The Irrelevance And Relevance Of The Christian Message

'The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message' is a transcript of Paul Tillich's 1963 Earl Lectures at the Graduate Theological Union. Delivered just two years before his death, these lectures present Tillich's heartfelt and deeply personal understanding of the relevance of Christian preaching and Christian theology. Why, Tillich asks, has the Christian message become seemingly irrelevant to contemporary society? Is the gospel able to give answers to the questions raised by the existentialist analysis of the human predicament? Yes, he answers -- but in order to do so Christian teaching and preaching need to undergo dramatic renewal, the root of which requires an affirmation of love as central to Christian identity. Further, we need to recognize that this task is not limited to preachers and theologians; all of us together are responsible for the irrelevance or the relevance of the gospel in our time.

Paul Tillich is best known today as a theologian of mediation. Many have come to view him as an out-of-date thinker a safe exemplar of a mid-twentieth-century theological liberalism. The way he has come to be viewed contrasts sharply with the current theological landscape one dominated by the notion of radicality. In this collection, Russell Re Manning breaks with the widespread opinion of Tillich as 'safe' and dated. Retrieving the Radical Tillich depicts the thinker as a radical theologian, strongly marked but never fully determined by the urgent critical demands of his time. From the crisis of a German cultural and religious life after the First World War, to the new realities of religious pluralism, Tillich's theological responses were always profoundly ambivalent, impure and disruptive, asserts Re Manning. The Tillich that is outlined and analyzed by this collection is never merely correlative. Far from the dominant image of the theologian as a liberal accommodationist, Re Manning reintroduces the troubled and troubling figure of the radical Tillich.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, there was prolific misuse and abuse of the concept of divine wrath in church pulpits. In pursuit of a faithful understanding of what he calls a «lost doctrine,» the author of this study investigates the substantial history of how «the wrath of God» has been interpreted in Christian theology and preaching. Starting with the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and moving historically through Christianity's most important theologians and societal changes, several models of divine wrath are identified. The author argues for the reclamation of a theological paradigm of divine wrath that approaches God's love and God's wrath as intrinsically enjoined in a dynamic tension. Without such a commitment to this paradigm, this important biblical aspect of God is in danger of suffering two possible outcomes. Firstly, it may suffer rejection, through conscious avoidance of the narrow misinterpretations of divine wrath that dominate contemporary theology and preaching. Secondly, irresponsible applications of divine wrath may occur when we neglect to engage and understand the wrath of God as inseparable from God's justice and love in Christian theology and proclamation.

This book explores how Paul Tillich’s systematic theology, focusing on the concepts of being and reason can benefit nonhuman animals, while also analysing how taking proper account of nonhuman animals can prove immensely beneficial. The author first explains the body of Tillich’s system, examining reason and revelation, life and the spirit, and history and the kingdom of God. The second section undertakes a critical analysis of Tillichian concepts and their adequacy in relation to nonhuman animals, addressing topics such as Tillich’s concept of ‘technical reason’ and the multidimensional unity of life. The author concludes by discussing the positive concepts in Tillich’s systematic theology with respect to nonhuman animals and creation, including the concept of universal salvation and Tillich’s interpretation of nonhuman animals and the Fall in Genesis.

Many people who have thought about God have not thought about animals, or about the relationship between the two. But among those who have are some of the most celebrated religious thinkers, including Michel de Montaigne, Thomas Tryon, John Wesley, John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and Paul Tillich. This volume comprises 24 scholarly studies that detail challenges to the dominant anthropocentrism of most religious traditions. The editors have brought together Jewish, Unitarian, Christian, transcendentalist, Muslim, Hindu, Dissenting, deist, and Quaker voices, each offering a unique theological perspective that counters the neglect of the nonhuman. Animal Theologians is divided into three parts starting with the pioneers who first saw a relationship between animals and divinity, those who contributed to the expansion of social sensibility to animals, and ending with the work of contemporary theologians. The essays in this volume use contextual and historical background to describe what led animal theologians to their beliefs, and then pave way for further developments in this expanding field. This volume is an act of reclaiming different religious traditions for animals by recovering lost voices.

