A short introduction to the Anglican Church. It covers its origins, beliefs, structure, form and function.

Product Description: This is a work of considerable strategic importance for the ecumenical movement and for the Anglican Communion. It describes and interprets Anglican understanding of the Christian Church, from the Reformation to the present day.This book presents the development of Anglican identity and ecclesiology in its historical context, focusing particularly on Anglican engagement with the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions...read more

Why Bishops? What's so special about Bishops? What are Bishops called to and how best can they do it? This book is the single resource of answers to all the questions one could conceivably have about what a Bishop is and their function and purpose in the Church.Paul Avis offers a fascinating account of the ministerial identity of the bishop, and in particular the tasks and roles of episcopal ministry. Placing the Bishop within his wider ecclesiological framework, Avis illuminates the role of the individual in episcopal ministry. The book sets the vital work of a Bishop within an ecclesiological framework: the Bishop in the Anglican Communion, within the Church of Christ, within the purposes of God.

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Product Description: Book by Avis, Paul

The book begins by defining the core tasks (or mission) of the Church in biblical and theological terms, and then asks how these tasks can best be carried out in the conditions of modernity and post-modernity.Paul Avis describes and evaluates contemporary expressions of spirituality, drawing on many empirical studies; the functions of the Church's 'occasional offices' or rites of passage; the ways in which the Church and its ministers can engage constructively with the community and with civil society; the pastoral method in mission and its practical, policy consequences. Throughout the book Avis urges the imperative for the Church and its ministers to break out from the privatization of Christian values into full participation in contemporary social issues and public life.This book is an authoritative and interdisciplinary study of theology and practice: a much-needed applied theology of mission and ministry for today.

Product Description: This is a wide-ranging text, which attempts to cover major issues facing the Church of England in both theological and practical ways. It is particularly concerned with the establishment of the Church of England and its relationship with mission...read more

Did Jesus want there to be a Church that would continue his work? What is her message, what constitutes it? How should the Church proclaim the gospel of Christ? What structure is there for the sacred, the mystery? In this book Paul Avis presents his answer to these questions as a fruit of more than twenty years of research and reflection. He argues that there is something solid and dependable at the foundation of the Church's life and mission. The Church is often battered and divided, but at its core is a treasure that is indestructible.Jesus did want a church in a sense, but not as we know it. What is clear is that Jesus himself proclaimed the gospel of the Kingdom and that his disciples proclaimed the gospel whose content was Jesus Christ himself, the Kingdom in person. So a chapter is devoted to the relationship between the Church and the gospel that it confesses. A complementary approach to the mystery of Christianity is the quest for the essence of Christianity, a classic gambit of modern theology. The last major study of this question was by Stephen Sykes in 1984 and that left several matters hanging in the air. This quest brings us back to Jesus with the formula, 'Christianity is Christ'. But this proves to be not the simplistic slogan that it first appears, as it opens up into a set of concepts that elucidate the structure of Christian belief, the texture of faith. When these are articulated in a critical way, they reveal the abiding structure of Christian theology, in which certain polarities (nature and grace, reason and revelation, immanence and transcendence) are inescapable. But the more we probe these, the more we come up against the limits of human thought about the divine, so the book concludes with a reflection on paradox and mystery.

Product Description: The renowned international scholars who contributed to this volume aimed to provide biblical, historical, contemporary, and reflective resources on the ways in which divine revelation has been understood in past and present discourse.

'A mere metaphor', 'only symbolic', 'just a myth' - these tell tale phrases reveal how figurative language has been cheapened and devalued in our modern and postmodern culture. In God and the Creative Imagination, Paul Avis argues the contrary: we see that actually, metaphor, symbol and myth, are the key to a real knowledge of God and the sacred. Avis examines what he calls an alternative tradition, stemming from the Romantic poets Blake, Wordsworth and Keats and drawing on the thought of Cleridge and Newman, and experience in both modern philosophy and science.God and the Creative Imagination intriguingly draws on a number of non-theological disciplines, from literature to philosophy of science, to show us that God is appropriately likened to an artist or poet and that the greatest truths are expressed in an imaginative form. Anyone wishing to further their understanding of God, belief and the imagination will find this an inspiring work.

Presenting some of the craft possibilities afforded by bamboo, the author outlines twenty projects that can be completed with this 'green gold,' including a plant holder, porch swing, candle holder, picture frame, privacy panel, lampshade, luggage rack, and much more. Original.

Anglican theology has been a hotbed of debate about the issue of authority since the Reformation. What do we really appeal to when attempting to decide matters of doctrine, worship, ministry or ethics? The debate is very much alive today, between Evangelical, Liberal and Catholic Anglicans around the world. This proposed book focuses on the understanding of authority in Anglican theology.It looks at the way that Anglican theologians, in the past and today, have developed their theories ofauthority in relation to burning issues. Avis critiques them in a continuous dialogue or running commentary and set them in an ecumenical context, comparing Anglican positions with Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant ones.In each area - Bible, tradition, reason, experience -he sets out a new understanding of authority in a constructiveand persuasive way, moving to a series of overall conclusions and recommendations. The sharp critiques of various positions will help to make it the subject of discussion and debate.

At time of uncertainty in the quest for Christian unity, this book takes a look at the goals, motives and methods of ecumenical dialogue. Key Anglican ecumenists, including Joy Tetley and John Webster, re-appraise ecumenical theology, identify the main challenges and chart a course for the future.

Reshaping Ecumenical Theology is a major contribution to the study of the Church.>