Saints and holy (and not so holy) individuals out of whom they are fashioned have held a perennial fascination for sinful, wayward mankind. Over the last forty years, Peter Brown has transformed historians' ways of looking at early Christian saints, with a new, anthropologically orientated approach. His ideas are tested and modified in novel ways in this book which takes a broad view of the cult of saints in its first millennium.

The legacy of late medieval Franciscan thought is uncontested: for generations, the influence of late-13th and 14th century Franciscans on the development of modern thought has been celebrated by some and loathed by others. However, the legacy of early Franciscan thought, as it developed in the first generation of Franciscan thinkers who worked at the recently-founded University of Paris in the first half of the 13th century, is a virtually foreign concept in the relevant scholarship. The reason for this is that early Franciscans are widely regarded as mere codifiers and perpetrators of the earlier medieval, largely Augustinian, tradition, from which later Franciscans supposedly departed. In this study, leading scholars of both periods in the Franciscan intellectual tradition join forces to highlight the continuity between early and late Franciscan thinkers which is often overlooked by those who emphasize their discrepancies in terms of methodology and sources. At the same time, the contributors seek to paint a more nuanced picture of the tradition's legacy to Western thought, highlighting aspects of it that were passed down for generations to follow as well as the extremely different contexts and ends for which originally Franciscan ideas came to be employed in later medieval and modern thought.

T&T Clark Reader in Kierkegaard as Theologian presents an anthology of Kierkegaard's most influential works. Lee Barrett examines Kierkegaard's explicit reflections on the appropriate passionately engaged way to engage in the theological task, by discussing such key themes as the nature and purpose of human life, sin both as a disease and as a culpable act, faith, and the perception of Christ as the enactment in time of God's eternal self-giving compassion. Never before gathered together in one place, the texts featured in this reader include The Concept of Anxiety, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Philosophical Crumbs and Works of Love. Additional links to further critical Kierkegaardian texts are provided by the Kierkegaard Research Center of the University of Copenhagen, the Howard and Edna Hong Kierkegaard Library of St Olaf College, and the resources of the Soren Kierkegaard Society. With each chapter featuring an introduction, explanatory notes, discussion questions and recommendation for further reading in both the primary and secondary literature, students will be able to fully discern and understand the theological dimensions of Kierkegaard's works.

The essays in this volume examine some of the fundamental doctrinal convictions of Martin Luther and the Reformation legacy, as well as the maturation and development of these convictions in the theology of Karl Barth. The broad evangelical vision that spans its various confessional tributaries is presented in the essays of this volume. Together these studies serve as a cumulative argument for the ongoing coherence, meaning, and consequence of that vision, one that at its heart is constructive and ecumenical rather than narrowly polemical. Kimlyn J. Bender examines a variety of topics such as the relation of Christ and the Church as understood in the theology of Luther and Barth, the centrality of Christ to an understanding of all the solas of the Reformation, the place and significance of the Reformers in Barth's own thought, and Barth's theology in conversation with distant descendants of the Reformation often neglected, including Baptists in America, Pietists in Europe, and Barth's own complicated relationship with Kierkegaard. Bender concludes his discussion by presenting constructive proposals for a Church and university "on the way" and thus ever-reforming.

This reference provides a thorough survey of the theology of and from Africa. The first part of the work presents a historical overview of African theology, while the second part includes citations for more than 600 books and articles. The citations are grouped in topical chapters, and each entry is accompanied by a descriptive and evaluative annotation. The entries focus on works published from 1955 to 1992, and cover sources that exemplify the importance of social and cultural analyses and the various types of African theology. Most of the sources have been published in Africa, the United States, or Great Britain. While most are in English, many are in French. Young begins with a narrative discussion of the history of African theology. This section includes chapters on the Christianization of African traditional religion, the Africanization of Christianity, and the impact of Black theology in South Africa. The annotated bibliography follows. The bibliography is divided into four chapters, which contain entries on historical and social analysis, traditional religion in Africa, African theology during different periods, and Black South African theology. The volume concludes with indexes of names, titles, and subjects.

Irenaeus' theology of the Holy Spirit is often highly regarded amongst theologians today, but that regard is not universal, nor has an adequate volume of literature supported it. This study provides a detailed examination of certain principal, often distinctive, aspects of Irenaeus' pneumatology. In contrast to those who have suggested Irenaeus held a weak conception of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, Anthony Briggman demonstrates that Irenaeus combined Second Temple Jewish traditions of the spirit with New Testament theology to produce the most complex Jewish-Christian pneumatology of the early church. In so doing, Irenaeus moved beyond his contemporaries by being the first author, following the New Testament writings, to construct a theological account in which binitarian logic did not diminish either the identity or activity of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, he was the first to support his Trinitarian convictions by means of Trinitarian logic. Briggman advances the narrative that locates early Christian pneumatologies in the context of Jewish traditions regarding the spirit. In particular, he argues that the appropriation and repudiation of Second Temple Jewish forms of thought explain three moments in the development of Christian theology. First, the existence of a rudimentary pneumatology correlating to the earliest stage of Trinitarian theology in which a Trinitarian confession is accompanied by binitarian orientation/logic, such as in the thought of Justin Martyr. Second, the development of a sophisticated pneumatology correlating to a mature second century Trinitarian theology in which a Trinitarian confession is accompanied by Trinitarian logic. This second moment is visible in Irenaeus' thought, which eschewed Jewish traditions that often hindered theological accounts of his near contemporaries, such as Justin, while adopting and adapting Jewish traditions that enabled him to strengthen and clarify his own understanding of the Holy Spirit. Third, the return to a rudimentary account of the Spirit at the turn of the third century when theologians such as Tertullian, Origen, and Novatian repudiated Jewish traditions integral to Irenaeus' account of the Holy Spirit.

