Blasphemy

Blasphemy PDF

Author: Leonard Williams Levy

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 708

ISBN-13: 9780807845158

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What society considers blasphemy - a verbal assault against the sacred - is a litmus test of the standards it believes to be necessary to preserve unity, order, and morality. Society has always condemned as blasphemy what it regards as an abuse of liberty

For Faith and Freedom

For Faith and Freedom PDF

Author: Charles A. Howe

Publisher: Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9781558963597

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Untangling Polish, Transylvanian and English Unitarianism is a challenge even for the serious student. Charles Howe's lucid account reclaims for modern readers the heroic martyrdom of Michael Servetus, the humane leadership of Faustus Socinus, the eloquent conviction of Francis David and the literary genius of Harriet Martineau.

Calvin's Tormentors

Calvin's Tormentors PDF

Author: Gary W. Jenkins

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1493413260

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This book offers a unique approach to Calvin by introducing the individuals and groups who, through their opposition to Calvin's theology and politics, helped shape the Reformer, his theology, and his historical and religious legacy. Respected church historian Gary Jenkins shows how Calvin had to defend or rethink his theology in light of his tormentors' challenges, giving readers a more nuanced view of Calvin's life and thought. The book highlights the central theological ideas of the Swiss Reformation and introduces figures and movements often excluded from standard texts.

Navigating Right and Wrong

Navigating Right and Wrong PDF

Author: Daniel E. Lee

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 9780742513952

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This concise and readable book uses the question of obligation to the law as a stepping-off point to a more general discussion of deciding what's right and wrong. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Heretics Within

Heretics Within PDF

Author: David Parnham

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 1101

ISBN-13: 1782841334

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When, early in the seventeenth century, the puritan pastor Anthony Wotton started to circulate manuscript statements of his theological revision, he was courting danger. Wotton was at once bold and subtle, a provocation to clerical brethren yet a skilled exponent of their technical disciplines. He addressed matters of fundamental importance: Christ's redemptive suffering and the imputation of justifying righteousness, God's saving grace and the moral law, faith and works, the gracious covenant and the legal covenant. Crucially important, for Wotton, was the interpretation of St. Paul's epistles in relation to the justification of sinners. This book examines Wotton's revisionary writings and the bitter doctrinal controversy that they stimulated, and traces the Wottonian complexion of the theology of John Goodwin, who became, over the course of a period of thirty years, a prolific exponent of unorthodox notions -- perhaps the most provocative of England's learned "heretics" and "blasphemers" in the age of the Long Parliament and the Interregnum. Contemporary responses to Wotton and Goodwin reveal how fixed were the core positions of orthodoxy and how worrisome were the challenges posed to them. Wotton and Goodwin trespassed -- often in the name of John Calvin -- upon some of the borderlands at which unusual uses of technical language became intolerable to the custodians of Calvinist truth. At these points, the contingency of theological language was uncomfortably exposed, and interlocutors discovered how rubbery were the signifiers of doctrine and how unstable the communication of "truth" could be.

Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism

Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism PDF

Author: Jonas Alexis

Publisher: WestBow Press

Published: 2013-01-10

Total Pages: 643

ISBN-13: 1449781608

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Our way must be: never knowingly support lies! Having understood where the lies beginstep back from that gangrenous edge! Let us not glue back the flaking scale of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world. Alexander Solzhenitsyn Enlightenment writer Voltaire was amazed that twelve fishermen, some of them unlettered, from an obscure place in the world called Galilee, challenged an empire through self-denial and patience and eventually established Christianity. He seriously thought that twelve philosophers or intellectuals, himself included, would do the opposite and crush Christianity. Voltaires self-appointed cheerleaders such as Diderot, Helvitius, dHolbach, DAlembert, Lametrie, and Baron Cloots, among others, tried to do just that and wrote volumes of work trying to tear down the basis of Christianity and erect an edifice of their own. Diderot in particular declared, I would sacrifice myself, perhaps, if I could annihilate forever the notion of God. Cloots wrote, We shall see the heavenly royalty condemned by the revolutionary tribunal of victorious Reason. Lametrie produced Man: A Machine, and an entire French encyclopedia was written between 1751 and 1772 by those philosophers because Christianity, to a large degree, had to go. Voltaire would send letters to his disciples and friends saying, crasez linfme. Rousseau, of course, was a disciple of Voltaire and declared that Voltaires work inspired me. The French Revolution failed. Yet like all significant revolutions before and after that period, the French Revolution indirectly had a theological root which was then a categorical and metaphysical rejection of Logos. That theological substratum has jumped from one era to the next and had and still has historical, political, economic, and spiritual ramifications. This book is about the historical and theological struggle of that conflict, which had its inception at the foot of the cross.

Revelation, Redemption, and Response

Revelation, Redemption, and Response PDF

Author: Philip Walker Butin

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0195086007

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In this fresh consideration of Calvin's Christian vision, however, Philip Butin demonstrates Calvin's consistent and pervasive appeal to the Trinity as the basis, pattern, and dynamic of God's relationship with humanity.

Divided by Faith

Divided by Faith PDF

Author: Benjamin J. Kaplan

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-03-30

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 0674264940

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As religious violence flares around the world, we are confronted with an acute dilemma: Can people coexist in peace when their basic beliefs are irreconcilable? Benjamin Kaplan responds by taking us back to early modern Europe, when the issue of religious toleration was no less pressing than it is today. Divided by Faith begins in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, when the unity of western Christendom was shattered, and takes us on a panoramic tour of Europe's religious landscape--and its deep fault lines--over the next three centuries. Kaplan's grand canvas reveals the patterns of conflict and toleration among Christians, Jews, and Muslims across the continent, from the British Isles to Poland. It lays bare the complex realities of day-to-day interactions and calls into question the received wisdom that toleration underwent an evolutionary rise as Europe grew more "enlightened." We are given vivid examples of the improvised arrangements that made peaceful coexistence possible, and shown how common folk contributed to toleration as significantly as did intellectuals and rulers. Bloodshed was prevented not by the high ideals of tolerance and individual rights upheld today, but by the pragmatism, charity, and social ties that continued to bind people divided by faith. Divided by Faith is both history from the bottom up and a much-needed challenge to our belief in the triumph of reason over faith. This compelling story reveals that toleration has taken many guises in the past and suggests that it may well do the same in the future.