This gallery highlights books written or edited by current and former Cedarville University faculty members. It does not represent a comprehensive list of books by Cedarville faculty, but rather includes only those which have been brought to the attention of the University Archivist. Please contact the library to suggest additional titles.
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God and the Idols: Representations of God in 1 Corinthians 8-10
Trent A. Rogers
The interpretation of 1 Cor 8-10 as a coherent argument is complicated by several factors, most significantly the apparent contradictions in the text (primarily an issue within chapter 8) and the remarkable changes in Paul's tone (primarily an issue with how 10:1-22 relates to 8:1-13 and 10:23-11:1). Trent A. Rogers argues that Paul consistently prohibits believers from eating εἰδωλόθυτα by first appealing to their obligation to love other believers and then to their obligation of exclusive faithfulness to Christ. The approach of his analysis is to examine how the representation of God functions in Paul's argument, especially in comparison to other Hellenistic Jewish polemics against idolatry. While this is an argument made about particular practices, it is an argument made on theological grounds, and these theological underpinnings have been largely unexplored until now.
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The Heavens and The Earth: Excursions in Earth and Space Science
Marcus Ross, John Whitmore, Steven M. Gollmer, and Danny Faulkner
The Heavens and the Earth is a groundbreaking new textbook designed for the undergraduate, non-science major. Thoroughly Biblical in approach and content, it is the only college-level textbook in Earth and space sciences that advocates Biblical, young-Earth creationism while also fairly and respectfully presenting naturalistic views of history.
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The Augustinian Theology of W.H. Auden
Stephen J. Schuler
When W.H. Auden returned to Christianity in the early 1940s, he identified himself with what he called an 'existential' method of spiritual and literary inquiry, which the writings of St. Augustine helped him define as a mode of thinking that not only allows for human subjectivity, but emphasizes the hopes, fears, needs, desires, and anxieties of the individual. Augustine thus became for Auden a model of a thinker who seamlessly merged psychological reflection with philosophical speculation and theological insight, and it is this combination of introspection and theoretical investigation that shapes much of Auden's later poetry. The Augustinian Theology of W.H. Auden illustrates that Augustine's thought is a major influence on Auden's postconversion poetry and prose. Auden encountered Augustine both directly, through his reading of the Confessions, and indirectly, through several of Auden's contemporaries, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Charles Norris Cochrane, and Charles Williams. Stephen J. Schuler argues that Augustine provided Auden with the language of privation to describe the nature of moral and social evil, enabling him to make sense of the pervasive anxieties produced by World War II. Augustine's works also offered Auden a rationale for his intuition that the physical world, and especially the human body, is intrinsically good. Auden's struggle to reconcile the implications of his Augustinian theology with his attitudes toward romantic love and sexuality are explained by Schuler, who demonstrates how the Augustinian theology of Reinhold Niebuhr helped shape Auden's ideas about human identity and community, which is defined and maintained by love in all its various forms. Finally, Schuler analyzes Auden's Augustinian view of the ethics of poetry. By examining the presence of Augustinian ideas in Auden's poetry and prose, Schuler establishes the Augustinian origins of several crucial but often misunderstood features of Auden's work as well as the importance of Augustine in shaping and articulating the concerns of Auden's later poetry.
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Staging Luther: Four Plays by Hans Sachs
Annis N. Shaver
The book contains four plays written by Hans Sachs, a troubadour, playwright, shoemaker, and important compatriot and supporter of Martin Luther.
Unlike Sachs' well-known poem "The Wittenberg Nightingale" (also included here in a new translation), the plays have not been translated into English until now and will be a boon for researchers and students who can now read them for the first time.
The plays are full of scriptural references and are generally written as dialogs between a Luther supporter and a Catholic cleric. Inevitably the Luther supporter wins the argument, but not without some name-calling and strong derision towards the Papist discussant!
In addition to the plays, the book provides historical commentary on the importance of Sachs' support of Luther, as well as annotations related to the translation and word choices along with cultural information to support the translations.
It is an important scholarly contribution to the ongoing work of reformation scholarship in the English language.
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The Textbook as Discourse: Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks
Annis N. Shaver
The central assumption of The Textbook as Discourse is this: interpreted in the flow of history, textbooks can provide important insights into the nature and meaning of a culture and the social and political discourses in which it is engaged. This book is about the social, political and cultural content of elementary and secondary textbooks in American education. It focuses on the nature of the discourses—the content and context—that represent what is included in textbooks. The term "discourse" provides the conceptual framework for the book, drawing on the work of the French social theorist Michel Foucault. The volume includes classic articles and book chapters as well as three original chapters written by the editors. To enhance its usefulness as a course text, each chapter includes an Overview, Key Concepts, and Questions for Reflection.
