In this seminal work, pioneering theologian Ernst Troeltsch raises the question, how can we pass beyond the diversity with which history presents us to norms for our faith and for our judgments about life? He trenchantly probes the issue of how one religion--when viewed historically in the context of other world religions--can be universally and absolutely true. Though many others since have explored the issue of historical relativism and religious truth, few have done so with Troeltsch's determination and incisiveness, and for this he has made a lasting contribution to Christian theology and the philosophy of religion. The questions Troeltsch poses in this book remain utterly significant for the thoughtful Christian today. This reissue of a well-known classic includes a foreword by theological titan James Luther Adams.

In this book a leading philosopher of religion offers fresh insights into some of the disputed religious questions of our time.

How does Christianity relate to other religions? Beginning with a consideration of the biblical perspective, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen offers a detailed and comprehensive survey of the diverse explanations proposed by teachers of the church down through the ages. This indispensable guide is for anyone seeking to grasp Christianity?s relationship to world religions.

Bonhoeffer's writings include a significant amount of biblical interpretation, but his potential contributions in the fields of biblical studies and theological exegesis of Scripture have not been sufficiently explored. This study reassesses some of his key exegetical writings in light of his theology of revelation and bibliology, unfolding the ways in which his reading of the Bible is determined by his theology of Scripture. Through this analysis, Joel Banman demonstrates that the uniting factor of Bonhoeffer's biblical interpretation is not methodological but bibliological: he reads Scripture as the living word of the present Christ.

»What Does Theology Do, Actually? Observing Theology and the Transcultural« is to be the first in a series of 5 books, each presented under the same question – »What Does Theology Do, Actually?«, with vols. 2–5 focusing on one of the theological subdisciplines. This first volume proceeds from the observation of a need for a highly inflected »trans-cultural«, and not simply »inter-cultural«, set of perspectives in theological work and training. The revolution brought about across the humanities disciplines through globalization and the recognition of »multiple modernities« has introduced a diversity of overlapping cultural content and multiple cultural and religious belongings not only into academic work in the humanities and social sciences, but into the Christian churches as well.

Among the greatest challenges facing religious thinkers today is that created by historicism, the notion that human beings and their myriad understandings of reality are utterly historical, conditioned by contingent circumstances and tied to particular contexts. In this book, Demian Wheeler confronts the historicist challenge by delineating and defending a particular trajectory of historicist thought known as pragmatic historicism. Rooted in the German Enlightenment and fully developed within the early Chicago school of theology, pragmatic historicism is a predominantly American tradition that was philosophically nurtured by classical pragmatism and its intellectual siblings, naturalism and radical empiricism. Religion within the Limits of History Alone not only undertakes a detailed genealogy of this pragmatic historicist lineage but also sets forth a constructive program for contemporary theology by charting a path for its future development. Wheeler shows that pragmatic historicism is an underdeveloped resource for contemporary theology since it offers a model for normative religious thought that is theologically compelling yet wholly nonsupernaturalistic, deeply pluralistic, unflinchingly liberal, and radically historicist.

The importance of Paul Tillich for understanding not only Christian faith but all religious systems is still being realized. Tillich is widely recognized as the theologian of the modern age--or, as many would have it, the postmodern age. For a new age of preoccupation with interreligious encounters--wherein tolerance may be the watchword but the quest for truth and faith maintains--Robison James reintroduces Tillich as an effective pedagogue for dealing with such encounters and for discovering, in the clamor of so many noisy, insistent religious systems, a voice of truth. James has reread Tillich with the specific purpose of discovering how we may deal with the many kinds of interreligious encounters that have been growing in frequency and importance. Such encounters, James points out, range from reading about "another religion" to "visiting" the other's observances, to dialogue with its members, to simply puzzling over how "my" faith (or nonfaith) relates to this or that "religion." Tillich's lifelong existential encounter with religious systems and his perceptive appraisal of those systems, James concludes, can lead us to the best attitude for our own quest for a way of faith and life among so many "ways" clamoring for our attention. Tillich's theology, James suggests, may best be understood as a synthesis of dialectics and paradox. Further--James contends--the attitude most characteristic of Tillich's thought, "reciprocal inclusivism, " is to be recommended as the best attitude for our own quest for the word of truth among so many noisy voices.