In the Shadow of Christ presents a fresh theological interpretation of nature's violent and suffering character, as determined by God's self-interpretation in Jesus Christ. Grounded in the rich spiritual tradition of premodern natural theology, Wiertel retrieves a figural reading of nature that interprets the entire span of created existence through Scripture's symbolic landscape. This restored vision of the "two books," rooted in God's creative and redemptive word, establishes an interpre...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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 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...

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...