Honoring the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Christopher Elwood offers an insightful and accessible overview of John Calvin's theological ideas within their historical context. A Brief Introduction to John Calvin discusses the trials and tribulations Calvin encountered as he ministered and taught in Geneva, paying special attention to the theological controversies associated with the Trinity and predestination. In this concise introduction, Elwood explores the development of Calvinism and its influence in today's world.
In this concise introduction to Calvin's life and thought, Christopher Elwood offers an insightful and accessible overview of Calvin's key teachings within his historical context. The trials and travails Calvin encountered as he ministered and taught in Geneva are discussed, with special attention given to theological controversies associated with the Trinity and predestination. Elwood indicates the ways that Calvinism developed and its influence in today's world. Illustrations are interspersed throughout the text and humorously illuminate key points providing an engaging introduction to this important theologian. Written by experts but designed for the novice, the Armchair series provides accurate, concise, and witty overviews of some of the most profound moments and theologians in Christian history. These books are essential supplements for first-time encounters with primary texts, lucid refreshers for scholars and clergy, and enjoyable reads for the theologically curious.
By focusing on the new understandings of signs and symbols purveyed in Protestant writing on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, Elwood shows how adherants to the Reformation movement came to interpret the nature of power and the relation between society and the sacred in ways that departed radically from the views of their Catholic neighbors.
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This artistic work takes the reader into the depths of the author’s soul as he reveals his most vulnerable work. The words written within these pages speak universally to all as it reaches into the most intimate parts of the human existence. Filled with passion, loss, fear, and encouragement, the author’s thoughts and emotions are spread across these pages for your reflection, learning, and enjoyment.
Growing up, I had always had a strange fascination of the idea that a spiritual realm could exist. Every time ghost programs came on television, I'd be watching. Although I couldn't believe in God, Satan or anything else that wasn't tangible. I needed physical proof to comprehend the existence of everything. In high school I began going on paranormal investigations weekly. In my eleventh grade English class I received an Opposing Viewpoints project. The subject I chose was Paranormal Phenomenon. Instead of using the encyclopedias to research my subject like the rest of my class did, I went straight to the real source. The following week I found a Ouija Board, video camera, and other tools to carry out my own paranormal investigation. When I got more info from spirits than I had intended to, I began feeling the presence of something staring at me. The last night of the investigation, I got home late at night. When I stepped into the doorway something occurred that took everyone in the house complete surprise.
Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the dialogue of religious skepticism and faith shaped struggles over the place of religion in politics. It produced different visions of knowledge and education in an "enlightened" society. It fueled social reform in an era of economic transformation, territorial expansion, and social change. Ultimately, as Christopher Grasso argues in this definitive work, it molded the making and eventual unmaking of American nationalism. Religious skepticism has been rendered nearly invisible in American religious history, which often stresses the evangelicalism of the era or the "secularization" said to be happening behind people's backs, or assumes that skepticism was for intellectuals and ordinary people who stayed away from church were merely indifferent. Certainly the efforts of vocal "infidels" or "freethinkers" were dwarfed by the legions conducting religious revivals, creating missions and moral reform societies, distributing Bibles and Christian tracts, and building churches across the land. Even if few Americans publicly challenged Christian truth claims, many more quietly doubted, and religious skepticism touched--and in some cases transformed--many individual lives. Commentators considered religious doubt to be a persistent problem, because they believed that skeptical challenges to the grounds of faith--the Bible, the church, and personal experience--threatened the foundations of American society. Skepticism and American Faith examines the ways that Americans--ministers, merchants, and mystics; physicians, schoolteachers, and feminists; self-help writers, slaveholders, shoemakers, and soldiers--wrestled with faith and doubt as they lived their daily lives and tried to make sense of their world.
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