This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. Toward the Future of Reformed Theology brings together the voices of leading contemporary Reformed theologians from around the world, providing a unique summary of the range and wealth of Reformed theology today and exploring its potential for the future. These thirty-one essays consider the task of Reformed theology in the modern world, give Reformed perspectives on key theological themes, and suggest fruitful present-day trajectories of Reformed thought from the past. Contributors: Brian GerrishM Janos Pasztor Nobuo Watanabe Choan-Seng Song Edmund Za Bik Wafiq Wahba John de Gruchy Jürgen Moltmann Michael Welker Beatriz Melano Thomas Torrance David Willis William Placher Alexander McKelway Leanne Van Dyk Christian Link Lukas Vischer Walter Herrenbrück Nancy Duff Hans-Joachim Kraus John Leith Willem Balke Hans- Helmut Esser Dawn DeVries Jan Milic Lochman John Hesselink Sang Hyun Lee Amy Plantinga Pauw Bruce McCormack Daniel Migliore Eberhard Busch

This volume offers a constructive theology of how the church is perpetually reformed and renewed within the context of life in the world

This work establishes the significance of the thought of Puritan William Ames (1576-1633) in deepening and systematizing established Reformation teaching on Christian doctrine and life in a way that ensured its subsequent development through the early modern period and beyond. This book argues that William Ames built on existing, but as yet un-developed and un-codified, thought of Reformed and Puritan forerunners to construct an early theological system on the twin pillars of covenant theology and piety. In this exciting new work, van Vliet expounds Ames' covenantal thinking and demonstrates that Ames relocates moral theology from the medieval structures of early, virtue-based, Puritanism, to a Reformed framework anchored in the Decalogue. This is followed by a demonstration of the confluence of Ames' concern for Christian living with similar concerns of seventeenth-century Reformed pastors and thinkers in the Dutch Republic of the early modern period's post-Reformation world (Nadere Reformatie), and his influence on early-American Jonathan Edwards-both directly and through Petrus van Maastricht. In this persuasive argument, van Vliet radically corrects Amesian historiography which has minimized his influence.

This book considers basics of Christian faith about the church, conveyed through the perspectives of the Reformed tradition, particularly in its Presbyterian expression from Donald McKim's own context in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The six chapters deal with ecclesiology: understandings of the church. The book begins by considering the call to follow Jesus in the church, the beginning of the Christian journey. The Reformation slogan "the Church Reformed and Always Being Reformed according to the Word of God" orients us to the nature of the church and God's ongoing work of Word and Spirit within the community of faith. Three of the chapters discuss phrases from the Apostles' Creed. These are "I believe in the Holy Spirit," "the holy catholic church," and "the communion of saints." The final chapter, called "Imagine the Church!" provides theological resources for helping us recognize and experience the God of superabundance who is at work in the world, in the church, and in our own lives (Eph 3:20). Together these essays provide theological understandings of the church while also exploring the meanings and implications of the church for Christian life and experience today.

With the profound changes in today's intellectual and scientific landscape, traditional ways of speaking about human nature, sin, and the image of God have lost their explanatory power. In this volume F.LeRon Shults explores the challenges to and opportunities for rethinking current religious views of humankind in contemporary Western culture. From philosophy to theology, from physics to psychology, we find a turn to the categories of "relationality." Shults briefly traces this history from Aristotle to Levinas, showing its impact on the Christian doctrine of anthropology, and he argues that the biblical understanding of humanity has much to contribute to today's dialogue on persons and on human becoming in relation to God and others. Shults's work stands as a potent effort to reform theological anthropology in a way that restores its relevance to contemporary interpretations of the world and our place in it.

Writing from a "postconservative evangelical" perspective, this book introduces theology into today's ecclesial and cultural contexts.

This unique study of the Church of England between the 1660s and 1720s addresses the neglected research area of the Reformed school of thought and its powerful influence on the later eighteenth century church and evangelical revival. Hampton also explores consequences for understanding Anglican identity today.

"John Edwards of Cambridge (1637-1716) has typically been portrayed as a marginalized 'Calvinist' in an overwhelmingly 'Arminian' later Stuart Church of England. In Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity, Jake Griesel challenges this depiction of Edwards and the theological climate of his contemporary Church. Griesel demonstrates that Edwards was recognized in his own day and the immediately following generations as one of the preeminent conforming divines of the period, who featured prominently in notable theological controversies concerning contemporaries such as John Locke, Gilbert Burnet, Daniel Whitby, William Whiston, and Samuel Clarke. Despite some Arminian opposition, Edwards' theological works are shown to have enjoyed a warm reception among sizable segments of the established Church's clergy, many of whom shared his Reformed convictions. Instead of a theological misfit, this study contends that the anti-Arminian Edwards was a decidedly mainstream churchman. Griesel's reassessment has ramifications far beyond the figure of Edwards, however, and ultimately serves as a prism through which to visualize with much greater clarity the broader theological landscape of the later Stuart Church of England, and particularly the place of Reformed orthodoxy within it. It substantially develops recent research on the persisting vitality of Reformed theology within the post-Restoration Church by demonstrating to an unprecedented extent the sheer strength and numbers of conforming Reformed divines between the Restoration and the evangelical revivals. Finally, Griesel problematizes the idea that the post-Restoration Church developed a fairly homogeneous 'Anglican' identity, and argues instead that the Church in this period was theologically and ecclesio-politically variegated"--

This study demonstrates that Benjamin Keach, the most important Baptist figure of the seventeenth century, was a catholic Reformed theologian. This is done by investigating his relationship with the tradition of the church, his interaction with federalism, and his concept of baptism. Dr Riker presents Keach, and thus the Baptist tradition, in a new way: not as a "Calvinist" but as part of the broad Reformed family. Secondly, believer's baptism, the rite from which the Baptists derive their name, is systematically scrutinized over against pedobaptism. In so doing, Riker presents every argument, strong or weak, that was used in the sixteenth- and seventeenth- century debates, and their respective refutation by a Baptist. "In these days of ecumenical rapprochement, it is important to retrace the origins of different theological traditions and see how they relate to the wider Christian world. Benjamin Keach was a Baptist theologian who drew on both Catholic and Reformed principles and Dr. Riker has ably demonstrated how he must be classified as belonging to both those traditions. This book helps us to put believers' baptism in context and is an important contribution to inter-church dialogue in our own time."---Gerald Bray Director of Research, Latimer Trust, Cambridge, UK, and Research Professor, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University "Making use of fresh perspectives on the history of the church in the late medieval and early modern eras, this new study of the most important Baptist theologian of the late seventeenth century capably demonstrates both Keach's catholicity and his profoundly Reformed convictions. As such, this excellent study helps orient contemporary Baptist thought as to its place in the larger Christian tradition and the inadequacy of the church-sect model as a way of explaining the Baptist past. Riker has helped restore Keach to his significant role as one of the key shapers of Baptist life and thought Highly recommended." ---Michael A. G. Haykin Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary "Dr. Riker's book challenges any assumption that English Nonconformity was uninterested in the church's tradition and history. It makes a significant contribution to a growing body of scholarship that highlights the connections between the work of the Reformed thinkers such as Keach and the theology of the patristic and medieval eras." ---Nick Thompson Lecturer in Church History, School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, University of Aberdeen