bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ministering to the Business Community
Authors: Tewell Thomas K.
Published: February 2011

The secular business world is an arena in which one can pursue the vocation of serving God. In order to be obedient to Jesus Christ, one need not leave the business world and matriculate at a theological seminary! Rather, according to John Calvin, one's vocation is to serve God in whatever job one pursues. What makes the work sacred is not the work itself—but the attitude with which one approaches it. George Herbert succinctly summarized this attitude: “Teach me my God and king / in all things Thee to see. / And what I do in anything / to do it as to Thee.”
The Christian Calling to Business Life
Authors: Roels Shirley J.
Published: February 2011

The biblical foundation for business activity is rooted in the goodness of creation and in God's appointment of human beings as its agents of development. While the fall has severely damaged all human activity—including economic activity—the call into business offers restoration made possible through Christ's victory over sin. Given this hope, the church should take up the challenge to renew and deepen the vocation of its business members, sorting through several centuries of confusion and neglect regarding a calling into business. Over the last quarter-century, a renewed exploration of Christian callings within business life has provided the church with stronger resources for addressing these questions of business vocation. The opportunity for creative partnerships with its business members in serving the kingdom of God can and must be renewed in the twenty-first century.
Lessons in Leadership and Management from Nehemiah
Authors: MacIariello Joseph
Published: February 2011

The book of Nehemiah provides a remarkable example of a servant leader motivated by, and acting for, God's ends: God's glory and the good of those served. It also provides an example of the use of godly means: the pursuit of excellence in leadership and management and a passionate focus upon achieving desirable results. These four objectives, both ends and means, offer us a sound approach for acting to glorify God in all leadership and management activities.
How Do “I” Encounter My Own Death?
Authors: Sauter Gerhard
Published: February 2011

This essay contrasts the unavoidable confrontation with their own death that all people share and current endeavors to avoid fear and loneliness in dying. Death is the last battle that each person must fight alone, a fact that challenges the widespread notion of human beings as constituted only by their social relations. It also challenges care for the dying that attempts to suppress the perception of a Christian hope against hope. But Christ's victory over death gives us the promise that we will not be deserted in dying and that God's acting will be revealed as interwoven with our life and our death.
Like a Thief in the Night
Authors: Perkinson James
Published: February 2011

What would it take for whites (especially those males claiming to be Christian) to have formed within themselves the kind of “vital ferocity” necessary to struggle lifelong against the powers and privileges that whiteness constantly leverages in and around them? This essay seeks to answer this question by embracing black liberation theology as gift of bombast for the white church, bearing the blood-cry of a betrayed “American” Abel. The white church in our day continues to live largely in denial of a judgment already clogging its own veins. It has yet to listen and learn from the deepest groan of Spirit inside its own history.
Pearl Buck's “Several Worlds” and the “Inasmuch” of Christ
Authors: Smylie James H.
Published: February 2011

Pearl Buck, born in West Virginia to Presbyterian missionaries, lived most of her early life in China. She introduced Americans to China and the Chinese through her novel The Good Earth (1931) and numerous other writings, which won for her both the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for literature. She also helped Christians to rethink the meaning and method of the mission enterprise in the 1930s and to understand the conflict under Chaing Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung that shaped the China we know today. Her perspective and insights are still pertinent to our relations with the Chinese today.
“Seek First the Kingdom”
Authors: Ware Bishop Kallistos
Published: February 2011

This essay examines the varied contributions to the wider church of Orthodox Christianity's three kinds of monastics: solitaries, those living in community, and those of the middle path (partly in community and partly solitary). Unlike western monastics, eastern monks never specialized in intellectual pursuits, instead supporting themselves by manual labor and dedicating themselves to prayer and spiritual struggle, a struggle whose benefits extend not only to each individual monk but to the whole body of the church. While monastics seek to live out their baptismal covenants in an ultimate commitment to God, monastic spirituality nonetheless represents the same Christian life to which all the baptized are called.
The Life of Prayer
Authors: Bloom Metropolitan Anthony
Published: February 2011

This article comprises a spiritual exploration into the life of prayer from a Christian Orthodox perspective. The author, a well-known writer on spirituality, describes the importance and power of prayer, as well as the living trinitarian God whom we address in prayer. Here, he underlines the personal and authentic elements of the praying person, while clarifying issues such the “presence” or “absence” of God in prayer. Emphasis is placed on the heart as the sacred treasury and point of encounter with the living God. Finally, the author also examines such matters as the length and rule in the practice of prayer.
Art and Religion
Authors: Andrejev Vladislav
Published: February 2011

