Christification


Book Description

The doctrine of theosis has enjoyed a recent resurgence among varied theological traditions across the realms of historical, dogmatic, and exegetical theology. In Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis, Jordan Cooper evaluates this teaching from a Lutheran perspective. He examines the teachings of the church fathers, the New Testament, and the Lutheran Confessional tradition in conversation with recent scholarship on theosis. Cooper proposes that the participationist soteriology of the early fathers expressed in terms of theosis is compatible with Luther's doctrine of forensic justification. The historic Lutheran tradition, Scripture, and the patristic sources do not limit soteriological discussions to legal terminology, but instead offer a multifaceted doctrine of salvation that encapsulates both participatory and forensic motifs. This is compared and contrasted with the development of the doctrine of deification in the Eastern tradition arising from the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius. Cooper argues that the doctrine of the earliest fathers--such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Justin--is primarily a Christological and economic reality defined as "Christification." This model of theosis is placed in contradistinction to later Neoplatonic forms of deification.




Christ's Will


Book Description

"Throughout the aeons, fear and the longing for security enslaved the body of will, turning it into a personal, defensive barrier. Fear and the longing for security have transformed human will into a wretched victim... The moment has arrived to liberate your human will from the horrible prejudices and tenebrous, ancestral fear and tendencies. Rejoice, oh buddha, since now your human will shall become Christ's will... Christ's will is heroic. Christ's will only bows and kneels before the will of the Father." --Samael Aun Weor Those who have completed the first four Initiations of Major Mysteries must begin the fifth, the creation of the causal body, which is related with willpower. Through the first four initiations, the initiate raised the kundalini in the physical body, vital body, astral body, and mental body, making the Innermost a Buddha. Now, with the fifth serpent of fire, the will of the Human Soul (Tiphereth) must reflect the will of the Father (Chesed), so that the will of Christ can be finally emerge. As the kundalini rises through each vertebra of the spinal column, the initiate must pass tests that are symbolized in the first thirty-three arcana of the Tarot. When completed, the human will becomes Christ's will. Then one is prepared for the incarnation of Christ and the entrance into the straight path (the path of the bodhisattva), upon which, as Christ's will, one performs greats sacrifices for suffering humanity. "The fundamental objective of our esoteric studies is to reach Christification... The inner Christ is what counts. Unfortunately, people only think about an historical Christ, and this is how they separate themselves from reality. They forget that Christ is what is, which always has been, and what will always be. They forget that Christ is the life that beats in each atom, as it beats in each Sun. They forget that Christ vibrates from instant to instant, from moment to moment. To incarnate Christ is fundamental." --Samael Aun Weor




Faith, Reason, and Theosis


Book Description

Theosis shapes contemporary Orthodox theology in two ways: positively and negatively. In the positive sense, contemporary Orthodox theologians made theosis the thread that bound together the various aspects of theology in a coherent whole and also interpreted patristic texts, which experienced a renaissance in the twentieth century, even in Orthodox theology. In the negative sense, contemporary theologians used theosis as a triumphalistic club to beat down Catholic and Protestant Christians, claiming that they rejected theosis in favor of either a rationalistic or fideistic approach to Christian life. The essays collected in this volume move beyond this East–West divide by examining the relation between faith, reason, and theosis from Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives. A variety of themes are addressed, such as the nature–grace debate and the relation of philosophy to theology, through engagement with such diverse thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, John Wesley, Meister Eckhart, Dionysius the Areopagite, Symeon the New Theologian, Panayiotis Nellas, Vladimir Lossky, Martin Luther, Martin Heidegger, Sergius Bulgakov, John of the Cross, Delores Williams, Evagrius of Pontus, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. The essays in this book are situated within a current thinking on theosis that consists of a common, albeit minimalist, affirmation amidst the flow of differences. The authors in this volume contribute to the historical theological task of complicating the contemporary Orthodox narrative, but they also continue the “theological achievement” of thinking about theosis so that all Christian traditions may be challenged to stretch and shift their understanding of theosis even amidst an ecumenical celebration of the gift of participation in the life of God.




Christification


Book Description

The doctrine of theosis has enjoyed a recent resurgence among varied theological traditions across the realms of historical, dogmatic, and exegetical theology. In Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis, Jordan Cooper evaluates this teaching from a Lutheran perspective. He examines the teachings of the church fathers, the New Testament, and the Lutheran Confessional tradition in conversation with recent scholarship on theosis. Cooper proposes that the participationist soteriology of the early fathers expressed in terms of theosis is compatible with Luther's doctrine of forensic justification. The historic Lutheran tradition, Scripture, and the patristic sources do not limit soteriological discussions to legal terminology, but instead offer a multifaceted doctrine of salvation that encapsulates both participatory and forensic motifs. This is compared and contrasted with the development of the doctrine of deification in the Eastern tradition arising from the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius. Cooper argues that the doctrine of the earliest fathers--such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Justin--is primarily a Christological and economic reality defined as "Christification." This model of theosis is placed in contradistinction to later Neoplatonic forms of deification.




