Interpretation articles from April 1997

Interpretation archives from April 1997

Confessing Christ: a quest for renewal in contemporary Christianity.
April 1, 1997... One of the more remarkable developments within the last ten years is the sudden emergence of confessing movements within mainline Protestantism. Independently and serendipitously, confessing groups have sprouted across the face of virtually all...

The church of the center.
April 1, 1997... H. Richard Niebuhr's influential book Christ and Culture is remembered for its thoughtful delineation of five types of encounter between church and culture. Often forgotten, however, is Niebuhr's discernment of a "church of the center" within...

To ask a better question: the heterosexuality-homosexuality debate revisited.
April 1, 1997... Various mainline and evangelical movements are now working to reclaim the center of Christian faith after many decades of living with an oversimplified "right versus left" portrait of church life. Other authors in this issue have examined...

Re-forming a sloppy center by and with grace. (American Protestantism)
April 1, 1997... A new Protestant center seems to be emerging in the United States. Many people are tiring of contentious rhetoric and are trying, in various ways, to reach out to each other both for the sake of the gospel and for the good of American society....

1 Samuel 3:1-20.(Between Text and Sermon)
April 1, 1997... 1 Samuel 3 invites the preacher to help the members of her or his congregation consider the ways in which they relate to one another as they respond to God's purpose and call in light of changing circumstances. The eleventh century BCE, a time...

Mark 3:20-35.(Between Text and Sermon)
April 1, 1997... "People will be forgiven for all their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter" (Mark 3:28). Suppose you hear some wild claims about how "God is at work" in that church across town. People's lives are being affected. Some, perhaps, in slow...

John 10:11-18.(Between Text and Sermon)
April 1, 1997... Easter celebrates the victory of God in Jesus Christ, and does so at full stretch. Easter preaching heralds this victory. As we move through the lections for the second through sixth Sundays of Easter, we are led to encounter the richness of...

Calvin in Context.
April 1, 1997... The aim of this book is to illuminate Calvin's thought by placing it in the context of the theological and exegetical traditions that formed his thought and gave it its particular texture (p. viii). By "clarifying the actual range of intellectual...

Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology.
April 1, 1997... In this, the first of a two-volume study, McCormack charts the evolution of Karl Barth's theology to the beginning of the Church Dogmatics, reviewing not only Barth's publications between 1909 and 1936, but also unpublished letters, papers, and...

Reforming Protestantism: Christian Committment in Today's World.
April 1, 1997... Those celebrating or lamenting the demise of what has been "mainline" Protestantism in the United States may be premature. Ottati makes a strong descriptive and normative argument for a renovated and vital version of "reforming Protestantism," a...

Biblical Ethics and Homosexuality: Listening to Scripture.
April 1, 1997... Books are neither written nor read in a vacuum. These two collections of essays deal with homosexuality in relation to church and scripture. They come at the close of three years of study and discussion of the subject in the Presbyterian Church...

Homosexuality and Christian Community.
April 1, 1997... Books are neither written nor read in a vacuum. These two collections of essays deal with homosexuality in relation to church and scripture. They come at the close of three years of study and discussion of the subject in the Presbyterian Church...

The School Tradition of the Old Testament.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... Heaton presupposes that all the wisdom literature in the Old Testament and much writing influenced by wisdom were the product of a "school tradition." Beginning with the clear evidence of a school in the writings of Ben Sira, Heaton looks at...

Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... Focusing on Hosea 2, various contexts in Jeremiah, and Ezekiel 16 and 23, Weems examines critically the sexual violence of the marriage metaphor in the portrayal of God's relationship with Israel. Like the metaphors of God as king, judge, or...

Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... Koester undertakes a multidisciplinary approach to Johannine symbolism. He attends to the literary, sociohistorical, and theological dimensions of Johannine symbolism in an attempt to arrive at a holistic understanding of the function of...

First and Second Peter, James, and Jude.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... Perkins has the unenviable task of engaging within a limited space four disparate compositions, each with its own set of difficulties. After a short general introduction to these "general" epistles, the compositions receive individual...

