George Lindbeck lamented that his most widely read work, The Nature of Doctrine, had often been read apart from his ecumenical focus. In this book, Shaun Brown seeks to provide a corrective to misreadings of Lindbeck’s work by focusing upon his “Israelology”—his emphasis upon the church and Israel as one elect people of God. While many Christians after the Holocaust have noted the harm that Supersessionism brought to the Jews, Lindbeck focuses upon the harm that supersessionism has brought to the church. He argues the appropriation of Israelhood by the church can bring intra-Christian ecumenical benefits. This work comes in two stages. In the first stage, undertaken while he was an observer at the Second Vatican Council, Lindbeck discusses a parallel between Israel and the church. The second stage, which begins in the late 1980s and continues through the end of his career, Lindbeck describes the church as “Israel-like” or “as Israel.”

Covenant and the People of God gathers twenty-four essays from friends and colleagues of Messianic Jewish theologian and New Testament scholar Mark S. Kinzer, in honor of his seventieth birthday. The essays are organized around two central themes that have animated Kinzer's work: the nature of the covenant and what it means to be the people of God. The volume includes fascinating discussions of some of the most sensitive areas related to Jewish-Christian dialogue, post-supersessionist interpretation of Scripture, and the theological shape of Messianic Judaism. Among the contributors are scholars working in North America, Europe, and Israel. They include: Gabriele Boccaccini, Douglas A. Campbell, Holly Taylor Coolman, Gavin D'Costa, Jean-Miguel Garrigues, Douglas Harink, Richard Harvey, Vered Hillel, Jonathan Kaplan, Daniel Keating, Amy-Jill Levine, Antoine Levy, Gerald McDermott, Michael C. Mulder, David M. Neuhaus, Isaac W. Oliver, Ephraim Radner, Jennifer M. Rosner, David J. Rudolph, Thomas Schumacher, Faydra L. Shapiro, R. Kendall Soulen, Lee B. Spitzer, and Etienne Veto.

George Lindbeck wrote one of the most often read and debated theological works of the twentieth century, The Nature of Doctrine. Despite the work's wide readership, few read the book considering his work as an ecumenist. In addition, few have read Lindbeck's other writings. This work seeks to remedy this situation by providing (1) a context for understanding The Nature of Doctrine, (2) a corrective to misreadings of Lindbeck's work, (3) an introduction to his broader corpus, and (4) some possible ways in which Lindbeck's work can contribute to future ecumenical discussion and to Christian theological practice more broadly. It will do so by focusing upon several key roles or aspects of Lindbeck's life and thought, from his understanding of his own Lutheran background and his participation in Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, to his training in medieval philosophy and theology and later work on the church as Israel.

In Freedom under the Word, top-tier scholars offer critical engagements with Karl Barth's exegesis of Christian Scripture and explore its implications for contemporary hermeneutics and biblical interpretation. Focusing on rare texts from the Barth corpus, the book considers the legacy and potential of Barth's theology by presenting a wide-ranging engagement with and assessment of Barth's theological exegesis. It covers Barth's career chronologically, providing insight into his theological development as it relates to Scripture. Contributors include John Webster, Francis Watson, Wesley Hill, Stephen Fowl, Paul Nimmo, and Grant Macaskill.

Offering not only state-of-the-art introductions from Biblical, historical, and constructive theologians, this volume also fosters an inter-disciplinary and cross-confessional conversation, reclaiming the idea of election as a central notion for any retelling of the biblical narrative. Several essays explore the variety of ways in which election is spoken about in the Scripture, drawing on research from the last twenty years that offers a more sophisticated framework than the traditionally theological categories of “elect” and “reject”. The historical part of the volume covers new analyses of Medieval and post-Reformation Catholic and Protestant debates on predestination, while the book's constructive part contributes to contemporary conversations on the relationship between Trinity, Christology, and election, the development of a post-supersessionist understanding of Israel's chosenness, as well as voices from contextual struggles in South America, Palestine, and South Africa.

A theological reflection on churches repenting of events and convictions they have held in the past.

