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God and humans as creative artists -- Imitation, the heart of the Christian's approach to creativity -- Building a Christian understanding of the artist's calling -- How do we judge the arts? -- Echoes of Eden: God's testimony to the truth -- The conversion of C. S. Lewis and echoes of Eden in his life -- Echoes of Eden in Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings -- Harry Potter and the triumph of self-sacrificing love -- Shakespeare and a Christian worldview -- Jane Austen, novelist of the human heart -- Appendix: the 'outing' of Dumbledore

When computers freeze, they are ""rebooted"" to help get things moving in the proper direction again. Similarly, legendary thinkers throughout history have argued that Christianity should start over fresh by recapturing the humanitarian spirit of Jesus' original message. These include such disparate individuals as Thomas Jefferson, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, and the religious leaders of the OccupyWallStreet movement. Surprisingly enough, even classic television shows and films meant to be entertaining--Lost, Battlestar Gal

This paper traces the complex relationship between classical literature and Christian doctrine in the first four centuries. In the earliest period of Christianity, we can identify two attitudes of Christians towards Greek literature: the hostile attitude shown by Tatian, Theophilus, and Tertullian, and the openness to Greek culture and philosophy demonstrated by Justin the Martyr, Athenagoras of Athens, and Minucius Felix. A notable change happened in the Alexandrian milieu when Clement of Alexandria and Origen started considering Greek classics the embodiment of an authentic Christian spirit. In keeping with Origen, Basil of Caesarea realized a good synthesis between Greek thought and Christian faith. Noting germs of divine revelation in ancient Greek thought, Christian authors took the tools of Greco-Roman criticism and ancient philosophy to develop their doctrine.

Although Lucien Rebatet's Les Deux étendards (The Two Standards) has been hailed by a number of critics as one of the best novels written in France since World War II, it is surrounded by a wall of silence because its author actively supported the Nazi movement before and during the war. Yet the novel does not deal with politics but with love, art, and religion. Based on real events, it is the story of a love triangle involving Michel, who has lost his Catholic faith, Régis, who studies to become a Jesuit priest, and Anne-Marie, a young student who shares a mystical love with Régis and also intends to join a religious order. When Michel meets Anne-Marie, he falls desperately in love with her, but hopelessly since she belongs to God and to Régis. Yet, fascinated by his friends' adventure, he tries to recover the faith he has lost in order to join them on their mystical plane, but eventually fails. The theme of religion and more specifically Catholicism dominates Les Deux étendards which treats the most complex religious issues with passion and intensity and tackles the history of the Church and religious exegesis with a thoroughness and a minuteness worthy of Proust. Over one thousand pages, Les Deux étendards, mainly through Régis and Michel's animated discussions, reenacts the quarrel that has been raging for two thousand years between believers and nonbelievers. If, in the end, Les Deux étendards condemns religion, it is in order to better affirm what can be called the sacred or the spiritual which stands in opposition to the religious. In any case, this passionate handling of religion, its place at the heart of the story and its intimate association with the other main themes, love and art, largely account for the originality of the novel.

Cover -- Contents -- Series Editors' Preface -- Foreword by Rowan Williams -- theatre & -- christianity -- Theatre & -- Christianity & -- Women -- Amateur Performance in Faith Contexts -- Theatre & -- Christianity & -- Offence -- Endnotes -- Further reading -- Index -- acknowledgements.

Jacques Ellul blends politics, theology, history, and exposition in this analysis of the relationship between political anarchy and biblical faith. On the one hand, suggests Ellul, anarchists need to understand that much of their criticism of Christianity applies only to the form of religion that developed, not to biblical faith. Christians, on the other hand, need to look at the biblical texts and not reject anarchy as a political option, for it seems closest to biblical thinking. Ellul here defines anarchy as the nonviolent repudiation of authority. He looks at the Bible as the source of anarchy (in the sense of nondomination, not disorder), working through the Old Testament history, Jesus` ministry, and finally the early church`s view of power as reflected in the New Testament writings."With the verve and the gift of trenchant simplification to which we have been accustomed, Ellul lays bare the fallacy that Christianity should normally be the ally of civil authority." - John Howard Yoder.

Christianity or religious pluralism? A review of Mansions of hte Spirit / Ron Dart -- The way, the truth, and the life: A discussion of Mansions of the Spirit / J.I. Packer -- Christ, the church, and the parliament of world religions / Ron Dart -- Appendix: The Enlightenment, the liberal establishment, and religious pluralism / Ron Dart.