bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Destructive Creation: The Covenantal Crisis of Capitalist Society
Authors: Ma David K. , Eliot T. S.
Published: February 2011

The Christian church today remains shockingly bereft of a prophetic and authoritative message in bearing witness to a capitalist society. Christian teachings are ad hoc, emphasizing altruism, honesty, and perhaps social justice, as if we have already conceded the autonomy of the economic system to which Christianity has these few reminders to offer. This essay seeks to understand the essence of capitalist society through a normative theological lens of creation and covenant. It offers a critical interpretation of liberal capitalism and in particular its current state of affairs as part of a historical process of increasing deviation from the Christian norm.
Developing a Jewish Theology regarding Torture
Authors: Feld Edward
Published: February 2011

Both the Torah's commandment to observe the Sabbath and the Mishnah's commentary on the creation of the first person enshrine the divine worth of every human being, however “other,” even criminals convicted of capital offenses. How we treat the least of society is the standard for how everyone ought to be treated. Such a view stands as a barrier to the practice of torture and animates the absolute prohibition of torture enunciated by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999.
What Can Christian Teaching Add to the Debate about Torture?
Authors: Waldron Jeremy
Published: February 2011

A national debate on torture has begun in the United States, initiated in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, fueled by hypothetical “ticking bomb” scenarios, inspired by the attempts of administration lawyers to weaken legal prohibitions, heightened by the ethical dilemmas faced by soldiers, law enforcement officers, and intelligence operatives in the presence of abusive interrogation procedures, and galvanized by public images of the descent into depravity that torture always involves. Rather than remain silent, the churches should now join this national debate and bring to it Christian perspectives relating to moral absolutes, the sacredness of the human person, the sacredness of norms, the requirement of judging means in relation to their ends, the respect due even to those who are guilty of crimes, and the venue that torture always affords for depraved and demonic conduct.
Scotland's Gift: Philosophy, Theology, and the Gifford Lectures
Authors: Haldane John
Published: February 2011

Appreciation of the Scottish contribution to philosophy and theology is particularly marked in North America, especially among those in Reformed traditions, on account of the influence of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish thinkers. The Scottish view of the importance of intellectual reflection on fundamental questions concerning the nature of humanity and its place within the cosmos is represented also by the lecture series established by the bequest of Adam Lord Gifford. This essay explores the impact of the Scottish tradition and reviews the course of the Gifford Lectures, then reflects on their future.
Speaking Again of the Trinity
Authors: Brown Sally A.
Published: February 2011

This essay argues, with Catherine M. LaCugna and others, that affirming that God is divine being-in-communion, the Three-in-One in whom power is equally shared, and in whom unity and difference wholly coincide has thoroughly practical consequences for congregational life. Dominant cultural models from outside the church that too often structure patterns of power and influence within the ecclesial community can be challenged, and a fresh theological basis for sustained theological and cultural pluralism in congregational life can be affirmed.
Realism and Romance in John Updike's Marry Me
Authors: McTavish John
Published: February 2011

One of the pitfalls on the road of any commentator on any author is that of seizing upon a single aspect of his work and developing this aspect to the exclusion of others equally important. What is said may then be true enough, yet the total picture becomes a distorted one. The danger of a selective reading pulling the whole critical super-structure awry is peculiarly evident in connection with John Updike. He is a comic writer, a fabulist, a poet, a moralist, an observer of social mores, a religious believer, a student of history, an “earnest meditator” on the ego, a critic of other authors—and sometimes all of these things at once. Those who would bake a critical cake must not only include all the ingredients he has supplied but also mix them in the right proportions. If they fail, the cake will turn out flat.
Charles Ives and the Reformed Tradition
Authors: Lapsley James N.
Published: February 2011

The American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) was rooted in New England Congregationalism, the Puritan wing of the Reformed tradition. Although he is often seen as an innovative composer identified with New England transcendentalism, he never abandoned his Reformed evangelical faith but rather expressed it in some of his greatest music, particularly the Third and Fourth Symphonies.
Paul Lehmann as Nurturer of Theological Discernment
Authors: Morse Christopher
Published: February 2011

The centennial in 2006 of Paul Lehmann's birth offers an opportunity to reassess the theological ethics of this provocative Reformed thinker. In reviewing Lehmann's persistent aim through four major works to explicate a theological anthropology in contrast to an anthropological theology, this article examines his remarkable pertinence as a nurturer of theological discernment.
The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Church in Action
Authors: King Coretta Scott
Published: February 2011

