Reclaiming the Bible for the Church

by Carl E. Braaten, Robert Jenson

Overview

Leading theologians speak out on the crisis in the role of biblical authority and the interpretation of the Bible in the church. 'The various chapters in this excellent book, summarised as to leading themes by editors in the introduciton, orginated as conference papers which addressed the question: can the Bible still speak to the Church in an age of critical historical awareness? It is a book which will repay careful reading by all those concerned to maintain or restore an intergral connection between Bible and Church while retaining also a personal integrity of intellect and spirit. There are eight essays in all, each addressing the central question in its own unique manner.' Colm O Baoill, University of Aberdeen, Scottish Journal of Theology

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780567085337
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/17/2000
Pages:	150
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.32(d)

About the Author

Carl Edward Braaten is an ordained minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He served as a parish pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Messiah in Minneapolis from 1958-1961. From 1961-1991 Braaten served as a professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. In 1992 he together with Robert W. Jenson founded the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology in Northfield, Minnesota. For fifteen years he served as the executive director of the Center, an ecumenical organization whose mission is to cultivate faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the churches, and also as the editor-in-chief of Pro Ecclesia, a journal of theology published by the Center.
Braaten has authored and edited over fifty theological books, including Principles of Lutheran Theology (Fortress Press, 1983), The Future of God: The Revolutionary Dynamics of Hope (Harper & Row, Publishers, 1969), Mother Church: Ecclesiology and Ecumenism (Fortress Press, 1998), Because of Christ: Memoirs of a Lutheran Theologian (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), and Who Is Jesus? Disputed Questions and Answers (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), as well as hundreds of articles and editorials in various academic journals.
Braaten was born on January 3, 1929 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He grew up on the island of Madagascar where his parents served as missionaries of the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America. He graduated from Augustana Academy, a Lutheran high school in Canton, South Dakota. He received degrees from St. Olaf College (B.A.), Luther Seminary (M. Div.), and Harvard University Divinity School (Th.D.). In 1951 he was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), in 1957 a doctoral student at the University of Heidelberg where he wrote his dissertation, and in 1967 a Guggenheim Fellow at Oxford University.
In 1974 he spent a sabbatical making a worldwide lecture tour of various colleges and seminaries in Japan, China, India, Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. This tour resulted in a book on the universal mission of the church entitled, The Flaming Center (Fortress Press, 1977).

Table of Contents

Contributors vii

Introduction: Gospel, Church, and Scripture Carl E. Braaten Robert W. Jenson ix

On Reclaiming the Bible for Christian Theology Brevard S. Childs 1

Alien Hermeneutics and the Misappropriation of Scripture Karl P. Donfried 19

The Loss of Biblical Authority and Its Recovery Roy A. Harrisville 47

Reclaiming Our Roots and Vision: Scripture and the Stability of the Christian Church Alister E. McGrath 63

Hermeneutks and the Life of the Church Robert W. Jenson 89

The Church, the Bible, and Dogmatic Theology Thomas Hopko 107

The Canon as the Voice of the Living God Elizabeth Achtemeier 119

Scriptural Word and Liturgical Worship Aidan Kavanaugh, O.S.B. 131

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"These vigorously written and boldly argued essays are not to be missed by anyone who cares about the vitality and authenticity of the church's life. Many will disagree with them—perhaps vehemently—but those who do should be prepared to think as seriously and as deeply as these theologians have about the role of the Bible in the church."
-LEANDER E. KECK, Yale Divinity School

"A compelling account of the dilemma caused by historical criticism of the Bible in the life of the contemporary church. An impressive array of scholarly authorities—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—have come together to argue that while historical criticism is indispensable to the under­ standing of Scripture, it endangers Christian faith when it is used by educational and bureaucratic elites in mainline churches to accommodate Christ to the ideological demands of secular America."
-WALTER SUNDBERG, Luther Seminary

Editorial Reviews

"The various chapters in this excellent book, summarised as to leading themes by editors in the introduciton, orginated as conference papers which addressed the question: can the Bible still speak to the Church in an age of critical historical awareness? It is a book which will repay careful reading by all those concerned to maintain or restore an intergral connection between Bible and Church while retaining also a personal integrity of intellect and spirit. There are eight essays in all, each addressing the central question in its own unique manner." Colm O Baoill, University of Aberdeen, Scottish Journal of Theology--Sanford Lakoff "Scottish Journal Of Theology "

From the Publisher