God calls humans to be creative. The human drive to represent transcendent truths witnesses to the fact that we are destined to be transfigured and to transfigure the world. It is worth asking, then, what truthful representations, whether in art, spirituality, or theology, teach us about the one who is our truth, the one who made us and the one in whose image we are made. All Things Beautiful: An Aesthetic Christology is an experimental and constructive aesthetic Christology sourced by close readings of a wide array of artistic works, canonical and popular-including poems, films, essays, novels, plays, short stories, sculptures, icons, and paintings-as well as art criticism and passages from the Christian Scriptures. From first to last, these readings engage in conversation with the deep, broad wisdom of the Christian theological tradition. The liturgical calendar guides the themes of the book, beginning with Advent and Christmas; carrying through Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, and Ascension; and ending with Pentecost and Ordinary Time. Chris Green brings together these readings to create a mosaic-like impression of Jesus as the one through whom God graces and gives nature to all things, his life and death redeeming the whole creation, including human creativity and artistic endeavor, and transfiguring it into the full, free flourishing that God has purposed. This vision of Christ holds promise for artists and theologians, as well as preachers and teachers, revealing how our compulsions to create-and the meanings with which we endow our creations-become a site of the Spirit's presence, opening us to the goodness and wildness of God.

North America has rarely produced a theologian as creative and productive as Robert W. Jenson. A truly ecumenical thinker, Jenson consistently demonstrates the way that the church's confession of the triune God of scripture restructures Christian thinking. Jenson's work on the nature of theology has focused on the category of "promise": a way with language that opens up new possibilities. At the heart of Jenson's theology of the gospel is the conviction that, in Christ, God discloses a word of pure promise to us, enabling new patterns of life. Just as the gospel opens up new ways of living, good theology unfolds into new interpretations and articulations. Engaging Jenson's work across vital areas, this volume lays out the contours and key contributions of Jenson's thought for modern Christology, theological interpretation of Scripture, the doctrine of the Trinity in light of the recent Trinitarian revival, and ecumenical theological relations. This volume gathers together essays by some of contemporary theology's most capable thinkers, such as Oliver Crisp, Stephen Holmes, Joseph Mangina, Peter Leithart, Telford Work, Eugene Rogers, R. Kendall Soulen, and Peter Ochs, to examine the ways in which Jenson's own theology functions as "promise," enabling further theological visions and articulations.

The Spirit and the Screen engages contemporary films from the perspective of pneumatology to give theologies of culture fruitful new perspectives that begin with the Spirit rather than other common theological contact points (Christology, anthropology, theological ethics, creation, eschatology, etc.). This book explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film, as well as literary devices that draw allusions to the Spirit. It offers three main contributions: first, it explores how Christian understandings of the person and work of the Spirit illuminate the nature of film and film-making; second, it shows that there are in fact “Spirit figures� in film (as distinct from but inseparable from Christ-figures), even if sometimes they’re not intended as such, “Spirit-led� characters, are moved to act “prophetically,� against their inclinations and in excess of their skill or knowledge and with eccentric, life-giving creativity; third, it identifies subtle and explicit symbolizations of the Spirit in pop culture, symbolizations that requires deep, careful thinking about the Christian doctrine of the Spirit and generate new horizons for cultural analysis. The contributors of this book explore these issues, asking how Christian convictions and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about films and film-making.