Religion Theory

In his first book since 2002's acclaimed The Hidden Face of God, popular scientist Gerald Schroeder combines decades of scientific research and biblical study to present a groundbreaking new paradigm of how to understand God. Fans of Jack Miles' God: A Biography, Francis Collins' The Language of God, and Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible will find much to contemplate in God According to God.

Acclaimed scholar and sociologist Peter L. Berger carefully lays out an understanding of religion as a historical, societal mechanism in this classic work of social theory. Berger examines the roots of religious belief and its gradual dissolution in modern times, applying a general theoretical perspective to specific examples from religions throughout the ages. Building upon the author's previous work, The Social Construction of Reality, with Thomas Luckmann, this book makes Berger's case that human societies build a "sacred canopy" to protect, stabilize, and give meaning to their worldview.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration - NASA - was established on July 29, 1958. Ever since that day, NASA has been at the forefront of efforts to explore outer space, resulting in the Apollo missions to the moon, the Skylab space-station, and today's space shuttle. But behind the open face of NASA, there is a much more mysterious world. NASA has been linked to a wealth of high-level cover-ups.

Far more happened to us on the cross than we realize! Righteousness: It’s so much more than a call to holy living or a theological notion. What you discover about this truth will alter your reality and revolutionize your walk with God.

Grace is more story than doctrine. It's more than forgiveness or compassion. It's undeserved by definition, essential to salvation. And it turns out that God's grace—though it's the only thing we stand on and the only thing we should stand for—is the very thing that we consistently distort and hesitate to extend to others. Why is that? To understand the story of grace—what it means and how it's misunderstood, why we need it and how it was given to us—we have to begin at the beginning.

Cold Tangerines is a collection of stories that celebrate the extraordinary moments hidden in our everyday lives. It is about God, and about life, and about the thousands of daily ways in which an awareness of God changes and infuses everything. It is about spiritual life, and about all the things that we have called nonspiritual life that might be spiritual after all.

Gay marriage, transgender rights, birth control - sex is at the heart of many of the most divisive political issues of our age. The origins of these conflicts, historian R. Marie Griffith argues, lie in sharp disagreements that emerged among American Christians a century ago. From the 1920s onward, a once-solid Christian consensus regarding gender roles and sexual morality began to crumble, as liberal Protestants sparred with fundamentalists and Catholics over questions of obscenity, sex education, and abortion.

Según R.C. Sproul, la predestinación no es solo para los calvinistas, sino para «todos» los cristianos bíblicos. En esta edición actualizada y ampliada de Escogidos por Dios, Sproul muestra que la doctrina de la predestinación no crea una imagen caprichosa o rencorosa de Dios, sino que pinta el retrato de un Dios amoroso que provee redención a una humanidad radicalmente corrupta. Hay misterio en los caminos de Dios, pero no contradicción.

What happens in the heart when it experiences real saving faith? John Piper argues that faith in Christ is not saving unless it includes an "affectional dimension of treasuring Christ." Nor is God glorified as he ought to be unless he is treasured in being trusted. Saving faith in Jesus Christ welcomes him forever as our supreme and inexhaustible pleasure. What Is Saving Faith? explains that a Savior who is treasured for his all-satisfying worth is more glorified than a Savior who is only trusted for his all-forgiving competence

Are you for Christ or are you against him? You know you are either one or the other, for he says so. We learn in Matthew 12:30 in the words of Jesus himself: He that is not with me is against me. Everyone is either with Jesus wholeheartedly, confessedly, and openly, or else they are against Jesus. Which are you? For Christ or against him?

Is the gift of tongues for today? Does God want me to have the gift of tongues? Should I ask for the gift of tongues? Believers have asked these questions and many others about this debated and mysterious spiritual gift. Offering fresh biblical insight, Robert Henderson has written an essential guide that helps believers understand and discover the power of tongues to remove limits and establish a renewed relationship with God transcending the natural realm.

Horrifying things have been said about God’s judgment - the most terrifying is that its sorrows never end. But what if divine judgment has been gravely misunderstood? What if it has a purifying nature which transforms our heart? Hope for All explores 10 key Bible truths that support this hope. Is this too good to be true? Examine the evidence for yourself. You just might find that God is the loving Father of us all - one who never gives up on any of his children.

We generally understand "radical Islam" as a purely Islamic phenomenon, but Buruma and Margalit show that while the Islamic part of radical Islam certainly is, the radical part owes a primary debt of inheritance to the West. Whatever else they are, al Qaeda and its ilk are revolutionary anti-Western political movements, and Buruma and Margalit show us that the bogeyman of the West who stalks their thinking is the same one who has haunted the thoughts of many other revolutionary groups, going back to the early 19th century.

Martin Luther's Bondage of the Will (1525) is a response to Desiderius Erasmus's "Diatribe on Free Will.’ The work is considered as one of the great masterpieces of the Reformation. Luther writes powerfully about man's depravity and God's sovereignty in his direct style, which combines spirituality and humor. For Luther, the crucial issue was the ability of free will, and the extent to which it is subject to God's sovereignty.

According to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, God raised up Methodism in order to spread the central teaching of entire sanctification. The church has offered an unbalanced understanding of the gospel for too long. This book calls all Methodists—the spiritual descendants of the Wesleyan revival, regardless of contemporary denominational expression—back to who we have been at our best. Perfect Love provides an in-depth explanation of entire sanctification and helps listeners pursue all that God has for us.

For Protestants or Catholics seeking to understand Eastern Orthodoxy, the Cross is a good place to start. In the West a multitude of different views sprang up over the last millennium, but Orthodox Christian beliefs have remained unchanged. The contrast between those views is suggested by the two images on the book's cover, showing how differently the meaning of the Cross was understood, East and West.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 has been described as an epochal event, called the peak of 20th century Islamic revivalism and revitalization, and analyzed as the one key incident that continues to impact politics across Iran, the Middle East, and the even the world as a whole. As a phenomenon that led to the creation of the first modern Islamic Republic in the world, the revolution marked the victory of Islam over secular politics, and Iran quickly became the aspiring model for Islamic fundamentalists and revivalists across the globe, regardless of nationality, culture, or religious sect.

According to attachment theory, we tend to experience love in predictable ways—based on our style and that of our partner. The good news is, whatever relationship style you have naturally, you're not stuck with it! Using the strategies found in this book, you can identify your relationship style (and your partner's); understand the strengths and challenges of that style; overcome feelings of rejection and failed relationships; recognize the patterns and behaviors that are affecting your relationships; and develop better ways to express and receive love.

In this writing I will demonstrate that the scriptures emphatically teach a contingent of angels called “Holy Watchers” decided to have offspring with human women and knowingly commit this great abomination of sin toward the Most High. The Sons of God and the Divine Council mentioned in the Bible are these same “Holy Watchers” (a position of angelic authority) mentioned in Enoch and Jasher and in Genesis 6 that not only conceived children with human women but also gave mankind knowledge, technologies, and weapons.

Christians have long differed with one another on both the meaning and the practice of water baptism. Using the classic Counterpoints forum of presentation-critique-response, this insightful book explores four prominent views of baptism held by different branches of Protestantism: Baptist, Christian Church/Church of Christ, Lutheran, and Reformed.