bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The True Worldliness of Advertising
Authors: Prewitt Michael
Published: February 2011

The case against advertising is easy to make. In 1994, the Vatican's Pontifical Council on Social Communications published a thoughtful, balanced document on “Ethics in Advertising,” presenting both positive and negative aspects of the practice. The Vatican focused on rational product selection based on a comparison of product qualities. The author, as a practitioner of advertising in the United States, offers an alternative view of advertising as a brand-building, relationship-building enterprise. Advertising can help initiate and sustain healthy commercial exchanges. A career in advertising can be pursued with good conscience when the good internal to the practice of advertising is creating these positive exchanges.
Ethical Implications of Prolonged Lives
Authors: Chapman Audrey R.
Published: February 2011

This article explores the scientific prospect and ethical implications of prolonging the human lifespan through genetic or other types of biomedical interventions. It suggests that when a potential scientific development raises profound theological, ethical, or social issues, it is preferable to assess the implications in advance, in order to decide whether and how to proceed. The analysis underscores that interventions to increase average life-expectancies in an already aging society pose economic, health, and environmental burdens that societies would be hard-pressed to sustain. The required resource-transfers would also have a profoundly negative impact on intra-and inter-generational equity.
Christology, Or Redeeming Whiteness
Authors: Carter J. Kameron
Published: February 2011

In this response essay, the author argues that Perkinson's appropriation of black liberation theology as a means of articulating what white redemption in the interests of a more whole and just society in the third millennium would entail, in fact, falters because his vision assumes the strengths, but more devastatingly, the limitations of the form of black liberation theology he appropriates, limitations that come to infect Perkinson's vision, rendering it incoherent. The response essay's second task is to clarify Black Theology's proper theological breakthrough and to resituate and, thus, salvage Perkinson's vision within it.
The Hope of Beauty in an Age of Ugliness and Death
Authors: Moore T. M.
Published: February 2011

In the world of postmodern art, the question of beauty has been rendered almost entirely relative—to the artist, the critic, and the beholder. Christian art has traditionally tied the notion of beauty to the character and works of God; therefore, if there is to be any recovery of a meaningful sense of beauty in today's world, it must begin in that community where faith in God is alive and well. The hope for beauty in an age of ugliness and death thus depends on whether Christians can develop a theologically informed taste and start taking the arts more seriously than they presently seem to do.
Salvation
Authors: Guroian Vigen
Published: February 2011

The New Testament writers explored the mystery and meaning of salvation in Christ through a variety of images, notably the bucolic metaphor of the good shepherd who gathers and guards his flock, the military metaphor of spiritual combat led by Christ the victorious warrior, and the juridical metaphor of Christ the redeemer and ransom from sin and death. In western Christianity, the juridical metaphor of redemption dominates. In eastern Christianity, however, images of Christ as physician and salvation as healing lie at the heart of piety, worship, and theology. This eastern imagery may be more compelling for our time and advantageous for evangelism and pastoral care.
Salvation as Communion
Authors: Heim S. Mark
Published: February 2011

Salvation is often defined primarily by the conditions it overcomes, by what it is not. The radical, traditional Christian hope that, in redemption, we may become sharers in the divine nature challenges us to exercise a more positive, creative imagination about salvation. Communion, as the distinctively trinitarian quality of Christian hope, distinguishes salvation as a particular aim among other possibilities and helps us appreciate the true breadth of salvation, the vast extent of variety and difference it encompasses, and the coherence of the life of the church with this end.
Virtual Salvation
Authors: Charry Ellen T.
Published: February 2011

Fortunately, Christian salvation was never defined precisely. In a culture of wealth like consumer capitalism—that seeds global culture—one's self-concept is constructed by advertising and other market-driven ploys that fan vanity, insecurity, and greed leading to anger, violence, and ennui amidst plenty. Such a socially constructed self is met by a theologically constructed self, a virtual self created by God. Whether through the cross, the trinitarian image of God, or the beauty, wisdom, and goodness of God, having a virtual identity from God is Christian medicine for a spiritually enervating culture.
Rethinking the First Article of the Creed
Authors: Miller Patrick D.
Published: February 2011

The ancient and controlling creeds of the church contain an overly compact and thus deficient first article. While there may be many things that could be added to the creed, I propose that the one fundamentally necessary clause lacking for proper representation of what Christian faith must say about the first person of the Trinity is the affirmation that God delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage. Theological, liturgical, and pedagogical reasons are given to indicate why such a clause is necessary for the most minimal statement of faith about God the Father and for avoiding a kind of modalism that does not affirm the commonality of Father and Son in the redemptive work of God in the world.
Reflections on the Church and HIV/AIDS
Authors: Haddad Beverley
Published: February 2011

