Henry L. Novello's Books

Setting Our Hearts upon the Deep

Acknowledging Lament in Christian Life, Worship, and Thought

By: Henry L. Novello

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Setting Our Hearts upon the Deep

Acknowledging Lament in Christian Life, Worship, and Thought

By: Henry L. Novello

In Christian churches, the “Why Lord?” and “How long Lord?” prayers of the Jewish lament tradition have fallen silent. This is astonishing given that Jesus’ fidelity to the cause of God culminates in his lament cry on Calvary, which was “heard” by God (Heb 5:7), who did not hide his face (Ps 22:24) but responded by raising him up in glory. In Christ’s paschal mystery, grief (lament) and joy (praise) are inextricably intertwined. So why is lament not incorporated into praise in church usage? How can we not lament as we strive to embody Christ in an unredeemed world? The book examines reasons for the neglect of lament in the New Testament and theological tradition. The pivotal section of the work situates Jesus in the tradition of the suffering righteous in which Psalm 22 stands and it proposes a theological (not juridical) interpretation of Jesus’ cry, which refutes the God-abandonment thesis: Jesus’ cry reveals his abandonment to God, not his abandonment by God! Because God was “for” and “with” Jesus, we know that God is “for” and “with” us in our own cries, which are joined to Jesus’ cry, and we are redeemed. Redemption, then, consists in human and divine suffering coming together to transform grief and evil into joy and newness of life.

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Page Count

285

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1666752932

ISBN 13

9781666752939

Death as Transformation

A Contemporary Theology of Death

By: Dr Henry L Novello

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Death as Transformation

A Contemporary Theology of Death

By: Dr Henry L Novello

A key tenet of Christian faith is that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is a unique death by which the powers of death in the world have been conquered, so that Christian life in the Spirit is marked by the promise and hope of 'new life' already anticipated in the community of baptized believers. Notwithstanding this basic tenet regarding the Christian life as a participation in the redemptive death of Jesus Christ, theology in the past, as well as much contemporary theology, tends to assign no salvific significance to the event of our own death, focusing instead on death in negative terms as the wages of sin. This work is a significant retort to theological neglect, both Catholic and Protestant, of the positive and transformative aspect of our death when conceived as a dying into the redemptive death of Jesus Christ. The development of Henry L. Novello's proposed theology of death takes place in conversation with the pre-eminent contemporary contributors to this field of theological inquiry. By offering comprehensive critiques of Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel and Jürgen Moltmann, Novello painstakingly pieces together a positive construal of death as salvific and transformative. What is especially distinctive about Novello's work is that he develops the idea of death as a sharing in the 'admirable exchange of natures' in the person of Jesus Christ, from which emerges his theory of resurrection at death for all. The reach of the work is extended by exploring some pastoral and liturgical implications of a theology of death conceived as the privileged moment for the actualization of God's grace in Jesus Christ, and thus being created anew in the power of the Spirit.

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Page Count

272

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409481468

ISBN 13

9781409481461

Passionate Deification

The Integral Role of the Emotions in Christ's Life and in Christian Life

By: Henry L. Novello

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Passionate Deification

The Integral Role of the Emotions in Christ's Life and in Christian Life

By: Henry L. Novello

In the past the passions were regarded as sicknesses of the soul due to Adam’s sin. As the Redeemer, Christ shares in our humanity and experiences the passions, but given his divine status he quickly overcomes the passions by his superior reason as the Word. In effect, Christ is displayed as a Stoic sage who is unperturbed by the passions. The book is critical of this traditional perspective for its inability to think of the Incarnation as the Word’s real participation in our humanity. Christ is not a Stoic sage who displays an uninvolved holiness, but the Word become flesh who displays an astonishing breadth and intensity of emotional life, which reveals what it means for the fullness of divinity to dwell bodily in him. Reformed theology moved beyond the traditional perspective in affirming the strong emotions of Christ as proof of his humanity, but Christ’s divinity was given insufficient attention. The book proposes a complex view of Christ’s emotions, which are regarded not merely as proof of his humanity, but reveal the personal attributes of divinity communicated to his humanity. To observe Christ’s emotions is to witness the mutual interaction of humanity and divinity in his person, which accomplishes our salvation (deification). To imitate Christ, then, means that Christ’s emotions become the emotions of his followers, so that by seeing as God sees and feeling as God feels, they go forth in obedience to Christ’s commandment to love one another as he has loved us, which is to live the way of the cross for the sake of the ongoing embodiment of God in the world.

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Page Count

321

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1532662572

ISBN 13

9781532662577

Book's by Henry L. Novello

Setting Our Hearts upon the Deep

Setting Our Hearts upon the Deep

Death as Transformation

Death as Transformation

Passionate Deification

Passionate Deification

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