Throughout the Gospel of John Jesus poses a series of questions: "What are you looking for?" "Do you want to be healed?" "Why do I speak to you at all?" as well as the most poignant, addressed to Peter, "Do you love me?" Michael Crosby's reflections on these questions take us into the heart of John's gospel. He highlights an important theme: the tension between a model of the church that gives emphasis to the Petrine principle of apostolic authority and a model of the church -- characterized by the Beloved Disciple -- that gives greater emphasis to loving service and discipleship. As Crosby shows, it is in balancing the roles of both Peter and the Beloved Disciple that the church best reflects the spirit of Christ.

Reflects what traditional proverbs used in Christian catechetical, liturgical, and ritual contexts reveal about Tanzanian appropriations of and interpretations of Christianity.

This book investigates the relationship between justification by faith and final judgment according to works as found in Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians within a Protestant theological framework. Benjamin M. Dally first demonstrates the diversity and breadth of mainstream Protestant soteriology and eschatology beginning at the time of the Reformation by examining the confessional standards of its four primary ecclesial/theological streams: Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Anglican. The soteriological structure of each is assessed (i.e., how each construes the relationship between justification and final judgment), with particular attention given to how each speaks of the place of good works at the final judgment. This initial examination outlines the theological boundaries within which the exegesis of Second Corinthians can legitimately proceed, and illuminates language and conceptual matrices that will be drawn upon throughout the remainder of thebook. Then, drawing upon the narrative logic of Paul's Early Jewish thought-world, Dally examines the text of Second Corinthians to discern its own soteriological framework, paying particular attention to both the meaning and rhetorical function of the "judgment according to works" motif as it is utilized throughout the letter. The book concludes by offering a Protestant synthesis of the relationship between justification and final judgment according to works in Second Corinthians, giving an explanation of the role of works at the final judgment that arguably alleviates a number of tensions often perceived in other readings devoted to this key aspect of Pauline exegesis and theology. Dally ultimately argues a three-fold thesis: (1) For the believer one's earthly conduct, taken as a whole, is best spoken of in the language of inferior/secondary "cause" and/or "basis" as far as its import at the last judgment. (2) One's earthly conduct, again taken as a whole, is soteriologically necessary (not solely, but secondarily nonetheless) and not simply of importance for the bestowal of non-soteriological, eschatological rewards. (3) There are crucial resources from within mainstream Protestantism to authorize such ways of speaking and to simultaneously affirm these contentions in conjunction with a robust, strictly forensic/imputational, "traditional" Protestant understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Jon Sobrino continues the magisterial christology begun in Jesus the Liberator. In that book Sobrino examined the identity of Jesus in relation to his message, his interlocutors, and the conflict that led to his death. In this second volume he takes up the Resurrection of Christ, the christology of the New Testament, and finally the christological formulae of the early church councils.

Throughout Christ the Liberator Sobrino writes from the reality of faith, as set in motion by the event of Jesus Christ, and from the situation of the victims -- the "Crucified People" of history -- particularly the poor of El Salvador, with whom he works. With Christ the Liberator Sobrino's christology takes its place among the most significant contributions of Latin America to the church and theology today.