Books published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers

Leading scholars on Christian origins and early Judaism assess critical questions about Jesus as they impinge on Jewish-Christian dialogue. These essays have their origin in the 1993 program of the Center for Jewish-Christian Learning at the University of Saint Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota.

'This is an excellent book on faith's center and source of power. The author shows the wealth and diversity of forms and effects prayer has and, along the way, introduces the reader to the theology and spirituality of the Old and New Testament traditions.'-Michael Welker

Long needed, Thomas Schubeck's is the first comprehensive assessment of the ethical import of this generation's most influential theological movement.Based on in-depth interviews with key liberation theologians, as well as comprehensive research, Schubeck offers a critical yet sympathetic evaluation of liberation theology's normative content by looking at how liberation theologians actually use their foundational sources-praxis, social analysis, and Scripture.After narrating its grassroots origins, Schubeck gauges the comprehensiveness and coherence of the work of a dozen theologians, including Gustavo Gutiérrez, Juan Segundo, Jon Sobrino, and the late Ignacio Ellacuría, José Míguez Bonino, and others. He reveals liberation theology's surprising diversity and its power to illumine method and such issues as poverty and power, economic and political systems, theory and practice, violence, national security, and land reform.No task is more important-or more urgent-than understanding how religious reflection can best engender social and global justice, and Schbeck's sustained analysis sets the terms. His constructive critique may well prove a turning point in the assessment by both theologians and ethicists of the cogency-and future-of liberation theology.

Two partial apprehensions of nature vied for dominance in the past century: religious (void of any influence from science) and scientific (unable to admit any reality, beyond the empirical). Both views have led to the exploitation of nature -- and the scientific may prove even more devastating. The fault, Gilkey argues, lies not in the scientific knowledge of nature but in the assumed philosophy of science that accompanies most scientific and technological practice. Scientific knowing needs to be critiqued and brought into relationship with other complementary ways of knowing.

Richard I. Pervo has taught at Seabury-Western Seminary and the University of Minnesota and is the author of numerous books in New Testament studies. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.Mikeal C. Parsons holds the Kidd L. and Buna Hitchcock Macon Chair in Religion at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, where he has taught since 1986. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including The Departure of Jesus in Luke and Acts, Body and Character in Luke and Acts, co-author (with Heidi J. Hornik) of Illuminating Luke (3 vols.), and co-author (with Martin Culy) of Acts: A Handbook on the Greek Text.

Marxsen examines the New Testament to learn from it what can be distinctively Christian about ethics. He describes and assesses the ethics reflected in the teaching of Jesus, the earliest Christian communities, Paul, and the rest of the New Testament.

Professor Juel defends a simple thesis: "The beginnings of Christian reflection can be traced to interpretation of Israel's scriptures, and the major focus of that scriptural interpretation was Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah." He therefore proceeds to demonstrate how certain Old Testament texts came to be applied to Jesus as Christ. He argues that the interpretative application of such texts to Jesus was part of the interior logic of Christianity.Introduction Messianic Exegesis: Developing an ApproachBiblical Interpretation in the First Century C.E.Christ the King: Christian Interpretation of 2 Samuel 7Christ the Crucified: Christian Interpretation of the PsalmsThe Servant Christ: Christian Interpretation of Second IsaiahChrist at the Right Hand: The Use of Psalm 110 in the New TestamentThe Risen Christ and the Son of Man: Christian Use of Daniel 7Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index of Passages

Not so much as a movement or school as an emerging consensus about philosophical criteria of truth and reality, nonfoundationalism is the critical impulse associated with the work of Richard Rorty, Richard Berstein, and others. Increasingly its critique of the search for sure and impregnable foundations shapes the fundamental commitments that gird contemporary theology. John Thiel here assays a careful exploration of its assumptions and convictions, as well as ways nonfoundationalism has influenced contemporary theology.

In our time the cross is often more a source of controversy than a sign of peace. While aware of differing points of view, Alexandra Brown shows that Paul's proclamation of the cross was an inclusive and empowering word of liberation, peace, and reconciliation.