A Theology For A Mediated God

A Theology for a Mediated God introduces a new way to examine the shaping effects of media on our notions of God and divinity. In contrast to more conventional social-scientific methodologies and conversations about the relationship between religion and media, Dennis Ford argues that the characteristics we ascribe to a medium can be extended and applied metaphorically to the characteristics we ascribe to God—just as earlier generations attempted to comprehend God through the metaphors of father, shepherd, or mother. As a result, his work both challenges and bridges the gap between students of religion and media, and theology.

A Theology for a Mediated God introduces a new way to examine the shaping effects of media on our notions of God and divinity. In contrast to more conventional social-scientific methodologies and conversations about the relationship between religion and media, Dennis Ford argues that the characteristics we ascribe to a medium can be extended and applied metaphorically to the characteristics we ascribe to God—just as earlier generations attempted to comprehend God through the metaphors of father, shepherd, or mother. As a result, his work both challenges and bridges the gap between students of religion and media, and theology.

How do human beings today receive divine revelation? Where and in what ways is it mediated so that all generations can hear the fullness of the gospel? In this volume, distinguished theologian Matthew Levering shows that divine revelation has been truthfully mediated through the church, the gospel, and Scripture so that we can receive it in its fullness today. Levering engages past and present approaches to revelation across a variety of traditions, offering a comprehensive, historical study of all the key figures and perspectives. His thorough analysis results in an alternative approach to prevailing views of the doctrine and points to its significance for the entire church.

"Douglas Campbell here offers a Pauline Dogmatics that moves to how Paul saw God revealed in Jesus and culminates in emphasizing the implications of Paul's gospel in his world and today"--

On the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, this book attempts to appropriate, situate, and to some degree reinterpret Luther‘s five principles-sola gratia, sola fides, sola Scriptura, solus Christus, and ecclesia semper reformanda - which come to mean that God must always come first. It also attempts to consider how grace reaches out to freedom, faith to reason, Scripture to church tradition, Christ to ministry, church to mediation. God‘s being and action always come first, yet God‘s first gift, creation, and the mediations that derive from it are not undone or rendered irrelevant.

Torrance, professor emeritus of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Edinburgh, sets forth a devotional theology of the atoning work of Christ in: the mediation of revelation, the mediation of reconciliation, and the Holy Trinity.

How can Christian theology confess God as both other than the world and also related to it in a way that compromises neither of these? Most modern thought has offered a simple reply: it cannot. Christ at the Crux analyzes one element of the roots of this denial and charts a route toward rapprochement. The Christologies of eight theologians offer various attempts to relate the Creator and the creature in Christ: Irenaeus of Lyon, Cyril of Alexandria, John Philoponus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Zizioulas, Robert Jenson, and Colin Gunton. Within the patristic era the question is grounded in theology about the incarnation; with the Reformers the focus is on the mediation between creation and Creator; and with the three modern theologians the breadth of the issue is completed with theology proper. Together, these eight offer a grand-scale perspective on much of the christological possibilities for conceiving the relation between God and everything else. In the end Paul Cumin shows how the doctrine of the Trinity appears to open new possibilities for Christology and in particular for the way theology about the Spirit enables a reimagining of those items of Christian thought most likely at the roots of our modern rejection of God-as-other.

This collection engages the challenges and opportunities for doing theology in the context or age of media. The intersection of media with theology is reciprocating: media boosts theology in its functions to inform, connect and educate; theology humbles the globalizing media with a reminder – media is in mediation but not in domination. Media and theology thus intersect at mediating (negotiating, interceding, resisting, protesting) and they should avoid the temptation to colonize. The essays are presented in two overlapping clusters: Mediascapes (intersection of media and a selection of land- and sea-scapes) and Mediations (implications of mediating theology for interrogating hegemonies). The topics addressed include social media and #tag cultures, the fourth industrial revolution and artificial intelligence, homiletics, social resistance, Palestine, Latin America, climate change, and Covid-19. Dieser Sammelband betrachtet die Herausforderungen und Chancen für die Ausübung von Theologie im Medienzeitalter. In ihren Berührungspunkte bedingen Medien und Theologie einander: Medien unterstützen die Theologie bei ihrer Aufgabe zu informieren, zu verbinden und zu bilden. Theologie wiederum erdet die globalisierten Medien, indem sie daran erinnert, dass Medien eine Vermittlerrolle ausüben und keine Herrschaftsrolle. Diesen Vermittlungsaspekt haben Theologie und Medien gemeinsam (Verhandeln, Intervention, Widerstand, Protest), weshalb sie der Versuchung widerstehen sollten, überheblich zu werden. Die vorliegenden Beiträge sind in zwei Bereiche unterteilt: Medienlandschaften und Vermittlung. Die besprochenen Themen beinhalten Social Media, Hashtag-Kultur, Industrie 4.0, KI, Homiletik, sozialer Widerstand, Palästina, Lateinamerika, Klimawandel und Covid-19.