Considers the legacy and future of radical theology. In 1966, an infamous Time magazine cover asked “Is God Dead?” and brought the ideas of theologians William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer to the wider public. In the years that followed, both men suffered professionally and there was no notable increase to the small number of thinkers considered death of God theologians. Meanwhile, Christian fundamentalism staged a striking comeback in the United States. Yet, death of God, or radical, theology has had an ongoing influence on contemporary theology and philosophy. Contributors to this book explore the origins, influence, and legacy of radical theology and go on to take it in new directions. In a time when fundamentalism is the greatest religious temptation, this volume makes the case for the necessity of resurrecting the death of God. “Resurrecting the Death of God shows why Altizer continues to ride the stream of contemporary conversations in academic theology and continental philosophy without ever losing his luster.” — Carl A. Raschke, author of Postmodernism and the Revolution in Religious Theory: Toward a Semiotics of the Event

Gods after God provides an accessible introduction to a wide range of contemporary radical theologies. Radical theology can be defined as talk about the divine that rejects the notion of God as a supernatural personal consciousness who created the world and who intervenes in it to accomplish his purposes. In addition, radical theologies tend to reject the absolute authority of traditional sources of guidance such as the Bible and the tradition of a church. Richard Grigg demonstrates that there is a discernible stream of radical theologies beginning in the seventeenth century and continuing to the present. He explores a host of rich and lively contemporary radical religious positions, including the radical feminist theology of Mary Daly, the deconstructive theology of Mark C. Taylor, the religious naturalism of Ursula Goodenough and Donald Crosby, the pragmatist approaches of Sallie McFague and Gordon Kaufman, the Taoist interpretation of Jesus of Stephen Mitchell, and the feminist polytheism of Naomi Goldenberg. This in-depth examination asks, in unflinching terms, what challenges radical theologies face and whether they have a realistic chance of surviving in American society.

Acclaimed church leader, blogger, founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan unpacks the lifecycle of a typical church, identifies characteristics of each phase, and provides practical next steps a church can take to move towards sustained health. Think about your church for a moment. Is it growing? Is it diminishing? Is it somewhere in between? Acclaimed church leader, blogger, and founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan has identified the seven stages of a church's lifecycle that range from the hopeful and optimistic days of launch, to the stagnating last stages of life support. Regardless of the stage in which you find your church, it carries with it the world's greatest mission—to "go and make disciples of all the nations . . ." With eternity at stake the Church should be doing most everything within its power to see lives changed forever. The Church should strive for the pinnacle of the lifecycle, where they are continually making new disciples and experiencing what Morgan refers to as "sustained health." In The Unstuck Church, Morgan unpacks each phase of the church lifecycle, and offers specific and strategic next steps the church leader can take to find it's way to sustained health . . . and finally become unstuck. The Unstuck Church is a call for honest an assessment of where your church sits on the lifecycle, and a challenge to move beyond it.

Why did Christianity begin, and why did it take the shape it did? To answer this question -- which any historian must face -- renowned New Testament scholar N. T. Wright focuses on the key points: what precisely happened at Easter? What did the early Christians mean when they said that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead? What can be said today about this belief? This book, third in Wright's series Christian Origins and the Question of God, sketches a map of ancient beliefs about life after death, in both the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds. It then highlights the fact that the early Christians' belief about the afterlife belonged firmly on the Jewish spectrum, while introducing several new mutations and sharper definitions. This, together with other features of early Christianity, forces the historian to read the Easter narratives in the gospels, not simply as late rationalizations of early Christian spirituality, but as accounts of two actual events: the empty tomb of Jesus and his "appearances." How do we explain these phenomena? The early Christians' answer was that Jesus had indeed been bodily raised from the dead; that was why they hailed him as the messianic "son of God." No modern historian has come up with a more convincing explanation. Facing this question, we are confronted to this day with the most central issues of the Christian worldview and theology.

The major death-of-God theologian explores the meaning and purpose of radical theology.

Why do I go through so much heartache? Why do I find myself in the same situations? Why is my life stagnating? We all have questions about life that sometimes leave us with an unbearable emptiness inside. Yet God can fill the well of our souls and provide love, strength, and hopeand he offers it freely! If you want to develop an authentic relationship with Godone that will ultimately bring about the most powerful transformation youve ever knownthen Death, Burial, Resurrection can help you. Drawing on his own faith-filled experiences, Cornelius Johnson focuses on the three stages of the transformation processdeath, burial, and resurrectionand reveals how each directly applies to your walk with Christ. Johnson shows that beginning this intimate relationship with God requires reading the Bible, talking to God, and understanding the seriousness of sin. These steps, in turn, will lead to a deeper knowledge of Gods plan. But it is your acceptance of Jesuss sacrifice on the cross for you and the forgiveness of your sins that brings you to true freedom. Gain understanding of Gods word, apply it to your life, and create an everlasting relationship with God with the help of Death, Burial, Resurrection.

Paul Tillich is best known today as a theologian of mediation. Many have come to view him as an out-of-date thinker a safe exemplar of a mid-twentieth-century theological liberalism. The way he has come to be viewed contrasts sharply with the current theological landscape one dominated by the notion of radicality. In this collection, Russell Re Manning breaks with the widespread opinion of Tillich as 'safe' and dated. Retrieving the Radical Tillich depicts the thinker as a radical theologian, strongly marked but never fully determined by the urgent critical demands of his time. From the crisis of a German cultural and religious life after the First World War, to the new realities of religious pluralism, Tillich's theological responses were always profoundly ambivalent, impure and disruptive, asserts Re Manning. The Tillich that is outlined and analyzed by this collection is never merely correlative. Far from the dominant image of the theologian as a liberal accommodationist, Re Manning reintroduces the troubled and troubling figure of the radical Tillich.