Sometimes—yes sometimes—the good Lord … I say the good Lord … accepts his own perfection, and closes his eyes, and goes ahead, and takes his own good time, and he makes himself a man. Yes! And sometimes that man gets hold of the idea of what he's supposed to do in this world, and he gets an idea of what it is possible for him to do. And that man lets that idea guide him as he grows and struggles, and stumbles, and sorrows … until finally he comes into his own God-given shape, and achieves his own individual and lonely place in this world. It don't happen often. Oh, no! But when it does, then even the stones will cry out in witness to his vision, and the hills and towers will echo his words and deeds, and his example will live in the breasts of men forever… . So you look at him awhile, and be thankful—that the Lord let such a man touch our lives, even if it were only for a little while.
Revisioning the Church: Martin Luther King Jr. as a Model for Reflection
Authors: Baldwin Lewis V.
Published: February 2011

This essay has arisen from the author'sresearch on the nature and purpose of the church in the view of Martin Luther King Jr. It contends that King was first and foremost a man of the church, that his sense of the church as a prophetic witness and movement was central to his social activism, and that there is a need for a reappropriation of many of his ideas for the contemporary church. The essay teases out some of King'smost striking images of the church without imposing a systematic ecclesiology on his thinking.
Theosis in Patristic Thought
Authors: Kharlamov Vladimir
Published: February 2011

In the current renewal of interest in the deification theme, the consensual and homogeneous character of this concept in early Christian writers is generally assumed. This article concisely examines the intricate complexity of the emergence and development of theosis in patristic theology, with acknowledgement of the initially marginal, rhetorical, multidimensional, and often contextualized role of this concept prior to its theological consolidation in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor in the sixth and seventh centuries. Important to the Palamite and Neo-Palamite Eastern Orthodox theology, the distinction between the divine essence and energy is not necessarily a representative characteristic of early church fathers.
Theosis and Beauty
Authors: Viladesau Richard
Published: February 2011

Contemporary theology has increasingly attended to the category of the beautiful. The relation of beauty to the theme of theosis implies two questions: Is God beautiful? Does earthly beauty lead to God? A strong Christian tradition sees beauty as a quality of the divine and of grace, sometimes explicitly relating it to divinization. But for Christian theology, the revelation of God in Christ and in his cross transforms the notion of beauty itself to include what in itself seems unattractive. A converted sense of beauty is both the sign of theosis and a means to attaining it.

O Lord, save Your people and bless Your inheritance, preserve the fullness of your church; sanctify those who love the beauty of Your House; glorify them in return by your divine power.

— Prayer of the Second Antiphon, Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
Reformed Theosis?
Authors: Murphy Gannon
Published: February 2011

Theologians in the classical Reformed tradition have not always recognized the elements in their own theologies that bear striking similarity to the doctrine of theosis principally advocated in Greek patristic and Byzantine theology and carried onward by historic and contemporary Eastern Orthodox thought. After a brief review of the classical Reformed doctrine of Christus in nobis (“Christ in us”), I propose a reconsideration and reformulation of the viability of theosis within classical Reformed theology, positing not only its fidelity to the biblical soteriology that Reformed theology seeks to guard but its suitability within Reformed theological and ecclesiastical contexts. It is indeed possible to conceive of a “Reformed theosis” provided it enjoins a certain substructural transmutation from that of its Eastern theological forebears.
We Have Met the Enemy And …
Authors: Mikoski Gordon S.
Published: February 2011

We live in an age in which … honesty is possible only when it skirts the edges of cynicism. All this is rather tragic. … Yet there is beauty in our tragedy. We are, at least, rid of some of our illusions. We can no longer buy the highest satisfactions of the individual life at the expense of our social injustice. We cannot build individual ladders to heaven and leave the total human enterprise unredeemed of its excesses and corruptions.

—Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society
Prophetic Ministry in the National Security State
Authors: Brueggemann Walter
Published: February 2011

Faithful Christian preaching in the United States is in the context of the ideology of the national security state, an ideology that permeates every facet of our common life. In that difficult and demanding context, this essay urges that Christian preaching must go back to basics, that everything depends on the mystery of faith, that “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” From that elemental claim, it is proposed that at the center of faith and faithful experience is an abyss that in the Old Testament came as the destruction of Jerusalem and in the U.S. national security state comes to be epitomized as “9/11.” Focusing on the abyss, according to that ideology, evokes denial about going into the abyss and despair about ever getting out of it. The prophetic rejoinder to such denial is truth telling, and the prophetic response to despair is hope telling. This truth has a Friday tone, and this hope has a Sunday flavor. Such truth and hope expose the ideology of the national security state as a promise that cannot be kept and invite alternative discipleship that issues in joy and freedom outside that system of death. In its original form, this essay was an address delivered at the 2007 Festival of Homiletics in Nashville.
The Sign of Jonah
Authors: Soulen R. Kendall
Published: February 2011

This essay develops a Christian understanding of Christianity's relation to Judaism and Islam based upon a typological reading of the book of Jonah.
Terrorism, Torture, and Conscience
Authors: Mount Eric
Published: February 2011

