Essays

Eschaton means first of all edge, not end. The edgy theology that takes responsibility for its historical and its apocalyptic politics will avoid the cheap hopes of denialism and the depressive purity of hope-free nihilism.

Contemporary rabbinic authorities have established this religious obligation as carrying scriptural authority – citing no fewer than five affirmative Commandments and three Biblical prohibitions.

With the Centre for Theology and Public Issues in the School of Divinity, the Institute offers the CTPI Duncan Forrester Fellowship for early-career researchers working in public theology, especially in relation to areas such as peacebuilding and the arts, politics and migration, environmental ethics, and law and justice.

The trouble in American Evangelicalism and in Christianity more broadly, is that standing face-to-face with our Messiah, we find ourselves at a loss of how to serve. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? What, beyond the instinctive sense that we are to follow Christ, does it mean to follow? What are we looking for?

Political theology needs to talk more about the role of religion in liberal democratic spaces such that those spaces are constituted as radically pluralistic.

Topics include “Aquinas’s Five Ways and Where They Lead,” “The Thought of John Henry Newman,” and “Truth and Authority in Augustine’s City of God.”

We are currently seeing folks pause to reflect both on what has historically counted as “political theology” and the ways in which those evaluate norms and frameworks need to shift moving forward.

Biblical stories about baptism are connected to, but also at odds with, historical theology about baptism as well as the current liturgical practices of baptism. Reading Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism together with contemporary theologies offers a glimpse of the radical solidarity of Jesus.

*This post originally appeared on the Politics of Scripture January 2, 2017.

How might we think about political theology in the absence of conventional scriptural, interpretive or institutional authorities together with their conceptual worlds?

Matthew’s careful quotation of Isaiah 60 urges us to perceive that the birth of the poor, brown boy in a back corner of the Roman empire was the dawning of God’s glory upon humanity. Let us, then, celebrate—not with fear and self-preservation, but with confident investment in human flourishing.

“What do I owe my fellow citizens whose conscience reaches different conclusions than my own?”

It seems like an important task of political theology is to critically reflect on moments of political crisis by pulling back the veil on its latent theological content.