Faith, hope, and love are central tropes in Christian teaching, and indeed are increasingly common in general vernacular, yet Swiss theologian Emil Brunner found the triad lacked the thorough theological study they demanded. These three words, Brunner argues, represent the totality of what it means to be Christian: faith as a receptable of God¿s timeless love, hope as our faith in what God has done in Christ, and the giving of love which makes humans truly human. To Brunner, faith, hope, and love are essential and total, reflecting the relation to Jesus in the three dimensions of time - the past, present, and future. Faith, Hope, and Love, originally delivered as the Earl Lectures in Berkeley, California, in 1955, therefore represents Brunner¿s accomplished expression on the significance and importance of these three values to Christians.
Now available for the first time in English, Karl Ludwig Schmidt¿s The Framework of the Story of Jesus (Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu) has been a foundation of New Testament studies. Through meticulous analysis, Schmidt demonstrates that the Synoptic Gospels are collections of individual stories that circulated orally and independently in the earliest Christian communities. Schmidt shows persuasively how, in their oral forms, most of these traditions existed apart from any sequence or specific temporal or geographic location, and that the chronology and locations now evident in the Gospels were applied by the evangelists while collecting and recording the oral traditions. Across much of the twentieth century and even into the present day, Schmidt¿s thesis has undergirded Gospel interpretation. Yet as long as The Framework of the Story of Jesus remained untranslated, Schmidt¿s ideas have been open to neglect and misinterpretation among Anglophone scholars. Discussion of the Synoptic Gospels and broader New Testament study will be enriched by engagement with the evidence and argument as originally presented.
Few books in theology have faced the twentieth century with all its horrors and yet revoiced the redemptive Christian antidote as convincingly as Joseph Ratzinger¿s 1968 masterpiece, Introduction to Christianity. In Gift to Church and World, John Cavadini and Donald Wallenfang present papers from the conference held at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this classic book¿s publication and, through it, Ratzinger¿s lasting influence on the world of Christian theology. Bishops, priests, and lay men and women set their hands to ¿the trowel of tribute,¿ honoring the legacy of Joseph Ratzinger and the pivotal role he has played in the recent history of the Catholic Church.Covering Ratzinger¿s work on fundamental theology, philosophical theology, dogmatic theology, spiritual theology, and pedagogy, the essays gathered here shed new light on Ratzinger¿s theological genius. Throughout, the authors return to his compelling expression of the divine call to reawaken to our true identity as beloved children of God. Altogether, readers will deepen their appreciation and understanding of the theological contributions of Joseph Ratzinger, and his continued relevance to mission and evangelisation today.
F.C. Baur¿s monumental study Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ (1845) is one of the greatest works of all time on the Apostle to the Gentiles. Laying the basis for modern Pauline scholarship, its three sections in turn thoroughly deconstruct the account of Paul found in Acts, examine the authentic, deuteron-Pauline and Pastoral Epistles, and draw the various strands of Paul¿s thought into a cohesive whole. In the first two parts Baur¿s historical-critical skills are at their finest, while in the third the influence of Hegel and Schleiermacher can be seen as Baur presents a comprehensive synthesis of Pauline theology.Since the original nineteenth-century English translation of Baur¿s masterpiece is no longer adequate, Hodgson and Brown¿s new edition will serve as the definitive resource for future scholarship. They not only present a new translation of the German, but also provide critical annotations and translations of all the scriptural passages originally quoted in Greek. Baur on Paul becomes truly available in English for the first time.
John Calvin¿s understanding of the extent of the atonement achieved in Christ¿s death is one of the most contested questions in historical theology. In common thought, Calvin¿s name is closely associated with the ¿limited atonement¿ stance canonized within the ¿TULIP¿ acronym, but Calvin¿s personal endorsement of a strictly particularist view, whereby Christ died for the elect alone, is debateable. In Calvin on the Death of Christ, Paul Hartog re-examines Calvin¿s writing on the subject, traces the various resulting historical trajectories, and engages with the full spectrum of more recent scholarship. In so doing, he makes clear that, while Calvin undoubtedly believed in unconditional election, he also repeatedly spoke of Christ dying for ¿all¿ or for ¿the world¿. These phrases must be held central if we are to discover Calvin¿s own view of the subject. Hartog¿s conclusions will surprise some, and may hold significant implications for the Calvinist tradition today. Throughout, however, they are cogently articulated and sensitively pitched.