The experience of the orthodox icon both requires and produces a specific outlook on art, creativity, and religion. As in the teaching of the church, everything earthly—all creation—is viewed in perspective with the divine plane. Life thus becomes, on the one hand, a search for the invisible God and, on the other, an effort to “make ready the paths” for his incarnation within the visible. Any true creativity must function along these same guidelines and must exceed human self-expression. When human life itself becomes such creativity, the universe is made whole again within the synergy of three types of “image:” the forms of the material world, humankind as a living icon, and the uncreated Image of God.
“Beauty will Save the World”
Authors: Louth Andrew
Published: February 2011

In the period from the sixth to the eighth century, Byzantine spirituality came to assume its characteristic form. The one who called himself Dionysios the Areopagite, St Maximos the Confessor, and St John of Damascus all played a crucial role in articulating this spirituality, at the center of which is the divine beauty calling all of creation back to itself: A beauty, expressed in creation and the human fashioning of created, material reality, that is the radiance of God's love, which can be perceived only through our purified senses.
The Practice of Medicine as Theosis
Authors: Lemasters Philip
Published: February 2011

Eastern Orthodox Christianity approaches healthcare within the context of theosis. The Orthodox Church encourages forms of healthcare that are signs of the healing of the whole person. These forms of healthcare are expressions of love and healing for those created in the image of God. Sickness and death are chief consequences of the fall and are contrary to our nature as those destined for eternal communion with the Holy Trinity. Abortion and euthanasia are contrary to an Orthodox vision of healthcare, though there is no compulsion for the patient or physician to endorse care that is pointless or overly burdensome.
Salvation is for Life
Authors: Foster Richard J.
Published: February 2011

The salvation that is in Jesus Christ is a new order of life in the kingdom of God that encompasses all of human existence, both here and hereafter. This life is mediated through the risen Christ, who is the eschatological “prophet like Moses” (Deut 18:15) here to teach his people himself. By means of his life, people are able to experience spiritual transformation into Christlikeness. Living communities of Christ's disciples are formed through his power; learning together, obeying together, and suffering together.
A Spirituality for Public Life
Authors: Mouw Richard J.
Published: February 2011

It is not always easy for Christians to cultivate the sort of consciousness necessary to support our lives as citizens. In recent years, we have been given some new resources for this task, with new perspectives on “public theology” and the civic virtues. But it is also necessary to attend to the spiritual dimensions of our public consciousness. Attention is given here to how the churches, as “schools of public virtue” (Thiemann), can help to nurture a public spirituality that features a sense of our finitude, empathy toward others, and an “art appreciation” approach to those with whom we disagree.
Evaluating the Faith-Based Initiative
Authors: Sider Ronald J.
Published: February 2011

This essay outlines the basic provisions of the charitable choice legislation; sketches its brief history; spells out the strongest arguments for and against it; and argues that charitable choice is more at home within a Catholic political philosophy with its principle of subsidiarity or Dutch Kuyperianism than in the Lockean tradition. It concludes with a brief summary of why charitable choice is good public policy.
A Reformation Theology of Nature Transfigured
Authors: Santmire H. Paul
Published: February 2011

Joseph Sittler's rich theology of “nature transfigured” is predicated on both the vision and the rhetoric of grace. Sittler's dual focus marks a break with Reformation tradition, particularly with Luther's theology, which was rooted primarily in a theology of hearing, often contrasted to any theology of seeing. Ironically, the biblical witness, which theologians like Luther so fervently claimed as their own, itself witnesses to revelation based on both hearing and seeing. Sittler builds on the biblical witness and also draws on the testimony of other theological witnesses, such as classical Eastern Orthodox theology, and the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, to lay foundations for a new, more biblical theology of nature in the Reformation tradition, for the life of our Reformation churches.
Globalization and Christian Responses
Authors: Yang Guen-Seok
Published: February 2011

Christian mission in Korea has changed under the influence of some of the recent effects of globalization, including the emergence of heterogeneous values and minority groups. These values and groups are minorities in Korean society as well as victims of globalization. Korean society and churches must seek to discover how the different values and groups can coexist peacefully and fruitfully in the globalization of Korean society. Although Christian mission in Korea has actively transformed itself in order to grapple with the new situation, new agendas demand additional theological and missionary endeavors, including a more critical and theological examination of globalization itself, and, at the same time, renewed missionary efforts to promote crosscultural communication and to overcome prejudices.
Protestantism's Perduring Preoccupation with Western Theological Texts
Authors: Hastings Thomas John
Published: February 2011

“Mainline” Japanese Protestantism is a young, minority faith whose future seems as uncertain as the future of the Jesus movement must have seemed in second century Rome. In contrast to the dominant family- and community-based Shinto-Buddhist religious synthesis, Japanese Protestantism is an individualistic, middle-class, urban phenomenon. The early samurai leaders of this movement, heirs of a Confucian tradition that stressed the careful study of texts, broke with the missionaries over modernist developments in theology and science. Their descendents have continued to focus on translated western theological texts to the neglect of local missional issues or engagement in ecumenical dialogue.
Art and Incarnation
Authors: Gill Jerry H.
Published: February 2011

