Stephen Hiemstra
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Image Of God In The Person Of Jesus
$16.95Add to cartOur image of God reveals not only God’s character, but our own.
Who is Jesus? Is Jesus more immanent (human) or transcendent (divine)? Because we are created in the image of God and Jesus is divine, the church struggles to define Jesus. This impulse can be a genuine attempt to know God better or it can be an insidious attempt to create God in our own image. This struggle is often tinged with a bit of both.
The Letter to the Church at Thessalonica was likely the first book written in the New Testament. In a literary sense, the implication is that the Apostle Paul is the father of the New Testament. Paul only knew the Risen Christ and, for him, the divinity of Christ was obvious. By contrast, the Gospels that record the humanity of Christ were written almost a generation later. Thus, the transcendence problem facing postmodern people that fixates on the humanity of Christ is relatively new.
My recent book, Image and Illumination (2023), asked the question-What does it mean to be created in the image of God?- focused on Christian anthropology. Embedded in this question is the metaphysical question: Who is God? The New Testament addresses this question with three pictures of God: The person of Jesus, Jesus’ teaching about God the Father in the parables, and the founding of the church on Pentecost by the Holy Spirit. In this book, I focus on the Image of God in the Person of Jesus.
Hear the Words; Walk the Steps; Experience the Joy!
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Living In Christ
$16.95Add to cartA T2Pneuma Publishers LLC Title
Our journey in Christian ethics starts with God in whose image we are created. Creation begins with birth and continues as we mature. Our character matures, shaped by the example of Christ under the mentorship of the Holy Spirit through the family and the church. Christian leaders reach full maturity once they able to mentor others-we are blessed to be a blessing.Living in Christ focuses on explaining, not justifying, Christian ethics. At a time and in a place where people scoff at developing a theological understanding of their faith and refuse to teach Christian morality, ethics is almost a lost art. At the heart of the ethical dilemma is a tension between theological principles that can only be resolved the guidance of the Holy Spirit. How do you practice forgiveness for sinners who refuse to confess their sin and force you to bear its consequences? In this context, ethics is less a philosophical discipline that a recognition of our own limitations as Christians and the need for divine intervention.Ethical thought and action always involve interpretation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is thus ironic that a book on Christian living should have an outward focus on God rather than an inward focus on what to do and not do. This interpretative element colors how we view character formation, the community of faith, leadership, and the many special issues that arise in daily life.Hear the words; walk the steps; experience the joy!
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Simple Faith : Something Worth Living For
$16.95Add to cartA T2Pneuma Publishers LLC Title
How do we know what we know? This question challenges the nature of information, how we learn, decision making, who we are, and who this God is that we worship. If this challenge appears optional; it is not–our post-Christian culture questions every assumption. Simple Faith examines these questions and discusses implications for faith and life.
An important implication of this study is that faith plays a critical role into how we think, learn, and make decisions in the context of limited resources and an uncertain future. Even scientific inquiry requires faith, which normally gets hidden in untested assumptions and presumptions about what is interesting to investigate. Often the critical arguments driving our decisions are not cold hard facts, but the stories that we tell in the midst of complex decision environments.
The timing of this inquiry is critical. The movement from modern to postmodern thinking has upended most institutions, but especially the Christian church. The separation of heart and mind, which characterizes modern thinking, eroded faith leaving the church in a weak position to adapt to the rapid changes accompanying postmodernism. Ironically, postmodern thinking that values storytelling favors Christian faith because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the best story around.