The Cross The Church And The Conflict

This important work by one of the most significant New Testament scholars of the modern period, now available in English for the first time, explores the significance of Christian apocalyptic for the church in times of conflict and crisis. Engaging with global social and political realities that are still very much with us, Ernst Käsemann offers a theological indictment of global white supremacy, capitalism, and militarism and passionately articulates an apocalyptic theology of liberation. The book includes a foreword by James H. Cone and an introduction by Ry O. Siggelkow.

Conflict abounds in the church of Jesus Christ. Reconciliation within the body, however, will not happen with the right 'method' or 'set of principles.' In Making Peace, readers are challenged to place their church and all of its dissension under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

If church is like a family, it fights like one too! As in any family, conflict in the church family is natural and inevitable. But the way the church family handles its fights can make or break ministry. By using stories and examples of real problems at actual churches, Cosgrove and Hatfield have applied family-systems theory to help us identify the hidden structural boundaries in any group relationship. They show how the dynamics and 'family rules' operating in the informal family-like church system powerfully influence how church members relate to each other.

In this book Ernst Ksemann celebrated initiator of the twentieth-century New Quest of the Historical Jesus examines the problem of the relation between discipleship and faith. / Ksemann first tackles specific passages in the Synoptic Gospels dealing with the summons to discipleship. He makes clear the relevance of the biblical message to human existence even today. In the second half he explores how themes relating to specific contemporary problems fulfill that message. / Here is a theologian who is radically and passionately committed to discipleship of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth and who is not afraid to share that commitment.

Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

T.F. Torrance’s Conflict and Agreement in the Church gathers together his most influential essays and articles on topics relating to ecumenism. Himself involved heavily in the ecumenical movement, he wrote that ‘ours must be the task of learning together again how to confess, like the early Church, faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and God in all its breadth and length and height and depth, and therefore in the overflowing love of God.’ Out of this conviction grew a comprehensive doctrine of the Church ‘in which our differences are lost sight of because they are destroyed from behind by a masterful faith in the Saviour of men.’ In this first volume, Torrance presents a set of essays engaging theologically with different denominations, along with responses to particular problems facing the ecumenical project. In particular, writing after the third world conference on faith and order, he addresses the hopes and barriers it raised to closer ecumenical relations. Throughout, Torrance’s acute awareness of contrasting theological principles establishes a firm basis for further progress, without obscuring the doctrinal and ecclesiological differences that remain.