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Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine is an important series which aims to engage critically with the traditional doctrines of Christianity, and at the same time to locate and make sense of them within a secular context. Without losing sight of the authority of scripture and the traditions of the Church, the books in this series subject pertinent dogmas and credal statements to careful scrutiny, analysing them in light of the insights of both Church and society, and thereby practise theology in the fullest sense of the word.

  • General Editors: Daniel W. Hardy, University of Cambridge

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17 results in Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine

A Theology of Public Life
  • Charles T. Mathewes
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    23 August 2007
  • What has Washington to do with Jerusalem? In the raging debates about the relationship between religion and politics, no one has explored the religious benefits and challenges of public engagement for Christian believers - until now. This book defends and details Christian believers' engagement in contemporary pluralistic public life not from the perspective of some neutral 'public', but from the particular perspective of Christian faith, arguing that such engagement enriches both public life and Christian citizens' faith themselves. As such it offers not a 'public theology', but a 'theology of public life', analysing the promise and perils of Christian public engagement, discussing the nature of civic commitment and prophetic critique, and the relation of a loving faith to a liberal politics of justice. Theologically rich, philosophically rigorous, politically, historically and sociologically informed, this book advances contemporary discussion of 'religion and public life' in fundamental ways.

Theology, Music and Time
  • Jeremy S. Begbie
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    24 July 2000
  • Theology, Music and Time aims to show how music can enrich and advance theology, extending our wisdom about God and God's ways with the world. Instead of asking: what can theology do for music?, it asks: what can music do for theology? Jeremy Begbie argues that music's engagement with time gives the theologian invaluable resources for understanding how it is that God enables us to live 'peaceably' with time as a dimension of the created world. Without assuming any specialist knowledge of music, he explores a wide range of musical phenomena - rhythm, metre, resolution, repetition, improvisation - and through them opens up some of the central themes of the Christian faith - creation, salvation, eschatology, time and eternity, Eucharist, election and ecclesiology. He shows that music can not only refresh theology with new models, but also release it from damaging habits of thought which have hampered its work in the past.

Prophecy and Discernment
  • R. W. L. Moberly
  • Published online:
    05 May 2010
    Print publication:
    02 March 2006
  • If people claim to speak for God, what enables us to know when to credit or discredit the claim? This book analyses the criteria for discernment of prophetic authenticity in the Old Testament, and for discernment of apostolic authenticity in the New Testament; and also considers their validity and viability in a contemporary context. After explaining the biblical concept of prophetic and apostolic speech on God's behalf, Moberly offers close readings of the biblical text so as to bring to life the distinctive voices, especially those of Jeremiah and St Paul, which speak of critical discernment. He addresses contemporary difficulties with the whole idea that humans might speak for God and analyses the nature of authentic spirituality. Throughout the discussion the premise is that the biblical treatment of discernment illuminates the fundamental human issue of the need to know who may be trusted and why.

Remythologizing Theology
  • Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship
  • Kevin J. Vanhoozer
  • Published online:
    04 May 2010
    Print publication:
    14 January 2010
  • The rise of modern science and the proclaimed 'death' of God in the nineteenth century led to a radical questioning of divine action and authorship - Bultmann's celebrated 'demythologizing'. Remythologizing Theology moves in another direction that begins by taking seriously the biblical accounts of God's speaking. It establishes divine communicative action as the formal and material principle of theology, and suggests that interpersonal dialogue, rather than impersonal causality, is the keystone of God's relationship with the world. This original contribution to the theology of divine action and authorship develops a fresh vision of Christian theism. It also revisits several long-standing controversies such as the relations of God's sovereignty to human freedom, time to eternity, and suffering to love. Groundbreaking and thought-provoking, it brings theology into fruitful dialogue with philosophy, literary theory, and biblical studies.

Worship as Meaning
  • A Liturgical Theology for Late Modernity
  • Graham Hughes
  • Published online:
    03 March 2010
    Print publication:
    11 September 2003
  • How, in this Christian age of belief, can we draw sense from the ritual acts of Christians assembled in worship? Convinced that people shape their meanings from the meanings available to them, Graham Hughes inquires into liturgical constructions of meaning within the larger cultural context of late twentieth-century meaning theory. Major theories of meaning are examined in terms of their contribution or hindrance to this meaning making: analytic philosophy, phenomenology, structuralism and deconstruction. Drawing particularly upon the work of Charles Peirce, Hughes turns to semiotic theory to analyse the construction, transmission and apprehension of meaning within an actual worship service. Finally the book analyses the ways in which various worshipping styles of western Christianity undertake this meaning making. Taking account of late modern values and precepts, this ground-breaking book will appeal to teachers and students of theology, to clergy, and to thoughtful lay Christians.

