Divinity School Research Articles

What Hath New Haven to Do with Chicago? A Reappraisal

One of the most significant theological debates of the late twentieth century was between the postliberal theology associated with Yale Divinity School and the revisionist theology associated with the University of Chicago Divinity School, led by Lutheran historical theologian and ecumenist George Lindbeck, and theologian Hans Frei at Yale and Roman Catholic theologian David Tracy at Chicago. Given that the fortieth anniversary of The Nature of Doctrine is in 2024, it is time to reappraise the terms of the debate, as well as note the commonalities of these two theological schools, by focusing upon the possible role of correlation in theology, the public nature of theology, and the plain sense of Scripture.

Cotton Mather’s Biblical Enlightenment: Critical Interrogations of the Canon and Revisions of the Common Translation in the Biblia Americana (1693–1728)

Abstract While there exists a robust scholarship on the cultural influences and public uses of the Bible in early American history, the historical development of biblical scholarship in America remains relatively understudied. The prevalent view suggests that biblical scholarship in America had its critical awakening with the importation of German Higher Criticism to northeastern divinity schools in the nineteenth century. This essay makes a corrective intervention by looking at Cotton Mather’s unpublished Biblia Americana (1693–1728), the first comprehensive Bible commentary to be authored in British North America. More specifically, the essay examines Mather’s response to critical interrogation of the canon and the Biblia’s numerous revisions of King James translation in light of recent philological scholarship. What connects these two issues is that they both concern the “givenness” of the Bible, which, in Mather’s day, was being fundamentally challenged. Behind the discussions about the canonicity of diverse books and over how to render the Hebrew and Greek texts into modern languages always lurked fundamental questions regarding the divine authority, integrity, and perspicuity of the Bible. Examining a broad range of examples from across the Biblia, the essay demonstrates how Mather’s work defies clear-cut categorization as either precritical or critical. In response to the intellectual currents of the early Enlightenment, Mather pioneered a new type of deeply learned, historically conscious but apologetically-oriented biblical criticism in America. The Biblia clearly reflects the challenges brought on by the deepening historicization of Scripture and the destabilization of texts and meanings through a new type of criticism. More widely read in current European scholarship and in many ways more curious and daring than any other early American exegete, Mather joined the infinitely complex and open-ended quest for better translations. Moreover, he was the first in New England to seriously address hard questions about the canon of the Bible and its historical development. But he always did so with the aim of providing constructive answers to these debates that would ultimately shore up the authority of Scripture, stabilize the scriptural foundation for what Mather regarded as the core of Reformed orthodox theological beliefs, and offer improved interpretations of the biblical texts, which would lend themselves even better to devotion and illuminate for Christians, with the help of the most up-to-date scholarship, the full riches of God’s Word.

Rejoicing in God’s World and Delighting in Humankind: Proverbs 8.1–11, 22–23, 30–35: Address to the Opening Convocation of the 2023–24 Academic Year at Yale Divinity School

Yale Divinity School begins the academic year with an ‘Opening Convocation’, a service of thanksgiving and dedication which includes a short speech, drawing on a bible reading, normally given by a member of the faculty.

Faith-based community-academic partnerships: An asset-based community development strategy for social change


 
 
 Faith-based community anchor institutions are important collaborators in community development. They are respected social innovators who deploy their assets for the common good, especially good works aimed towards helping marginalised communities and those in poverty. More recently, the pace of faith-based social innovation and community development leadership has slowed substantially (Jones 2016). Seeking renewed imagination, will and ability for asset-based social innovation among faith-based communities, the Ormond Center at Duke University’s Divinity School has developed a curriculum, based on a human ecology framework, that engages faith-based ‘community- academic partnered participatory research’ (Chen et. al. 2006) towards social change.
 Our approach starts by working with congregations to discover community-level barriers to thriving in their local context. We then walk alongside faith-based communities to identify strengths-based, relationship-centred opportunities to collaboratively integrate congregational assets with community assets towards positive social change. This curriculum has been tested by the Ormond Center with several diverse, multi- denominational congregations in communities located in North Carolina and Virginia. Its potential to encourage asset-based community development for social good is supported by tangible evidence. This article takes the reader through the process of changing a semester-long graduate course, designed by the academy for the academy, to a six-week course that walks alongside faith- based lay leaders and pastors in their local context, towards asset-based community development for positive social change. Five viable asset-based solutions to community-level social issues are shared, and lessons learned are offered.
 
