Books by "Paul Jean Convenent"
2 books found
Paul C. H. Lim offers an insightful examination of the polemical debates about the doctrine of the Trinity in seventeenth-century England, showing that this philosophical and theological re-configuration significantly impacted the politics of religion in the early modern period. Through analysis of these heated polemics, Lim shows how Trinitarian God-Talk became untenable in many ecclesiastical and philosophical circles, which led to the emergence of Unitarianism. He also demonstrates that those who continued to embrace Trinitarian doctrine articulated their piety and theological perspectives in an increasingly secularized culture of discourse. Drawing on both unexplored manuscripts and well-known treatises of Continental and English provenance, he unearths the complex layers of the polemic: from biblical exegesis to reception history of patristic authorities, from popular religious radicalism during the Civil War to Puritan spirituality, from Continental Socinians to English anti-trinitarians who avowed their relative independent theological identity, from the notion of the Platonic captivity of primitive Christianity to that of Plato as "Moses Atticus." Among this book's surprising conclusions are the findings that Anti-Trinitarian sentiment arose from a Puritan ambience, in which Biblical literalism overcame rationalistic presuppositions, and that theology and philosophy were not as unconnected during this period as previously thought. Mystery Unveiled will fill a significant lacuna in early modern English intellectual history.
Born during the Great Depression and the height of the modernist/fundamentalist controversies, Paul Emanuel Larsen entered pastoral ministries in the late fifties. Rooted in historical evangelical theology, he embarked on church planting through expository preaching and evangelism. In the mid-sixties, he also became politically involved in the civil rights movement. For over twenty-seven years, he pastored three churches while pursuing advanced pastoral doctoral studies. In 1986, he was elected president of his denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church. During his twelve years of service, he became involved in both national and international ecumenical affairs. For twelve years, he served as chair of the Annual Meeting of all United States Church Leaders. This included heads of Roman Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant, and evangelical denominations. He aided his church in its emergence from its Swedish immigrant culture and its efforts to become an ethnically inclusive church body. During his tenure, the church grew by more than 50 percent. Retiring at age sixty-five, he spent the next twenty years pursuing evangelization and social justice on behalf of more than a half billion Indian Other Backward Castes and Dalits. He was the founding chair of both Truthseekers International USA and the William Carey Heritage Foundation. The former worked among the poorest of the poor, while the latter developed the first Indian university-accredited evangelical PhD in Christian studies. This book chronicles the way one pastor has sought to navigate the harsh ongoing polarizations in theology, race, and politics.