Readers will know that I'm a week late in getting this selection up, but I've been plagued by an infection that turned out to be far more painful than I had initially anticipated. So I had to take a break from writing. Hopefully I can get back on track now.
That said ...
Practicing Theology is an important little volume of essays that explores how systematic theology can assist people of faith in negotiating the world as Christians. Here, this collection of theologians puts theology to the service of the Church, and these "critical realists" (among whom I would count myself) make some robust claims about God's reality and God's relationship to the world. And in the process, help us articulate the difference God makes in how we articulate culture and world.
In what is perhaps the most important essay in the entire collection, Amy Plantinga Pauw turns the "gaps" that emerge from faith and practice in our culture into a rich theological space. These "gaps", she reminds us, are places in our lives where we throw ourselves onto God's grace and acknowledge the necessity of living as Christians in community. We need God and we need one another in the Church. Without both, Christian life withers and dies as a practical atheism.
Practicing Theology is an important book for those Christians who really aren't sure the difference God and Church make in the world.
That said ...
In what is perhaps the most important essay in the entire collection, Amy Plantinga Pauw turns the "gaps" that emerge from faith and practice in our culture into a rich theological space. These "gaps", she reminds us, are places in our lives where we throw ourselves onto God's grace and acknowledge the necessity of living as Christians in community. We need God and we need one another in the Church. Without both, Christian life withers and dies as a practical atheism.
Practicing Theology is an important book for those Christians who really aren't sure the difference God and Church make in the world.