150 words: The books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah contain oracles that address problems in and around ancient Judah in ways that are as incisive and critical as they are optimistic and constructive. Daniel C. Timmer’s The Theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah situates these books in their social and political contexts and examines the unique theology of each as it engages with imposing problems in Judah and beyond. In dialogue with recent scholarship, this study focuses on these books’ analysis and evaluation of the world as it is, focusing on both human beings and their actions and God’s commitment to purify, restore, and perfect the world. Timmer also surveys these books’ later theological use and cultural reception. Timmer also brings their theology into dialogue with concerns as varied as ecology, nationalism, and widespread injustice, highlighting the enduring significance of divine justice and grace for solid hope and effective service in our world.

50 words: This volume examines the powerful and poignant theology of the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Daniel C. Timmer situates these books’ theology in their ancient Near Eastern contexts and traces its multifaceted contribution to Jewish and Christian theology and to broader cultural spheres, without neglecting its contemporary significance.

20 words: This volume draws out the theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, attending to their ancient contexts, past use and reception, and contemporary significance.

150 words: The books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah contain oracles that address problems in and around ancient Judah in ways that are as incisive and critical as they are optimistic and constructive. Daniel C. Timmer’s The Theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah situates these books in their social and political contexts and examines the unique theology of each as it engages with imposing problems in Judah and beyond. In dialogue with recent scholarship, this study focuses on these books’ analysis and evaluation of the world as it is, focusing on both human beings and their actions and God’s commitment to purify, restore, and perfect the world. Timmer also surveys these books’ later theological use and cultural reception. Timmer also brings their theology into dialogue with concerns as varied as ecology, nationalism, and widespread injustice, highlighting the enduring significance of divine justice and grace for solid hope and effective service in our world.

50 words: This volume examines the powerful and poignant theology of the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Daniel C. Timmer situates these books’ theology in their ancient Near Eastern contexts and traces its multifaceted contribution to Jewish and Christian theology and to broader cultural spheres, without neglecting its contemporary significance.

20 words: This volume draws out the theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, attending to their ancient contexts, past use and reception, and contemporary significance.

This chapter shows that Davidic traditions were closely connected to the temple. It looks at the way the Jesus tradition broadly, and Matthew specifically, ties Jesus’s activity in the sanctuary to Davidic imagery, arguing that this likely reflects memories that have their origin in Jesus himself. Among other things, special attention is given to the account of Jesuss triumphal entry and to Matthews accounts of Jesuss activity in the temple.

This chapter explores Engels’s engagement with apocalyptic thought. Some reduce Marxism to a secularized version of Christian eschatology, a claim that functions as a rhetorical weapon against Marxism’s originality. I reject this simplistic view but take seriously the textual evidence showing Engels’s interest in the apocalyptic figure Thomas Müntzer and the book of Revelation. He praises Müntzer, going so far as to argue that the coming kingdom of God preached by Müntzer was actually a Marxist ideal marked by radical equality. Though Engels rejects Christian apocalyptic doctrines, he shares with them the belief that things must worsen and reach a crisis before a utopian future is possible. Whereas Machiavelli rejects apocalyptic hope and Hobbes tempers it, Engels embraces it.

Why would secular thinkers find in Christian apocalyptic beliefs – often dismissed as bizarre – appealing tools for interpreting politics? This chapter aims to unpack that puzzle. A helpful approach for understanding apocalyptic thought’s appeal is the lens of ideal theory, which tries to imagine the best and most just society. Ideal theory faces a daunting task: outlining a goal that is both utopian and feasible. To be worth striving for, the ideal must be utopian and possess sufficient moral appeal to justify the transition costs needed to achieve it. Yet the ideal also must be feasible, since it is difficult to justify dedicating limited resources to pursue the impossible. These competing goals result in a catch-22: a more utopian ideal is a less feasible moral goal, which diminishes reasons to strive for it, but a more modest and feasible ideal is a less appealing moral goal, which also diminishes reasons to strive for it. What I call cataclysmic apocalyptic thought proposes a way out of this dilemma. It embraces a utopian goal and declares it feasible by pointing to crisis as the vehicle to wipe away corruption and bring the seemingly impossible within reach.

This chapter examines how Hobbes tempers apocalyptic thought to advance his political philosophy. What troubles Hobbes about such thought is its potential to spur continuous upheaval. Apocalyptic thought anticipates perfection – a divine kingdom that will wipe away corruption. The failure to realize utopian hopes breeds endless dissatisfaction, disruption, and instability in politics. But rather than abandon apocalyptic ideals, Hobbes co-opts them. Specifically, he reinterprets the doctrine of the kingdom of God to make it safe for politics. He arrives at an interpretation that denies, at present, all claims to represent God’s kingdom by prophets and sects challenging the sovereign’s authority. For now, the kingdom of God can only take one form – what Hobbes calls the natural kingdom of God. Importantly, the Leviathan-state is a manifestation of the natural kingdom of God. By identifying God’s kingdom with the Leviathan-state, Hobbes transforms a Christian doctrine used to justify rebellion into one bolstering the sovereign’s authority.

