Books on the topic 'Holy bath'

To hold a little microbat in your hand, its body the size of the end of your thumb, is nothing but astounding. Its head is nearly the size of a man’s fingernail, its tiny ears are twitching as it struggles to get free, and then it bares its teeth to try and scare you into letting it go. Inside that tiny head is a powerhouse of information. Some of our little bats know the entire landscape of our east coast, and can pinpoint a cave entrance in dense forest 500 km from its last home. When they get there they know what to do – where to forage, which bat to mate with and how to avoid local predators. A Natural History of Australian Bats uncovers the unique biology and ecology of these wonderful creatures. It features a description of each bat species found in Australia, as well as a section on bat myths. The book is enhanced by stunning colour photographs from Steve Parish, most of which have never been seen before.

Dealing with biblical inspiration within the scheme of the Word of God in its threefold form (as preached, written, and revealed), Karl Barth distinguished between divine revelation and the inspired Bible. He insisted that the revelation to prophets and apostles preceded proclamation and the writing of Scripture. He interpreted all the Scriptures as witness to Christ. While the human authors of the Bible ‘made full use of their human capacities’, the Holy Spirit is ‘the real author’ of what is written. Raymond Collins, in dialogue with Thomas Aquinas, Barth, and others, interpreted biblical inspiration in the light of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Divine Revelation. He spoke of the Holy Spirit as the ‘principal, efficient cause’ (with the human authors as the ‘instrumental’ causes), rejected dictation views of inspiration, and examined the scope of biblical truth and the authority of the Bible for the Church.

This book presents a fresh vision for Christian theology that foregrounds the relationship between theological ideas and the experiences of Christians. It argues that theology is always operating in a vibrant landscape of feeling and desiring, and shows that contemporary theology has often operated in problematic isolation from these experiential dynamics. It then argues that a theologically serious doctrine of the Holy Spirit not only authorizes but requires attention to Christian experience. Against this background, the book outlines a new methodological approach to Christian theology that attends to the emotional and experiential power of theological doctrines. This methodology draws on recent interdisciplinary research on affect and emotion, which has shown that affects are powerful motivating realities that saturate all dimensions of human thinking and acting. In the process, the book also explains why contemporary theology has often been ambivalent about subjective experience, and demonstrates that current discourse about God’s activity in the world is often artificially abstracted from experience and embodiment. The book culminates in a proposal for a new experiential and pneumatological account of the theology of grace that builds on this methodology. Focusing on the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation and sanctification, it retrieves insights from Augustine, Luther, and Philip Melanchthon to present an affective and Augustinian vision of salvation as a pedagogy of desire. In articulating this vision, the book engages critically with recent emphasis on participation and theosis in Christian soteriology and charts a new path forward for Protestant theology in a landscape hitherto dominated by the theological visions of Karl Barth and Thomas Aquinas.

This essay recovers an extended moment in Enlightenment melancholy, opening with the tenacious hold of the four temperaments and the belief that an excess of “black bile” might foster creativity or genius, a heightened sense of time and memory, even a propensity for the sublime. This melancholy temperament was turned into a musical subject by C. P. E. Bach. The literary and psychological stances embodied in the “joy of grief” were abetted by newer medical theories of nerve contractions, and a greater focus on individual sensibility found Bach expressing his own experience of saying goodbye; hisFarewell to My Silbermann Clavierconnects the complexities of the harmonic labyrinth to the figure of the labyrinth as a poetic emblem of melancholy embodying the paradox of enclosure and wandering. Beethoven’sLa Malinconiamay be seen as the unique successor to both historical strands: it creates a vivid musical labyrinth with a neurally inflected thread, and suggests a link to Scarpa’s recent anatomical discoveries about the human ear.

