2.4 The Rise of Christianity
Resources supporting the Shepway and District u3a Science, Philosophy, and Spirituality discussion group, Season 2, Session 2.4 – The Rise of Christianity
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Issue: Scripture
The Rise of Christianity: How the Church Embraced What Jesus Spurned
To understand the life and death of Jesus, we must understand his Jewish roots, the Hellenistic world , and Roman Rule. This article traces how the message of a crucified enemy of Rome became the core of Rome’s official religion – the Christian Church.
Read MoreThe New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God series Book 1)
Part of a five-volume project on the theological questions surrounding the origins of Christianity, this book offers a reappraisal of literary, historical and theological readings of the New Testament, arguing for a form of “critical realism” that facilitates different readings of the text.
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Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things
For centuries, the scientific question of life’s origins has confounded us. But in Every Life Is on Fire, physicist Jeremy England argues that the answer has been under our noses the whole time, deep within the laws of thermodynamics. England explains how, counterintuitively, the very same forces that tend to tear things apart assembled the first living systems.
But how life began isn’t just a scientific question. We ask it because we want to know what it really means to be alive. So England, an ordained rabbi, uses his theory to examine how, if at all, science helps us find purpose in a vast and mysterious universe. — Amazon.co.uk
Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love
What is Christian wisdom for living in the twenty-first century? Where is it to be found? How can it be learnt? In the midst of diverse religions and worldviews and the demands and complexities of our world, David Ford explores a Christian way of uniting love of wisdom with wisdom in love. Core elements are the ‘discernment of cries’, the love of God for God’s sake, interpretation of scripture, and the shaping of desire in faith. Case studies deal with inter-faith wisdom among Jews, Christians and Muslims, universities as centres of wisdom as well as knowledge and know-how and the challenge of learning disabilities. Throughout, there is an attempt to do justice to the premodern, modern and postmodern while grappling with scripture, tradition and the cries of the world today. Ford opens up the rich resources of Christianity in engaging with the issues and urgencies of contemporary life.
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