The author of the Gospel of Luke writes his story of Jesus against the widest possible backdrop. It is the story of the salvation of Israel and the nations in fulfilment of the promises of God in the scriptures. The new kingdom community which Jesus inaugurates by word and deed is one which challenges his contemporaries by transforming values and offering forgiveness and welcome to people of every condition and status.

This final chapter outlines the contours of a Christian political theology of law as an indirect and provisional witness to the divine rule, before considering how this approach might engage with Sunni political theology. The chapter develops a theological account of public law as a site of contestation where provisional and indirect witness to God’s rule is at stake. The law is a witness because it is never able to be or to usher in the rule of God; it is indirect because public law should be minimally concerned with the truth about God’s identity and nature; it is provisional since the law is always in need of critique and reevaluation and can never be finally settled. Following the comparative hermeneutic that has guided this book, the chapter then shows how such a theo-legal vision might engage with certain aspects of classical, modern, and contemporary Sunni Islamic thought and prove a productive framework for further debate and dialogue on three key issues in modern Islamic thought: (1) the nature of divine sovereignty and public law, (2) the distinctions between sharī’a and fiqh, and (3) the relationship between maqaṣid (the higher aims of the law), maṣlaḥa, and fiqh.

In 1974 the Norwegian physicist and co-author of Limits to Growth (1972) coined the phrase “a sustainable society.” It was meant to capture his vision for a viable environmental future, while also open a new endless frontier for science with the larger goal of mobilizing Christian religion and respect for the almighty. It was an ecumenical hope in the coming of the Golden Age and the Kingdom of God that framed early understandings of environmental sustainability. In Norway, Randers directed the Resource Policy Group, an influential think tank that provided policy papers to the Labor Party and beyond. The notion of a “sustainable development” was adapted from them by the Norwegian politician Gro Harlem Brundtland, who chaired the World Commission on Environment and Development leading up to the Our Common Future report from 1987.

Kant holds that the origin of our propensity to evil arises in connection with our unsociable sociability. The effective response to it, therefore, must also be social. We must leave the ethical state of nature and join with others in voluntary ethical community, where our shared ends, conceived as the highest good, under the legislation of a divine lawgiver will promote moral progress among human beings. The existing communities of this kind are churches and ecclesiastical faiths, which fall short of their religious vocation but can and should be reformed so as to live up to it. The relation of rational religion to revealed religion is therefore intended by Kant to be dynamic, with the interpretation of revealed religion enriching rational religion and the reform of revealed religion bringing rational and revealed religion into closer harmony, leading gradually toward the founding of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The strong eschatological vein portrayed in Jesus’ teaching raises questions concerning the nature and degree of instability being experienced by the inhabitants of Galilee and Judea. This chapter evaluates the documentary evidence for discontent at the time of Jesus, against a backdrop of foreign invasions and conquests over five hundred years. There is substantial evidence that there was discontent among the people: the cumulative evidence from Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, certain apocalypses, and the Evangelists, especially the literarily distinct Gospels of Mark and John, supports this. After the Feeding of the Five Thousand clearly a large crowd wanted Jesus as their leader, even their king, and tried to coerce him into this, but he was not interested. His focus was on God and the implementation of his kingdom through discipleship. As an apocalyptical and eschatological prophet Jesus believed that God’s rule was in the process of happening, and he is remembered as warning about judgement to come for the unrepentant. His ministry centred on the welfare of the poor, and their inclusion in the coming kingdom.

The strong eschatological vein portrayed in Jesus’ teaching raises questions concerning the nature and degree of instability being experienced by the inhabitants of Galilee and Judea. This chapter evaluates the documentary evidence for discontent at the time of Jesus, against a backdrop of foreign invasions and conquests over five hundred years. There is substantial evidence that there was discontent among the people: the cumulative evidence from Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, certain apocalypses, and the Evangelists, especially the literarily distinct Gospels of Mark and John, supports this. After the Feeding of the Five Thousand clearly a large crowd wanted Jesus as their leader, even their king, and tried to coerce him into this, but he was not interested. His focus was on God and the implementation of his kingdom through discipleship. As an apocalyptical and eschatological prophet Jesus believed that God’s rule was in the process of happening, and he is remembered as warning about judgement to come for the unrepentant. His ministry centred on the welfare of the poor, and their inclusion in the coming kingdom.