The Role of Fear in Our Love of God: A Lutheran Perspective

Abstract : Lutheran Christians in particular have been taught in the Catechism to “fear and love God.” This article questions the assumption that in a contemporary context, fear and love can helpfully co‐exist, examining the different ways in which “fear of God” is a challenging concept for twenty‐first‐century Christians to understand. The article concludes with suggestions for how “fear of God” might be re‐interpreted and re‐articulated in a constructive way, leading to a more meaningful Christian life in the world today.     

Muhammad in Contemporary Christian Theological Reflection

After briefly surveying the generally polemical pre-modern Christian views of Muhammad, this essay considers a range of recent Christian approaches. Daniel Madigan explores often unrecognized complexities involved in the question; he considers Muhammad's message a “salutary critique” prompting Christians to a fuller understanding of their faith. Hans Küng insists that Christians should recognize Muhammad as a prophet; Islam is akin to early Jewish forms of Christianity, whose validity should be recognized. Jacques Jomier and Christian Troll are respectful of Muhammad but argue that, if Christians call him a prophet, they effectively deny their own faith. Kenneth Cragg presents a “positive, critical position”, encouraging sympathetic Christian interpretation of Muhammad's achievement in his context, but expressing reservations about the “political equation” in his ministry and contrasting this with Christ's way of redemptive suffering. Cragg's approach is upheld against criticisms as an exemplary model of Christian theological engagement with Islam.     

Issues and Insights: Working With God: Managing Conservative Christian Beliefs That May Interfere With Counseling

Counselors who work with conservative Christians may ask how to respect a client's values when “God” seems to be saying something contrary to what the counselor believes is in the client's best interests. In a managed care era of decreasing choice about one's counselor, referral of such clients to a conservative Christian counselor is not always an option. “Working with God” when counseling conservative Christian clients requires counselors to understand conservative Christian beliefs. This article portrays conservative Christianity as a culture and articulates conservative Christian beliefs that may challenge the counseling process, suggesting options within the framework of these beliefs.     

Liberation,Salvation, Enlightenment: An Exercise in Comparative Soteriology

Abstract : This article is an exercise in what might be called “comparative soteriology.” It is both constructive and essential for Christians to examine non‐Christian expressions of soteriology that challenge their own, in order to see with new eyes what salvation can and perhaps should connotate. Thus, this article intends to lead the reader to a deeper appreciation of the Christian doctrine of salvation through the exploration of three different images of salvation: from Hinduism, the Nataraja—the Dancing Shiva; from Buddhism, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara; and from Christianity, an icon of the crucifixion, the San Damiano Crucifix.     

Christ's Love as the Basis of the Church's Faith Witness to Muslims

According to the Christian view, the essence of the triune God is revealed in the relational event between God the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The Bible says of this God, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). By way of example, the article explores “God's love” to show that the Qur'an's conception of God is incompatible with key tenets of the New Testament. Thus, when keeping both conceptions of God in view, we cannot speak of one and the same God. Now what does this mean for the pursuit of conciliatory relations between Christians and Muslims? Which relational paradigms need to be kept in mind? After reflecting on the concepts of neighbourliness, companionship, and hospitality, the article goes on to trace the conceptual outlines of Christian mission as a mission of God's love (missio amoris Dei). Its hypothesis is that a characteristically Christian conception of God can supply useful motifs for appreciative and conciliatory actions by Christians toward Muslims. Finally, the author proposes a theology of interreligious relations (which he has elaborated upon elsewhere) as an alternative approach to conventional theologies of religion.     

Rethinking Christian and Jewish Exceptionalisms☆

This article argues that Christianity and Judaism, as they have developed historically, express complementary but opposing exceptionalist perspectives. The article defines “exceptionalism” in terms of the singular mission that Jews and Christians each claim for themselves and the varied Jewish and Christian conceptions of how their missions relate to non-Jews and non-Christians respectively. While Jewish exceptionalism consists in the demand to be left alone to live its God-given mission with not much concern for what God expects from the other nations save that it is different from what God expects from the Jews, Christian exceptionalism demands that all peoples follow its singular vision of redemption through Christ. This article develops these arguments by way of considering competing readings of the Book of Ruth, continuing debates about the Apostle Paul in recent historical scholarship, as well as history’s role in theological reflection. The article argues that Christians and Jews need to reckon with their respective exceptionalisms on their own decidedly singular terms, and not on the terms of each other, since to do otherwise would be to renounce their respective exceptionalisms and to lose the theological singularity that defines each faith tradition. Nevertheless, the article concludes by calling for more intellectual honesty from Christians and Jews regarding what their exceptionalisms do and do not entail as well as for the enduring importance of bringing historical research to bear on theology.     