The Third Reformation


Book Description




Union with Christ


Book Description

The Christian's participatory union with Christ is a central element of salvation, both in Scripture and in the historic Christian tradition. In the early twentieth-century, however, this theme gradually began to diminish in its prominence within Lutheran theological writing. Due to a variety of philosophical and theological shifts, many Lutherans began to emphasize forensic justification to the exclusion of participationist motifs. That forensic exclusivism is challenged in this work. In this book, Jordan Cooper articulates an approach to union with Christ that is drawn from both Patristic theology, and the classical Lutheran tradition. Throughout this study, Cooper exposits union with Christ under three distinctive categories: the objective union of God and man through the Incarnation, the formal union of faith in which the believer is united to Christ's person and work, and the mystical union through which the Triune God dwells in the hearts of Christians. This book is the sixth volume in a series titled A Contemporary Protestant Scholastic Theology.




Becoming the Gospel


Book Description

The first detailed exegetical treatment of Paul’s letters from the emerging discipline of missional hermeneutics, Michael Gorman’s Becoming the Gospel argues that Paul’s letters invite Christian communities both then and now to not merely believe the gospel but to become the gospel and, in doing so, to participate in the life and mission of God. Showing that Pauline churches were active public participants in and witnesses to the gospel, Gorman reveals the missional significance of various themes in Paul’s letters. He also identifies select contemporary examples of mission in the spirit of Paul, inviting all Christians to practice Paul-inspired imagination in their own contexts.




Enneagram Theology


Book Description

The enneagram has become popular among evangelical Christians as a spiritualized personality typology that claims to help people better understand themselves and others. Several influential evangelical Christian leadership ministries have promoted the enneagram as a tool in forming and maintaining effective ministry teams, and the personality typology is now taught and embraced at several Christian universities. But uncertainty exists about the appropriateness of referring to the Enneagram as a Christian tool. Are pastors and Christian institutional leaders aware of the theology associated with the Enneagram? Enneagram Theology: Is It Christian? provides a biblical critique of the Enneagram’s underlying theology and exposes not only its foundational theological contradictions with orthodox evangelical theology but also some potential dangers to the church.




Modern Orthodox Theology


Book Description

Modern Orthodox theology represents a continuity of the Eastern Christian theological tradition stretching back to the early Church and especially to the Ancient Fathers of the Church. This volume considers the full range of modern Orthodox theology. The first chapters of the book offer a chronological study of the development of modern Orthodox theology, beginning with a survey of Orthodox theology from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the early 19th century. Ladouceur then focuses on theology in imperial Russia, the Russian religious renaissance at the beginning of the 20th century, and the origins and nature of neopatristic theology, as well as the new theology in Greece and Romania, and tradition and the restoration of patristic thought. Subsequent chapters examine specific major themes: - God and Creation - Divine-humanity, personhood and human rights - The Church of Christ - Ecumenical theology and religious diversity - The 'Christification' of life - Social and Political Theology - The 'Name-of-God' conflict - The ordination of women The volume concludes with assessments of major approaches of modern Orthodox theology and reflections on the current status and future of Orthodox theology. Designed for classroom use, the book features: - case studies - a detailed index - a list of recommended readings for each chapter




Prayer After Augustine


Book Description

The influence of the theology and philosophy of Augustine of Hippo on subsequent Western thought and culture is undisputed. Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition argues that the notion of the 'Augustinian tradition' needs to be re-thought; and that already in the generation after Augustine in the West such a re-thinking is already and richly manifest in more than one influential form. In this work, Jonathan D. Teubner encourages philosophical, moral, and historical theologians to think about what it might mean that the Augustinian tradition formed in a distinctively Augustinian fashion, and considers how this affects how they use, discuss, and evaluate Augustine in their work. This is exemplified by Augustine's reflections on prayer and how they were taken up, modified, and handed on by Boethius and Benedict, two critically influential figures for the development of Latin medieval philosophical and theological cultures. Teubner analyses and exemplifies the particular theme of prayer and the other topics it constellates in Augustine and to show how it already forms a distinctively 'Augustinian' concept of tradition that was to prove to have fascinatingly diverse manifestations. Part I traces the development of Augustine's understanding of prayer. Patience and hope as articulated in prayer sit at the centre of Augustine's understanding of Christian existence. In Part II, Teubner turns to suggest how this is picked up by Boethius and Benedict.