Theology Study

Many Christians are under the impression that God's grace and his favor are two different things - that while his grace may be a gift, his favor is something we must earn. This misunderstanding has led to destructive teachings about "prosperity" and blessings, and ultimately to lives that feel unfulfilled and inadequate. Pastor Greg Gilbert puts favor back in its rightful place, as God's gift through Jesus Christ. He shows how the favor that Jesus earned through his perfect life and sacrificial death becomes ours the moment we believe.

God's identity is beyond what we could ever fully express in human words. But Scripture uses one particular word to describe the distinctiveness of God's character: the Hebrew word hesed. Hesed is a concept so rich in meaning that it doesn't translate well into any single English word or phrase. Michael Card unpacks the many dimensions of hesed, often expressed as lovingkindness, covenant faithfulness, or steadfast love. He explores how hesed is used in the Old Testament to reveal God's character and how he relates to his people.

World-renowned Jesus scholar Marcus J. Borg shows how we can live passionately as Christians in today's world by practicing the vital elements of Christian faith. For the millions of people who have turned away from many traditional beliefs about God, Jesus, and the Bible, but still long for a relevant, nourishing faith, Borg shows why the Christian life can remain a transforming relationship with God. Emphasizing the critical role of daily practice in living the Christian life, he explores how prayer, worship, Sabbath, pilgrimage, and more can be experienced as authentically life-giving practices.

In 2007, two Israeli news publications, Israel Today and News First Class, reported that the most famous rabbi in Israel's modern history, 108-year-old Yitzhak Kaduri, had left a cryptic death note revealing the name of the long-awaited Messiah. Within a year after the rabbi's death, the note was reported to have been verified as authentic by some of Kaduri's closest followers and then placed on Kaduri's own website (Kaduri.net).

On November 22, 1963, three great men died within a few hours of each other: C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy, and Aldous Huxley. All three believed, in different ways, that death is not the end of human life. Suppose they were right, and suppose they met after death. How might the conversation go? Peter Kreeft imagines their discussion as a part of The Great Conversation that has been going on for centuries. Does human life have meaning? Is it possible to know about life after death? What if one could prove that Jesus was God?

What sort of "person" is God? Is it possible to approach him not as an object of religious reverence, but as the protagonist of the world's greatest book--as a character who possesses all the depths, contradictions, and abiguities of a Hamlet? In this "brilliant, audacious book" ( Chicago Tribune), a former Jesuit marshalls a vast array of learning and knowledge of the Hebrew Bible to illuminate God--and man--with a sense of discovery and wonder.

Increasingly astronomers recognize that if the cosmos had not unfolded exactly as it did, humanity would not, could not, exist. Yet, these researchers - along with countless ordinary folks - resist belief in the biblical creator. Why? They say a loving God would have made a better home for us, one without trouble and tragedy. In Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, Hugh Ross draws from his depth of study in both science and Scripture to explain how the universe's design fulfills several distinct purposes.

A compilation of narratives and histories based on the largely unheard or ignored perspectives of Scientologists themselves, Among the Scientologists draws on six years of interviews, fieldwork, and research conducted among members of the Church of Scientology. This groundbreaking work examines features of the new religion's history, theology, and praxis in ways that move discussion beyond apostate-driven and expose accounts.

In his reflections on God, Jesus, suffering, and liberation, James H. Cone relates the gospel message to the experience of the Black community. But a wider theme of the book is the role that social and historical context plays in framing the questions we address to God as well as the mode of the answers provided.

In his sixth God's Generals volume, Roberts Liardon chronicles some of the great martyrs for the faith - and some of the lesser-known ones. Their inspirational testimony, acts of courage, and even seasons of doubt both encourage and point awareness toward the persecuted church of the 21st century. The audiobook includes profiles on Apostle Paul and Stephen the Faithful (c. 100 AD), martyrs from the 18th, 19th, and 21st centuries, and so many more!

For anyone who feels caught in the tension between the beauty of God’s story and the ugliness of human hypocrisy, Why I Still Believe by apologist and Professor Mary Jo Sharp is the hopeful story of an unlikely convert and an approachable case for believing in God when you want to walk away from Christianity.

The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter and moral rectitude, were at odds. In this analysis, Terry Eagleton makes a compelling argument that the idea of sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Pursuing the complex lineage of sacrifice in a lyrical discourse, Eagleton focuses on the Old and New Testaments, offering a virtuosic analysis of the crucifixion.

In this book, Dr. Kurschner traces the key topics and passages providing compelling biblical evidence that the church will first encounter the Antichrist's great tribulation before Christ returns to rapture his people and judge the world. Jesus warns us, "Remember, I have told you ahead of time." (Matt. 24:25). And Paul cautions us, "Let no one in any way deceive you, for that day will not arrive until the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness [Antichrist] is revealed, the son of destruction" (2 Thess. 2:3).

The central issue of Jesus' death is not the cause, but the meaning - God's meaning. That is what this book is about. John Piper has gathered from the New Testament 50 reasons. Not 50 causes, but 50 purposes - in answer to the most important question that each of us must face: What did God achieve for sinners like us in sending his Son to die?

When we see the fallenness of the world, it is often challenging to understand how sinners can stand before a holy God, but the gospel gives hope―justification that comes through Jesus Christ. This doctrine is essential to the gospel but has sparked countless academic and theological disagreements throughout church history, even contributing to the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century.

Embark on a worldwide journey with renowned scholar of comparative religion, Jacob Needleman, as he gathers together ancient texts and writings of the modern practitioners of essential Christianity. Needleman demonstrates that a more effective, contemplative tradition existed in the early church and continues today in the lives of extraordinary people whose stories he retells in the course of his own personal explorations into the realms of the spirit.

It's almost second nature for Christians to call God Father. Jesus taught his followers as much, although for them it was apparently a surprising practice. The worshiping community of the Old Testament used fatherly images for understanding God's character and actions, but "Father" was not a common way for believers to address God. In Knowing God the Father Through the Old Testament, Christopher Wright explores in depth the images that pervade the biblical narratives, psalms, and prophetic texts of the Old Testament.

Facing sin, suffering, and an uncertain future, it’s easy to become pessimistic, but believers in Christ know the best is yet to come. God promises that one day he will redeem his image bearers and renew the earth. Few books are written on the doctrine of glorification, but its promise of restoration brings urgent hope for Christ followers. In this addition to the Short Studies in Systematic Theology series, Graham A. Cole examines the concept of divine glory as well as God’s plan for redeeming individual believers, the church, and the universe.

An accessible introduction to philosophical theology, this book first explains the scope, relevance, and value of philosophical theology and then shows students how its conceptual tools help us to examine core Christian doctrines: the Trinity, the Incarnation, redemption and the atonement, and resurrection and life after death.

Jack Miles's book is a provocative and revisionary look at the life of Jesus, in which many of the most well-worn truths about Christ are recontextualized and revisited. It does not look for the historical Jesus, but takes the Gospels as the sole source about his life.