Jesus and the Subversion of Violence

Jesus and the Subversion of Violence

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  • Author: Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld
  • Publisher: SPCK Publishing
  • ISBN: 9780281060689
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

Asking about violence rather than peace is to come at the New Testament with a specific set of concerns growing out of a public discourse that has raised the issues of violence to new levels of urgency. While violence may not be as central a concern to the writers of the New Testament as is peace, it opens up avenues of analysis and reflection that shed important light on the New Testament. For many readers these may be unaccustomed and even troubling.


Killing Enmity

Killing Enmity

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  • Author: Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld
  • Publisher: Baker Academic
  • ISBN: 1441232087
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 192

Is the New Testament inherently violent? In this book a well-regarded New Testament scholar offers a balanced critical assessment of charges and claims that the Christian scriptures encode, instigate, or justify violence. Thomas Yoder Neufeld provides a useful introduction to the language of violence in current theological discourse and surveys a wide range of key ethical New Testament texts through the lens of violence/nonviolence. He makes the case that, contrary to much scholarly opinion, the New Testament is not in itself inherently violent or supportive of violence; instead, it rejects and overcomes violence. [Published in the UK by SPCK as Jesus and the Subversion of Violence: Wrestling with the New Testament Evidence.]


The Subversion of Christianity

The Subversion of Christianity

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  • Author: Jacques Ellul
  • Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
  • ISBN: 1606089749
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 223

Pointing to the many contradictions between the Bible and the practice of the church, Jacques Ellul asserts in this provocative and stimulating book that what we today call Christianity is actually far removed from the revelation of God. Successive generations have reinterpreted Scripture and modeled it after their own cultures, thus moving society further from the truth of the original gospel. The church also perverted the gospel message, for instead of simply doing away with pagan practice and belief, it reconstituted the sacred, set up its own religious forms, and thus resacralized the world. Ellul develops several areas in which this perversion is most obvious, including the church's emphasis on moralism and its teaching in the political sphere. The heart of the problem, he says, is that we have not accepted the fact that Christianity is a scandal; we attempt to make it acceptable and easy--and thus pervert its true message. Ultimately, however, Ellul remains hopeful. For, in spite of all that has been done to subvert the message of God, the Holy Spirit continues to move in the world. Christianity, writes Ellul, never carries the day decisively against Christ.


Subversive Jesus

Subversive Jesus

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  • Author: Craig Warren Greenfield
  • Publisher: Zondervan
  • ISBN: 031034624X
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 192

When Jesus left the most exclusive gated community in the universe to come live with the people he loved and gave his life for, he turned everything we know and believe about life on its head. Jesus said that he came to bring good news to the poor, but most Western Christians remain disconnected and isolated from the poor and their contexts of injustice. Even our churches echo society’s pressure to isolate ourselves from the margins (e.g. by moving to a better suburb) and instead teach us how to be “nice people” who worship a “nice Jesus” and don’t disrupt the status quo. Convinced that Jesus places love for the poor and the pursuit of justice central, Craig Greenfield has sought to follow in Christ’s footsteps by living among people at the edges of society for the last fourteen years. His quest to follow this Subversive Jesus has taken Craig and his young family from the slums of Asia to inner city Canada and back again. This is the story of how Jesus led them to the margins: initiating the Pirates of Justice flash mobs, sharing their home with detoxing crackheads, welcoming homeless panhandlers and prostitutes to the dinner table, and ultimately sparking a movement to reach the world’s most vulnerable children. This book is a strong and potentially controversial critique of the status quo too often found in our churches, but it offers an inspirational and hopeful vision of another way. While readers may not relocate to a slum, they will certainly come to view their lives and ministry through a fresh lens—reconsidering how they are uniquely called by Jesus to subversively love the poor and break down systems of injustice in their sphere of influence.


The Gospel of Peace in a Violent World

The Gospel of Peace in a Violent World

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  • Author: Shawn Graves
  • Publisher: InterVarsity Press
  • ISBN: 1514001292
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 263

"Blessed are the peacemakers." The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news of peace: peace between God and humanity, peace among humans. And yet it can be difficult to see that peace in our broken, violent world. In this volume, Shawn Graves and Marlena Graves have gathered contributions from theologians, pastors, and practitioners on the importance and implementation of Christian nonviolence in today's world. The vision they cast not only responds to the realities of war and conflict but also offers a broader, deeper understanding of peace that addresses topics such as race, gender, disability, immigration, the environment, food scarcity, and more—a holistic shalom that is evidence of God's presence. May it be so.