 

Review of We Belong to Big Church: Caribbean Soundings and Stories in Anglicania


 We Belong to Big Church: Caribbean Soundings and Stories in Anglicania provides a rare insight into the cross-cultural dynamics of Afro-Anglicanism in the Caribbean and in North America. The historic fictional religious narratives of the first section give a voice to the ecclesial and cultural adjustments of the Anglican Caribbean Diaspora in America. The second section is a compilation of the author’s sermons, addresses, and lectures that engage issues of multiculturalism, inclusion, and racism as a call to stimulate further conversations on a proposed way forward in the Ecclesia Anglica. As the Professor of Theology at Howard University School of Divinity, Kortright Davis’ book is a creative and educative gem that fills the void of Afro-Caribbean literature and is a good starting place for navigating the conversations on cultural diversity.

Kierkegaard and Religionswissenschaft: A Source- and Reception-Historical Survey (Part 2)

Abstract This second part of a two-part article (the first part of which appeared in the Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2022) surveys the varying uses made of Kierkegaard’s writings by four twentieth- and, in two of their cases, also twenty-first-century contributors to Religionswissenschaft: Joachim Wach, Mircea Eliade, Wendy Doniger, and Bruce Lincoln, all four of whom happen to have taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Far from being irrelevant or being regarded as a theologically-inclined persona non grata by comparatists of religion, Kierkegaard was embraced in three main capacities by these influential contributors to the field: as a datum (mostly in the history of theology and/or philosophy), as a theorist, and, in one case, as an existential soulmate. In Lincoln’s case, the reduction to memes—the memeification—of certain ideas ascribed to Kierkegaard comes under consideration.

American Romanticism and the Popularization of Literary Education

American Romanticism and the Popularization of Literary Education

A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War by James P. Byrd, and: Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares: The American Civil War as an Apocalyptic Conflict by John H. Matsui

Reviewed by: A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War by James P. Byrd, and: Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares: The American Civil War as an Apocalyptic Conflict by John H. Matsui C. David Dalton A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War. By James P. Byrd. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. [x], 376. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-19-090279-7.) Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares: The American Civil War as an Apocalyptic Conflict. By John H. Matsui. Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. Pp. x, 295. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7482-1.) Over the past several decades religion, specifically evangelical Protestantism, has become a focal point of Civil War–era scholarship. The denominational schisms, the influence of clerical sermons, and the interactions between religion, slavery, and politics have been extensively examined in studies by historians from C. C. Goen, David B. Chesebrough, and Richard J. Carwardine to Steven E. Woodworth, Mark A. Noll, Timothy L. Wesley, and George C. Rable. Two recent works by James P. Byrd and John H. Matsui make significant contributions to this area of study. Byrd, an associate professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, previously authored Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution (New York, 2013). He carries his work into the mid-nineteenth century with A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War. Byrd argues that most Americans had a copy of the King James Bible, and that many looked to the book for guidance during the nation’s bloodiest conflict. Chaplains told soldiers to place their faith in God, whose divine guidance could be most easily discerned through a close reading of scripture. Both armies viewed victories on the battlefield as God’s will and defeats as tests of devotion—calls to rededication rather than signs of the Almighty’s eventual judgment. After all, the Bible revealed that God’s people had disobeyed His Word and had been punished in many ways, from being enslaved in Egypt to wandering in the wilderness for years. With its exhaustive analysis of references from thousands of sources, including sermons, diaries, letters, and newspapers, Byrd’s work is the most in-depth examination of the Bible’s presence and importance during the Civil War. The appendix includes a ranking of the most cited verses across these sources, revealing striking differences between how Confederates and Federals viewed the Bible. Northerners cited the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans— in which he condemns those who rebel against their rulers (Romans 13)—to defend the Union and its government, describing the United States as “God’s chosen nation” (p. 13). Abolitionists frequently invoked Acts 17:26, where Paul declares that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men,” to justify [End Page 363] their call for freedom and equality for slaves (p. 190). Confederate clergy countered with the Genesis story of the curse of Ham, asserting that even if God had created all people from one blood, the Almighty also had favored some races and cursed others. And as battlefield casualties mounted, and eventual defeat began to seem inevitable, Confederates continued to turn to the Bible for solace, comparing their plight to the trials of Job and reminding themselves that their ultimate reward was not of this earth. Byrd chronicles the pronouncements of both well-known and relatively obscure clergy, detailing their views on slavery, secession, and war. The author includes enough political and military detail, interspersed with biographical stories, writings, and sermons, to make for a smooth-flowing narrative. Some of these men of God were anything but blessed peacemakers, advocating for war while believing that God was on their side. They encouraged both their congregations at home and the companies they served on the battlefield to trust in the Lord, just as their revolutionary predecessors had done in 1776. But the slaughter often stirred mixed emotions among lay soldiers, especially those who put great emphasis on Christ’s injunction, from the Sermon on the Mount...