Intangible qualities can be expressed or communicated only indirectly, in and through tangible qualities. I have found it helpful to speak of this indirection as the process of “mediation.” This essay explores the notion of mediation in relation to aesthetic creation and appreciation, on the one hand, and a Christian understanding of incarnation, on the other. While the experience of mediation is, in fact, quite common in a wide variety of human activities, the actual pattern or dynamic of this phenomenon generally goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
Love without Boundaries
Authors: Reynolds Thomas E.
Published: February 2011

Reflecting on the author's experience of parenting a son with disabilities and bringing this experience into conversation with authors such as Jean Vanier, Paul Ricoeur, and Emmanuel Levinas, this article suggests that “letting go” and becoming open to another in love is an experience of redemption that marks a conversion of self, one that transgresses boundaries and empowers the deepest kind of mutual belonging imaginable. Moreover, this conversion to another ultimately transforms us in the direction of a conversion to the divine itself, cultivating dispositions of gratitude and hope, for God is the relational power of the whole of reality, that which makes love imaginable, indeed possible.
Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904–84): A Theologian of Change and Judgment
Authors: Kanaris Jim
Published: February 2011

At least two elements pervade Lonergan's contribution to theology: a faith-based desire for religious “orthodoxy” and an indefatigable desire for “understanding.” This concern receives distinctively new form in Lonergan, being forged against a background of competing voices whose mastery over belief and thought stultifies faith and restrains insight. The article investigates this dynamic in three basic parts: Lonergan's contribution to the distillation of the Catholic “orthodoxy” upon which he was reared; the conscious operation of “judgment,” which earmarks Lonergan's revalorization of orthodoxy as against the fundamental failure he saw in reactionary thinking to Catholicism; and a brief illustration of how these elements correlate in Lonergan's Christology.
John Courtney Murray, SJ (1904–67): Working with God
Authors: Hooper J. Leon
Published: February 2011

For most of his life, the Jesuit John Courtney Murray rejected the possibility of ecumenical theological discourse, while insisting that Protestants and Catholics could and must speak with each other in the languages of natural law ethics and natural theology. At the very end of his life, he insisted that all future Christian theology must be ecumenical in its inspiration, sources, and methods. This article traces two roads that led to his final ecumenical stance, one through his political theory and a second, more sure path, through his cognitional theory.
Karl Rahner, SJ (1904–84): A Theologian for the Twenty-First Century
Authors: O'Donovan Leo J.
Published: February 2011

One of the most prolific theologians of the modern age, Karl Rahner drew on Ignatius of Loyola, Thomas Aquinas, the Kantian tradition, and Martin Heidegger to forge a new approach to the concrete dialectic of historical transcendence. This essay offers guidance for reading him in a new century with particular attention to his understanding of human reason; the reciprocal relations of knowledge, love and freedom; the interrelatedness of our experience of God, self, and community; the primacy of praxis; and his concrete dialectical approach to shared freedom in time.
In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers: By John Chryssavgis: Bloomington, IN, World Wisdom, 2003. 163 pp. $19.95
Authors: Sheldrake Philip F.
Published: February 2011

In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers: By John Chryssavgis: Bloomington, IN, World Wisdom, 2003. 163 pp. $19.95.
Carmen Dei: Music and Creation in Three Theologians
Authors: Casarella Peter J.
Published: February 2011

The essay traces the idea that God creates the world with the harmony, order, and beauty of a song or poem ( carmen Dei), through the works of St Augustine, St Bonaventure, and John Polkinghorne. Some common themes emerge: The idea of musical temporalization, the harmonious unity of the world, a logic of wholes and parts, the priority of a theological aesthetics, the realization of temporal harmonies in daily life, and the notion that the composition of the world is produced by a trinitarian Creator and that its last note will be played in an eschatologically open future.
Iconoclastic Immunity: Reformed/Orthodox Convergence in Theological Aesthetics in Theodore of Studios
Authors: Milliner Matthew J.
Published: February 2011

There were two major waves of Byzantine iconoclasm–an outbreak that led to Empress Irene's Nicea II in 787 and one that led to Empress Theodora's triumph of Orthodoxy in 854. This essay shows that, whereas the initial theological defense of icons formulated by John of Damascus in response to the first wave of iconoclasm clearly falls within the scope of John Calvin's censure of images, the more sophisticated theological defense of icons formulated by Theodore of Studios against the second wave clearly does not, thus opening the possibility of a Reformed appropriation of images, properly understood, for worship or personal devotion.
The “Naked” University: What if Theology is Knowledge, Not Belief?
Authors: Stoner James R.
Published: February 2011