Expanding on the work of Fredrik Barth and Pierre Bourdieu, Chapter 4 introduces a new theory of differential knowledge that helps account for diversity in pluralistic societies. It discusses the key roles of agency, habitus, and an uneven distribution of knowledge in the Centering Prayer movement, and coins the term “performative knowledge” to describe the technical and rhetorical skill with which leaders encouraged their followers. It compares the surprising differences of monastic and non-monastic versions of a Holy Week ritual, thus showing how leaders used their social and cultural capital to authenticate chosen histories in order to innovate new rites or stabilize long-established forms: some monastics worked to evoke an ethos of atonement, whereas a non-monastic community cultivated eros through the biblical theme of Love Mysticism. The role of individual leadership and charisma was especially crucial in the American environment in which religious institutions have limited authority.

This book anchors its study of inspiration firmly in the Scriptures themselves, and examines both the inspired nature of the Bible and its inspiring impact. It begins by evaluating classical views of biblical inspiration expounded by Karl Barth and Raymond Collins. It then takes up the inspired origin of the Old Testament, where earlier books helped to inspire later books, before moving to the New Testament, which throughout shows the inspiring impact of the inherited Scriptures—both in direct quotations and in many echoes. The work then moves to the Bible’s inspiring influence on Christian worship, preaching, teaching, the visual arts, literature, and life. After a chapter that clarifies the interrelationship between divine revelation, tradition, and inspiration, two chapters expound ten characteristics of biblical inspiration, with special emphasis on the inspiring quality of the Bible. The book explains a major consequence of inspiration, biblical truth, and the grounds on which Christians ‘canonized’ the Scriptures. After spelling out three approaches to biblical interpretation (the authorial intention, the role of readers, and the primacy of the text itself), the work ends by setting out ten principles for engaging theologically with the Scriptures. An epilogue highlights two achievements of the book. By carefully distinguishing (but not separating) inspiration from divine revelation and biblical truth, it can deliver readers from false problems. The book also underlines the inspiring effects of the Scriptures as part of the Holy Spirit’s work of inspiration.

Dura-Europos, a Parthian-ruled Greco-Syrian city, was captured by Rome c.AD165. It then accommodated a Roman garrison until its destruction by Sasanian siege c.AD256. Excavations of the site between the World Wars made sensational discoveries, and with renewed exploration from 1986 to 2011, Dura remains the best-explored city of the Roman East. A critical revelation was a sprawling Roman military base occupying a quarter of the city's interior. This included swathes of civilian housing converted to soldiers' accommodation and several existing sanctuaries, as well as baths, an amphitheatre, headquarters, and more temples added by the garrison. Base and garrison were clearly fundamental factors in the history of Roman Dura, but what impact did they have on the civil population? Original excavators gloomily portrayed Durenes evicted from their homes and holy places, and subjected to extortion and impoverishment by brutal soldiers, while recent commentators have envisaged military-civilian concordia, with shared prosperity and integration. Detailed examination of the evidence presents a new picture. Through the use of GPS, satellite, geophysical and archival evidence, this volume shows that the Roman military base and resident community were even bigger than previously understood, with both military and civil communities appearing much more internally complex than has been allowed until now. The result is a fascinating social dynamic which we can partly reconstruct, giving us a nuanced picture of life in a city near the eastern frontier of the Roman world.

The Early Music revival has had far-reaching consequences on how music of the past is performed, both by specialists and non-specialists. This timely book is a practical step-by-step course of lessons for violinists and violists in both these categories, covering the interpretation, technique, culture, and historical background of the Baroque violin repertoire. Written by a violinist and teacher specializing in Baroque music over many years, it guides readers from the basics (how to hold the violin) to Bach, via music from a wide variety of styles. Avoiding obscure musicological jargon, it is eminently readable and accessible. Packed with information, detailed observations on the music under discussion, and relevant quotations from historical and contemporary sources, it covers everything the Baroque violin student should know and may be considered the equivalent of two to three years of individual lessons. The book contains over 100 exercises devised for and tested on students over the years. The author’s holistic approach is evident through the exercises aimed at bringing out the individual voice of each student, and his insistence that what happens within, the identification and manipulation of affects, is a vital part of successful performance. Imitating the voice, both spoken and sung, is a constant theme, beginning with the simple device of playing words. There are fifty lessons, including five Ornamentation Modules and ones on specific topics: temperament, rhetoric, the affects, and so on. All the music, transcribed for both violin and viola, is downloadable from the website, where there is also a series of videos.