The church in South Africa faces a new challenge—the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which claims the lives of people in its communities and congregations every day. Until recently, the church remained silent or, worse still, adopted a theology that contributed to the stigma and discrimination faced by those who are HIV-positive. Increasingly, this theology is being questioned, as church leaders take a more positive public stance on education, prevention, care, support, and lobbying for treatment. Yet a mainstream, contextual theology that acknowledges and supports people living with HIV/AIDS, offering them Christian hope and acceptance, still remains to be formulated for South Africa.
Missiological Challenges in the HIV/AIDS Era
Authors: Mombo Esther
Published: February 2011

In the context of HIV/AIDS and traditional rites of widow-inheritance, the church is challenged to offer more than just funeral services for the dead. The missiological challenges and opportunities today include: rethinking the relationship between gospel and culture in the era of HIV/AIDS; developing a theology and spirituality to cope with the growth of a countervailing “prosperity gospel”; ameliorating the root causes of poverty that lie at the heart of the HIV/AIDS pandemic; and engaging in vigorous public moral advocacy on behalf of those most vulnerable in society.
A Prophet in the Wasteland
Authors: Moore T. M.
Published: February 2011

The late Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz was a voice of transcendent beauty amid the wasteland of modern and postmodern verse. His bold choice of themes, clear voice, compelling images, and searching faith are an encouragement to Christian poets and readers of poetry, showing us that, when it comes to spiritual matters, the contemporary world is open for discussion.
Hans URS von Balthasar (1905–88): The Wave and the Sea
Authors: Oakes Edward T.
Published: February 2011

Hans Urs von Balthasar's unique approach to theology took the form of a trilogy of works focused on the beauty, goodness, and truth of God: Theological aesthetics, theo-dramatic, and theo-logic. Rejecting the conventional binaries of both modern liberalism and traditional conservatism, as well as eschewing the radical perspectivalism of postmodern theology, Balthasar developed his own phenomenological view of Christian life, focusing on the inherent attractiveness of God's splendor, initial human response to that beauty, and the truth revealed only in and through that human response. His extensive, creative theology leaves many theological fruits on which contemporary thinkers may continue to feast.
Joseph Ratzinger (1927–): How Conservative Is Benedict XVI?
Authors: Ellingsen Mark
Published: February 2011

Much has been made of the new pope's theological conservatism. His views on ecumenism have been characterized as cautiously open. This article clarifies these claims and points out promising topics for further dialogue between Benedict XVI and Protestant scholarship. Benedict is no more theologically conservative than the so-called postliberal and canonical approaches of George Lindbeck, Hans Frei, Brevard Childs, and some of their neo-orthodox predecessors. These theological viewpoints converge with the pope's theological method in significant ways. Traditional African-American hermeneutics may also converge with the papal method. Benedict's concerns about sixteenth-century Protestant theology regarding the authority of tradition and treatments of the doctrine of justification have been or can be successfully addressed.
Control is Good–Trust is Better: Freedom and Security in a “Free World”
Authors: Moltmann JÜRgen
Published: February 2011

“Trust is good, control is better,” said Lenin and those who want the total surveillance state. But who controls the controllers? This ancient question is unanswered. No control works without trust. After looking into different levels of trust from psychology to politics, we ask about trust in God. Only a God who bears the sins and sufferings of the world is trustworthy. Can trust be restored when it is broken? Repentance, confession of guilt, change of the heart and reparation of damages can restore trust on the personal level as well as on the political.
Reclaiming Creation in a Darwinian World
Authors: Hanby Michael
Published: February 2011

This essay argues for the necessity and viability of a rigorous theological critique of the Darwinian tradition of evolutionary biology. Contending that Darwinism and the political economy from which it originated have been important agents in creating the contemporary “culture of death,” it argues that Darwinism either violates its claim to scientific status by relying upon an illicit metaphysics or that it robs itself of explanatory power by denying its own metaphysical status. More fundamentally, the current debate requires a metaphysically rigorous articulation of the Christian doctrine of creation, free from the theological distortions imposed by the “creationist” debate with Darwinism and thus equally critical of both.
Religious Music and Secular Music: A Calvinist Perspective, Re-formed
Authors: Burch Brown Frank
Published: February 2011

Although Calvin's theology of music runs counter to the tenor of our times, it can be reformed so as to alert us to both assets and risks of music in Christian worship and life. In particular, Calvin can help reintroduce critical discernment in a context in which churches appear eager to absorb virtually every style of secular music (the reverse of what Calvin desired). More positively, he can encourage us to find and create music that not only touches the heart but lends itself to the high calling of lifting hearts into “the presence of God and the angels.”
Motive and Motif in the Church Music of Johann Sebastian Bach
Authors: Robin A. Leaver
Published: February 2011

