Journal articles on the topic 'Jesus Christ Sermons'

On 13 April 1403, Parisian chancellor Jean Gerson delivered one of his most famous sermons, a sermon on the Passion of Christ entitled “Ad deum vadit.” That evening, in the second part of the sermon, Gerson set forth the central and most dramatic portion of the Passion narrative, the crucifixion of Jesus. As he had done throughout the story, Gerson sought to recreate the feelings, responses, and very words of Mary as she witnessed her son's suffering. In an anguished question that echoed Jesus’ own, Gerson proclaims that Mary was able to cry to God.

Most research on John Calvin focuses on theology and history. Yet Calvin viewed himself primarily as a minister and preacher: the Bible is the revelation of God and exposition the preacher’s ultimate mission. This article examines Calvin’s methodology of biblical interpretation in his sermons, his perspective on the word, and his conception of preaching. Calvin’s sermons reveal four characteristics: the goal of preaching is unfolding biblical texts, biblical interpretation communicates the intent of the original author, the absolute lordship and grace of God is centered upon Jesus Christ, and the text must be applied as well as explained.

St. Augustine, first as a presbyter then as a bishop of Hippo, prepared catechumens for baptism. In accordance with the practice of the Church of the time, this preparation took place during Lent. The proper preparation started more or less two weeks before the Easter Vigil. The most important elements of that preparation were so-called “traditio” and “redditio” of the Symbol and of the Lord’s Prayer. Catechumens had to learn these prayers by heart.The mystagogical catechesis started on Easter Sunday. In Hippo, if one can believe preserved texts, a Bishop gave only one sermon on the mystery of the baptism and one on the Eucharist. The other sermons during Easter Week were devoted to an interpretation of the Gospels saying about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

St. Augustine, first as a presbyter then as a bishop of Hippo, prepared catechumens for baptism. In accordance with the practice of the Church of the time, this preparation took place during Lent. The proper preparation started more or less two weeks before the Easter Vigil. The most important elements of that preparation were so-called “traditio” and “redditio” of the Symbol and of the Lord’s Prayer. Catechumens had to learn these prayers by heart. The mystagogical catechesis started on Easter Sunday. In Hippo, if one can believe preserved texts, a Bishop gave only one sermon on the mystery of the baptism and one on the Eucharist. The other sermons during Easter Week were devoted to an interpretation of the Gospels saying about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

AbstractThis essay analyzes blogs, sermons, videos, and published interviews to examine the religious rhetoric of Christian practitioners of mixed martial arts as well as pastors who promote or reference the sport in their sermons. In the tradition of muscular Christianity (the Bible-based manhood movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries), these fighters and pastors argue that MMA teaches Christian virtues such as discipline and self-control. Linking a healthy physical body with a healthy mind and spirit, they suggest that athletes enact and embody Christian values and ideals of manliness. Some scholars (such as Tony Ladd and James Mathisen) have argued that modern incarnations of muscular Christianity preach a mere “folk theology”—that is, essentially a locker-room pep talk with a touch of Jesus thrown in. Drawing on the field of lived religion, however, I argue that practitioners of Christian MMA experience a close connection between the sport and their religious beliefs. Though the theology may take the language of the “folk,” certain values (discipline and self-sacrifice), theological positions (premillennialism, life as a struggle, Jesus as the focus of religion), and social agendas (addressing masculine aggression and religious and cultural effeminacy) characterize both turn-of-the-century muscular Christianity and Christian MMA today. Athletes strive to imitate Christ and embody Christian values—aided, perhaps, by the bodily practice of their sport. Their focus on Jesus at the expense of doctrine does not indicate a lack of theology. Rather, the image of a manly Christ who will not give up represents a strong, assertive, masculine ideal that fits clearly into an evangelical worldview.

El corpus sermonari de sant Vicent Ferrer es ric en simils i al・legories de tall bellic. El present article analitza l’us d’aquest tipus d’imatgeria per part del dominic valencia, principalmente mitjancant la lectura comparada dels seus sermons amb els d’altres predicadors medievals i diversos tractats de predicacio de l’epoca. En concret, hom centra l’atencio en tres aspectes de la presencia d’aquesta mena d’imatges dins la predicacio vicentina: a) la presentacio de Jesucrist com un cavaller (Christus miles) que lluita contra el diable per tal de redimir la humanitat; b) el desenvolupament de similitudines complexes en que el conjunt de la cristiandat es presentat com una host en formacio de batalla contra els vicis i les temptacions; i c) el recurs frequent a l’al・legoria del castell espiritual, un simbol el significat del qual fluctúa en funcio de cada sermo.Saint Vincent Ferrer’s corpus of sermons presents a rich variety of military similes and allegories. The present paper analyzes the use of these images in Ferrerian preaching, and does it mainly by means of a comparative approach which takes into account also the work of other medieval preachers and several Artes praedicandi treatises. Particular consideration has been given to three diferent aspects of the use of this sort of imagery in Ferrer’s sermons: a) the portrayal of Jesus Christ as a knight (Christus miles) who jousts against the devil for human salvation; b) the elaboration of complex similitudines in which the whole of Christendom is represented as a host assembled in battle array against temptations and vices; c) the regular use of the spiritual allegory of the castle under siege, a symbol whose meaning fluctuates from sermon to sermon.

The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) has a long, complex history. Well-known in the Latin West, the story was neglected but not forgotten in the East. Incorporated within Late Antique and Early Medieval Gospel manuscripts, depicted in Christian art, East and West, and included within the developing liturgies of Rome and Constantinople, the passage has fascinated interpreters for centuries despite irregularities in its transmission.1 Throughout this long history, one narrative detail has been of particular interest: the content and significance of Jesus— writing. Discussed in sermons, elaborated in manuscripts, and depicted in magnificent illuminations, Jesus— writing has inspired interpreters at least since the fourth century, when Ambrose of Milan first mentioned it. Offering his opinion on the propriety of capital punishment, the bishop turned to the pericope in order to argue that Christians do well to advocate on behalf of the condemned since, by doing so, they imitate the mercy of Christ. Nevertheless, he averred, the imposition of capital punishment remains an option for Christian rulers and judges. After all, God also judges and condemns, as Christ showed when, responding to the men questioning him and accusing the adulteress, he wrote twice on the ground. Demonstrating that “the Jews were condemned by both testaments,” Christ bent over and wrote “with the finger with which he had written the law,” or so the bishop claimed.2 Ambrose offered a further conjecture in a subsequent letter: Jesus wrote “earth, earth, write that these men have been disowned,” a saying he attributes to Jeremiah (compare Jer 22:29),3. As Jeremiah also explains, “Those who have been disowned by their Father are written on the ground,” but the names of Christians are written in heaven.4

The sermons of the mature Luther offer an illuminating ministeriology, in whose center stands the conviction that Christ is present in the office of the ministry. Various aspects of this central motif of Christ’s presence in the ministry can be observed. Drawing on this motif and its various aspects, weighty conclusions about the place of the office of the ministry in Luther’s ecclesiology and in the larger whole of his theology are drawn. In an English summary of his German dissertation, the author shows that Luther’s homiletically communicated understanding of the ministry offers new perspectives on the disputed topic of Luther’s understanding of the ministry, which hold no small promise for ecumenical theology and dialogue.