At a time when major branches of Judaism and most Christian denominations are addressing the relationship between religion and homosexuality, Jewish/Christian/Queer offers a unique examination of the similarities between the queer intersections of Judaism and Christianity, and the queer intersections of the homosexual and the religious. This volume investigates three forms of queerness; the rhetorical, theological and the discursive dissonance at the meeting points between Christianity and Judaism; the crossroads of the religious and the homosexual; and the intersections of these two forms of queerness, namely where the religiously queer of Jewish and Christian speech intersects with the sexually queer of religiously identified homosexual discourse. Including essays on literature and literary theory, Christian theology, Biblical, Rabbinic, and Jewish studies, queer theory, architecture, Freud, gay and lesbian studies and history, Jewish/Christian/Queer will have a truly interdisciplinary appeal.

George Lindbeck once characterized postliberalism, which received its initial structure from his book The Nature of Doctrine, as an attempt to recover pre-modern scriptural interpretation in contemporary form. In Lord, Giver of Life: Toward a Pneumatological Complement to George Lindbeck’s Theory of Doctrine, Jane Barter Moulaison explores the success of that effort through a close examination of Lindbeck’s own theological contributions. Taking seriously the ecumenical promises of Lindbeck’s writing (he was instrumental in advancing Lutheran and Roman Catholic dialogue throughout the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s), this book brings Lindbeck’s famous cultural-linguistic model of religion into dialogue with Christianity’s theological forbearers: specifically, the Eastern progenitors of orthodox confession. This constellation of theological voices—Lindbeck, his supporters and detractors, along with patristic theologians—is meant not only to test the viability of a religious model but, more importantly, to advance Lindbeck’s project in ways that have not yet been pursued. Among the critical questions engaged are: to what degree can the excesses of modern theology be overcome by a return to premodern sources? What are the implications of a constructive pneumatology to the cultural-linguistic model? Does this complement address the critiques of postliberalism, particularly those that consider the role of human agency, rationality, and autonomy? While Lindbeck recovers significant and forgotten elements of pre-modern biblical interpretation, the very formalism of his project sometimes obscures the theological underpinnings of premodern insights and practices. Through specific attention to Eastern Trinitarian theologies of the fourth century, this book exposes a rather persistent oversight within Lindbeck’s recovery: namely, that alongside the regulative function of canon and doctrine, early biblical interpretation recognizes the role of the Holy Spirit in the appropriation of scripture, in the mission of the church, and in the defence of the gospel within the context of an unbelieving world. This book attends to these insights from the early churchs doctrine of the Holy Spirit in appreciative service to the cultural-linguistic model of religion.

Peter Ochs is one of today's most influential Jewish philosophers and the cofounder of the practice of Scriptural Reasoning. Signs of Salvation: A Festschrift for Peter Ochs celebrates Ochs' deep and wide-ranging contributions to theology, philosophy, interreligious dialogue, and conflict resolution studies. The volume offers a rich and rigorous introduction to Peter Ochs' extensive body of work and his philosophy of scriptural pragmatism. In addition, it presents engaging essays by Ochs' colleagues, friends, and former students, who reflect on the impact his work has had on their academic field and their own thought. Contributors raise questions about the task of philosophy and the nature of reasoning, the appropriate function and limits of the Western academy, the practice of Scriptural Reasoning and its significance for interreligious dialogue, and the future of modern theology. With contributions from: Robert Gibbs Nicholas Adams Daniel Weiss Jim Fodor Jacob Goodson Emily Filler Rumi Ahmed Basit Koshul Nauman Faizi Rachel Muers Eliot Wolfson Steven Kepnes Shaul Magid Mike Higton Tom Greggs Susannah Ticciati Stanley Hauerwas

What should we believe, and why should we believe it? This book addresses these questions through a critical exposition of the work of the contemporary philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and of the theologian George Lindbeck, the father of postliberal theology. The book argues that MacIntyre's philosophical development can be seen as a response to the question of how belief in a comprehensive metaphysical system can be justified. Such a system provides its believers with an account of the nature of the universe and human nature, and a basis for their ethical reasoning and action. The book draws on Lindbeck's cultural-linguistic account of religion to argue that such a system is primarily a way of interpreting the world and the place of humanity within it, rather than a speculative theory. The justification of belief in such systems can be understood in terms of MacIntyre's account of tradition-constituted rationality, provided that this notion of rationality is made more specific by the incorporation of elements of Lindbeck's theology. Equally, the book argues that Lindbeck's theology can be strengthened by the incorporation of elements drawn from MacIntyre's work. This book will be of value to students of philosophy and theology and to the general reader who is interested in the question of the grounds of belief.