Johann Sebastian Bach stands in a long line of Lutheran composers who used musical forms to convey theological concepts that reaches back to Luther himself. Lutheran theologians and musicians used the Latin formula viva vox evangelii to define their understanding of music as the living voice of the gospel. Here is presented first an overview of this Lutheran tradition, and then an examination of specific examples from Bach's musical works that expound specific theological concepts such as the doctrine of the Trinity, the distinction between law and gospel, the nature of discipleship, and christological hermeneutics in general.
Roots into the Future: Recovering Gregorian Chant to Renew the Church's Voice
Authors: Richard A. Smith
Published: February 2011

In the Christian church, the people are the body of Christ. Somehow in the last half-century of reinventing, reimagining, re-creating, reviving, renewing, and restoring ourselves in the rush to become or stay “relevant,” that identity has frequently become blurred or lost altogether. Music in the church has been both a victim and a cause of this corrupted identity. Gregorian chant is well worth considering as a model for recovery in twenty―first―century worship. Its spiritual power and musical excellence may lead us to recover our voice as the people of God.
The Ecstasy of Lament: Opera as a Model of Theology
Authors: Suna-Koro Kristine
Published: February 2011

Opera is often perceived as an elitist genre of music, admired by snobbish traditionalists and greatly suspected by radical feminists. By viewing opera as an innovative avenue for lament over tragic and sinful human reality long before any formal feminist critique, the essay examines the creative role of opera as a mode of encouragement for a different Theologia Primaworship in music as otherwise than intellectually satisfying certain theological assumptions. The risky speech of operatic lament as inverted ecstatic praise of the triune God affirms the relevance of critical attention toward the praise of God that, deprived of lament, risks becoming an inauthentic and vacuous worship.
Freewill Theism: Doing Business in a Free-Market Society
Authors: Robinson Jason C.
Published: February 2011

The openness model of divine attributes is largely a preconscious response to the idyllic principles of the free market. The present popularity and acceptance of open theism can be accounted for primarily in terms of its shared ambitions and regulating structure with the free market. It is one the most pronounced and distinct articulations of a Christian business ethos struggling with the cardinal dilemma of how one can profit from a relationship with God and avoid the threat he poses to personal freedom—similar to the dilemma between all free-market participants and government.
Vessels of Wrath, Prepared to Perish: Adolf Schlatter and the Spiritual Extermination of the Jews
Authors: Mcnutt James E.
Published: February 2011

Christians and Jews generally agree that confessional attitudes played a role in the unfolding of the Holocaust. The Vatican's “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” while admitting to a painful history, distinguishes between “anti-Semitism,” based on racial theories contrary to the constant teaching of the church, and theological sentiments of mistrust and hostility called “anti-Judaism.” Such a dichotomy has been questioned. Adolf Schlatter offers an influential source for Christian attitudes toward Judaism on the eve of the Holocaust. His work provided a rationale and concrete example of the bridging of negative religious views and accusations of the Jews as an immediate social danger.

In the process of carrying out his will, God bears vessels of wrath, prepared to perish, with great and often enduring longsuffering…. That they [the Jews] came to exist through wrath is made evident in that the loss of life is their end. Adolf Schlatter, 1935
Interreligious Dialogue: Encountering an other or Ourselves?
Authors: Dickens W. T.
Published: February 2011

Participants in interreligious dialogue encounter persons who are, in some respects, radically different. Accordingly, appreciating the diversity among and within the world's religions requires that we abandon the attempt to see others as culturally variant expressions of ourselves. The view of persons and of religion my argument presupposes is at odds with the one advocated by revisionist pluralists such as John Hick. After identifying the weaknesses of Hick's theory, I commend an alternative that provides a firmer basis for respecting the other as such and enhances the possibilities of profound individual and communal transformation through interreligious dialogue.
Court Preacher
Authors: Kay James F.
Published: February 2011

Course description: A study of representative texts from the classical rhetorical tradition, the history of preaching, and the history of theology formative for the development of homiletical theory. Among thinkers, preachers, or movements examined are Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian; Origen and Chrysostom; Augustine, scholasticism, and the preaching orders; Luther and Calvin; Puritanism and Anglicanism; and Fénelon and the court of Louis XIV.
Making Enemies: The Imagination of Torture in Chile and the United States
Authors: Cavanaugh William T.
Published: February 2011

Through a comparison of the use of torture by Chile under General Pinochet and the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, the author argues that one of torture's primary purposes is the fostering of a certain kind of social imagination of who our enemies are. The author then briefly suggests how communities of faith can resist this imagination.
Theology, International Law, and Torture: A Survivor's View
Authors: Ortiz Dianna
Published: February 2011

International law and theology are related to torture through the experience of a survivor of this crime against humanity. From this perspective, international law proved irrelevant, and theology became the problem of the absent God. As for government, the issue was, and continues to be, betrayal, the Bush administration being the most recent example. In calling for action against the ongoing practice of torture, the importance of ending impunity is noted. Those who facilitate or order the practice of torture must face judgment for their violation of law and for their role as perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
Against Torture: An Evangelical Perspective
Authors: Gushee David P.
Published: February 2011