Spina Bifida: Our Story

Shannon Carroll, BS Faculty Support Coordinator, Liberty University School of Nursing. Daniel Carroll, BS Graduate Student, Liberty University School of Divinity. The authors declare no conflict of interest. Correspondence: Shannon Carroll, BS. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Supplemental digital content is available for this article. Direct URL citations are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article.

Spiritual Formation in Theological Education: A Multi-case Exploration on Seminaries and Student Development

In recent decades, theological schools have demonstrated increased interest in educational models that not only transmit knowledge and skill to students, but also prepare them to have the character and virtue dispositions needed to successfully navigate the moral challenges that await them in future ministry settings. This shift is reflected in the most recent 2020 accreditation standards of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), which highlight the importance of “personal and spiritual formation” as a key facet to seminary programs. Research conducted by the ATS (2018) into how seminaries understood the terms “personal and spiritual formation” revealed that over 40% of seminaries do not have a formal or working institutional definition of personal and spiritual formation. While this finding may be understandable given the complexities of terms and definitions in light of diverse Christian spiritual traditions, it also highlights an area of crucial need given the centrality of spiritual formation to the mission of theological education. Accordingly, the aim of this present paper is to support work in this area and to stimulate a larger discussion into the topic of spiritual formation within the seminary context by articulating and putting forth four different institutional perspectives on the topic (from Fuller Theological Seminary, George Truett Theological Seminary, Talbot School of Theology, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School).

Performing medieval narrative and song

The bipartite event ‘Imagining French Narrative and Song c.1100–c.1350: Literary, Musicological and Performance Perspectives’ was held in the magnificent setting of St John’s College, University of Cambridge on 14 January 2023. It comprised a conference at the Old Divinity School—an impressive late Victorian edifice built in the Gothic Revival style—and a closing concert in the nearby medieval Round Church, founded in the early 12th century and modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Coincidentally marking the date of the 787th anniversary of the marriage in 1236 between an English king (Henry III) and a French noblewoman (Éléonore de Provence), plus also that of the annual medieval ‘Feast of the Ass’ (celebrating the Flight into Egypt, with its famous Latin and French conductus Orientis partibus referring to an ass ‘from Eastern regions’), there was perhaps no better occasion for ‘imagining’ medieval French romances and songs, both in terms of their international impact and also changing medieval perceptions of them, whether secular or sacred. Attended by around 35 delegates, the conference included 12 papers given by literary scholars and musicologists from universities in the UK, France, Belgium and the USA; this international mix thus set the groundwork for an exciting interchange of ideas between academics from frequently isolated yet closely overlapping disciplines.