Through the concept of a “naked public square,” universities, led by schools of law, have sought to purge the American polity of religious influence as thoroughly as university classrooms have been purged of religious knowledge. But even though explicit discourse about God (theology) has been decidedly out of academic fashion, academics today–often under pressure from inquisitive, religiously well-informed students–are positioned to realize that, in order to excel in their own academic fields, they need to be informed about theology more than their graduate training half a generation ago may have led them to expect.
Google® of No Return?
Authors: Stewart David R.
Published: February 2011

This is not a case for nostalgia, a defense of business-as-usual in libraries and publishing, or (heaven knows) a Luddite plea to “leave the books alone.” I am appealing, instead, to enlightened self-interest in urging that, in the light of these changing technological prospects and possibilities, we should engage in a better review of the nature of theological learning (for instance, is theological literature format-neutral?) and of theological discourse (can it be de-personalized or de-contextualized without serious consequences?).

Think of it this way: Do we have more to fear from the success of Google's project (possibly more texts available than ever, but with proportionately fewer being authentically read than ever before) or from its failure (a lost opportunity for placing the best resources within the reach of as many students, in as many places, as possible)? If the project is completed, are we ready with a new research methodology and a new pedagogy to exploit it to its fullest extent?

However we answer these questions, it is clear that now is the time to be asking them. How well we understand what makes study in our discipline distinctive is likely to affect the outcome of projects such as Google's more decisively than the technologies themselves. We need to do our own thinking on this–as scholars, librarians, authors, publishers, network administrators, but also as theologians.
Does God Manifest Himself in the World in Trickles of Music?
Authors: Stapert Calvin
Published: February 2011

The reception of Mozart's music is rife with extravagant claims that connect it to the divine and see it as a source of hope and comfort. Although that aspect of Mozart reception is still alive and well, recent demystification projects have tried to reduce his music to “social construction.” Christian theology goes some distance with those projects, but it also gives reason to believe that human artifacts can give glimpses of transcendence and reason for hope. Further, it guides our response to them between the dangers of idolatry and ingratitude.
An Augustinian Look at Empire
Authors: Mathewes Charles T.
Published: February 2011

This paper uses an Augustinian construal of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity to analyze and assess the diversity of challenges facing faithful Christian witness, particularly in the United States, since 9/11. After describing the diverse challenges to proper inhabitation of these virtues and how attempts properly to inhabit them will inevitably put adherents in some tension with the culture as a whole, it ends with some general comments about what this teaches us not only regarding the condition of Christian faith in the contemporary world but also about how to apply Augustine's thought today.
From Aphrodite to God the Father
Authors: Wetzel James
Published: February 2011

The contrast between the Greek goddess of beauty and the sublime father figure of monotheism suggests why it may be easier to think of God as good than to think of him as beautiful. The aim of this essay is to offer a basis for thinking about the beauty of the Father. Along the way the good and the beautiful are distinguished, beauty is gently disambiguated from sex, and Freud's complaint about the infantilism of faith in an exalted father is addressed.
The Theological Aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards
Authors: Mitchell Louis J.
Published: February 2011

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was a preacher and philosopher of beauty. Beauty, relational in nature, was understood and expressed by him in such relationships as proportionality, symmetry, harmony, and love. Edwards articulated ideas about God as Trinity, Christ, the Holy Spirit, soteriology, being, community, and ethics in aesthetic terminology, a language of beauty. For Edwards, beauty was the structure of being, authentic communal life, and genuine religious experience.
The Beauty of Hell? Augustine's Aesthetic Theodicy and Its Critics
Authors: Sohn Hohyun
Published: February 2011

Augustine was one of the first theologians to approach the problem of evil from an aesthetic perspective. Even though Augustine is usually known as the champion of freewill theodicy, his anthropological explanation of evil is logically dependent on his aesthetic theodicy. In beauty Augustine finds a fundamental logic of contrastive harmony, which integrates even the wound of human freedom into a poem of the universe. Heaven and hell together highlight God's providential care of the world. After examining Augustine's aesthetic theodicy of harmony, I argue that there can be no eternal hell even in the Augustinian universe. God's beautiful justice will not tolerate the eternal frustration of hell.
Von Balthasar's Way from Doxology to Theology
Authors: Mongrain Kevin
Published: February 2011

Hans Urs von Balthasar's proposal that aesthetics ought to be returned to its place of primacy in Christian theology is central to his overall project to revive a vision of theology as intellectual reflection deeply rooted in the church's life of prayer and spirituality. He argues for reintegrating aesthetics into theology because he believes that failing to do so would mean failing to understand and attain the existential disposition and spiritual posture required for knowing God in the only way God can possibly be known, namely, as self-giving love offered in the gifts of creation and the Incarnation.
Deification in Contemporary Theology
Authors: Olson Roger E.
Published: February 2011

