Books published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers

Challenging the common notion that Augustines Confessions lacks literary unity, You Made Us for Yourself approaches the Confessions in light of what Augustine himself would have considered most fundamental: creation, understood in a broad sense. Creation, for Augustine, is an epiphany, a light which reveals who God and man are. It is, Ortiz argues, the light within which Augustine wrote the Confessions and can account for the often despaired of meaning, structure, and unity of the Confessions.

Building on his previous work on embodied liturgy, Frank C. Senn explores the relationship between the sacramental body and blood of Christ, the ecclesial body of Christ, and the body of the communicant. Drawing on the richness of the eucharistic prayer traditions and his own life experiences, this book expands our understandings of the Eucharist to include a life of gratitude (anaphora), cosmology and praise (preface), body and remembrance (anamnesis), Spirit and community (epiclesis), orthodoxy and world view (doxology), presence and union with Christ (communion), and initiation and reconciliation (fencing the table).

Archaeological exploration of Syria-Palestine and the ancient Near East has revolutionized our understanding of the Bible. David A. Fiensy describes how key archaeological discoveries have opened up new understandings of Israels own history and religion as well as the ancient Near Eastern and later Greco-Roman environments. He discusses the impact these discoveries have had on biblical studies, theology, and the task of biblical interpretation. The challenges for the future of archaeology and biblical study will be explored. Part of the series, Reading the Bible in the 21st Century: Insights.

A landmark text on the history of Christian spirituality embarks on the journey afresh. This accessible and engaging history provides an excellent primer on the two-millennium quest for union with God, a "thirst" at the center of Christian life and practice. Holt traces the practice of Christian devotion, prayer, and contemplation from the biblical and influential early periods through the diverse insights of the Reformation and modern eras. Globally framed, the book highlights the local contributions of people from a wide array of traditions and perspectives as unified yet diverse voices giving witness to the thirst for the experience of the divine that is at the heart of the Christian pilgrimage.This new edition not only updates all the chapters and features but also adds more material on the spirituality of Jesus, medieval women mystics, contemporary spirituality, spiritual faith and practice in the digital age, and spirituality in a globalized world. Excerpts and illustrations from primary sources, a glossary, a timeline, new bibliographies, sets of spiritual exercises and discussion questions, and an online resource guide heighten the book''s usefulness for students and lay persons alike.

This project generates conversation between the great thinkers of the Russian Orthodox tradition with the most significant Protestant theologian of the last century, Karl Barth. The body of Russian theological scholarship guided by sobornost challenges Barth, helping us to draw out necessary criticism while leading us toward unexpected insight, and vice versa. Accordingly, this collection not only illuminates but also stimulates discussions for those engaged in the study of Karl Barth''s corpus, the Orthodox tradition, and in the ecumenical discourse between East and West.  

John D. Caputo has a long career as one of the preeminent postmodern philosophers in America. Caputo now reflects on his spiritual journey from a Catholic altar boy in 1950s Philadelphia to a philosopher after the death of God. Part spiritual autobiography, part homily on what he calls the nihilism of grace, Hoping against Hope calls believers and nonbelievers alike to participate in the praxis of the kingdom of God, which Caputo says we must pursue without why.

Until recently, many scholars have read Pauls use of the word Christos as more of a proper name (Jesus Christ) than a title, Jesus the Messiah. Joshua Jipp broadens the discussion by surveying Greco-Roman and Jewish depictions of the ideal king and argues for the influence of these traditions on several aspects of Pauls thought, including Pauls language of participation in Christ. Jipp finds that Pauls use of royal tropes is indeed significant, and concludes that Christos is a royal title, an honorific, within Pauls letters.

Ruben Zimmermann moves beyond the agenda of asking what Jesus himself said and meant in his parables to explore the dynamics of parabolic speech. Introductory chapters address the history of research and distinguish historical from literary and reader-oriented approaches, then sets out a postmodern hermeneutic that analyzes narrative elements and context, maps the sociohistorical background, explores stock metaphors and symbols, and opens up contemporary horizons of interpretation. Subsequent chapters then focus on one parable from early Christian sources, including the canonical Gospels, Q, and Thomas.

