Beyond Cheap Grace
A Call to Radical Discipleship, Incarnation, and Justice
- Christian Living
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Published: 2006
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Publisher's Description
Foreword by Howard John Loewen As our lives become complex with the demands of our affluent and accelerating society, do we hear the gospel's timeless and insistent call to live the "obedience of faith"? In these three "sermonic essays" Eldin Villafañe takes on the task of awakening true obedience of faith through the themes of discipleship, incarnation, and justice. Beginning with discipleship, Villafañe draws on the "Christ hymn" of Philippians 2 to challenge Christians to choose the costly Christ-life. He then offers six contrarian perspectives on the incarnation from the early church as correctives to our current, culturally conditioned theological emphases. Finally, taking the book of Amos as a touchstone, Villafañe issues a call for just leadership among the nations. Adding interest and depth to this work are an insightful foreword by Dean Loewen and thoughtful responses by Richard Peace, Juan Francisco Martinez, and Veli-Mattí Kärkkäinen. Villafañe's Beyond Cheap Grace incisively extends Christ's call to discipleship, incarnation, and justice to the church, the academy, and Christian leaders of all traditions.
Endorsements (5)
“Hardly anything is more urgent today than that the church heed the call to abandon cheap grace and embrace costly, biblical discipleship.”
“Eldin Villafañe brings to the fore both his ministerial experience and his decades of reflection in a clear and concise manner, calling for the need to reform theological education.”
“Long a leading theorist of urban ministry, contextual theological education, and Latino/a theological ethics, Eldin Villafañe is revealed in Beyond Cheap Grace to be above all a prophetic voice on behalf of the cruciform life, challenging various forms of cultural accommodation that distort and conceal the gospel in our era. Calling us to recover the radical meaning of discipleship, incarnation, and justice for spiritual renewal, this valuable work deserves a wide reading and even wider application.”
“Eldin Villafañe calls us from the comfortable pew away from a self-centered prosperity and name-it-and-claim-it gospel to a servant ministry that embraces the poor and marginalized with righteousness and justice.”
“Beyond Cheap Grace integrates theology and ethics through the lens of Christology and biblical scholarship to challenge traditional paradigms of theological education and method. Villafañe seeks to prod Christian leaders and educators to create a new model of discipleship that lives up to the principles of the reign of God — one that is welcoming to all, transformative, and above all incarnational. . . I hope that this book encourages all theological institutions to invite as many diverse voices as possible to join the conversation.”
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