Although the concept of theosis, or deification, is usually associated with Eastern Orthodoxy, it has enjoyed an ecumenical renaissance in modern and contemporary Christian theology. Nevertheless, not all uses of the idea are equal; some fall short of its full significance in Orthodox soteriology. Within Orthodox theology deification has become the cause of some debate. The Palamite essence/energies distinction is essential if the idea of deification is not to lead to panentheism.
The Place of the Past in Theological Construction
Authors: Vidu Adonis
Published: February 2011

This article discusses the views of three liberal theologians, L. Cady, D. Brown, and S. G. Davaney, on the place of the past in theological construction. They all attempt to keep in balance both a historicist view of epistemology as well as an insistence on the continued usefulness of the past for theology. In the process, the meaning of the past gets radically altered. I argue that Cady fails to make coherent her notion of “creative extension” because of the unity she ascribes to the whole of tradition. Brown deconstructs this unity, but to such an extent that tradition becomes a mere generic term for whatever “authors” human identities. Finally, Davaney's radicalizing of Brown ends up identifying theology with ethnography, surrendering its distinctiveness.
The Language of Jesus
Authors: Buttrick David
Published: February 2011

Having written books on Jesus' parables, teachings, and dialogues in the conflict-pronouncement stories, the author argues the attributable words of Jesus are defined by his understanding of the kingdom ( basileia) of God. Thus, though Jesus' words may have immediate reference, they include surreal disruptions that hint of God's emerging new order. The author traces such dynamics in parables, teachings, and conflict stories. He then surveys Jesus' use of metaphor within his crisp, compressed language forms. Jesus' words displayed Jewish thought, but always in a language looking toward the future of God.
The Urgency of Reading the Bible as One Story
Authors: Goheen Michael W.
Published: February 2011

This article argues that it is urgent for the church to recover the Bible as the one true story of the world. The first section explores what it means to confess that the Bible is one story. The second section argues that reading the Bible as one story is urgent for three reasons: it is only in reading the Bible as one story that we can understand the Bible's authority, that we can understand our identity as God's people as missional, and that we can counter other meta-stories that compete for our allegiance. The last section responds to the postmodern charge that all grand stories are oppressive.
On Earth as it is in Heaven: Rehearsing the Reign of God
Authors: Lewis Jacqueline
Published: February 2011

Segregation is the adultery of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.
Gendered Legacies of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Leadership
Authors: West Traci C.
Published: February 2011

This essay is a critical reflection on issues of gender within the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership, exploring the implications for contemporary social activist church leaders. It focuses on notions of maleness found in scholarly interpretive narratives about King and descriptions in biographies of King and of other civil rights movement leaders. The significance of his maleness when assessing King's leadership is discussed in relation to Christ metaphors and sexual conduct. Also, the essay briefly considers how the sexist treatment of women leaders by King and others informs the legacy bequeathed to current social justice organizers.
Schleiermacher, the Via Negativa, and the Gospel of Love
Authors: Farley Wendy
Published: February 2011

Schleiermacher found himself caught between oppressive orthodoxy and religion's despisers. As a corrective, he described piety as nondual awareness of God that issues in equanimity and love. This essay examines his understanding of immediate self-consciousness and contemplation as they provide him with a way of describing the interdependence between divine transcendence and the primacy of love. The analysis of mind together with what it revealed about religion provided Schleiermacher, and potentially provides our own generation, with one way of retaining a generosity of spirit amid ongoing culture wars.
Communal Bishops and the Future of Catholicism
Authors: Van Allen Rodger
Published: February 2011

The problematic aspects of bishops in contemporary Catholicism are addressed sympathetically but critically under four themes: (1) reassessing the lay trustee system, (2) renewing the process for selecting bishops, (3) financial disclosure, and (4) aspects of protocol and lifestyle. The scholarship supporting such initiatives is shared, and the case is made for more communal bishops as a need for the future of Catholicism. The article aims to inform an ecumenical readership.
Church and Covenant: Theological Resources for Divided Denominations
Authors: Van Driel Edwin Chr.
Published: February 2011

What theological resources do mainline churches have to counter ecclesial division and strife? Recent American discussions have invoked the idea of a “covenant” as the basis for the unity of the church. Strikingly, these discussions conceive of covenant as being of human making. This essay instead recommends the idea of a divine covenant as the basis for the church. This is supported by an analysis of the idea of divine covenant in the ecclesiology of the former Netherlands Reformed Church.
Worship: Schooling in the Tradition of Jesus
Authors: Anderson E. Byron
Published: February 2011

Christian worship “schools” our bodies and minds in a common way of life. It is a means by which we receive the tradition of Jesus, learn to see the world through the story of God's faithfulness, practice the Christian life, and nurture habits of holiness. Worship is the primary formative and transformative practice of the church.
By the Secret Ladder: Christian Mysticism and Liberation of the Imprisoned
Authors: Skotnicki Andrew
Published: February 2011

