Did Jesus want there to be a Church that would continue his work? What is her message, what constitutes it? How should the Church proclaim the gospel of Christ? What structure is there for the sacred, the mystery? In this book Paul Avis presents his answer to these questions as a fruit of more than twenty years of research and reflection. He argues that there is something solid and dependable at the foundation of the Church's life and mission. The Church is often battered and divided, but at its core is a treasure that is indestructible.Jesus did want a church in a sense, but not as we know it. What is clear is that Jesus himself proclaimed the gospel of the Kingdom and that his disciples proclaimed the gospel whose content was Jesus Christ himself, the Kingdom in person. So a chapter is devoted to the relationship between the Church and the gospel that it confesses. A complementary approach to the mystery of Christianity is the quest for the essence of Christianity, a classic gambit of modern theology. The last major study of this question was by Stephen Sykes in 1984 and that left several matters hanging in the air. This quest brings us back to Jesus with the formula, 'Christianity is Christ'. But this proves to be not the simplistic slogan that it first appears, as it opens up into a set of concepts that elucidate the structure of Christian belief, the texture of faith. When these are articulated in a critical way, they reveal the abiding structure of Christian theology, in which certain polarities (nature and grace, reason and revelation, immanence and transcendence) are inescapable. But the more we probe these, the more we come up against the limits of human thought about the divine, so the book concludes with a reflection on paradox and mystery.

Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), founder of Reconstructionism and the rabbi who initiated the first Bat Mitzvah, also produced the longest Jewish diary on record. In twenty-seven volumes, written between 1913 and 1978, Kaplan shares not only his reaction to the great events of his time but also his very personal thoughts on religion and Jewish life. In Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan Volume III, 1942-1951, readers experience his horror at the persecution of the European Jews, as well as his joy in the founding of the State of Israel. Above all else, Kaplan was concerned with the survival and welfare of the Jewish people. And yet he also believed that the well-being of the Jewish people was tied to the safety and security of all people. In his own words, "Such is the mutuality of human life that none can be saved, unless all are saved". In the first volume of Communings of the Spirit, editor Mel Scult covers Kaplan's early years as a rabbi, teacher of rabbis, and community leader. In the second volume, readers experience the economic problems of the 1930s and their shattering impact on the Jewish community. The third volume chronicles Kaplan's spiritual and intellectual journey in the 1940s. With candour and vivid detail, Kaplan explores his evolving beliefs concerning a democratic Judaism; religious naturalism; and the conflicts, uncertainties, and self-doubts he faced in the first half of the twentieth century, including his excommunication by the ultra-Orthodox in 1945 for taking a more progressive approach to the liturgy. In his publications, Kaplan eliminated the time-honored declarations of Jewish chosen-ness as well as the outdated doctrines concerning the resurrection of the dead. He wanted a prayer book that Jews could feel reflected their beliefs and experiences; he believed that people must mean what they say when they pray. Kaplan was a man of contradictions, but because of that, all the more interesting and significant. Scholars of Judaica and rabbinical studies will value this honest look at the preeminent American Jewish thinker and rabbi of our times.