scholarly journals Onderskeid (בין) in die Ou Testament

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ananda Geyser-Fouche
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
Textual Research ◽  
The Church

Discernment () in the Old Testament. Discernment is one of the concepts that urge each and everyone to think critically and anew. The concept of a never-ending spiral of thinking is very familiar in the circles of reformed churches. This concept is also known from the wisdom literature in the Old Testament. The realisation that you do not know, means approaching the ability to grasp something of wisdom. In order to find out what the Old Testament is saying about ‘discern’, I did a textual research on the two Hebrew words: and I apply the results of this research to the context of the church (with specific reference to the ‘Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika’ [NH Church]) attempting to find out what the church’s responsibility is with regards to what is really important (i.e. discernment).

scholarly journals Pieter M. Venter’s contribution to Old Testament Studies – an appreciation

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter C. Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Interpretive Community ◽  
Second Temple Literature ◽  
Critical Theology ◽  
The Church ◽  
Old Testament Studies

The contribution that Professor Pieter M. Venter has made to the study of the Old Testament during his academic and ecclesiastic career is reviewed. After a brief biographical introduction, the article surveys the development of his research interests, focusing specifically on his contributions to the study of wisdom literature, narratives and narratology, second temple literature, the formation of the canon, and Old Testament Theology. The review concludes with reference to his way of practising critical theology, taking full cognisance of research into the linguistic, historical critical, narratological and ideological aspects of Old Testament texts, but always with a sensitivity for the needs of the church as interpretive community.

scholarly journals Missional branding: A case study of the Church of Pentecost

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter White
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Acts Of The Apostles ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Church

Branding is a strategy designed by companies to help patrons or consumers quickly identify their products or organisations and give them a reason to choose their products or organisations over other competitors. In the Old Testament, God identified the Israelites as a unique brand. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ branded the church with the power of the Holy Spirit, miracles, signs and wonders. Reading the Acts of the Apostles, the church developed a brand of being Spirit-filled, communal-living and mission-minded. It was out of this that early believers in Antioch were called ‘Christians’. The name ‘Christian’ therefore became a brand name for believers and followers of Jesus Christ. In view of this, one would expect that the concept of branding would be a major tool for modern-day churches. Although there are several publications on branding from the perspective of marketing and management, there is no such academic research on missional branding, hence this research. This article contributes to the interdisciplinary discourse on branding, with specific reference to the missional branding of the Church of Pentecost.

A Further Dilemma for British Divines

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay T. Collier
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
International Trends ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church

Chapter 5 continues to investigate the Montagu affair by surveying adjacent doctrines related to the perseverance debate. For instance, Dort’s more narrow definition of perseverance caused difficulties for those holding a more traditionalist view of baptism and regeneration. After looking at Montagu’s baptismal argument against perseverance of the saints, the chapter evaluates published responses to Montagu’s advocacy of baptismal regeneration as well as more private debates where John Davenant and Samuel Ward tried to reconcile a form of baptismal regeneration with Dort’s determination on perseverance. This survey shows division on the efficacy of baptism even within the pro-Dortian party, with readings and receptions of Augustine factoring in. It also reveals further evidence of how a broad-church approach to being Reformed set the Church of England at odds with the international trends of the Reformed churches.

The Minor Prophets as Christian Scripture in the Commentaries of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hauna T. Ondrey
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Cyril Of Alexandria ◽  
Theodore Of Mopsuestia ◽  
Positive Account ◽  
Mosaic Law ◽  
Recent Tendency ◽  
The Church ◽  
Minor Prophets