Introducing the Seminary to Early Ministry Study

The Seminary to Early Ministry (SEM) Study is a mixed-method, prospective study designed to provide high-quality empirical data on student formation in theological education. The study will use a series of surveys and in-depth interviews to track three cohorts of divinity school students from matriculation into the early years of their careers. As a result, the study hopes to compile the most comprehensive longitudinal dataset on theological education to date, enabling researchers to better understand who attends seminaries, how seminaries form students, and how the training of future religious leaders can be improved.

Wilgefortis as an example of Transing logics: Before/after Enlightenment thinking

The German QuarterlyEarly View FORUM Wilgefortis as an example of Transing logics: Before/after Enlightenment thinking Roberto Che Espinoza, Corresponding Author Roberto Che Espinoza [email protected] Department of Theology, Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina, USA Correspondence Roberto Che Espinoza, Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina, USA. Email: [email protected] Stephanie A. Budwey, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorStephanie A. Budwey, Corresponding Author Stephanie A. Budwey [email protected] Department of Homiletics and Liturgics, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee, USA Correspondence Roberto Che Espinoza, Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina, USA. Email: [email protected] Stephanie A. Budwey, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Roberto Che Espinoza, Corresponding Author Roberto Che Espinoza [email protected] Department of Theology, Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina, USA Correspondence Roberto Che Espinoza, Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina, USA. Email: [email protected] Stephanie A. Budwey, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorStephanie A. Budwey, Corresponding Author Stephanie A. Budwey [email protected] Department of Homiletics and Liturgics, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee, USA Correspondence Roberto Che Espinoza, Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina, USA. Email: [email protected] Stephanie A. Budwey, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 14 May 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12352Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

The End of College: Religion and the Transformation of Higher Education in the 20th Century by Robert Wilson-Black

Reviewed by: The End of College: Religion and the Transformation of Higher Education in the 20th Century by Robert Wilson-Black Robert Benne The End of College: Religion and the Transformation of Higher Education in the 20th Century. By Robert Wilson-Black. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021. 281 pp. This book is an adaptation of one of the last dissertations advised by the great American historian of religion and distinguished Lutheran, Martin Marty. His student, Robert Wilson-Black, has been CEO of Sojourners since 2013 but earlier served as an administrator at the University of Chicago and then as a college and seminary vice [End Page 99] president for a decade. He has written widely and serves on the board of Lynchburg University. The book describes the great debates about if and how religion ought to be taught in the constantly changing face of American higher education from the beginning of the 20th century to its midpoint following World War II. Its scope and depth of research are truly remarkable. The author seems to have covered the thoughts on this subject of almost every elite intellectual in every elite university in America from the turn of the 20th century to its mid-point. Early on he develops a typology of thinkers who argue their vision of the nature of religion and how it ought to be presented in academia. The types are "skeptics," "pious true believers," and "those who functioned primarily as reconcilers between them for each college or discipline" (xx). After World War II, as after World War I, many educators were so shaken by the collapse of civilization in the Christian West that they thought deeply about how higher education should wrestle with the civilizational crisis illuminated by the wars. Christian and secular humanist movements existed in both periods; members of those movements wondered how young Americans should be shaped as good citizens by higher education. For them, the role of religion in education was crucial. But how to go about it? This book plumbs that question in great detail, especially among the best and brightest in the educational world. Wilson-Black traces the many debates that took place in the elite colleges. Some atheists and skeptics from outside the Christian humanist movement argued that secular humanism could supply the moral fiber needed in the new generation. Most, however, saw an important role for religion, especially Christianity, for such a task. Should religion be presented through a department of religion at the undergraduate level? Should it be spread throughout the curriculum as kind of a tutoring in natural law? Should it be limited to a graduate school of divinity? Should it be embedded in other departments? Further, should religion be taught objectively and scientifically as religious studies? Or should it have a persuasive dimension to its teaching? These questions have not gone away by any means. Indeed, it seems that "religious studies," with no privilege [End Page 100] offered to Christian studies, is increasingly dominant, even in our church-related colleges. The powerful "diversity, inclusivity, and equity" movement ensures the demotion of Christian perspectives, especially of an orthodox Christian sort. The book covers the role of religion in higher education up to the 1950s. Interestingly, that period featured many intellectuals who thought that the Christian faith was crucial in the moral development of young Americans. Such intellectuals are fairly rare now, with many instead believing that orthodox Christianity should be banished from an influential role. Other movements—ecological, sexual, anti-racial, multicultural, and "diversity"—are seen as far more promising in shaping young minds. Perhaps the author's next book will take up that great change. One limiting factor in this book is its exclusive attention to elite higher education. It does not discuss at all the role of religion in the many ethnic, evangelical, and Roman Catholic colleges of the time. In those places, Christian faith—not only in its moral dimension—played a robust role in the shaping of millions of non-elite Americans, whose important story should also be told. Robert Benne Institute of Lutheran Theology Brookings, South Dakota Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

