Traditional patterns of educating and training clergy face not only crises of increasing cost and declining enrollment, but also a crisis of identity, since at present it is the academy, not the church, that shapes formation for ministry. This collection of essays outlines a history and a new vision of the church as the primary location of ministerial formation for the future of theological education.

About the Contributor(s): Hans W. Frei (1922-1988) was one of the most important American theologians of his generation. He spent the majority of his career teaching at Yale Divinity School, where he authored The Identity of Jesus Christ and The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, numerous essays, and a vast collection of unpublished works, which have since been published posthumously: Types of Christian Theology, Theology and Narrative, and the forthcoming Reading Faithfully: Writings from the Archives.

The problem of creationand grace has a long history of contention within Protestant and Catholic theology, involving not only internecine conflict within the traditions but fueling, as well, ecumenical debates that have continued a dogmatic divide. This volume traces out that conflict in modern Catholic and Protestant dogmatics and provides a historical genealogy that situates the origin of the problem within different emphases in the thought of St. Augustine. The author puts forward an argument and reconstruction of the problem that overcomes the longstanding abstractions, elisions, and divisions that have characterized the theological discussion. What is called for is a reclamation of the reading of Augustine in Aquinas and Luther, a recovery of an ethical metaphysics, and a Christological reconstruction of being and otherness as the path toward a concrete union of creation and grace.