Books published by Pickwick Publications

In light of the numerous challenges posed by globalization, living together as humanity on one planet needs to be reinvented in the twenty-first century. To create a new, peaceful, just, and sustainable world order is vital to the survival of us all. In this regard, humankind will have to expand the limited scope of its moral imagination beyond the borders of family, tribe, class, religion, nation, and culture. Will the cultivation of compassion, as scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Karen Armstrong, and religious leaders like the Dalai Lama maintain, contribute to a more just world? A global movement to cultivate and extend compassion beyond the immediate circle of concern may indeed find inspiration from many different religious traditions. The question at the heart of this book is whether the Christian legacy provides us with sources of moral imagination needed to guide us into the global era. Can the Christian practice of faith contribute to a more compassionate world? If so, how? And is it true that compassion is what we need, or do we need something else (justice, for example)? In Considering Compassion, colleagues from different theological disciplines at Stellenbosch, South Africa, and Groningen, Netherlands, take up these challenging questions from a variety of interdisciplinary angles.""Considering Compassion is more than just an eye-catching title; it's a vital next step in thinking through the intersections of contemporary advocacy for compassion and pressing questions about life in an interconnected world. Wisely blending disciplines and helpfully exploring the implications of varied perspectives, this book--made all the more valuable by its mix of writers from the Global North and the Global South--makes good on its title's promise.""--Mark Douglas, Professor of Christian EthicsFrits de Lange is Professor of Ethics at the Protestant Theological University, Groningen/Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is the author of Loving Later Life: An Ethics of Aging (2015).Juliana Claassens is Professor of Old Testament in the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her works include, Claiming Her Dignity: Female Resistance in the Old Testament (2016) and Mourner, Mother, Midwife: Reimagining God's Liberating Presence in the Old Testament (2012).

Written at a time when his ideas and practices were provoking opposition even from fellow Christians, the Apostle Paul articulates in his Letter to the Romans his understanding of God's plan for humanity and discusses the implications of this plan for different groups of people. Romans is considered by many as the most theologically significant and sophisticated book of the Bible. This volume is designed to bridge the gap between studying Romans as an academic enterprise and experiencing how Romans can speak today in the life of the church. All of the chapters in this volume--especially those devoted to the content of Romans--were written with both exegesis and application in mind. All of the contributors to this volume believe that Romans has a crucial voice within the church today and that those who preach, teach, and study the book need to be attentive to its witness and to its timeliness.""It seems that there is always more to say about Romans because Romans always has more to say to us. Stanley Porter has assembled a fine collection of scholars for the task, and here we find helpful essays on historical background, how linguistics shapes our understanding of the letter, the use of the Old Testament, along with essays that survey the letter. We are treated here to stimulating exegesis and application to everyday life and are reminded afresh that Romans speaks to both the mind and heart.""--Tom Schreiner, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary""The McMaster New Testament series is known for producing anthologies of studies of the statis quaestionis on important topics. In recent years, the format has morphed into creative and cutting-edge scholarship. This collection of essays on Romans combines each of these two categories. Learn here about major themes in Romans, but also about linguistics and intertextuality, from top scholars who also care about the church and the world.""--Craig L. Blomberg, Denver Seminary""This collection of essays breaks new ground historically, exegetically, and linguistically. Pitched at an appropriate level, this volume will serve the academic, pastor, and any serious student who wants to explore fresh avenues for interpreting Romans.""--David Mathewson, Denver Seminary""The Letter to the Romans is an outstanding example of how the grammar, language, background, and train of thought should be analyzed and laid out for readers. Porter's many years of experience with ancient Greek texts and the book culture of late antiquity shine through on every page. We have here a truly significant contribution to the interpretation of Romans."" --Craig A. Evans, Houston Baptist UniversityStanley E. Porter is President, Dean, and Professor of New Testament, McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario. He also holds the Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview. He is a prolific writer and editor in the area of New Testament studies.Francis G. H. Pang is Assistant Professor of New Testament, McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario. He is the Associate Director of the Centre for Biblical Linguistics, Translation, and Exegesis.

