For decades, Sallie McFague lent her voice and theological imagination to advocating for the most important issues of our time. In this final book, finished before her death in 2019, McFague summarizes the work of a lifetime with a clear call to live in such a way that all might flourish.
For decades, Sallie McFague lent her voice and her theological imagination to addressing and advocating for the most important issues of our time. In doing so, she influenced an entire generation and empowered countless people in their efforts to put religion in the service of meeting human needs in difficult times. In this final book, finished in the year before her death in 2019, McFague summarizes the work of a lifetime with a clear call to live in "such a way that all might flourish." The way, she argues, is the "kenotic interpretation of Christianity: the odd arrangement whereby in order to gain your life, you must lose it. The way of the cross is total self-emptying so that one can receive life, real life, and then pass this life on." A masterful and life-giving summing-up of a theology that makes a profound difference for us, our communities, and our planet.
Climate change promises monumental changes to human and other planetary life in the next generations. Yet government, business, and individuals have been largely in denial of the possibility that global warming may put our species on the road to extinction. Further, says Sallie McFague, we have failed to see the real root of our behavioral troubles in an economic model that actually reflects distorted religious views of the person. At its heart, she maintains, global warming occurs because we lack an appropriate understanding of ourselves as inextricably bound to the planet and its systems. A New Climate for Theology not only traces the distorted notion of unlimited desire that fuels our market system; it also paints an alternative idea of what being human means and what a just and sustainable economy might mean. Convincing, specific, and wise, McFague argues for an alternative economic order and for our relational identity as part of an unfolding universe that expresses divine love and human freedom. It is a view that can inspire real change, an altered lifestyle, and a form of Christian discipleship and desire appropriate to who we really are.
What does climate change have to do with religion and spirituality? Even though a changing environment will have a dire impact on human populations--affecting everything from food supply to health to housing--the vast majority of Americans do not consider climate change a moral or a religious issue. Yet the damage of climate change, a phenomenon to which we all contribute through our collective carbon emissions, presents an unprecedented ethical problem, one that touches a foundational moral principle of Christianity: Jesus's dictate to love the neighbor. This care for the neighbor stretches across time as well as space. We are called to care for the neighbors of the future as well as those of the present. How can we connect the ethical considerations of climate change--the knowledge that our actions directly or indirectly cause harm to others--to our individual and collective spiritual practice? Christianity in a Time of Climate Change offers a series of reflective essays that consider the Christian ethics of climate change and suggest ways to fold the neighbors of the future into our spiritual lives as an impetus to meaningful personal, social, and ultimately environmental transformations.
In this splendidly crafted work, McFague argues for theology as an ethical imperative for all thinking Christians. It can help Christians assess their own religious story in light of the larger Christian tradition and the felt needs of the planet. She shows readers how articulating their personal religious stories and credos can lead directly into contextual analysis, unfolding of theological concepts, and forms of Christian practice.
This book is invigorating to read, for it is how biblical theology should be written. Professor Cullmann has set a high standard of biblical scholarship in this book, and it will be a great resource for students of sacred Scripture.
The Gospel according to John presents Jesus in a unique way as compared with other New Testament writings. Scholars have long puzzled and pondered over why this should be. In this book, James McGrath offers a convincing explanation of how and why the author of the Fourth Gospel arrived at a christological portrait of Jesus that is so different from that of other New Testament authors, and yet at the same time clearly has its roots in earlier tradition. McGrath suggests that as the author of this Gospel sought to defend his beliefs about Jesus against the objections brought by opponents, he developed and drew out further implications from the beliefs he inherited. The book studies this process using insights from the field of sociology which helps to bring methodological clarity to the important issue of the development of Johannine Christology.
For decades, Sallie McFague has lent her voice and her theological imagination to addressing and advocating for the most important issues of our time. In doing so, she has influenced an entire generation, and empowered countless people in their efforts to put religion in the service of meeting human needs in difficult times. In this timely book, McFague recalls her readers to the practices of restraint. In a world bent on consumption it is imperative that people of religious faith realize the significant role they play in advocating for the earth, and a more humane life for all. The root of restraint, she argues, rests in the ancient Christian notion of Kenosis, or self-emptying. By introducing Kenosis through the life stories of John Woolman, Simone Weil, and Dorothy Day, McFague brings a powerful theological concept to bear in a winsome and readable way.
"One of the most readable and inspiring surveys of the development of the theology of the early Church is to be found in the introduction on faith, theology, and creeds in this volume.....Dr. Hardy here clearly interprests the scope of the vast, yet delicate, problem faced by the Fathers in the period of the Ecumenical Councils.