If the whole of the Christian life is to be governed by the "law of love"—the twofold love of God and one's neighbor—what might it mean to read lovingly? That is the question that drives this unique book. Through theological reflection interspersed with readings of literary texts (Shakespeare and Cervantes, Nabokov and Nicholson Baker, George Eliot and W. H. Auden and Dickens), Jacobs pursues an elusive quarry: the charitable reader.

- Addresses key questions related to Christian faith

This book poses an eloquent challenge to the common conception of the hermeneutical tradition as a purely modern German specialty. Kathy Eden traces a continuous tradition of interpretation from Republican Rome to Reformation Europe, arguing that the historical grounding of modern hermeneutics is in the ancient tradition of rhetoric.

Karl Barth and his legacy have dominated theology circles for over a decade. In this volume George Hunsinger, a world-renowned expert on Barth's theology, makes an authoritative contribution to the debate concerning Barth's trinitarian theology and doctrine of election. Hunsinger challenges a popular form of Barth interpretation pertaining to the Trinity, demonstrating that there is no major break in Barth's thought between the earlier and the later Barth of the Church Dogmatics. Hunsinger also discusses important issues in trinitarian theology and Christology that extend beyond the contemporary Barth debates. This major statement will be valued by professors and students of systematic theology, scholars, and readers of Barth.

In this reappraisal of charity in the biblical tradition, Anderson argues that the poor constituted the privileged place where Jews and Christians met God. He shows how charity affirms the goodness of the created order; the world was created through charity and therefore rewards it.

The central argument in this thesis is that religion, and in particular the Christian religion, has an essential cultural function to play in the first half of the twenty-first century as a cultural educator par excellence that offers proposals for the rediscovery and renewal of human dignity as an absolute value. Constructive dialogue, which is critical for mediating conflicting truth claims and value convictions, has largely broken down in contemporary society, and I contend that mainstream religious communities have something vital to contribute to repair this impasse; namely, to impart or re-inculcate a sense of transcendence within the public square. I use the word transcendence here to refer to the absolute mystery of God, who exceeds our human language and concepts, and thus one central task of this thesis is to reflect anew upon the questions posed to humanity over the centuries in light of this mystery as we contemplate it as Christians in the emerging horizon of the current century. To briefly prefigure the argument here, it is that a Trinitarian anthropology witnessed most clearly in the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which as the Vatican II Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World argues, is the source of authentic human dignity. In one of the most quoted passages of the constitution, the Council fathers declare the “truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.... Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.” In addressing this topic, I rely heavily upon the writings of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose analysis of the complex problems confronting the contemporary world are both perspicacious and accurate, so much so that I consider him to be a public intellectual par excellence. The methodological framework that will be used throughout the thesis is based on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics that he advanced in his renowned work Truth and Method.

What, precisely, does the word hermeneutics mean? And in what sense can one speak of the hermeneutics of original argument? The author explores these questions in order to build upon Heidegger's hermeneutical thought