Jim Cronfel believes "conversion comes from the awareness of eternal conscious torment," that [Christianity] is about fleeing hell and sin." Annihilationists believe that even the consideration of a literal, eternal hell is intolerable and "the fire and brimstone school of theology" not to be "biblical Christianity." Yet there are many that promote this belief like Dr. John Stott who was named Time magazine's "100 most influential people in the world" and was recognized by Rev. Billy Graha...

A respectful approach to the debate over Reformed theology.Calvinist theology has been debated and promoted for centuries. Roger Olson suggests that Calvinism, also commonly known as Reformed theology, holds an unwarranted place in our list of accepted theologies and certainly shouldn’t be understood as the only authentic Christian theology.In Against Calvinism, readers will find scholarly arguments disputing some points of Calvinist theology and h...

Who will be judged? What is hell? How will the earth be renewed? What will it be like to live in the new heavens and the new earth?Derived from Wayne Grudem’s perennial bestseller, Systematic Theology, this digital short presents in detail the Bible’s teaching on heaven and hell.In the wake of debates about God’s judgment and the afterlife, Grudem’s clarity and accessibility will help readers to better understand what the Bible says on these import...

Jesus' prayer on behalf of his of followers is "that all may be one. As you, Father are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us" (John 17:21). No Turning Back illustrates significant developments in ecumenism during the thirty-plus years of ecumenical theologian Margaret O'Gara's own engagement in ecumenical dialogue.This collection of selected papers from the final fifteen years of O'Gara's work before her untimely death in 2012 aimsto illustrate the bro...

In The Mystery of Suffering—a timeless classic first written in 1963—celebrated British Benedictine monk, author, and sculptor Hubert van Zeller (1905-1984) offers an eloquent response to the question of human suffering: Those who endure suffering with hope and trust in Divine Providence will embark on an ever-deeper path to holiness that leads to eternal glory.Van Zeller believed that those who surrender to the pain and embrace it as a way to identify with the Passion of ...

What is the highest good in life that anyone can pursue?In Latin, there is a term summum bonum, which means "the highest good out of which all good flows." Many pursue wisdom, social justice, wealth, power, or physical strength as the highest good in life. However, none of these compare to the benefits of knowing God. Listen to what the Lord said through the prophet Jeremiah:Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boa...

Can Christians and churches be both catholic and Reformed? In this volume, two accomplished young theologians argue that to be Reformed means to go deeper into true catholicity rather than away from it. Their manifesto for a catholic and Reformed approach to dogmatics seeks theological renewal through retrieval of the rich resources of the historic Christian tradition. The book provides a survey of recent approaches toward theological retrieval and offers a renewed exploration of the doctr...

The book aims at showing the most important topics and paradigms in modern Trinitarian theology. It is supposed to be a comprehensive guide to the many traces of development of Trinitarian faith. As such it is thought to systematize the variety of contemporary approaches to the field of Trinitarian theology in the present philosophical-cultural context.The main goal of the publication is not only a description of what happened to Trinitarian theology in the modern age. It is rather ...

Who is the God of the gospel?Robert W. Jenson's way of answering this question, according to Scott Swain, hinges on the nature of the relationship between God in himself and the redemptive events through which God becomes our God.Swain first locates Jenson's pursuit of a relentlessly "evangelical" understanding of God in the broader history of trinitarian theology after Karl Barth, before carefully and sympathetically unpacking Jenson's doctrine of the Trinity. For Jenson, one of ...

What does it mean to be “truly human?” In Christological Anthropology in Historical Perspective, Marc Cortez looks at the ways several key theologians—Gregory of Nyssa, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, John Zizioulas, and James Cone—have used Christology to inform their understanding of the human person. Based on this historical study, he concludes with a constructive proposal for how Christology and anthropology should work together to infor...

Piety is often regarded with a pejorative bias: a "pious" person is thought to be overly religious, supercilious even. Yet historically the concept of piety has played an important role in Christian theology and practice. For Abraham Heschel, piety describes the contours of a life compatible with God's presence. While much has been made of Heschel's concept of pathos, relatively little attention has been given to the pivotal role of piety in his thought, with the result that the larger met...

The movement that is known as 'theological interpretation of Scripture' reminds us that the reading and exegesis of Scripture is an indispensable part of the theologian's work, not to be reserved to biblical scholars alone. This insight that the reading of Scripture is a theological responsibility is always at risk of being eclipsed by the modern disciplinary divisions between biblical studies, historical theology, and systematic theology.Intended as a contribution to the theologic...