Patriarchs at home, but brides of Christ in spirit: it is an intriguing fact that while puritan writers opposed any confusion of gender roles in everyday life, they were happy for men to adopt a feminine identity in spiritual experience. On one hand, seventeenth-century conduct books and sermons hammered home the divinely-ordained place of husbands and wives in marriage. William Whately (1583-1639) argued that wives should always have on their lips the refrain ‘Mine husband is my superior, my better’, and thatas our Lord Jesus Christ is to his Church … so must [the husband] be to his wife an head and Saviour … the Lord in his Word hath intitled him by the name of head: wherefore hee must not stand lower than the shoulders…. That house is a … crump-shouldered or hutcht-backt house, where the husband hath made himself an underling to his wife, and given away his power to an inferior.

Grundtvig and Liturgical ExegesisBy Christian ThodbergLiturgical exegesis is defined as the way in which the Church re-actualised the words and deeds of Jesus in the service of worship in trying to answer the need of the congregation for being simultaneous with the biblical events. In the Western Church this liturgical exegesis received an emphatic exposition in connection with the old series of pericopes in the roman mass and in most of protestant churches as well.Many modem preachers do not like the old lectionary because it is crammed with the stories of Jesus’ miracles which - as they say - have no relevance to churchgoers of today. Grundtvig, however, always met those stories with pleasure, because in his opinion, they dealt with Jesus’ strong deeds in the worship today in baptism and communion. And essentially the biblical readings are worked out on the Sundays before and after the old baptismal terms, either at Easter time, or on the sixth of January, or at Whitsun. Thus baptism is defined in three ways by the three old baptismal terms: on January sixth as a birth with Christ, at Easter as death and resurrection with Christ and at Pentecost as the reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit.The Western system of gospel readings in general survived the Reformation, but in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the account of Christ’s acts of power came under critical scrutiny. They were understood as magical elements, which obscured the character of the bible as the teaching of Christianity. Parallel with this, in the context of the liturgy, the renunciation and the naming of the Devil and the word Hell was removed from the Apostles’ Creed in the baptismal rite and the Annunciation, the Resurrection and the Ascension were understood as images.As an old-fashioned believer, Grundtvig protested against all this. Christianity depended on Christ’s works of power. But despite his faith that the bible was literally God’s word, his problem was this: When and how did God’s word and Christ’s deeds of power touch him personally? Theologically, the question about the presence of God was a problem for Grundtvig throughout his life. In simple terms: Where does God speak to mel Grundtvig’s problem was solved by his famous »unparalleled discovery«, which became the hermeneutic key to his sermons. The thesis of liturgical history scholarship is that liturgical exegesis has its place already in the New Testament, and that the secondary epistles of St. Paul in connection (Ephesians, Colossians) can be rehabilitated, since they give us the key to the understanding of Jesus’ miracles in relations to baptism. In the end it points to Grundtvig’s persistent attempt to find the place where God speaks to him, where he intuitively rediscovers the early church’s understanding of the connection between Jesus’ works of power and baptism, and which thus becomes a contemporary challenge to New Testament scholarship and preaching today.

In May 1741, an anonymous Yorkshire Methodist sent George Whitefield a long letter in which he recorded the details of his nine-year-old daughter’s evangelical conversion. Within a fortnight the letter was printed in The Weekly History, the magazine which had become the official mouthpiece of the Calvinistic wing of the Evangelical Revival by this point. Here is how Whitefield began his account: We have a little daughter about nine years old; one Lord's Day in the last winter, when she staid at home, she read one of your journals, and afterwards some sermons of yours we had got from London. It pleased God by his Holy Spirit so to impress her mind as is very remarkable. She desires me to tell Mr Whitefield (that sweet minister of Jesus Christ) what she has met with in reading his book, she says, such a change of Heart, that she can now pray to God, and converse with his people in such a manner as she could never do before that day. She is of a sprightly brisk temper, yet if she be never so much engaged in work or play, if she hears any body talk of you, or things relating to religion, she will come and hear, and put in her word about it.

The article is devoted to the issue of contemporary church, perhaps the church of the recent times, to the issue of its parishioners and the characteristics of their psychological disposition, scope of reading, thought and ideas. Where is the marking line that divides them from the “secular life”, from “good laypeople” who also aspire to be moral? We see this marking line in the realization (awareness) of the conception of the sin and the use of this realization in everyday life. The root of difference between the “ecclesiastical traditionalists” and “ecclesiastical liberals”, that are connected with two diverse theologies and two diverse anthropologies, lies in the different attitude to the conception of sin. The traditionalists support the ascetic church doctrine that now more and more penetrates the parishioners’ life, and the liberals, voluntary or involuntary, absorbed the idea of the Man of the New Time, natural man, who due to the newest tendencies is gradually turning into an “unnatural man”. The disappearance of the concept of sin from the public conscience makes it impossible to deliver such sermons as the Saint Holy John of Kronstadt. The church and the laypeople tend more and more to talk past each other, the ecclesiasts turn more introvertive, unsociable and misunderstood by the world. Jesus Christ also spoke about this phenomenon: “If you were from the world, the world would love its own, but I chose you from the world, so the world hates you”. The tragic aspect of this saying becomes more evident in our time that has certain apocalyptic traits.

Jesus Christ is one of the most remarkable in the history of the world, the "sovereign" of many who enriched spiritual morality. Many scholars have created the biography of Jesus and a portion of the epic as a book. Among them were Veeramamunivar, The works of Krishnapillai, John Palm, Kannadasan and Nirmala Suresh are remarkable. The bead of this epic is the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ. This hill fall is also referred to as 'Puratchi Osai'. The purpose of this article is to know the principles of the ology that jesus compares the blessed part of the epic mountain shower and the biblical gospel with it.

