The God Of All Flesh

Biblical faith is passionately and relentlessly material in its emphasis. This claim is rooted in the conviction that the creator God loves the creation and summons creation to be in sync with the will of the creator God. This collection of essays is focussed on the bodily life of the world as it ordered in all of its problematic political and economic forms. The phrase of the title 'all flesh' in the flood narrative of Genesis 9 refers to all living creatures who are in covenant with God - human beings, animals, birds, and fish - as recipients of God's grace, as dependent upon God's generosity, and as destined for praise and obedience to God. The insistence on the materiality of life as the subject of the Bible means that the difficult issues of economics and the demanding questions of politics are front and centre in the text. So the Pentateuch pivots around the Exodus narrative and the emancipation from an unbearable context of abusive labour practices. In a similar manner, the prophets endlessly address such questions of social policy and the wisdom teachers reflect on how to manage the material things of life and social relationships for the well-being of the community. This emphasis, pervasive in these essays, is a powerfulalternative and a strong resistance against all of the contemporary efforts to transcend (escape!) the material into some form of the 'spiritual'. All around us are efforts to find an easier, more harmonious faith. This may be evoked simply because of a desire to shield economic, political advantage from the inescapable critique of biblical faith. Such a temptation is a serious misreading of the Bible and a critical misjudgment about the nature of human existence. Thus the Bible addressed the most urgent issues of our day, and refuses the 'religious temptation' that avoids lived reality where the power of God is a work.

Samuel Butler was son and grandson of the priests. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1858. He got carried away by music and drawing. Torn with his father, in 1859-1864 he lived in New Zealand, bred sheep. He became an ardent devotee of Darwinism, his views spelled out in a study of Life and Habit (1877). Returning to England, engaged in literature and painting, lived a hermit. Traveled to Italy and Sicily. He exhibited paintings in the Royal Academy, wrote about Italian art. His prose was highly appreciated by Forster and Shaw, and later by Joyce, Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Maugham, George Orwell. Extremely frank autobiographical novel "The Way of All Flesh" (The Way of All Flesh) was completed by the author in the 1880s, but at the author's will was not published during his lifetime and was published only in 1903. Six volumes of his notebooks were also published, correspondence. FS Fitzgerald on the back of the title page of this book Butler wrote with his hand: "The most interesting human document of all available".

Offers a fascinating look at Pentecostalism's place in global theology and shows how Christians from other traditions can benefit from recent developments in Pentecostal theology.

A broad, sweeping volume that breaches the walls separating biblical and theological disciplines Biblical scholars and theologians engage an important question: Who is Israel’s God for Christian readers of the Old Testament? For Christians, Scripture is the Old and New Testament bound together in a single legacy. Contributors approach the question from multiple disciplinary vantage points. Essays on both Testaments focus on figural exegesis, critical exegesis, and the value of diachronic understandings of the Old Testament’s compositional history for the sake of a richer synchronic reading. This collection is offered in celebration of the life and work of Christopher R. Seitz. His rich and wide-ranging scholarly efforts have provided scholars and students alike a treasure trove of resources related to this critical question.

An excellent, single-volume Catholic dictionary of the Bible written by respected Catholic Biblical scholar John L. McKenzie S. J. and originally published in 1965. Fr. John L. McKenzie, S.J., (1910-1991) was an acclaimed Catholic Scripture scholar who wrote numerous books and was the first Catholic scholar on the Divinity School faculty. He was at one time president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America and president of the Society of Biblical Literature. His Dictionary of the Bible is the best one-volume orthodox Catholic Bible dictionary available in the English language—it’s an essential reference tool that should be on the shelf of every good Catholic library. A standard reference work, providing concise descriptions of biblical characters, terms, and places, as well as pertinent illustrations and charts, this is “one of the most up-to-date and reliable dictionaries of the Bible in any language.…Magnificent in scholarship, ample in learning, frank and unhesitating in facing all the difficulties and problems, sympathetic with the varieties and diversities of other views” (Religious Education).