Craig L. Nessan

Biography

Craig L. Nessan wrote Beyond Maintenance to Mission and Shalom Church, and co-wrote The Integrity of the Body of Christ with Arden Mahlberg.

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On This Rock

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“Child abuse in its myriad forms—prevalent in contemporary church and society—necessitates that congregations develop and implement proactive policies to protect God’s little ones. Victor Vieth makes a compelling and articulate case for grounding the church’s response to child abuse on the words and practices of Jesus. This book deserves wide circulation and serious study.”

Postcolonial Public Theology

Theology

“Boldly articulating the centrality of the Christian confession of Jesus Christ as the living voice of God, Chung insists that only an appropriation of Christian tradition as public theology in the sense of a prophetic diakonia can address the crises of our present age. Bringing interpretations of major figures in Christian thought (Luther, Bonhoeffer) into dialogue with secular prophets (Darwin, Foucault), Chung demonstrates how his archeological hermeneutics and 'ana-lectical' method lead us to an urgently needed transformative praxis.”

Promising Nothing

Theology

“How hidden from human experience can God become? As entirely as God’s divinity was effaced in Jesus’s crucifixion. This book is sculpted from the genius of Luther, informed by radical theology, and accompanied by the specter of Vitor Westhelle. Anthony explores the Lutheran apprehension of God’s absolute hiddenness, a Christology from the cross. The promise of God is masked in the cry of abandonment and the nothingness of a corpse.”

Reclaiming Mission as Constructive Theology

Theology

“"Reclaiming Mission as Constructive Theology locates the contemporary discussion of missional church in its fullest eschatological horizon. Chung advocates for socially engaged mission that attends to the emergence of world Christianity, the imperative of public theology, and the call to serve God's diakonia for the life of the world. Informed by mission history and recent hermeneutical theory, this book deepens and broadens the study of missiology to address the urgent issues of our time.”

Rooted and Renewing

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“As God reinvents church, we must retrieve core New Testament practices. Authentic spirituality, servanthood, and public witness define the Way of Jesus Christ. This book reimagines enduring patterns beyond the church box: worship, prayer, eating, koinonia, and ministry in daily life. An amazing convergence of congregational savvy and scholarly wisdom.”

Salvation Story

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Froemming invites readers to juxtapose the endemic violence of our world with the world of Scripture. With uncanny apprehension of our penchant for violence, he applies Girard's analysis of mimetic rivalry and scapegoating to biblical texts, and his Scripture commentaries are mirrors to see our own complicity in perpetuating violence. The salvation story of Jesus crucified is the hermeneutical key to unlock the prison door and set us free from the vicious cycles destroying our world.”

Sharing Food

Christian Living

“Here is a clarion call to mindfulness in relationship to one of the most fundamental of all human activities – eating! Shannon Jung summons us to slow down and examine not only our eating dis-orders – like obesity in a world of hungry people – but the promise of eating well, as epitomized in the Eucharist. Rich in theological insight and full of practical wisdom, this book motivates the reader beyond guilt toward rediscovering delight in sharing together a common meal.”

The Cave and the Butterfly

Theology

“This book transcends hermeneutics in any conventional sense. In response to the crisis of modern technological existence and the contradictions of global capitalism, Chung guides the reader on an intercultural quest for authentic and responsible humanity. The wisdom of the East reorients us to our place in the natural world, and the truth of the incarnate Word sends us into the public sphere to encounter God in the face of the least (Minjung). We are invited to open ourselves to the way of embodied emancipatory praxis.”

The Forgotten Luther

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“The Forgotten Luther series retrieves prophetic dimensions of Luther's life work to advocate for socio-economic justice. This volume locates Luther's inextricable connection between justification and justice within a global horizon through analysis by leading theologians from diverse contexts. The Spirit is active to radicalize the Reformation through contemporary engagement with these provocative dimensions of the Lutheran legacy.”

The Forgotten Luther III

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

The God Who Is

Apologetics

“Building upon decades of interreligious and ecumenical engagement, Hans Schwarz establishes the parameters for serious deliberation of the God question in our time. Taking seriously diverse views and counterarguments against religion, The God Who Is invites readers to examine biblical claims for the God who is revealed in history and whose ultimate self-disclosure occurs in Jesus Christ. The longings of theomorphous humanity meet the infinite compassion of the one, true God most adequately and completely in the Christ event.”

The Quest for Faithfulness

History & Biography

“There is an urgent need for lively models of Christian existence who exemplify faithfulness under challenging circumstances. This memoir by Helmut Hartmann provides imagination for the way of the cross in contexts that cried out for a confessing church: Germany under Nazi dictatorship and East Germany under Russian domination. The details about specific dilemmas, times, places, and relationships lend authenticity to this witness from which we richly benefit on the road to justice and peace. Readers are immersed in an extended case study about the cost of discipleship.”

The Scattering

Church Leadership & Ministry

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Theological Audacities

Theology

“Why is the work of Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt so little translated and little known in the English-speaking world? Is this lack due to his radical re-thinking of the Jewish foundations of Christianity after the Shoah? Is it a result of his iconoclastic interpretation of Karl Barth as a political theologian who shatters the constraints of neo-orthodox categories? Or, is it due to his following consequentially the implications of what it means to be a Confessing Church in the political and economic events of our times? This book begins to correct a theological slight. Theological Audacities indeed!”

Ubi Deus Dixit

Theology

“Lutheran political theology must retrieve and reinterpret the foundational insights of Luther’s Two Kingdoms. Duane Larson brilliantly overcomes misunderstandings in a constructive project that restores to its central place the living word of God. The Gospel of Jesus Christ contends with the principalities and powers under a theology of the cross, on the right, and reimagined divine sovereignty under natural law, on the left. A tour de force!”

When All Else Fails

Church Leadership & Ministry

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Working for the Public Good

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“In this definitive study, Leslie F. Weber Jr. combines insightful historical research with a career devoted to the church's social teaching to demonstrate the penetration of Reformation teaching into the fabric of German and Scandinavian societies. Refuting the thesis of Troeltsch about Lutheran quietism, this book documents the manifold ways Reformation theology--especially Luther's Two Governances (kingdoms)--gave rise to responsibility for the common good. Across the centuries, the teachings and practices of the Reformers generated impetus for charity and social justice, leading eventually to welfare states that function best as democracies, where citizens are free to participate in the spirit of a universal priesthood.”