Kevin Vanhoozer calls the church to a picture of theology that sees every person, thing and event in the light of God's act of reconciliation. Through essays on the church's worship, witness and wisdom, he shows us how a poetic imagination can answer the questions of life's meaning by drawing our attention to what really matters: the God of the gospel.

Kevin Vanhoozer calls the church to a picture of theology that sees every person, thing and event in the light of God's act of reconciliation. Through essays on the church's worship, witness and wisdom, he reveals how a poetic imagination can answer the questions of life's meaning by drawing our attention to what really matters: the God of the gospel.

A stimulating exploration of theology in the service of the church

Why do many popular songs positively reference God if our culture is widely viewed as secular? Why is it a challenge to tell the Christian story when many say they are spiritual and believe in God? Why do we draw so much meaning from the popular songs we listen to? And might a deeper understanding of popular-music culture help us to explore the bigger stories we listen to throughout our lives, such as the Christian story? Primarily using Zygmunt Bauman's understanding of "liquid modernity" we look at the social forces that shape Western society and consider why, while many are looking for "authentic," ontologically based stories to understand their life experiences, historic providers of the big stories that shape our lives, such as the church, favor a different, epistemological way of telling them. How do these different approaches to storytelling affect their reception and what insight might we draw from that? Whilst this book is written primarily with those in Christian ministry in mind, it will be of interest, too, to those who use music to explore life experiences through their work, who are interested in the social forces that shape society, or who simply enjoy listening to popular music.

Humans are created in the image of God, yet by choosing to rebel against God we become unfaithful bearers of his image. But Jesus, who is the image of God, restores the divine image in us. At the intersection of theology and culture, these essays offer a unified vision of what it means to be truly human and created in the divine image in the world today.

In Participation and Covenant: Contours of a Theodramatic Theology, Moes develops a theological framework that has participation in the life of God in Christ through the Spirit as its integrative center. In doing so, he enters into conversation with covenant or federal theology, particularly as it has been presented by Michael Horton, in which the integrative center is the concept of the covenant. He argues that God's fundamental relationship with humanity does not entail a covenant ontology--a fundamentally legal and ethical relationship to God, as we find in Horton's presentation--but rather an ontology of participating in God's loving presence in Christ through the Holy Spirit. For this relationship we were created, and this participation is therefore natural to us. Accordingly, a theodramatic framework that incorporates a reframed understanding of divine-human covenants and that has participation in the life of God in Christ by the Spirit as its integrative center is better able to give direction for clearly communicating the gospel in our secular culture and for properly shaping our Christian identity and practice--in the face of the secularism that affects the church, too--than Horton's framework of covenant theology.

In this fresh and engaging text, Keith Johnson examines how the discipline of theology not only leads to discipleship, but is itself a way of following after Christ in faith. Unlike other introductions that overview doctrines according to the Apostles' Creed, Johnson presents theology by describing the Christian life—being in Christ, hearing God's Word and sharing the mind of Christ.

In this inaugural volume in the Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture, Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Daniel J. Treier set forth a programmatic proposal for evangelical theology, rooted in the claim that the church's vocation is to mirror the witness of Scripture in its doctrine and discipleship.

When Zoom worship emerged in Britain during the COVID lockdown of 2020, Christians quickly turned to an art form, a form of theater, to deliver their worship. It was a quest for immanence, the very thing the Reformation dealt with by the elevation of transcendence. What an intriguing thought: Could John Calvin with his dictum regarding piety have practiced Zoom worship? Served as he was with the principle that the finite cannot contain the infinite, we must admit it looks very unlikely! At least in this Calvin saw eye-to-eye with Erasmus, but what of Luther? He may have been a comfortable Zoom worshiper, with his views that "Religious artworks are neither here nor there" and "We may have them or not as we please." Little did the church realize that it would be a step back into the past, because "what you permit you promote." The desire to use images was much more sinister than in Medieval times, as these were now images of ourselves! Regardless of the age, the image reigns supreme. What had caused the demise? Was it bereavement? It could not be bereavement of God; rather, it was the loss of the social, the bereavement of "one another." The need for "one-anothering" had forced the hand of Christians to turn to a practice completely untested. Zoom worship was born--the genie is out, and will never go back in. But in the face of the now-acceptable force of contemporary narcissism, who cares?