Books published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers

The Christian gospel, says Brueggemann, is too easily preached and heard. Too often technical reason and excessive religious certitude reduce the gospel to coercive, debilitating pietisms that mask the text's meaning and freeze the hearers heart. With skill and imagination, Brueggemann demonstrates how the preacher can engage in daring speech-differently voiced and therefore differently heard. This speech, as suggested by the Bible itself, is "poetic" speech, enabling the preacher to forge communion in the midst of alienation, bring healing out of guilt, and empower the hearer for "missional imagination." As an alternative to theological/homiletical discourse that is moralistic, pietistic or scholastic, Brueggemann proposes preaching that is artistic, poetic, and dramatic. The basis for the 1989 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School, Finally Comes the Poet is a unique and transforming guide for powerful preaching.

This book is an attempt to make some initial tracing of what the gospel looks like through the lens of "secular" literary criticism. As an interdisciplinary study, the work is an effort to contribute to that dialogue by studying the narrative elements of the Fourth Gospel while interacting occasionally with current Johannine research. It is intended not as a challenge to historical criticism or the results of previous research but as an alternative by means of which new data may be collected and readers may be helped to read the gospel more perceptively by looking at certain features of the gospel. This process is to be distinguished from reading the gospel looking for particular kinds of historical evidence.Our aim is to contribute to understanding the gospel as a narrative text, what it is, and how it works. The emphasis will be upon the construction of hypotheses or critique of methods. The gospel as it stands rather than its sources, historical background, or themes is the subject of this study.

This is Tshenuwani Simon Farisani's harrowing account of the suffering inflicted on a single human being by the brutalities of apartheid. Farisani shows us the terror of torture, the fear of death, and the eventual victory of faith.

Can practical theology be truly practical?The answer is yes. This collection brings together top scholars in the fields of pastoral care, systematic theology, and biblical hermeneutics to offer a coherent practical theology for the pastoral mission of the church. As Christians around the world practice their faith, this important scholarly book highlights the salient struggles in contemporary Christian thought and seeks to bring together the best of the church and academy for the greater good.

Being a Christian means learning to love with God's love. But God's love is not a warm feeling in the pit of the stomach. It has definite characteristics we learn in the course of our life, in the behavior and teaching of the early monastics, as we ponder over what we can say about God as God deals with us, and finally, as we model our own lives on what we have learned.

In light of globalization, ongoing issues of race, gender, and class, and the rapidly changing roles of institutions, this volume asserts that Christian social ethics must be reframed completely. Three questions are at the heart of this vital inquiry: How can moral community flourish in a global context? What kinds of leadership do we need to nurture global moral community? How shall we construe social institutions and social movements for change in the twentyfirst century?The illustrious contributors include: Anthony B. Pinn, Katie G. Cannon, Noel Erksine, Jacob Olupona, Riggins R. Earl Jr., James H. Cone, Dwight N. Hopkins, Lewis V. Baldwin, Jonathan L. Walton, Rosetta E. Ross, Traci C. West, Melanie L. Harris, Victor Anderson, Emilie M. Townes, and Barbara A. Holmes.

Patrick D. Miller seeks to help interpreters of the Psalms "find entre into them in various ways to hear their theological claims and their point of contact with human life." In Part One, Miller examines the dominant "general approaches" that are currently shaping the study of psalms. He pays special attention to the poetic features of the psalms so as to aid the task of understanding their meaning. In Part Two, he offers extended expositions of ten specific Psalms-1, 2, 14, 22, 23, 82, 90, 127, 130, and 139. These Psalms are interpreted with an eye to theological and pastoral issues and with a sensitivity to their features and to their significance as Christian Scripture.

In most Bibles the period between the Old and the New Testaments is represented by a single blank page which, perhaps, has symbolic significance. 'From Malachi to Matthew' has for long remained vague and unfamiliar to many readers of the Scriptures. Many mysteries remain, but in recent times much light has been cast on this whole period. Exciting new insights have been provided by the writings of numbers of scholars and by some remarkable archaeological discoveries. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls caught the popular imagination and engaged the attention of worldwide scholarship. In this small volume an attempt is made to review these years in the light of recent study and discoveries and in particular to assess the religious contribution made by that rather strange company of men known as 'the apocalyptists'. The purpose of this book is selective rather than exhaustive, indicating the part which the apocalyptists had to play within the religious development of Judaism and in the preparation of men's minds for the coming of Christianity.

