The Dialogic Evangelical Theology of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

The Dialogic Evangelical Theology of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen
Author: Peter Goodwin Heltzel
Publisher: Fortress Academic
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2022
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781978710351

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen broke new ground in developing a Christian systematic theology that embeds rich hospitable dialogue with many different areas of expertise and religions. This volume offers a response to his work by experts of these diverse fields, offering rich insights and points to continuing fruitful conversations.

Christian Perspectives on Transforming Interreligious Encounter

Christian Perspectives on Transforming Interreligious Encounter
Author: Peter C. Phan
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2024-05-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666959995

Christian Perspectives on Transforming Interreligious Encounter underscores the urgency of interreligious dialogue for contemporary society, aiming to foster interfaith understanding, justice, and peace. The initial section focuses on novel approaches to engaging with the religious Other through non-Christian sacred texts. Contributors explore the Jewish-Christian relationship, offer Christian interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian scriptures, and discuss the Qurʾān's potential to refine Christian theology. The dangers of comparative theology are warned against, and alternative perspectives, such as Asian liberation theology, are proposed for situating religion critically, as well as share the insights on Christian engagement with Zen practice. The second part explores the transformation of key Christian doctrines through interreligious encounters. Contributors delve into topics such as the conditions for faith and divine revelation, formulating a Christology in dialogue with Asian traditions, and understanding the Spirit as a source of questioning. They investigate the communitarian dimension of religious faith, discuss the Catholic Church's stance on interreligious dialogue, examine the role of biblical hermeneutics in decolonizing theology, and reflect on the existential threat of ecological destruction. The third part pays tribute to Leo Lefebure, emphasizing his impact on Catholic theology and comparative theology, and concludes with Lefebure's epilogue, providing him with the last word.

Under the Oak Tree

Under the Oak Tree
Author: Ronald J. Allen
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2013-11-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1630870757

Two trends in the early twenty-first-century intersect to give this volume immediate relevance: 1) The emerging postmodern ethos in North America is calling into question many things we have taken for granted, including the purposes of the church; and 2) our time is increasingly fractious as groups with distinct worldviews become polarized and often antagonistic. Eleven noted contributors join a growing current that sees conversation as an image to refresh our thinking about the nature and purpose of the church, and as a process in which individuals and communities with different perspectives come together for real understanding. Under the Oak Tree employs the image of Sarah and Abraham greeting three visitors under the Oaks of Mamre as an image for the church as a community of conversation, a community that opens itself to the otherness of the Bible, voices in history and tradition, others in the contemporary social and ecological worlds. Furthermore, the book shows how conversation can lead the church to action. The book takes a practical approach by exploring how conversation can shape key parts of the church's life. Topics include preaching, worship, formation, evangelism, pastoral care, mission and ecumenism, social witness, and the relationship of Christianity to other religions. Foundational chapters consider God as conversational, the church as community of conversation, and the minister as conversation leader.

The Messianic Disruption of Trinitarian Theology

The Messianic Disruption of Trinitarian Theology
Author: Kornel Zathureczky
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2009-03-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0739131524

The unsettling context of late modernity, a terrain of an infinite fragmentation of life, poses a challenge to Christianity to rearticulate its defining doctrine of the Trinity. Christianity's initial messianic weakness_in that its canonical writings attest to a universal message of redemption for the victims of Empire_was subverted into the strong theology of the Empire. This book demonstrates that Trinitarian discourse was profoundly implicated in this development as it essentially absorbed and took the bite out of the messianic language of the early Christian movement. Zathureczky proposes a retrieval of the messianic discourse of Christianity by way of recapturing its redemptive weakness. Relying on an elective affinity between Walter Benjamin's messianism and JYrgen Moltmann Trinitarianism, he attempts to recapture the 'weakness' and fragility of the language of the initial messianic impulse of the Christian community. The resulting 'weak' Trinitarianism retains the basic character of Christianity as a Trinitarian faith, but now Trinitarian discourse about God is simultaneously messianic discourse, a language that is attuned to give voice to the damaged lives and alienating conditions of our contemporary context.

