A novel economic interpretation of how religions have become so powerful in the modern world Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. Religions in many traditions have honed their competitive strategies over thousands of years. Today, they are big business; like businesses, they must recruit, raise funds, disburse budgets, manage facilities, organize transportation, motivate employees, and get their message out. In The Divine Economy, economist Paul Seabright argues that religious movements are a special kind of business: they are platforms, bringing together communities of members who seek many different things from one another—spiritual fulfilment, friendship and marriage networks, even business opportunities. Their function as platforms, he contends, is what has allowed religions to consolidate and wield power. This power can be used for good, especially when religious movements provide their members with insurance against the shocks of modern life, and a sense of worth in their communities. It can also be used for harm: political leaders often instrumentalize religious movements for authoritarian ends, and religious leaders can exploit the trust of members to inflict sexual, emotional, financial or physical abuse, or to provoke violence against outsiders. Writing in a nonpartisan spirit, Seabright uses insights from economics to show how religion and secular society can work together in a world where some people feel no need for religion, but many continue to respond with enthusiasm to its call.

The theology of creation interconnected with virtually every aspect of early Christian thought, from Trinitarian doctrine to salvation to ethics. Paul M. Blowers provides an advanced introduction to the multiplex relation between Creator and creation as an object both of theological construction and religious devotion in the early church. While revisiting the polemical dimension of Christian responses to Greco-Roman philosophical cosmology and heterodox Gnostic and Marcionite traditions on the origin, constitution, and destiny of the cosmos, Blowers focuses more substantially on the positive role of patristic theological interpretation of Genesis and other biblical creation texts in eliciting Christian perspectives on the multifaceted relation between Creator and creation. Greek, Syriac, and Latin patristic commentators, Blowers argues, were ultimately motivated less by purely cosmological concerns than by the urge to depict creation as the enduring creative and redemptive strategy of the Trinity. The 'drama of the divine economy', which Blowers discerns in patristic theology and piety, unfolded how the Creator invested the 'end' of the world already in its beginning, and thereupon worked through the concrete actions of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to realize a new creation.

God gives Green Stamps. A look at the theological and economic meanings of redemption.

Divine Economy And It's Real World Economic Principles is a book that reorients economic thinking. It is an intriguing and satisfying read for those interested in business ethics and economics or for those interested in philosophy or religion. The Divine Economy Model (c) presented in Chapter Two will change your impression of economics. Economics has been called the 'dismal science' but the Divine Economy Model (c) will instead make you see economics as bright and hopeful. Chapter One builds the case for the parallel emergence of humankind and the economy. It introduces their spiritual foundations. Chapter Two lays out the Divine Economy Model (c) which is an original and significant contribution to economic science. Chapter Three demonstrates how real world economic principles are interconnected and how the Divine Economy Model (c) helps to show their symmetry and reciprocity. Chapter Four identifies new directions in education and law that will serve to unbind the restraints, which greatly retard prosperity. The moral authority of the divine economy springs from human rights, which are the mirror images of property rights. The economic policies derived from the Divine Economy Model (c) are useful for inaugurating social change, see www.divineeconomyconsulting.com.

What has theology to do with economics? They are both sciences of human action, but have traditionally been treated as very separate disciplines. Divine Economy is the first book to address the need for an active dialogue between the two. D. Stephen Long traces three strategies which have been used to bring theology to bear on economic questions: the dominant twentieth-century tradition, of Weber's fact-value distinction; an emergent tradition based on Marxist social analysis; and a residual tradition that draws on an ancient understanding of a functional economy. He concludes that the latter approach shows the greatest promise because it refuses to subordinate theological knowledge to autonomous social-scientific research. Divine Economy will be welcomed by those with an interest in how theology can inform economic debate.

The divine revelation in the holy Scriptures follows a central line concerning the person and plan of our unique Triune God. This revelation is progressive, beginning with God in Genesis 1:1 and culminating in the all-inclusive Christ in Revelation. The sixty-six books of the Bible reveal that the center and highest point of the divine revelation is Christ, who today is realized in our experience as the life-giving and indwelling Spirit. In this Spirit we have everything related to the Triune God, including the all-inclusive death, the powerful resurrection, and all the unsearchable riches of Christ. The central line of the Bible reveals that our wonderful Triune God, who is our portion and day-by-day supply, desires to impart all that He is into us to constitute and build us up as the Body of Christ. In The Central Line of the Divine Revelation, Witness Lee fully unveils this central truth, beginning from Genesis and concluding in Revelation with the New Jerusalem.

The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1984, volume 3, contains messages given by Brother Witness Lee from March 3 through December 16, 1984. At the beginning of March Brother Lee traveled to Brazil and spent most of March ministering there. At the end of March he returned from Brazil to Anaheim, California, and remained there until the middle of April. During the last two weeks in April, Brother Lee traveled to Stuttgart, Germany, and on his return to the United States he visited New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Newton, Massachusetts, during the month of May. At the end of May he ministered in Irving, Texas, and in the first few days in June he visited Denver, Colorado. At the end of June Brother Lee returned to Anaheim and remained there until the first week in October. From the middle of October until the middle of November, Brother Lee traveled to the Far East and ministered in Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; Taipei, Taiwan; and Quezon City, Philippines. He returned to Anaheim for a few days in the middle of November, and near the end of November he traveled to Irving, where he remained until the end of the year. The contents of this volume are divided into two sections, as follows: 1. Seventeen messages given in Brazil on March 3 through 10. These messages were previously published in a fifteen-chapter book entitled The Divine Economy and are included in this volume under the same title. 2. Fifty-one messages given in Stuttgart, Germany; Washington, D.C.; Irving, Texas; Newton, Massachusetts; New York City; and Anaheim, California, on April 20 through December 16. These messages were previously published in a forty-four-chapter book entitled God's New Testament Economy and are included in this volume under the same title.

A novel economic interpretation of how religions have become so powerful in the modern world Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. Religions in many traditions have honed their competitive strategies over thousands of years. Today, they are big business; like businesses, they must recruit, raise funds, disburse budgets, manage facilities, organize transportation, motivate employees, and get their message out. In The Divine Economy, economist Paul Seabright argues that religious movements are a special kind of business: they are platforms, bringing together communities of members who seek many different things from one another—spiritual fulfilment, friendship and marriage networks, even business opportunities. Their function as platforms, he contends, is what has allowed religions to consolidate and wield power. This power can be used for good, especially when religious movements provide their members with insurance against the shocks of modern life, and a sense of worth in their communities. It can also be used for harm: political leaders often instrumentalize religious movements for authoritarian ends, and religious leaders can exploit the trust of members to inflict sexual, emotional, financial or physical abuse, or to provoke violence against outsiders. Writing in a nonpartisan spirit, Seabright uses insights from economics to show how religion and secular society can work together in a world where some people feel no need for religion, but many continue to respond with enthusiasm to its call.