West Coast Weather

West Coast Weather Grace Kearney (bio) We had not spoken in months when you invited me to your baptism—your "bapti-Zoom"—and I heard myself saying, "Yes, of course," as I have to all your rebirths. The ceremony took place in a backyard pool in Berkeley, befitting, to my mind, the ill-defined character of the church to which you now belonged. ("When a church has a podcast and a professionally designed website but no denomination listed, it's Evangelical," my sister in divinity school told me, foretelling your repeated attempts to bring me into its fold.) The video quality was poor, which was too bad, as I wanted to hear which Bible verse you had chosen to read. I heard only the splash, and the faint sound of applause. I had angled my camera so that you could see, though you did not look, the wall behind me, where the painting you made me five years ago still hangs. Inspired by The Phantom Tollbooth, it shows a little boy driving an open-roofed car down a road lined with palms, their trunks wavy and distorted, like driving in a dream. ________ When we found the Enterprise on Escondido Road closed on Sundays, we downloaded a car-sharing app and with a few taps secured a shiny red car, available immediately on the other side of campus. It was our junior year of college and we were prone to shortcuts. Plus, it was a convertible, and nothing is more Spring Break or Road Trip or Route 1 than a red convertible. Prone, too, to the idea of Platonic forms. We had both been reading Plato's Republic when we met, high on our own intellect like so many college freshmen before us. While the trappings of reality surrounded us—the election of a Dorm President, the mad scramble for friend groups—we closed the door and sat cross-legged on my thin mattress and decided the Real lay elsewhere. We answered each other's questions with questions. You drew diagrams. Whenever a third party entered the room, the difference was obvious: men spoke at us, and we spoke to each other. There was only one solution, we joked, platonically. We went to parties only to observe and debrief on the stumbling walk home. On Halloween, we went to Sig Ki with everyone else but [End Page 45] wore white bedsheets over our heads, sexless and bodiless, eyes and ears only. As we peeled onto 280 North, the wind was merciless. For the sake of Spring Break we kept the roof down, but it was too cold when night fell and we realized the roof was stuck. The wind blew our voices back into our mouths, wiped the sheen from our faces. Not long after, the front left tire blew out. You were driving and I was annoyed by your carelessness, though of course it was not your fault. But hadn't this happened to your own car last month? You didn't answer. You were annoyed, too, because now Angelo would be asleep by the time we got there. He was, and so was everyone else, laid out in sleeping bags on the wooden deck. You crawled into his, and I lay out my own. Harbin Hot Springs, according to the website, was a hot spring retreat and workshop center. According to its patrons, it was a nudist camp. This was something your Angelo was into, and you were talked into, and I accepted as a detour on our trip. There was a recommended order for the array of heated pools: tepid bathtub water, standard hot tub water, icy pool water, and a boiling pot with clay walls, where I sat and let blackness hover on the edges of my vision. Time passed in a dizzy blur of bodies. I didn't see you for most of the day, until I wandered into the communal pantry and there you were, eating chocolate chips and raspberries. "Have you ever done this?" I asked, and pressed a chocolate chip into the pocket of a raspberry. "No, but it's perfect," you said. You shared my food kleptomania. That first year together...

Jesus and Dogs: Or How to Command a Friend?

