I've got enough time on my hands...You invited me to raise whatever objections come to mind, so I'll jump right in. Here's one I've wondered about a lot: how could an all-powerful and all-loving God allow the church to do so much harm to humanity for so long? Isn't this supposed to be His true church, His representation on earth?...To my mind, this alone is quite enough to prove that the church does not possess any true philosophy...Well, you wanted an objection; you've got one. I look forward to your response...Love always, DadIn Letters from a Skeptic Dr. Gregory Boyd and his father Edward Boyd "debate" many other objections to Christianity, the church, and the Bible.• Why is the world so full of suffering? • Does God know the future? • How can you believe that a man rose from the dead? • Why do you think the Bible is inspired? • Do all non-Christians go to hell? • How can I be holy and sinful at the same time?Greg Boyd initiated this correspondence with his father in the hope that his father would eventually come to know Christ. After three years, 30 letters, and numerous phone calls, Edward K. Boyd did just that.Letters from a Skeptic will help you wrestle with the rational foundation of your own faith. It will also help you know how to share that faith with the skeptics you love.

    Through these 'showings', Christ's sufferings were revealed to her with extraordinary intensity, but she also received assurance of God's unwavering love for man and his infinite capacity for forgiveness. Written in a vigorous English vernacular, the Revelations are one of the most original works of medieval mysticism and have had a lasting influence on Christian thought. This edition of the Revelations contains both the short text, which is mainly an account of the 'showings' themselves and Julian's initial interpretation of their meaning, and the long text, completed some twenty years later, which moves from vision to a daringly speculative theology. Elizabeth Spearing's translation preserves Julian's directness of expression and the rich complexity of her thought. An introduction, notes and appendices help to place the works in context for modern readers.

    * How the Vatican's Office of Exorcism drives out demons and battles Satanic evil in today's world

    The real identity of the person who chose to write under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite is unknown. Even the exact dates of his writings have never been determined. Moreover the texts themselves, though relatively short, are at points seemingly impenetrable and have mystified readers over the centuries. Yet the influence of this shadowy figure on broad range of mystical writers from the early middle ages on is readily discernible. His formulation of a method of negative theology that stresses the impotence of humans' attempt to penetrate the "cloud of unknowing" is famous as is his meditation on the divine names.Despite his influence, relatively few attempts have been made to translate the entire corpus of his written into English. Here in one volume are collected all of the Pseudo-Dionysius' works. Each has been translated from the Migne edition, with reference to the forthcoming Göttingen critical edition of A.M. Ritter, G. Heil, and B. Suchla.To present these works to the English-speaking public, an outstanding team of six research scholars has been assembled. The lucid translation of Colm Luibheid has been augmented by Paul Rorem's notes and textual collaboration. The reader is presented a rich and varied examination of the main themes of Dionysian spirituality by René Roques, an incisive discussion of the original questions of the authenticity and alleged heresies in the Dionysian corpus by Jaroslav Pelikan, a comprehensive tracing Dionysius' influence on medieval authors by Jean Leclercq, and a survey by Karlfried Froehlich of the reception given the corpus by Humanists and sixteenth-century Reformers.

    And since medieval Europe was the cradle of modern Western society, this work is vital for understanding our world and how it came into being.

    In this fast-paced world in which we live, things are set up for maximum speed and efficiency. Technology is now moving faster than ever before. Smartphones are so cutting edge that they allow news events to arrive seconds after they actually occur. We are so used to everything moving at lightning speed, that we have a very hard time adjusting to the slower pace that God likes to work things out. Dazed and confused we look for answers in all the wrong places. Our life becomes directed by fear instead of faith. We grow disheartened. Our faith can weaken. If you watch a seed grow you will not see much change from one day to the next. Although without water and care it will die. Faith is no different. There are perfect times in your future. When your life will blossom. All that God asks is for you to wait for them to be revealed. Thing is, we do not like to wait. Many times when life is not going as we like, we force things to happen. God's timing is not good enough for us. Pushing life is like digging up a seed to check if it has germinated, this may sound crazy but this is exactly what people do when they don't wait for Gods timing. We pray. We have faith. But, we lack an essential ingredient? Often we need to be reminded of the fruits that come from waiting. If you learn to wait for God’s timing, your life will overflow with grace. Surely that is not for me? Yes, it can be. Within these pages, I will share with you what scripture says about waiting for Gods timing. Powerful. Stories of those that listened and also those that did not. Enlightening. It is so easy to get carried away with life. Forgetting what is important. Casting the truth to one side. I welcome you to take this journey with me and leave your stressful life behind. Surrender. Trust Gods perfect timing, and you will be given the desires of your heart.

