Ingolf U. Dalferth develops a “radical theology” that unfolds the orienting strength of faith for human life from the event of God’s presence to every present. In a concise and clear manner, Dalferth outlines the theological and philosophical approaches to hermeneutics in the modern era, in order to promote a convincing and defensible theology for the twenty-first century, critically carrying on Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann, without forgetting Karl Barth. The result of his reconstruction is a “radical theology” that neither glorifies premodern theology in an antimodern attitude nor seeks a mystical deepening of the secular, but argues for a radical change in theological perspective of the possible. In doing so, theology unfolds “limit concepts” that restrict the claims of science and philosophy critically, and develops “ideas of orientation” that illumine the ways in which human life is understood and lived in radically new ways in faith. From here, Dalferth unfolds the reality of revelation and the Christian sense of an unconditional hope that fundamentally transcends all beliefs based on mundane realities and orients the world on something beyond its own temporal horizon—its loving Creator.

The incursion of evil has always caused people to turn to the divine, to gods or to a god, in order to reorientate their life. Ingolf U. Dalferth studies the complexity of this procedure in three thought processes that deal with the central concepts in the Christian understanding of malum as privation (a lack of good), as evil-doing, and as a lack of faith. In doing so, he provides a detailed discussion of theories of theodicy, the argument from freedom, and the religious turn to God, in which the author explores the traces of the discovery of God's goodness, justness, and love in connection with the malum experiences in ancient mythology and biblical traditions.

A Prominent Theologian Explores What It Means to Be Human Preeminent scholar and theologian Ingolf Dalferth offers mature reflections on what it means to be human, a topic at the forefront of contemporary Christian thought. Dalferth argues that humans should be defined not as deficient beings--who must compensate for the weaknesses of their biological nature by means of technology, morals, media, religion, and culture--but as creatures of possibility. He understands human beings by reference to their capacity to live a truly humane life. Dalferth explores the sheer gratuitousness of God's agency in justifying and sanctifying the human person, defining humans not by what we do or achieve but by God's creative and saving action. In the gospel, we are set free to interact with the world and creation.

Providing a historical context, this book examines the challenges that pluralism presents to denominationalism and civil religion and considers the contributions secularism and the New Age movement have made to the culture of religious pluralism.

The authors of this volume rethink our usual understanding of the relationship between faith, belief and skepticism. For some, skeptical faith is an oxymoron and faith and skepticism are mutually exclusive states or attitudes. Others argue that there is no proper faith without skepticism about faith. Taking John Schellenberg's recent work on the possibility of a skeptical faith as a starting point, the authors respond to and in some cases seek to go further than Schellenberg. In a variety of ways, the papers take up the following questions: How are we to construe the relationship between faith, belief, and skepticism if we seek to understand what is characteristic of a life of faith, or of unfaith? Is belief in God necessary for faith in God to be possible? Does one need to have sufficient reasons for believing something before one is rationally entitled to having faith in something? In short, what is the relationship between faith and belief, belief and understanding, understanding and experience, and experience and skepticism?

The most discussed and most significant issue on the religious scene today is whether it is possible, or even desirable, to believe in God. Mr. Kaufman's valuable study does not offer a doctrine of God, but instead explores why God is a problem for many moderns, the dimensions of that problem, and the inner logic of the notion of God as it has developed in Western culture. His object is to determine the function or significance of talk about God: how the concept of God is generated in human experience; the special problems in turn generated by this concept (for example, the intelligibility of the idea of transcendence, the problem of theodicy) and how they are met; and under what circumstances the idea of God is credible or important or even indispensable. He does not try to prove God's existence or nonexistence, but elucidates what the concept of God means and the important human needs it fulfills. Four of the eleven essays have been previously published, at least in part; seven are completely new.