LITMIR.BIZ

With all the jumble of human disagreements, how can we know? Can the Christian church think coherently about knowledge? Can it regain confidence in teaching what it knows? In an increasingly divided and pessimistic postmodern world this book offers a theology for epistemology and for pedagogy that aims to be faithful and fruitful.
Building on Karl Barth, it argues that God's knowing guides how humans know. We should imitate God's epistemic stance–his love–for that is the best model for knowing anything. The Trinitarian theme in Barth identifies three key concepts: committedness, openness, and relationality. These mean being committed and open towards what we wish to know. Relational open committedness also profoundly clarifies and shapes what love means in knowing and in teaching. This book unpacks an epistemology and pedagogy of love. Wouldn't you love to know?

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Colonial missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, arrived in India with the grandiose vision of converting the pagans because, like St. Peter (Acts 4:12) and most of the church fathers, they honestly believed that there is no salvation outside the church (extra ecclesiam nulla salus). At the end of the «great Protestant century,» however, Christians made up less than 3 percent of the population in India, and the hope of the missionary was nearly shattered.
But if one looks at mission in India qualitatively rather than quantitatively, one sees a number of positive outcomes. Missionaries in India, particularly Protestant missionaries espousing the social gospel, in collaboration with a few British evangelical administrators, dared to challenge numerous social evils and even began to eradicate them. The scientific and liberal English education began to enlighten and transform the Indian mindset. Converts belonging to the upper caste, although small in number, laid the foundation stone of Indian theology and an inculturated church using Indian genius.
The end of colonialism in India coincided with the painful death of colonial mission theology. Now, the power of the Word of God, extricated from political power, is slowly and peacefully gaining ground, like the mustard seed of the parable. A paradigm shift from the ecclesio-centric mission to missio Dei offers reason for further optimism. In short, the future of mission in India is as bright as the kingdom of God. In today's new context, theologians, despite objections from some quarters, are struggling to discover the Asian face of Jesus, disfigured by the Greco-Roman Church. And the missionary is challenged to become a living Bible that, undoubtedly, everyone will read.

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Paul lies at the core of the constant debate about the opposition between Christianity and Judaism in biblical interpretation and public discourse as well. The so-called new perspective on Paul has not offered a significant break from the formidable paradigm of Christian universalism vs. Jewish particularism in Pauline scholarship. This book seeks to liberate Paul from the Western logic of identity and its dominant understanding of difference, which tend to identify Pauline Christianity as its ally.
Drawing attention to the currency of discourses on difference in contemporary theories as well as in biblical studies, the author critically examines the hermeneutical relevance of a contextual and relational understanding of difference and applies it to interpret the dynamics of Jew-Gentile difference reflected particularly in meal practices (Galatians 2:1-21 and Romans 14:1–15:13) of early Christian communities.
This book argues that by deconstructing the hierarchy of social relations underlying the Jew-Gentile difference in different community situations, Paul promotes a politics of difference, which affirms a preferential option for the socially «weak,» that is, solidarity with the weak. Paul's politics of difference is invoked as a liberative potential for the vision of egalitarian justice in the face of contemporary globalism's proliferation of differences.

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Few people have any extensive knowledge of the life and witness of the Protestant churches in the former Portuguese colonies of southern Africa. Yet these communities of faith played a significant role in the liberation struggles that led to the independence of both Mozambique and Angola and subsequently to the independence of Zimbabwe and the ending of apartheid in South Africa. In Mozambique, Eduardo Mondlane emerged from the Swiss Mission to become the first president of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO). This book examines Mondlane's role in challenging the churches both in Mozambique and globally to support the struggle for independence through a renewed understanding of the missio Dei, God's liberating mission in the world. Mondlane maintained a strong connection with the World Council of Churches and was a key player in bringing about its Programme to Combat Racism after the 1968 Assembly in Uppsala before his assassination in 1969. This connection was to have important implications for the WCC's complex relationship with Mozambique and its Protestant churches following independence.