In light of the numerous challenges posed by globalization, living together as humanity on one planet needs to be reinvented in the twenty-first century. To create a new, peaceful, just, and sustainable world order is vital to the survival of us all. In this regard, humankind will have to expand the limited scope of its moral imagination beyond the borders of family, tribe, class, religion, nation, and culture. Will the cultivation of compassion, as scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Karen Armstrong, and religious leaders like the Dalai Lama maintain, contribute to a more just world? A global movement to cultivate and extend compassion beyond the immediate circle of concern may indeed find inspiration from many different religious traditions.  The question at the heart of this book is whether the Christian legacy provides us with sources of moral imagination needed to guide us into the global era. Can the Christian practice of faith contribute to a more compassionate world? If so, how? And is it true that compassion is what we need, or do we need something else (justice, for example)? In Considering Compassion, colleagues from different theological disciplines at Stellenbosch, South Africa, and Groningen, Netherlands, take up these challenging questions from a variety of interdisciplinary angles.

During the relatively short history of American Protestantism countless pastors, theologians, and pastor-theologians have addressed a variety of pragmatic issues facing Christian congregations. No one has done so with greater theological precision and passion than the Reformed theologian John Williamson Nevin (1803-1886). Nevin made his mark in American Protestantism with the publication of The Anxious Bench and The Mystical Presence. In this volume, Sam Hamstra brings to light Nevin's previously unpublished "Lectures on Pastoral Theology," a work that provides students with a more comprehensive portrait of one of the nineteenth century's leading Reformed theologians in America. Hamstra's introduction provides an important companion to Nevin's "Lectures," one that includes application for twenty-first-century pastors, as well as a surprise for those familiar with Nevin's critique of New Measures.

This volume is about ecclesiology and ethnography and what really matters in such academic work. How does material from field studies matter in a theological conversation? How does theology, in various forms, matter in analysis and interpretation of field work material? How does method matter? The authors draw on their research experiences and engage in conversations concerning reflexivity, normativity, and representation in qualitative theological work. The role and responsibility of the researcher is addressed from various perspectives in the first part of the book. In the next section the authors discuss ways in which empirical studies are able to disrupt the implicit and explicit normativity of ecclesial traditions, and also how theological traditions and perspectives can inform the interpretation of empirical data. The final part of the book focuses on the process of creating ""the stuff"" that represents the ecclesial context under study.What Really Matters is written to serve students and researchers in the field of ecclesiology and ethnography, systematic and practical theology, and especially those who work empirically or ethnographically--broadly speaking. The book might be particularly helpful to those who deal with questions of methodology in these academic disciplines. This volume offers perspectives that grow out of the Scandinavian context, yet it seeks to participate in and contribute to a scholarly conversation that goes beyond this particular location.""What Really Matters displays the importance of ethnography for the theological world. Exploring methodological challenges in sociological and theological approaches, the essays provide compelling ways to take lived faith seriously. As the book shows, by combining 'normative' and empirical research, ethnographic theology moves beyond limiting Christian theology and faith to the creedal and cognitive, enabling attention to long-ignored stories of 'practical' ecclesial community such as the 'digitization of Christian life.'""--Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Professor of Theology, Duke Divinity School""This book represents the next step in the fascinating and relatively new field of ethnographic ecclesiology, which seeks to bring theological reflection on the church out of the library and integrate it with qualitative fieldwork. . . . The book is full of engrossing and theoretically sophisticated reflections on the excitement and messiness of engagement with real church communities. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in how theology is done.""--William T. Cavanaugh, DePaul UniversityJonas Idestrom is Associate Professor of Ecclesiology at Uppsala University and researcher at the Church of Sweden Research Department. He is the editor of For the Sake of the World (2009) and co-editor of Ecclesiology in the Trenches (2015).Tone Stangeland Kaufman is Associate Professor of Practical Theology at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Oslo. She is the author of A New Old Spirituality? (2017).