To speak of miracles in post-Reformation England may seem like something of an oxymoron. The sense of internal contradiction in my title springs from the fact that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant ministers consistently maintained that this category of extraordinary events had long since ceased. They did not deny that supernatural acts of this kind had taken place in biblical times. As set down in the books of the Old Testament, God had vouchsafed many wonders to His chosen people, the Hebrews, including the parting of the Red Sea, the raining of manna from heaven, and the metamorphosis of Aaron’s rod into a serpent. Equally, the New Testament recorded the prodigious feats performed by Christ and his apostles to convince the disbelieving Gentiles and Jews: from the raising of Lazarus and the transformation of water into wine at the marriage at Cana to curing lepers of their sores and restoring sight to the blind, not to mention the great mysteries of the Incarnation and Resurrection. But dozens of sermons and tracts reiterated the precept that God no longer worked wonders above, beyond, or against the settled order and instinct of nature – the standard definition of miracle inherited from the scholastic writings of St Thomas Aquinas. Such special dispensations were the ‘seales and testimonials’ of the Gospel. They had been necessary to sow the first seeds of the faith, to plant the new religion centring on the redemption of mankind by Jesus of Nazareth. But this gift, stressed John Calvin and his disciples, was only of ‘temporary duration’. Miracles were the swaddling bands of the primitive Church, the mother’s milk on which it had been initially weaned. Once the Lord had begun to feed His people on the meat of the Word, he expected them to believe the truth as preached and revealed in Scripture rather than wait for astonishing visible spectacles to be sent down from heaven. Although there was some uncertainty about exactly when such wonders had come to an end, Protestant divines were in general agreement that, as a species, miracles were now extinct. Christians could and should not expect to see such occurrences in the course of their lifetimes.

Jacques De Vitry (c. 160-1240) was a most perceptive and sympathetic observer of all that the religious life meant to women at the beginning of the thirteenth century. He thus took care to address some of his preaching to particular groups of these women. In his Sermones vulgares, probably set down at some time after 1228, he put forward messages appropriate to each of these groups. He was uniquely qualified to do so.

The Bible is a good teaching and ethics. The first book of the New Testament is the Gospel of Matthew. The most famous of the teachings of Jesus Christ is the Sermon on the Mount teaching. The purpose of this article is to highlight the theological principles found in the Sermon on the Mount and explain with evidence that the theological elements are found in the Gospel of Matthew for the development of society.