Every faith community knows the challenges of inviting new members and the next generation into its shared life, without falling into an arid traditionalism or a shallow relativism. Walter Brueggemann finds a framework for education in the structure of the Hebrew Bible canon, with its assertion of center and limit (in the Torah), of challenge (in the Prophets), and of inquiry (in the Writings). Incorporating best insights from canonical criticism, Old Testament theology, and pedagogical theory, this revised edition is introduced by Amy Erickson of Iliff School of Theology.

This book introduces the Pseudo-Dionysian mystical theology, with glimpses at key stages in its interpretation and critical reception through the centuries. Part one reproduces and provides commentary on the elusive Areopagites own miniature essay, The Mystical Theology, impenetrable without judicious reference to the rest of the Dionysian corpus. Stages in the reception and critique of this Greek corpus and theme are sketched in part two, from the sixth-century through the twelfth and to the critical reaction and opposition by Martin Luther in the Reformation.

"Innovation within Tradition is an exploration of the meaning and implications of Joseph Ratzinger's biblical interpretation of the women of salvation history. Mary Frances McKenna argues that Ratzinger's work, through his development and refinement of the church's tradition, brings the important role and significance of the female characters of Scripture to the fore by placing them at the heart of Christian faith. Explicating the pope emeritus's concept of a 'female line in the Bible, ' which has a profound impact on the meaning and interpretation of the women of salvation history, the volume shows that this concept illustrates the practical value and creative nature of his approach to theology and biblical interpretation. Pivotal to the argument are questions around the findings on the notion of person, feminist theology, salvation history, and Mary, as well as the use of history in theology and biblical interpretation and the potential for the continuing development and deepening of the church's comprehension of the meaning of revelation. The book advances a constructive approach, in coordination with these questions, for a Trinitarian theology of society, addresses old theological issues anew, and provides a starting point for an interdenominational understanding of Mary"--Back cover.

Coming Full Circle provides a working constructive dogmatics in Native Christian theology. Drawing together leading scholars in the field, this volume seeks to encourage theologians to reconsider the rich possibilities present in the intersection between Native theory and practice and Christian theology and practice. This innovative work begins with a Native American theory for doing constructive Christian theology and illustrates the possibilities with chapters on specific Christian doctrines in a theology in outline. This volume will make an important contribution representing the Native American voice in Christian theology.

Volume 1 of The Annotated Luther series contains a number of the writings that defined the roots of reform set in motion by Martin Luther, from the 95 Theses through The Freedom of a Christian. Included are treatises, letters, and sermons written from 15171520, revealing Luthers earliest confrontations with Rome and his defense of views that led to his excommunication. Each volume in The Annotated Luther series contains new introductions, annotations, illustrations, and notes to help shed light on Luthers context and interpret his writings for today.

These chapters explore a number of issues in the contemporary study of Paul raised by questing what it means to read Paul from within Judaism rather than supposing that he left the practice and promotion of living Jewishly behind after his discovery of Jesus as Christ (Messiah).This is a different question to those which have driven the New Perspective over the last thirty years, which still operates from many traditional assumptions about Pauls motives and behavior, viewing them as inconsistent with and critical of Judaism.

Edited by Eric D. Barreto, not authored.

Chapters 911 of Romans remains one of the most contested biblical texts in scholarship today. Theological discussions often limit the focus of this passage to Gods sovereignty or to Pauls defense of Gods faithfulness, but less attention has been devoted to the form and style. Wallace demonstrates how Paul weaves two distinct Jewish literary forms togetherlament and midrashinto a logical narrative concerning Israels salvation. Attention is given to Pauls poetical structures, key literary terms, and use of Old Testament contexts.

Kathryn B. Alexander argues that natural beauty is a source of religious insight into the need and way of salvation, and this project develops a theological aesthetics of nature and beauty with an aim toward cultivating a theological and ethical framework for redeemed life as participation in ecological community. With interdisciplinary verve, engaging systematic, philosophical, and art theory systems of aesthetics, the volume fosters the cultivation of the sense of beauty through creative, religious, and sacramental experience.

Important ecclesiastical documents have stressed the urgency of world hunger and put in the foreground its natural and historical causes, from famine to global austerity measures and warfare. Here biblical scholars take readings of the Old and New Testaments, exploring the dynamics of hunger and its causation in ancient Israel and the Greco-Roman world and revealing the centrality of hunger concerns to the Bible.

