You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Is there any way to talk theologically about the Trinity and place? What might the 'placedness' of creation have to do with God's triunity? In The Place of the Spirit, Sarah Morice-Brubaker considers how anxieties about place have influenced Trinitarian theology - both what it is asked to do and the language in which it is expressed. When one is nervous about collapsing God into created horizons, she suggests, one is apt to come up with a model of Trinity that refuses place. Distance becomes a primary way of situating the divine persons in relations to each other. Conversely, theologians who wish to avoid a too-remote God likewise recruit Trinitarian language to suit that purpose. They, too, use language that encourages the importance of place, expressing triunity in terms of coinherence and mutual indwelling. And yet, suggests Morice- Brubaker, the question has received full-on attention in other areas of ethics, philosophy, and systematic theology. The Place of the Spirit calls for Trinitarian thought to avail itself of those insights and offers some ways in which it may do so.
This book lifts up women of the Hebrew Bible who, working with the Divine, play amazing roles in the stories of Israel--prophet, judge, worship leader, warrior, scholar, scribe. They helped people celebrate the Divine's triumph over oppression. They spoke boldly to those in power. They went into battle to secure their people's safety. They gave wise judgments in important legal matters. They authenticated sacred texts and inspired a reform to help Israel return to the way of Torah. In roles that were not tied to their wombs or fertility, these women made Israel's story possible and helped it to continue to future generations.
The Cambodian Civil War and genocide of the late 1960s and ’70s left the country and its diaspora with long-lasting trauma that continues to reverberate through the community. In this book, Briana L. Wong explores the compelling stories of Cambodian evangelicals, their process of conversion, and how their testimonials to the Christian faith helped them to make sense of and find purpose in their trauma. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Cambodian communities in the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Paris, and Phnom Penh, Wong examines questions of religious identity and the search for meaning within the context of transnational Cambodian evangelicalism. While the community...
It has been widely accepted that few individuals had as great an influence on the church and its theology during the twentieth century as Karl Barth (1886-1968). His legacy continues to be explored and explained, with theologians around the world and from across the ecumenical spectrum vigorously debating the doctrinal ramifications of Barth's insights. What has been less readily accepted is that the Holocaust of the Jews had an equally profound effect, and that it, too, entails far-reaching consequences for the church's understanding of itself and its God. In this groundbreaking book, Barth and the Holocaust are brought into deliberate dialogue with one another to show why the church should heed both their voices, and how that may be done.
How are we to care for our bodies and our health as part of faithful Christian living? Melanie Dobson excavates from Thomas Aquinas an answer for how contemporary Christians might live well in the midst of a very sick culture. Through a close reading of Aquinas's Treatise on Habit, Dobson reveals that the moral practice of habit does indeed include health. Thomas's keen understanding of the human person and of human longings supports the book's argument for a practice of health that directs us deep into the heart of God. Field research with clergy and missionaries offers concrete examples of the implementation of habits of health as part of the life of Christian virtue. The stories from the Clergy Health Initiative and Word Made Flesh missionary organization exhibit transformations that ushered Christian leaders into deeper love of God, neighbor, and themselves. In the end, the theology of habits of health means that our quotidian care of our bodies is not only faithful, but directs us into a life of flourishing.
According to the Nicene Creed, Christ died for us and for our salvation. But while all Christians agree that Christ's death and resurrection has saving significance, there is little unanimity in how and why that is the case. In fact, Christian history is littered with various accounts of the redemptive value of Christ's death, and new models and motifs are constantly being proposed, many of which now stand in stark contrast to earlier reflections. How then should contemporary articulations of the cross's saving significance be judged? At the heart of this book is the contention that Christian reflection on the atonement is faithful inasmuch as it incorporates the intention that Jesus himself had for his death. In a wide-reaching study, the author draws from both classical scholarship and recent work on the historical Jesus to argue that not only did Jesus imbue his death with redemptive meaning but that such meaning should impact expressions of the cross's saving significance.
What is justice? How do we know justice? How is justice cultivated in society? These are the three questions that guide this critical dialogue with two representatives of the Catholic and Protestant traditions: Karl Barth and Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. Though the two thought leaders are shaped within divergent theological traditions and historical contexts, they both appeal to Christian anthropology as a starting point for justice. Their explorations into the nature of humanity yield robust new theories of justice that remain relevant for our contemporary era. The third interlocutor, our female author, brings her own voice fully into the dialogue in the third part of the book in order to address the shortcomings in their theories and build upon their insights, all the while seeking theories of humanity and social justice that result in justice for all persons.
We live in an age of global capitalism and terror. In a climate of consumption and fear the unknown Other is regarded as a threat to our safety, a client to assist, or a competitor to be overcome in the struggle for scarce resources. And yet, the Christian Scriptures explicitly summon us to welcome strangers, to care for the widow and the orphan, and to build relationships with those distant from us. But how, in this world of hostility and commodification, do we practice hospitality? In The Gift of the Other, Andrew Shepherd engages deeply with the influential thought of French thinkers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, and argues that a true vision of hospitality is ultimately found not in postmodern philosophies but in the Christian narrative. The book offers a compelling Trinitarian account of the God of hospitality--a God of communion who "makes room" for otherness, who overcomes the hostility of the world though Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, and who through the work of the Spirit is forming a new community: the Church--a people of welcome.
This book is a work of theological resistance. It is not so much about the presidency of Donald Trump as it is about what his popularity and rise to power reveal about the state of Christianity and the moral character of the evangelical Right in the United States today. More specifically, it is about the threat of white Christian nationalism, which is the particular form that the nationalist populist movement of Trumpism has adopted for itself. The contributors are all fellows from the Westar Institute’s academic seminar on God and the Human Future, and include many of the leading figures in theology and Continental philosophy of religion. This volume provides a form of theopolitical resistance based on intersectionality. The authors recognize how the various forms of oppression interrelate to contribute to a vast, dynamic, and seeming impenetrable network of systemic injustice and marginalization. These essays demonstrate that politics need not be played as a zero-sum game with a winner-take-all mentality, and that a critical theology is as urgently needed and as relevant now as ever.
This study of John Calvin's ecclesiology argues that Calvin's idea of the twofold identity of the Church--its spiritual identity as the body of Christ and its functional identity as the mother of all believers--is closely related to his understanding of Christian identity and life, which are initiated and maintained by the grace of the triune God. The anthropological basis of Calvin's idea of the Church has not been examined fully, even though Calvin presents the important concepts of his ecclesiology in light of his anthropological ideas. This study offers an overall evaluation for Calvin's ecclesiology, arguing that it is ultimately his pastoral concern for the Christian and the Church under affliction that both governs his theological understanding of the Church and shapes his proposals for establishing and sustaining the life of the Church in the world.