In our current intellectual climate, the inner moral dialogue of conscience has been subjected to new criticisms. Competing authoritative discourses in the self are often reduced to clashing social power arrangements. Diverse voices in conscience are seen as evidence of a dispersed or divided self without continuing identity. Suspicion of metanarratives and universal claims accompanies emphasis on the particularity of social location. In this context, this essay examines the case of Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, the Marine lawyer who refused to prosecute a suspect at Guantanamo because he became convinced that the prisoner had been tortured. What is proposed is a view of conscience that takes the criticisms seriously without abandoning the authority, identity, and universality that true community fosters.
Soul Mates: Updike's Harry Angstrom and Ayckbourn's Norman Dewers
Authors: Mctavish John
Published: February 2011

John Updike's Rabbit tetralogy in the field of literature and Alan Ayck-bourn's Norman Conquests trilogy in the field of drama represent two of the most likely-to-endure artistic works of our time. The one writer is American, the other British; the one is a confessing Christian, the other not. Their respective protagonists, however, illumine the mysteries of life, love, and death in ways that not only complement each other but manifest profound theological insight into the human condition.

John Updike may be America's finest novelist and his newest novel is … likely to be scrutinized a generation or two or three from now as runic clues to the times we live in.

William McPherson

If, in a hundred years, anyone wants to know what it was like to live in the second half of the 20th century, I am quite sure they will turn to the plays of Alan Ayckbourn before they look at historians or sociologists.

Peter Hall
Calvinism and Taiwan
Authors: Yang-En Cheng
Published: February 2011

How has Calvinism been at work in the island state of Taiwan over the last four centuries? Does the extension of “international Calvinism” to a remote corner of Asia yield new forms of expression? This article aims to describe and analyze four paradigms of the Calvinist presence and manifestation, embodied in the work of the Dutch Reformed Church, the British and Canadian missions, and the indigenous Presbyterian Church in Taiwan during the successive rules of the Dutch, the late Ching Dynasty of China, the Japanese, and the Nationalist regimes. Over time, the Calvinist tradition has displayed enduring witness as well as nuanced adaptation in the various yet challenging contexts of early modern colonialism, paternal modernization, wartime trials, and indigenous democratization in Taiwan.
Educating for Wisdom: Theological Studies as a Spiritual Exercise
Authors: Charry Ellen T.
Published: February 2011

Augustine set the goal of human life as knowing, loving, and enjoying God forever. He also set the practical task of theology as knowledge of God seeking the wisdom of God. Theology is to enable wisdom. The fourfold curriculum now focuses primarily on mastering information and technical ministerial skills. If Augustine is correct, however, the various theological subdisciplines, now generally divided into guilds, share a sacred calling that transcends their various subject matters and methods. If teaching, scholarship, and learning aim at wisdom, then teachers, scholars, and students pursue a common goal. Theological students want to become wise in God, and their teachers are there to help them. Informing students about history, literary tropes, various construals of doctrines, and the skills of preaching and counseling is a necessary but preliminary step in helping students grow spiritually.
Practicing Koinōnia
Authors: Van Deusen Hunsinger Deborah
Published: February 2011

Koinonia is both the origin and telos of the church's existence. It is the goal of all Christian practices, and at the same time it is something to be practiced. Nonviolent communication (made up of the interplay of observation, feeling, need, and request) provides heightened awareness of the centrality of koinōnia as well as skill in working toward it. It is especially helpful in situations when the peace and unity of fellowship breaks down. It can also serve as a means of spiritual growth.
Catholicity and Globality
Authors: Wong Kam Ming
Published: February 2011

The term “global church” is prevalent in contemporary Christian literature. For those who see the catholic church, more or less spatially, as the universal church, it would seem entirely proper to compare and contrast a geography of globalization with a geography of the church as manifested in its catholicity. This article grounds “catholicity” in its proper perspective, in the attributes of God, thus linking it to God's omnipresence. In order to highlight the distinctness and uniqueness of “catholicity,” I also juxtapose and compare it to “globality.” I then discuss the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ by way of indicating the intricate relationship between catholicity and particularity.
American Scriptures
Authors: Black C. Clifton
Published: February 2011

Washington's Farewell Address (1796) and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865) occupy positions of extraordinary importance in American political history. Authored by arguably the greatest presidents, these statements arose from critical moments in the nation's life: its formative coalescence under a new Constitution and its complete dissolution after four years of civil war. Though neither Washington nor Lincoln pretended theological sophistication, analysis of their last great speeches reveals discerning claims about God and humanity, often biblically based, which are at once subtle and stark. Christologically soft yet anthropologically tough, these final pronouncements by Washington and Lincoln still summon their readers to consider “the American experiment” within the framework of an inscrutable, intractable Providence.
Sexuality as Sacrament: An Evangelical Reads Andrew Greeley
Authors: Blair Anthony L.
Published: February 2011

