OK so the last of the books for this semester arrived in the mail today! I found a great deal at Amazon.com on Christianity & Ecology! This monster has come up in a few courses for me already and I'm sure I've got photocopies of half of it somewhere... but now I have the book. It has some really good articles in there, Berry, Eaton, Ruether, Johnson, etc.
I also ordered Kate Turabian's Style Guide. This semester some of my profs are suggesting we use that instead of the faculty style sheet. Saves me running to the library every time I come up with a new situation to try and footnote!
I picked up Fuellenbach's Church: Community for the Kingdom which is surprisingly good. I only read the prerequisite chapter but it left me wanting more. He is a bit overly technical in his format, could relax a bit there John and make it an easier read. But I'm definitely a Kingdom man so I really appreciated his exploration of the dangers of identifying the Church as the Kingdom of God.
My Aunt Sharon is coming over tonight, she's a Lutheran minister and is going to send me some of her book from seminary up! Wahoo! I am thinking of exploring Luther's concept of grace for one of my courses so she might just save me some big bucks!
2 comments:
What do you mean when you say "Kingdom man"? As in the body of chirst?
Thank you
Chase
Hey Chase. Actually there is a problem with directly equating the Kingdom of God (KoG) with the Church or Body of Christ. Fuellenbach does a great job with that topic. But the two main problems are that if the Church = the KoG then it is perfect already, which I'm pretty sure not too many of us believe. The second problem is that the KoG is the expressed reign of God, this doesn't just happen in the Church.
Now there is a strong relationship between the Church and the KoG, it is just not one of equality. We are those who announce the KoG as well as those who consciously do the work of the KoG in the world. This is part of what the Church is called together to do.
I am a Kingdom man in the sense that I am a great fan of Laddian Kingdom theology. This is a theology of eschatological tension. A big term that says we live in the tension of the Kingdom being both present now and also still to come. Often called the now and not yet of the Kingdom. Most mature theologies of the Kingdom have some extent of this now and not yet blend in them. But in the Vineyard, where I pastor, we see this focus as colouring everything we do. It is how we understand God's work in our midst.
A really excellent book on the subject is Derek Morphew's "Breakthrough".
Post a Comment