Higher education has not escaped the imperative of transformation which has marked the post-apartheid South African landscape. The nature of the changes at universities, however, is open to critique. Fundamental questions concerning the ideological moorings of knowledge and the politics of the curriculum have not yet been satisfactorily addressed. During the apartheid era, theology faculties played influential roles at traditional universities, and were often characterised by unsettling exclusion of non- Christian religions, non-Calvinist denominations and marginalised voices. This volume of essays evidences a process at the University of the Free State?s Faculty of Theology to reflect seriously about the need for transformation at the fundamental level, that is, of knowledge. The challenge for theology at a public university is framed in terms of epistemological transformation. A number of outstanding public intellectuals such as Jonathan Jansen, Crain Soudien and Lis Lange have been invited to present papers to clarify the conceptual challenge and what this might entail for theology. Well-known theologians such as Conrad Wethmar, Allan Boesak and Martin Prozesky reflect on the nature of theology and religion at universities amidst social exigencies. Two international theologians ? Harold Attridge from the prestigious Yale Divinity School and Bram van de Beek from the Free University of Amsterdam ? share their experiences of institutions that exemplify excellence and ecumenical openness. Theologians from the Departments of Practical Theology and Systematic Theology at the University of the Free State, writing from the ?inside?, articulate the challenges they envision for theology in a post-apartheid dispensation. The essays represent a variety of perspectives, but all attest to a commitment to re-think the nature and task of theology at a public university, accepting the challenge of knowledge and power, of plurality and otherness, and of restorative intellectual justice. These timely essays make a unique contribution to the discourses on transformation and on theology at a public university.

In this engaging volume, Capetz argues that Protestants have largely ignored Luther's heritage when it comes to thinking about biblical authority and instead have followed Calvin's biblicism, leading to many intellectual and moral problems in the face of a fully historical-critical understanding of the Bible in our time. After prefacing the book with a personal story that illustrates what is at stake in this question for the church's pastoral ministry, he examines in detail the debate between Barth--an heir of Calvin--and Bultmann--a Lutheran--regarding Sachkritik or "content criticism" of Scripture since their debate serves to clarify the central issue facing Protestants today. He then traces their debate back to the Reformation itself to show how the difference between Luther and Calvin presented Protestants from the outset with two conflicting models of biblical authority. He then reflects on how this question of the proper understanding of biblical authority manifests itself in the debates over sexual ethics that have plagued mainline denominations for the past four decades. And he concludes by arguing that Luther's heritage provides Protestants with a viable way to engage in a robust theological interpretation of the Bible that does not violate what historical criticism has taught us about it.

Trajectory of the Twenty-first Century explores what many prophets of the twentieth century, such as Oswald Spengler, Paul Tillich, Aldous Huxley, Jacques Ellul, and others, have predicted would transpire in the current century. Their vision included an out-of-control technological system and a return to religious sentiment that will ultimately undermine the system to which it is reacting. This book aims to accurately present their positions and draw certain logical conclusions from them that pertain to the course of history in our time. The book's theme argues that modernity is a secularized version of millennial Christianity, which reaches its fullest development in the twenty-first century and will regress into what Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev called the new Middle Ages or a new religious period. This will mean the twilight of modern technological society, as its values of rationalism give way to a postrationalist society. Ironically, decline will come through further technological advance. Omnicide threatens through religious world war driven by transcendent values and modern weaponry. Jihadist thinking and posthumanist technology both establish the omnicidal mentatlity. New technologies such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence created under millennial inspiration to reach for immortality could potentially bring an end to the human species either through a slow, steady obsolescence or through environmental catastrophe. The titanic forces of technological progress and regress are on a direct collision course in the twenty-first century.