes in confession. The common pull of all the essays is towards the imperfection in self-knowledge--a place of disfigurement perhaps, but also a nod to transformation.

At once provocative and inspiring, Against the Flow is a work of polemic from an internationally respected writer and thinker on arts education. Peter Abbs argues that contemporary education ignores the aesthetic and ethical as a result of being in thrall to such forces as the market economy and managerial and functional dictates. He identifies the present education system as being inimical to creativity and authentic learning and instead, narrowly focused on the quantitative measuring of results. This absence of a creative and ethical dimension in education has implications for art making in wider society. Art is shown as emerging from, and appealing to, the ironic postmodernist sensibility and mass media-led culture, while being devoid of philosophical significance. This book opens up a fresh and timely debate about the vital power of creativity in modern education. Drawing on examples from modern poetry, literature and visual art, it is an eloquent and passionate argument for the need to develop ethical and aesthetic energies to confront the growing vacuity of contemporary culture.