ABSTRACTReligious ethics, like its sibling, religious studies, emerged out of the divinity schools and theological seminaries in the mid‐20th century. Many years have now passed since these academic disciplines have secured independent standing in universities and colleges, independent from their theological beginnings. The time seems right, then, to ask what theological inquiry might gain from religious ethics and what religious ethics might look like when done in a theological mode. Reflection on the manumission scene in the 15th chapter of John's gospel, on the exegetical puzzles it poses, offers one possible example of these gains and this mode.

Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ: A Study in Contextualized Christology by How Chuang Chua

Reviewed by: Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ: A Study in Contextualized Christology by How Chuang Chua Andrew Ronnevik Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ: A Study in Contextualized Christology. By How Chuang Chua. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2021. x + 308 pp. Only about 1% of Japan's population are Christians, but this book shows how members of the small community have made significant theological contributions. The author, How Chuang Chua [End Page 103] (1959–2015), was a Singaporean evangelical theologian and missionary to Japan. A revised PhD dissertation from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, his book examines the lives and writings of three twentieth-century Japanese Christians—Kazo Kitamori, Shusaku Endo, and Kosuke Koyama—in relation to Christ's death. It is an exemplary work of contextual theology, drawing attention to how the word of the cross has been received in distinctive ways in Japan. The three opening chapters orient readers to biblical and Western theological interpretations of the cross, approaches to contextual theology, and the history of Japanese Christianity. More engaging are the following three chapters. Each of these is devoted to one Japanese-Christian writer and engages insightfully with both biography and texts. Chapter four presents the theologian Kitamori (1916–1998), best known for his 1946 Theology of the Pain of God. Chua carefully describes Kitamori's notion of divine pain, the result of God encountering the sinner with wrath and love. Lutheran readers will be interested to see how Luther's theology of the cross influenced Kitamori's thought, along with personal, cultural, and biblical factors. Chua is appreciative of how seriously Kitamori takes human sin and divine wrath, but he rightly criticizes Kitamori for overreaching in the claim that pain is an ontological attribute of God. Chapter five takes up the Catholic novelist Endo (1923–1996), famous for his Silence (1966). Chua shows how Endo, attuned to dissonances between East and West, believed that Christ could never be at home in the "mudswamp" of Japan as a triumphant (Western) savior but only as the crucified, weak, humiliated companion of the suffering. While Chua is sympathetic to Endo's effort to indigenize Christ, he criticizes Endo's pluralistic-syncretistic trajectory, emphasis on suffering over sin, and failure to discuss divine deliverance. Chapter six turns to the globetrotting missiologist Koyama (1929–2009), widely hailed for his Waterbuffalo Theology (1974). More than Kitamori and Endo, Koyama considered the death of Christ in concrete relation to history, culture, politics, and ethics. Koyama, Chua suggests, communicated the cross primarily with the missiological concern of cultivating the "crucified mind" of Christ in diverse individuals and communities. Although Chua worries that [End Page 104] Koyama, out of concern for violence, distances himself too far from the satisfaction theory of atonement, he generally affirms Koyama's legacy, especially his attention to context and neighbor, the centrality of sin, and the eschatological movement of history. A summary chapter and epilogue on missiological matters conclude the book. These provide thoughtful synthesis and deeper attention to issues previously addressed more briefly, such as divine impassibility, the cross and violence, theological language, and modes of theological work. There is much to commend in this book. First, better than many, Chua strikes a healthy balance between the centrality of Scripture, the need for contextualization, and the critical appreciation of the Western tradition. Second, Chua's methodology is effective in its use of different kinds of writings and in its blending of texts and biography. Third, shining through his scholarly work are Chua's pastoral and missiological commitments. While appreciative of the book, I also note two questions. First, might Chua have tightened his project by focusing more consistently on issues of the cross? Sometimes he addresses more topics than necessary, blurring the focus on the death of Christ. Second, does Chua exaggerate the difference between sin and suffering? Some distinction is appropriate, but I wish Chua had probed more thoroughly their relation. This book deserves a wide readership, especially among those interested in the global church and Christology. Because of its density, it is best suited for upper-level college and seminary courses. Andrew Ronnevik Baylor University Waco, Texas Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran...

