A useful study guide or resource for individuals and bible study groups who want to take a fresh look at familiar material. This book looks again at Luke’s writings from the point of view of reaching “outsiders”.

A short accessible guide to the Gospel of Mark for individuals and groups.

What does Christianity have to say about the salvation of the African tribesman who died before the missionaries arrived, and the "great sorrow" of the Messianic Jew who grieves for family and friends who did not or will not acknowledge his Jesus as their Messiah? C. S. Lewis said these outsiders represent the "scandal of exclusivity." Jim Geiger is a Christian insider and fully committed to the exclusivity of Christ's atonement. However, he is suggesting an expanded Christology where: - The constant speed of light in E = mc2 corroborates the constant Christ of Heb 13:8. - Special and general relativity model special and general revelation. - The Christ of general revelation represents the hope of salvation for some of Christianity's outsiders.

This book examines the linkages between the music and message of the Grateful Dead and the Christian gospel. The Grateful Dead emerged from the San Francisco “hippie” scene in the late 1960s, and offered a message of community and divine encounter. While the Dead drew on the teachings of many spiritual traditions, the band’s ethos echoed quite powerfully the wisdom of Christian Scripture. This reflection examines the ways in which the Grateful Dead embodied Christian teachings in areas of community, praise, and service. The Grateful Dead left an enduring legacy, whose power and longevity stem in significant part from the confluence of values between the Gospel and Grateful Dead.

This book offers a probing, insightful look at the "outsider" motif running through the Bible. The biblical story about God's covenant with "insiders" -- with Israel as the chosen people -- is scandalous in today's cultural climate of inclusivity. But, as Frank Anthony Spina shows, God's exclusive election actually has an inclusive purpose. Looking carefully at the biblical narrative, Spina highlights in bold relief seven remarkable stories that treat nonelect people positively and, even more, as strategically important participants in God's plan of salvation. The stories of Esau, Tamar, Rahab, Naaman, Jonah, Ruth, and the woman at the well come alive in new ways as Spina discusses and examines them from an outsider-insider point of view.

A short accessible guide to the Gospel of John for individuals and groups. This last in a series of four books on the identifies the fourth Gospel as the Gospel of the Trinity and helps readers explore the unique characteristics of St John.

In His parables, Jesus referred to the Gospel as seed and, in so doing, sought to present features of this good news and the manner in which it needed to be received. The seedbed, of course, is the human heart. People need to hear the message of the Christ and embrace it by faith and, in so doing, allow it to grow within their soul, letting it become an informing influence in their lives. Yet this seedbed already has vegetation growing within it. From infancy, we're taught how to get along in this world in which we live, how to understand our surroundings, how to avoid harm, how to make our way into adulthood and benefit from our various activities.Our existence is defined through our interaction with other people; our families and our communities teach us how to understand the world around us. We learn what is considered good and what is considered bad. In complex societies, basic values may be contested, but even in this complexity, there are certain fundamental beliefs that are embraced by most members of a particular society.All these features pertaining to our surroundings are referred to as culture. The culture works to define us, and all who are part of our culture are defined in similar ways. When the Gospel is presented within any culture, it may share some common elements within that seedbed, but it will also invariably conflict with that culture because at its core, it is unique. And its uniqueness will work to challenge the people within that culture to choose the Gospel over what they have absorbed from their surroundings.The focus of this discussion is to consider how the good news, the Gospel, is understood and embraced in American culture today, in the twenty-first century, and to investigate how it may be being distorted or its power diminished by some of the ideas that are prevalent in today's society.Cover Design by Rebekah Jenkins

A Theology of Mark’s Gospel is the fourth volume in the BTNT series. This landmark textbook, written by leading New Testament scholar David E. Garland, thoroughly explores the theology of Mark’s Gospel. It both covers major Markan themes and also sets forth the distinctive contribution of Mark to the New Testament and the canon of Scripture, providing readers with an in-depth and holistic grasp of Markan theology in the larger context of the Bible. This substantive, evangelical treatment of Markan theology makes an ideal college- or seminary-level text.

Analyzing the illness-related terminology of the Gospel against the background of classical medical texts, Annette Weissenrieder examines the degree to which ancient medical knowledge was incorporated into the healing narratives of the Gospel of Luke. Thus, her work focuses on the crossroads of theology and medical history. Her primary reference is the Corpus Hippocraticum, supplemented by the writings of Soranus, Empedocles and Caelius Aurelianus. She also examines Jewish sources in the light of these secular medical texts. The premise of the study is the constructivist concept that has been developed in the context of 'writing the history of the body': that there is no objective view of the sick body. Every description of the body is formed by the cultural norms of a particular society, and society's culture influences the way in which any given illness is seen.In investigating concepts of medicine prevalent in antiquity, Annette Weissenrieder brings to light the cultural parameters of perception specific to Luke. She deals with gender-specific images of illness as well as with those associated with impurity or demonic possession. Her analysis confirms that the concepts of illness used by the Lucan author were profoundly characteristic of his time. She demonstrates how he uses these concepts to make his central message plausible: the presence of divine reality in the human sphere which can be experienced by both the physical body and the social body.