Perceptions of Religious Hypocrisy: When Moral Claims Exceed Moral Action

In this study, we investigated perceptions of hypocrisy among Christian and non-Christian individuals. Specifically, participants (N = 121) were asked to evaluate people of different religious orientations in terms of perceptions of both claimed morality, actual behavior, and general hypocrisy. Across all designations, perceptions of moral hypocrisy were determined to be greater to the extent that moral claims exceeded actual behavior. Among non-Christian participants, perceptions of hypocrisy were highest with respect to “devout” and “evangelical” Christian targets. In contrast, among Christian participants, the highest ratings of hypocrisy were reserved for “casual” Christians (i.e., Christians who do not incorporate their faith into their daily life). Our findings have both theoretical implications regarding the nature of religious hypocrisy perceptions, as well as real-world implications for understanding inter-faith perceptions and interactions.     

On the rationality of positive mysterianism

In Paradox in Christian Theology (2007) I argued that the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation are paradoxical—that is, they appear to involve implicit contradictions—yet Christians can still be rational in affirming and believing those doctrines. Dale Tuggy has characterized my theory of theological paradox as a form of “positive mysterianism” and argues that the theory “faces steep epistemic problems, and is at best a temporarily reasonable but ultimately unsustainable stance.” After summarizing my proposed model for the rational affirmation of theological paradox and considering whether my proposal is indeed a form of “positive mysterianism” as Tuggy defines the term, I address the two main criticisms raised in Tuggy’s paper: first, that the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility cannot bear the weight required by my defense of paradox; and second, that my proposed model is afflicted with epistemic instability. I conclude that Tuggy has failed to show that a mysterian stance with respect to paradoxical Christian doctrines is in principle unreasonable, unnatural, or unsustainable.     

I Love to Tell the Story: Reshaping the Narrative of Adoption

Abstract : This article argues that a Christian theological understanding of adoption can be a helpful corrective to some of the negative interpretations and assumptions around adoption that continue to circulate in secular culture. The article proceeds as follows: First, I argue that the way in which Christians understand and describe the experience of being adopted into God's family counters the idea that one's birth family is one's “real” family. Second, I argue that a Christian understanding of adoption mitigates the tendency to view adoption as a sort of “Plan B.” Finally, I argue that because of the value Christians place on caring for those in need, and the replacement of kin relationships with relationships of love and faith, the metaphor of adoption can and should be used more widely, to create broader networks of family that encompass far more than mere blood ties.     

How Hebrew were the Hebrew Christians?

This article demonstrates how Hebrew Christians – or Jews who converted to Christianity but retained Jewish identity – resonated with the claims of the Zionist movement in its first decades, particularly with regard to its notion of Hebrew identity. In their espousal of Zionist ideals and their attempts to join Zionist efforts, Hebrew Christian notions of Hebrewness reflected the multivalence of Hebrew identity in the Zionist movement itself, and particularly the understanding of Hebrewness as racial, ethnic, and cultural. The influence of the Zionist movement upon Hebrew Christians was especially evident in Hebrew Christian attempts to form their own institutions. These organizations promoted Jewish national culture dissociated from Judaism, expressed assertive and even aggressive motivations (what I term “Muscle Hebrew Christianity”), and recognized the ineluctability of anti-Semitism regardless of Jewish religious beliefs. Examining the somewhat obscure movement of Hebrew Christianity can ultimately help us to better understand the ways Zionism was interpreted in its formative stages, especially in light of its own divisions and various emphases.     

God at Play: Seeing God Through the Lens of the Young Krishna

Abstract : This article begins with the absence of biblical stories about Jesus' youth. This lack means that typical boyhood characteristics, such as playfulness, are absent from a traditional Christian picture of the divine. Using the lens of stories told about Krishna's youth in the Bhagavata Purana, I suggest that Christians could learn from the Hindu idea of a “god at play,” as such a concept enhances a Christian understanding of who God has revealed Godself to be, and how Christians are called to be in relationship to God.     

