Streams in the Wilderness

Miranda Beale analyzes two award-winning novels by Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004) and Home (2008), identifying their major themes as the necessity of balancing parental responsibility and God\u27s loving guidance and redemptive power in raising children

God and Evidence: A Cooperative Approach

This article identifies intellectualism as the view that if we simply think hard enough about our evidence, we get an adequate answer to the question of whether God exists. The article argues against intellectualism, and offers a better alternative involving a kind of volitional evidentialism. If God is redemptive in virtue of seeking divine -human reconciliation, we should expect the evidence for God to be likewise redemptive. In that case, according to the article, the evidence for God would aim to draw the human will toward cooperation with God’s will. Accordingly, the available evidence for God would be volitionally sensitive in that one’s coming to possess it would depend on one’s volitional stance toward its source. The article identifies some implications for divine hiddenness, traditional natural theology, and the view that the evidence for God’s existence is akin to evidence for a scientific hypothesis

Forgiveness and the Law - A Redemptive Opportunity

A discussion of the role of forgiveness in criminal law. The author relates the approach of the Georgia Justice Project, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide justice to indigent criminal defendants and help them become productive citizens

On Baptism and the Spirit: The Ethical Significance of the Marks of the Church

(Excerpt) As the church rounds the close of its second millennium, Christians must recapture the ecclesial and sacramental character of Christian ethics. They must see clearly once more that their ethics belongs to the mystery of the incarnation and the redemptive mission of the church. They must see afresh that their ethics issues directly from their adoption through baptism as sons and daughters of God

The Need for Redemptive Discipline in the Christian School

Classroom management and discipline are key components in determining the success of a school. A safe, positive environment increases the potential for quality learning and complete development on the part of every student. However, the resulting behavior of those disciplined is as varied as the systems or methods employed. The aim of this paper is to provide sufficient rationale to support both the subjective probability that a significant difference exists between the recidivism rates of those who are disciplined redemptively and those disciplined punitively and the necessity to conduct future qualitative and quantitative research to validate that theoretical position

Text and Context: Redemptive Societies in the History of Religions of Modern and Contemporary China

In recent years, scholars of modern and contemporary Chinese religion have turned their attention to the subject of “redemptive societies”, a term coined by Prasenjit Duara in 2001 to refer to groups such as the Yiguandao, the Daoyuan, the Tongshanshe , the Wushanshe, and others which had a major socio-religious impact during the Republican period. Spiritually authoritative or sacred texts play a number of crucial roles within redemptive societies. First and foremost, of course, they record and codify a redemptive society’s beliefs and rituals and are thus key sources for the analysis of these aspects of a specific religious system. As obvious as this may appear, such analyses have not been carried out for many of these texts, which more commonly serve as quarries in which to collect data on the organizational structure or social and political history of a particular group. Research that takes the doctrinal systems encoded in modern redemptive societies’ sacred texts seriously has been fairly rare. We have therefore put together an international team of scholars from Europe, Taiwan, Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Japan to focus on the textual and contextual histories of redemptive societies, with an eye toward giving their past – and their future – the attention they deserve

Redemptive-Historical Approach: Suatu Pendekatan Hermeneutis Injili Yang Kristosentris

Di satu sisi, penekanan modernisme pada rasionalitas dan historisitas telah menghasilkan kristologi yang kritis-objektif. Di sisi lain, pascamodernisme yang berepistemologi pluralis menghasilkan kristologi yang subjektif. Menanggapi dan menjembatani dua sisi persoalan ini, pendekatan hermeneutis redemptive-historical diajukan sebagai pendekatan alternatif injili. Pendekatan yang berpusat pada Kristus sebagai kulminasi sejarah penebusan (seperti yang disaksikan Alkitab) ini mengaitkan tiga horizon yaitu: textual, epochal, dan canonical untuk menginterpretasikan teks Kitab Suci secara holistik. Pendekatan ini menganalisis sintaksis, konteks sastra, konteks sejarah dan genre-nya (textual horizon), mengaitkannya dengan sejarah penebusan (epochal horizon), dan melihatnya dalam terang keutuhan kanon (canonical horizon). Penggabungan ketiga unsur tersebut menekankan dinamika pemenuhan janji Allah dalam kulminasi tersebut. Dengan demikian, pendekatan hermeneutis redemptive historical dapat mengarahkan orang Kristen pembacaan dan penafsiran Alkitab yang kristosentris. Kata-kata kunci: Pendekatan Redemptive-Historical, Epistemologi, Kristologi Modern Kristologi Pascamodern, Hermeneutika Injili Kristosentris On the one hand, the emphasis of modernism on rationality and historicity has produced a critical-objective Christology. On the other hand, post-modernism with a pluralist epistemology produces subjective Christology. Responding to, and bridging the two sides of this problem, the redemptive-historical hermeneutical approach is proposed as an alternative evangelical approach. The Christ-centered approach as the culmination of the history of redemption (as witnessed to in the Bible) links three horizons, namely: textual, epochal, and canonical to interpret the text of the Scriptures holistically. This approach analyzes syntax, literary context, historical context and its genre (textual horizon), links it to the history of redemption (epochal horizon), and sees it in the light of the canon (canonical horizon). The combination of these three elements emphasizes the dynamic fulfillment of God\u27s promises. Thus, the historical redemptive hermeneutical approach can lead Christians to read and interpret the Christocentric Bible. Keywords: Redemptive-Historical Approach, Epistemology, Modernist Christology, Post-modernist Christology, Christ-centered Evangelical Hermeneutic

Redemptive Suffering and Christology in African American Christian Theology

In this paper, based on a presentation delivered at the 2009 Annual Meeting at the Atlanta University Center, Holmes engages the debate over the redemptive nature of suffering in Christianity. Are evil, suffering, and oppression redemptive, thereby bringing us closer to the divine? Or, are suffering and oppression detrimental to the salvific nature of Christ’s liberation? Holmes explores the religious and philosophical literary tradition of redemptive suffering, especially as interpreted in African American religious thought, and shows us that the answers to these questions are complex and multifaceted