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This study examines the history of Article VII, tracing its roots to the early beginnings of the Synod, and its redefinition and expansion in the early twentieth century during a period of Americanization and great growth in the Synod. The book also examines the function of Article VII in the life of the Synod through a study of two theologically moderate congregations in conflict with the Synod during the conservative-moderate debate which raged from 1969 to 1981. The key to Article VII is the meaning of the word "inexpedient". Article VII was born of the socio-spiritual turmoil in the Saxon colonies in Missouri as a result of the deposition of Martin Stephan, the leader of the colonies. Stephan's hierarchical ecclesiology, supported by his autocratic and charismatic leadership, was viewed with suspicion by lay leaders in the colony who advocated a congregational polity in which the laity were given the right and the responsibility to judge doctrine and practice. This polity was codified in the synodical constitution. In the early twentieth century, it became necessary to redefine and reemphasize the Synod's decentralized polity. It is here, in the English translation of the German constitution, that the word "inexpedient" is first used. First Lutheran Church and Pacific Hills Lutheran Church, both of Omaha, Nebraska, each entered into conflict with the Synod when it came to believe that the Synod had become a coercive power which imposed doctrine and practice on the congregation which was contrary to the sense of Article VII.
George MacDonald (1824–1905) was writing at a time of Evangelical unease. In a society ravaged by Asiatic cholera, numbed by levels of infant mortality, and fearful of revolution and the toxicity of industry (to name but a few of the many challenges), the “gospel” proclaiming eternal damnation for unbelievers was hardly good news; rather, Christianity was increasingly viewed as the source of bad news and a tool of state oppression. MacDonald agreed: in his view, the church had become a vampire sucking the blood of her children instead of offering them eucharistic life. In contrast, like Christ, MacDonald brings before us a child. Although at first sight a familiar Romantic incarnation, in MacDonald’s theology “the child” becomes an unlikely icon challenging the vampire’s kingdom—a challenge reaching beyond the confines of Evangelicalism, confronting the foundations of much of Western theology. This meticulously-researched study exploring MacDonald’s work—especially his “realist” and fantasy novels—in the light of its Victorian context is of more than historical interest. His incisive critique of church and empire have particular relevance today in light of the growing and troubling alliance between fundamentalist expressions of church and intolerant, right-wing politics. This volume considers MacDonald’s radical solution to religious vampirism; becoming children.
This book ventures to describe Augustine of Hippo's understanding of demons, including the theology, angelology, and anthropology that contextualize it. Demons are, for Augustine as for the Psalmist (95:5 LXX) and the Apostle (1 Cor 10:20), the "gods of the nations." This means that Augustine's demons are best understood neither when they are "spiritualized" as personifications of psychological struggles, nor in terms of materialist contagions that undergird a superstitious moralism. Rather, because the gods of the nations are the paradigm of demonic power and influence over humanity, Augustine sees the Christian's moral struggle against them within broader questions of social bonds, cultural form, popular opinion, philosophical investigation, liturgical movement, and so forth. In a word, Augustine's demons have a religious significance, particularly in its Augustinian sense of bonds and duties between persons, and between persons and that which is divine. Demons are a highly integrated component of his broader theology, rooted in his conception of angels as the ministers of all creation under God, and informed by the doctrine of evil as privation and his understanding of the fall, his thoughts on human embodiment, desire, visions, and the limits of human knowledge, as well as his theology of religious incorporation and sacraments. As false mediators, demons are mediated by false religion, the body of the devil, which Augustine opposes with an appeal to the true mediator, Christ, and the true religion of his body, the church.
This is a study of canon in the Christian tradition. Standard accounts locate the canonical heritage of the church within epistemology. The author explores the consquences of this move, from the Fathers to modern feminist theology.