MESSIANIC THEOLOGY AND CHRISTIAN FAITH

light olive cloth hardcover 8vo. (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. vg cond. binding square & tight. covers have minor soiling. top edge has faint water spot, edges clean. erasure spot & old owner's embossed blind stamp on front flyleaf, otherwsie contents free of markings. price clipped dustwrapper in vg cond.rubbed,wrinkled, 1" tear on rear, minor stains. nice vintage copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers. no inking, underlining, remainder markings. first edition. first printing (NAP). 208p. notes. index. ancient history. biblical studies. theology. religion. ancient literature. ~This study in Biblical theology explores in depth what it has meant historically that a man was called the Messiah and, by implication, what it means to be a Christian today. Messianic interpretation of history is once again in crisis, and Christian faith itself is undergoing transformation. It is to help stem the existent confusion of this crisis that Dr. Riggan offers his scholarly review of the concept of the Messiah in Hebrew thinking. He believes that such a "thinking through " can provide a clearer basis for action for those trying to live a Bible~based Christian life in this day of active theological questioning and sometimes dizzying resultant crosscurrents. Probing recent linguistic and historical studies of the "Hero~Savior" theme in both Old and New Testaments, Dr. Riggan builds the thesis that God has chosen to reveal himself in and through the developing stages of Hebrew~Christian messianism. Dr. Riggan's study ranges through all the various concepts of the Messiah in Hebrew thinking ~ from the Old Testament" anointed one " (always used to designate only the reigning king in Israel orJudah) to the New Testament post~resurrection view of Jesus as the Messiah. His final focus is "upon the release of therapeutic energies in the life and times of Jesus, and upon the meaning for us in our time of New Testament language concerning his death and resurrection, his Messiahship, and his Second Coming at the end of the world." The reader (layman or scholar) who follows Dr. Riggan's logical deductions from the source material he so rigorously examines will find added insight emerging ~ insight that may well lead him to adopt the author's well~reasoned conclusion that "thanks to the dynamics of healing and integration emergent among us in the life and times of Jesus, there now exists the possibility by which we ourselves from time to time become alternately and mutually Christ one to another.' " Even modern~day apocalyptists, who would consign our twentieth~century world to woe (if not actually to a Revelation~type destruction), can hardly help gaining from Dr. Riggan a resurgence of the same strong hope of their Biblical predecessors namely, that there will be a future age and world brought into being, as all earthly ages and worlds are, by God's acting in history and through whatever people and happenings man, by free choice or in heedless ignorance, may be moved to perpetrate.…