The Early Music revival has had far-reaching consequences on how music of the past is performed, both by specialists and non-specialists. This timely book is a practical step-by-step course of lessons for violinists and violists in both these categories, covering the interpretation, technique, culture and historical background of the Baroque violin repertoire. Written by a violinist and teacher specializing in Baroque music over many years, it guides readers from the basics (how to hold the violin) to Bach, via music from a wide variety of styles. Avoiding obscure musicological jargon, it is eminently readable and accessible. Packed with information, detailed observations on the music under discussion and relevant quotations from historical and contemporary sources, it covers everything the Baroque violin student should know and may be considered the equivalent of two to three years of individual lessons. The book contains over 100 exercises devised for and tested on students over the years. The author’s holistic approach is evident through the exercises aimed at bringing out the individual voice of each student, and his insistence that what happens within, the identification and manipulation of affects, is a vital part of successful performance. Imitating the voice, both spoken and sung, is a constant theme, beginning with the simple device of playing words. There are fifty lessons, including five Ornamentation Modules and ones on specific topics: temperament, rhetoric, the affects, etc. All the music, transcribed for both violin and viola, is downloadable from the website, where there is also a series of videos.

TOWARDS THE NEW LIFE Theology and Importance of Christian Initiation for the Life of Faith The book is in equal parts a presentation and an invitation. The subject matter of both is the mystagogical initiation leading to the personal encounter with God and eventually to the union within the Church in Christ, which happens initially and particualry in the sacramental liturgy. Mystagogy was the essential experience of life in the early Church and now is being so intensely discussed and postulated by the ecclesial Magisterium and through the teaching of the recent popes and synods. Within the ten chapters of this book the reader proceeds through the aspects strictly associated with Christian initiation, noticeable in catechumenate and suggestive for further Christian life. It is not surprising then, that the study begins with answering the question about the sense of dealing with catechumenate at all. The response developed in the first chapter covers four key points: the contemporary state of our faith, the need for dialogue in evangelization, the importance of liturgy in the renewal of faith and the obvious requirement of follo- wing the Church’s Magisterium, quite explicit in the subject undertaken within this book. The introductory chapter is meant to evoke interest in catechumenate as such and encourage comprehension of its essence, in order to keep it in mind while planning contemporary evangelization. For doing this with success and avoiding pastoral archeology, we need a competent insight into the main message and goal of Christian initiation. Catechumenate is the first and most venerable model of formation and growth in faith and therefore worth knowing. The second chapter tries to cope with the reasons and ways of the present return to the sources of catechumenate with respect to Christian initiation understood to be the building of the relationship with God. The example of catechumenate helps us to discover, how to learn wisely from the history. This would definitely mean to keep the structure and liturgy of catechumenate as a vehicle of God’s message, which must be interpreted and adapted always anew and with careful and intelligent consideration of the historical flavour on particular stages within the history of salvation and cultural conditions of the recipients. For that reason we refer to the Biblical resources and to the historical examples of catechumenate including its flourishing and declining periods, after which we are slowly approaching the present reinterpretation of the catechumenal process enhanced by the official teaching of the Church. As the result of the latter, particularly owing to the Vatican Council II, we are now dealing with the renewed liturgy of baptism displayed in two liturgical books: The Rite of Baptism for Children and the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). This version for adults is the subjectmatter of the whole chapter, in which a reader can find theological analyses of the particular rites as well as numerous indications for improving one’s life with Christ in the Church. You can find interesting associations among the rites of initiation themselves and astounding coherence between those rites and the sacraments of the Eucharist, penance and other sacraments, which simply means the ordinary life of faith. Deep and convincing theology of the process of initiation proves the inspiring