The Son of the Widow from Nain.By Kaj ThaningThis article intends to elucidate the distinctions that Grundtvig made in his world of ideas in the course of the years from 1824 to 1834, first between spirit and letter, church and church-school (1826-1830), and then between natural life and Christian life (in 1832). In His "Literary Testament" (1827), Grundtvig himself admits that there was a "Chaos" in his writings, due to the youthful fervour that pervaded his literary works and his sermons in the years 1822-1824. But not until 1832 does he acknowledge that "when I speak or write as a citizen, or a bard, or a scholar, it is not the time nor the place to either preach or confess, so when I have done so, it was a mistake which can only be excused with the all too familiar disorder pertaining to our church, our civic life, and our scholarship...", as it says in a passage omitted from the manuscript for "Norse Mythology”, 1832. (The passage is printed in its entirety in ”A Human first...”, p. 259f.)The point of departure for Thaning’s article is a sermon on the Son of the Widow from Nain, delivered in 1834, which the editor, Christian Thodberg also found "singularly personal”, since Grundtvig keeps using the pronoun ”1”. In this sermon Grundtvig says that those who have heard him preaching on this text before, would remember that he regarded the mourning widow as ”an image of the same broken heart at all times”, and her comforter, Jesus, not only as a great prophet in Israel, but ”as the living Being who sees us and is with us always until the end of the world”. Thodberg is of the opinion that Grundtvig refers to his sermon from 1823. Thaning, however, thinks that the reference is to the sermon from 1824. But Grundtvig adds that one may now rightly ask him whether he ’’still regards the gospel for the day with the same eyes, the same hope and fear as before.” He wants to discuss this, among other things ’’because the best thing we can do when we grow old is ... to develop and explain what in the days of our youth .. sprang up before our eyes and echoes in our innermost mind.” In other words, he speaks as if he had grown old. So Thaning asks: "What happened on the way from Our Saviour’s Church to Frederick’s Church?"Thaning’s answer is that there was a change in Grundtvig’s view of life. Already in his first sermon in 1832, he says that his final and truly real hour as a pastor has now arrived. Thaning’s explanation is that Grundtvig has now passed from the time of strong emotions to that of calm reflections. Not until now does he realize "what is essential and what is not". And in 1834 he says that our Christian views, too, must go through a purgatorial fire when we grow older. This is not only true of the lofty views of human life which, naturally, go through this purgatory and most often lose themselves in it. Here Grundtvig distinguishes between natural and Christian life which is something new in a sermon. Thaning adds that this purgatorial fire pervades Grundtvig’s drafts for the Introduction to "Norse Mythology" in 1832. But then, Grundtvig’s lofty views did not lose themselves in purgatory. He got through it. His view of life changed. (Here Thaning refers to his dissertation, "A Human First...", p. 306ff).This is vaguely perceptible throughout the sermon in question. But according to Thaning Grundtvig slightly distorts the picture of his old sermon. In the latter he did not mix up natural and Christian life. It is Thaning’s view that Grundtvig is thinking of the distinct mixture of Christianity and Danish national feeling in the poem "New Year’s Morning" (1824). But he also refers to Grundtvig’s sermon on Easter Monday, 1824, printed in Helge Toldberg’s dissertation, "Grundtvig’s World of Symbols" (1950), p. 233ff, showing that he has been captured by imagery in a novel manner. He seems to want to impose himself upon his audience. In 1834 he knows he has changed. But 1832 is the dividing year. In the passage omitted from the manuscript for "Norse Mythology", Grundtvig states explicitly that faith is "a free matter": "Faith is a matter of its own, and truly each man’s own matter". Grundtvig could not say this before 1832. Thaning is of the opinion that this new insight lies behind the distinction that he makes in the sermon in 1834, where he says that he used to mix up Christian life with "the natural life of our people", which involved the risk that his Christian view might be misinterpreted and doubted. Now it has been through purgatory. And in the process it has only lost its "absurdity and obscurity, which did not come from the Lord, but from myself”.Later in the sermon he says: "The view is no more obscured by my Danish national feeling; I certainly do not by any means fail to appreciate the particularly friendly relationship that has prevailed through centuries between the Christian faith and the life of this people, and nor do I by any means renounce my hope that the rebirth of Christianity here will become apparent to the world, too, as a good deed, but yet this is only a dream, and the prophet will by no means tell us such dreams, but he bids us separate them sharply from the word of God, like the straw from the grain...". This cannot be polemically directed against his own sermons from 1824. It must necessarily reflect a reaction against the fundamental view expressed in "New Year’s Morning" and its vision of Christianity and Danishness in one. (Note that in his dissertation for the Degree of Divinity, Bent Christensen calls the poem "a dream", as Thaning adds).In his "Literary Testament" (1827) Grundtvig speaks about the "Chaos" caused by "the spirits of the Bible, of history, and of the Nordic countries, whom I serve and confuse in turn." But there is not yet any recognition of the same need for a distinction between Danishness and Christianity, which in the sermon he calls "the straw and the grain". Here he speaks of the distinction between "church and church-school, Christianity and theology, the spirit of the Bible and the letter of the Bible", as a consequence of his discovery in 1825. He still identifies the spirit of human history with the spirit of the Bible: "Here is the explanation over my chaos", Grundtvig says. But it is this chaos that resolves itself, leading to the insight and understanding in the sermon from 1834.In the year after "The Literary Testament", 1828, Grundtvig publishes the second part of his "Sunday Book", in which the only sermon on the Son of the Widow in this work appears. It is the last sermon in this volume, and it is an elaboration of the sermon from 1824. What is particularly characteristic of it is its talk about hope. "When the heart sees its hope at death’s door, where is comfort to be found for it, save in a divine voice, intoning Weep not!" Here Grundtvig quotes St. John 3:16 and says that when this "word of Life" is heard, when hope revives and rises from its bier, is it not then, and not until then, that we feel that God has visited his people...?" In the edition of this sermon in the "Sunday Book" a note of doubt has slipped in which did not occur in the original sermon from 1824. The conclusion of the sermon bears evidence that penitential Christianity has not yet been overcome: "What death would be too hard a transition to eternal life?" - "Then, in the march of time, let it stand, that great hope which is created by the Word ... like the son of the great woman from Nain."It is a strange transition to go from this sermon to the next one about the son of the widow, the sermon from 1832, where Christ is no longer called "hope". The faith has been moved to the present: "... only in the Word do we find him, the Word was the sign of life when we rose from the dead, and if we fell silent, it was the sign of death." - "Therefore, as the Lord has visited us and has opened our mouths, we shall speak about him always, in the certain knowledge that it is as necessary and as pleasurable as to breathe..." The emphasis of faith is no longer in words like longing and hope.In a sense this and other sermons in the 1830s anticipate the hymn "The Lord has visited his people" ("Hymn Book" (Sangv.rk) I, no. 23): the night has turned into morning, the sorrow has been removed. The gospel has become the present. As before the Church is compared with the widow who cried herself blind at the foot of the cross. Therefore the Saviour lay in the black earth, nights and days long. But now the Word of life has risen from the dead and shall no more taste death. The dismissal of the traditional Christianity, handed down from the past, is extended to include the destructive teaching in schools. The young man on the bier has been compared with the dead Christianity which Grundtvig now rejects. At an early stage Grundtvig was aware of its effects, such as in the Easter sermon in 1830 ("Sunday Book" III, p. 263) where Grundtvig speaks as if he had experienced a breakthrough to his new view. So, the discovery of the Apostles’ Creed in 1825 must have been an enormous feeling of liberation for him – from the worship of the letter that so pervaded his age. Grundtvig speaks about the "living, certain, oral, audible" word in contrast to the "dead, uncertain, written, mute" sign in the book. However, there is as yet no mention of the "Word from the Mouth of our Lord", which belongs to a much later time. Only then does he acquire the calm confidence that enables him to preach on the background of what has happened that the Word has risen from the dead. The question to ask then is what gave him this conviction."Personally I think that it came to him at the same time as life became a present reality for him through the journeys to England," Thaning says. By the same token, Christianity also became a present reality. The discovery of 1825 was readily at hand to grant him a means of expression to convey this present reality and the address to him "from the Lord’s own mouth", on which he was to live. It is no longer enough for him to speak about "the living, solemn evidence at baptism of the whole congregation, the faith we are all to share and confess" as much more certain than everything that is written in all the books of the world. The "Sunday Book" is far from containing the serene insight which, in spite of everything, the Easter sermon, written incidentally on Easter Day, bears witness to. But in 1830 he was not yet ready to sing "The Lord has visited his people", says Thaning.In the sermon from 1834 one meets, as so often in Grundtvig, his emphasis on the continuity in his preaching. In the mourning widow he has always seen an image of the Church, as it appears for the first time in an addition to the sermon on the text in the year 1821 ("Pr.st. Sermons", vol I, p. 296). It ends with a clue: "The Church of Christ now is the Widow of Nain". He will probably have elaborated that idea and concluded his sermon with it. Nevertheless, as it has appeared, the sermon in 1834 is polemically directed against his former view, the mixture of Christian and natural life. He recognizes that there is an element of "something fantastic" sticking to the "view of our youth".Already in a draft for a sermon from March 4,1832, Grundtvig says:"... this was truly a great error among us that we contented ourselves with an obscure and indefinite idea of the Spirit as well as the Truth, for as a consequence of that we were so doubtful and despondent, and we so often mistook the letter for the spirit, or the spirit of phantasy and delusion for that of God..." (vol. V, p. 79f).The heart-searchings which this sermon draft and the sermon on the 16th Sunday after Trinity are evidence of, provide enough argument to point to 1832 as a year of breakthrough. We, his readers, would not have been able to indicate the difference between before and now with stronger expressions than Grundtvig’s own. "He must really have turned into a different kind of person", Thaning says. At the conclusion of the article attention is drawn to the fact that the image of the Son of the Widow also appears in an entirely different context than that of the sermon, viz. in the article about Popular Life and Christianity that Grundtvig wrote in 1847. "What still remains alive of Danish national feeling is exactly like the disconsolate widow at the gate of Nain who follows her only begotten son to the grave" (US DC, p. 86f). The dead youth should not be spoken to about the way to eternal life, but a "Rise!" should be pronounced, and that apparently means: become a living person! On this occasion Grundtvig found an opportunity to clarify his ideas. His "popular life first" is an extension of his "a human being first" from 1837. He had progressed over the last ten years. But the foundation was laid with the distinction between Christian and natural life at the beginning of the 1830s.

The Pentecostal sermon attributed to Peter in Acts announces Joel’s prophecy fulfilled: It shall happen in the last days, says God, that I will pour some of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your youths shall see visions and your elders shall dream dreams; yes, even on my slaves and slavegirls in those days I will pour some of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.The gift thus overrides sex, rank, and social status; it is often overlooked that the company on whom the Spirit falls in Acts 2 includes, beside the restored Twelve, ‘women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers’, and Acts in this respect agrees with Paul that in Christ ‘there is no Jew nor Greek, there is no slave nor free man, there is no male and female; you are all one person in Christ Jesus.’

The hymn in Phil 2:5–11, which may be the earliest statement about Jesus’s death on the cross, omits typical concepts of substitutionary atonement. This hymn sees the cross within the story that Jesus gave up the privilege of divinity to become human and offers a fresh way to see the intersection of Jesus’s death and Christian discipleship. Feminist and womanist theologians have rightly criticized substitutionary atonement, because the powerful inevitably place the message of sacrifice and suffering upon women and the marginalized. The hymn, however, speaks not of sacrifice and suffering, but of God’s willingness to give up privilege to create solidarity. For those with privilege to be of the same mind that was in Christ Jesus (v. 5), they must choose not to exploit that advantage, but to empty themselves of it and collectively create atonement through solidarity with one another.

