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...

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...

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...

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...

Living in proximity to human disability, with a son who has Down Syndrome, Andrew Barron has come to understand that not only do we live in a world of human difference, but that God wants us to live in this kind of world, for our own flourishing. Human Difference is an extended meditation on that experience and a reflection on the nature of human care and hospitality. Barron seeks to understand and embrace the uncertainty that comes with living in proximity to difference and disability and...

The Holy Spirit is in a way the most mysterious of the three "names" of God. For many it is the "unknown God" (Acts 17:23). How can a "Spirit" be love? How can it be a person? What role can a "Spirit" have in the trinitarian relations? In The Breath of God, Veto argues that a more exact comprehension of the third divine person can be reached by considering the way it acts in the economy of salvation and how it reveals itself in its scriptural names: Ruah and Pneuma, breath or wind. Just as...

This book offers an introduction to pastoral theology grounded in and flowing from the worshiping life of the church. It embraces the contemporary theological and sociological focus on praxis, while remaining rooted in a robust creedal theology that attends to God’s real presence. The work assumes a Christian social imaginary that is continually shaped and reshaped within the church, through God’s faithful engagement with his people, even as it seeks to learn from and incorporate the insig...

“The man is the head of the woman” (1 Cor 11:3). There was a time when this claim was uncontroversial, taken as part of the fabric of the “good news” announced in Christ, and bound up with claims concerning the church’s salvation in him (Eph 5:23–33). But this time has long passed. This book explains how it came to be that the language of the Scriptures concerning male and female generally, and the naming of the man as “head” specifically, has come to be heard not as good news but as a wor...

This collection of essays presented at the 1997 Scholarly Engagement with Anglican Doctrine (SEAD) Conference counters some of today's New Testament scholarship, particularly that of the Jesus Seminar. Asserting that only canon and creed can render knowledge of God, two generations of scholars speak for a retrieval of more traditional modes of interpretation by and for today's church.The Rule of Faith features three keynote addresses by eminent New Testament scholar the Rev. Dr. Br...

Philip Turner's contributions as a leader and thinker in Christian missions and social ethics are here engaged by an array of friends and colleagues. Turner's scholarly and clerical career spans a key era of transition in American and world Christianity, and his thinking and teaching about the intersection between ecclesial and civil life have encouraged several generations of Christian theologians and ministers. The essays in this collection touch on key topics in which Turner has been in...

The proposed Anglican Covenant impinges not only upon the future of the Anglican Communion but upon global Christianity as well. Pro Communione: Theological Essays on the Anglican Covenant is the first volume that considers the completed text of the Covenant and its congruity with the Anglican tradition. Contributors across the Anglo-American world appraise the Covenant within a holistic framework defined by liturgical, historical, and ecumenical perspectives. These essays transcend curren...

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...