Increasingly, scholars recognize that prophetic traditions, expressions, and experiences stand at the heart of most religions in the ancient Mediterranean world. This is no less true for the world of Judaism and Jesus. Ben Witherington III offers an extensive, cross-cultural survey of the broader expressions of prophecy in its ancient Mediterranean context, beginning with Mari, moving to biblical figures not often regarded as prophetsBalaam, Deborah, Moses, and Aaronand to the apocalyptic seer in postexilic prophecy, showing that no single pattern describes all prophetic figures. The consequence is that different aspects of Jesus' activity touch upon prophetic predecessors: his miracles, on Elijah and Elisha; his self-understanding as the Son of Man, on Daniel and 1 Enoch; his warnings of woe and judgment, on the "writing prophets" in Judean tradition; and his messianic entry into Jerusalem, on Zechariah 9. Witherington also surveys the phenomenon of apocalyptic prophecy in early Christianity, including Paul, Revelation, the Didache, Hermas, and the Montanist movement. Jesus the Seer is a worthy complement to Witheringtons other volume on Jesus, Jesus the Sage (Fortress Press, 2000).

The "Great Whore" of the Book of Revelationthe hostile symbolization used to illustrate the authors critique of empirehas attracted considerable attention in Revelation scholarship. Feminist scholar Tina Pippin criticizes the use of gendered metaphors "Babylon" as a tortured womanwhich she asserts reflect an inescapably androcentric, even misogynistic, perspective. Alternatively, Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza understands Johns rhetoric and imagery not simply in gendered terms, but in political terms as well, observing that "Babylon" relies on conventionally coded feminine language for a city.Shanell T. Smith seeks to dismantle the either/or dichotomy within the Great Whore debate by bringing the categories of race/ethnicity and class to bear on Johns metaphors. Her socio-cultural context impels her to be sensitive to such categories, and, therefore, leads her to hold the two elements, "woman" and "city," in tension, rather than privileging one over the other. Using postcolonial womanist interpretation of the woman Babylon, Smith highlights the simultaneous duality of her characterizationher depiction as both a female brothel slaveandas an empress or imperial city. Most remarkably, however, Smiths reading also sheds light on her own ambivalent characterization as both a victim and participant in empire.

Theologians and philosophers are turning again to questions of the meaning, or non-meaning, of the natural world for human self-understanding. Brian R. Doak observes that the book of Job, more than any other book in the Bible, uses metaphors drawn from the natural world, especially of plants and animals, as raw material for thinking about human suffering. Doak argues that Job should be viewed as an anthropological ground zero for the traumatic definition of the post-exilic human self in ancient Israel. Furthermore, the battered shape of the Joban experience should provide a starting point for reconfiguring our thinking about natural theology as a category of intellectual history in the ancient world.Doak examines how the development of the human subject is portrayed in the biblical text in either radical continuity or discontinuity with plants and animals. Consider Leviathan explores the text at the intersection of anthropology, theology, and ecology, opening up new possibilities for charting the view of nature in the Hebrew Bible.

Draws together the strengths of two exegetical approaches to the Gospel of John. Part of the Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries series, this book takes a broad thematic approach to the Gospel while at the same time giving exegetical and homiletical insights about individual pericopes.

Finding practical theology not always able to present frameworks for understanding concrete and lived experience with divine action, Andrew Roots Christopraxis seeks to reset the edifice of practical theology on a new foundation. While not minimizing its commitment to the lived and concrete, Root argues that practical theology has neglected deeper theological underpinnings. Root seeks to create a practical theology that is properly and fully theological, post-postmodern, post-Aristotelian, and that attends to doctrines such as divine action and justification.

When Scholars have set Jesus against various conceptions of the messiah and other redemptive figures in early Jewish expectation, those questions have been bound up with the problem of violence, whether the political violence of a militant messiah or the divine violence carried out by a heavenly or angelic figure. Missing from those discussions, Simon J. Joseph contends, are the unique conceptions of an Adamic redeemer figure in the Enochic materialconceptions that informed the Q tradition and, he argues, Jesus own self-understanding.

In Silence and Praise, Ryan Leif Hansen begins with the premise that cosmology is a central focus in Johns Apocalypse. However, Johns intention in reflecting theologically on the nature, existence, and destiny of the created world is not in order to explicate a stable system. Rather, Johns cosmological thought is employed for persuasive purposes as an ethical and political critique of Roman imperial cultic discourse. Hansen seeks to read the contours of Johns rhetorical cosmology and to understand the theological and political implications of its strategy.