The famed thinker and writer, C.S. Lewis, addressed issues that were paramount and pressing for religious persons in his time. In this volume, and in honor of Lewis, experts in their fields examine topics and challenges that face Christians living their faith today. Originally delivered as invited public lectures in a decade-long series--The Annual C.S. Lewis Legacy Lectures at Westminster College in Missouri--they include faith and reason, theological imagination, religion and ecology, the life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, antisemitism, Native American spirituality, science and religion, racism and poverty in the ministry and social action of Martin Luther King, Jr., misconceptions of Islam, religious pluralism, and religion and violence. The authors argue that these issues must be acknowledged and confronted in order for Christianity to remain, or to become relevant, in the current century.

In September 2002, twenty-one prominent Catholic and Protestant scholars released the groundbreaking document 'A Sacred Obligation,' which includes ten statements about Jewish-Christian dialogue focused around a guiding claim: 'Revising Christian teaching about Judaism and the Jewish people is a central and indispensable obligation of theology in our time.' Following the worldwide reception of their document, the authors have expanded their themes into Seeing Judaism Anew. The essays in this volume offer a conceptual framework by which Christians can rethink their understanding of the church's relationship to Judaism and show how essential it is that Christians represent Judaism accurately, not only as a matter of justice for the Jewish people, but also for the integrity of Christian faith. By linking New Testament scholarship to the Shoah, Christian liturgical life, and developments in the church, this volume addresses the important questions at the heart of Christian identity, such as: Are only Christians saved? Why did Jesus die? Why is Israel so important to Jews, and what should we think about the conflict in the Middle East? How is Christianity complicit in the Holocaust? What is important about Jesus being a Jew?

This book makes available in English important essays delivered at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate). Surveying official Vatican dialogues and documents over the preceding decades, the essays also explore challenging theological questions posed by the Shoah and the subsequent Catholic recognition of the permanence of the Jewish people's covenantal life with God. Featuring articles by Vatican officials, leading rabbis, diplomats, and Catholic and Jewish scholars, the book discusses the nature of Christian-Jewish relations and the need to remember its conflicted and often tragic history, aspects of a Christian theology of Judaism, the Catholic-Jewish dialogue since the Shoah, and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel. The book includes an essay by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, and appendices documenting the official rapprochement between the Church and the Jewish People in recent decades.

The amazing, historic journey of Jews and Christians coming together. In this book Philip Cunningham traces the remarkable developments in Catholic-Jewish relations over the last fifty years. Centuries of antipathy and suspicion, Cunningham says, have largely given way to a new, mutually enriching relationship between the two traditions of Judaism and Catholicism. A specialist in Christian-Jewish relations, Cunningham recounts the amazing, historic journey of Jews and Christians coming together in light of both Scripture and theology, covering the period from Vatican II up to the present day. After fifty years of significant dialogue, Cunningham suggests, Catholics and Jews are now on the threshold of building true shalom between their two communities, experiencing the Holy One anew in each other's distinctive and edifying ways of walking with God.

Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today explores the historical, biblical, christological, trinitarian, and ecclesiological dimensions of this crucial question: -How might we Christians in our time reaffirm our faith claim that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all humanity, even as we affirm the Jewish people's covenantal life with God?- This volume is the result of a transatlantic, interfaith collaboration among Boston College, Catholic Theological Union, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Lund University, Pontifical Gregorian University, and Saint Joseph's University. -This book opens up new vistas after forty-five years of Catholic-Jewish reconciliation. Not comfortable with resting on prior accomplishments, this work is a bold step forward in Catholic searching for a closer theological bond to Judaism without giving up the differences between the two faiths. . . . Offers the cutting edge of Christian theological views of Judaism.- -- Alan Brill Seton Hall University -Stunning in its scope, erudition, and creativity, this work is without parallel or peer. . . . A watershed contribution to a new era in the Jewish-Christian encounter, as both communities increasingly take decades of dialogue experience back into their own theological workshops and, with newfound partners lending support, strive to fashion a more adequate account of God's work among us.- -- Peter A. Pettit Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding, Muhlenberg College

In September 2002, twenty-one prominent Catholic and Protestant scholars released the groundbreaking document "A Sacred Obligation," which includes ten statements about Jewish-Christian dialogue focused around a guiding claim: "Revising Christian teaching about Judaism and the Jewish people is a central and indispensable obligation of theology in our time." Following the worldwide reception of their document, the authors have expanded their themes into Seeing Judaism Anew. The essays in this volume offer a conceptual framework by which Christians can rethink their understanding of the church's relationship to Judaism and show how essential it is that Christians represent Judaism accurately, not only as a matter of justice for the Jewish people, but also for the integrity of Christian faith. By linking New Testament scholarship to the Shoah, Christian liturgical life, and developments in the church, this volume addresses the important questions at the heart of Christian identity, such as: Are only Christians saved? Why did Jesus die? Why is Israel so important to Jews, and what should we think about the conflict in the Middle East? How is Christianity complicit in the Holocaust? What is important about Jesus being a Jew?