The Gospel In Christian Traditions

Throughout the history of Christianity, there have been theological disputes that caused fissures among the faithful. There were the major ruptures of the Great Schism of 1054 and the Protestant Reformation. Since the Reformation, though, there has been an eruption of new denominations. The World Christian Database now list over 9000 worldwide. And new denominations are created every day, often when a group splits off from an established church because of a dispute over doctrine or leadership. With such a proliferation of denominations, could there possibly be one core Christian message that all churches share? That's the question that Ted Campbell sets out to answer in this book. He begins his examination of Christian doctrine where it started: in the gospels. He then shows how the gospel has been received and professed by Christian communities through the centuries, from the first "proto-Orthodox" Christian communities right through the modern evangelical, Pentecostal, and ecumenical movements. Campbell shows that, despite all the divisions, there is indeed a single unifying core of the faith that all Christians share. In the process, he offers a brief, well-written, and acceptable history of Christian doctrine that will be ideal for courses in the history of Christian thought.

Recommends both religious writings and books that reflect Christian values, and lists books suited to discussion groups and sharing with children

In Baptists and the Christian Tradition, editors Matthew Emerson, Christopher Morgan and Lucas Stamps compile a series of essays advocating "Baptist catholicity." This approach presupposes a critical, but charitable, engagement with the whole church, both past and present, along with the desire to move beyond the false polarities of an Enlightenment-based individualism on the one hand and a pastiche of postmodern relativism on the other.

Description of the roles women have played in the construction and practice of Christian traditions, from the earliest disciples to the latest theologians.

In two large and somewhat technical books, Memory and Manuscript and Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity, Professor Gerhardsson put forward some controversial theories about how the gospel material came down to us, arguing that modern critics had not paid enough attention to the nature of oral tradition in the ancient world. This short study presents his views clearly and simply, as they have been tested and refined over the past fifteen years since they were first put forward. The reader will find not only a straightforward presentation of one way in which the writing of our gospels may be explained, but also a series of penetrating questions which will prompt further thought, whether from radicals or conservatives. Here is strong argument for the reliability of the gospels coupled with an acknowledgment of the degree of our ignorance and a stimulus to further questioning.

We are used to the idea of people believing in Christ, but did the early church consider that Jesus also had faith in God? This book examines the meaning of faith in Judaism and Graeco-Roman literature, identifies two main trajectories of interest in the question of Jesus' faith, and traces the progress of these trajectories through the literature of the first four Christian centuries, up to the point where the interpretation of Jesus as a man of faith eventually proved incompatible with the orthodoxy of Nicene Christianity.

In this five-volume opus—now available in its entirety in paperback—Pelikan traces the development of Christian doctrine from the first century to the twentieth. "Pelikan's The Christian Tradition [is] a series for which they must have coined words like 'magisterial'."—Martin Marty, Commonweal

The historical reliability of the Gospels has been discussed from the Enlightenment onwards. At present, many scholars assume that the canonical Gospels as we have them are essentially fictions constructed near the end of the first century to meet the needs of the Christian movement of that time and that they give us very little reliable information regarding the life and teachings of Jesus. But have these scholars really understood the nature of the written Gospels? Birger Gerhardsson has devoted almost the whole of his academic career to the study of the oral tradition that is the basis of our canonical Gospels. His groundbreaking doctoral dissertation, "Memory and Manuscript," drew a parallel between the way in which the rabbis taught their disciples and the way Jesus taught his disciples: both required memorization of the master s teaching. Rabbinic disciples handed on their masters tradition with great care, and we can be sure that the disciples of Jesus would have been no less careful with what he taught them! "The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition" presents three studies that illuminate how the early Christians passed on tradition. The Origins of the Gospel Tradition gives an accessible review of the debate regarding the extent to which the New Testament evangelists enable us to hear the voice of Jesus. The Path of the Gospel Tradition contains a critical discussion of the approach of the form-critical school to the problem of the early Christian tradition, ending with an alternative sketch of the path of the tradition. The Gospel Tradition offers a rather detailed picture of various aspects of the content and method of early Christian tradition and assesses thereliability of the four oldest of the extant written records. In the current climate of skepticism I know of nothing more helpful than Birger Gerhardsson s writings, and that is why I am particularly delighted that the pieces that compose the present volume are again available in print. New generations of students deserve to have them, not merely because they ultimately vindicate the church s estimate of Jesus, but because they are true to the nature of the Gospels themselves and to the purpose of those who wrote them." Donald A. Hagner (from the Foreword)