Believing Into Christ: Relational Faith and Human Flourishing

Believing Into Christ uses very focused attention on a grammatical point of translation to open up an expansive Christian understanding of human flourishing. Natalya A. Cherry, Assistant Professor in Methodist Studies and Theology at Brite Divinity School, explains how a footnote to a World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission document on the Faith of the Nicene Creed caught her attention because the Latin phrase it referenced (credere in deum) uses an unusual case for the noun with the verb ‘believe’. Using the work of Christine Mohrmann, she argues that because the phrase uses the preposition in plus the accusative case, it implies movement. The English would be better rendered ‘believe into’ rather than ‘believe in’. This phrasing is used not only of God (in deum) but also of Christ (in Christum), or sometimes simply ‘him’ (in eum). The unusual use of Latin replicates biblical Greek pisteuein eis.Once this grammatical point is established, Cherry argues that Augustine understood the significance of this construction and exploited it in his homilies. In her telling, Augustine was not above using bawdy references to convey to his listeners the intimacy of being incorporated into Christ. Augustine’s sermons also clearly distinguish different types of belief: believing Jesus is the Christ, believing what he says, and believing into him (the third being the faith that results in right relationship with God and distinguishes faith of Christians from the faith of demons). Cherry refers to this threefold understanding as Augustine’s ‘formula’.The faith that brings us ‘into’ Christ is far from an intellectual assent that many assume saving faith requires. In fact, part of the importance of Augustine’s ‘formula’ is to show the contrast between ‘believing into’ and the other two ways of believing. It is when we give ourselves to be incorporated into Christ (deification or theosis) that we flourish with the spiritual health and wholeness that God intends for us. Cherry’s description of this incorporation stresses body and movement: our limbs are ‘glued’ to Christ’s limbs and therefore we move as he moves in order to express his love bodily in the world. This image expresses faith working by love.Cherry then outlines how the explicit link that Augustine made between a specific kind of faith and human flourishing faded over time as theologians avoided the bodily image of incorporation and instead systematized Augustine’s threefold formula conceptually. Although theologians could still connect faith and love, the contrast between ‘believe into’ and the other two types of faith in the formula was minimized as all three were stressed as positive aspects of faith. Cherry hopes that renewed attention to Augustine’s emphasis could nourish constructive theological understanding of what it is to be Christlike in daily living.The book is not specifically about Wesley or Methodist studies, but it does mention Methodism in a way that should be noted. Because of the fading influence of Augustine’s formula, Cherry laments that vital movements such as Methodism did not have available to them the understanding of ‘believing-into’ that Augustine preached. She does note that a Methodist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Edward H. Sugden, understood from biblical Greek the point about believing into Christ. In a footnote to John Wesley’s sermon ‘The First Fruits of the Spirit’, Sugden referred to the Greek pisteuein eis from the Gospel of John as ‘believing into’ in order to illumine what Wesley missed about Paul’s phrase ‘in Christ’ in the text for this sermon (Romans 8:1). Cherry interprets Sugden’s comment to mean ‘that Wesley’s early theology had yet to consider faith in relational, rather than merely transactional, terms’. It should be acknowledged, though, that as early as 1738 (in ‘Salvation by Faith’) Wesley distinguished right, living faith from the faith of the devils and talked about it in terms of trust and confidence.It is not clear to me that Sugden’s footnote intended to comment that Wesley’s early theology of faith was not relational but rather to make a point about the distinction between justification and sanctification. Sanctification is more clearly how we grow into Christ—what Sugden thinks Paul means by ‘in Christ’. Sugden points out that Paul uses believe upon (epi) for justification and believe into (eis) for sanctification.My own sense as I read Cherry’s book was how much Wesley and Augustine had in common in the way they called people to Christlikeness. They may well have come to their understandings differently—and perhaps used different images—but they offered a similar vision for Christian living. I hope Wesleyan Methodist readers will make use of this book to highlight the wisdom that is in this tradition and recover it.