Andrew M. Greeley, a noted sociologist and Catholic priest, has also established a reputation as a writer of racy novels. In these stories, he portrays sexuality as sacrament, a means of grace whereby the love of God is experienced via physical and emotional intimacy between the sexes. While there are some weaknesses to his approach, his emphasis on strong female characters and a sacralizing sexuality are ultimately a positive contribution to our culture's struggles with love, sex, and intimacy.
History as Sacrament: The Joys of Noninstrumentalized Time
Authors: Hovey Craig
Published: February 2011

This article investigates what is entailed in the claim that Christ is the meaning of history. It takes stock of the postmodern antipathy for metanarratives in order to understand both their failures and tendencies toward domination. In response, I draw on an Augustinian, christological hermeneutic for the Old Testament and find a parallel reading of history in the rhetoric of liberation theology that understands history in a sacramental, nontotalizing manner as the history of Christ.
Between Syncretism and the Ghetto
Authors: Smith Huston
Published: February 2011

THESIS: Christian theologians appear agreed that if syncretism is inadequate as an answer to the question of how the Christian faith should be related to the other faiths of man, so is ghettoism which assumes complete discontinuity and advocates isolation. But where between these two extremes does the proper answer lie? Analysis of historical and methodological aspects of the problem leads to several suggestions as to where, in content, the Christian faith differs from others.
Protestant Theology's Predicament
Authors: Piper Otto A.
Published: February 2011

“What is demanded of Protestant theology is not that it should abandon belief in a supramundane God and a heavenly world for which man is destined, but rather that by adopting a new methodology it should show for what reason and in what respect the life which we live and the world which surrounds us have ultimate significance. The way to this goal can hardly be found in psychologizing, historicizing, or demythologizing the Christian message.”
Thursday's Child: The Theologian Today and Tomorrow
Authors: Hamilton William
Published: February 2011

“Faith is the way the Christian affirms the past and appropriates the meaning of certain past events deemed to be significant. … Hope is the way of declaring one's future to be open and assured, while love is the way of standing before your neighbor in the present moment … the theologian of today and tomorrow is a man without faith, without hope, with only the present and therefore only love to guide him.”
God and the Good: Does Morality Need Religion?
Authors: Nielsen Kai
Published: February 2011

“Without religious belief, without the Living God, there could be no adequate answer to the persistently gnawing questions: What ought we to do? How ought I to live?.… Is this frequently repeated claim justified?.… I shall argue that the fact that God wills something—if indeed that is a fact—cannot be a fundamental criterion for its being morally good or obligatory and thus it cannot be the only criterion or the only adequate criterion for moral goodness or obligation.”
American Fiction and the Loss of Faith
Authors: Detweiler Robert
Published: February 2011

“The loss of faith which has characterized our fiction … seems to have consisted of three steps: first, an awareness by writers and critics of the decline of traditional Christian values and often an accompanying disavowal of them; second, a sense of loss precipitated by the failure to find adequate substitutes for those values; third, a re-evaluation of those values from a standpoint of disillusion, resulting in a new recognition of the Christian heritage but without the vitalizing ingredient of personal commitment.”
Language-Event and Christian Faith
Authors: Weber Joseph C.
Published: February 2011

“Fuchs maintains that the reality proclaimed in the text is actuated only in the execution of this reality in our own existing. This reality must happen in language, thereby qualifying our time as a new time. This happening in language is what Fuchs calls a language-event. With this on-tological concept Fuchs attempts to grasp and express the reality of revelation and faith.”
Can the Source also be Resource?
Authors: Price Charles P.
Published: February 2011

“And of Zion it shall be said, ‘This one and that one were born in her’; for the Most High himself will establish her. The Lord records as he registers the peoples, ‘This one was born there.’ The singers and dancers shall make answer, ‘All my fresh springs are in you.’” (Psalm 87: 5–7, after Coverdale)
The Playboy and the Christian, II
Authors: Cox Harvey
Published: February 2011

Scene suggests a coffee shop set. In Part I (THEOLOGY TODAY, October, 1965), the three actors, CHRISTIAN, PLAY BOY, and ALTRUIST, were introduced to their roles by the NARRATOR; in Part II, NARRATOR assumes the role of “an ordinary troubled, doubt-ridden Christian, with an interest in what's going on,” and except for the final summing up, the dialogue is between NARRATOR and PLAYBOY.
Drama in the Church: An Experiment
Authors: Carmines Alvin
Published: February 2011

“As the fear, suspicion, and uneasiness of the artist and the church toward each other were replaced by mutual interest, we find that the excitement generated by the drama and the dance is affecting the total life of our church and not least its worship.”
Scripture and the Confession of 1967
Authors: Smart James D.
Published: February 2011