What if there were no God? Politically conservative and liberal Christians imagine their lives without faith

A sample of devout Christian adults, ranging widely in political orientation, described what their lives (and the world) might be like had they never embraced faith. Politically conservative Christians (also scoring high on right-wing authoritarianism) tended to imagine a life deficient in impulse control, wherein unrestrained sexual and aggressive urges, addictive behaviors, and human selfishness undermined the social good. By contrast, politically liberal Christians (also scoring low on right-wing authoritarianism) imagined an empty and barren world, devoid of the emotional intensity that makes life worth living. Gender differences were also observed, but they did not interfere with the relation between political orientation and the narrative themes. In accord with theoretical writings regarding normative and humanistic ideologies, the findings suggest that, at least among American Christians, political conservatism may entail a fear of, or strong sensitivity to, the prospects of conflict and chaos, whereas political liberalism may entail an equally strong fear of, or sensitivity to, emptiness.     

Christian Affiliation,Christian Practice,and Attitudes to Religious Diversity: A Quantitative Analysis among 13- to 15-year-old Female Students in the UK

Within the context of the “Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity” project at the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, this study examines the association between self-assigned Christian affiliation, self-reported Christian practice, and attitudes towards religious diversity among a sample of 5,748 13- to 15-year-old female students attending schools in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The two hypotheses being tested are that, among female students, nominal Christians do not differ in their attitudes towards religious diversity from unaffiliated students and that church attendance leads to less tolerance of other religious groups. The data partly support the first hypothesis but not the second. Churchgoing Christian female students are more interested in and more tolerant of other religious groups. The data also draw attention to the perceived importance of religious education in schools for shaping views on religion and on religious diversity among unaffiliated students, nominal Christians, and practising Christians. Both the Christian churches and religious education in school seem to have an important part to play in nurturing a tolerant and inclusive religiously diverse society in the UK.     

Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence

In science-fiction literature and film, human beings simultaneously feel fear and allure in the presence of intelligent machines, an experience that approximates the numinous experience as described in 1917 by Rudolph Otto. Otto believed that two chief elements characterize the numinous experience: the mysterium tremendum and the fascinans. Briefly, the mysterium tremendum is the fear of God's wholly other nature and the fascinans is the allure of God's saving grace. Science-fiction representations of robots and artificially intelligent computers follow this logic of threatening otherness and soteriological promise. Science fiction offers empirical support for Anne Foerst's claim that human beings experience fear and fascination in the presence of advanced robots from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AI Lab. The human reaction to intelligent machines shows that human beings in many respects have elevated those machines to divine status. This machine apotheosis, an interesting cultural event for the history of religions, may—despite Foerst's rosy interpretation—threaten traditional Christian theologies.     

Coalition – creation – church*

Taking the recent UN Report about extreme poverty in the UK as a point of departure, this article analyses and assesses William Cavanaugh’s political ecclesiology. Drawing on the interpretation of Martin Luther’s concept of creation in Scandinavian Creation Theology, I argue that creation destabilises the distinction Cavanaugh draws between what he considers to be church and what he considers not to be church. I account for creation as a web of vulnerability in which all creatures are vulnerable to both creature and creator. In contrast to Cavanaugh’s strong and stable church, I advocate for what I call “coalitional church”: a church that can enter into coalitions with Christians and non-Christians in order to call for conditions under which vulnerable life is liveable. The public and political task of churches is not necessarily to fight the state, but to hold the state accountable to its citizens, whether they are Christian or non-Christian.     

The Sources and Resources of Our Indigenous Theology: An Australian Aboriginal Perspective

I will attempt to show the Australian Aboriginal Christian from the spiritual, physical and cultural perspectives. The point that I wish to highlight is that there is an expression of continuity of relationship and ritual sacredness between my ancient people and their Higher Power (known by various names). This relationship is an unbroken thread that has weaved its way through the passages of time. It has been passed on for thousands of years to us here today as Aboriginal Christians. We are not only the “Children of God,” but are also the “Children of the Dreaming”– this is my identity.     

Christ,Country, and Conspiracies? Christian Nationalism,Biblical Literalism,and Belief in Conspiracy Theories

When misinformation is rampant, “fake news” is rising, and conspiracy theories are widespread, social scientists have a vested interest in understanding who is most susceptible to these false narratives and why. Recent research suggests Christians are especially susceptible to belief in conspiracy theories in the United States, but scholars have yet to ascertain the role of religiopolitical identities and epistomological approaches, specifically Christian nationalism and biblical literalism, in generalized conspiracy thinking. Because Christian nationalists sense that the nation is under cultural threat and biblical literalism provides an alternative (often anti-elite) source of information, we predict that both will amplify conspiracy thinking. We find that Christian nationalism and biblical literalism independently predict conspiracy thinking, but that the effect of Christian nationalism increases with literalism. Our results point to the contingent effects of Christian nationalism and the need for the religious variables in understanding conspiracy thinking.