William Placher looks at "classical" Christian theology (Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Martin Luther) and contrasts it with the Christian discourse about God that evolved in the seventeenth century. In particular, he deals with the notion of transcendence that gained prominence in this era and its impact on modern theology and modern thinking today. He persuasively argues that useful lessons can be drawn from premodern thinking about God, especially when viewed within the context of contemporary objections to it. This reexamination, according to Placher, has practical and profound implications for modern theology.

Carl Raschke and Susan Doughty Raschke argue that God's own self-revelation is neither exclusively male nor exclusively female but both at once. With this self-revelation of the "two in one", the authors contend that the scriptures are actually a radical proclamation of gender equality. Basing their findings on historical, anthropological, and biblical scholarship, they make a compelling argument that this awareness of God's dual nature was widely accepted and understood in the early years of Christianity but was intentionally obscured through the ages. This book is an essential starting point for the inquiry into the nature of God and creation. Readers will find resources from within the Christian tradition that aid in the understanding of both the male and the female sides of God.

The most loved and memorized verse in the Bible--John 3:16--is the focus of J. Sidlow Baxter's in-depth study of the love of God. (Biblical Studies)

In practically the only recent book in English to give a global picture of the theology of creation, Paul Haffner explores God's masterpiece, the spiritual and material cosmos, from the angels to man and woman centred in Christ. Paul Haffner provides an authoritative, detailed and systematic introduction to this fundamental subject in Christian theology. This is the first volume in a series that has now seen publication of The Sacramental Mystery, the Mystery of Reason and the Mystery of Mary. All these titles have become essential texts in Catholic seminary teaching, and the series is now being published in Italian translation by Vatican Press. Paul Haffner lectures in systematic and dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Pontifical Lateran University and the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome.

The debate about God-language has two opposing extremes. One side maintains that biblical language and masculine pronouns must be retained. The other argues that female imagery for God is preferable. Now Gail Ramshaw presents a third position, urging the inclusion of many images for God, the correction of others, and the total avoidance of any pronouns.

In a time of rapid change and global confusion, how are Christians to perceive God at work in history? The theme of God's presence among the nations is here addressed from different perspectives by two major theologians. Douglas John Hall explores foundational theological questions: the providence of God, the relation of global to national concerns, and the role of the church in relation to God's worldly work. Rosemary Radford Ruether raises the question of the presence of God in the context of three major crises of our times-the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global poverty and the preferential option for the poor, and the ecological crisis.

This volume provides new directions for thinking about the structure, organization, and "function" of the gods of the Levantine and ancient Near Eastern worlds, arguing that the structure of the pantheon worshiped in Syria-Palestine mirrored the social structure of the city-states of that region.

In this book, Kaplan enlarges on his notion of functional reinterpretation and then actually applies it to the entire ritual cycle of the Jewish year-a rarity in modern Jewish thought. This work continues to function as a central text for the Reconstructionist movement, whose influence continues to grow in American Jewry.

Draws on themes of the disability-rights movement to identify people with disabilities as members of a socially disadvantaged minority group rather than as individuals who need to adjust. Highlights the hidden history of people with disabilities in church and society. Proclaiming the emancipatory presence of the disabled God, the author maintains the vital importance of the relationship between Christology and social change. Eiesland contends that in the Eucharist, Christians encounter the disabled God and may participate in new imaginations of wholeness and new embodiments of justice.

Unqualified divine simplicity not only contradicts the central christological and trinitarian distinctions but it also renders implausible any positive relation between God and world, God and time.

Who was Jesus? A cynic-like figure? A political activist? Professor Marcus Borg, a nationally known Jesus scholar, here offers an accessible guide through the growing maze of literature and research on Jesus. This state-of the art volume will be a welcome resource especially for libraries, research specialists and students. The book is divided into three parts. Part One deals with Jesus scholarship in the 1980s, focusing on the renaissance in Jesus studies during that period and summarizing the portraits of Jesus offered by North American scholars. Part Two examines issues in contemporary Jesus research, particularly questions related to the "eschatological Jesus" and the "politics of Jesus." Part Three looks at the potential of current research for helping rethink Jesus' identity and the implications for the modern reader and the church. Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship represents a "summing up" of current research and an illuminating and important contribution to the ongoing debate. Marcus J. Borg is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, and the author of the recently published Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.

"Eerdmans' third edition of Dowey's The Knowledge of God in Calvin's Theology is both a welcomed and noteworthy publishing event, welcomed because its publication makes available for a new generation Dowey's substantive analysis of Calvin's thought and noteworthy because its author's breadth of scholarship, then and now, endows the work, with its expanded appendices, with a lively, penetrat-ing, and judicious perspective from which to assess Calvin's theological genius. With incisive clarity, Dowey both explains and criticizes Calvin's principle of the duplex cognitio domini, illuminating how the Reformer's concept of the knowledge of God the Creator and the knowledge of God the Redeemer controls and contributes to the whole of Calvin's thought. Although first published over forty years ago, Dowey's comprehensive study still remains the best on the subject." - Theology Today

Suppose that one is presented with a report of a miracle as an exception to nature's usual course. Should one believe the report and so come to favour the idea that a god has acted miraculously? Hume argued that no reasonable person should do anything of the kind. Many religiously sceptical philosophers agree with him, and have both defended and developed his reasoning. Some theologians concur or offer other reasons why those who are believers in God should also refuse to accept accounts of miracles as accurate reportage. This book argues to the contrary. For Houston, miracle stories may contribute towards the reasonableness of belief in God, and, appropriately attested, may be accepted by believers in God. To bolster his case he examines historically and intellectually significant writings about the miraculous. And having argued for the rejection of Hume, he explores the implications of this rejection for science, history and theology.