This essay offers a Christian moral analysis of torture. After defining torture and considering the international and domestic moral and legal strictures against torture, the essay moves on to offer six moral reasons why torture should be forbidden. The essay concludes with a call especially to evangelical Christians in the United States to demand that their government cease and desist from any form of torture.
Flannery O'Connor's Art of Conversion
Authors: Raab Joseph Quinn
Published: February 2011

This essay follows the interpretive clues given by Flannery O'Connor in her lectures and personal letters to elucidate the sacramental quality of her art. More specifically, it demonstrates the functional use of violence in her art as a strategy for displacing her readers and opening them to the invitations and demands of God's grace. The essay includes a meditation on O'Connor's story “Good Country People” as a particular example of this strategy. By adverting to O'Connor's lectures and letters, the contemporary reader may encounter the sacramental quality of her art more readily than did her original readers.
Imagination and the Nature of Evil
Authors: Harvey Barry
Published: February 2011

Although many were troubled about the reality of evil and suffering following the earthquake and tsunami that decimated much of Southeast Asia in December 2004, few considered the inability of the modern moral imagination—which had been incapacitated by our desire to free ourselves from fate through technical organization—to deal with these events. We are thus subject to the works of our hands, while fate still rules over us. The wisdom that can fathom such natural disasters requires communal practices where our vulnerability is scripted as a special sort of moral strength by participation in the trinitarian exchange of love.
Perceiving God
Authors: Smythe Thomas W.
Published: February 2011

This paper expounds and defends the work of William P. Alston in his book Perceiving God and several papers written on this topic. I shall take seriously the view that there is a nonsensory perceptual awareness of God that provides grounds for religious belief. A person can become justified in holding certain kinds of beliefs about God by virtue of perceiving God as being so-and-so and doing such-and-such. God can comfort, strengthen, guide, communicate a message, or sustain the subject in being. By virtue of my being aware of God as comforting me, I can justifiably believe that God is comforting me.
The Beauty of God the Holy Spirit
Authors: Sherry Patrick
Published: February 2011

The association of beauty, both in nature and in art, with the Holy Spirit goes back to the early church and emerges intermittently in theology, in widely different eras and places. I trace the development of this theme briefly, concentrating on its treatment by Jonathan Edwards. I end by discussing why beauty has been discussed relatively rarely by theologians, especially in connection with the Holy Spirit, and suggest that the topic is of vital concern now, not just for theology but for the life of the church.
The Vicarious Beauty of Christ: The Aesthetics of the Atonement
Authors: Kettler Christian D.
Published: February 2011

A theology of the vicarious humanity, not just death, of Christ provides a fresh way to ground theological aesthetics in the reconciling life of Christ. Theological aesthetics can also bring a new perspective on the atonement as including the “Godward” movement of the Son to the Father, a movement of beauty that humanity has been invited to participate in, an act of both solidarity and substitution. This response reveals the uniqueness of Christ's beauty, a vicarious not analogous knowledge of beauty, thus creating a wholeness and openness to the beauty of the grace of God's creation.
Liturgy as Drama
Authors: Graham Gordon
Published: February 2011

The purpose of this essay is to explore the case for understanding liturgy as a kind of drama. By “liturgy” here I mean religious action in contrast to religious contemplation. The contrast is an especially interesting one, because it cuts across some historically important differences between Christian traditions of worship, and in particular between Catholic and Reformed. The Catholic service of Benediction, for example, seems very far from the austere Calvinist service in which the sermon occupies central place. Yet the two share the same fundamental character in being contemplative, the first by the mystical contemplation of the Blessed Sacrament before the altar, and the second by the intellectual contemplation of the word of God. It hardly needs to be said that deep theological differences lie behind these alternative forms of Christian worship. Yet their essentially contemplative nature means that both allot the worshiper the largely passive role of recipient.

In this respect, however far apart otherwise, both are to be contrasted with forms of worship in which things are done and not merely apprehended. These include acts of purification, investiture, and sacrifice, all of them instances of “making holy,” which is precisely what the etymology of the word “sacrifice” implies. The activity of “making holy” is central to a great many religions, but this essay will be concerned only with the sacramental activities of the Christian religion—such as baptizing, uniting in marriage, and ordaining to ministry—and above all its central and most enduring practice: celebrating Mass, the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion. I shall take the last of these to encapsulate the essence of liturgical action, and for convenience I shall use the relatively neutral term “Communion” to refer to it.
A Place to Appear: Ecclesiology as if Bodies Mattered
Authors: Fulkerson Mary Mcclintock
Published: February 2011