From its first publication, what is now known as the Immortality Ode has been praised for the magnificence of its verse and disparaged for its paucity of meaning - the ¿immortality¿ of the subtitle unsubstantiated, and the ¿recollections¿ insubstantial. Yet Wordsworth¿s idea of immortality has clear precedents in the seventeenth century, and recollections of childhood are Traherne¿s starting point for the recovery of a lost vision comparable to Wordsworth¿s. Via the power of the imagination, or reason, they believed they could experience a renewed vision that both termed variously Paradise, or infinity, or immortality. Graham Davidson traces the origins of Wordsworth¿s poetic impetus to his resistance to the Cartesian division between mind and nature, first adumbrated by the Cambridge Platonists. If reunited, Paradise was regained, but this personal trajectory was tempered by a deep sympathy for the woes of mortal life. Davidson explores the consequent dialogue through some of Wordsworth¿s best-known poems, at the heart of which is the Ode. In the last section, he demonstrates how Wordsworth¿s publishing history led the Victorians and modernists to misinterpret his work; if one considers Eliot¿s Four Quartets as odes, facing several of the same problems as did Wordsworth, there is some irony in Eliot¿s dismissal of the Immortality Ode as ¿verbiage¿.
Is there a theology of the New Testament? Bishop Neill shows that arising out of many traditions and interpretations of Jesus even within the New Testament there is an underlying unity of faith summed up in the words "resurrection, spirit, reconciliation".
Ferdinand Christian Baur¿s Die Christliche Gnosis, first published in 1835, is considered by many to be the most important book on Gnosticism published in the nineteenth century and is a pivotal work within Baur¿s canon. Baur¿s unique thesis of a link between ancient and modern religious philosophy, as well as his conception of Gnosticism - developed through dialogues with his predecessors and contemporaries - consolidate Christian Gnosis as an important contribution to Christian theology. In this seminal work, written over a hundred years before the manuscript discovery at Nag Hammadi, Baur classifies the gnostic systems in terms of how they conceive the relationship of Christianity to Judaism and paganism, describing them in detail. He then goes on to describe the criticism of and reaction to gnosis in church history, before contending with the modern religious philosophy of his time, discussing Boehme, Schelling, Schleiermacher and Hegel. Christian Gnosis is Baur¿s first great religio-historical study, and Robert Brown¿s masterful translation ensures the work is as impactful today as it was on its first publication.
The publication of the Chinese Union Version (CUV) in 1919 was the culmination of a hundred years of struggle by Western missionaries working closely with Chinese assistants to produce a translation of the Bible fit for the needs of a growing church. Celebrating the CUV¿s centennial, The Translation of the Bible into Chinese explores the unique challenges faced by its translators in the context of the history of Chinese Bible translation.Ann Cui¿an Peng¿s personal experience of the role played by the CUV in Chinese Christian communities lends the narrative particular weight, while her role as director of the Commission on Bible Publication at the China Christian Council offers a unique insight into the continuing legacy of the CUV for Bible translators today.
Writing in the middle of the twentieth century, G.W. Bromiley was acutely aware of the renewal of debates surrounding baptism taking place within the Anglican church and elsewhere. These debates, which are still the cause of denominational division, can be best understood by tracing them back to their origins in the sixteenth century. Analysing the Anglican Reformers¿ views on baptism¿s sacramental status, its liturgical format and its theological substance, Bromiley places the current diversity of positions in its proper context. The legitimacy of infant baptism, the authority of ministers and the efficacy of grace are all discussed. Whether a scholar of ecclesiological and doctrinal history, or of the current debate within and between churches, this study is essential reading on the question of baptism past and present.
Nathan Soederblom (1866-1931), was not only a profoundly influential figure in Swedish church history, but also one of the great pioneers of the modern ecumenical movement. Elected Archbishop of Uppsala, the head of the Lutheran church in Sweden, in 1914, he was a ceaseless advocate for peace during the first world war. His collaboration with George Bell laid the foundations for intercommunion between the Church of Sweden and the Church of England. Finally, in the year before he died, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite this, until this landmark biography he was largely neglected by historians, the subject of only a few partial studies. In Nathan Soederblom: His Life and Work, Bengt Sundkler corrects this, with new analysis of Soederblom's meticulously preserved correspondence and interviews with his family, friends and former students. The resulting image is of a man deeply committed to his leadership of ecumenical projects, most significantly his movement of 'Life and Work', but also of a complex and fascinating personality.
The fascinating history of this extracanonicaltext, its background and reception
Now available in J.K.S. Reid's widely-praised translation, this is Calvin's most sustained treatment of the central theme of his theological writings, predestination.
Julian of Norwich¿s Revelations of Divine Love grapples with the same fundamental question that has vexed philosophers and theologians since the advent of monotheistic religion, and continues as a barrier to belief for many today. Namely, if God is so good, how can natural disaster, genocide, trauma - and my present suffering - occur? Historically, there have been two apparently very different approaches to the problem: the pastoral, or practical, on the one hand and the systematic on the other. Richard Norton, however, suggests that these two lines of thought may not be as separate as they seem, and may indeed be dependent on one another for their cohesion. Drawing on Julian¿s medieval experience of personal and population-wide suffering, alongside that of more recent theologians such as Dorothy Solle and Jürgen Moltmann, Norton constructs a compassionate model of theodicy that can be of use to both pastoral and systematic theologians. Throughout, he remains sensitive to the raw atrocity of evil, while preserving a vision of God as the one who ensures that all shall be well.
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