Can the Church delegate the Gospel to the government? Can the Church depend upon coercive powers to be the guarantor of Biblical values of charity, love of neighbor, fairness, generosity, shelter and nurture? Can anything but the Holy Spirit make us free? Caesar, Christian, Church, Government, Welfare, Freedom, Gospel, Laverentz, Finance, Religion

The Pastoral Epistles present difficult questions for the modern interpreter, including such matters as their authorship, literary characteristics, and social orientations. Raymond Collins carefully leads the reader through the texts of these three documents, attending to the flow of the Pastor's thought and locating it within the Jewish and Hellenistic culture of his day. The New Testament Library offers authoritative commentary on every book and major aspect of the New Testament, as well as classic volumes of scholarship. The commentaries in this series provide fresh translations based on the best available ancient manuscripts, offer critical portrayals of the historical world in which the books were created, pay careful attention to their literary design, and present a theologically perceptive exposition of the text.

This volume makes a systematic theological statement in light of the unique revelation of God and humankind that has come to us in Jesus, the Messiah, as recorded in Scripture. It is the companion to the author's 'Jesus Christ Our Lord' (1987, 1990). There are chapters on Jesus Christ as the lens through which we receive theological insight, revelation, God, humanity, the Holy Spirit, the church, and last things, all understood through God's self-disclosure in Christ. From within the Anabaptist theological tradition, Kraus offers a biblically oriented alternative to rationalistic orthodoxy and to liberalism. He takes Scripture as the normative witness to the meaning of Christ, the authoritative source for theological reflection, and thus makes a thoroughly evangelical statement. Yet this evangel begins with salvation as newness of life in resurrection with Christ, not simply as juridical justification. The emphasis is on God as source of creative potential rather than on God as instigator of legal judgment. Christ, the Second Adam, the truest image of God, is both the climax of creation and the means through which humanity can attain that image and respond to God in personal relationship. Kraus views the Holy Spirit as the enlivening presence of the risen Christ, the church as the continuing saving mission of Christ, and eschatology as the victory of Christ over the powers of evil and death.

The 1860 split between the Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Brethren was probably the most divisive in the Russian Mennonite story. Each group had a different version of what happened. The Brethren viewed the established church as decadent, while it in turn saw the new movement as a threat to the prevailing order. It was not long before each group generated a stereotype of the other. Later compilations of relevant documents did little to alter the prevailing mindsets. In the early 1860s a Lutheran magistrate, Alexander K. Brune, was appointed by the Ministry of the Interior to investigate the schism. The inquiry lasted several years. Brune interviewed people on both sides and tried to portray the conflict in an objective manner. His reports to the Ministry, together with the accompanying letters, provide an outside perspective on the schism. The documents translated in this book provide a graphic insight into the Russian Mennonite religious world of the 1860s.

In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, an international group of scholars engage open questions in the study of the Apostle Paul and those documents often deemed pseudepigraphal. This volume addresses many traditional questions, including those of method and the authenticity of several canonical Pauline letters, but they also reflect a desire to think in new ways about persistent questions surrounding pseudepigraphy. The focus on pseudepigraphy in relationship to Paul affords a unique opportunity to address this innovative inclination, not readily available in studies of New Testament pseudepigraphy in general. Regarding these concerns, new approaches are introduced, traditional evidence is reassessed, and some new suggestions are offered. In addition to Pauline letters, treatments of related non-canonical Pauline pseudepigraphs are included in discussion.

Explores future visions under a universalizing empire that many thought would never die.

William of Ockham (c. 1285-c. 1347) was the most eminent and influential theologian and philosopher of his day, a giant in the history of political thought. He was a Franciscan friar who came to believe that the Avignonese papacy of John XXII had set out to destroy the religious ideal on which the Franciscan order was based: the complete poverty of Christ and the apostles. This is the first complete text by Ockham to be published in English. The Short Discourse is a passionate but compelling statement of Ockham's position on the most fundamental political problem of the medieval period: the relationship of supreme spiritual authority, as represented by the pope, to the autonomous secular authority claimed by the medieval empire and the emerging nation-states of Europe. Professor McGrade's introduction, and the notes on the translation make the volume wholly accessible to a modern readership, while a full bibliography and chronology are included as further aids to the reader.