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At present the battle over who defines our future is being waged most publicly by secular and religious fundamentalists. Hope and the Longing for Utopia offers an alternative position, disclosing a conceptual path toward potential worlds that resist a limited view of human potential and the gift of religion. In addition to outlining the value of embracing unknown potentialities, these twelve interdisciplinary essays explore why it has become crucial that we commit to hoping for values that resist traditional ideological commitments. Contextualized by contemporary writing on utopia, and drawing from a wealth of times and cultures ranging from Calvin's Geneva to early twentieth-century Japanese children's stories to Hollywood cinema, these essays cumulatively disclose the fundamental importance of resisting tantalizing certainties while considering the importance of the unknown and unknowable. Beginning with a set of four essays outlining the importance of hope and utopia as diagnostic concepts, and following with four concrete examples, the collection ends with a set of essays that provide theological speculations on the need to embrace finitude and limitations in a world increasingly enframed by secularizing impulses. Overall, this book discloses how hope and utopia illuminate ways to think past simplified wishes for the future.

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The church in the West has subsisted for five hundred years in a state of ever-increasing multiple identities, many of which claim to be the best representation of the church established by Christ. Often attending novel models of the church are new scriptural interpretive methods that support theological claims. Rarely, however, has an exploration been undertaken to test the impact of this ecclesiological division on the reading of the Bible. A Darkened Reading explores the specific case of the nineteenth-century Church of England and competing interpretations of the book of the prophet Isaiah–a book of great importance in theological history–as a kind of parable of the existential anguish the church has experienced as a consequence of being torn apart.

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The Theologically Formed Heart invites the reader to consider the role of theology in the formation of virtues and passions, and, conversely, the role of virtues and passions in understanding Scripture, theology, and living a Christian life. The essays in this volume are offered in appreciation of the teaching, scholarship, and service to the church and world of Professor of Theology David J. Gouwens. They are organized in three sections: theological reflections, Reformed theology in service to the church, and studies in the thought of Soren Kierkegaard. Four important issues are explored from multiple perspectives: the Church's coming to terms with religious pluralism in mission, inter-religious dialogue, theological education, and ecclesial life; the gospel's invitation to welcome communities of difference; Reformed aesthetics in Calvin's rhetoric and in contemporary hymnody; and Kierkegaard's contribution to theology and ecclesial practice. The aims of the book go beyond academic confines. Through reading the different essays, a personality will emerge who illustrates a life of scholarship that yields itself gladly to the God made known in Jesus Christ. Thus, beyond imparting new information, the book may inspire its readers to their own practice of theologically forming their hearts.

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The Tradition of the Elders, based on Matt 15:1-20 and Mark 7:1-23, explores how the oral law upheld and promoted the anti-Christian forces of Pharisaism and Sadduceism. As such, they appear repeatedly in the New Testament documents, often as «the law» and «the works of the law.» For example, consider: – "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law" (Rom 2:14). – "We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified" (Gal 2:15-16). – "Tell me, you who desire to be under law, do you not hear the law?" (Gal 4:21). But which law do these legal references concern–the Torah, the oral law, or the Decalogue? This important distinction between the oral law and the Ten Commandments is what The Tradition of the Elders sets out to make clear. All New Testament exegetes, including teachers and students, can benefit from an increased understanding of the enmity of the oral law against the Gospel.

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The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox grapples with the question of how one may hold together the ideals of systematic theology, apologetic proof, and theological paradox by building on the insights of Cornelius Van Til. Van Til developed an apologetic where one presupposes that the triune God exists, and then proves this Christian presupposition by demonstrating that philosophies that deny it are self-defeating in the specific sense that they rely on principles that only the Trinity, as the ultimate harmony of unity and diversity, can furnish. A question raised by Van Til's trademark procedure is how he can evade the charge that the apparent contradictions of the Christian faith render it equally self-defeating as non-Christian alternatives. This text argues that for Van Til, Christian paradoxes can be differentiated from genuine contradictions by the way that their apparently opposing elements discernibly require one another, even as they present our minds with an irresolvable conflict. And yet, Van Til failed to sufficiently vindicate the central Christian paradox–the doctrine of the Trinity–along the lines required by his system. Hence, the present text offers a unique proof that God can only exist as the pinnacle of unity-in-diversity, and as the ground of a coherent Christian system, if He exists as three, and only three, divine Persons.

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