Perhaps more than any philosophy written in the past few centuries, the work of Friedrich Nietzsche has given rise to controversy, misunderstanding, and dissent. Today Nietzsche is remembered as the revolutionary author of such polemical ideas as the death of God, the revaluation of values, the will to untruth, and the Ubermensch. Yet is Nietzsche's philosophy as atheistic, relativistic, nihilistic, and immoral as some commentators have claimed? Or ought we perhaps to give more credence to Nietzsche's own assertion that one writes books ""precisely to conceal what one harbors"" (BGE, 9, 289)?If ""whatever is profound loves masks"" (BGE, 2, 40) then might Nietzsche's more daring claims be interpreted as clever masks behind which he conceals a deeper philosophy and on which he reveals a hidden truth? Is it not possible that the standard readings of Nietzsche are in fact misreadings--that his work invites misreading, that it is intentionally unclear, deceptive, disguised?The goal of this volume is to reread Nietzsche for all that he shows and all that he hides. It is to dig deeper into his work in order to challenge misreadings of old and invite misreadings anew--as, indeed, his work itself calls for and demands.""That the essays in this volume challenge us not only to reevaluate our understanding of Nietzsche but also to consider how we have misunderstood him and, more importantly, why we have misunderstood him, makes this collection both a compelling work of scholarship and an original work of philosophy.""--Richard Kearney, Boston CollegeM. Saverio Clemente is a husband and father of three. He lives in Massachusetts where he writes, studies, and teaches philosophy. He is the author of Out of the Storm: a Novella (Resource, 2016).Bryan J. Cocchiara is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Brookdale Community College. He received his MA from Boston College in 2014, where he was a research fellow at The Lonergan Institute.

Drawing on her own experience of befriending a person suffering from a long-term mental health challenge, Priscilla Oh reflects on the meaning of care and friendship theologically. Using autoethnography, she goes beyond the personal experience and examines various issues surrounding mental health. Hospitable Witnessing candidly takes readers into the everyday life of being with a mentally ill person. There are emotional challenges and contingencies in sustaining friendship and caring for a person with a long-term mental health problem. Oh points out that those who care for a loved one during a long-term illness inevitably experience ""burnout"" resulting from the constant care requirements. Under such an enormous disruption, we need to be compassionate toward another's suffering and be willing to be present and available for them. This book suggests our need of one another and identifies three important Christian practices: caring as we are being made in the image of God, compassion as being present with the sufferer, and lament as to revitalize our faith and hope.""Hospitable Witnessing is an unusual and necessary book which investigates the author's experience of caring for her mentally ill friend. Readers will find themselves deeply engaged in the psychological pain and confusion of both the author and her friend. This honest and compassionate book will be of great value to families, church members, and professionals engaged in the care and treatment of mentally ill people.""--Mary Fawcett, Former Lecturer, School of Policy Studies, University of Bristol, United Kingdom""This tender and compelling work offers a challenging theological reflection upon mental illness. It fully acknowledges the pain and ambiguity that accompanies mental anguish but through the use of deeply reflexive and profoundly spiritual tools it helps to bring this suffering within the reach of prayerful contemplation and ethical response.""--Heather Walton, Professor of Theology and Creative Practice, University of Glasgow""Hospitable Witnessing is a delicate filigree of longing and loss held together with twisted threads of lived experiences. As a reader and relational psychotherapist, I am impacted by the gentle invitation of entering the enchanted world of another's faith and the realm of possibilities which open up in the spaces between presence and absence of illness when exploring the nature of the divine.""--Salma Siddique, Director of Counselling, Psychotherapy and Experiential Therapies, School of Education, University of Aberdeen, Scotland""'Our real humanness, as God brings us into being, is not that of separateness and isolation, but that of belonging to God and being the partaker of God's unfailing love. . . For the Hebrew word, Shalom is the near term to health to express a person's well-being of life and fullness.' I see the work of Priscilla as one driven by and for shalom, especially in the story of her ministry with these two close friends. And I believe her work can direct others toward similar lives of service.""--Gary A. Parrett, Former Professor of Educational Ministry and Worship, Gordon Conwell Theological SeminaryPriscilla Sun Kyung Oh is a practical theologian and author. After her formulative studies in Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, Massachusetts, USA and her PhD at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, her research became focused on stories of people with mental health problems and how practical theology might help them. Recently, she began to explore the idea of identity formation practice for people with dementia and their families, and pose a meaningful question: What does dementia mean for the body of Christ as a whole?