This essay looks primarily at the poetic imagery of St. John of the Cross to discuss imprisonment and liberation. St. John, who wrote many of his poems while in prison, frequently turned to penal metaphors when discussing the human existential condition: All are trapped in a prison created by the “knowledge” received through the senses. Only by means of the secret ladder of contemplative prayer can prisoners—confined in an actual cell or in their own illusions and addictions—find liberation in the embrace of God.
Justification for Human Rights and the Implications for HIV Prevention
Authors: Smith Stephanie Mar
Published: February 2011

This article argues that discerning Christian ethical responses should include human rights analysis. The first part uses the theological ethics of Karl Barth to argue that the idea of human rights may have a distinctly Christian starting point and expression. The second part seeks to demonstrate the importance of human rights analysis for Christian ethical discernment. Specifically, it examines this ethical dilemma: Should Christian faith-based organizations promote condoms as a means of HIV prevention?
Calvin and the Church Today: Ecclesiology as Received, Changed, and Adapted
Authors: Douglass Jane Dempsey
Published: February 2011

Calvin's theological legacy is embraced somewhat differently by conservative-evangelical and mainstream Reformed churches today. This article identifies and illustrates themes in Calvin's ecclesiology that have shaping influence in Reformed churches today: the church as the gift of the Holy Spirit; the necessity of the visible church; the unity of the church; human solidarity through common creation in the image of God, solidarity of Christ, the true image of God with fallen humanity, and solidarity of Christians as members of the body of Christ; the freedom of the reformed church; the church and Israel; and the reign of God. Contemporary documents used as illustrations are the Accra Declaration of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Belhar Confession from South Africa, and a poem from Argentina.]
Calvin and “Communion Ecclesiology”: An Ecumenical Conversation
Authors: Rodríguez Rubén Rosario
Published: February 2011

This essay evaluates John Calvin's ecclesiology—especially his emphasis on plural ministries—as a model for articulating a contemporary ecumenical ecclesiology in conversation with post—Vatican II “communion ecclesiology.” Particular attention is given to the contributions of Latin American and U.S. Hispanic theologians whose liberating vision of church seeks to embody the very qualities Calvin affirmed in his doctrine of the church: a rejection of rigid hierarchical governance and an emphasis on God's grace as the very foundation of human community.
How Collegial Can They Be?: Church Offices in the Korean Presbyterian Churches
Authors: Lee Jung-Sook
Published: February 2011

Calvin's fourfold office in Geneva was designed to fulfill the goals of church ministry, namely, education and discipline, in order to help the church and Christians to bear their distinctive marks. It represented a collaborative ministry of pastor and laity that demonstrated, to a great extent, parity and collegiality among offices. It is widely observed that Korean Presbyterian churches lack a sense of parity and collegiality among offices, particularly between elders and pastors. Since a hierarchical instead of collegial view of church offices is the main cause of the problem, it is necessary and edifying for Korean Presbyterian Churches to reflect on and learn from Calvin's theology and practice.
Unintended Consequences: Schism and Calvin's Ecclesiology
Authors: Jinkins Michael
Published: February 2011

John Calvin believed schism was a sin. But however deeply he deplored schism, and however eloquently and judiciously he defined the Protestant movement as a necessary reformation of the church to its primitive faithfulness, nevertheless the spirit of schism has remained an unhappy legacy in the movement that shares Calvin's name and theology. This essay explores what schism means and what it does not mean, the ways in which Calvin's theology and several other factors contributed to schism in the Reformed movement, and how Calvin's soteriology may be able to provide a safeguard against schism that Calvin's ecclesiology could not.
Exploring the text-Practice Interface: Acquiring the Virtue of Hermeneutical Modesty
Authors: Brown Sally A.
Published: February 2011

The theological conversation about Christian practices emerged amid the convergence of two streams of theory—the social practices theory of Alasdair MacIntyre and narrative approaches to biblical hermeneutics. This essay argues that, as a result, something of a narrativist consensus, more tacit than explicit, about the hermeneutical relationship between a community's reading of the Bible and the assessment of its practices tended to be assumed under the surface of scholarship on Christian practices. Today, however, as we attend increasingly to the lived practices of particular Christian communities, we are discovering that lingering narrativist hermeneutical assumptions can mask the real complexity of the Scripture-practice interface.
Presbyterians and Practice: Reflections on Denominational History in a New Key
Authors: Moorhead James H.
Published: February 2011

If denominational histories were recast as accounts of practice and behavior, there would still be a place for the traditional emphasis on theological debates, but these would be examined with greater attention to their impact on religion as actually lived. Forms of worship, church architecture, the weekly offering envelopes, church potlucks, and ice cream socials would also become important topics. Denominational history written in this key is not likely to yield a single story but rather many stories.
Interreligious Literacy and Hermeneutical Responsibility: Can There Be a Theological Learning from Other Religions, or Only a Phenomenological-Historical Learning about Them?
Authors: Young Richard Fox
Published: February 2011