Drawing upon the author's ethnographic study of an interracial church with members from group homes, the essay argues for “a place to appear” as an ecclesiological image supportive of reconciliation between persons of different races and abilities. The image is a corrective of “obliviousness” toward marginalized groups, which is more likely than outright malice to characterize churches populated by dominant populations. In order to portray the supports for obliviousness and, by contrast, what enables persons from different groups to “appear” or to be fully recognized by one another, this essay explores the concept of bodily practices of propriety.
Kierkegaard after Hauerwas
Authors: Mahn Jason A.
Published: February 2011

With the “return of the virtues” in theology and church practice, Christians seek to develop dispositions that make moral excellence more likely. By contrast, the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, though retrieved by virtue ethicists, develop dispositions (anxiety, self-doubt, the real possibility of offense) that lead to self-conflict and make virtue more difficult. If Kierkegaard does develop virtue, he most closely resembles Stanley Hauerwas, who suggests that virtue makes conflict and moral failure increasingly possible. In this essay, I read Kierkegaard through Hauerwas in order to trace a peculiar version of Christian training and to question assumptions about the immediate benefit of religious formation.
Basic Christological Distinctions
Authors: Wildman Wesley J.
Published: February 2011

This essay surveys major distinctions used to classify and gain insight into contemporary christologies, clarifying some confusions about them. The focus is on distinctions pertaining to christological starting points (from above, from below), schemas (cosmological, anthropological, eschatological, dialectical), styles (historical versus ideal, ontological versus functional), and results (high versus low, literally and figuratively incarnational, absolutist and anti-absolutist or modest). The essay concludes with an argument that the absolutist-modest distinction helps to diagnose several important fault lines in contemporary christology.
Dialogic Thickness in a Monologic Culture
Authors: Brueggemann Walter
Published: February 2011

This essay considers the context of the contemporary church in the United States as an environment of monologue in which one-way communication is prized and practiced as religious authoritarianism, market ideology that has no interest in communication, and imperial politics that proceeds from the top down. In such an environment, a primal task of the church is to advocate and practice a mode of life that honors the thickness of human interaction and engages in faithful interaction with God as a two-way practice. A specific consideration of dialogic practice is a case study of Psalm 35 in which “the many selves of the self are given voice in discourse with God in a way that submits to and yet insists on leverage with the Holy One. This transaction may be a model for human transaction as well in the strange world where truth speaks to power.
Dying with Others
Authors: Tran Cat Jonathan
Published: February 2011

The author employs Thomas Aquinas's conception of divine existence in order to characterize creaturely being as contingent rather than necessary, and suffering as participatory rather than isolating. In this way, the article disputes both the narratives of necessity inherent within medical appropriations of immanent causality and the views of suffering that warrant practices of technological desperation. The author relates the story of one family's illness, through interspersed eulogy, and highlights how technological mastery imposes indictments of ethical “responsibility.” The author concludes by showing how baptism and the Eucharist offer narratives that might resist such imposition.
The Last Testament of Martin Luther King Jr
Authors: Hopkins Dwight N.
Published: February 2011

This essay looks at Martin Luther King Jr.'s last will and testament, found in his final publication, The Trumpet of Conscience. The summation and new direction of his vision is divided into five chapters, each of which presents fresh and provocative developments in King's intellectual and faith journey. He truly had become a global citizen rooted in the everyday struggles of his community and that of the poor. The question remains: how do King's words and legacy sound today?
The Doctrine of Deification: A Call to Worship
Authors: Wesche Kenneth Paul
Published: February 2011

In Christ, we do not touch the divine essence or become divine essence, but we become God by grace through partaking of him in his uncreated energies. Streaming forth from the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation like rays from the sun, the doctrine of deification is the outer face of the Orthodox Church's answer to the ancient riddle of the one and the many. Reality is not a monism but a communion of the many in the Three in One. The doctrine of deification gives voice to the experience of the saints: God is altogether inaccessible to creatures, and yet he is at the same time altogether accessible in his uncreated energies.
Reconciliation in the Middle East: A Biblical Perspective
Authors: Blenkinsopp Joseph
Published: February 2011

This essay aims to make a preliminary exploration of what is involved in identifying resources in the canonical texts shared by Jews and Christians for healing and reconciliation in the apparently interminable conflict in Palestine/Israel. Consideration of forgiveness and reconciliation between individuals provides some insight into the implications of reconciliation at the social level. In classical and biblical antiquity, categories of honor and shame tend to exclude considerations of forgiveness as a virtuous act, and the biblical record is replete with holy wars, territorial struggles, and violence visited by the strong on the weak. The book of Isaiah both documents this situation and provides visions of its future reversal in the messianic poems (chaps. 9 and 11), the abolition of war (2:1–4), and an astonishing reinterpretation of the Abrahamic promise (19:24–25).
Reforming Ecclesiology in Emerging Churches
Authors: Shults F. Leron
Published: February 2011