“Again and again in the history of the church, men have fallen into the rabbinic error of failing to distinguish between the word itself and the Scriptural witness and always with the same result, that some one interpretation of Scripture is regarded as final and men's ears are closed against any further word from God that might disturb or overturn their established viewpoint … God must have his freedom to judge all our interpretations and to point the way forward for his church.”
Models of God's Transcendence
Authors: King Robert H.
Published: February 2011

“The causal model emphasizes priority in respect to efficacy, but that is by no means the only kind of priority God exhibits. The elusive priority of the self in relation to its action, as well as the priority of persons in relation to one another, is also important and characteristic of religious apprehension of God in some of its modes anyway. On the other hand, the two more personal models, Schleiermacher's and Barth's, include a feature that is conspicuously lacking in the causal model, yet equally important to religious experience, the aspect of immediacy. So there may be good reason for preferring one model to another, while not excluding one or another. It is, after all, with a model that we have to do, and not with the thing itself. The relation of God and the world is unique and mysterious. It is not surprising that several different models have been used to interpret it.”
Cultural Alienation: In Cold Blood
Authors: Lapsley James N.
Published: February 2011

“If the protagonist of the book can be said to be our own culture (and this does not seem so far fetched, as Kansas is in many ways at the cultural as well as geographical heart of the nation), we see still another characteristic of Greek drama—the nobility of the hero, his pride, and his tragic flaw. The Clutter family clearly embody the culture at its self-identified best, self-made, hard working, civic minded, helpful to others. And the murderers clearly show us the flaw.”
The Lord's Supper in the Reformed Confessions
Authors: Gerrish B. A.
Published: February 2011

“Schaff's judgment, that Calvin's eucharistic teaching ‘must be regarded as the orthodox Reformed doctrine,’ oversimplifies the evidence. In actual fact, Zwingli's view continued to find its way into the confessions even after Calvin's emergence as foremost leader of the Reformed Church. Moreover, Bullinger's Second Helvetic Confession (1561/3) exhibits a third eucharistic type. There seem to be, then, three doctrines of the Eucharist in the Reformed confessions, which we may label ‘symbolic memorialism,’ ‘symbolic parallelism,’ and ‘symbolic instrumentalism.’”
The Post-Ecumenical Era
Authors: Oxtoby Willard Gurdon
Published: February 2011

“How easily the word ‘ecumenical’ falls from our lips now, and yet hozu much more in the sphere of action the movement has achieved than in the area of formulation and statement. The practical situation has dragged theory along with it. Community, these days, comes before theology. … But the very principle of inclusiveness which the ecumenical movement has so valiantly upheld promises by the year 2000 to be the standard by which it shall have been found wanting. For why should one stop with Christian unity? Is not the logical next step a post-‘ecumenical’ era of interreligious community? Ecumenism—defined in terms of Christianity alone—is about to become old-fashioned, and in three decades it will seem downright reactionary.”
Baptism as a Performative Sign
Authors: McClendon James W.
Published: February 2011

“There are … conventional human acts which although verbal have the quality not of describing but of doing something. Let us, with J. L. Austin, call these sign-acts ‘performatives.’ Perhaps the place where we most readily recognize performatives is in legal documents. After certain necessary preliminaries, we may find the document saying, ‘I hereby donate my ranch to my stepdaughter, Susan.’ This is, as lawyers say, the operative, or as we shall say, the performative clause. The action of the verb (in this case, ‘donate’) is not described by the performative clause, it is accomplished.”
Church-Sponsored Service Activities
Authors: Stroup Herbert
Published: February 2011

“The fact is that church-sponsored service activities currently are undergoing a series of tensions requiring some systematic and workable resolution. The ‘contraries’ admit the partial validity of dual principles. Yet the partially valid principles appear to be in conflict. The resulting dilemmas constitute the dark night of the soul of church-sponsored service activities.”
Beyond Substance and Process
Authors: Ferré Nels F. S.
Published: February 2011

“Both thought and life for a new age need a more adequate substrate than either that of the substance philosophy of the West or the process philosophy of the East. … We must have a faith adequate for the needs of one world, a faith focused in universal truth. The New Testament categories of Spirit and Love have never been developed as a total framework for all thought. They have been prescribed for life and conduct, to be sure, but now they need even more importantly to be developed as the total framework for the fullness of meaning that can be trusted as truth. Unless such meaning is again forthcoming we shall not find the motivation for life and conduct that is surely the critical side of all general thought.”
Where the Action is: A Sermon
Authors: Walters Carl F.
Published: February 2011

“Where is the action to which he [Jesus] pointed taking place today? Where can he be found at work? Where can man be found by him today? One might naturally reply: ‘in the church.’ … Well, is it occurring in and through those of us who claim to be members, membranes, and sinews of his body? Is the church to which we belong participating primarily in liberating, life-giving, saving action for others in the world?”
Sociology and Theology
Authors: Berger Peter L.
Published: February 2011

