The Mystery And Agency Of God

There are two philosophical commitments requisite to Christian belief: that God is the ultimate mystery and that God is present and active in the world. Attempting to avoid the trappings of a radical distantiation and the immanent collapse of God and world, Frank Kirkpatrick argues for a theory of agency and action that preserves the mystery of God while providing a philosophically robust account of divine action in created time and space. Kirkpatrick proposes a way around the stalemates that have stymied thought on divine agency and enters into conversation with significant figures in systematic theology.

In God, Mystery, and Mystification, Denys Turner presents eight essays covering the major issues of philosophical and practical theology that he has focused on over the fifty years of his academic career. While a somewhat heterogeneous collection, the chapters are loosely linked by a focus on the mystery of God and on distinguishing that mystery from merely idolatrous mystifications. The book covers three main fields: theological epistemology, medieval and early modern mystical theologies, and the relation of Christian belief to natural science and politics. Turner develops the implications of a moderate realist account of theological knowledge as distinct from a fashionable, postmodernist epistemology. This modern realist epistemology is embodied in connections between theoretical, speculative theologies and the practice of the Christian faith in a number of different ways, but mainly as bearing upon the practical, lived connections between faith and reason, between reason and the mystical, between faith and science, and among faith, prayer, and politics. Scholars and advanced students of theology, religious studies, the history of ideas, and medieval thought will be interested in this book.

A highly insightful study of three major movements in Roman Catholic theology over the past thirty years. This fascinating work of theological scholarship offers an exceptionally broad scope and powerfully unifying theme. Gaspar Martinez first offers penetrating interpretations of three major contemporary theologians working on three continents, in quite dissimilar historical, cultural, social, and economic situations. Then he goes on to illustrate how Johannes Metz, Gustavo GutiTrrez, and David Tracy each had a tensive ongoing relationship to the mid-twentieth century theologians and movements that formed them-Karl Rahner, nouvelle theologie, and Bernard Lonergan, respectively. Martinez brilliantly contextualizes each of these thinkers. In broad strokes, he sketches postwar Germany, postcolonial Peru, and the American century and shows how each man was formed by his era. He also examines the lines of influence and relationship between these theologians and some of their nontheological contemporaries: Metz and Adorno, Bloch, and Benjamin; GutiTrrez and Paulo Freire, JosT Carlos Mariategui, and the novelist JosT Marfa Arguedas; and Tracy and thinkers from Eliade and Ricoeur to Gadamer and Derrida.Martinez convincingly illustrates how each of these theologians in recent years has focused more directly on the mystery of God, entailing greater emphasis on spirituality and mysticism, with the consequence that the more properly theological their theologies have become the more they have become negative theologies.

This book fills a real need for pastors and students. Though there is currently a large body of material on the theological interpretation of Scripture, most of it is highly specific and extremely technical. J. Todd Billings here provides a straightforward entryway for students and pastors to understand why theological interpretation matters and how it can be done. / A solid, constructive theological work, The Word of God for the People of God presents a distinctive Trinitarian, participatory approach toward reading Scripture as the church. Billings's accessible yet substantial argument for a theological hermeneutic is rooted in a historic vision of the practice of scriptural interpretation even as it engages a wide range of contemporary issues and includes several exegetical examples that apply to concrete Christian ministry situations.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Christian ethics is less a system of principles, rules, or even virtues, and more of a free and open-ended responsible witness to God's gracious action to be with and for others and the world. Postmodernity has left us with the risky uncertainty of knowing and doing the good. It also leaves us with the global risks of political violence and terrorism, economic globalization and financial crisis, and environmental destruction and global climate change. How should Christians respond to these problems? Thisbook creatively explores how Christian ethics is best understood as a witness to God's action, thereby providing the ethical framework for addressing the various problematic social issues that put our world at risk. Haddorff develops the notion of witness through a detailed study of Karl Barth's theological ethics. Barth, he argues, provides a language enabling us to know what a Christian ethics of witness actually looks like in both theory and in practice. In correspondence to God's gracious action, Christians remain free to think and act in faith, hope, and love in respondence to their unique circumstances, even in a world at risk. In their witness, Christians remain confident that God has not abandoned the world but loves and cares for its future.