Getting seminarians up to speed on interreligious literacy is not a luxury but a necessity. Still, how much knowledge, or what kind, does one need in order to learn from another religion theologically? What might a serious attempt at interreligious understanding actually look like? Learning from the religions theologically will not look the same as it does when we learn about them phenomenologically and historically. While acts of interreligious reparticularization are a hermeneutical privilege, theologians must acknowledge their accountability; after all, the believer traduced could be the neighbor next door.
Framing the Global Ethos
Authors: Stackhouse Max L.
Published: February 2011

This article summarizes the major themes and perspectives developed in dialogue with scholars and clergy from Asia, Africa, and the North Atlantic region and treated in detail in the four-volume series God and Globalization (2000–2007). Here specific attention is given to the tasks of theology and the implicit roles of the church in view of the pervasive dynamics of globalization in every sphere of social life. The article concludes with a proposal regarding the changing vocation of theology amid the new social ecumenicity now taking shape around the world.
James Luther Adams as Biblical Theologian
Authors: Miller Patrick D.
Published: February 2011

James Luther Adams's famed focus on voluntary associations is rooted in a deeply biblical and theological conviction that “we live in a cosmos that is social.” All of our actions and thinking are set in the context of community-manifesting diversity but always with a center that holds things together. This article explores aspects of Adams's thinking that are rooted in Scripture, particularly his interest in the image of the divine council and the political character of divinity to which it points, the significance of covenant as the context of social life, and the prophethood of all believers as a mode of faithful critique of the present as well as articulation of new possibilities for the future.
Missional Church, Missional Liturgy
Authors: Meyers Ruth A.
Published: February 2011

For the past half century, missiologists and theologians have given new attention to mission as a matter of Christian identity, grounded in the missio Dei, the “mission of God.” The term “missional” is used increasingly to express this notion of the church's participation in God's mission. This essay explores this approach to mission and considers how liturgy can be a locus of the missio Dei. Missional liturgy is not a matter of particular techniques but an approach to liturgy in which the worshiping assembly enacts and signifies God's love for the world. The root meaning of “liturgy” as “public service” supports this understanding of liturgy as the church's offering on behalf of the world.
The Kirchenkampf of the Gountercultural Colony: A Critical Response
Authors: Lösel Steffen
Published: February 2011

This article offers a critical response to the contemporary renaissance of Anabaptist ecclesiology among mainline theologians such as Hauerwas, Cavanaugh, and the proponents of the Missional Church. I focus on their claim that through its ecclesial practices the church must become a countercultural colony in society. I contend that the notion of the church as countercultural colony is problematic on three counts: First, it obfuscates the solidarity in sin between church and world, leads to ecclesial triumphalism, and ignores how interwoven churches are with their social surroundings. Second, it can lead to blindness toward the sufferings of the world beyond the confines of the church. Third, through an undue domination of ecclesiology by the metaphors of exodus and martyrdom, it creates the impression that God's people are always under siege, thus ignoring the struggles of God's people at other times in history to build a society according to God's law.
Ethics and the Gospel, by T. W. Manson. 109 pp. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961. $2.75
Authors: Anderson Hugh
Published: February 2011

The Ethic of Jesus in the Teaching of the Church, by John Knox. 124 pp. New York, Abingdon Press, 1961. $2.00.
The Churches and Rapid Social Change, by Paul Abrecht. 216 pp. Garden City, Doubleday & Company, 1961. $3.95
Authors: Gustafson James M.
Published: February 2011

Man in Rapid Social Change, by Egbert de Vries. 240 pp. Garden City, Doubleday & Company, 1961. $4.50.
Christ's Atonement and the Non-Christian
Authors: Easton W. Burnet
Published: February 2011

THESIS: Many former colonial peoples of Asia and Africa are exhibiting antagonism to Christianity. Much of this comes from an understandable but unfortunate identification of Christianity with western civilization. But much of it has a deeper theological root. The adherents of the non-Christian religions resent being damned for committing sins they do not understand as sin and for not believing in a Christ of whom they have never heard. Is there, perhaps, a legitimate interpretation of the atonement (as suffering rather than sin) that speaks to this situation? And how, in this contemporary situation, are we to think of the relation between double predestination and universal salvation?
Are American Negro Churches Christian?
Authors: Washington Joseph R.
Published: February 2011