Has God said? Has God actually spoken, declared himself and his purposes to us? Historically the Christian faith has affirmed God's redemptive, revelatory speaking as historical, contentful, redemptive, centrally in Jesus Christ and, under Christ and by the Spirit, in the text of Holy Scripture. But in the past three centuries developments in Western culture have created a crisis in relation to historical, divine authority. The modern reintroduction of destructive dualisms, cosmological and epistemological, via Descartes, Newton, Spinoza, and Kant have injured not only the physical sciences (e.g., positivism) but Christian theology as well. The resulting ""eclipse of God"" has permeated Western culture. In terms of the Christian understanding of revelation, it has meant the separation of God from historical action, the rejection of God's actual self-declaration, and especially in textual form, Holy Scripture. After critical analysis of these dualistic developments, this book presents the problematic effects in both Protestant (Schleiermacher, Bultmann, Tillich) and Roman Catholic (Rahner, Dulles) theology. The thought and influence of Karl Barth on the nature of Scripture is examined and distinguished from most ""Barthian approaches."" The effects of dualistic ""Barthian"" thought on contemporary evangelical views of Scripture (Pinnock, Fackre, Bloesch) are also critically analyzed and responses made (Helm, Wolterstorff, Packer). The final chapter is a christocentric, multileveled reformulation of the classical Scripture Principle, via Einstein, Torrance, and Calvin, that reaffirms the church's historical ""identity thesis,"" that Holy Scripture is the written Word of God, a crucial aspect of God's larger redemptive-revelatory purpose in Christ.""John Morrison's Has God Said? rightly identifies the central issue in an Evangelical doctrine of Scripture. It's all about the meaning of 'is,' as in 'the Bible is the Word of God.' Carefully distinguishing Barth's own position from 'Barthian' pretenders, Morrison analyzes various contemporary options, Evangelical and non-Evangelical, and then offers his own constructive proposal. Morrison's new position builds on Barth's (not Barthian!) Christocentric insights even as it reclaims the Scripture principle in a manner that even Calvin could applaud."" Kevin Vanhoozer Trinity Evangelical Divinity School""For those who want to think deeply about what it means to say that the Bible is the word of God, John Morrison brings wide-ranging resources and careful reflection. Reading this book is a challenging but rewarding task."" Millard Erickson Baylor University ""Bravo to John Morrison for addressing a weighty issue in philosophical theology that is seldom even proposed, let alone faced squarely in recent academic discussions. Far from avoiding the general trend in recent critical thought, Morrison is to be commended for his affirmation that Scripture is an intricate component of God's redemptive self-revelation to a needy world. This volume places front and center God's work through Jesus Christ and in the very text of Scripture. I highly recommend this rigorous intellectual investigation and subsequent call to reaffirm Scripture as a crucial element in the revelation of God's loving actions to a needy creation."" Gary R. Habermas, Liberty UniversityJohn Douglas Morrison is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Liberty University and Liberty Theological Seminary. His first book, Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God in the Thought of Thomas Forsyth Torrance, has received much recognition both in Europe and North America. In addition, he has written numerous articles on the church fathers, Calvin, Kierkegaard, Barth, and various developments in Roman Catholic thought.

Bangert shows how the work of three major contemporary Protestant thinkers, James M. Gustafson, Sallie McFague, and David Ray Griffin, may be fruitfully appropriated for the articulation of an ethics that is responsive to the Christian tradition while sharing the modern commitment's appeal to human experience and reason. Each of these three thinkers eschews a priori appeal to the authority of religious tradition, as each takes seriously scientific knowledge of our world. Each accents ways in which current scientific understandings inform, and in some cases are informed by, contemporary appropriations of the language and thought of Christian tradition. Each is also concerned to relate his or her approach to human valuing, life, and action. A critical appraisal of their work shows that none provides a sufficient basis for an intellectually and religiously adequate theological ethics, but that each contributes elements necessary to the articulation of such an ethics within the Protestant Christian tradition as it confronts the religious and intellectual challenges of today's world.Bangert has done a remarkable job in bringing three important constructive proposals for contemporary theology into respectful dialogue with one another. In addition to presenting the positions of Gustafson, Griffin, and McFague fairly and sympathetically, he makes a convincing case that their respective contributions can only be strengthened and enriched through critical engagement with one another. This book has many virtues to commend it, not least of which are the clarity of analysis and the simple elegance of its prose style. It is a model of rigorous, yet irenic, theological argumentation.Paul E. Capetzauthor of God: A Brief HistoryByron C. Bangert is Research Associate at the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), with over 25 years' experience as a parish minister. His Ph.D. in religious studies is from Indiana University.