How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian

How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian

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  • Author: John Dominic Crossan
  • Publisher: Harper Collins
  • ISBN: 0062203622
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 272

The acclaimed Bible scholar and author of The Historical Jesus and God & Empire—“the greatest New Testament scholar of our generation” (John Shelby Spong) —grapples with Scripture’s two conflicting visions of Jesus and God, one of a loving God, and one of a vengeful God, and explains how Christians can better understand these passages in a way that enriches their faith. Many portions of the New Testament, introduce a compassionate Jesus who turns the other cheek, loves his enemies, and shows grace to all. But the Jesus we find in Revelation and some portions of the Gospels leads an army of angels bent on earthly destruction. Which is the true revelation of the Messiah—and how can both be in the same Bible? How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian explores this question and offers guidance for the faithful conflicted over which version of the Lord to worship. John Dominic Crossan reconciles these contrasting views, revealing how different writers of the books of the Bible not only possessed different visions of God but also different purposes for writing. Often these books are explicitly competing against another, opposing vision of God from the Bible itself. Crossan explains how to navigate this debate and offers what he believes is the best central thread to what the Bible is all about. He challenges Christians to fully participate in this dialogue, thereby shaping their faith by reading deeply, reflectively, and in community with others who share their uncertainty. Only then, he advises, will Christians be able to read and understand the Bible without losing their faith.


Divine Violence and the Christus Victor Atonement Model

Divine Violence and the Christus Victor Atonement Model

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  • Author: Martyn J. Smith
  • Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
  • ISBN: 1498239471
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 262

In this book Martyn Smith addresses the issue of God's violence and refuses to shy away from difficult and controversial conclusions. Through his wide-ranging and measured study he reflects upon God and violence in both biblical and theological contexts, assessing the implications of divine violence for understanding and engaging with God's nature and character. Jesus too, through his dramatic actions in the temple, is presented as one capable of exhibiting a surprising degree of violent behavior in the furtherance of God's purposes. Through a reappropriation of the ancient Christus Victor model of atonement, with its dramatic representation of God's war with the Satan, Smith proposes that Christian understanding of both God and salvation has to return to its long-neglected past in order to move forward, both biblically and dynamically, into the future.


Violence

Violence

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  • Author: Jacques Ellul
  • Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
  • ISBN: 1610977963
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 193

On an issue that has created considerable uncertainty and uneasiness among many Christians, Jacques Ellul brings to bear the bold analysis and the brilliant clarity of argument that are associated with his distinguished studies on contemporary social questions. After surveying historically the various approaches of Christians to violence, Ellul examines in depth current statements by Christians condoning or accepting violence. He then contrasts, with penetrating insight, the dynamics of violence and the clear demands of the Gospel. In a concluding chapter he eloquently sets forth the truly distinctive nature of Christian radicalism and the violence of love.Of comfort to neither Right nor Left as such, this Gospel-centered study of the complex issue of violence today--deftly translated by Cecilia Gaul Kings--is a forceful, original contribution to the ongoing discussion of the issue in church and society.


Jesus and the Violence of Scripture

Jesus and the Violence of Scripture

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  • Author: John Dominic Crossan
  • Publisher: SPCK
  • ISBN: 0281074216
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 286

This brave and provocative book grapples with Scripture’s two conflicting visions of Jesus and God – one loving and gracious, and the other punitive and vengeful – and explains how readers can better understand these images in a way that enriches their faith. Many portions of the New Testament introduce a compassionate Jesus who turns the other cheek, loves his enemies, and shows grace to all. But the Jesus we find in Revelation and some portions of the Gospels leads an army of angels bent on earthly destruction. Which is the true revelation of the Messiah—and how can both be in the same Bible? Jesus and the Violence of Scriptureexplores this question and offers guidance for all who are confused about which version of the Lord to worship. In doing so the author demonstrates that writers of different books of the Bible not only possessed different visions of God but also different purposes for writing, and that for Christians the only God worthy of our worship is the one revealed through the words and action of the historical Jesus.


Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric?

Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric?

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  • Author: William J. Webb
  • Publisher: InterVarsity Press
  • ISBN: 0830870733
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 412

Word Guild Award Shortlist — Biblical Studies Word Guild Best Book Cover Award Association of University Presses Design Show — Book, Jacket, and Covers Christians cannot ignore the intersection of religion and violence, whether contemporary or ancient. In our own Scriptures, war texts that appear to approve of genocidal killings and war rape—forcibly taking female captives for wives—raise hard questions about biblical ethics and the character of God. Have we missed something in our traditional readings? In Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? William Webb and Gordon Oeste address the ethics of reading biblical war texts today. Theirs is a biblical-theological reading with an eye to hermeneutical, ethical, canonical, and ancient cultural contexts. Identifying a spectrum of views on war texts ranging from "no ethical problems" to "utterly repulsive," the authors pursue a middle path using a hermeneutic of incremental, redemptive-movement ethics. Instead of trying to force traditional Christian answers to fit contemporary questions, they argue, we must properly connect the traditional answers with the biblical storyline questions that were on the minds of Scripture's original readers. And there are indeed better answers to the ethical problems in the war texts. Woven throughout the Old Testament, a collection of antiwar and subversive war texts suggest that Yahweh's involvement in Israel's warfare required some degree of accommodation to people living in a fallen world. Yet, God's redemptive influence even within the ugliness of ancient warfare shouts loudly about a future hope—a final battle fought with complete and untainted justice by Christ.