This work compares the Minor Prophets commentaries of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria, isolating the role each interpreter assigns the Twelve Prophets in their ministry to Old Testament Israel and the texts of the Twelve as Christian scripture. It argues that Theodore does acknowledge christological prophecies, as distinct from both retrospective accommodation and typology. A careful reading of Cyril’s Commentary on the Twelve limits the prospective christological revelation he ascribes to the prophets and reveals the positive role he grants the Mosaic law prior to Christ’s advent. Exploring secondly the Christian significance Theodore and Cyril assign to Israel’s exile and restoration reveals that Theodore’s reading of the Twelve Prophets, while not attempting to be christocentric, is nevertheless self-consciously Christian. Cyril, unsurprisingly, offers a robust Christian reading of the Twelve, yet this too must be expanded by his focus on the church and concern to equip the church through the ethical paideusis provided by the plain sense of the prophetic text. Revised descriptions of each interpreter lead to the claim that a recent tendency to distinguish the Old Testament interpretation of Theodore (negatively) and Cyril (positively) on the basis of their “christocentrism” obscures more than it clarifies and polarizes no less than earlier accounts of Antiochene/Alexandrian exegesis. The Conclusion argues against replacing old dichotomies with new and advocates rather for an approach that takes seriously Theodore’s positive account of the unity and telos of the divine economy and the full range of Cyril’s interpretation.

Revelation, Tradition, and Inspiration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, SJ
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The Self ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Present Experience ◽  
Living Tradition ◽  
The Church

This chapter spells out the complex interrelationship between the divine self-revelation, the tradition that transmits the prophetic and apostolic experience of that revelation, and the writing of the inspired Scriptures. Primarily, revelation involves the self-disclosure of the previously and mysteriously unknown God. Secondarily, it brings the communication of hitherto unknown truths about God. Revelation is a past, foundational reality (completed with the missions of the Son and Holy Spirit), a present experience, and a future hope. Responding with faith to divine revelation, the Old Testament (prophetic) and then New Testament (apostolic) witnesses initiated the living tradition from which came the inspired Scriptures. Tradition continues to transmit, interpret, and apply the Scriptures in the life of the Church.

Canons to the Left of Him: Brevard Childs, his Critics, and the Future of Old Testament Theology

1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Provan
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Probable Origin ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

It is well known that the seeds from which the modern discipline of OT theology grew are already found in 17th and 18th century discussion of the relationship between Bible and Church, which tended to drive a wedge between the two, regarding canon in historical rather than theological terms; stressing the difference between what is transient and particular in the Bible and what is universal and of abiding significance; and placing the task of deciding which is which upon the shoulders of the individual reader rather than upon the church. Free investigation of the Bible, unfettered by church tradition and theology, was to be the way ahead. OT theology finds its roots more particularly in the 18th century discussion of the nature of and the relationship between Biblical Theology and Dogmatic Theology, and in particular in Gabler's classic theoreticalstatementof their nature and relationship. The first book which may strictly be called an OT theology appeared in 1796: an historical discussion of the ideas to be found in the OT, with an emphasis on their probable origin and the stages through which Hebrew religious thought had passed, compared and contrasted with the beliefs of other ancient peoples, and evaluated from the point of view of rationalistic religion. Here we find the unreserved acceptance of Gabler's principle that OT theology must in the first instance be a descriptive and historical discipline, freed from dogmatic constraints and resistant to the premature merging of OT and NT — a principle which in the succeeding century was accepted by writers across the whole theological spectrum, including those of orthodox and conservative inclination.

Charlemagne as a Patron of Art

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 43-77
Author(s):  
Henry Mayr-Harting
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Education ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Church Art ◽  
Catholic Schooling ◽  
The Church ◽  
Looking Back

The lesson that people hold radically differing views about church art is the harder to learn when one comes to it from the iconodul-istic side. Looking back on my own Roman Catholic schooling, and the place of statues and holy pictures in the religious devotions of that milieu, I realize that once sacramental awareness develops, it is not always easily confined to the matter of the theological sacraments themselves. The beheading of the statues in the Lady Chapel at Ely, which I visited at the age of eleven, seemed a shocking circumstance whose motivation was totally incomprehensible, even allowing for the fact that it was the work of Protestants, and the Old Testament, which might have brought the dawn of understanding, was, of course, no part of an ordinary Catholic education at that time. In short, the author of Charlemagne’s Libri Carolini would have found much upon which to make adverse comment in me, my fellows, and the monks who taught us. With the first artistic love of my student days, which was Romanesque sculpture, came an awareness of the voices and practice of those great medieval Protestants, the Cistercians. But only in the later encounter with Charlemagne was I forced to listen seriously to the moral and theological arguments against the unbridled use of figurai art in the service of the Church.

