Camus on baptism, the Bible, and church membership.
The author reviews four books and proposes a new perspective on justification: Through the cross God inaugurates a new creation, a new space and time in which rectified, restored and renewed human action.
To the growing debate on "fulfillment theology" the author adds a contribution from a Reformed theological perspective: the thesis that New Testament messianic claims can be abandoned only at the cost of sacrificing crucial aspects of the church’s witness to the gospel of the Kingdom, but that Christians do need to abandon a good deal of "fulfillment theology" that finds its source in ecclesiastical triumphalism.
Atheistic evidentialists conclude that those living in the 20th century who are fairly well educated in matters scientific and philosophical can believe in God only by sacrificing their rationality. Must one sacrifice rationality to believe in God? Using contemporary analytical philosophy, a number of philosophers have develped impressive responses to atheistic evidentialism.
God is not God apart from the story of Israel, the story of Jesus and the story of the church. God is an event, says Jenson. "God is what happens between Jesus and his Father in their Spirit."
The author examines the magnitude and meaning of the current passion for Wesleyan studies.
A review of a book that calls for including the Palestinians in the Jewish Covenant in Israel.
Luther struggled to bring all of life under the rule of God. There is no lesser task for us. Our drive for world peace needs grounding in a deep spiritual commitment similar to that of the Reformation. Money needs to be dethroned as god and brought under control for just uses in peace.
True freedom comes from being saturated by the word of God and having it burn in one's bones.
These seven books look at the strengths and the weaknesses of the atonement: Is Jesus’ death and life his story or is the story mainly about the life and death that flows from it?
William Placher reviews two books on faith, both by B.A. Gerrish. We are summoned to be loyal to the best we know and to bear faithful witness to it. We are not required to deny that the eternal goodness we believe in may reach out to other faiths in other ways.
The surprising faith of E.F. Schumacher, who as a practical man is led to the abstract side of economics -- its metaphisical and religious underpinnings -- through more “practical” concepts like Intermediate Technology and Buddhist Economics.
Our sense of time is unlike the essential character of Indian time. Our frequently misguided efforts to fit spirituality into neat time frames like those scheduled for theater performances or athletic events. As if we could regulate our encounters with God. The sweatlodge reminds us of another way: of surrendering; allowing ourselves to be “gripped” by the Other, renewed, recast, reborn.
Nowhere, except in the contemplation of his suffering and hope, is man more triumphantly aware of his kinship with the Creator than in his cognitive and manipulative relations with nature. In the world of nature, which he faces ready-made and which he leaves as he finds it, man proves himself a master of understanding, imitation and control. The moral dilemmas of history, like its intellectual counterpart, are existential. They can be mitigated but not resolved.
In 1984 a friend of the author faced severe cancer, and from that experience asked questions which sophisticated professionals rarely pose: Did he pray? Was there a meaning in life? What, really, was the meaning of life? This is the author's reply.
A review of Radical Orthodoxy, edited by John Milbank. The book contains nine essays, setting forth the ideas of those identified as belonging to a movement in Britain called "radical orthodoxy."
(ENTIRE BOOK) How does God reveal himself to us? This question is basic to theology and is here addressed in a new light.
Rather than using Jesus as an escape hatch for fear, we need an understanding of redemption that will allow us to engage our fears in their most terrifying dimensions.
In our tumultuous times, three areas need our attention in charting a theological program today, particularly for the preparation of future priests and ministers.: 1. Philosophy; 2. Professionalism; 3. Spirituality.
Christian faith entails a belief in change, but it is change grounded in the redemptive life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The author reviews six books that reveal many meanings and interpretations of the transfiguration of Christ.
We have no generally workable and agreed-on consensus that the UFOs are real, and further investigation will have to settle this, one way or the other. If it proves to be true, then we must find out what the UFOs really are and what the intent of their guiding intelligence is.
The author talks with Christian mystic Bernard McGinn. We do not deify ourselves by becoming one with God (as Eckhart says), but rather, God deifies himself in us when we become perfectly detached. This is the nature of God’s creation of humanity as the likeness of God – imago Dei.
The author paints what for her is a believable picture of heaven, as tradition teaches us to envisage it.
As we become aware of the artificial appetites created by our consumption-compulsive society, it will be well to ask who is catering the theological smorgasbord now laid before us, and what appetites we who partake are attempting to satisfy. There’s a world of difference between one who is “hungering and thirsting after righteousness” and one who is merely seeking an intellectual snack.