“The vertigo of relativity that historical scholarship has precipitated upon theological thought may … be said to deepen in the perspective of sociology. At this point one is not much helped by the methodological assurance that theology, after all, takes place in a different frame of reference. That assurance comforts only if one is safely established in that frame of reference, if, so to speak, one already has a theology going. The existential question, however, is how one may begin to theologize in the first place.”
“Love Your Enemies”
Authors: Reimers Carl D.
Published: February 2011

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5: 43-45).
Church and Theology: From Here to Where?
Authors: Robinson J. A. T.
Published: February 2011

“Corresponding to what I called the theistic container, which has shaped divinity into a God existing over against the world, is the religious organization, which has shaped the church into a community existing over against the secular order…I believe in fact that what is dissolving is the casing of the church, and that this process could be one of release and liberation. Just as, in the God-debate, ‘the end of theism’ meant the end not of God but of one way of expressing the divine reality, so I believe that the decay of the religious organization is the decay of one body in which the church has hitherto lived and whose demise may be necessary for its resurrection.”
Faith as Taking the Risk
Authors: Walker Wyatt T.
Published: February 2011

“Then Elisha said to those people who were assembled in the main square, in the midst of a terrible famine, with the Syrian army at the gate: ‘In about twenty-four hours you will be able to buy a measure of fine flour for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel.’ And the captain upon whose arm the king leaned looked at him and spoke in derision: ‘Ha! What's God going to do? Open up a hole in the sky and pour out food upon all of these hungry people?’ And Elisha turned to him and said: ‘You have a big mouth. You will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat thereof.’ And there were four lepers sitting at the entering in of the gate of Samaria, and they held a conversation amongst themselves that had to do with what the future might hold for them. And they said one to another: ‘What good is it for us to sit here until we die? If we go into the city, there is a famine there, and we shall die. If we sit here, if we maintain the status quo, if we hold what we've got, we shall die also. Come on, let us go out to meet the Syrian hosts, let's try something that we never tried before, and perhaps we shall be taken prisoners of war, and, if so, at least we'll survive. And if not, what have we got to lose?’” (II Kings 7: 1–20; the “Walker” translation).
The Problem of Ethics Today
Authors: West Charles C.
Published: February 2011

“The word of the church about calling to suffering service, about forgiveness and reconciliation as ways to peace, justice, and new humanity ring false because they are expressed by a church which does not find itself in the proletarian situation and which therefore belongs to a section of society that can use these Christian responses to undercut effective protest against itself. … Revolutionary humanism is the direct descendent of a long tradition in biblical and Christian history which in its increasingly desperate uncertainty needs both the encouragement and the correction of the full Christian gospel. But the words of this gospel are so embedded in the religious culture, against which the revolutionary criticism of religion is a weapon of divine judgment, that not only are the revolutionaries confirmed in their atheism but we ourselves are forced to ask how we may repent of our ideas of deity in order to rediscover the relationship with Christ and our neighbor which we are called to proclaim.”
Does Religion Demand Social Change?
Authors: Shaull Richard
Published: February 2011

“One of the few things that seems certain about Jesus of Nazareth is that he was condemned to death by the Romans on charges of sedition and was executed by the means commonly used for Zealots and other politically subvesive characters. The early Christian communities were often denounced as subversive groups, and Christians were described as those who ‘turned the world upside down.’ From time to time in Christian history, those most committed to religious reform were social revolutionaries…God's action in the world creates an ongoing process of social change, and consequently our faithfulness to him requires that we be involved at the cutting edge of change.”
Apocalypse: The Medium is the Message
Authors: Peterson Eugene H.
Published: February 2011

“The Apocalypse is non-literary in its inception. … No biblical book has suffered such an extreme fate at the hands of its scholarly exegetes. The reason is now easy to see—no biblical book has been so far removed in its origin from the literary medium. … Television-trained lay Christians may discover that it is the one biblical book in which they hold an interpretive advantage over their more bookish pastors and theologians. It may again become the brilliant climax to the scriptural canon that it once was, instead of the bizarre embarrassment it has been for so many centuries.”
Problems of a Protestant Spirituality
Authors: Kent John
Published: February 2011

“Spiritual discipline degenerates into little more than ethics, which may mean private good behavior, such as not stealing, not lying overmuch, and so on. Or it may mean support for more communal, if rather more vaguely defined, good works, such as Christian stewardship—of which one might hazard the guess that Luther might have called it the Indulgence system of our century. In any event, the links between this activism and spiritual discipline are not thought out; instead, it is usually taken for granted that personal holiness—the aim of the classical discipline —will emerge as a kind of spiritual by-product. A whole case for trusting to one's spiritual luck seems to have grown up….”
A New Church for a New World
Authors: Aldridge John William
Published: February 2011

