Placing the neglected issue of class back into the study and understanding of religion, Sean McCloud reconsiders the meaning of class in today's world. More than a status grounded in material conditions, says McCloud, class is also an identity rhetorically and symbolically made and unmade through representations. It entails relationships, identifications, boundaries, meanings, power, and our most ingrained habits of mind and body. He demonstrates that employing class as an analytical tool that cuts across variables such as creed, race, ethnicity, and gender can illuminate American religious life in unprecedented ways. Through social theory, historical analysis, and ethnography, McCloud makes an interdisciplinary argument for reinserting class into the study of religion. First, he offers a new three-part conception of class for use in studying religion. He then presents a focused cultural history of religious studies by examining how social class surfaced in twentieth-century theories of religious affiliation. He concludes with historical and ethnographic case studies of religion and class. Divine Hierarchies makes a convincing case for the past and present importance of class in American religious thought, practice, and scholarship.

Ministry explores the rich and consistent history of lay ministry in the Roman Catholic Church since the first witness in the Bible. Kenan Osborne, a well-known theologian, combines his personal insights in contemporary spirituality to address the major issues that lay men and women face within the church structures at various periods of time. Has the role of the lay person in the Roman Catholic Church been diminished or supported over the centuries? 'Ministry' examines the historical evidence thoroughly and focuses on three important factors. First, Osborne offers a critical examination of the discipleship of every follower of Jesus. Next he describes the gradual de-emphasis of the non-cleric and non-religious in the church. Finally, he discusses the gradual emergence of the lay person into the mainstream of discipleship. 'Ministry' is designed for the lay person and the ordained. A complement to Osborne's previous book, 'Priesthood', this book is an extremely important historical study and must reading for those who seek the central foundation of discipleship within the Roman Catholic Church.

In The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4, Jaap Doedens offers an overview of the history of exegesis of the enigmatic text about the ‘sons of God’, the ‘daughters of men’, and the ‘giants’. First, he analyzes the text of Gen 6:1–4. Subsequently, he tracks the different exegetical proposals from the earliest exegesis until those of modern times. He further provides the reader with an evaluation of the meaning of the expression ‘sons of God’ in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. In the last chapter, he concentrates on the message and function of Gen 6:1–4. This volume comprehensively gathers ancient and modern exegetical attempts, providing the means for an ongoing dialogue about this essentially complex and elusive passage.

A radical reinterpretation of Egypt’s ancient origins and its esoteric philosophy • Explains how the “spontaneous” appearance of Egyptian civilization 5,000 years ago represents the remnants of an ancient worldwide advanced culture • Explores astrophysical, geophysical, and anthropological evidence of forgotten civilizations beneath the Mediterranean and along the coast of northwestern Africa • Examines the mystical traditions and initiatory rituals of the ancient Egyptians and their sophisticated understanding of precession, human evolution, and divine purpose Radically reinterpreting the time line of prehistory, J. S. Gordon shows that Egyptian civilization is 50,000 years older than acknowledged by Egyptology. He explores astrophysical, cosmological, geophysical, linguistic, and anthropological evidence to reveal forgotten civilizations hidden beneath the Mediterranean and along the coast of northwestern Africa. He explains how the “spontaneous” full-fledged appearance of Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations 5,000 years ago represents not the birth of civilization but the remnants of an immensely ancient and sophisticated worldwide culture ranging from Tibet and China to Atlantis and the vastly larger continent of which it once was part. Examining the mystical traditions and initiatory rituals of the ancient Egyptians, Gordon shows that they were not a culture obsessed with death and tombs but one structured around cosmic knowledge, with an astronomical competence that modern science has yet to attain. He reveals their sophisticated understanding of the precession of the equinoxes and its inextricable connection to human evolution and divine purpose--an understanding that could only have arisen from many millennia of high-level observation. Illustrating in detail the sacred geometry of the Great Pyramid and the Giza site, Gordon explains how the coherence of Egyptian mystico-scientific concepts and their art, architecture, and engineering reveals a mission to achieve a “reflection of Heaven on Earth” through the careful location, orientation, and stellar alignment of their temples. He shows the Egyptian Mystery School and its scientific knowledge and universal spiritual philosophy to be a legacy left to the ancient Egyptians by the “fallen star gods,” divine celestial beings who came to Earth long ago and founded the original now forgotten culture--and who will return again with the turning of the Great Year.

"In the sea of Luther studies, this volume stands out as one of the best available in English. It is a condensed retrospective of the most significant Reformation research of the last decade, and it is clearly written with verve, insight, and humor." -- CHOICE "Gritsch has provided us with a full-scale, one-volume biography of Luther. The work is meticulously documented and the bibliography at the end will alone warrant the price of the book." -- Roland H. Bainton "This book will be an invaluable source of information for students of the Lutheran Reformation. Ecumenists will find in its pages a great resource in their efforts to deal with issues that have been church - divisive." -- Carl J. Peter, Catholic University of America

Spiraling into God: Bonaventure on Grace, Hierarchy, and Holiness offers a systematic account of the Seraphic Doctor's doctrine of grace across his speculative-academic, mystical, hagiographical, and pastoral texts. It does so by arguing that an account of this kind can only be provided by also attending to his theology of hierarchy, a methodology derived from Bonaventure's claim in the Major Legend of St. Francis that Francis of Assisi was a "vir hierarchicus," or hierarchical man. As the book explores in great depth, this appellation relies upon Bonaventure's reading of a Victorine Dionysian interpreter by the name of Thomas Gallus, whose "angelic anthropology"--or notion of the hierarchical soul--becomes a crucial component within the Seraphic Doctor's teaching on grace as he interprets the sanctity of St. Francis. Throughout the course of his career, Bonaventure will define sanctifying grace as a created "inflowing" (influential) that "hierarchizes" human beings by purifying, illuminating, and perfecting them from within, thus causing them to become a similitude of the Trinity. This book explains what this means and why it matters. Most existing scholarship on this subject in Bonaventure's thought interprets it as a subtopic with respect to other themes--for example, with respect to his Christology or his Trinitarian theology--rather than taking the time to understand his doctrine of grace in its own right. Alternatively, scholarly treatments of his doctrine of grace will treat it at length, but will only examine the topic as it appears in his more speculative-academic texts--most especially his Commentary on the Sentences or his famous Itinerarium Mentis in Deum--without bringing these into conversation with his pastoral works, sermon literature, or hagiographical texts. Spiraling Into God provides the first unified treatment of Bonaventure's doctrine of grace across all these different genres of his known corpus, and in so doing, fills a massive lacuna in both Bonaventurean scholarship and in the field of medieval historical theology.

An extensive collection of apocrypha, divided into Old and New Testaments. Some titles are rare and elusive, such as Jannes and Jambres, Gad the Seer and Psalms of Thomas. Some texts are fragmented like the newly discovered Gospel of the Saviour, due to the damage sustained by the manuscript. The idea of Tried Money Changers is to provide the reader with an extensive library of apocrypha in one book. Presented in an easy to read format with large text divided into three columns in an A4 size book.