In this first serious assessment of the meaning of church division, Ephraim Radner provides a theological rationale for today's divided church in the Christian West.

Current debates over a host of issues, particularly those relating to homosexuality, have left the 70-million-member Anglican Communion straining to understand what it means to be a communion -- and even wondering whether life as a communion is possible.
In this timely book two priest-scholars, Ephraim Radner and Philip Turner, examine the future of the concept of "communion" as a viable church structure, tracing its historical development as a self-conscious Anglican third way between Protestant congregationalism and Catholic centralism. In examining this essential issue, Radner and...

Description: In The World in the Shadow of God, Ephraim Radner argues for a vigorous Christian natural theology and insists that such a theology must, of necessity, be performed poetically. The peculiar character of such a theology is found in its disclosing of the natural limits that indicate indirectly the impinging and more fundamental reality of the divine life. Natural theology represents the encounter between created reality and the "shadow" of God's creative and revelatory grace. However, the encounter is a morally demanding task for the Christian church if it is to be held accountable...

To describe the Church as "united" is a factual misnomer--even at its conception centuries ago. Ephraim Radner provides a robust rethinking of the doctrine of the church in light of Christianity's often violent and at times morally suspect history. He holds in tension the strange and transcendent oneness of God with the necessarily temporal and political function of the Church, and, in so doing, shows how the goals and failures of the liberal democratic state provide revelatory experiences that greatly enhance one's understanding of the nature of Christian unity.

Synopsis:

The proposed Anglican Covenant impinges not only upon the future of the Anglican Communion but upon global Christianity as well. Pro Communione: Theological Essays on the Anglican Covenant is the first volume that considers the completed text of the Covenant and its congruity with the Anglican tradition. Contributors across the Anglo-American world appraise the Covenant within a holistic framework defined by liturgical, historical, and ecumenical perspectives. These essays transcend current debates by illuminating abiding theological themes within Anglicanism. Creative and...