Christianity At The Crossroads

The Gospel Coalition Book of the Year Biblical Foundations Award Winner Christianity in the twenty-first century is a global phenomenon. But in the second century, its future was not at all certain. Initially Christianity possessed little social or cultural influence and found itself fighting for its life. While apostolic tradition was emerging as a "rule of faith," factions contested the nature of the gospel, and pagan philosophers found its claims scandalous. And while its pathway was tenuous, Christianity was forming structures of leadership and worship, and a core of apostolic texts was emerging as authoritative. But it was the challenges, obstacles, and transitions faced by Christians in the second century that, in many ways, would determine the future of the church for the next two millennia. It was a time when Christianity stood at a crossroads. Michael Kruger's introductory survey examines how Christianity took root in the second century, how it battled to stay true to the vision of the apostles, and how it developed in ways that would shape both the church and Western culture over the next two thousand years. Christianity at the Crossroads provides an accessible and informative look at the complex and foundational issues faced by an infant church still trying to determine its identity. The church's response to the issues of heresy and orthodoxy, the development of the canon, and the transmission of the Christian Scriptures not only determined its survival, but determined the kind of church it would be for generations to come.

How can Christians live faithfully at the crossroads of the story of Scripture and postmodern culture? In Living at the Crossroads, authors Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew explore this question as they provide a general introduction to Christian worldview. Ideal for both students and lay readers, Living at the Crossroads lays out a brief summary of the biblical story and the most fundamental beliefs of Scripture. The book tells the story of Western culture from the classical period to postmodernity. The authors then provide an analysis of how Christians live in the tension that exists at the intersection of the biblical and cultural stories, exploring the important implications in key areas of life, such as education, scholarship, economics, politics, and church.

Albert Y. Hsu provides a balanced, biblical understanding of Christian singleness that debunks the myth of the "gift of singleness" and honors singleness as a status equal to marriage. Includes an interview with John Stott.

Lieven Boeve examines the place of theology in the university, the church and society. He emphasizes that theology certainly belongs to all of these three domains as it belongs to the nature of theology to involve itself in all three spheres, especially at the crossroads where they overlap. Boeve discusses the recent document Theology Today from the International Theological Commission which circumscribes theology's place and task in the Catholic Church. Boeve discusses how the difficult relation between theology and philosophy is typical for a Church which has difficulty with the dialogue in today's world; as well as examines the relation between theology and religious studies. Going further, Boeve offers a reflection on Catholic identity today, focusing more specifically on education. He presents four models for considering the identity of Catholic schools in the light of the changed society and argues that dialogue in a context of plurality and difference can lead to new, fruitful ways to shape even the Catholic identity. Boeve concludes his discussion with a short assessment of Pope Benedict's papacy and emphasizes the need for the Catholic Church to convert itself before it can call the world to do the same.

In this multi-faceted volume, Christian and other religiously committed theorists find themselves at an uneasy point in history -- between premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity -- where disciplines and methods, cultural and linguistic traditions, and religious commitments tangle and cross. Here, leading theorists explore the state of the art of the contemporary hermeneutical terrain. As they address the work of Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Derrida, the essays collected in this wide-ranging work engage key themes in philosophical hermeneutics, hermeneutics and religion, hermeneutics and the other arts, hermeneutics and literature, and hermeneutics and ethics. Readers will find lively exchanges and reflections that meet the intellectual and philosophical challenges posed by hermeneutics at the crossroads. Contributors are Bruce Ellis Benson, Christina Bieber Lake, John D. Caputo, Eduardo J. Echeverria, Benne Faber, Norman Lillegard, Roger Lundin, Brian McCrea, James K. A. Smith, Michael VanderWeele, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.

At a time when major branches of Judaism and most Christian denominations are addressing the relationship between religion and homosexuality, Jewish/Christian/Queer offers a unique examination of the similarities between the queer intersections of Judaism and Christianity, and the queer intersections of the homosexual and the religious. This volume investigates three forms of queerness; the rhetorical, theological and the discursive dissonance at the meeting points between Christianity and Judaism; the crossroads of the religious and the homosexual; and the intersections of these two forms of queerness, namely where the religiously queer of Jewish and Christian speech intersects with the sexually queer of religiously identified homosexual discourse. Including essays on literature and literary theory, Christian theology, Biblical, Rabbinic, and Jewish studies, queer theory, architecture, Freud, gay and lesbian studies and history, Jewish/Christian/Queer will have a truly interdisciplinary appeal.

A carefully guided tour of four hundred years of modern religious history. Lloyd Geering has crafted illuminating cameo sketches of the impact of dozens of thinkers and movements on the evolution of the Christian faith following the Renaissance and Reformation.

The world is changing, and preaching needs to do the same. With that change, the notion of truth need not be surrendered in a postmodern age, but it must be approached differently. David Lose argues that preaching is a confession made openly for the hearers to embrace and engage in the midst of the real lived world they experience.