Far from being solely an academic enterprise, the practice of theology can pique the interest of anyone who wonders about the meaning of life. This introduction to Christian theology - exploring its basic concepts, confessional content, and history - emphasizes the relevance of the key convictions of Christian faith to the challenges of today's world. Part I introduces the project of Christian theology and sketches the critical context that confronts Christian thought and practice today. Part II offers a survey of the key doctrinal themes of Christian theology, including revelation, the triune God, and the world as creation, identifying their biblical basis and the highlights of their historical development before giving a systematic evaluation of each theme. Part III provides an overview of Christian theology from the early church to the present. Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of An Introduction to Christian Theology includes a range of new visual and pedagogical features, including images, diagrams, tables, and more than eighty text boxes, which call attention to special emphases, observations, and applications to help deepen student engagement.

What is the place-if any-for violence in the Christian life? At the core of Christian faith is an experience of suffering violence as the price for faithfulness, of being victimized by the world's violence, from Jesus himself to martyrs who have died while following him. At the same time, Christian history had also held the opinion that there are situations when the follower of Jesus may be justified in inflicting violence on others, especially in the context of war. Do these two facets of Christian ethics and experience present a contradiction? Christian Martyrdom and Christian Violence: On Suffering and Wielding the Sword explores the tension between Christianity's historic reverence for martyrdom (suffering violence for faith) and Christianity's historical support of a just war ethic (involving the inflicting of violence). While the book considers the possibility that the two are unreconcilable, it also argues that they are ultimately compatible; but their compatibility requires a more humanized portrait of the Christian martyr as well as a stricter approach to the justified use of violence.

Far from being solely an academic enterprise, the practice of theology can pique the interest of anyone who wonders about the meaning of life. This introduction to Christian theology - exploring its basic concepts, confessional content, and history - emphasizes the relevance of the key convictions of Christian faith to the challenges of today's world. Part I introduces the project of Christian theology and sketches the critical context that confronts Christian thought and practice today. Part II offers a survey of the key doctrinal themes of Christian theology, including revelation, the triune God, and the world as creation, identifying their biblical basis and the highlights of their historical development before giving a systematic evaluation of each theme. Part III provides an overview of Christian theology from the early church to the present. Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of An Introduction to Christian Theology includes a range of new visual and pedagogical features, including images, diagrams, tables, and more than eighty text boxes, which call attention to special emphases, observations, and applications to help deepen student engagement.