Trinity and Truth
  • Bruce D. Marshall
  • Published online:
    23 December 2009
    Print publication:
    25 November 1999
  • Two closely related questions receive distinctively theological answers in this study: What is truth? and How can we tell whether what we have said is true? Bruce Marshall proposes that the Christian community's identification of God as the Trinity serves as the key to a theologically adequate treatment of these questions. Professor Marshall argues on trinitarian grounds that the Christian way of identifying God ought to have unrestricted primacy when it comes to the justification of belief, and he proposes a trinitarian way of reshaping the concept of truth. Direct engagement with the current philosophical debate about truth, meaning and belief (in Quine and others) suggests that a trinitarian account of epistemic justification and truth is also more philosophically compelling than the approaches generally favoured in modern theology, as exemplified by Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Rahner and others. Marshall offers a contemporary way of conceiving of the Christian God as 'the truth'.

The Creativity of God
  • World, Eucharist, Reason
  • Oliver Davies
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    05 August 2004
  • We have, as a theological community, generally lost a language in which to speak of the created-ness of the world. As a consequence, our discourses of reason cannot bridge the way we know God and the way we know the world. Therefore, argues Oliver Davies, a primary task of contemporary theology is the regeneration of a Christian account of the world as sacramental, leading to the formation of a Christian conception of reason and a new Christocentric understanding of the real. Both the Johannine tradition of creation through the Word and a Eucharistic semiotics of Christ as the embodied, sacrificial and creative speech of God serve the project of a repairal of Christian cosmology. The world itself is viewed as a creative text authored by God, of which we as interpreters are an integral part. This is a wide-ranging and convincing book that makes an important contribution to modern theology.

Theology and the Dialogue of Religions
  • S. J. Michael Barnes
  • Published online:
    04 December 2009
    Print publication:
    14 March 2002
  • Theology of religions is an area of theological reflection on inter-religious relations which raises fundamental questions for all people of faith in a pluralist, post-modern world. How to practise a religious faith with integrity while respecting other claims to ultimate truth? Must 'the other' always be regarded as a problematic complication on the fringes of a Christianity-centred world? Is there a 'third way' between an all-dominating exclusivism and a vapid relativism? This book contributes to the debate about the place of inter-religious relations in the life of the Church by developing a 'theology of dialogue'. In offering a critique of much current thinking in this area, Michael Barnes SJ proposes instead a theology rooted in the themes of welcome and hospitality. He argues for a vision of Christianity as a 'school of faith', a community called not just to teach others but to learn from them as well.

The Bible, Theology, and Faith
  • A Study of Abraham and Jesus
  • R. W. L. Moberly
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    27 July 2000
  • How can academic biblical interpretation fruitfully contribute to Christian belief and living in today's world? This book offers a synthesis of some of the best in pre-modern, modern and post-modern approaches to biblical interpretation, and locates the discipline within a self-critical Trinitarian rule of faith, where historical criticism, systematic theology, ethics, and spirituality are constructively combined. Moberly reclaims biblical and patristic principles of what is necessary for meaningful and truthful speech about God to be possible; he engages with contemporary ideological suspicions directed both to scripture and to its interpreters; and he offers an account of God and humanity in relation to both Old and New Testaments. Hermeneutical theory is given practical shape in in-depth studies of Genesis 22 ('The Akedah'), the Journey to Emmaus (Luke 24), and the Christology of Matthew's Gospel, studies which should be of interest to both Jews and Christians.

Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age
  • Sue Patterson
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    03 June 1999
  • This book cuts new ground in bringing together traditional Christian theological perspectives on truth and reality with a contemporary philosophical view of the place of language in both divine and wordly reality. Patterson seeks to reconcile the requirements that Christian theology should both take account of postmodern insights concerning the inextricability of language and world as well as taking God's truth to be absolute for all reality. Yet it is not simply about theological language and truth as such. Instead Patterson asks: where does language fit in divine and human reality? Patterson's discussion straddles realist, liberal-revisionist and postliberal theological schools, and critiques their various positions before going on to utilise selectively their insights to develop and apply a theological model of 'language-ridden' reality. This model affirms that worldly reality has a radical dependence on God. Finally, the book explores the theological and ethical implications of the model it proposes.

Bound to Sin
  • Abuse, Holocaust and the Christian Doctrine of Sin
  • Alistair McFadyen
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    07 August 2000
  • This book tests the explanatory and descriptive power of the doctrine of sin in relation to two concrete situations: sexual abuse of children and the holocaust. Taking seriously the explanatory power of secular discourses for analysing and regulating therapeutic action in relation to such situations, the book asks whether the theological language of sin can offer further illumination by speaking of God and the world together. Through its discussion of abuse and the holocaust, an engagement with Augustine, original sin and feminism, a fresh and sometimes surprising perspective is offered, both on the theology of sin and on the pathologies under consideration. The understanding of sin that emerges is centred on joyful worship of the trinitarian God. This essay is more systematic and more theological than most practical, pastoral or applied theology and more practical and concrete than most systematic or constructive theology. It is a genuinely concrete, systematic theology.

