This book by one of today's leading theologians examines how Christians might more faithfully and realistically imagine their political vocation.Ephraim Radner explains that our Christian calling is to limit our political concerns to the boundaries of our created lives: our birth, parents, siblings, families, brief persistence in life, raising of children, relations, decline, and death. He shows that a Christian approach to politics is aimed at tending and protecting these "mortal ...

This book by Ephraim Radner constitutes the first significant theological account of the foundations and methods of the figural reading of Scripture. Radner's reintroduces contemporary scholars to a traditional approach to biblical interpretation that dates back to Jewish practice from before the time of Jesus. Figural interpretation continued in prominence through the early church, the Middle Ages, and into the early modern period before it was forcefully rejected with the rise of histori...

In the march of modernity and the opening of global boundaries, the face of the world changed. How we understood the world, and our place in it, changed. And with that great shift, our concept of the Holy Spirit also changed. Now the third person of the Trinity became a diffusive power in a universalizing attempt at resolving the expansively harsh realities of human existence. In A Profound Ignorance, Ephraim Radner traces the development of pneumatology as a modern discipline and...

In The World in the Shadow of God, Ephraim Radner argues for a vigorous Christian natural theology and insists that such a theology must, of necessity, be performed poetically. The peculiar character of such a theology is found in its disclosing of the natural limits that indicate indirectly the impinging and more fundamental reality of the divine life. Natural theology represents the encounter between created reality and the "shadow" of God's creative and revelatory grace. However, the en...

This is an introduction to thinking theologically about the Christian church--what is known as ecclesiology. The book covers background questions of conception, history, differences among separated Christian churches, and several modern approaches to the study of the church. It also introduces readers to a specific scriptural way of thinking about the church centered on mission, that takes into account problems associated with past approaches, and sensitive to contemporary concerns with th...

This book by Ephraim Radner constitutes the first significant theological account of the foundations and methods of the figural reading of Scripture. Radner's reintroduces contemporary scholars to a traditional approach to biblical interpretation that dates back to Jewish practice from before the time of Jesus. Figural interpretation continued in prominence through the early church, the Middle Ages, and into the early modern period before it was forcefully rejected with the rise of histori...

Explore how the roots of the ancient Christian tradition inform and shape faithfulness todayThe Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible enlists leading theologians to read and interpret scripture creedally for the twenty-first century, just as the church fathers, the Reformers, and other orthodox Christians did for their times and places.A rich resource for preachers, teachers, students, and study groups, the BTC provides guidance for reading the Bible u...

The miracle of birth and the mystery of death mark human life. Mortality, like a dark specter, looms over all that lies in between. Human character, behavior, aims, and community are all inescapably shaped by this certainty of human ends. Mortality, like an unwanted guest, intrudes, becoming a burden and a constant struggle. Mortality, like a thief who steals, even threatens the ability to live life rightly. Life is short. Death is certain. Mortality, at all costs, should be resisted or tr...

Christian natural theology is founded on the proper coordination of Scripture and the created world, what was once called "The Two Books" of God. Carrying forward the work he began in The World in the Shadow of God, Radner here reflects on the way that Scripture's creative relationship with temporal experience--ordering history rather than being ordered by history--opens up the natural world to its essential Scriptural meaning. Like the earlier volume, poetic description is offered as a pr...

Explore how the roots of the ancient Christian tradition inform and shape faithfulness todayThe Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible enlists leading theologians to read and interpret scripture creedally for the twenty-first century, just as the church fathers, the Reformers, and other orthodox Christians did for their times and places.A rich resource for preachers, teachers, students, and study groups, the BTC provides guidance for reading the Bible u...

Explore how the roots of the ancient Christian tradition inform and shape faithfulness todayThe Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible enlists leading theologians to read and interpret scripture creedally for the twenty-first century, just as the church fathers, the Reformers, and other orthodox Christians did for their times and places.A rich resource for preachers, teachers, students, and study groups, the BTC provides guidance for reading the Bible u...

Explore how the roots of the ancient Christian tradition inform and shape faithfulness todayThe Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible enlists leading theologians to read and interpret scripture creedally for the twenty-first century, just as the church fathers, the Reformers, and other orthodox Christians did for their times and places.A rich resource for preachers, teachers, students, and study groups, the BTC provides guidance for reading the Bible u...