The rapid growth of “emerging” churches worldwide provides a new opportunity for reflection on the nature and task of the church. This article briefly outlines some of the tensions this movement raises in relation to the traditional “marks” of the church (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic). It identifies some ways toward a reconstructive and reformative ecclesiology that also recognizes that followers of the way of Christ are multiple, embedded, particular, and hospitable.
Plurality in Unity: The Ecclesiology of Leonardo Boff in Honor of His 70th Birthday (December 14, 2008)
Authors: Conn Marie A.
Published: February 2011

Leonardo Boff has served the people of God for decades, first as a Franciscan priest and now as a lay theologian. His writings lay out a vision of the church born in the Brazilian rain forests, nurtured by extensive study and training in theology, and strengthened by ecclesiastical ordeal. This essay seeks to honor Boff's significant contributions to post—Vatican II theology by exploring his ecclesiology, as well as its implications for the sacramental life of the faithful and the role of the hierarchy.
The Church: One and Holy
Authors: Goodloe James C.
Published: February 2011

In chapter 1, book 4, of Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin sets forth the unity of the true church, from which we must not separate ourselves. In chapter 2 he compares this true church with the false one, from which we must separate ourselves. The church one and holy needs yet today to hear both of these together. Moreover, today's denominations function as provincial churches governed by provincial councils, as depicted in chapter 9. Finally, threats to church constitutions, which provide for worship, order, and discipline, threaten the existence of the church, as shown in chapter 10.
Ministry in the Subjunctive Mood
Authors: Jarvis Cynthia A.
Published: February 2011

In language the indicative mood is for facts and absolutes; the subjunctive mood is for hope and possibility, for faith held together with astonishment. The argument of this article is that women may be more likely to do their believing, their preaching, and their ministry in the subjunctive mood, a mood that would seem to correspond to the kind of truth both revealed and hidden in the Incarnation, a mood that refuses brute inevitability and the despotism of the fact. To consider this thesis, we turn not to statistics but to Scripture and to three key women: Eve, whose fall is a fall into the indicative; Mary, whose subjunctive mood in response to the Annunciation sets our salvation in motion; and Mary Magdalene, whose encounter with the risen Lord is an encounter with the one whom words cannot hold.
Christian Spirituality in a Time of Ecological Awareness
Authors: Fischer Kathleen
Published: February 2011

Faced with our ecological crisis, Christian thinkers are making clear that ecological spirituality is not a passing trend but the lived expression of faith in divine creation, the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the reign of God. Not only must ecological spirituality motivate all Christians to act on behalf of our imperiled planet, but it requires reformulation of key convictions about the relationship between the inner and outer life, the imagination's role in conversion, and what it means to be a human who is called to contemplation. Exploring these themes reveals how fully embodied and social Christian spirituality is meant to be.
The Theology of Providence
Authors: Fergusson David
Published: February 2011

The classical doctrine of providence has generally been treated as a subdivision of the doctrine of creation. In stressing the sovereign and wise rule of God over nature and history, it has too often veered in an unduly determinist and philosophical direction that fails adequately to register scriptural notions of the differentiated action of the triune God. A more modest and intellectually tentative account of providence is outlined here, negatively through a sense of historical misuses of the doctrine, but more positively from the conviction that a scripturally based and pastorally adequate approach must represent it as a vital aspect of faith.
Augustine's Interpretation of John's Prologue: A Theology of God's Word
Authors: Michielin Maico
Published: February 2011

Biblical scholars and theologians who wish to distance themselves from the methodological trappings of modern biblical scholarship and retrieve a theologically informed interpretation of Scripture are increasingly turning to patristic practitioners of biblical exegesis such as Augustine. Augustine shows in his exegesis of John's Prologue that there is actually not much difference between what patristic interpreters and modern interpreters do with Scripture. The dissimilarities that exist are not so much in a difference in tasks but in the execution of them. Augustine is untroubled appealing to the grammatical and rhetorical tools of his day. Yet what differentiates Augustine's use of such tools from his modern counterparts is his a priori commitment to a spiritual construal of the text's subject matter, God's Word. For Augustine, God's Word is not a static historical phenomenon but is ever present and thus able to speak to the church in and through the testimony of the apostolic witness. Augustine thus gives primacy to divine communicative acts over his interpretative undertakings. The communicative presence of God's Word informs his understanding of, and thus approach to, the historical particularities of the text. For Augustine, theories of understanding, history, or texts cannot be the starting point for a theological exegesis of the Bible because human reasoning must first be redeemed and thus directed by the communicative presence of God's Word.
The holy spirit and the trinity
Authors: Welch Claude
Published: February 2011

… in Spiritum sanctum Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit, qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur.…*
A New Theology for a New Missiology
Authors: Jacobson Nolan P. , Winn William E.
Published: February 2011