spiritual power of the initial and constitutive sacraments of baptism and confirmation, which may seem attractive not only for catechumens but also for the faithful baptized in their infancy, and even more, since they might have not yet had a chance to see what a plausible treasure they have been conveying in their baptismal personality. How much challenge for further and constant realization in life may offer these introductory events of Christian initiation, yet not sufficiently appreciated by those who have already been baptized and confirmed! We all should submit to permanent re-evangelization according to this primary pattern, which always remains essential and fundamental. Very typical and very post-conciliar approach to Christian formation appears in the communal dimension, which guards and guarantees the ecclesial profile of initiation and prepares a person to be a living member of the Church. The sixth chapter of the book is dealing with ecclesial issues in liturgy. They refer to comprehending the word of God, especially in the context of liturgy, which brings about a peculiar theological sense to it and giving a special character to proclaiming the Gospel, which the Pope Francis calls “liturgical proclamation”. The ecclesial premises influence the responsibility for the fact of accompanying the candidates, who aim at becoming Christ’s disciples. As the Church is teaching also in the theological and pastoral introduction to the RCIA, this is the duty of all Christians, which means: priests, religious and the lay, because the Church is one organism in whose womb the new members are conceived and raised. As this fact is strongly claimed by the Church the method of initiation arises to great importance. The seventh chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the catechumenal method stemming from Christ’s pedagogy and His mystery of Incarnation introducing a very important issue of implementing the Divine into the human. The chapter concerning this method opens a more practical part of the book. The crucial message of it is to make mystagogy a natural and obvious method which is the way of building bonds with Christ in the community of the people who already have these bonds and who are eager to tighten them and are aware of the beauty and necessity of closeness with Christ. Christian initiation is the process of entering the Kingdom of God and meeting Christ up to the union with Him – not so much learning dogmas and moral requirements. This is a special time when candidates-catechumens-elected mature in love and in their attitude to Christ and people, which results in prayer and new way of life. As in the past catechumenate nowadays inspires the faithful in their imagination of love and mercy as well as reminds us about various important details of the paschal way of life, which constitute our baptismal vocation, but may be forgotten and now with the help of catechumenate can be recognized anew, while accompanying adults on their catechumenal way. The book is meant for those who are already involved in catechumenal process and are responsible for the rites and formation as well as for those who are interested in what the Church is offering to all who consciously decide to know and follow Christ. You can learn from this book, what is the nature and specificity of the method suggested by the Rite itself for guiding people to God the Saviour and to the community of His people. The aim of the study is to present the universal way of evangelization, which was suggested and revealed by God in His pedagogy, particularly through Jesus Christ and smoothly adopted by the early Church. This way, which can be called a method, is so complete, substantial and clear that it deserves rediscovery, description and promotion, which has already started in the Church’s teaching by making direct references to such categories as: initiation, catechumenate, liturgical formation, the rereading the Mystery of Christ, the living participation in the Mystery and faith nourished by the Mystery. The most engaging point with Christian initiation is the fact, that this seems to be the most effective way of reviving the parish, taking place on the solid and safe ground of liturgy with the most convincing and objective fact that is our baptism and our new identity born in baptismal regenerating bath. On the grounds of our personal relationship with God and our Christian vocation we can become active apostles of Christ. Evangelization begins with ourselves and in our hearts. Thinking about the Church’s mission, we should have in mind our personal mission within the Church and we should refer to it’s roots – first to our immersion into Christ’s death and resurrection and to the anointment with the Holy Spirit. In this Spirit we have all been sent to follow Christ wherever He goes, not necessarily where we would like to direct our steps, but He would. Let us cling to Him and follow Him! Together with the constantly transforming and growing Church! Towards the new life!