In challenging both traditional and contemporary notions of the nature and history of the Biblical apocalyptic literature, Professor Hanson begins by saying that the origins of apocalyptic cannot be explained by a method which juxtaposes seventh and second century compositions and then proceeds to account for the features of the latter by reference to its immediate environment. "The apocalyptic literature of the second century and after is the result of a long development reaching back to pre-exilic times and beyond, and not the new baby of second century foreign parents. Not only the sources of origin, but the intrinsic nature of late apocalyptic compositions can be understood only by tracing the centuries-long development through which the apocalptic eschatology developed from prophetic and other even more archaic native roots."In this ground breaking study, Professor Hanson focuses on one strand which can be seen running through the heart of many of the so-called apocalyptic works, the strand of apocalyptic eschatology. He seeks to demonstrate that the rise of apocalyptic eschatology is neither sudden nor anomalous, but follows the pattern of an unbroken development from preexilic and exilic prophecy.By means of a detailed analysis of the Hebrew text and a new translation of it into English, Professor Hanson demonstrates why scholars must look again at the apocalyptic eschatology. This contextual-typological approach will call for a reexamination of many opinions about this literature.

In African American culture, the church is instrumental in establishing and maintaining social order. Professor Paris shows that a study of black church teachings reveals black social ethics. These ethics aren't "abstract moral principles, but sociopolitical quests for liberation and freedom."

William J. Carl III confronts the problem of using theological language in preaching through a combination of serious theological reflection, rhetorical criticism, cultural analysis, and practical homiletical advice. He examines the approaches of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Barth, and Tillich to determine how these theologians brought life to the pulpit and what today's preachers can learn from them. Preaching Christian Doctrine organizes and describes the various approaches to doctrinal preaching developed throughout the history of the church and across denominational lines, making this volume a unique systematic homiletics text dealing with the problem of preaching Christian doctrine today.

This comprehensive, systematic survey of Luther's ethical thought and teaching clearly discusses all the major ethical issues that concerned Luther. Contemporary readers will be especially interested in what the Reformer has to say about the Christian's attitude toward secular society, toward the state, and toward war. The Ethics of Martin Luther offers scholars and nonspecialists alike a much-needed explanation of Luther's ideas.

". . . a liberating book about a liberating theological approach." --Christianity and Crisis "Metaphorical Theology is a brilliant piece of writing which will make an important contribution both to new thinking on he nature of religious language and also to the dialogue between Christianity and Feminist Theology." --Rosemary Radford Ruether Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary "The great virtue of Professor McFague's book is that it tackles [some] crucial problems in an extremely perceptive and creative way . . . .All in all it is a most timely book both for the theological and for the church at large." --Maurice Wiles Regius Professor of Divinity Christ Church, Oxford University

In this comprehensive and thought-provoking study, Terence Fretheim focuses on the theme of divine suffering, an aspect of our understanding of God which both the church and scholarship have neglected. Maintaining that "metaphors matter," Fretheim carefully examines the ruling and anthropomorphic metaphors of the Old Testament and discusses them in the context of current biblical-theological scholarship. His aim is to broaden our understanding of the God of the Old Testament by showing that "suffering belongs to the person and purpose of God".

"This book is not only absorbingly readable but important. For its themes engage effectively with main dilemmas not only of formal theology but of current piety and witness." - Amos N. Wilder, Andover Newton Quarterly "This book is immensely valuable for its persuasive illustrations of the parabolic and metaphoric imagination. McFague attends both to the interpretive and the evaluative levels of hermeneutics. Her readings of specific parables, poems, stories, and autobiographies are insightful and relevant to her thesis that what religious language 'says' is 'conceptually imperceivable and inexpressible.'" - Mary Gerhart, Journal of the American Academy of Religion "It is at the very least a fine guide to one important direction that theological hermeneutics might take, and more than that, it testifies confidently to the presence of still unplumbed resources of the biblical word and its secular counterpart that are there for the imagination's appropriation." - Robert Detweiler, Religious Studies Review "Everyone interested in theology will be stimulated by Sallie McFague's mediating theological position and the form of thinking and discourse she espouses. Those interested in the intercourse between theology and literature will be stimulated by the way she links the two and the perceptive way she handles her literary examples. Biblical scholars will undoubtedly note her primacy of the parables as the central corpus of the biblical records. Preachers of the church will be strengthened by the concern McFague has for the Christian community and the importance of the word through the words of the preachers. With this variety of concerns, Speaking in Parables will have a deservedly wide reading and, perhaps even more important, wide discussion." - Ronald E. Sleeth, Perkins School of Theology Journal

The first nontechnical description of the principles and procedures of narrative criticism. Written for students' and pastors' use in their own exegesis.With great clarity Powell outlines the principles and procedures that narrative critics follow in exegesis of gospel texts and explains concepts such as "point of view," "narration," "irony," and "symbolism." Chapters are devoted to each of the three principal elements of narrative: events, characters, and settings; and case studies are provided to illustrate how the method is applied in each instance. The book concludes with an honest appraisal of the contribution that narrative criticism makes, a consideration of objections that have been raised against the use of this method, and a discussion of the hermeneutical implications this method raises for the church.

Professor McCarter here offers an introduction to the art and science of textual criticism for students of the Hebrew Bible. His emphasis is on the work involved in the critical evaluation of a given portion of text. His explanations of critical principles are illustrated with carefully selected examples of the textual phenomena discussed-in Hebrew, with English translations. The book concludes with unique appendices on several kinds of essential but hard-to-find information.