A biographical study on the Theology of W. W. Bryden.""Walter Bryden, whose students remember him as an inspiring teacher and provocative exponent of Christian faith at a critical time in Canadian church history, has suffered the fate of many Canadians: neglect by his own countrymen. Vissers' lucid and well-documented study of this important Protestant scholar will help greatly to re-establish Bryden's place in the evolution of Christian theology in the Canadian context.""--Douglas John Hall, C.M.Professor of Christian Theology EmeritusMcGill University""Vissers' splendid study of Walter Bryden introduces a new generation to the importance of a leading scholar who in the 1930s introduced the emerging 'neo-orthodoxy' of Karl Barth to the Canadian church and to key students who themselves became significant theologians. Reacting to the idealism and rationalism of his times, in sharp contrast to the prevailing Liberal Theology, Bryden--like Barth--emphasized God's definitive revelation in Jesus Christ who pronounces a Judging-Saving Word to the world. A theology of God's Word and Spirit is the true source for the church's renewal. Bryden's influence in the Canadian Presbyterian Church was monumental as he worked out the implications of Barth's theological approach for his Canadian context. Vissers' study engagingly conveys the thought and influence of Bryden who called the church to theological engagement with issues that are still of vital importance today.""--Donald K. McKimEditor of the Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith and How Karl Barth Changed My Mind""Walter Bryden of Knox College articulated a consistent evangelical theology during an embattled lifetime. This fine work is a fitting tribute to one who anticipated rather than echoed Neo-orthodoxy for the North American scene. His prophetic teaching rejected both the fashionable liberalism of the age as well as what he termed 'Rational Orthodoxy,' those whose motto could well be 'Always Having Been Reformed.' Almost single-handedly he saved the 'continuing' Presbyterian Church in Canada from obscurantism. Vissers' book is a sympathetic yet critical account of a neglected voice that deserves to be heard today.""--Joseph C. McLellandProfessor of Philosophy of Religion Emeritus McGill UniversityJohn A. Vissers is Principal at The Presbyterian College in Montreal. He is also Director of the Montreal School of Theology and Faculty Lecturer in Christian Theology at McGill University.

This collection of essays is a Festschrift for Naymond Keathley, honoring his many contributions to Baylor as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, as Senior Vice-Provost, as Interim Director of the Center for International Education, as Interim Chair of the Religion Department, as Professor, and as Director of Undergraduate Studies. He also served as president of the Southwest Region of the NABPR and was a long-time member of the Society of Biblical Literature. The authors of the essays include Naymond's friends, colleagues, and students. All of the essays are (broadly) in biblical studies and biblical reception, including essays exploring the intersection between biblical studies and popular culture. Most of the essays take up various New Testament texts.

Post-Christendom Studies publishes research on the nature of Christian identity and mission in the contexts of post-Christendom. Post-Christendom refers to places, both now and in the past, where Christianity was once a significant cultural presence, though not necessarily the dominant religion. Sometimes ""Christendom"" refers to the official link between church and state. The term ""post-Christendom"" is often associated with the rise of secularization, religious pluralism, and multiculturalism in western countries over the past sixty years. Our use of the term is broader than that however. Egypt for example can be considered a post-Christendom context. It was once a leading center of Christianity. ""Christendom"" moreover does not necessarily mean official public and dominant religion. For example, under Saddam Hussein, Christianity was probably a minority religion, but, for the most part, Christians were left alone. After America deposed Saddam, Christians began to flee because they became a persecuted minority. In that sense, post-Saddam Iraq is an experience of post-Christendom--it is a shift from a cultural context in which Christians have more or less freedom to exercise their faith to one where they are persecuted and/or marginalized for doing so.