As society becomes more concerned with the future of our planet, the study of apocalypse and eschatology become increasingly pertinent. Whether religious or not, peoples' views on this topic can have a profound effect on their attitudes to issues such as climate change and social justice and so it cannot be ignored. This book investigates how different approaches in historical and contemporary Christian theology make sense in reflecting about the final things, or the eschata, and why it is so important to consider their multi-faceted impact on our lives. A team of Nordic scholars...

To claim to believe in God without accepting that God exists independently of human minds would mean reducing God to merely a human construct, thus not real enough for being the object of religious worship. This book sets out to challenge this common view on existence and religious belief. Arguing from concrete examples of language use in children's make-believe play and other ordinary situations, Erica Appelros suggests that what makes us consider something to be real involves our capacities to relate to our surroundings - not only on grounds of their physical characteristics but also on...

This book presents the theological work of Stanley Hauerwas as a distinctive kind of 'liberation theology'. John Thomson offers an original construal of this diffuse, controversial, yet highly significant modern theologian and ethicist. Organising Hauerwas' corpus in terms of the focal concept of liberation, Thomson shows that it possesses a greater degree of coherence than its usual expression in ad hoc essays or sermons. John Thomson locates Hauerwas in relation to a wide range of figures, including the obvious choices - Rauschenbusch, Niebuhr, Barth, Yoder, Lindbeck, MacIntyre, Milbank...

This book offers a contemporary Christian explication of the word 'soul' that uses Wittgenstein and his interpreters to suggest that human intelligence and desire cannot be 'mapped into the world' that is described by science and metaphysics. It examines the Aristotelian notion of the soul as one who acts in the world, and suggests that we construct ourselves, our narratives, by our actions in history. Drawing upon the resurrection accounts of the gospels, where Jesus is presented as having been 'translated into the liturgy' it speculates that the core of the human person, his or her...

Some hundred years from inception, the ecumenical movement is stagnating. William C. Ingle-Gillis argues that the problem lies in modern ecumenism’s treatment of denominational Churches as provisional entities requiring reunion to be more fully Christ’s Body. In a work unique both to ecumenical studies and to trinitarian theology, the author redefines ecclesial life from the premise that God’s essence is personhood-in-communion and that the ultimate calling of human persons is to share as fully in the divine life as Christ himself. Concluding that the Churches are, by the Spirit’s...

This book explores the construction of Christian identity in fourth and fifth centuries through inventing, fabricating and sharpening binary oppositions. Such oppositions, for example Christians - pagans; truth - falsehood; the one true god - the multitude of demons; the right religion - superstition, served to create and reinforce the Christian self-identity. The author examines how the Christian argumentation against pagans was intertwined with self-perception and self-affirmation. Discussing the relations and interaction between pagan and Christian cultures, this book aims at widening...

While the revelation of God's name is a central theological topic, its ethical and political significance are often overlooked. In a world filled with violence committed 'in the name of God', how might invoking God's name enable peace, community, and hope? The Politics of Praise argues that the redemptive potential of naming God lies in how this event transforms friendship. It breaks new ground by tracing the connections between naming God and friendship in the work of Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Derrida. Advancing an innovative reading of Aquinas on the divine names, the book explores how...

This book provides an original and comprehensive assessment of the hypotheses concerning the origin of resurrection Christology. It fills a gap in the literature by addressing these issues using a transdisciplinary approach involving historical-critical study of the New Testament, theology, analytic philosophy, psychology and comparative religion.
Using a novel analytic framework, this book demonstrates that a logically exhaustive list of hypotheses concerning the claims of Jesus’ post-mortem appearances and the outcome of Jesus’ body can be formulated. It addresses these hypotheses in...