Jesus founded His Church as the new family of God by instituting the Twelve. The new family is a real space which fulfils the Kingdom of God. It is a community of Jesus’ disciples which fosters the rule of God in the world and has an explicitly institutional dimension. The founding of the new family fulfils the promise to create the new Israel made in the Old Testament. The ethos of the new family of God is aimed at proclaiming the universal reign of God, as it is the mission bestowed on the family by Jesus. Its moral principles were laid out in the Sermon on the Mount. The new family of God is a space where all the promises made by God to Israel come to fulfilment. In this sense, we can speak of continuity between the nation of Israel and the Ecclesia. The Church does not replace the people of the Old Testament but is a continuation thereof in Jesus Christ.

Resum: El nomen sacrum ihs se hallaba presente en infinidad de manifestaciones artísticas y objetos de la vida cotidiana durante la Edad Media, por lo que era bien conocido por los fieles. El objetivo del presente artículo es mostrar de qué modo san Vicente Ferrer se sirve de esta abreviatura como símbolo de la crucifixión de Jesucristo con el fin de fomentar la devoción al nombre Iesus y erradicar el recurso a adivinos y sortílegos. Para ello, analizaremos el sermón de la Circuncisión del Señor predicado por el maestro dominico y estableceremos la conexión de los elementos integrantes del texto con representaciones coetáneas de la crucifixión.Paraules clau: san Vicente Ferrer, predicación, Nomina Sacra, crucifixión, historia de la cultura escrita Abstract: The nomen sacrum ihs was present in many paintings as well as other artifacts during the Middle Ages, therefore, it was very well known by the public. The aim of this paper is to show the way Saint Vincent Ferrer uses this abbreviation as a symbol of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ in order to increase the devotion to the Name of Jesus and prevent people from consulting diviners and sorcerers to solve daily life problems. To this end, we analyse the Sermon of the Circumcision of the Lord preached by the Dominican master and establish the relationship between the elements that compose the text and some contemporary images of the Crucifixion.Keywords: Saint Vincent Ferrer, preaching, Nomina Sacra, crucifixion, history of literacy

Abstract The ninth century Heliand is a poetic retelling of the New Testament in Old Saxon, written by an anonymous monk for the purpose of confirming the conversion his fellow Saxons to the new faith. This conversion had been forced upon them by the Frankish invaders. The author adepts the story of Jesus Christ to fit within the feudal Saxon society and precursory Nordic mythology. This contribution focuses on the Saxon rendering of the Lord’s Prayer as it is situated in the context of the Sermon on the Mount. Several key differences between the Saxon version and its biblical original are pointed out. These mirror and illustrate the attempt of the anonymous author to inculturate Jesus’ message. Finally, it is shown how, by some subtle phrases in the text of the Heliand, the poet of the Heliand is including his Saxon audience to fit themselves spiritually into the biblical story. Through the Heliand, Jesus seems to speak directly to its readers, thus stimulating a transformation of the reader-or hearer-himself.

Holy Week naturally centers its attention on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. When pondering the good news of God’s liberating love in Christ, everything culminates in Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. Not surprisingly, then, Holy Saturday gets short shrift. The gospels themselves have little to say about it, and Christian tradition does nothing of note to mark what it means. The following message, which in its original form was presented as part of an ecumenical Holy Week series, invites worshipers into the pregnant pause of “silent Saturday,” there to lay lives bare in the aftermath of Christ’s death. In the spirit of the first followers of Jesus, for whom resurrection could scarcely be imagined, those with imaginations and willingness to do so can confess their sins, their fears, their frustrations, their doubts. Against the backdrop of today’s yearnings for justice, they can bring their suffering, exhaustion, and disappointment, as well, and find in introspection the gifts of relinquishment and hope.

The cross of Christ in the Middle Ages was the most powerful symbol of God’s victory over sin, death and the forces of evil, while also representing the most abject suffering and degradation of Jesus Christ, the God-Man. A simplistic reading of the evolution of the theology of the cross during this period posits a transition from the early medieval victorious and heroic Christ figure, reigning and triumphant upon the cross, to a late medieval emaciated and tortured object of pity whose ignominious death was supposed to elicit heartfelt compassion for his plight and sincere sorrow for the sin which placed him on the beams of the tree of crucifixion. Of course, there is a great deal of value in this argument, and much evidence might be brought forward to support its central thesis. However, it should not be pushed too far; it might also be remembered that the essential paradox of Christ the victor-victim is a constant theme in Christian theology, expressed in the sixth-century Vexilla regis in its identification of the cross as ‘victim of the passion’s glory, by which life brought death to an end, and, by death, gave life again’ and in the hymn Victimae paschali laudes from the central medieval period: ‘Death with life contended, combat strangely ended, life’s own champion slain yet lives to reign’. The image of the victorious cross of Christ, conceived of as simultaneously an instrument of triumph and of torture, would persist right through the late medieval period, despite the development of a greater emphasis on the physical sufferings of Christ in his passion and their ever more graphic depictions. This essay, which examines the way in which the cross of Christ is presented in medieval Irish literature, provides sufficient examples to make this point clear; these are drawn from a variety of sources including religious verse, saints’ lives, medieval travel accounts and sermon material. Of course, these examples are best viewed within the context of a broader medieval European devotional culture from which Ireland was certainly not immune.

The antitrinitarian Polish Brethren, from the inception of their denomination as a breakaway from the Calvinist Reformed Church in 1565, had earnestly debated the issue of whether a “true Christian” might collaborate in the workof the sword-bearing magistracy, take part in war, or kill a fellow human being in self-defense. Whereas the brotherhood in the militarily exposed Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with a few exceptions, gave a positive answer, the congregational leaders in the more secure kingdom of Poland for the most part said no. To do any of these things, the latterargued, entailed disobedience to Jesus’ commandments as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere in the New Testament. For Christ replaced the laws of the Old Testament, which had allowed the ancient Israelites to wage just wars and wield the sword for good cause, with a gospel of love and defenselessness. This doctrine of nonresistance the pacifist Brethren, of course, had taken over from the Anabaptists of central Europe, whose insistence on adult baptism they also adopted.

The background of the problem in this study is the occurrence of changes in the current generation due to mass media that change the mindsets, behavior, and habits of today's youth, accompanied by education that tends to be based on knowledge or cognitive. All of this will result in humans not being human. Thus, character education offered by Jesus in a happy speech at the Sermon on the Mount is character-based education centered on the imitation of Christ, which is to follow in the footsteps or steps of Christ in the lives of Indonesian Christian students. This framework of thought or world view is what Christian Character education is. Thus, this research will use an asynchronous method that is to exegete what is said in the text of Matthew 5:6-12. Abstrak Latar belakang dari masalah dalam penelitian ini adalah terjadinya perubahan pada generasi saat ini karena media massa yang mengubah pola pikir, perilaku, dan kebiasaan pemuda saat ini, disertai dengan pendidikan yang cenderung didasarkan pada pengetahuan atau kognitif. Semua ini akan meng-akibatkan manusia tidak manusia. Dengan demikian, pendidikan karakter yang diajarkan Yesus melalui khotbah ucapan bahagia di bukit merupakan pengajaran berbasis karakter yang berpusat pada meniru Kristus, yang mengikuti jejak atau langkah Kristus dalam kehidupan siswa Kristen Indonesia. Kerangka pemikiran atau pandangan dunia ini adalah apa yang pendidikan karakter Kristen. Dengan demikian, penelitian ini akan menggunakan metode asynchronous yaitu untuk penafsir apa yang dikatakan dalam teks Matius 5:6-12.

