Books in the AAR ACADEMY SERIES series

In this, the first critical study of the major theologians of pentecostalism, Christopher A. Stephenson establishes four original categories that classify recent pentecostal theologians' methodologies in systematic/constructive theology.

Christian tradition holds that an individual's ability to respond to God's graceto love both God and neighbor is not wholly vulnerable to earthly contingencies, such as victimization. Today, however, trauma theory insists that situations of overwhelming violence can permanently damage a person's capacity for responsive agency. For Christians, this theory raises the very troubling possibility that humans can inflict ultimate harm on each other, such that someindividuals' eternal destiny can be determined not by themselves but by those who do great harm. Offering crucial insights that lead to a more adequate understanding of the relation between Gods grace and human freedom, Bestes important theory reconfigures our visions of God and humanity and alters ourperceptions of what it means to truly love ones neighbor.

Reflecting on St Paul's construal of Christian identity, this book stresses the communal aspects of Paul's thought and his narrative understanding of the self. It offers an analysis of Rudolph Bultmann's phenomenology of the self and its impact on his demythologizing interpretation of Paul's writings.

Offers an ethnographic study of the initiation ritual practiced by one coven of Witches located in Ohio. This analysis of the Wiccan initiation ceremony offers a challenge to the commonly accepted anthropological model of 'rites of passage.'

This work locates the historical underpinnings of the relationship between the Christian church and its Hispanic constituency through an analysis of the Disciples' interaction with Hispanics in Texas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Offers an analysis of Gregory's writings about the divine persons. This book shows that the fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nyssa developed a very sophisticated concept of the person in the context of his attempts to clarify the paradox of the Trinity - a single God comprising three distinct persons.

This book provides a framework for a new theology of disability which begins with the notion that limits are an unsurprising element of human life. This profoundly challenges common sense categories of disabled and non-disabled and offers significant new images and possibilities for theological reflection and action

The ethical treatment of animals has become an issue of serious moral concern. What is the relationship between human and animals? Do animals have moral standing? The use of animals for experimentation raises these and other questions. This work presents an argument, grounded in Christian theology, for restricted animal experimentation.

Christology is especially problematic for feminists. Because Jesus was undeniably male and because the Christian church claims him as the unique God-bearer, feminist christology confronts the dual tasks of explaining the significance of a male God-bearer for women and creating a christological model adequate to feminist experience. Jacquelyn Grant rehearses the development and challenges of feminist christology and argues that, because it has reflected the experience of White women predominantly, it fails to speak to the concerns of non-white and non-western women. In response to this failure, Grant proposes a womanist theology and christology that emerge from and are adequate to the reality of contemporary Black women.

In this study, the author proposes a new feminist theological ethic. She presents feminist Christian realism as an alternative that can reclaim a positive interpretation of divine and human transcendence, while maintaining emphases on human boundedness and divine immanence.

This volume examines the contributions of three contemporary theologians -- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler, and Jurgen Moltmann -- to the development of Christian ecological theology. Against the charge that the Christian tradition is ecologically bankrupt, the author demonstrates the intellectual and spiritual resources available within Christianity for addressing ecological issues. Of particular interest are Ruether's doctrine of God and her emphasis on ecojustice, Sittler's cosmic Christology and reconception of the relation between nature and grace, and Motlmann's doctrine of the Holy Spirit and argument for social trinitarianism. Beyond evaluating the issues raised by Ruether, Sittler, and Moltmann, the author presents sixteen theses or desiderata for any adequate Christian ecological theology.

Evan Kuehn argues that historiographical assumptions about twentieth-century religious thought have obscured the coherence and relevance of the Protestant theologian Ernst Troeltsch's understanding of God, history, and eschatology. Kuehn argues that an eschatological understanding of the Absolute stands at the heart of Troeltsch's theology and the problem of historicism with which it is faced. Troeltsch's theory of the Absolute is shown to be central to his views onreligion and religious ethics and provides practitioners of constructive studies in religion with important resources for engaging with sociological and historical studies.

Offers a model of empathic communication to benefit both patients and physicians. Drawing from concepts in the domains of psychology and theology, this book constructs a model of empathy that is ethical and reciprocal. An integrated model of empathy recognizes the physical, psychological, spiritual, and social nature of human beings.

Originally presented as the author''s thesis (doctoral)ΓÇöUniversitat Tubingen, 1992, under the title: Die Lehre von den ungeschaffenen Energien: Ihre Bedeutung fuer die oekumenische Theologie.

This book offers a clear and thorough overview of Thomas F. Torrance's insights into the theology/science dialogue. At the same time it presents a critical study of Torrance's Christological model, evaluating its significance for the relationship between theology and science.

In this book, Groppe argues that Yves Congar significantly advanced contemporary pneumatology through his elaboration of a theology of the Holy Spirit that is at once a theology of the church and a theological anthropology.

This book raises in a new way a formerly central but recently neglected question in systematic theology: what is the divine motive for the incarnation? Throughout Christian history theologians have agreed that God's decision to become incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ was made necessary by humanity's fall from grace. If Adam and Eve had not sinned, the incarnation would not have happened. This position is known as "infralapsarian." In the 19th and 20thcenturies, however, some major theological figures championed a "supralapsarian" Christology, arguing that God had always intended the incarnation, independent of "the Fall." Edwin van Driel offers the first scholarly monograph to map and analyze the full range of supralapsarian arguments. He gives a thick description of each argument and its theological consequences, and evaluates the theological gains and losses inherent in each approach. Van Driel shows that each of the three ways in which God is thought to relate to all that is not God - in creation, in redemption, and in eschatological consummation - can serve as the basis for a supralapsarianargument. He illustrates this thesis with detailed case studies of the Christologies of Schleiermacher, Dorner, and Barth. He concludes that the most fruitful supralapsarian strategy is rooted in the notion of eschatological consummation, taking interpersonal interaction with God to be the goal of the incarnation.He goes on to develop his own argument along these lines, concluding in an eschatological vision in which God is visually, audibly, and tangibly present in the midst of God's people.

Graham Greene's early books are usually described as 'Catholic Novels'. Greene's later work, by contrast, is generally regarded as falling into political and detective genres. This book argues that this is a false dichotomy created by a narrowly prescriptive understanding of the Catholic genre.

A number of critics and scholars have argued for the notion of a distinctly Catholic quality or character of imagination: not a matter of doctrine or even necessarily of belief, but a sensibility, a complex of intellectual, emotional, spiritual and ethical assumptions and proclivities that proceed from Catholic belief and constitute a stance towards reality that informs imaginative expression. In this book Michael Murphy brings to bear Hans Urs von Balthasar'sperspectives on theology and literary criticism to put this concept to the test and give it greater specificity and definition. The works examined range from fiction by such authors as Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Jack Kerouac, to poetry from Denise Levertov and William Everson and the films ofLars von Trier.

Psychotherapist Dorothy W. Martyn reverses the way in which psychoanalytic psychology and Christian theology have usually been related to one another. With few exceptions, priority has been granted to psychology: infantile needs and wishes spawn religious ideas; from one''s life experience one can proceed to an understanding of God. Tracing the therapeutic journeys of three children, Martyn finds crucial illumination in the insights of Freud, Jung, Winnicott, Klein,and others. But she sees the power that evokes emotional growth in the therapeutic relationship as deriving from motifs of Christian theology that deepen our understanding of authentic parental love.

This title presents a focused analysis of the core value of Confucian thought, namely the jen (humanity or co-humanity), through an investigation of Hsieh Liang-tso's analysis of the Analects of Confucius.