More Information
ISBN: 9781783687923
Imprint: Langham Global Library
Format: Paperback
Dimensions (mm): 229 x 152 x 14
Publication Date: 30/09/2020
Pages: 268
Language: English

Blessing the Curse?

A Biblical Approach for Restoring Relationships in the Church

£16.99

The message of the kingdom of God, as brought to us by Christ, is a message that overturns hierarchies, sets free the enslaved, and breaks the power of the curse upon humanity. Yet when it comes to women, the church has chosen all too often to live according to the structures of sin and death, offering them not the good news of Christ, but the curse of Genesis, as their inheritance.

In this powerful and challenging text, Ksenija Magda traces the impact of the curse – and the ever-present temptation to choose the world and its power over the servant-hearted humility of Christ – on our families, our church structures, our nations, and ultimately, our gospel witness. The question of how we view, treat, oppress or empower women is not, Magda reminds us, peripheral to the gospel but foundational. She warns that if men and women will not partner together in building the kingdom of God, they will find themselves partners in the work of upholding the world’s structures of power and oppression.

Will we choose to bless the curse or to redeem it? To live in the death that our foreparents chose in the garden, or accept the life and freedom held out to us by Christ? This is a question upon which human history and the hope of our restoration hangs.

Author Bios

Ksenija Magda
(By)

Dr Ksenija Magda (PhD, London School of Theology and Brunel University, UK) is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at the Matthias Flacius Illyricus University Centre for Protestant Theology, Croatia.

Endorsements

In an ever-winding narrative of Scripture and cultural application, Ksenija Magda expounds the challenge of gender equity with robust frankness. She has something powerful to say to both genders and it needs hearing. This book is not for the faint-hearted and needs to be embarked upon with openness of mind and humility of spirit.

Karen Wilson
Chairperson and CEO, Global Leadership Network Australia


One of the most attractive aspects of this outstanding book is how Ksenija Magda very thoroughly examines Scripture and lays out the foundations carefully. From these foundations she challenges our views on male-female relationships throughout history and up to today. I wish this book would have been published forty years ago.

Thomas Bucher
General Secretary, European Evangelical Alliance


It is dangerously easy to take individual verses about women out of context and Dr. Magda’s explanations (with much academic firepower) reminds readers that God’s design is for women and men to be a blessing to each other and to our needy world.

Amanda Jackson
Executive Director, Women’s Commission, World Evangelical Alliance


This is a thought-provoking book that can change the way women and men think and live. The application of its prophetic insights can infuse the everyday realities of our lives with God’s life-giving salvation and bring hope to our troubled world.

Louise Kretzschmar
Professor of Theological Ethics,
University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction: How the Church Makes the Gospel Bad News for the World
  2. Blessing the Curse
    1. Genesis 3: A Curse or a Blessing?
    2. The Contemporary World from the Perspective of the Curse
  3. Church Structures as Structures of Sin
    1. Hierarchies as Sanctifying the Curse
    2. Church Hierarchies as Systems of Abuse
    3. Hierarchies as Systems of Ecological and Economic Abuse
  4. The Solution to the Problem of Sin
    1. Looking at the Curse with Paul’s Eyes
    2. Christ Takes the Curse of the Body upon Himself
    3. Bearing Fruit: The Sarks and Soma Dichotomy in Paul
  5. The Church as New Creation
    1. A Biblical Word to Men
    2. A Biblical Word to Women
  6. Epilogue: Next Steps
    1. Combatting Slavery and Human Trafficking
    2. Women’s Ministries in the Church
  7. Bibliography
  8. Index of Names
  9. Index of Scriptures

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