Предлагаемая публикация продолжает ряд работ прот. Леонида Грилихеса по семитской реконструкции новозаветных текстов. Вместе с тем, она познакомит читателя с принципиально новым подходом к реконструкции, который в ранних работах автора был лишь намечен. Прот. Леонид исходит из того, что притчи Иисуса Христа, а также значительно число Его других речей, представляли собой изосиллабические поэтические тексты. Другими словами, они включали в себя равное количество слогов в каждой строке. Устойчивые модели, стоящие за реконструируемыми текстами, позволяют прот. Леониду описать несколько языковых закономерностей, характерных для оригинального языка притч. Настоящая публикация позволит компетентному читателю ознакомиться с реконструкциями двух текстов: речи Иисуса о Законе Моисеевом из Нагорной проповеди и притчи о Страшном Суде. The present publication continues a series of works by archpriest Leonid Grilikhes on the «Semitic reconstruction» of the New Testament texts. At the same time, it represents a fundamentally new approach to the reconstruction, which was only outlined in archpriest Leonid’s early works. The author presumes that the parables of Jesus Christ, as well as a significant number of His other speeches, were isosyllabic poetic texts. In other words, they included an equal number of syllables in each line. The patterns represented by the reconstructed texts allow the author to describe several «rules» characteristic for the original language of the parables. The present publication familiarizes the competent reader with the reconstructions of two texts, namely, the speech of Jesus on the Law of Moses from the Sermon on the Mount, and the parable of the Last Judgment.

Abstract: The Kingdom of God is central to the whole message of Jesus Christ. Through the kingdom of God, we can discover and understand the entire mission of Jesus. The Kingdom of God is the embodiment of God’s saving presence in human life. Compared with the Jewish religious movements of that era, especially the apocalyptic movement, which also awaited the coming of the Kingdom of God, Jesus’ preaching about the kingdom of God has a special feature, that the Kingdom of God is an act of forgiveness and salvation from God, and not God’s judgment; moreover, the action is happening now in people’s life, rather than being something that is expected in the future. Through Jesus, through his word and his work, God is now present in the midst of the people. Through his parables and his words in the Sermon on the Mount and in the act of casting out demons, in healing the sick and in the forgiveness of sin, Jesus reveals the presence of a compassionate God, a God who frees people from the power of sin and leades them in the power of divine grace. Jesus not only preached the kingdom of God but gave himself so that people would experience God’s saving work. Through His death on the cross, Jesus freely poured God’s mercy and goodness upon human beings. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God has important implications for the understanding of the Christological and ecclesiological renewal. Keywords: Kingdom of God, salvation, forgiveness, word of Jesus, work of Jesus, human life, Christological and ecclesiological renewal. Abstrak: Kerajaan Allah merupakan inti seluruh pewartaan Yesus Kristus. Melalui Kerajaan Allah kita dapat menemukan dan mengerti seluruh perutusan hidup Yesus. Kerajaan Allah berarti perwujudan kehadiran Allah yang menyelamatkan dalam hidup manusia. Dibandingkan dengan gerakan keagamaan yahudi pada zaman itu, khususnya apokaliptik yang juga menantikan kedatangan Kerajaan Allah, pewartaan Yesus tentang Kerajaan Allah memiliki ciri khusus bahwa Kerajaan Allah adalah tindakan pengampunan dan penyelamatan Allah, bukan penghakiman Allah dan tindakan itu kini terjadi nyata dalam hidup manusia, dan bukannya sesuatu yang dinantikan di masa depan. Melalui diri Yesus, dalam sabda dan karya-Nya, Allah kini hadir di tengah-tengah umat-Nya. Lewat perumpamaan dan sabda bahagia maupun dalam tindakan pengusiran setan, penyembuhan orang sakit dan pengampunan orang berdosa, Yesus menyatakan kehadiran Allah yang penuh belas kasih dalam hidup manusia, yang membebaskannya dari kuasa dosa dan menuntunnya dalam kuasa rahmat Ilahi. Yesus tidak hanya memberitakan Kerajaan Allah tetapi juga memberikan diri-Nya, sehingga orang sungguh mengalami karya penyelamatan Allah. Melalui kematian-Nya di salib, Yesus mencurahkan dengan cuma-cuma kerahiman dan kebaikan Allah dalam hidup manusia. Pewartaan Kerajaan Allah Yesus ini memiliki dampak penting bagi pembaruan pemahaman kristologis dan eklesiologis. Kata-kata Kunci: Kerajaan Allah, penyelamatan, pengampunan, sabda Yesus, karya Yesus, kehidupan manusia, pembaruan pemahaman kristologis dan eklesiologis.

AbstractIn Acts 3, Peter calls God "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers" (3:13), a surprisingly rare OT appellation occurring thrice in Exodus 3. Acts 3's story of the healed cripple rewrites LXX Exodus 3, reversing various markers of God's presence prominent therein, the most significant of which is God's resistance to being named. Initially calling himself òων (3:14), God ultimately acquiesces to a periphrastic self-designation: the unnamed god of named others (3:15-16). In "Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book," Jacques Derrida explains why God's presence resists naming: to call something something else involves a conceptualization of being that effaces Being itself. Following this logic, Acts 3's repeated references to "the name of Jesus" (3:6, 16) signify the ascended Christ's absence (1:6-11), whose implications Peter's sermon explores. Although Peter speaks of the eschatological consummation that the "holy prophets" announced (3:20-21), when recalling such a prophecy he quotes from Deuteronomy 18, "the Lord will raise up a prophet like me" (3:22-23), going on to assert that "all prophets" speak of the time when God will do this (3:24). Prophets' prophesy about a time when God will raise up a prophet who, according to 3:24, will prophesy about a time when God will raise up a prophet. This circular prophecy of an eschatological prophet gestures at the infinite deferral of Christ's eschatological presence, or παρoυσíα. In dialogue with Hans Conzelmann, I consider the implications of this and a related episode (Luke 17:22-37) for Lukan eschatology.