Church, World and the Christian Life
  • Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology
  • Nicholas M. Healy
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    18 September 2000
  • This book argues that modern ecclesiology exhibits two unfortunate tendencies: it describes the church in ideal terms, rather than directly addressing the problems of its everyday, sinful activity; and it undermines the distinctiveness of the church and its way of life. The book analyzes the impact of pluralism and inclusivism upon ecclesiology, and draws upon Balthasar's theodramatic theory, MacIntyre's theory of traditional inquiry, postmodern critiques of humanism, and postmodern ethnography to develop a more flexible and concrete ecclesiology that can better address the practical and pastoral needs of the church. This alternative ecclesiology strongly affirms the need for the church to debate with those who challenge its claims and their embodiment, both from within and externally. The book concludes by discussing how the church may construct its own theological forms of historical, sociological and ethnographic analysis of both the church and society.

A Political Theology of Nature
  • Peter Scott
  • Published online:
    09 November 2009
    Print publication:
    06 March 2003
  • This book argues that the modern separation of humanity from nature can be traced to the displacement of the triune God. Locating the source of our current ecological crisis in this separation, Peter Scott argues that it can only be healed within theology, through a revival of a Trinitarian doctrine of creation interacting with political philosophies of ecology. Drawing insights from deep ecology, ecofeminism, and social and socialist ecologies, Scott proposes a common realm of God, nature and humanity. Both Trinitarian and political, the theology of this common realm is worked out by reference to Christ and Spirit. Christ's resurrection is presented as the liberation and renewal of ecological relations in nature and society, the movement of the Holy Spirit is understood as the renewal of fellowship between humanity and nature through ecological democracy, and the Eucharist is proposed as the principal political resource Christianity offers for an ecological age.

Christian Wisdom
  • Desiring God and Learning in Love
  • David F. Ford
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    07 June 2007
  • What is Christian wisdom for living in the twenty-first century? Where is it to be found? How can it be learnt? In the midst of diverse religions and worldviews and the demands and complexities of our world, David Ford explores a Christian way of uniting love of wisdom with wisdom in love. Core elements are the 'discernment of cries', the love of God for God's sake, interpretation of scripture, and the shaping of desire in faith. Case studies deal with inter-faith wisdom among Jews, Christians and Muslims, universities as centres of wisdom as well as knowledge and know-how and the challenge of learning disabilities. Throughout, there is an attempt to do justice to the premodern, modern and postmodern while grappling with scripture, tradition and the cries of the world today. Ford opens up the rich resources of Christianity in engaging with the issues and urgencies of contemporary life.

God, the Mind's Desire
  • Reference, Reason and Christian Thinking
  • Paul D. Janz
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    06 May 2004
  • This 2004 book reconfigures the basic problem of Christian thinking - 'How can human discourse refer meaningfully to a transcendent God?' - as a twofold demand for integrity: integrity of reason and integrity of transcendence. Centring around a provocative yet penetratingly faithful re-reading of Kant's empirical realism, and drawing on an impelling confluence of contemporary thinkers (including MacKinnon, Bonhoeffer, Marion, Putnam, Nagel) Paul D. Janz argues that theology's 'referent' must be located within present empirical reality. Rigorously reasoned yet refreshingly accessible throughout, this book provides an important, attentively informed alternative to the growing trends toward obscurantism, radicalization and anti-reason in many recent assessments of theological cognition, while remaining equally alert to the hazards of traditional metaphysics. In the book's culmination, epistemology and Christology converge around problems of noetic authority and orthodoxy with a kind of innovation, depth and straightforwardness that readers of theology at all levels of philosophical acquaintance will find illuminating.

Theology, Political Theory, and Pluralism
  • Beyond Tolerance and Difference
  • Kristen Deede Johnson
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    25 January 2007
  • How can we live together in the midst of our differences? This is one of the most pressing questions of our time. Tolerance has been the bedrock of political liberalism, while proponents of agonistic political thought and radical democracy have sought an answer that allows a deeper celebration of difference. Kristen Deede Johnson describes the move from tolerance to difference, and the accompanying move from epistemology to ontology, within political theory. Building on this 'ontological turn', in search of a theological answer to the question, she puts Augustine into conversation with recent political theorists and theologians. This theological option enables the Church to envision a way to engage with contemporary political society without losing its own embodied story and practices. It contributes to our broader political imagination by offering a picture of rich engagement between the many different particularities that constitute a pluralist society.

Theology and the Drama of History
  • Ben Quash
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    11 August 2005
  • How can theology think and talk about history? Building on the work of the major twentieth-century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar as well as entering into sharp critical debate with him, this book sets out to examine the value and the potential of a 'theodramatic' conception of history. By engaging in dialogue not only with theologians and philosophers like von Balthasar, Hegel and Barth, but with poets and dramatists such as the Greek tragedians, Shakespeare and Gerard Manley Hopkins, the book makes its theological principles open and indebted to literary forms, and seeks to show how such a theology might be applied to a world intrinsically and thoroughly historical. By contrast with theologies that stand back from the contingencies of history and so fight shy of the uncertainties and openness of Christian existence, this book's theology is committed to taking seriously the God who works in time.