My good buddy Michael Pahl (Ph.D Birmingham and Pastor in Canada) has a great little book out called From Resurrection to New Creation: A First Journey in Christian Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010). Here's the blurb and a promo:
What is Christianity really all about? Is it-in its essence-about proper religious rituals, or correct religious beliefs, or acceptable moral behavior? What is at the heart of an authentic Christian faith and life? In From Resurrection to New Creation Michael Pahl provides an introduction to Christian theology which attempts to answer these questions, proposing that the heart of Christianity is not a set of rituals or beliefs or behaviors, but an event-the resurrection of the crucified Jesus from the dead-that prompts a story-the gospel or "good news" of salvation through Jesus. Jesus' resurrection, Pahl claims, is the starting place and the compass in the journey of Christian theology, our journey to understand God, God's work in the world, and how we should live out God's purposes for humanity. Thus, beginning with Jesus' resurrection and using this event as a guide, Pahl surveys the terrain of classic Christian belief and practice. The Trinity, the identity of Jesus, the work of the Holy Spirit, the nature of humanity, Christ's atonement for sin, salvation and the gospel, baptism and the Eucharist, the church and the future state-all these landscapes and more are explored in this concise introductory survey of essential Christian theology.
"In this clear and compelling introduction to Christian theology, Michael Pahl explains the biblical roots and practical significance of the most important Christian convictions. He rightly directs our attention to God's resurrection of the crucified Jesus as the center of Christian faith and practice. Readers will come away both informed and inspired." —Michael J. Gorman St. Mary's Seminary and University
2 comments:
I don't know about that Gorman character, but did you see this one?
"Michael Pahl profoundly grasps what too many Christians miss: that the death and resurrection of Jesus transforms everything. Carefully interpreting these events and their relationship to other areas of Christian faith, From Resurrection to New Creation shows us how the entire story of God, humanity, and the cosmos can only be rightly read in light of Jesus' saving work. This book is remarkable for its breadth of biblical engagement, its incisiveness of theological perception, and its lucid and accessible prose. Those taking a first journey in Christian theology could ask for no better guide."
—Daniel Kirk
Fuller Theological Seminary
New interpretation of the Resurrection:
The first wholly new interpretation for 2000 years of the Gospel and moral teachings of Christ is on the web. Redefining all primary elements including Faith, the Word, Baptism, the Trinity and the Resurrection, this new interpretation questions the validity and origins of all Christian tradition; it overturns all natural law ethics and theory. At stake is the credibility of several thousand years of religious history and moral teaching.
This new teaching has nothing whatsoever to do with any existing religious conception known to history. It is unique in every respect. What science and religion have agreed was not possible, has now become all too inevitable.
Using a synthesis of scriptural material from the Old and New Testaments, the Apocrypha , The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Nag Hammadi Library, and some of the worlds great poetry, it describes and teaches a single moral LAW, a single moral principle, and offers the promise of its own proof; one in which the reality of God responds directly to an act of perfect faith with a individual intervention into the natural world; correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries. Intended to be understood metaphorically, where 'death' is ignorance and 'Life' is knowledge, this experience, personal encounter of transcendent power and moral purpose is the 'Resurrection', and justification for faith. Here is where true morality, called righteousness begins.
Here then is the first ever viable religious conception capable of leading reason, by faith, to observable consequences which can be tested and judged. This new teaching delivers the first ever religious claim of insight into the human condition, that meets the Enlightenment criteria of verifiable and 'extraordinary' evidence based truth embodied in action. For the first time in history, however unexpected, the world must now measure for itself, the reality of a new claim to revealed truth, a moral tenet not of human intellectual origin, offering access by faith, to absolute proof, an objective basis for moral principle and a fully rationally justifiable belief!
This is 'religion' without any of the conventional trappings of tradition. An individual, virtue-ethical conception, independent of all cultural perception in a single moral command, and the single Law finds it's expression of obedience within a new covenant of marriage. It requires no institutional framework or hierarchy, no churches or priest craft, no scholastic theological rational, dogma or doctrine and ‘worship’ requires only conviction, faith and the necessary measure of self discipline to accomplish a new, single, categorical moral imperative and the integrity and fidelity to the new reality.
If confirmed, this will represent a paradigm change in the moral and intellectual potential of human nature itself; untangling the greatest questions of human existence: consciousness, meaning, suffering, free will and evil. And at the same time addressing the most profound problems of our age.
Trials of this new teaching are open to all and under way in many countries. For those individuals who will question their own prejudices, who can imagine outside the historical cultural box, with the moral courage to learn something new, and test this for themselves, to stand against the stream of fashionable thought and spin, an intellectual and moral revolution is already under way, where the 'impossible' becomes inevitable, with the most potent Non Violent Direct Action any human being can take to advance peace, justice, change and progress.
Review copies available free at:
[www].energon.org.uk
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