This compelling study by J. Christiaan Beker provides a moving, triumphant answer to one of life's greatest mysteries - the presence of suffering in God's world. Now an established classic in the discussion of the problem of evil, Suffering and Hope plumbs the Old Testament's response to earthly pain as well as Paul's own dealings with 'redemptive suffering.' Beker seeks to understand how the Bible's view of suffering relates to our present experience of suffering and to the Christian hope for the future creation. His concern is with the quality and character of bothe suffering and hope in a world where the question of suffering is inescapable. This powerful new edition features a foreword by Ben C. Ollenburger that describes the story behind the book - the dehumanizing conditions Beker endured as a slave laborer during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and the ways in which they helped shape the particular poignancy of his view of suffering. Readers will be moved both by Beker's personal transparency and by his biblical vision of 'hopeful suffering' - the apocalyptic trust in God's eventual victory over the power of death that poisons his creation.

A fresh examination of the history of early Christian doctrine, by one of the world s leading authorities, which sets its development in the political and cultural context of the Roman Empire.>

With this book, Anna Case-Winters provides a reconstruction of the doctrine of God based on process theology and feminist thought. She takes a fresh approach to the problem of theodicy (the justification of God's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil) and contends that traditional attempts to address this problem are unsuccessful because they do not discuss the meaning of omnipotence. Once the dispute is recast, it is not a question of how much power is attributed to God, but what kind. Case-Winters provides a coherent and theologically viable doctrine of omnipotence that avoids the pitfalls of traditional beliefs.

Thomas Altizer, one of America's premier theologians, searches for a proper understanding of the Christian God, which he believes can only be explicated when the question of origin is raised. He begins with an investigation of Hegelian thinking, develops his insights in dialogue with such thinkers as Augustine and Nietzsche, and then focuses on notions generated by the Christian epic poetry of Dante, Milton, and Blake. By explicating the absolute origin of God that only Christianity knows, Altizer discloses the origin of a uniquely Christian freedom while also touching upon such important themes as predestination, the fall, evil, and eternity.

"An excellent introduction to the prophets and the prophetic literature . . . The goal of the book is to understand the thought of the prophets in their historical contexts, and to communicate that understanding for our time. Its approach, while innovative, builds upon he best of contemporary analysis of the prophetic literature." --Gene M. Tucker Candler School of Theology Emory University "Koch's first volume on the prophets of ancient Israel displays his sound and creative scholarship and will fill a bibliographical gap.He displays the individuality of each prophet with perceptive insight, but he also compares and interrelates them in his various summaries. Furthermore, Koch relates his study of individual prophets to theological currents that have been flowing through the scholarly world in recent decades." --Bernhard W. Anderson Princeton Theological Seminary

Ted Peters brings Trinitarian theology conversation to a new level by examining the works of Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, Eberhard Jungel, Jurgen Moltmann, Robert Jenson, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Catherine Mowry LaCugna. He highlights talk about the becoming of God by process theologians, sexism in Trinitarian language by feminists, and divine and human community by liberation theologians. Peters addresses the relationship of God's eternity to the world's temporality, and claims that thinking of God as Trinity affirms that the word "God" applies to both eternity and temporality.

What do we proclaim when we preach the gospel? Paul McGlasson poses this question as the best point of departure for fresh theological work as a new era in theology begins. Influenced by contemporary discussion and indebted to classical tradition, McGlasson contrasts literal and critical interpretations of the Bible. His thought-provoking work presents and analyzes the central biblical and theological concepts of the Christian witness in an original and illuminating way.

Alvin Plantinga has done much to stimulate the resurgence of interest in the philosophy of religion. This collection of essays is written in response to his seminal paper, "Advice to Christian Philosophers", in which he issues a powerful, and inevitably controversial, challenge to religious philosophers to serve their own religious communities more faithfully. Plantinga advises Christian philosophers to expend more effort on issues of importance to the Christian community and, by implication, the particular Christian communities of which they are members. In addition he urges them to use their distinctively theistic and Christian perspectives in working in the many traditional areas of philosophy, a task on which the present volume focuses. The book begins by presenting Plantinga's essay, and the chapters that follow address issues in three traditional areas of interest to philosophers: epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. The first section, on epistemology and theism, contains essays by Alvin Plantinga, Jonathan Kvanvig, Richard Otte, and Stephen Wykstra. The next section, on metaphysics and theism, has papers by Linda Zagzebski, Del Ratzsch, Christopher Menzel, Charles Taliaferro, and Eleonore Stump. The final group, including Philip L.Quinn, William P.Alston, Scott MacDonald, and Carlton D.Fisher, addresses the subject of moral theory and theism. While certainly intended for Christian philosophers, other instructors and students of philosophy may be interested as well, because the book discusses several traditional philosophical issues in innovative ways, such as the nature of probability, scientific rationality, religious rationality, the logic of counterfactuals, and free will and moral responsibility.