In his second book, Charles Shingledecker goes beyond The Crazy Side of Orthodoxy to look at the issues confronting all traditions of Christianity. He accompanies fellow believers on an entertaining and informative journey through the Bible, Church history, and the nature of Christian belief. Narrow is The Way, Jesus said. It is a hazardous path, too, lined with obstacles and roadblocks that lurk in the shadows of naïve fundamentalism. Chuck has bumped into many rough spots, surprised at the difficulties he never saw coming in a simplistic faith but also fascinated by the nuances of a more authentic one. Now he offers a candle to help light the way for others, to provide some comfort for those troubled Christians who feel isolated and alone in their doubts. The Church has long done its utmost to enforce that feeling of isolation. It would rather not deal with the stumbling blocks that challenge believers to remain on the path of faith. Chuck did so, and illuminates the dark places with candor, compassion, and a good dose of irreverent humor. He describes archaeological and scientific discoveries that discredit biblical literalism, the illogical aspects of Christian dogmas like the Trinity and Virgin Birth, the moral consequences of the doctrine of hell, and the failures and sins of institutional Christianity. Even the existence of God is not exempt from his honest inquiry. But all the while, Chuck remains a person of faith. It enables him to look beyond the cold, hard edges of a purely material world and contemplate the holy and transcendent. He has discovered that the life of faith need not be plagued by guilt and fear, but can and should be filled with the freedom to ask tough questions, the freedom to seek truth, and the Freedom to Doubt.

Freedom to Doubt

Religion & Spirituality

Shingledecker, Charles P.

Christian Books & Bibles

Tellectual LLC

The better we understand the Bible via the Higher Criticism, the less useful biblical study becomes for theology. The more the student of the Bible is obedient to an inherited theology, the less he can understand the Bible, for his vision will be clouded by a vested interest in having what he reads there say one thing and not another. W.C. van Manen was able to make his breakthroughs in early Christian literature, especially Paulinism, because he had ejected theology (with all its nagging) from the study. After he got some peace and intellectual privacy in this manner, he understood many things for the first time. What he understood, and the method he used to understand it, made traditional theology impossible. You are in for an eye-opening experience as you read this first book collection of Van Manen's only English writings. The supposed bedrock of even the "undisputed" Pauline epistles, the foundation on which the edifice of Protestant Christianity was constructed, appears to be just more of the same unstable sand as the rest of the New Testament. Dare you press on further? Will you be as open to shocking new perspectives as you once were, however reluctantly at first, when you first considered the Higher Criticism?

A Wave of Hypercriticism: The English Writings of W.C. van Manen

van Manen, W.C.

Could the folklore of ancient ghost stories be the basis for the resurrection accounts of the New Testament? Recent scholarship surveyed in Apparitions of Jesus suggests that early Christians poured their heady new wine--a man saved the world by rising from the dead--into the old wineskins of familiar legend. Combining his own research with the insights of publications past and present, Conner leads us down haunted hallways of Greco-Roman ghost lore to illuminate neglected corners of the gospels. Along the way, finding yet another human side to the beloved old tales, we understand how ghostly apparitions were spoken about for much the same reason modern-day people still see them: a psychological response vividly experienced by those suffering great loss.

Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story

Conner, Robert

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Books by Tellectual LLC

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Tellectual LLC publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Freedom to Doubt

A Wave of Hypercriticism: The English Writings of W.C. van Manen

Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story