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A constructive new proposal for Christian dialogue with other faiths. Religious pluralism is today the most challenging issue facing traditional Christianity. This constructive work by a leading voice on the subjects of religious pluralism and interfaith relations probes the Christian understanding of God and salvation and offers a new perspective on religious pluralism that affirms unique salvation in Christ while also recognizing the religious ends of other faiths. The questions explored here are both difficult and enlightening. What is the distinctive nature of salvation? Is there a place in Christian theology for recognizing other religious ends in addition to salvation? In pursuit of meaningful answers, S. Mark Heim uses the classical doctrine of the Trinity to develop a theology that allows Christians to respect the possibility that alternative relations with God exist in other religions.
The cross has long been not only a scandal but also a profound paradox: filled with saving significance and power, it is at the same time a sobering tragedy. In Saved from Sacrifice theologian Mark Heim takes on this paradox, asserting that the cross must be understood against the whole history of human scapegoating violence. In order to highlight the dimensions of his argument, Heim carefully and critically draws on the groundbreaking work of French theorist and biblical scholar René Girard. Yet Heim goes beyond Girard to develop a comprehensive theology of the atonement and the cross through his fresh readings of well-known biblical passages and his exploration of the place of the victim.
For more than a century Christian theologians have attempted to construct "theologies of religion" that would be recognized as authentically Christian and authentic in relation to the historical and social reality of many religions. This attempt usually ends in an impasse in which either only one religion is portrayed as holding the true path to salvation, or that many do. Neither the exclusivist nor the pluralist position is completely satisfactory in integrating the two goals of an authentically Christian and historically viable theology of religions. In calling this book Salvations author S. Mark Heim moves the theology of religions project beyond taking sides on exclusivist and pluralist...
Winner of the Frederick Streng Book Award for Excellence in Buddhist-Christian Studies This work provides the first systematic discussion of the Bodhisattva path and its importance for constructive Christian theology. Crucified Wisdom examines specific Buddhist traditions, texts, and practices not as phenomena whose existence requires an apologetic justification but as wells of tested wisdom that invite theological insight. With the increasing participation of Christians in Buddhist practice, many are seeking a deeper understanding of the way the teachings of the two traditions might interface. Christ and the Bodhisattva are often compared superficially in Buddhist–Christian discussion. Th...
Offers a new model for understanding the atonement, sensitive to both the Christian tradition and its postmodern critics.
I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Echoing Hosea, Jesus defends his embrace of the unclean in the Gospel of Matthew, seeming to privilege the prophetic call to justice over the Levitical pursuit of purity. And yet, as missional faith communities arewell aware, the tensions and conflicts between holiness and mercy are not so easily resolved. In an unprecedented fusion of psychological science and theological scholarship, Richard Beck describes the pernicious (and largely unnoticed) effects of the psychology of purity upon the life and mission of the church.
In After Our Likeness, Miroslav Volf explores the relationship between persons and community in Christian theology. He seeks to counter the tendencies toward individualism in Protestant ecclesiology and give community its due.
A provocative study that cuts to the very heart of Christian thought, The Nonviolent Atonement challenges the traditional, Anselmian understanding of atonement along with the assumption that heavenly justice depends on Christ s passive, innocent submission to violent death at the hands of a cruel God. Instead J. Denny Weaver offers a thoroughly nonviolent paradigm for understanding atonement, grounded in the New Testament and sensitive to the concerns of pacifist, black, feminist, and womanist theology. While many scholars have engaged the subject of violence in atonement theology, Weaver s Nonviolent Atonement is the only book that offers a radically new theory rather than simply refurbishi...
Founding his argument on a close reading of St. Augustine?s De Trinitate, Keith Johnson critiques four recent attempts to construct a pluralistic theology of religions out of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.
Forgiveness is a hallmark teaching within monotheistic religions. This Element introduces the topic in three ways. First, it considers the extent to which forgiveness is specific to or constituted by monotheistic beliefs, by a comparison with analogous teaching and practice in Buddhism. Second, the most extensive section explores the grammar of forgiveness shared across the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam – elements of repentance, intercession, and eschatological deferral. This section identifies some of the divergent tendencies or emphases on this topic among those traditions. A third section addresses the role of forgiveness and monotheistic religions in human cultural evolution and the emergence of eusociality. The aim is for the reader to gain an introductory view of monotheism and forgiveness from a comparative religious example, from an internal examination of Abrahamic traditions, and from a developmental, secular perspective.