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Perhaps no declaration incites more theological and moral outrage than a human's claim to be divine. Those who make this claim in ancient Jewish and Christian mythology are typically represented as the most hubristic and dangerous tyrants. Their horrible punishments are predictable and still serve as morality tales in religious communities today. But not all self-deifiers are saddled with pride and fated to fall. Some who claimed divinity stated a simple and direct truth. Though reviled on earth, misunderstood, and even killed, they received vindication and rose to the stars. This book tells the stories of six self-deifiers in their historical, social, and ideological contexts. In the history of interpretation, the initial three figures have been demonized as cosmic rebels: the first human Adam, Lucifer (later identified with Satan), and Yaldabaoth in gnostic mythology. By contrast, the final three have served as positive models for deification and divine favor: Jesus in the gospel of John, Simon of Samaria, and Allogenes in the Nag Hammadi library. In the end, the line separating demonization from deification is dangerously thin, drawn as it is by the unsteady hand of human valuation.
Perhaps no declaration incites more outrage than a human's claim to be God. Those who make this claim in ancient Jewish and Christian mythology are typically either demonized or deified. Yet the line separating demonization from deification is dangerously thin, and drawn by the unsteady hand of human values. Desiring Divinity tells the stories of six self-deifiers in their historical, social, and ideological contexts.
In this groundbreaking study, Gary M. Ciuba examines how four of the South's most probing writers of twentieth-century fiction -- Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, and Walker Percy -- expose the roots of violence in southern culture. Ciuba draws on the paradigm of mimetic violence developed by cultural and literary critic René Girard, who maintains that individual human nature is shaped by the desire to imitate a model. Mimetic desire may lead in turn to rivalry, cruelty, and ultimately community-sanctioned -- and sometimes ritually sanctified -- victimization of those deemed outcasts. Ciuba offers an impressively broad intellectual discussion that gives universal cultural meaning to the southern experience of desire, violence, and divinity with which these four authors wrestled and out of which they wrote. In a comprehensive analysis of Porter's semiautobiographical Miranda stories, Ciuba focuses on the prescribed role of women that Miranda imitates and ultimately escapes. O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away reveals three characters whose scandalous animosity caused by religious rivalry leads to the unbearable stumbling block of violence. McCarthy's protagonist in Child of God, Lester Ballard, appears as the culmination of a long tradition of the sacred violence of southern religion, twisted into his own bloody faith. And Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome brings Ciuba's discussion back to the victim, in Tom Moore's renunciation of a society in which scapegoating threatens to become the foundation of a new social regime. From nostalgia for the old order to visions of a utopian tomorrow, these authors have imagined the interrelationship of desire, antagonism, and religion throughout southern history. Ciuba's insights offer new ways of reading Porter, O'Connor, McCarthy, and Percy as well as their contemporaries who inhabited the same culture of violence -- violence desired, dreaded, denied, and deified.
Malls, stadiums, and universities are actually liturgical structures that influence and shape our thoughts and affections. Humans--as Augustine noted--are "desiring agents," full of longings and passions; in brief, we are what we love. James K. A. Smith focuses on the themes of liturgy and desire in Desiring the Kingdom, the first book in what will be a three-volume set on the theology of culture. He redirects our yearnings to focus on the greatest good: God. Ultimately, Smith seeks to re-vision education through the process and practice of worship. Students of philosophy, theology, worldview, and culture will welcome Desiring the Kingdom, as will those involved in ministry and other interested readers.
The Christian life is built on three seemingly unremarkable practices: reading the Bible, prayer, and fellowship with other believers. However, according to David Mathis, such “habits of grace” are the God-designed channels through which his glorious grace flows—making them life-giving practices for all Christians. Whether it’s hearing God’s voice (the Word), having his ear (prayer), or participating in his body (fellowship), such spiritual rhythms of the Christian life have the power to awaken our souls to God’s glory and stir our hearts for lifelong service in his name. What’s more, these seemingly simple practices grant us access to a host of spiritual blessings that we can only begin to imagine this side of eternity—and the incredible joy that such blessings bring to God’s children today.
In this book, Tyson Putthoff explores the relationship between gods and humans, and between divine nature and human nature, in the Ancient Near East. In this world, gods lived among humans. The two groups shared the world with one another, each playing a special role in maintaining order in the cosmos. Humans also shared aspects of a godlike nature. Even in their natural condition, humans enjoyed a taste of the divine state. Indeed, gods not only lived among humans, but also they lived inside them, taking up residence in the physical body. As such, human nature was actually a composite of humanity and divinity. Putthoff offers new insights into the ancients' understanding of humanity's relationship with the gods, providing a comparative study of this phenomenon from the third millennium BCE to the first century CE.
Over the past forty years, scholarship on John's Gospel has explored its theological vision and literary coherence. Marianne Meye Thompson's scholarship has contributed richly to this field of study. Here, some of today's top scholars advance our understanding of the Fourth Gospel by studying its relationships to other biblical texts.
New from Best-Selling Author John Piper From Genesis to Revelation, the providence of God directs the entire course of redemptive history. Providence is "God's purposeful sovereignty." Its extent reaches down to the flight of electrons, up to the movements of galaxies, and into the heart of man. Its nature is wise and just and good. And its goal is the Christ-exalting glorification of God through the gladness of a redeemed people in a new world. Drawing on a lifetime of theological reflection, biblical study, and practical ministry, pastor and author John Piper leads us on a stunning tour of the sightings of God's providence—from Genesis to Revelation—to discover the allencompassing reality of God's purposeful sovereignty over all of creation and all of history. Piper invites us to experience the profound effects of knowing the God of all-pervasive providence: the intensifying of true worship, the solidifying of wavering conviction, the strengthening of embattled faith, the toughening of joyful courage, and the advance of God's mission in this world.
In this book, John Piper explores the lives of 21 leaders from church history, offering a close look at their perseverance amidst opposition, weakness, and suffering--inspiring readers toward a life of Christ-exalting courage, passion, and joy.