What does the Wesleyan message have to say to the greater theological world? This is a question that Laurence Wood has taken up as his concern throughout his career. In order to honor his work, this collection takes up this question through a series of essays designed to show how Wesleyan Theology, while distinctive, has a continued relevance to the wider world of theological scholarship. This collection does this in two ways. First, by showing how the Wesleyan distinctives have been present throughout the history of theology. And secondly, the collection brings the Wesleyan distinctives into conversation with various contemporary theological conversations, ranging from theological hermeneutics and the science-religion dialogue to the practice of preaching and spirituality. The result is a volume that puts Wesleyan theology into continued dialogue with the broader theological world, showing its vitality and importance for the contemporary situation.
Is America a Christian nation? This question has loomed large in American culture since the Puritans arrived on American shores in the early seventeenth century. More recently, the Christian America thesis has been advocated by many evangelical leaders across the denominational spectrum. This book contributes to the conversation by critiquing, from an evangelical perspective, the idea that America is a Christian nation as articulated by specific writers over the past three decades. Wilsey asserts that the United States was not conceived as a Christian nation, but as a nation with religious liberty. Herein lies the genius of the Founders and the uniqueness of America.
"Religion and ecology" has arrived. What was once a niche interest for a few academics concerned with environmental issues and a few environmentalists interested in religion has become an established academic field with classic texts, graduate programs, regular meetings at academic conferences, and growing interest from other academics and the mass media. Theologians, ethicists, sociologists, and other scholars are engaged in a broad dialogue about the ways religious studies can help understand and address environmental problems, including the sorts of methodological, terminological, and substantive debates that characterize any academic discourse.
This book recognizes the field that has taken shape, reflects on the ways it is changing, and anticipates its development in the future. The essays offer analyses and reflections from emerging scholars of religion and ecology, each addressing her or his own specialty in light of two questions: (1) What have we inherited from the work that has come before us? and (2) What inquiries, concerns, and conversation partners should be central to the next generation of scholarship?
The aim of this volume is not to lay out a single and clear path forward for the field. Rather, the authors critically reflect on the field from within, outline some of the major issues we face in the academy, and offer perspectives that will nurture continued dialogue.
The subject of «culture» has provided theologians with a whole new realm of exploration. By the turn of the twentieth century and the beginning of this new milennium the subject of culture had presented itself to theologians and church leaders for vital consideration. As one of the world's leading theologians, Robert Jenson's eminent career has coincided with the pre-eminence of culture in theological and churchly discussion. Having described himself as a theologian of culture in his earliest works, culture continually informs Jenson's systematic theology, which in turn works its way out in countless cultural forms. In Rhyming Hope and History we explore the philiosophical and theological influences of Jenson's work and outline their vast and varied applications to the world of culture and the life of the church. For Jenson, the church is the cultural embodiment of the risen Christ in the fallen reality of our world. In a series of conversations between Jenson and leading thinkers, including G.W.F. Hegel, Jonathan Edwards, Wittgenstein, Richard H. Niebuhr, Kathryn Tanner, Paul Tillich, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Augustine, and Jeremy Begbie, we explore this creative and courageous proposal.
What becomes of theology when we think of it aesthetically? What becomes of aesthetics when we think of it theologically? These are the guiding questions that inform both the method and the conclusions of this volume's exploration into the literary world of Herman Melville's «characteristic theology.» Far from a specialist work that simply seeks to flesh out the religious disposition and myriad influences of one particular literary giant, Johnson's focus in this volume is instead the identification of a philosophically robust aesthetic conception of theology at its most politically and contemporarily relevant. By way of the Masquerade it sets in motion and in which it fully participates, from its beginning to its very end, this book uses Melville's fiction as vehicle for a radical aesthetic engagement with the theological bases of subjectivity and sovereignty. Through this exploration Johnson conceives the creatively duplicitous character of a materialistic theology whose aim is nothing less than the fashioning of a new heaven and a new earth.
Evangelical and feminist approaches to Old Testament interpretation often seem to be at odds with each other. The authors of this volume argue to the contrary: feminist and evangelical interpreters of the Old Testament can enter into a constructive dialogue that will be fruitful to both parties. They seek to illustrate this with reference to a number of texts and issues relevant to feminist Old Testament interpretation from an explicitly evangelical point of view. In so doing they raise issues that need to be addressed by both evangelical and feminist interpreters of the Old Testament, and present an invitation to faithful and fruitful reading of these portions of Scripture.
This book articulates a contextual pneumatology from a perspective of the Eastern idea of ch'i (ki in Korean). Rather than understanding the Spirit from a Westernized philosophical perspective, this book utilizes East Asian categories rooted in the I Ching and Asian religions in dialogue with such prominent Western theologians as Barth, Pannenberg, Moltmann and Harvey Cox. The result is an exciting interaction between the Bible, traditions of the West, and experiences of the Spirit rooted in East Asia. Yun argues that the formal dimension of the Spirit (sangjeok) is present and active in all cultures and religions while the material dimension of the Spirit (muljeok) is categorically revealed and embodied through the life of Jesus Christ, the event of Pentecost, and Charisms given to the church. In making his case, he mediates a creative balance between countercultural and exclusivist models on the one hand, and pluralistic and anthropocentric models on the other.
The number of Hispanics living in Oregon has burgeoned over the past several decades. The number of Spanish-speaking churches in the state has also grown exponentially. However, most non-Hispanic Oregonians know very little about the Hispanic population. This lack of knowledge about Latinos, and about Hispanic ministries specifically, is found among academics and Anglo Protestants alike. This book is the result of my desire to provide information that will serve as a bridge between Spanish-speaking and English-speaking churches and facilitate understanding between groups in the broader population, and provide a well-documented study for the academy.
Anabaptists have often felt suspicious of American evangelicalism, and in turn evangelicals have found various reasons to dismiss the Anabaptist witness. Yet at various points in the past as well as the present, evangelicals and Anabaptists have found ample reason for conversation and much to appreciate about each other. The Activist Impulse represents the first book-length examination of the complex relationship between evangelicalism and Anabaptism in the past thirty years. It brings established experts and new voices together in an effort to explore the historical and theological intersection of these two rich traditions. Each of the essays provides fresh insight on at least one characteristic that both evangelicals and Anabaptists share–an impulse to engage society through the pursuit of active Christian witness.
The Mystical Presence (1846), John Williamson Nevin's magnum opus, was an attempt to combat the sectarianism and subjectivism of nineteenth-century American religion by recovering the robust sacramental and incarnational theology of the Protestant Reformation, enriched with the categories of German idealism. In it, he makes the historical case for the spiritual real presence as the authentic Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist, and explains the theological and philosophical context that render the doctrine intelligible. The 1850 article «The Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper» represents his response to his arch critic, Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary, providing what is still considered a definitive historical treatment of Reformed eucharistic theology. Both texts demonstrate Nevin's immense erudition and theological creativity, contributing to our understanding not only of Reformed theology, but also of the unique milieu of nineteenth-century American religion.
The present critical edition carefully preserves the original text, while providing extensive introductions, annotations, and bibliography to orient the modern reader and facilitate further scholarship.
The Mercersburg Theology Study Series is an attempt to make available for the first time–in attractive, readable, and scholarly modern editions–the key writings of the nineteenth-century movement known as the Mercersburg Theology. An ambitious multi-year project, this aims to make an important contribution to the academic community and to the broader reading public, who may at last be properly introduced to this unique blend of American and European, Reformed and Catholic theology.