Faith, Hope, Love, and Justice

Faith, Hope, Love, and Justice
Author: Anselm K. Min
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2018-03-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498577121

Faith, hope, and love, traditionally called theological virtues, are central to Christianity. This book renews faith, hope, and love in the context of the many contemporary challenges in many unique ways. It is an ecumenical collection of papers, equally divided between Catholic and Protestant positions, that seek to radically renew the classical doctrine of faith, hope, and love, and argues for their essential connection to the praxis of justice. It contains eight different approaches, each represented by a distinguished theologian and addressing different aspects of the issues and followed by insightful and critical responses. It does not merely seek to renew the theological virtues but to also reconstruct them in the demanding context of justice and the contemporary world, nor is it simply a treatise on justice but a theoretical and practical reflection on justice as vital expressions of faith in God, hope in God, and love of God. A non-dogmatic and non-ideological approach, it accommodates both conservative and liberal positions, and avoids the separation of the theological virtues from the demands of the contemporary world as well as the separation of justice talk from the theological context of faith, hope, and love. It seeks above all to renew, not merely repeat, the classical doctrine of faith, hope, and love in the contemporary context of the urgency of justice, and to do so ecumenically, comprehensively, and from a variety of perspectives and aspects.

Environmental Science

Environmental Science
Author: Richard T. Wright
Publisher: Pearson Education
Total Pages: 674
Release: 2010-01-04
Genre: Environmental sciences
ISBN: 9780321701404

By emphasizing the memorable themes of science, sustainability and stewardship, this textbook helps readers understand the science behind environmental issues and what they can do to build a more sustainable future.

Statistical Mechanics Made Simple (2nd Edition)

Statistical Mechanics Made Simple (2nd Edition)
Author: Daniel C Mattis
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2008-03-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9814365386

This second edition extends and improves on the first, already an acclaimed and original treatment of statistical concepts insofar as they impact theoretical physics and form the basis of modern thermodynamics. This book illustrates through myriad examples the principles and logic used in extending the simple laws of idealized Newtonian physics and quantum physics into the real world of noise and thermal fluctuations.In response to the many helpful comments by users of the first edition, important features have been added in this second, new and revised edition. These additions allow a more coherent picture of thermal physics to emerge. Benefiting from the expertise of the new co-author, the present edition includes a detailed exposition — occupying two separate chapters — of the renormalization group and Monte-Carlo numerical techniques, and of their applications to the study of phase transitions. Additional figures have been included throughout, as have new problems. A new Appendix presents fully worked-out solutions to representative problems; these illustrate various methodologies that are peculiar to physics at finite temperatures, that is, to statistical physics.This new edition incorporates important aspects of many-body theory and of phase transitions. It should better serve the contemporary student, while offering to the instructor a wider selection of topics from which to craft lectures on topics ranging from thermodynamics and random matrices to thermodynamic Green functions and critical exponents, from the propagation of sound in solids and fluids to the nature of quasiparticles in quantum liquids and in transfer matrices.

Doing the Work of Comparative Theology

Doing the Work of Comparative Theology
Author: Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2020-01-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1467458554

In a world that is more religiously diverse than ever before, our coworkers and neighbors may well be adherents of other faiths. But how many of us really grasp the similarities and differences between the major world religions? Comparative theology is one increasingly important way to bridge this gap, especially for Christian leaders and professors, but also for lay people and students. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen introduces the nature and work of comparative theology, then delves into a detailed doctrine-by-doctrine comparison of Christian teachings with those of historical and contemporary Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. With every doctrine, he first presents a summary of consensual Christian belief and then orients the reader to the distinctive teachings of other faith traditions, highlighting parallels and differences. Ideal for students, ministers, instructors, and lay people interested in interfaith dialogue, Doing the Work of Comparative Theology distills the comparative-theological rigor of Kärkkäinen’s Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World series into an accessible and user-friendly textbook. Readers will not only learn basic methodology but also begin to undertake the actual work of comparative theology.

Hope and Community

Hope and Community
Author: Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2017
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0802868576

The culmination of Kärkkäinen's multivolume magnum opus This fifth and final volume of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen's ambitious five-volume systematic theology develops a constructive Christian eschatology and ecclesiology in dialogue with the Christian tradition, with contemporary theology in all its global and contextual diversity, and with other major living faiths--Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. In Part One of the book Kärkkäinen discusses eschatology in the contexts of world faiths and natural sciences, including physical, cosmological, and neuroscientific theories. In Part Two, on ecclesiology, he adopts a deeply ecumenical approach. His proposal for greater Christian unity includes the various dimensions of the church's missional existence and a robust dialogical witness to other faith communities.

Karl Barth's Doctrine of Sanctification

Karl Barth's Doctrine of Sanctification
Author: Michael Bartholomaeus
Publisher: Fortress Academic
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2021
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781978712157

This book explores Karl Barth's doctrine of sanctification as set out in "The Sanctification of Man," §66 of the Church Dogmatics. It combines a close reading and interpretation of Barth's argument alongside some extended explorations of a number of difficulties and puzzles in Barth's formulation of the doctrine.