Theology Today

This is a historical and political analysis of the early sources about David and his kingdom in the light of its broader ancient Near Eastern context. Under the headings (1) public opinion, (2) royal apologetics, and (3) imperial ideology, it attempts to trace and contextualize the development of the political and religious propaganda that undergirded David’s rule as he negotiated the difficult transition from a commoner to a royal usurper to the conquering founder of an imperial state. It ends with a brief hint at the rich and productive theological transformation and afterlife of these imperial traditions.

The Union of Evangelical Churches in the German Evangelical Church honored Prof. George Hunsinger with the “Karl Barth Prize 2010.” This is the laudation given at the conferment of the Prize in June 2011. It recalls Barth’s first trip to the United States in 1962 and the impression of it on Barth as well as on the American people. It explains the relation between Barth’s theology and American theology then and now. And, most of all, it honors George Hunsinger as a theological teacher who has been learning from and writing on Barth for decades, developing theological insights and political engagement true to Barth’s heritage.

While Paul Tillich’s theological legacy remains alive and well in a wide range of intellectual conversations, his identity as a church theologian and his unique contributions to ecclesiology are often overlooked. This article argues that Tillich provides a substantive and relevant ecclesiological proposal rooted in Christology and pneumatology. Tillich’s thoroughgoing integration of ecclesiology with his overall theological system along with the critical methodological principle of Catholic Substance and the Protestant Principle demand rigorous reflection and have the potential to equip today’s Church as it engages the diverse challenges facing the worldwide communion.

This article seeks to rediscover the significance of the Judeo-Christian wisdom tradition for the present world. In order to uncover the physicality and sensuality widely missing from the Church today, the wisdom theology of the Old and New Testaments is examined and put into conversation with a feminist theological understanding of Wisdom. Relationship and love/eros are presented as gifts Wisdom offers through which to understand the world.

This essay takes up and develops Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel’s question “Is there a feminist theology of the cross?” I propose to re-vision the condition of sin as “the bondage of the eye/I”—a condition marked by occluded vision, alienation, and cycles of exploitation. Building on this analysis, I re-evaluate the meaning of redemption through the witness of the women on Easter morning following the desolation of the cross experience as described in the Gospel of John.

This article explains how Moltmann-Wendel “communicates life” by inviting us to participate in the stories of biblical women. Three themes are developed: (1) how Moltmann-Wendel employs “imagination” in a way that is consistent with the Reformed theological commitment to the extra calvinisticum, and why this matters; (2) how Moltmann-Wendel’s narrative reading of biblical stories about women resists a Nestorian separation between the divine and the human, between Word and words, between “theofantasy” and empirical fact—and why this matters; and (3) how Moltmann-Wendel’s interpretation of the women around Jesus becomes flesh in her theology of Mary Magdalene, which she simultaneously identifies as a theology of tenderness.

This article focuses on the implications of Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel’s theological category of friendship for U.S. minority theologies today. The emphasis is on the significance of relationship and community for theological anthropology. The author explores the implications of friendship as defined by Moltmann-Wendel for collaborative work among minority theologians in the United States. The article concludes with the possibility of professional friendship as a collaborative model for U.S. minority theologians.

Under a hermeneutics of disclosure that prioritizes a subjective “ready-to-hand” relationship with the biblical text and, concomitantly, the ontological realities of solicitude and the knowing of a priori understanding, this article interprets Rom 1:17 and Gal 3:15–19 utilizing the literary-critical principles of a close reading of the text and consistency building. Paul’s perspective in Rom 1:17 is that the gospel, not the law, discloses God’s justice and its movement, “out of trust into trust,” is interpreted in relation to Gal 3:15–19 and the testament of inheritance that God established with Abraham and his seed, Christ. The law is relegated to a codicil, constituted by angels and added to the testament of inheritance through Moses’ mediation between God and Israel at Sinai. Its function is to raise to consciousness the infection of sin (hamartia) and to serve as the guide to Christ, the end of the law. Christ, the testamentary heir, fulfilled its conditions by eradicating sin and making the benefits of the testament universally available. Accordingly, the phrase, “out of trust into trust,” implies the movement “from the trust of Abraham into the trust of Christ” and establishes the possibility of actualizing the justice of God and delivering the creation from its corruption. Luther and Calvin’s formulation of a law-oriented gospel, combined with their adoption of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin—that continues to dominate the interpretation of Romans—limited salvation to God’s accreditation of dikaiosynê (usually translated as “righteousness”) to those who receive Christ into their lives. Their theology of atonement, determined by their law-oriented gospel, presupposed a punitive God who was compelled to inflict the punishment of law-transgressing humanity upon God’s Son in order to satisfy God’s law-directed retribution. The result: a gospel of individual salvation without commitment to the actualization of God’s justice.

This case for a neo-ontotheology responds to the postmodernist rejection of traditional ontotheology, resulting in a re-examination of the relation of ontos and theos. Rejections by Merold Westphal, John Caputo, and Mark Taylor are critiqued. The re-examination employs deconstructive, analogical, and hermeneutical methods, affirms ontos and theos by pointing outside text, recognizes primal conditions as a ground for order and sense, and exercises a praxis of language usage and contemplative practice.