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This collection of essays from one of America's great theological minds explores the nature and meaning of Christian community. First published between 1945 and 1960, these essays make clear for the first time H. Richard Niebuhr's moral theology of the church. Understanding Christianity itself as a movement--and not an institution--Niebuhr argues that, at their best, Christian communities should express the ongoing, transforming relation of God and the world. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.
Originally published: Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, c1986.
The Responsible Self was H. Richard Niebuhr's most important work in Christian ethics. In it he probes the most fundamental character of the moral life and it stands today as a landmark contribution to the field. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.
“Ultimately,” or so H. Richard Niebuhr wrote as early as 1929, “the problem of church and world involves us in a paradox; unless the church accommodates itself to the world, it becomes sterile inwardly and outwardly; unless it transcends the world, it becomes indistinguishable from the world and loses its effectiveness no less surely.” In the same context he went on to state: “The rhythm of approach and withdrawal need not be like the swinging of the pendulum, mere repetition without progress; it may be more like the rhythm of the waves that wash upon the beach; each succeeding wave advances a little farther into the world with its cleansing gospel before that gospel becomes sullied with the earth.” Niebuhr’s thought on the paradox of church and world is an essential piece of our understanding of twentieth-century theology in America. In this volume, Jon Diefenthaler collects for the first time over forty writings that trace the lineage of Niebuhr’s thought, presents them in a single place, and makes a case for their enduring value in a post-church religious environment. The volume is a treasury of little-known and hard-to-find pieces, making scholarship and understanding easier.
Drawing on a deep knowledge of history and human affairs, the essays pinpoint the key issues facing Christians and non-believers in determining the future of modern democratic life
The term Believers' Church refers to those who regard the church as the fellowship of regenerate followers of Jesus Christ. Membership in these churches is founded on a voluntary confession of Jesus as Lord. Each member has access to God in worship and prayer and accepts responsibility for carrying the gospel to the world. The Word of God serves as the final authority in all matters of faith and practice. Written by capable thinkers in the Believers' Church tradition, The People of God addresses key issues in the area of ecclesiology. The contributions represent a wide variety of mature theological reflection. Exploring these ecclesiological concerns from a theological, biblical, historical, and contemporary perspective, these essays reflect the unity and diversity of the Believers' Church heritage.
Denominations are one of the primary ways in which Christians attempt to live in a community based around God. Yet there is very little careful theological analysis of denomination available today. Between Congregation and Church offers a constructive theological understanding of denomination, showing its role as an intermediary structure between congregation and church. It places denomination and other intermediary structures within the doctrine of the church. Barry Ensign-George reviews work by theologians and church historians that can contribute to a constructive theological understanding of denomination. The book highlights particular developments in the history of the church that established preconditions for the emergence of denomination. Exploration of unity and diversity is central to this analysis, and individual chapters offer theological analyses of the unity and the diversity to which the Christians are called. Finally, denomination has often been a vehicle for sin, and the relationship between denomination and sin is considered. Between Congregation and Church addresses a major gap in contemporary theology: the failure to offer substantive theological analysis of denomination, a major way Christians together live their faith today.
Arguably his most famous book, Moral Man and Immoral Society is Reinhold Niebuhr's important early study (1932) in ethics and politics. Widely read and continually relevant, this book marked Niebuhr's decisive break from progressive religion and politics toward a more deeply tragic view of human nature and history. Forthright and realistic, Moral Man and Immoral Society argues that individual morality is intrinsically incompatible with collective life, thus making social and political conflict inevitable. Niebuhr further discusses our inability to imagine the realities of collective power; the brutal behavior of human collectives of every sort; and, ultimately, how individual morality can mitigate the persistence of social immorality. This new edition includes a foreword by Cornel West that explores the continued interest in Niebuhr's thought and its contemporary relevance.
Karl Barth was the master theologian of our age. Whenever men in the past generation have reflected deeply on the ultimate problems of life and faith, they have done so in a way that bears the mark of the intellectual revolution let loose by this Swiss thinker. But his life was not simply one of quiet reflection and scholarship. He was obliged to do his thinking and writing in one of the stormiest periods of history, and he always attempted to speak to the problems and concerns of the time. In June 1933 he emerged as the theologian of the Confessional movement, which was attempting to preserve the integrity of the Evangelical Church in Germany against corruption from within and terror from without. His leadership in this struggle against Nazism also made it necessary for him to say something about the totalitarianism that the Soviet power was clamping down upon a large part of Europe. In this indirect way, a Barthian social philosophy emerged, and this theologian, who abjured apologetics and desired nothing but to expound the Word of God, was compelled by circumstances to propound views on society and the state that make him one of the most influential social thinkers of our time. David Haddorff is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at St. John's University, New York. He is the author of several articles and reviews, and the book: Dependence and Freedom: The Moral Thought of Horace Bushnell (1994). Table of Contents: Introduction by David Haddorff - Karl Barth's Theological Politics 1 Gospel and Law 71 Church and State 101 The Christian Community and the Civil Community 149 Bibliography 191
This 1935 book answered some of the theological questions raised by Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) and articulated for the first time Niebuhr's theological position on many issues.