Books published by James Clarke & Co Ltd

An examination of the nature of Christian unity based on the pattern revealed in the New Testament.

A fascinating contribution to biblical theology, in which the figure of Jesus is understood in terms of the concepts of Messiah and kingship developed in the Old Testament.

Maximus the Confessor's combustive historicalera, committed doctrinal reflection, and loud and influential voice took him ona turbulent career of traveling and writing around the Mediterranean. Maximuswas a spiritual teacher, an ascetic and a contemplative, but he was also apolemicist, a crafter of dogma, an embattled Christologian, a premeditatingrhetorician. In this study, Luke Steven binds togetherthese two disparate sides of the man and his writings by showing thatthroughout his oeuvre the Confessor positions imitation as the key toknowledge. This lasting epistemology characterizes his earlier ascetic andspiritual works, and in his later works it prominently defines his dogmaticChristological method - that is, the means by which he communicates andpersuades and brings people to understand and encounter Jesus Christ, the onewith two natures, divine and human. This multifaceted study offers a deepassessment of Maximus's forebears, new insight on the animating assumptions ofhis thought, and an unprecedented focus on the rhetoric and method of hischristological writings.  

In his commentary, John Paul Heil presents two new proposals regarding Paul's letter to the Galatians. First, he demonstrates an entirely new chiastic structure embracing the entire letter, based on strict linguistic and textual criteria rather than on conceptual or theological themes. This chiastic structure accords with the view that Galatians was originally performed orally in a setting of communal worship. Second, Heil offers a new proposal for a key theme that runs throughout Galatians, as expressed by the subtitle of this book - 'Worship for Life by Faith in the Crucified and Risen Lord'. Here, 'worship' is considered to be a comprehensive concept that includes liturgical, cultic, or ritual worship as well as the moral behaviour that is to complement it as ethical worship in accord with the biblical tradition. 'Life' refers both to the present way of living as well as to future eternal life. 'Faith' refers to the acceptance of divine grace available to the believer because of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The complex nature of Christian communion with a personal God requires a nuanced expression. Since its inception, the early church affirmed God's unknowable nature and also participation in God through Christ. The church fathers employed the language of theosis in talking about union with God and human transformation in the likeness of God. However, the term theosis or deification is a broad category and requires precise explanation to avoid human dissolution into the divine in the mystical union it attempts to describe. In Triadosis, Eduard Borysov offers a new approach to the conundrum of the imparticipable divine nature and the prospect of personal union between human and the Trinity. Most significantly, he proposes that if God is Trinity, then we are created and restored in the image of the same tri-personal God.