Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classic Themes: A Project of The Workgroup On Constructive Christian Theology

by Jones, Serene

• ISBN13: 9780800636838
• ISBN10: 080063683X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-02-28
• Publisher: Fortress Pr

Summary

Coordinated by Serene Jones of Yale Divinity School and Paul Lakeland of Fairfield University, fifty of North America's top teaching theologians (members of the Workgroup on Constructive Christian Theology) have devised a text that allows students to experience the deeper point of theological questions, to delve into the fractures and disagreements that figured in the development of traditional Christian doctrines, and to sample the diverse and conflicting theological voices that vie for allegiance today.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Contributors	ix
Introduction Theology as Faith in Search of Understanding	1	(18)
A Short History of the Workgroup
What Is Constructive Theology?
The Structure of Our Doctrinal Maps
God	19	(58)
State of the Question
A Brief History of God
Some Peculiar Challenges of Our Time
Constructive Proposals
Beyond Atheism and Theism
God Is Love
God and Religious Diversity
God beyond Racism and Sexism
Special Questions: Christians as Atheists
What Can We Know about God?
The Theories of Levinas and Derrida
Polytheism and Monotheism through History
The Problem of Incarnation
Human Being	77	(40)
State of the Question
Voices from the Tradition
Constructive Proposal
Body, Race, and Being: Theological Anthropology in the Context of Performing and Subverting Eucharist
Special Questions: Were the Gnostics Really That Bad?
The Eschatological Character of Gregory's Anthropology
An Alternative Augustinian Anthropology
The Body, Time, and Eternity in Augustine
Election or Entitlement?
Can the Body Be Revelatory?
Conflict as a Prelude to Fellowship
Two Kinds of Ritual
Charity as Exposure
Sin and Evil	117	(44)
State of the Question
A History of Sin
Constructive Proposals
Tracking the Tragic
Anguish and Victimization
Sin, Evil, and Economics
Sin and Power: Poststructuralist and Post-colonialist Theories
Special Questions: A Critique of Adamic Language
Sin as Disobedience and as Personal
Moral Evil versus Natural Evil
Original Sin
Sin as Social or Structural
Confession of Sin
Augustine's Ambivalent Legacy
Implicated Resistance
Theology as Action
Sin and Evil as Social Constructs
Critiques of Poststructuralism
Jesus Christ	161	(40)
State of the Question
Historical Developments
Constructive Proposals
The Scandal of Particularity
God with Us in the Dust
Christ's Offices Reconsidered
Special Questions: The Significance of Mary
The Problems with Nicaea and Chalcedon
Stumbling over the Cross: Suffering, Atonement, and Redemption
Radical Reformation
Spanish Conquest of the Americas
Schleiermacher and Colonialism
Asian Christologies
Church	201	(38)
State of the Question
Historical Development
Constructive Proposals
Race, Body, Space, and Time
The Mission of the Church
Special Questions: An Ecumenical Statement on the Notes of the Church
Postdenominationalism
Race
The Church and Sin
Mission and Christian Universalism
Post-colonial Critiques of Mission
Spirit	239	(40)
State of the Question
A Subaltern History of God the Spirit
Constructive Proposals
Discerning Spirit
The Cosmic Spirit
The Jazz of the Spirit
Special Questions: Montanism
Roman versus Celtic Christianity
The Faces of the Spirit
A Warning about Labels
Powwows
Womanism and Native American Religion
A Story about Spirit
John Muir's View of Spirit
Notes	279	(10)
Glossary	289	(18)
Index	307