Philip Schaff’s classic work colloquially known as The Early Church Fathers is an invaluable resource filled with the primary documents and early theological building blocks for the Christian church. Comprised of thirty-eight volumes, it is broken into three parts: the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First and Second Series.

This book constitutes the second volume of a three-volume study of Christian testimonies to divine suffering: God's Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering, vol. 2, Evil and Divine Suffering. The larger study focuses its inquiry into the testimonies to divine suffering themselves, seeking to allow the voices that attest to divine suffering to speak freely, then to discover and elucidate the internal logic or rationality of this family of testimonies, rather than defending these attestations against the dominant claims of classical Christian theism that have historically sought to eliminate such language altogether from Christian discourse about the nature and life of God. This second volume of studies proceeds on the basis of the presuppositions of this symbol, those implicit attestations that provide the conditions of possibility for divine suffering-that which constitutes divine vulnerability with respect to creation-as identified and examined in the first volume of this project: an understanding of God through the primary metaphor of love ("God is love"); and an understanding of the human as created in the image of God, with a life (though finite) analogous to the divine life-the imago Dei as love. The second volume then investigates the first two divine wounds or modes of divine suffering to which the larger family of testimonies to divine suffering normally attest: (1) divine grief, suffering because of betrayal by the beloved human or human sin; and (2) divine self-sacrifice, suffering for the beloved human in its bondage to sin or misery, to establish the possibility of redemption and reconciliation. Each divine wound, thus, constitutes a response to a creaturely occasion. The suffering in each divine wound also occurs in two stages: a passive stage and an active stage. In divine grief, God suffers because of human sin, betrayal of the divine lover by the beloved human: divine sorrow as the passive stage of divine grief; and divine anguish as the active stage of divine grief. In divine self-sacrifice, God suffers in response to the misery or bondage of the beloved human's infidelity: divine travail (focused on the divine incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth) as the active stage of divine self-sacrifice; and divine agony (focused on divine suffering in the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth) as the passive stage of divine self-sacrifice.

This book constitutes the first volume of a three-volume study of Christian testimonies to divine suffering: God's Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering, Divine Vulnerability and Creation. This study first develops an approach to interpreting the contested claims about the suffering of God. Thus, the larger study focuses its inquiry into the testimonies to divine suffering themselves, seeking to allow the voices that attest to divine suffering to speak freely, to discover and elucidate the internal logic or rationality of this family of testimonies, rather than defending these attestations against the dominant claims of classical Christian theism that have historically sought to eliminate such language altogether from Christian discourse about the nature and life of God. Through this approach this volume of studies into the Christian symbol of divine suffering then investigates the two major presuppositions that the larger family of testimonies to divine suffering normally hold: an understanding of God through the primary metaphor of love ("God is love"); and an understanding of the human as created in the image of God, with a life (though finite) analogous to the divine life--the imago Dei as love. When fully elaborated, these presuppositions reveal the conditions of possibility for divine suffering and divine vulnerability with respect to creation.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.

The Feasts of the Lord, or God’s Appointed Times, first appear in the Bible during the Exodus. There are three aspects to the Feasts of the Lord: 1. Agricultural, 2. Memorial, and 3. Prophetic. They are prophetic about both the First Advent and the Second Advent which means that some events prophesied have not happened yet. The Jewish calendar was to be determined by the New Moons and the ripening of barley in Israel and consisted of twelve or thirteen months. The first of the Appointed Times was Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Unfortunately, the Hebrews rarely observed the Feasts of the Lord and this ultimately led to their division and the Babylonian captivity. In Babylon they began to rely upon the Babylonians astronomical calculations as well as observations to try to determine when the Feasts of the Lord would occur. Finally in the fourth century, they began to rely solely on calculations to determine the dates of the Feasts of the Lord. The Feasts of the Lord played an important role during Christ’s time on earth. There were four Passovers during His ministry culminating in His crucifixion at the time of the fourth Passover. After His resurrection, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon His followers in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. The early Christian Church continued observance of the Feasts of the Lord. Paul observed Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Philippi. He was arrested at the time of Pentecost. The first breaks from the Feasts of the Lord began in the second century CE. The Feasts of the Lord are still important today because they were part of an oath from God, and He never breaks His oaths. Furthermore, we will be observing Feasts of the Lord in the New Earth.