THESIS: New currents in theology have special relevance in Asia today where man is trapped in the strings of one established order or another and moves from the old slavery to the new. Christian missions cannot merely bring a new order of life, a new religion with its code of behavior and institutional organization. Christian missionaries need theological assurance that in Christ a great deliverance is possible, a deliverance from the old to the new being.
Religion and Culture in West Africa
Authors: Ilogu Edmund C. O.
Published: February 2011

THESIS: How can courses in religion and theology in the new West Africa universities be related to the emerging problems of culture change? Apart from being the study of a system of thought and belief, theology is also a way of looking at life. This means that theology must concern itself with the culture of a people. Theology must provide insight for the criticism of culture as well as for the social norms and community values that uphold the culture. The problems connected with culture change in West Africa are immense. A more adequate curriculum for the study of theology must include the “new fangled ideas” of psychology, sociology, and political science.
Can Faith Validate God-Talk?
Authors: Nielsen Kai
Published: February 2011

THESIS: Philosophical analysis provides fideism with a crucial problem. It seems that we can accept on faith only what we can understand. For if we cannot understand something, we cannot know what it is we are to accept on faith. Yet crucial religious assertions appear to be completely without truth value. But if they are, how then can we possibly accept them on faith? This essay examines some efforts to get around this barrier to an appeal to faith and concludes that fideism can only be a satisfactory apologetic stance if the factual intelligibility of key religious utterances has been established.
What Should a Congregation Sing?: A Few Thoughts on Hymnology
Authors: Scheide William H.
Published: February 2011

EDITOR'S NOTE: This essay was originally prepared in connection with the Sesquicentennial celebrations of Princeton Theological Seminary. As the article indicates, the point of departure is Louis FitzGerald Benson, a graduate of Princeton Seminary in the class of 1887 and a collector of hymnbooks and writer in the field of hymnology. It was felt that this discussion should be published in THEOLOGY TODAY where its vigorous thesis, as well as its equally vigorous strictures on the kind of hymnody Benson represented, could be read and studied by the widest possible audience. It will be clear that the main point of the article is not Benson but the plight of contemporary church music, especially congregational singing.
The Future of Christian Anthropology
Authors: Hiltner Seward
Published: February 2011

THESIS: The time is decisively ripe for the aggressive presentation of a perspective on Christian anthropology that differs, in significant respects, from every anthropological point of view now widely held or advocated. Stated negatively, the thesis finds every widely held point of view in Christian anthropology to be misleading because of its principally compensatory intent, resulting at best in one-sidedness and at worst in downright distortion.
Authentic Secularity
Authors: Summerscales William
Published: February 2011

THESIS: The climate of disenchantment that pervades the church and world today may be the very challenge to awaken Christians from comfortable slumbers. When secular prophets say, “God is dead,” those who have a faith rooted in the God of the biblical saga are given opportunity for a new kind of dialogue with their contemporaries. This new dialogue cannot proceed in outmoded language, nor can it be supported by patterns of church life conformed to an age that is past. No clear strategy is apparent for the coming generation of church life but one “stage direction” is crystal clear: The windows of the church must be opened to let the astringent and invigorating air currents of the modern era blow into our oft-times stifling religious conclaves. A this-worldly, rather than an other-worldly, gospel is the option for the present age.
Man's Extremity and the Modern Artist
Authors: Eversole Finley
Published: February 2011

THESIS: The current idiom, “the death of God,” may be taken as either defiant atheism or as modern man's way of articulating his own extreme lostness. If the absence of God is more celebrated today than his presence, what would it mean for Christian thinkers to examine such nihilism as a clue to man's extremity for which, hopefully, the gospel may come as good news? Modern abstract expressionism in art provides some interesting clues. But the Christian “Yes” to despairing man's “No” must come through the agony of nothingness. Who knows? Man's talk about the death of God may even be God's way of preparing us for his reappearance in our midst.
Christian Theology and the Challenge of Its Parodies
Authors: Frye Roland Mushat
Published: February 2011

“By denying the realm of nature as fundamentalism did, and by denying the realm of the supernatural as the demythologizers and others do, we find that the seamless coat of Christ is ripped apart. Only by holding steadily and honestly to the Gospel of the Incarnation, with its inseparable juncture of nature and grace, reason and revelation, life here and hereafter, can the church truly be the church as God's mission in a divided world.”
Judgment on Jezebel, or A Woman Wronged
Authors: Frost Stanley B.
Published: February 2011

“There is in the Bible, it would seem, a double standard of judgment, and the view is tacitly inculcated that when actions benefit Israel they are right, but when they militate against her they are wrong. Clearly, then, a woman like Jezebel who was opposed to Israel has no chance of a fair trial in any biblical court. Jehu accused her to his own advantage of ‘harlotries and sorceries’ when he stirred up revolt against her son, and the world has uncritically accepted this assessment of her ever since. The time is long overdue that she should be given a fresh trial.”
Theology as Translation
Authors: Robinson James M.
Published: February 2011