Penulisan karya ilmiah ini dilatar belakangi dengan sebuah tujuan untuk melihat lagu hymn karya Charles Wesley memiliki relevansi di dalam sebuah penginjilan, yang dilakukan oleh Wesley bersaudara. Wesley bersaudara merupakan salah satu tokoh gerejawi yang mempunyai peran besar dalam berkembangnya pelayanan penginjilan di Inggris. Masing-masing diantara Wesley bersaudara mempunyai peran tersendiri ketika menjalankan pelayanan. John Wesley terkenal dengan khotbahnya yang membangun dan displin dalam iman kepada Yesus Kristus, sedangkan Charles Wesley terkenal dengan kemampuannya dalam menulis lirik lagu. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penulisan karya ilmiah ini adalah dengan menggunakan metode kualitatif. Dan untuk melakukan metode penelitian tersebut hal yang akan dilakukan, yaitu: Pertama, pengambilan dan pengumpulan data melalui buku, jurnal, dan skripsi online yang berkaitan dengan judul yang dibahas dalam karya tulis ini. Kedua, observasi lagu-lagu ciptaan Charles Wesley. Dalam karya ilmiah ini, penulis mencoba untuk membuktikan bahwa lagu hymn karya Charles Wesley mempunyai relevansi di dalam penginjilan Wesley bersaudara berperan sejauh mana nyanyian yang diciptakan oleh Charles Wesley, mendukung khotbah dari John Wesley, dan pelayanan penginjilan yang dikerjakan menghasilkan makna baru. Setiap syair mengandung makna yang mendalam dalam menggugah hati jemaat, sehingga lewat nyanyian mampu membuat jemaat bertobat, dan mengalami peneguhan iman di dalam Yesus kristus.The writing of this scientific work was motivated to see the role of a song in evangelism, carried out by the Wesley brothers. The Wesley brothers were one of the ecclesiastical figures who had a large role in developing evangelistic services in England. Each of the Wesley brothers has its role when running services. John Wesley is famous for his constructive preaching and discipline in faith in Jesus Christ, while Charles Wesley is famous for writing song lyrics. The research method used in writing this thesis is to use qualitative methods. And to do the research method, the things that will be done are: First, data collection and collection through books, journals, and online thesis related to the title discussed in this paper. Second, observation of songs by Charles Wesley. In this scientific work, the author tries to prove that the role of singing in the Wesley evangelization of brothers plays the extent to which the song was created by Charles Wesley, supporting John Wesley’s sermon. Each poem contains a profound meaning in moving the congregation's hearts so that singing can make the church repent and experience the confirmation of faith in Jesus Christ.

AbstractBetween Erich Auerbach and Walter Benjamin, there existed a remarkable friendship, which on the one hand manifested itself as an unobtrusive disputation, and yet which on the other hand could be considered an unintended collaboration toward an old-new ideal of philology. Auerbach claims that with the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Western European literature reached the climax of the figuralism that Auerbach, if belatedly, wants to bring to the fore. Benjamin, in contrast, finds energy for the revolution in the surrealistic love that traces back not to Dante, but to the Provençal poetry which Auerbach regards merely as preliminary to Danteʼs literary achievement. In his The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin highlights the concept of creatureliness, whose significance for his philosophy of history is no less than that of justice. Auerbach, for his part, does not find its expression in the Germany of the 17th century, but in the France of the 16th century, namely in the work of Michel de Montaigne. However, Montaigneʼs creatureliness is rooted in sermo humilis, which is best embodied in the story of Peter who denied his Lord Jesus Christ three times. By contrast, German creatureliness detects its dissolution in the idea of natural theatre that Benjamin locates in the work of Franz Kafka. Sermo humilis is the perfection of figuralism, whereas the idea of natural theatre means reversal of allegory. The perfected figuralism and the reversed allegory cooperate in the idea of the philology of instead (Philologie des Stattdessen), whose task it is to make bygone the futility of worldly things.

Prominent motifs in a selection of sermons delivered before, during and immediately after the Anglo-Boer War This article investigates a selection (160) of sermons delivered before, during and after the Anglo-Boer war and published afterwards. The aim of the investigation is to indicate (possible) repetitive motifs used in these sermons. The initial hypothesis taken was that the motif of freedom probably would have functioned prominently within the context of the war. The investigation of the 160 selected sermons, however, proved that although the motif of freedom indeed occurs, it is applied in the broad Biblical sense of being liberated from sin. Freedom in God is stressed and not primarily freedom from British oppression. Several other motifs also function prominently in these sermons – motifs like redemption in Christ, hope, comfort in hardship and peace with God in Jesus Christ. Although these motifs are applied within the context of the Bible, it should be kept in mind that these sermons were delivered in the time of the Anglo-Boer War. These sermons should, therefore, be studied as embedded within a certain time frame: text and context should both be considered in the analysis of these sermons. The analysis, however, indicates that the parts from Scripture selected for these sermons were treated homiletically in a responsible way.

Creative preaching: The importance of creativity in the preaching process Using the limited resources for proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ in a rapidly changing world presents problems for preachers. Preaching in the reformed tradition is based primarily upon the Bible and the tradition of the church. Given the limitations of the age of the source, the preacher runs the risk of boring the congregation with sermons irrelevant to their living conditions, by repeating the same basic message. Preachers may run out of ideas and ways of presenting a fresh, relevant message on a weekly basis. They start employing all kinds of tricks and gimmicks in order to stay relevant. Creative preaching is suggested as an answer to this dilemma. Creative preaching is developed and described as a process in which the preacher, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, employs creative methods like observation, association, imagination and creative thinking when creating a sermon. The sermon is structured to be creative and to stimulate the creativity of the listeners. Creative preaching could be described as stimulating preaching based on Scripture, imagination and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Totius and the Book of Revelation In his sermons on the book Revelation, published in 1921, the Afrikaans theologian and poet, Prof. J.D. du Toit, better known under the pseudonym Totius, took the “futurist” view as the principal way to explain this Bible book. Elements of other views like the “historicist view” were also followed, especially in the sermon on the seven churches in Asia Minor, which regarded each church as concerned with later periods in the history of Western Europe. According to Du Toit the scene of the sealing of the servants of God (7:1-8) and of the great multitude mentioned later in the chapter (7:9-17) is set at the end of time. It should, however, be better to interpret chapter 7:1-8 as the church in John's time and the vast crowd of people from every nation as an image of the redeemed in the bliss of heaven. The multitude who comes (present tense) out of the great tribulation are those who died for their faith when Revelation was written. But the article describing the multitude in the original Greek text also seems to indicate the great trouble accompanying the end of things. For Du Toit the prostitute in chapter 17 symbolizes a city, namely Babylon. The harlot, however, had slain a great number of saints who believed in Jesus (17:6). Thus the harlot cannot be identified with Babylon. The city must be Rome, the contemporary representative of the cruel empires which, through the ages have enslaved people by brute force. Rome also killed saints who served Christ. Du Toit’s greatest shortcoming in his explanation of the Book of Revelation was that he did not see that the book Revelation is rooted in a given historical situation.