    Elizabeth Johnson offers an interpretation of Mary that is theologically sound, spiritually empowering, ethically challenging, socially liberating, and ecumenically fruitful. In particular, she sees the image of Mary as a blessing rather than a blight for women's lives in both religious and political terms."If you read only one book on Mary in your lifetime, let this be the one." American Catholic Booksellers'

    Bader in the foreword to Zen Judaism. “This growing movement offers a unique way to follow in the footsteps of the Buddha, ideally without gaining quite so much weight.” These nearly 100 sacred teachings are capable “of bringing about an enlightenment experience so pure, so elevating, and so intense, you could plotz.” For you, some samples:To know the Buddha is the highest attainment. Second highest is to go to the same doctor as the Buddha.Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated? There is no escaping Karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?If there is no self, whose arthritis is this? Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

    The remarkable discovery recently of a considerable number of letters and sermons by Augustine has thrown fresh light on the first and last decades of his experience as a bishop. These circumstantial texts have led Peter Brown to reconsider some of his judgments on Augustine, both as the author of the Confessions and as the elderly bishop preaching and writing in the last years of Roman rule in north Africa. Brown's reflections on the significance of these exciting new documents are contained in two chapters of a substantial Epilogue to his biography (the text of which is unaltered). He also reviews the changes in scholarship about Augustine since the 1960s. A personal as well as a scholarly fascination infuse the book-length epilogue and notes that Brown has added to his acclaimed portrait of the bishop of Hippo.

    After over a decade of successful ministry, he had to make a painful self admission: although he believed in God, he was leading his church like God didn’t exist.To Christians and non-Christians alike, to the churched and the unchurched, the journey leading up to Groeschel’s admission and the journey that follows—from his family and his upbringing to the lackluster and even diametrically opposed expressions of faith he encountered—will look and sound like the story of their own lives.Now the founding and senior pastor of the multicampus, pace-setting LifeChurch.tv, Groeschel's personal journey toward a more authentic God-honoring life is more relevant than ever.Christians and Christian Atheists everywhere will be nodding their heads as they are challenged to take their own honest moment and ask the question: am I putting my whole faith in God but still living as if everything was up to me?

    Doesn’t God work in the nighttime as well? In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Taylor asks us to put aside our fears and anxieties and to explore all that God has to teach us “in the dark.” She argues that we need to move away from our “solar spirituality” and ease our way into appreciating “lunar spirituality” (since, like the moon, our experience of the light waxes and wanes). Through darkness we find courage, we understand the world in new ways, and we feel God’s presence around us, guiding us through things seen and unseen. Often, it is while we are in the dark that we grow the most.With her characteristic charm and literary wisdom, Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find our footing in times of uncertainty and giving us strength and hope to face all of life’s challenging moments.

    Some think it could be the answer to greed, and globalism. Some even argue that it’s the best way to obey Christ’s command to help the poor. Let’s give socialism a fresh chance, they say. A democratic socialism this time, friendly to religion and ordered to the common good, as the Church says the economy should be. In Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?, Trent Horn and Catherine R. Pakaluk refute this tempting but false notion. Drawing on Scripture, history, Catholic social teaching, and basic economic reality, they show beyond a doubt that Catholicism and socialism are utterly incompatible. Along the way, they debunk many of the common claims used to keep afloat the fantasy of a Christian-socialist hybrid, including: -Since the early Christians kept their property in common, so should we. -Jesus would be in favor an economic system that guarantees everyone food, health care, and education. -The Church teaches that Catholics must find a “third way” between the extremes of Communism and capitalism. -Socialism would work if it were just done right, like in Sweden. Although there is no one “Catholic” economic system, Can a Catholic Be a Socialist? helps you understand commonsense economic principles that are truly in line with the Faith. For we all should work for an economy that gives life, fostering prosperity and the common good while providing opportunities to practice temperance and charity.

    Follow the faith journey of author and fellow disciplemaker Jen Hatmaker and rediscover Jesus among the least of us.

    He offers compelling evidence that religious experiences have a nonmaterial origin, making a convincing case for what many in scientific fields are loath to consider—that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.Beauregard and O'Leary explore recent attempts to locate a "God gene" in some of us and claims that our brains are "hardwired" for religion—even the strange case of one neuroscientist who allegedly invented an electromagnetic "God helmet" that could produce a mystical experience in anyone who wore it. The authors argue that these attempts are misguided and narrow-minded, because they reduce spiritual experiences to material phenomena.Many scientists ignore hard evidence that challenges their materialistic prejudice, clinging to the limited view that our experiences are explainable only by material causes, in the obstinate conviction that the physical world is the only reality. But scientific materialism is at a loss to explain irrefutable accounts of mind over matter, of intuition, willpower, and leaps of faith, of the "placebo effect" in medicine, of near-death experiences on the operating table, and of psychic premonitions of a loved one in crisis, to say nothing of the occasional sense of oneness with nature and mystical experiences in meditation or prayer. Traditional science explains away these and other occurrences as delusions or misunderstandings, but by exploring the latest neurological research on phenomena such as these, The Spiritual Brain gets to their real source.

    They've asked the same questions. Like you, sometimes they just don't want to believe in hell. But as they write, "We cannot afford to be wrong on this issue."This is not a book about who is saying what. It's a book about what God says. It's not a book about impersonal theological issues. It's a book about people who God loves. It's not a book about arguments, doctrine, or being right. It's a book about the character of God.Erasing Hell will immerse you in the truth of Scripture as, together with the authors, you find not only the truth but the courage to live it out.