… constructive restructuring is not something that one can work out on paper and put into practice by the mere adoption of such a program at the denominational level. … Yet one model has appeared on the scene in recent years that demon-strates concretely that a restructuring can take place. This model was the civil rights local movement in which men and women, for all practical purposes, left their local congregation in order to give themselves to this paramount cause. It is this historically recognizable model that gives a clue to what can take place when people are committed to the extent that they will identify themselves with a cause to the point of exclusion, if need be, of their former group identification.
Environmental Action
Authors: Hayes Denis
Published: February 2011

“Most of the politicians and businessmen who are jumping on the environmental bandwagon clearly do not have the slightest idea what they are getting into. They do not yet understand that we see this as a long and serious fight for a profound change in what this country is all about. They are talking about emission control devices on automobiles; we are talking about bans on automobiles. They are bursting with pride over plans for inadequate municipal waste treatment plants; we are challenging the ethics of a society that, with only seven per cent of the world's population, accounts for more than half of the world's annual consumption of raw materials.”
Theological Guidelines for the Future
Authors: West Charles C.
Published: February 2011

“The technologists are asking the church and its thinkers to help them define the goals of their effort, and to co-determine guidelines for the application of their newly found power. They are asking for a definition of what is human so that moral suasion will reinforce technological reason in giving order to what is now a dangerously open field of experimentation. The revolutionaries are asking that their hope be subsidized at a moment when it threatens to go bankrupt. They want a confidence that, in fact, the way of transformation, of liberation in the foundations of our systems, is the direction of our future.”
Theology in the Seventies
Authors: Gilkey Langdon
Published: February 2011

“… predictions represent not so much a description of the future as an expression of the priorities in the predictor's mind. Thus saying what theology will be like is really saying what I think it should be like; we extrapolate the trends that we think are creative, as if history were going to go in that wise direction. A strange view of history for a biblical realist to adopt! So let us agree to transpose all our verbs. When we guess what theology will be like, we are really saying what we think it ought to be like.”
Saturday's Child: A New Approach to the Philosophy of Religion
Authors: McClendon James Wm. , Smith James M.
Published: February 2011

“While philosophy of religion in the university was absorbed with something very like natural theology (though often using the newer techniques), in the seminaries it was obliged to struggle for respectability. Meanwhile, both religious studies and philosophy in other areas had taken exciting new turns. Could there emerge a new understanding of philosophy of religion which might restore its role as the critic and illuminator of religion, and as an aid in man's long quest for self-understanding?”
Political Theology
Authors: Moltmann JÜRgen
Published: February 2011

“Political theology is therefore not simply political ethics but reaches further by asking about the political consciousness of theology itself. It does not want to make political questions the central theme of theology or to give political systems and movements religious support. Rather, political theology designates the field, the milieu, the environment, and the medium in which Christian theology should be articulated today.”
Women's Liberation: A Catholic View
Authors: Bowers Marilyn
Published: February 2011

The women's revolution is “the final revolution of all, based on women's potential to participate actively in the world as neither oppressor nor oppressed. Such a new perspective in the world as it exists today would be welcome salvation. Over and above their capacity for motherhood, women have a similar capacity to meet the world in a gentler way, one which would take into consideration the need always to respect the other and allow the other to grow.”
Theological Travel Seminar
Authors: Holden John C.
Published: February 2011

Continuing adult education, or life-long education, is one of the most rapidly developing movements of our time. Recently, several travel seminars for ministers and others interested in religious and theological issues have appeared in various places and under various auspices. There are summer theological institutes in this country and abroad. The Oxford and Canterbury programs are well known. We include in this issue a descriptive commentary on the English Language Continental Seminars, conducted by John C. Holden, as an illustration of the kinds of opportunities now available. Dr. Holden is the Director of Westminster House, University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago, Ill. He holds the doctor's degree from the University of Hamburg, and he is associated with several medical groups interested in the emerging and complicated problems on the borderline between religion and ethics, on the one hand, and medicine and biomedical research, on the other.
Black Spirituals: A Theological Interpretation
Authors: Cone James H.
Published: February 2011

“Contrary to popular opinion, the spirituals are not evidence that black people reconciled themselves with human slavery. On the contrary, they are black freedom songs which emphasize black liberation as consistent with divine revelation. For this reason it is most appropriate for black people to sing them in this 'new' age of Black Power. And if some people still regard the spirituals as inconsistent with Black Power and Black Theology, that is because they have been misguided and the songs misinterpreted. There is little evidence that black slaves accepted their servitude because they believed God willed their slavery. The opposite is the case. The spirituals speak of God's liberation of black people, his will to set right the oppression of black slaves despite the overwhelming power of white masters. … And if 'de God dat lived in Moses' time is jus de same today,' then that God will vindicate the suffering of the righteous black and punish the unrighteous whites for their wrong doings.”
From Somewhere Along the Road
Authors: Hall Barbara , Shaull Richard
Published: February 2011