The introductory part of this article presents an explanation of what is meant by the Greek New Testament word παράκλησις: and an indication of what is accepted by the author of this article as a valid method of studying Romans. The main indicative of Romans lies in the first part, 1:16 - 4:25. Special attention should thus be given to the introductory part before this main section. In deviations from the formal introduction to the letter Paul beforehand indicates what is to follow later in the letter The traditional exegesis of Romans 1:18 is not considered as correct in all aspects and reformed dogmatics built on Romans 1 should be reconsidered as far as sufficiency of revelation is concemed The second main section, Romans 5-8 is a consolation and an exhortation to Christians to persevere in faith. The third part, Romans 9-11, is an appeal to Jews to accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah. This part also contains an urgent warning to Christians from the Gentiles not to fall into covenant-automatism. The παράκλησις; of Romans 12:1 -15:13 is directed in first instance to the congregation in Rome. Though this paraclesis primarily concerns the congregation in Rome, it also touches upon the relation to the world and to authority, and it culminates in Romans 15:7 with an appeal that the diverse groups in the congregation in Rome should accept each other as Christ had accepted them. In the concluding part of the letter Paul’s main issues are to get the Romans involved in his planned missionary work in Spain and the appeal that they should bring forth the fruit of their faith. The article concludes with some suggestions for sermons from Romans.

Jesus� imperatives in the Sermon on the Mount continue to play a significant role in Christian ethical discussions. The tension between the radical demands of Jesus and the impossibility of living this out within the everyday world has been noted by many scholars. In this article, an eschatological-ontological model, based on the social construction of reality, is developed to show that this dialectic is not necessarily an embarrassment to the church but, instead, belongs to the essence of the church as the recipient of the Spirit of Christ and as called by him to exist now in terms of the coming new age that has already been realised in Christ. The absolute demands of Jesus� imperatives, it is argued, must relativise all other interpretations of reality whilst the world, in turn, relativises Jesus� own definition of what �is� and therefore also the injunctions to his disciples on how to live within this world. This process of radical relativisation provides a critical framework for Christian living. The church must expect, and do, the impossible within this world through her faith in Christ who recreates and redefines reality. The church�s ethical task, it is further argued, is to participate with the Spirit in the construction of signs of this new reality in Christ in this world through her actions marked by faith, hope and love.

The Holy Spirit and preaching in the service The question investigated in this article is how the Holy Spirit is present and active in the action of preaching, and what the result of this is. The Spirit edifies the message and establishes certainty within the preachers that the Spirit will create the right audience for the words of the message. Christ as the centre of preaching is accepted and obeyed by the congregation in its meeting with the Lord. Preaching should transfer the lines in the text via the content of Scripture to the human being of today. The congregation should apply the sermon to their concrete life situation through the exercising of the gift of prophecy. Preach- ing and prayer stands in a causal relationship to Scripture reading, because Scripture reading elicits preaching and prayer. Preaching as testimony elicits prayer as worship, and the prayer in turn elicits testimony. This causal and interactive relationship is living and powerful through the dynamic work of God the Holy Spirit, who effects communion between God and the congregation in Jesus Christ through these events.

AbstractThe context in which Bediüzzaman Said Nursi wrote the first version of his now famous Damascus sermon was a meeting on a continent and in an age in which Muslims were being forced to reflect on their identity due to negative interaction with non-Muslims.Meanwhile, the relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims have changed drastically. Nonetheless, not only Muslims but also Christians and even Muslims and Christians together in dialogue now have more rather than fewer reasons to be concerned about the question of how they, based on their authentic religious values, can contribute to a good society.Even the mid-20th century Turkish revision of the Damascus sermon is dated. The document does, however, offer a clarifying template that can still be highly beneficial for Muslims and Christians a century later in striving for what is beneficial for themselves and their environment while keeping their own identities in mind.Christians could also acknowledge a great deal in the six ailments and remedies the healer identifies in the “Six Words.” At the same time, it suits the spirit of the age to proceed not only via a set of major resemblances between both religions but also mutatis mutandis in connection with what is typical for each religion. As a Christian, I would like to flesh this out with “hope,” “faithfulness,” “love,” “unity,” “dignity,” and “consultation,” based on my faith, of which Jesus Christ is the centre.The challenge of today’s and tomorrow’s globalised reality that Muslims and Christians have to cope with is, for instance, to formulate a new Purifying paradigm based on the concepts listed by Nursi, designed to be fully respective of the well understood uniqueness of the other. Christian acceptance of Muslims should not depend on the extent to which they are integrated into Western society, nor should Christians be viewed by Muslims as pre-Muslims.This challenge goes further and is more difficult than striving to come to “a common word”: in fact, we will need to understand a variety of words. But if the efforts are crowned with success, this is a more valid way for Muslims and Christians - who together make up the majority of the world’s population - to be a good example for society.From a Christian point of view and that of the 20th century’s disenchantment, Nursi is overly optimistic when he suggests society can be affected by implementing religious values. Religious people and non-religious people alike in the current demographic will continue to co-exist and individually suffer from the cited and notcited maladies, and this was no different in the golden eras of yore.Nevertheless, we can point to signs of hope when we succeed together in resolving the dilemma of right-wing capitalism and liberalism on the one hand and left-wing communism and socialism on the other by means of our own religiously motivated values to allow Christians, Muslims, and others to sample a bit of the future heaven on earth.

The article states that, for the purpose of interpreting the Biblical topos of the Law and Grace, Hilarion refers to the genre of the word. Hilarion takes first place in the title, and then in the text of the work God brings out wisdom. By law, he believes the Old Testament, which has already fulfilled its task, and Grace - the New Testament, which outlines the existence of man, his relationship with God, gives hope for eternal life. The subject of the "Word" breaks the sermon into four fragments. In the first of them, we notice the allegorical meaning of reading the Scriptures in relation to the history of mankind. The second part is devoted to the interpretation of the image of Jesus Christ, which appears as a synthesis of God and human nature. The third fragment depicts events beyond the boundary of the Bible. It is devoted to the baptism of Rus. In the fourth fragment Prince Volodymyr is glorified. Following the best traditions of Byzantine oratory prose, the author of the Word simply pours his text into quotations from the Bible and adds to them a predominantly allegorical interpretation, emphasizing that the work is not intended for proclamation, but for reading, which enabled the author to interpret the Scriptures and in the literal, and in allegorical sense. The advantage of the New Testament over the Old Testament is embodied by the author in the images of the free wife of Abraham Sarah - Grace and his servant Hagar - Law. Laconic retelling of God-inspired text, Hilarion interprets the old-czarist images, as those that represent the new covenants at the level of allusions, presented them in the form of additional parallel antithesis. The same anti-colored color is also depicted by the images of their children. Isaac was born from a free woman, which means that he represents freedom, Ishmael is from a slave, hence his image symbolizes slavery. He who receives Grace receives goodness, love, becomes the son of God, and begins to live a new life in the Holy Spirit through which the believer is through. The overcoming of the Law and the perception of Grace means, according to Hilarion, the acquisition of spiritual freedom.