Making Sense of New Testament Theology: "Modern" Problems and Prospects.
April 1, 1997... The tension between the historical ideals of modern biblical scholarship and the theological interests guiding many of its practitioners has been acute but also acutely managed in German New Testament theology over the past two centuries....

Powers of Evil: A Biblical Study of Satan and Demons.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... In this work, Page discusses virtually every explicit reference to Satan and to other evil spirits in the Bible. Page's aim is to offer those readers "who consider the Bible to have authority over faith and life" a comprehensive review of the...

Wealth as Peril and Obligation: The New Testament on Possessions.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... The new testament has a great deal to say about wealth, but much of its teaching seems foreign and impractical to contemporary believers. In an insightful volume that began as a Yale dissertation, Wheeler asks, "How can the New Testament canon...

Scripture and Discernment: Decision Making in the Church.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... This is a bold, provocative, and ultimately very practical book, described by the author as "a theological reflection on the nuts and bolts of the church's life." In this revision of a 1982 work (Decision Making in the Church: A Biblical Model),...

Calvin: An Introduction to His Thought.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... Parker, one of his generation's foremost proponents of the study of Calvin's sermons and commentaries, turns his attention once again to the work for which Calvin is best known and most often read, the 1559 edition of the Institutes of the...

The Theology of John Calvin.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... Barth's analysis of the early career and writings of Calvin is both refreshing and informative. The book represents Barth's published lectures on Calvin, which he gave at Gottingen in the summer of 1922. Barth opens with an incisive section on...

Colombia Series in Reformed Theology. Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety.
April 1, 1997... Jones seeks to interpret Calvin's understanding of theology in general, and piety in particular, through the lens of contemporary rhetorical criticism. Her laudable goal in employing this approach is to highlight previously under-noticed themes...

Christian Confessions: A Historical Introduction.
April 1, 1997... This volume undertakes a remarkably ambitious project of summarizing and comparing the official teachings of the four major families of Christian churches: Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Reformation and Union Churches, and Evangelical and...

The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong.
April 1, 1997... Placher argues that less than a century after the Reformation, Protestant and Catholic theology took a fatal turn. By contrasting three figures of classical theology (Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin) to the theological discourse that evolved in the...

Vital Signs: The Promise of Mainstream Protestantism.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... Over the past two decades, mainstream Protestantism has been the subject of many analyses. Some have reported research findings - mostly chronicling and interpreting mainstream decline. Others have offered prescriptions for its renewal. This book...

Radical Christianity and the Flesh of Jesus: The Roots of Eucharistic Living.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... The orientation of this challenging yet highly readable text is foreshadowed in the title and clearly identified in the preface: Christianity is much less about doctrinal discussion and debate than it is about daily living (living "in the flesh,"...

Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics, vol. 9. A Common Sense Theology: The Bible, Faith, and American Society.
April 1, 1997... This work, as series editor Charles Mabee notes, is the first "to elevate the concerns (of the series) to the self-conscious quest for an American theology." That Ellingsen's quest is a self-conscious one there can be no doubt. Deeply indebted to...

Feminism and Christian Ethics.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... Parsons recognizes diversity in feminist moral theory, and examines three models of moral reasoning which feminist theologians have adopted: liberalism, social constructionism, and naturalism. Each has assets and deficits. For example, while...

Uncommon Calling: A Gay Christian's Struggle to Serve the Church.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... These two books are significant reflections on the presence of gay and lesbian Christians who are struggling to serve the church. Glaser's book (first published by HarperCollins in 1988) is already, in my view, a classic. He rehearses his story...

Know My Name: A Gay Liberation Theology.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... These two books are significant reflections on the presence of gay and lesbian Christians who are struggling to serve the church. Glaser's book (first published by HarperCollins in 1988) is already, in my view, a classic. He rehearses his story...

Listening for God: Contemporary Literature and the Life of Faith.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... This slender volume presents eight American writers of fiction in the twentieth century. It includes a brief biographical sketch of each and a fairly lengthy quotation from their works, accompanied by a leader's guide that gives suggested...

An Evangelical Theology of Preaching.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... This book serves as a winsome introduction to the reflections on preaching of an important figure in contemporary Methodism. Donald English is an evangelical in the broad sense; his work is grounded in classical Christianity, and he takes...