"In the present study we shall be primarily concerned with sacramental practice and interpretation as they are to be found in the Reformation churches and especially those which took the Reformed rather than the Lutheran path. But this does not mean that we shall be committed merely to an historical survey. "The main interest of the Reformers themselves was to be true to the teachings of Holy Scripture itself, and we shall be most loyal to them if, along with the general lines of their tradition, we attempt a biblical rather than an historical statement. This will have a threefold advantage....

"An ideal historical theology, or even an introduction to it," says Geoffrey Bromiley, "lies beyond the limits of human possibility." And, indeed, he does not intend this volume to be an all-inclusive theological study about everybody and everything. Rather, "this work is composed for beginners, for inquirers, for those who know nothing or very little of the history of theology, but who want to know something, or something more." The approach here is theological rather than strictly historical. Among the implications of this approach are an acknowledgement that God has really spoken to the...

Jacque Ellul blends politics, theology, history, and exposition in this analysis of the relationship between political anarchy and biblical faith. While he clarifies the views of each and how they can be related, his aim is not to proselytize either anarchists into Christianity or Christians into anarchy. On the one hand, suggests Ellul, anarchists need to understand that much of their criticism of Christianity applies only to the form of religion that developed, not to biblical faith. Christians, on the other hand, need to look at the biblical texts and not reject anarchy as a political...

Pointing to the many contradictions between the Bible and the practice of the church, Jacques Ellul asserts in this provocative and stimulating book that what we today call Christianity is actually far removed from the revelation of God. Successive generations have reinterpreted Scripture and modeled it after their own cultures, thus moving society further from the truth of the original gospel. The church also perverted the gospel message, for instead of simply doing away with pagan practice and belief, it reconstituted the sacred, set up its own religious forms, and thus resacralized the...

Here are sermons from which to learn how the old Gospel, first given in a very different world, may come with all the living comfort and the regenerative force of truth and reality to our own age too, made relevant by the Holy Spirit on the lips of the sensitive and dedicated preacher."--Geoffrey W. Bromiley.

--This is not a commentary in the traditional sense. One might call it an existential commentary. An important aim of the author is to bring out the relevance of the story, of the person, mission, and situation of Jonah, to Christians in our own time.-- --Above all, this is a theological, or --more specifically -- a christological commentary. The author's chief aim is to relate the book, not to Christians, but to Christ. Ellul thinks Christ is the center of all Scripture, and he also takes seriously the specific reference which Christ makes to the sign of Jonah. If this reading is correct,...

Widely regarded as the foremost theologian in the world today, Wolfhart Pannenberg here unfolds his long-awaited systematic theology, for which his many previous (primarily methodological) writings have laid the groundwork.
Volume 2 of Pannenberg's magnum opus moves beyond the highly touted discussion of systematic prolegomena and theology proper in Volume 1 to commanding, comprehensive statements concerning creation, the nature of man, Christology, and salvation. Throughout, Pannenberg brings to bear the vast command of historical and exegetical knowledge and philosophical argumentation...

Originally published in German in an edition edited by Dietrich Braun, Karl Barth's Ethics is at last available in English. This volume, containing lectures given as courses at the University at Munster in 1928 and 1929, represents Barth's first systematic attempt at a theological account of Christian ethics. Although composed over fifty years ago, just prior to Barth's thirty-year devotion to Church Dogmatics, many of its themes, problems, and conclusions are astonishingly relevant today (his critique of competitiveness and of technology, for example). While this work is concerned with the...