“Not only do translation and interpretation belong together; they in turn share with language a basic scope. For language itself is the bringing to expression, the exposition, of an understanding. Language is already the beginning of the hermeneutical process. Thus one catches sight of the basic interrelatedness of the problem of the word of God and that of theological hermeneutic. In the broader sense, hermeneutic embraces the movement from the original speaking of God's word, to which the Bible refers, through its address to me in such a way that it speaks to me. Hence hermeneutic, far from being a minor subdivision in one department of theology, has come to be recognized as the overarching category that unites the various theological disciplines and makes them a whole. It is in this sense that theology and translation are one in hermeneutic.”
The New Hermeneutics and the Early Luther
Authors: Ebeling Gerhard
Published: February 2011

“The fundamental problem for him [Luther] is not a verbal description of God but the exposure of man's existence before God; that is to say, the proclamation of God's judgment over man. With this we are not brought into the horizon of metaphors. The linguistic use of metaphors has now quite another task with reference to the subject matter of theology, namely, to bring man into the real situation, where the subject-matter itself occurs, as is the case with Jesus' speech in parables.”
The Theology of True Secularity
Authors: Fennell William O.
Published: February 2011

“In Jesus Christ the radical separation between church and world has not simply been transcended, but broken down. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, for God so loved the world. … If in Jesus Christ the world has been reconciled to God, then there are no longer two realms, a godly and an ungodly, standing in irreconcilable enmity toward one another. There is now only one realm, the created, creaturely, fallen yet reconciled and renewed realm over which Jesus Christ reigns as Savior and Lord.”
The Council in Action; Theological Reflections on the Second Vatican Council, by Hans Küng, Translated by Cecily Hastings. 276 pp. New York, Sheed and Ward, 1963. $4.50
Authors: Nichols James H.
Published: February 2011

That the World May Believe, by Hans Küng. 150 pp. New York, Sheed and Ward, 1963. $3.00.
The Logos in a World Come of Age
Authors: Lehmann Paul L.
Published: February 2011

“The difference between a world come of age and a world initially surprised by the advent of the logos is that in a world come of age the logos must create new conditions for the experience and apprehension of transcendence, not merely correct conditions already at hand. This is a new experience for the logos which does not make the logos any less a new experience for the world.”
Was Shakespeare a Theologian?
Authors: Smith Neil G.
Published: February 2011

“His poetry, unless we are willing to follow the allegorizers in reading Christian meanings into it, is frankly humanistic. But it is a humanism which has been undergirded by centuries of the Christian tradition. ‘There is another echo in our ears as we close a Shakespearean play,’ wrote P. T. Forsyth, ‘from that which besets us as we lay Sophocles down. It is no less sad, perhaps, but it is far more deep, more rich, more wide and varied in its chords.’”
Calvin and the Genevans
Authors: Barrois Georges A.
Published: February 2011

“The principal themes of Calvin's theology are treated in these sermons from Isaiah, but thoroughly adapted to the special needs of an audience which Calvin endeavored to meet at the level of their daily occupations and preoccupations, an audience of well-to-do burghers, bent upon making good business and substantial gains.
The One Baptism and the Many Baptisms
Authors: Wilburn Ralph G.
Published: February 2011

“We shall be able to work our way to an ecumenical resolution of our current differences on baptism only if we envisage our problem in historic perspective.” “…by tackling our problem in historic perspective I mean that certain modes and forms of baptism are particularly fitting for some historical situations, but not for others. History in part determines what forms are essential for the faith to possess genuine, cultural integrity. No one form of baptism is valid for all Christian people and for all ages.”
Styles of Service in the New Testament and Now
Authors: Nelson J. Robert
Published: February 2011

“While the New Testament has much to tell us about the ministry which is both descriptive for its time and normative for all times, it simply does not give the specific and incontrovertible answers to our restless questionings about ordination, succession, sacramental administration, the ministry of women, and the like. Even a most conservative, or literalistic, reading of the New Testament does not make possible a simple restorationism, as though the church needed only common reason, good faith, and the leading of the Holy Spirit to discover the perennially valid patterns of ministry and order.”
On Theological Typology
Authors: Welch Claude
Published: February 2011

“… I am not attempting to say that the schematism of ‘right’ and ‘left’ is meaningless, either in relation to the issue of demythologizing or to the theological scene in general—only that it is disastrous. Everyone knows what it means, and that is just the trouble. It is another way of saying ‘conservative’ versus ‘liberal,’ or minimum versus maximum accommodation to the world. Now we all know more or less what those vague contrasts are supposed to indicate, and we recognize the presence of varieties of perspectives to which such terms have some relevance. But they are not illuminating! And they are usually misleading!”