Called to live in the world, but not to be of it, Christians must maintain a balancing act that becomes more precarious the further our culture departs from its Judeo-Christian roots. How should members of the church interact with such a culture, especially as deeply enmeshed as most of us have become? In this award-winning book -- now in paperback and with a new preface -- D. A. Carson applies his masterful touch to that problem. After exploring the classic typology of H. Richard Niebuhr with its five Christ-culture options, Carson offers an even more comprehensive paradigm for informing the Christian worldview. More than just theoretical, Christ and Culture Revisited is a practical guide for helping Christians untangle current messy debates about living in the world.

God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered considers the early development and reception of what is today the most widely professed Christian conception of Christ. The development of this doctrine admits of wide variations in expression, understanding, and interpretation that are as striking in authors of the first millennium as they are among modern writers. The seven early ecumenical councils and their dogmatic formulations were crucial facilitators in defining the shape of this study. Focusing primarily on the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, Brian E. Daley argues that previous assessments that Christ was one Person in two natures - the Divine of the same substance as the Father and the human of the same substance as us - can sometimes be excessively narrow, even distorting our understanding of Christ's person. Daley urges us to look beyond the Chalcedonian formula alone, and to consider what some major Church Fathers - from Irenaeus to John Damascene - say about the person of Christ.

Given the popular-level conversations on phenomena like the Gospel of Thomas and Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, as well as the current gap in evangelical scholarship on the origins of the New Testament, Michael Kruger’s Canon Revisited meets a significant need for an up-to-date work on canon by addressing recent developments in the field. He presents an academically rigorous yet accessible study of the New Testament canon that looks deeper than the traditional surveys of councils and creeds, mining the text itself for direction in understanding what the original authors and audiences believed the canon to be. Canon Revisited provides an evangelical introduction to the New Testament canon that can be used in seminary and college classrooms, and read by pastors and educated lay leaders alike. In contrast to the prior volumes on canon, this volume distinguishes itself by placing a substantial focus on the theology of canon as the context within which the historical evidence is evaluated and assessed. Rather than simply discussing the history of canon—rehashing the Patristic data yet again—Kruger develops a strong theological framework for affirming and authenticating the canon as authoritative. In effect, this work successfully unites both the theology and the historical development of the canon, ultimately serving as a practical defense for the authority of the New Testament books.

Dave Tomilinson is author of "The Post Evangelical", a seminal book which acknowledged the disenchantment with simplistic approaches to faith experienced by many evangelicals. Many, locked into interpretations of Christianity that they can no longer accept, have given up on the Church altogether. But is re-enchantment possible in our post-modern, post-Christian age?Re-enchantment is not a return to credulity or an attempt to recapture lost innocence, but it is finding a realistic faith that reconciles heart and head, that offers a positive, engaging spirituality, that is unafraid of grappling honestly with difficult questions.

The study of the application of the title ancestor to Christ permits the author to delve into the Christological reflection in Africa today through one of the principal ways. At play here is the inculturation of the faith, which cannot be fully achieved without a process of theological assimilation of the fundamental parameters in the African life. The thesis, therefore, is not only limited to a mere description of the contemporary panorama in that respect, but attempts to offer a theological evaluation of the real expressive capacity of the title, as it has been proposed. The criterion used is therefore double: In the first place, the thesis tried to show that the human and the divine natures of Jesus Christ can be maintained in such a way that there is no rupture with the great tradition of the Christological councils. In the second place, if it is capable of responding to demands of Christology from above and from below. In all this, however, the horizon of the debate is not occidental exegetical investigation well known by the author; but from the theological ambient of sub-Saharan world. The conclusion is positive, pondering the terms involved. The work can be of great use in the christoogical endeavors of contemporary Africa, as well for those who desire to delve into it. Don Alfonso Carrasco Rouco (director of the thesis and now Bishop of the Diocese of Lugo Spain) The work of Don Cletus Chukwuemeka contains a clear description of what we may call African traditional religiosity as well as the theological efforts to inject Christianity into this cultural and religious tradition. The central point of these efforts revolves around the understanding of Christ. The most original aspect of this work is in the critical recourse to the figure of the ancestor or proto-ancestor to present the identity of Christ in a way that is faithful to the Church tradition, and at the same time, significant for the religious and cultural tradition of Africa. Dr. Don Gerardo del Pozo Abejn (Censor of the thesis)

Ordinary Christology is defined as the account of who Jesus was/is and what he did/does that is given by Christian believers who have received no formal theological education. In this fascinating study Ann Christie analyses, and offers a theological appraisal, of the main christologies and soteriologies operating in a sample of ordinary churchgoers. Christie highlights the formal characteristics of ordinary Christology and raises questions about how we should respond to the beliefs about Jesus held by ordinary churchgoers. Empirical findings have important pastoral, theological, and missiological implications, and raise important questions about the importance (or otherwise) of 'right' belief for being Christian. This book presents a model for how the study of ordinary theology can be conducted, with the in-depth theological analysis and critique which it both requires and deserves.