“In your work on ethics you have provided us with resources for moving ahead, the importance of which we have been slow to recognize; we think of your stubborn insistence that a koinonia ethic is concerned with relations and functions, not with principles and precepts; your emphasis upon insight rather than calculation, upon coherence rather than consistency; … It now seems clear to us that you are pointing to a basic shift, long overdue, not only in ethics but also in the whole theological enterprise.”
Violence: The New Realism in Films
Authors: Rice Susan
Published: February 2011

“An actor, shot at, grabs his kneecap and falls downstairs. Within a few seconds, he is able to explain, in a politely stoical voice, that he isn't badly hurt—just hit in the leg. This is a fair measure of how intimately most movies are acquainted with even the most rudimentary realities of experience. A good excruciating crack on every kneecap that needs it might be enough to revolutionize Hollywood. Even if it didn't, it would be a pleasure to deliver.”—James Agee Nation, February 14, 1948
The Sanctification Gap
Authors: Lovelace Richard
Published: February 2011

“There seemed to be a sanctification gap among Protestants, a peculiar conspiracy somehow to mislay the tradition of spiritual growth and to concentrate on side issues. ‘Liberals’ sought to commend Christianity to its cultured despisers, and to apply its ethics to social concerns. ‘Conservatives’ specialized in personal witnessing activity, sermons on John 3:16, and theological discussion of eschatological subtleties.”
The Sensuousness of Agape
Authors: Phipps William E.
Published: February 2011

“The Greek Bible does not support the common assumption that agape should be defined in a way that stands in contrast to ordinary human love. … The prevailing tendency to impose a dichotomy between divine and human love is due to a distortion of the biblical outlook.”
Vatican Summer Seminar
Authors: Montgomery Robert P.
Published: February 2011

“We know that your visit is inspired by and organized for a serious dialogue, part of that search for Christian unity which is a noble sign of our times. With all our heart we welcome you.”
The Barth–Bultmann Correspondence
Authors: Grau H. Gerhard
Published: February 2011

The newly-published letters between Barth and Bultmann“give us new information about the intensity of their relationship. Of course, in this correspondence one does not find a brand-new theology. What is so fascinating about them is that theology is done here in a personal context. One observes how these two theologians as persons wrestle with the frontiers of faith and knowledge in the personal medium of letters.
What Does it Mean to Believe in God?
Authors: Matt Hershel Jonah
Published: February 2011

“To believe means to act out one's affirmations, to testify to one's belief through the way one acts; the test of one's faith is the degree to which it is embodied in the actual life one lives. In Martin Buber's phrase, based on the Hebrew word ‘emunah,’ faith is faithfulness. How overpowering it is to realize that one's religious belief, which is of all things the most private, is so publicly discernible!”
Where are We Now—In Philosophy?
Authors: Allen Diogenes
Published: February 2011

“Religion is viewed primarily as an explanation of the universe, that is, as a subdivision of metaphysics. It is because there is a lack of interest in metaphysics that religion is neglected by philosophers today. Why have philosophers been loath to offer metaphysical worldviews in the past fifty years, and … pretty much left religion to its own devices?”
Anti-Semitism in Christian Theology
Authors: Ruether Rosemary R.
Published: February 2011

“The rejection of the Jews is based on their rejection of the Messiah … [but] the Jews have always been apostate from God, and so the rejection and murder of Jesus is the foreordained culmination of this evil history of an evil people…. The Jews, in Christian theory, thus become the eternally damned ones, outside the pale of humanity and on-going history, preserved until the end of time in a negative space of divine wrath and human misery.”
Eucharist: Feeding and Faith
Authors: Jackson Gordon E.
Published: February 2011

“The maternal matrix of pre-verbal times, from which we receive the substances of life, food, personal warmth, nourishment of our senses, is the archetype of God's tender, patient giving of himself for the deepest needs of creaturehood. The oral stage and the eucharistic feast are profound reminders that we are creatures whose very existence is in providers, human and cosmic, the incorporation of, and identification with whom, are life to us.”
Plato and Kierkegaard in Dialogue
Authors: Cooper Robert M.
Published: February 2011

“If seeing Kierkegaard's stages through the eyes given me by Plato is useful, good, or right, then if it is a good method, it ought to go the other way. Kierkegaard's stages, and what I call the perspectival activities, viz., irony, humor, and faith, can enable a deepened appreciation for the genius of Plato. Great thinkers in dialogue honor each other, test us, and finally enable us to praise them as they take our measure.”