Crucifying Religion

Jesus is the end of all religion. All the sacrifices of priests and people are rendered null and void by Jesus' one-time-for-all-time sacrifice for all people, everywhere, past, present, and future tense. Jesus' death and resurrection save us from our own religiosity.

Jesus is crucified everyday in the United States. Christians, especially conservatives, show greater hostility toward their own faith and contribute far more to the nations secularization than often wrongly accused atheists, liberals, humanists, Democratic activists, or card carrying members of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). America must examine what it means to be a country of faith. In doing so, citizens should ask how they come together as one nation under the same God where all are welcomed as part of the same national family. Part politics, theology, and constitutional analysis, the book offers a possible answer that speaks to the American soul.

What was crucifixion? Why was Jesus of Nazareth executed and what really happened? Gerard Sloyan begins with history and traces the development of the New Testament accounts of Jesus' death. He shows how Jesus' death came to be seen as sacrificial and how the evolving understandings of Jesus' death affected those who suffered most from it - the Jews. He then traces the emergence and development - in theology, liturgy, literature, art - of the conviction that Jesus' death was redemptive, as seen both in soteriological theory from Tertullian to Anselm, in the Reformation and modern eras, and in more popular religious responses to the crucifixion. Especially fascinating is the story of the emergence of a distinct "Passion piety" that still characterizes the West. In all this Sloyan detects the separation of the cross from Jesus' life and resurrection, allowing the mythicizing of an event too large for mere words to handle: the mystery of the cross.

From its English publication in 1973, Jrgen Moltmanns The Crucified God garnered much attention, and it has become one of the seminal texts of twentieth-century theology. Following up on his groundbreaking Theology of Hope, The Crucified God established the cross as the foundation for Christian hope. Moltmanns dramatic innovation was to see the cross not as a problem of theodicy but instead as an act of ultimate solidarity between God and humanity. In this, he drew on liberation theology, and he was among the first to bring third-world theologies into a first-world context. Moltmann proposes that suffering is not a problem to be solved but instead that suffering is an aspect of Gods very being: God is love, and love invariably involves suffering. In this view, the crucifixion of Jesus is an event that affects the entirety of the Trinity, showing that The Crucified God is more than an arresting titleit is a theological breakthrough.

"This is Jrgen Moltmann's best and therefore most important book. He has substantially changed the central thrust of his theology without sacrificing its most vital element, its passionate concern for alleviation of the world's suffering." -Langdon Gilkey "The Crucified God rewards, as it demands, the reader's patient and open-minded attention, for its theme is nothing other than the "explosive presence" of the sighting and liberating Spirit of God in the midst of human life." -The Review of Books and Religion

The first book to examine the controversial Qur'anic phrase which divides Christianity and Islam. According to the majority of modern Muslims and Christians, the Qur'an denies the crucifixion of Jesus, and with it, one of the most sacred beliefs of Christianity. However, it is only mentioned in one verse - 'They did not kill him and they did not crucify him, rather, it only appeared so to them' - and contrary to popular belief, its translation has been the subject of fierce debate among Muslims for centuries. This innovative work is the first book devoted to the issue, delving deeply into largely ignored Arabic sources, which suggest that the origins of the conventional translation may lie within the Christian Church. Arranged along historical lines, and covering various Muslim schools of thought, from Sunni to Sufi, "The Crucifixion and the Qur'an" unravels the crucial dispute that separates the World's two principal faiths.

What does it mean to be made in God’s image if God is Father, Son and Spirit? Tom Smail offers an approach to theological anthropology base on the doctrine of the Trinity, arguing that we are only human when we reflect the relationships between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The book focuses on what it is to be like Father, like Son and like Holy Spirit, focusing in particular on the initiating love of the Father, the responsive love of the Son and the creative love of the Holy Spirit. Interacting with sociological, theological and personal issues of concern on a day-to-day level, Like Father, Like Son is relevant to Christian living in both the church and the world.