As a scholar and an activist, Glenn Harden seeks a theology of hope that can sustain opposition to evil. Looking into the face of evil without blinking, he uses the sex trade as an example of how horrendous evil can be. But he also uncovers stories of radical healing which are problematic for those who deny either God or the resurrection. This book is for those people of faith who walk in dark places and need deeper theological sustenance to sus ...
Karl Barth (1886-1968), as a young Swiss pastor in Safenwil, struggled to make an organic connection between «the newspaper [contemporary sociopolitical events] and the New Testament.» When he discovered «a strange new world of God within the Bible,» God became the subject matter for renewing and transforming the world. This discovery helped Barth to integrate the world into his interpretation of the Bible and also impacted his theology of Chris ...
The Ways of Wisdom answers the demand for a new kind of theology appropriate for a postsecular, global civilization, showing how to engage questions of meaning and value across as well as within traditions. Arguing that humanity is the desire to be God, The Ways of Wisdom analyzes the diverse ways in which humanity has pursued this aim, and argues for a synthesis that draws on the great spiritual traditions of the Axial Age as well as on the hum ...
Born of Water and the Spirit presents essays on the sacraments by the three major representatives of «Mercersburg Theology,» John Nevin, Philip Schaff, and Emanuel Gerhart. It focuses on Mercersburg's doctrine of baptism and Christian nurture, attempts to correct putative deficiencies of the major Reformed trajectories (e.g., New England and Princeton), and vigorously critiques the anti-sacramental animus of revivalistic evangelicalism. Mer ...
Azusa, Rome, and Zion offers historical, theological, and spiritual reflections on major movements of the Holy Spirit in modern times. The author shows where the lived experience of these movements challenges received theological concepts and categories, and indicates how engagement with these challenges can contribute to Christian reconciliation and Christian unity. Of particular interest are the surprising ways in which what appear at first si ...
What is the nature and purpose of the church for a twenty-first-century world? What is the church's calling in an age of globalization? Twenty-one pastors and theologians in the Reformed tradition offer insightful perspectives by bringing into conversation the treasures of liturgical and missional theology. These authors see the church's essential character to be as worshipping-witnessing communities, gathered and sent by the triune Go ...
The role of architecture within the French Reformed tradition has been of recent scholarly interest, seen in the work of Helene Guicharnaud, Catharine Randall, Andrew Spicer, and others. Few, however, have explored in depth the relationship between Reformed theology and architectural forms. This thesis explores the roots of Reformed aesthetics, set against the background of late medieval church architecture. The work of Serlio is demonstrably im ...
These homilies, lectures, and essays vigorously champion the author's conviction that it is reasonable to believe in a God of «pure unbounded love» and, also, that the best religion is a reasonable religion. That is, «the God of Love» is «the God of Reason» and, as a seventeenth-century Cambridge preacher put it, «If you would be religious, be rational in your religion.» Thus, these essays challenge both the New Atheists and Fundam ...
The body of Christ. The body of the anorexic. The altered body. The mutilated body. The Eucharist. Canonical Western thought has had an uneasy relationship with the flesh from Plato forward. Western philosophy has spent its time dwelling upon ideation, perception, cognition, and recollection, and has pursued, de facto if not de jure, a duality of mind and body that continues to this day. Western theology has followed suit, either viewing the bod ...