This textbook offers a systematic introduction to eschatology. The first part introduces the historical approaches to eschatology. The second part concerns the reasons for eschatological statements in light of important aspects of the doctrine of God and Christ. The third part is devoted to different concepts of the relationship between eternity and time, space and infinitude as well as the question of what is good, true and beautiful. Using a thematic structure, the multiple different approaches and concepts of modern eschatology are clearly presented, and illuminated by the perspective of the classical teachings on the Last Things; which are ultimately brought together in a synthesis. This is an important contribution to a crucial part of the study of systematic theology.

Readers' Choice Award Winner "For God so loved the world . . ." We believe these words, but what do they really mean? Does God choose to love, or does God love necessarily? Is God's love emotional? Does the love of God include desire or enjoyment? Is God's love conditional? Can God receive love from human beings? Attempts to answer these questions have produced sharply divided pictures of God's relationship to the world. One widely held position is that of classical theism, which understands God as necessary, self-sufficient, perfect, simple, timeless, immutable and impassible. In this view, God is entirely unaffected by the world and his love is thus unconditional, unilateral and arbitrary. In the twentieth century, process theologians replaced classical theism with an understanding of God as bound up essentially with the world and dependent on it. In this view God necessarily feels all feelings and loves all others, because they are included within himself. In The Love of God, John Peckham offers a comprehensive canonical interpretation of divine love in dialogue with, and at times in contrast to, both classical and process theism. God's love, he argues, is freely willed, evaluative, emotional and reciprocal, given before but not without conditions. According to Peckham's reading of Scripture, the God who loves the world is both perfect and passible, both self-sufficient and desirous of reciprocal relationships with each person, so that "whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

In the early years of contesting patriarchy in the academy and religious institutions, feminist theology often presented itself as a unified front, a sisterhood. The term "feminist theology," however, is misleading. It suggests a singular feminist purpose driven by a unified female cultural identity that struggles as a cohesive whole against patriarchal dominance. Upon closer inspection, the voice of feminist theology is in fact a chorus of diverging perspectives, each informed by a variety of individual and communal experiences, and an embattled scholarly field, marked by the effects of privilege and power imbalances. This complexity raises an important question: How can feminist theologians respect the irreducible diversity of women's experiences and unmask entrenched forms of privilege in feminist theological discourse? In Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference, Margaret D. Kamitsuka urges the feminist theological community to examine critically its most deeply held commitments, assumptions, and goals-especially those of feminist theologians writing from positions of privilege as white or heterosexual women. Focusing on women's experience as portrayed in literature, biblical narrative, and ethnographic writing, Kamitsuka examines the assumptions of feminist theology regarding race and sexuality. She proposes theoretical tools that feminist theologians can employ to identify and hopefully avoid the imposition of racial or sexual hegemony, thus providing invaluable complexity to the movement's identity, and ultimately contributing to current and future Christian theological issues. Blending poststructuralist and postcolonial theoretical resources with feminist and queer concerns, Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference makes constructive theological proposals, ranging from sin to christology. The text calls feminist theologians to a more rigorous self-critical approach as they continue to shape the changing face of Christian theological discourse.

This volume frames the question of responsibility as a problem of agency in relation to the systems and structures of globalization. According to Ricoeur responsibility is a "shattered concept" when considered too narrowly as a problem of act, agency and individual freedom. To examine this Esther Reed develops a short genealogy of modern liberal and post-liberal concepts of responsibility in order to understand better the relationship dominant modern framings of the meanings of responsibility. Reed engages with writings by major modern (Schleiermacher, Hegel, Marx, Weber) and post-liberal (Buber, Levinas, Derrida, Badiou, Butler, Young, Critchley) theorists to illustrate the shift from an ethnic responsibility built on notions of accountability and attributions to an ethic responsibility that starts variously from the 'other'. Reed sees Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the most promising partner of this theological dialogue, as his learning of responsibility from the risen Christ present now in the (global) church is a welcome provocation to new thinking about the meaning of responsibility learned from land, distant neighbour, (global) church and the bible. Bonhoeffer's reflections on the centre, boundaries and limits of responsibility remain helpful to Christian people struggling with an increasingly exhausted concept of accountability.

This bibliography documents and annotates the various articles and books devoted to Jewish ethics. It is divided into two sections. The first is an essay exploring philosophical questions and the way in which Jewish thinkers wrestle with them. The second part is an annotated bibliography with author, subject, and title indexes that brings together widely scattered or relatively unknown works. Representing the broad spectrum of Jewish thought, it includes articles from journals published by Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Jewish institutions, scholarly articles and books published in the United States and Europe, traditional collections of Hebrew ethical writings, both contemporary and classical, and anthologies. The bibliographical survey is divided into five major sections: general works and anthologies, the history of Jewish ethics, issues in Jewish ethics, themes in Jewish ethics, and Jewish ethics and non-Jewish ethical theories.