Stretching the Heavens: The Life of Eugene England and the Crisis of Modern MormonismEugene England: A Mormon Liberal

Stretching the Heavens: The Life of Eugene England and the Crisis of Modern MormonismEugene England: A Mormon Liberal

Editorial

IN this number, the New England Quarterly proudly announces the publication of the 2021 Colonial Society of Massachusetts Walter Muir Whitehill Prize winning essay, “The Rights of God's Stewards: Property, Conscience, and the Great Awakening in Canterbury, Connecticut” by Erik Nordbye. The prize recognizes Whitehill's contributions to the Colonial Society, but at the same time we acknowledge the Colonial Society's larger contributions to scholarship on early America. Walter Muir Whitehill was, in the words of the New York Times, “one of Boston's most outspoken champions of historic preservation.” Whitehill presided over the Colonial Society, managed the publication of collections of primary source documents in volumes remarkable for their editorial integrity and beauty—a practice continued, after 1978 by Fredrick Scouller Allis Jr. and, then since 1993, by John Tyler—and laid the foundation for its current programs. The establishment of the Whitehill Prize represents the extension of the Colonial Society's mission to encourage scholarship on early American history. Readers of this journal know that the prize annually offers an honorarium to an outstanding essay on the early republic (up to 1815) which the Quarterly agrees to publish.A doctoral student in theology at the Harvard Divinity School, Erik Nordbye illustrates the Colonial Society's support of innovative scholarship. Rather than pursuing the evangelical arguments separating New from Old Light theology, Nordbye correlates institutional and structural attributes of that division with questions about the impact of the contexts of property and possessory rights in shaping the disputes of the Great Awakening and provides us with an unusual view of its social controversies. In brief, who owned the church, who were subject to the costs of maintaining it, and what this meant for the larger conversation about colonial Connecticut's policies regarding taxation and established religion?Fortuitously, two other essays also provide complementary perspectives on eighteenth-century New England. Francis Russo's “Sonic Piety in New England” reviews the controversies over “Regular Singing” to recapture the significance of sound in religious life and ascertain its place in the larger story of the Great Awakening. Russo makes the case for a re-evaluation of our understanding of the function of sound in puritan or congregational piety. In our Memoranda and Documents Section, Leah Orr subjects bookstore owner Benjamin Guild's Daybook to an intense, deep analysis, traces the details of each transaction, and unexpectedly finds minimal changes in customer purchases in the midst of the American Revolution. In a detailed examination of the ebb and flow of Guild's custom, Orr breaks down Bostonians’ book purchases and finds that interest in British fiction continued relatively unabated in this period. These three essays together argue for the need to challenge simple axioms regarding change over time and the importance of the historian's charge to ascertain the significance of its complexities.While topically an outlier, our fourth essay, Eve Raimon's careful study of New England's hidden Black history, shows how memories allow us to elide the unpleasantness of our shared past. Examining four recent local commemorations of Black history, Raimon points to the way in which these sites impel the confrontation of the past, challenge the false pride of moral exceptionalism, and provide a sense of historical if not moral humility.Although long thought a Chinese curse, the greeting, “May you live in interesting times,” probably originated with Austen Chamberlain, the British diplomat, brother of Neville, and step-son-in-law to American Mary Endecott Chamberlain, the daughter of Cleveland's secretary of war William Crowninshield Endecott. As we approach the New Year, we express our appreciation for what seems to be the restoration of normality—masks are optional, the pandemic is (maybe) over, and the Red Sox missed the playoffs. Here at the Quarterly, we are especially grateful for the normality that carried us through interesting times: the many scholars who submitted essays, patiently awaited our review process, which despite our best efforts, seemed slower than usual, reviewed submissions and books, our subscribers and supporters, the Colonial Society, its Council, and its president Robert Alison for their sustained support. To our delight, we continue to find readers and authors who share their great affection for the journal with us. The staff of the Quarterly wishes all of you the happiest of holidays and the blessings of a normal New Year.