THESIS: Negro religious institutions have developed a pattern of life totally irrelevant to the Christian faith. The historical conditions which severed Negro religio-socio-theological life from mainstream Christianity have issued in religious compartmentalization. Rooted in racial concerns and emerging through response to social questions, the Negro has little basis for renewal. The hope for the Negro in religion, as in every other aspect of life, lies in full participation within the main-line congregations whose errors are under the judgment of a dynamic theology which seeks to interpret the contemporary mission and message of the church. But, there is no present possibility for the inclusion of Negro religion within the Christian faith; only a few Negros are accepted in Christian communities outside the bond of color. On the way to the inclusion of Negroes into the main-stream the present may best serve as a period of preparation for the future when Negro (qua Negro) institutions will no longer be the only alternative for the Negro who is also a Christian.
Books with Men Behind Them: A Companion to “Man in Modern Fiction,” by Edmund Fuller. 241 pp. New York, Random House, 1962. $3.95
Authors: Frye Roland Mushat
Published: February 2011

Man in Modern Fiction: Some Minority Opinions on Contemporary American Writing, by Edmund Fuller. 171 pp. New York, Random House, 1958. $3.50.
An Analysis of Simul Iustus Et Peccator
Authors: Hall Thor
Published: February 2011

THESIS: This is a linguistic analytical attempt to redeem a phrase which, because of its ingrained difficulties, has tended to be regarded as useless and redundant for modern theology. By setting up a correlation between three different ways of analyzing the linguistic ambiguity involved in the phrase and three different theological interpretations of the Christian life to which the phrase can be seen to give expression, various ways are opened to overcome the ambiguity—or at least to clarify it so as to abrogate its more destructive theological consequences. The result is that both within Augustinian and Lutheran, as well as Wesleyan, interpretations of the Christian life, one can—with full intellectual respectability—make a meaningful use of the phrase.
Anticipation and Consummation
Authors: Adams Robert Merrihew
Published: February 2011

THESIS: The idea that present and future salvation ore conditionally related is to be criticized as fostering legalism and otherworldliness, and as misrepresenting God's eschatological judgment and mercy. Their true relationship is one of anticipation and consummation, which is defined in terms of identity, the character of future salvation as destiny and as decisive, and non-conditionality. The doctrine of justification is to be expounded under the category of anticipation, and the issues of assurance of salvation and universalism must be considered in this context. The doctrine of judgment is freed from some restrictions, but it also raises the problem of conditionality most sharply. The finished work of Christ must also be viewed under the category of anticipation if the freedom of God is to be adequately expounded.
The Heresy of Simple Faith
Authors: Pierson Maurene Fell
Published: February 2011

THESIS: Two idolatries, having some things in common, are evident today in the worship of faith and the worship of knowledge. The worship of faith is a heresy that occurs within the church and passes as an especially fine type of Christianity; the worship of knowledge exists largely outside the church. Both avoid the dimension of depth. What is the heresy of simple faith, and how are we to deal with it?
Religion, Art, and the Student
Authors: Cantelon John E.
Published: February 2011

THESIS: The oft-noted relationship between art and religion is here explored with reference to college students. The similarities between these two disciplines suggest the possibility that art may be used as a substitute for religion because of the well-known problems connected with the teaching of religion in our pluralistic society. Dangers stemming from such a substitution are noted as well as the potentialities presented by the modern liturgical movement.
The Lord's song in a Strange Land
Authors: Mccord James I.
Published: February 2011

“How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?” (Psalm 137: 4).
The Emerging Ecumenical Complex
Authors: Brown Robert Mcafee
Published: February 2011

“The hopeful thing that is happening today is that whenever a denominationalist honestly surveys his own past history and that of other denominations, he discovers that the things that bind them all together are much more central and important than the things that keep them apart. … But the new fact, perhaps the great new fact of our era (which William Temple did not foresee in his), is the fact that henceforth Christian ecumenical concern will be inclusive of Roman Catholicism as well as Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy.”
Anxiety, Guilt, and Shame in the Atonement
Authors: Pruyser Paul W.
Published: February 2011

“If mental health is a Christian value and mental hygiene one practical concern of the church (as many churchmen now hold), Christian education in the churches must be enlightened, among other things, by the data of religious psychopathology and the psychology of religion. If man's redemption is to be proclaimed, it is important that not only the positive symbol values, but also the limitations and even the dangers of each of the [three] atonement theories be made clear.… I would be inclined to advocate a broad representation of all the atonement models.… not only [to] help revitalize many now antiquated and quaint, but in principle crucial Christian propositions, but also [to] aid people in overcoming the crude, unnecessarily primitive and un-biblical supernaturalisms which abound in yesterday's and today's Christianity.”
Wittgenstein and Religious Language
Authors: Gill Jerry H.
Published: February 2011

“If one were to follow a Wittgensteinian approach in theology, the very least that could be said is that one of the primary functions of theology would be the analysis of its own language. Broadly speaking, theology is the study of God and his relationship to men. Such a study of necessity involves the use of language in its development and communication. Thus the analysis of theological language can reveal a great deal about the nature of the experiences that give rise to theology. Perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish between the philosophical and dogmatic theologian at this point. The latter could be said to ‘do theology’ while the former's function is to analyze what sort of thing one is doing when one does theology.”