Seven Sacraments Compositions in English Medieval Art

1929 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. McN. Rushforth
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Great Tradition ◽  
Speculum Humanae Salvationis ◽  
Church Art ◽  
The Church

Émile Mâle says that medieval Christian art in its last period had lost touch with the great tradition of symbolism which had been so important in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and still largely dominated the art of the fourteenth. But there was one great symbolical idea which survived, and that was the harmony of the Old and New Testaments; and so we find among the most popular subjects of fifteenth-century Church art the concordance of the Apostles and Prophets in the Creed, and the series of parallels between the life of Jesus and episodes of Old Testament history, which were summed up and digested in the Biblia Pauperum and the Speculum Humanae Salvationis. The reason for the popularity of these subjects was, no doubt, their didactic value, and though Mâle does not develop this side of the subject, we may say that one, though not the only, characteristic of the religious art of the fifteenth century was that, instead of being symbolical, it became didactic. We find in this period a whole series of subjects which reduced the articles of Christian faith and practice to pictorial form, and seem to have been intended to illustrate the medieval catechism by which the teaching of the Church was imparted.

‘The Substance of the Faith’ A Clarification of the Concept in the Church of Scotland

1983 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-338
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Torrance
Keyword(s):  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
Scottish Parliament ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
Nicene Creed ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Church

In determining the meaning of the expression ‘the substance of the Faith’, it seems right to go back to the act of the Scottish Parliament in 1690 which ratified the Westminster Confession of Faith ‘as the publick and avowed Confession of this Church, containing the summe and substance of the doctrine of the Reformed Churches.’ There the WCF was regarded as containing the sum and substance of some thirty Reformed Confessions, including the Scots Confession, the First and Second Helvetic Confessions. These confessions expressly acknowledged the ancient Catholic Creeds and Conciliar Statements of the Church, the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Formulations of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and the so-called ‘Athanasian Creed’, and embodied all their main statements as essential articles of belief. This was true of the WCF which, as James Denney once pointed out, ‘contains everything that is in the Nicene Creed’ (Jesus and the Gospel, p. 39If). That is to say, there was no move away from what the Athanasian Creed and the Second Helvetic Confession called ‘the Catholic Faith’, although the basic articles of faith handed down through the Creeds were set within a confessional frame of distinctively Reformed character. It was inevitable, therefore, that a distinction was made between what Samuel Rutherford called (Due Right Presbyteries, p. 13) ‘a confession dejure, what everyman ought to believe, as the Nicene Creed, and the Creed of Athanasius’, and a wider summation of teaching common to ‘true Reformed Protestant religion’.

scholarly journals Ritual Lamentation in the Irish Penitentials

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Alexandra Bergholm
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Religious Observance ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
The Church ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Some of the earliest references to ritual lamentation or keening in the early Irish sources are found in the penitential handbooks dated to around the seventh and eighth centuries. In previous scholarship, these passages have commonly been interpreted as evidence of the continuous attempts of the Church to curb pagan practices among the ‘nominally Christian’ populace, thus assuming that such regulations were primarily used as a means of social control. This article examines the wider theological and intellectual context of these texts, by focusing in particular on the influence of the Old Testament on early Irish ecclesiastical writing. It will be argued that the demonstrable preoccupation of these sources with issues such as ritual purity and proper religious observance suggests that the stipulations pertaining to lamentation were not solely intended to regulate lay behavior.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document