Given the perpetual problem of the historical Jesus, there remains an ongoing posing of the question to and a continuous seeking of the meaningfulness of Christology. From the earliest reckoning with the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of faith, what it means to do Christology today remains at the methodological center of the task and scope of every systematic theology. Whether giving an account of Albert Schweitzer's bringing an end to the quest for the historical Jesus in 1906, or attending to Rudolf Bultmann's period of no quest culminating with his demythologization project in the 1940s, how we still think of Christology as a matter of questions and concerns with meaning speaks to an unavoidable philosophizing of Christology. In this way, The Philosophy of Christology offers both a particular history of Christology in conjunction with a particular philosophy of Christology, which assesses the theological contributions by a group of Bultmannians following Bultmann in the 1950s and 1960s up to what can be reimagined by repurposing Jacques Derrida's philosophical question into the meaning of love in 2002.

Troeltsch's struggle with historicism sets the stage for a proposal that Christology be done from within and from ahead. Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and Schleiermacher's experiential theology inform a Christology from within that is rooted in tradition and experience, while Pannenberg's notion of proleptic eschatological fulfilment serves as resource for a Christology from ahead. This volume develops a hermeneutical Christology that takes into account the historical contingency of knowledge, and seeks a Christology beyond the objectivism of timeless truth and the relativism of absolutised contextuality. The book is concluded with an examination of the convergence of critical traditionality, experiential appropriation and eschatological prolepsis in the Christology of the apostle Paul. The author explores how Christology might respond to the scandal of universality in postmodernity without defaulting on its claim to transcontextual referentiality.

Kierkegaard has always enjoyed a rich reception in the fields of theology and religious studies. This reception might seem obvious given that he is one of the most important Christian writers of the nineteenth century, but Kierkegaard was by no means a straightforward theologian in any traditional sense. He had no enduring interest in some of the main fields of theology such as church history or biblical studies, and he was strikingly silent on many key Christian dogmas. Moreover, he harbored a degree of animosity towards the university theologians and churchmen of his own day. Despite this, he has been a source of inspiration for numerous religious writers from different denominations and traditions. Tome II is dedicated to tracing Kierkegaard's influence in Anglophone and Scandinavian Protestant religious thought. Kierkegaard has been a provocative force in the English-speaking world since the early twentieth century, inspiring almost contradictory receptions. In Britain, before World War I, the few literati who were familiar with his work tended to assimilate Kierkegaard to the heroic individualism of Ibsen and Nietzsche. In the United States knowledge of Kierkegaard was introduced by Scandinavian immigrants who brought with them a picture of the Dane as much more sympathetic to traditional Christianity. The interpretation of Kierkegaard in Britain and America during the early and mid-twentieth century generally reflected the sensibilities of the particular theological interpreter. Anglican theologians generally found Kierkegaard to be too one-sided in his critique of reason and culture, while theologians hailing from the Reformed tradition often saw him as an insightful harbinger of neo-orthodoxy. The second part of Tome II is dedicated to the Kierkegaard reception in Scandinavian theology, featuring articles on Norwegian and Swedish theologians influenced by Kierkegaard.

Christology defines the very heart of the Christian faith. Traditionally the study of the person and work of Christ has been understood largely as an exercise in biblical exegesis or historical and doctrinal analysis. Rarely, if ever, has Christology focused on the changing cultural paradigms that have deeply influenced the development of human knowledge and self understanding. This unique volume by Colin Greene reverses that trend and, in line with developments in modern cultural theory, explores the interlaces between successive cultural contexts and the story of Jesus to which the Scriptures bear witness. Starting with an examination of the three main Christological trajectories that have dominated the history of Christology--cosmological Christology, political Christology, and anthropological Christology--Greene proceeds to concentrate on the subtle and complex linkages between Christology and the sociopolitical paradigms that have bolstered the epistemological assumptions of modernity. Greene's wide-ranging study closes with a creative exploration into how Christology might once again provide us with a Christ-centered vision of reality.