This book traces the intellectual journey of a Christian minister and theologian. Starting with his discovery of God through a love of the natural world, David Peel’s encounter with thinkers from his Reformed tradition and extensive ecumenical involvement takes him to a revisionary theology which meets his attempt to integrate a scientific background with the Christian faith. Essays written during his career illustrate the path he has taken. The topics covered include theological method; the centrality of theology for the church’s life and work; a sacramental view of ministry; the missional church; biblical authority; nonconformity’s gifts to the contemporary church; and theological education. Peel’s theological approach is as critical of inadequate theologies inherited from the past as it is determined to construct a Christian narrative which satisfies twin requirements: first, being congruent with the Jesus tradition; and secondly, convincing the minds, reaching the hearts, and driving the commitments of contemporary people. Both ministers and church members are challenged to view their own theological journeys as God-given vocations.
This book traces the intellectual journey of a Christian minister and theologian. Starting with his discovery of God through a love of the natural world, David Peel’s encounter with thinkers from his Reformed tradition and extensive ecumenical involvement takes him to a revisionary theology which meets his attempt to integrate a scientific background with the Christian faith. Essays written during his career illustrate the path he has taken. The topics covered include theological method; the centrality of theology for the church’s life and work; a sacramental view of ministry; the missional church; biblical authority; nonconformity’s gifts to the contemporary church; and theological education. Peel’s theological approach is as critical of inadequate theologies inherited from the past as it is determined to construct a Christian narrative which satisfies twin requirements: first, being congruent with the Jesus tradition; and secondly, convincing the minds, reaching the hearts, and driving the commitments of contemporary people. Both ministers and church members are challenged to view their own theological journeys as God-given vocations.
This book presents a synthesis of Alan Sell’s theology drawn from his voluminous publications. As Sell’s doctrinal views are explored and interpreted, his indebtedness to P. T. Forsyth becomes clear. What emerges is a theology rooted in and flowing from the Cross-Resurrection event. Standing in the Separatist, Dissenting, and Nonconformist traditions, Sell advocates a wholehearted commitment to a Congregational ecclesiology, which he maintains carries the potential to break through the log-jams holding up the establishment of full ecumenical relationships across the churches. Saddened by Christianity’s many sectarianisms, Sell’s intentions are thoroughly catholic; while his faithfulness to the Christian tradition handed on to him is matched by a willingness to receive insights from beyond it. The result is a generous, if eclectic, expression of Christian orthodoxy. The critical phase of the book turns upon the question whether Sell’s “generous” orthodoxy is generous enough: Do his theological conclusions actually do justice to the life and ministry of Jesus? And secondly are they credible in the contemporary world? For all Sell’s commitment to apologetics does his theology actually speak to contemporary hearers?
In Forging Nations, Blaazer studies the relationships between money, power, and nationality in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the first attempts to unify their currencies following the Union of the Crowns in 1603 to the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. Through successive crises spanning four centuries, Forging Nations examines critical struggles over monetary power between the state and its creditors, and within and between nations during the long, multifaceted process of creating the United Kingdom as a monetary as well as a political union. It shows how and why centuries of monetary dysfunction and conflict eventually gave way to the era of the sterling gold standard, when elite and popular beliefs about money converged around a set of almost unassailable monetary dogmas that transcended differences of nationality, party, and class. Sustained by a mixture of historical myths and imperial hubris, this consensus effortlessly reinforced the authority and served the interests of the monetary elite, even after its economic foundations had collapsed under the pressure of war and international competition. The book concludes by showing how the end of the UK's global hegemony and the prospect of Scottish independence have resuscitated historical differences between England, Ireland, and Scotland in attitudes to currency's role in defining national identity, while the Global Financial Crisis has revived forgotten debates over the nature of money and monetary power.
Today’s medicines are regulated for their efficacy and safety and, once approved, they can be marketed for certain uses as justified by the data. Regulatory bodies in developed countries are constituted by legal statute and operate as parts of government, ostensibly in the interests of the people as patients. But once approved, medicines can be used for any purpose the prescriber thinks fit and appropriate for the patient. One in five prescriptions is therefore written outside regulatory purview. Off-label Prescribing looks into the corners of our medicated lives, where drug regulation runs up against medical practice, and concerns the use of a drug that has been approved for one use (in medical parlance, ‘indication’) being used for a different indication; alternatively, being used on a different set of patients from the ones it is approved for, or at a different dose. Usually the patient is unaware of what is going on, having not been informed by their doctor of this aspect of his or her prescribing choice. The book examines how and why this occurs, what the various medical professions have to say about it, and how pharmaceutical companies benefit by moving into this poorly regulated area. Off-label Prescribing pulls these complex issues together in one volume, to highlight current practice, its advantages and weaknesses and how the author suggests practice should evolve in the future. It will therefore be of interest to all those who prescribe (and receive) medicines, combined with a greater objective to provide more transparency and discussion for professionals.
Artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms both are areas of research which have their origins in mathematical models constructed in order to gain understanding of important natural processes. By focussing on the process models rather than the processes themselves, significant new computational techniques have evolved which have found application in a large number of diverse fields. This diversity is reflected in the topics which are subjects of the contributions to this volume. There are contributions reporting successful applications of the technology to the solution of industrial/commercial problems. This may well reflect the maturity of the technology, notably in the sense that 'real' users of modelling/prediction techniques are prepared to accept neural networks as a valid paradigm. Theoretical issues also receive attention, notably in connection with the radial basis function neural network. Contributions in the field of genetic algorithms reflect the wide range of current applications, including, for example, portfolio selection, filter design, frequency assignment, tuning of nonlinear PID controllers. These techniques are also used extensively for combinatorial optimisation problems.
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