You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The modern era includes a two-fold tradition of radical suspicion--the suspicion that politicians corrupt morality, and that politics is corrupted by theology. However, such a view has been challenged in recent theological thought which seeks to move beyond such suspicion to recover a constructive role for political theology. By pursuing a critical comparison of the political theologies of John Howard Yoder and Oliver O'Donovan, the present work shows how post-Christendom Protestant political theology has attempted to move beyond suspicion without putting forward some hidden attempt to reassert a contemporary version of Christendom. O'Donovan's political theology, written from within the Bri...
A. James Reimer's (1942-2010) theopolitical project, intended to be a fully theologically conceptualized political theology, offers a constructive and creative contribution to this burgeoning field of theological inquiry. Reimer's thesis for this theologically derived politics focuses on the necessity to take seriously the biblical-Trinitarian foundations for all Christian social ethics, but also on the importance of astute and faithful engagement by Christians in public institutional life, including the political realm. While Reimer understood himself to be working as an Anabaptist, and hoped to invite that tradition to embrace a more positive view of civil institutions than has historicall...
Take and Read is a collection of essays first presented as oral theological reflections on books, written to stimulate conversations among diverse groups of readers, which included farmers, physicians, teachers, poets, novelists, scientists, people involved in business, finance, relief work, and many other walks of life, ranging in age from twenty-something to eighty. These reflections introduce and offer samples of theological readings of a variety of books. The result is a collection of essays addressing a wide range of topics from food security to violence, from dementia to indigenous issues. Perhaps this book is best described as an invitation to joining a conversation about books, and more importantly, about God.
This book explores how contemporary approaches to the meaning of time and history follow patterns that are simultaneously political and theological. Even after postsecular critiques of Christianity, religion, and secularity, many influential ways of dividing time and history continue to be formed by providential narratives that mediate between experience and expectation in movements from promise to fulfilment. In response to persistent theological influences within ostensibly secular ways of understanding time and history, Postsecular History revisits and revises the concept of periodization by tracing powerful efforts to divide time into past, present, and future, and by critiquing historical partitions between the Reformation and Enlightenment. Developing a postsecular critique of theopolitical periodization in six chapters, Postsecular History questions how relations of possession, novelty, freedom, and instrumentality implied in the prefix ‘post’ are reproduced in postsecular discourses and the field of political theology.
A new generation engages the theology of John Howard Yoder. These essays wrestle with questions of power and its implications for social practices including policing, nonviolence, sexism, governmentality, dialogue, political critique, theological construction, and the work of “inheriting” a theological tradition. The authors and their approaches to Yoder’s work are diverse. They bring a wide array of backgrounds to the task, from activism and church leadership to advanced studies and the professorate. What each has in common is an instinct to place Yoder’s work into new conversations and to examine it through new lenses. Authors include Chris K. Huebner, Nekeisha Alexis-Baker, Paul Martens, John C. Nugent, and Paul C. Heidebrecht.
Bathsheba is undeniably a minor character in the biblical plotline, appearing in only four chapters in Samuel and Kings combined, and even therein saying and doing very little. Thus she is often ignored or mentioned merely parenthetically. When Bathsheba has been considered, she has been depicted in a myriad of ways on the spectrum from helpless victim to hapless seductress. In fact, with so many different interpretations of her throughout the centuries, it is easy to find oneself asking, along with the anonymous informant in 2 Sam 11:3, "Isn't this Bathsheba?"This study argues that while she is a minor character, Bathsheba is complex and positive, and shows development from when she first a...
TWENTY-THREE. The Age of Devils -- TWENTY-FOUR. The Age of Reasonable Doubt -- TWENTY-FIVE. The Age of Outcomes -- TWENTY-SIX. The Spirit of the Age -- EPILOGUE. Assessing the Reformations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Illustration Credits -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Z
When asked about his work for social change, one Presbyterian elder and activist sighed, "You always have the feeling that you're attacking an iceberg with an ice pick. . . . But still, some people do listen, and it does some good. As they say, even glaciers move every now and then." The work for social change is long, arduous, and yields only the smallest of results. What sustains religious social activists while they chip away at social change? This book examines the practice of social activism from the inside out, exploring how activists are affected by their participation in the public sphere. Drawing on the fields of practice theory, social movement theory, and theologies of sin and hope, this book presents an interdisciplinary look at a complex phenomenon, and concludes with proposals for the nourishment of social activism within the church.
"What is the purpose of theology for the church?" Systematic theology provides an inroad into this question by offering both a method for doing theology and an explanation for the purpose of that method. However, "system" is itself the product of a specific understanding of knowledge grounded in rational demonstration of facts. This study attempts to address the historical debate over when systematic theology began. Much of the debate is centered on the definition of system and revolves around the use, or lack thereof, of external philosophical categories or language. Specific historical figures have been selected to serve as illustrations of how theological prolegomena functioned in works p...
How are we to understand Bonhoeffer? In these essays, Peter Frick attempts to answer this question by examining different aspects of Bonhoeffer's thought, thus illuminating the hermeneutical, philosophical, theological, and social dimensions of his writings. All sixteen essays collected here were written between 2007 and 2014; some of them address the question of methodology, others contribute to Bonhoeffer's intellectual formation, and still others seek to connect with contemporary questions. The aim of the volume is to present Bonhoeffer's key theological and philosophical ideas, and to emphasize their contemporary relevance.