This is a teacher's book, written by an able teacher.... Most people are interested in literature because of a deep love for literature itself. They want to understand the reasons for that love. Ryken helps us do this, but he also helps Christians understand and validate their love for literature.... Ryken has also provided a solid means for non-Christians to understand a Christian perspective on literature.... It [Windows to the World] comes closer to defining the goal and task of the teacher of literature than any work I have read." - Christianity and Literature

Educated people have become bereft of sophisticated ways to develop their religious inclinations. A major reason for this is that theology has become vague and dull. In The Character of God, author Thomas E. Jenkins maintains that Protestant theology became boring by the late nineteenth century because the depictions of God as a character in theology became boring. He shows how in the early nineteenth century, American Protestant theologians downplayed biblical depictions of God's emotional complexity and refashioned his character according to their own notions, stressing emotional singularity. These notions came from many sources, but the major influences were the neoclassical and sentimental literary styles of characterization dominant at the time. The serene benevolence of neoclassicism and the tender sympathy of sentimentalism may have made God appealing in the mid-1800s, but by the end of the century, these styles had lost much of their cultural power and increasingly came to seem flat and vague. Despite this, both liberal and conservative theologians clung to these characterizations of God throughout the twentieth century. Jenkins argues that a way out of this impasse can be found in romanticism, the literary style of characterization that supplanted neoclassicism and sentimentalism and dominated American literary culture throughout the twentieth century. Romanticism emphasized emotional complexity and resonated with biblical depictions of God. A few maverick religious writers-- such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, W. G. T. Shedd, and Horace Bushnell--did devise emotionally complex characterizations of God and in some cases drew directly from romanticism. But their strange and sometimes shocking depictions of God were largely forgotten in the twentieth century. s use "theological" as a pejorative term, implying that an argument is needlessly Jenkins urges a reassessment of their work and a greaterin understanding of the relationship between theology and literature. Recovering the lost literary power of American Protestantism, he claims, will make the character of God more compelling and help modern readers appreciate the peculiar power of the biblical characterization of God.

A fresh examination of Luke's vision for life together in a local church, defined by three key passages in the book of Acts, offers modern churches twenty distinct characteristics of an exemplary life together today.

Two dozen Christian higher education professionals thoroughly explore the question of the faith's place on the university campus, whether in administrative matters, the broader academic world, or in student life.

Dr. Bryant K. Owens presents the argument of the value of the Christian tradition of caritas (or love) from the philosophy and the subsequent hermeneutic of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) within contemporary philosophical scholarship. Dr. Owens’s study of Augustine’s investigations into biblical interpretation will reveal that he sought the beauty of understanding as evidenced through caritas. The shift in the Western philosophical tradition during the Enlightenment period resulted in a solid break from authority-based hermeneutics to the autonomy of the mind. The result was a greater emphasis on the literal meaning of a text, as gleaned from the subjective mind of the reader and through grammatical and historical criticism, over the spiritual meaning of the text, or application of the greater meaning to Christian living. Dr. Owens proposes that the benefits of Augustine’s caritas as the a priori spirit of the biblical text and the proper application of that spirit in contemporary scholarship, should be the epistemological focus of hermeneutics rather than the emphasis on method prevalent from Spinoza to Dilthey. The concluding value from Augustine’s hermeneutic is that caritas is a product of understanding while at the same time is the method, or means, by which caritas is produced. Therefore, Augustine’s hermeneutic argues that the sense, or spirit, of Scripture is caritas and is the truth to which all Christian philosophy must cohere.

Explains how to grasp and apply the timeless truths in Old Testament narratives.

The Christian Imagination brings together in a single source the best that has been written about the relationship between literature and the Christian faith. This anthology covers all of the major topics that fall within this subject and includes essays and excerpts from fifty authors, including C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Sayers, and Frederick Buechner.