This book sets the Scottish theologian John Oman (1860-1939) in his historical and cultural context.

A volume of significant contributions to our understanding of John Oman. With an impressive list of contributors (Adam Hood, Alan Sell, Fleur Houston, David Thompson, Eric McKimmon, Stephan Bevans, John Hick, John Nightingale and Ashok Chaudari) the volume is unique in a number of ways. It provides a more detailed historical account of Omans life and work than that offered before, often drawing on primary sources.

John Oman (1860–1939) was one of the most original and profound theologian-philosophers of his generation. Drawing on previously unpublished archival sources, Houston traces the influences on Oman’s Orkney childhood and his student days in Edinburgh University and the Divinity Hall of the United Presbyterian Church. She reviews Oman’s subsequent publications during his ministry in Alnwick, and his influential career as professor of systematic theology and college principal at Westminster College, Cambridge. Houston describes the extent to which Oman’s view of the world was challenged and affirmed by his experience of the First World War. Oman’s theological and religious perspectives, summarized as “reverence, freedom, and sincerity,” are rooted in the concerns of daily life. Oman’s experiences and reflections are sure to stimulate, challenge, and inspire readers today as much as they did in his own time.

According to John Hick's model of religious pluralism, all the world's great religions present equally valid ways of understanding and responding to the same ultimate Reality. This book offers an exposition of, and critical response to, Hick's model. Following an introductory chapter that surveys dominant approaches to religious diversity, the rise and development of Hick's pluralist interpretation of religions is traced. Finally, a critical assessment of Hick's mature pluralist model is offered. The conclusion: Hick's model is ultimately unsuccessful in overcoming the pluralist's most difficult conceptual problem, namely providing an adequate account of the fact that the world's religions understand the divine Reality in often contradictory ways. Ultimately, Hick's own solution threatens two of his long-cherished goals: a robust religious realism and a tradition-neutral religious pluralism.

This book is a correspondence between two theologians and friends during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–21. In it the authors reflect on the nature of God, the efficacy of prayer, the value of experience, the nature of theology itself, the importance of Christian hope, and many other topics. The style is familiar and light, rich, and full of wisdom.

This book is the first comprehensive study of the systematic, doctrinal, and constructive theology produced within the major Nonconformist traditions during the twentieth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, modern biblical critical methods were fairly widely adopted, evolutionary thought was in the air, and doctrinal modifications, especially concerning the fatherhood of God, were underway. Sell charts the influence on Nonconformist thinking in the twentieth century of the New Theology associated with R. J. Campbell, the First World War, the reception of Karl Barth, the theological excitement of the 1960s, and growing religious pluralism. The second lecture concerns the major Christian doctrines of God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity. Whereas in the early decades of the century there was considerable emphasis upon the atonement, during the concluding two decades the Trinity received more attention than had formerly been the case. In Lecture Three attention is directed to ecclesiological and ecumenical themes. The Nonconformists are presented as Protestant, and as displaying some zeal in propagating their particular understanding of the Church. The doctrinal aspects of their national and international moves toward inner-family unity and of their broader ecumenical relationships are considered. Eschatology is treated in the concluding lecture prior to Sell's assessment of the significance of twentieth-century Nonconformist theology, and his observations regarding its current state, its future content, and its practitioners.