Walter Brueggemann

The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship

Preaching & Worship

“Practical theology of the highest order. Witvliet's work is deeply grounded in good critical study and in the teaching of the church tradition. But his eye is on the congregation where the Psalms take on new life in each fresh rendering, and he stands alongside other practitioners of prayer and praise who move back and forth between text and context. His book is an immensely rich resource for such practice.”

The Book of Deuteronomy and Post-modern Christianity

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“James Baxter offers a popular exposition of the book of Deuteronomy. In doing so, he latches on to the dynamism of Deuteronomy and links it to the new forms the church is now to take. I am pleased my own work has been a resource and impetus for his work.”

The Church in Exile

Theology

“Beach's assessment is surely correct. His book invites church leaders to recognize where God has now put the church. The work of new leadership—in terms of hope, imagination and missional vision—is to be about the business of 'defining reality' in ways that violate, subvert and transgress all old definitions of reality. Specifically this means to contradict the dominant definitions of reality that oppose gospel truth. Such leaders will anticipate that such new definitions of reality will be vigorously contested, outside the congregation and within it. Anything less than that work will end in irrelevance and despair. This book is a rich exercise in hope!”

The Company of Preachers

Preaching & Worship

“As constant and recurring as preaching is in the church, it is a practice that is endlessly inscrutable in its performance. In our time of peculiar bewilderment, the sermon is especially odd in its performance and in its possible impact. Richard Lischer's 'reader' on preaching is a reminder that we do not need to reinvent the wheel. Others before us and alongside us have thought well about the mystery of preaching. This valuable collection will benefit both beginners and veterans who may be at a point of rethinking. The representative voices in these pages invite such rethinking and make clear that preaching at its most faithful is not the property of any sect or perspective but stretches us all beyond our inclinations to the True Subject of such proclamation.”

The Cross in Our Context

Theology

“Subtle, passionate, and knowing...a coherent case for discipleship on an intentional and daring kind. This book gives ready access to the thinking and faith of one of our finest thinkers, a welcome addition to a remarkable corpus of evangelical faith.”

The Crucifixion of the Warrior God

Theology

“Gregory A. Boyd looks the violence of God, as attested in scripture, full in the face without flinching. But he submits that testimony to the absolute and ultimate truth of the cross that both permits and requires the recognition that we are not supposed to take these violent divine portrayals at face value. Boyd mobilizes the remarkable resources of the Christian interpretative tradition to show that such divine violence is strategic, pedagogical, and accommodating but is not definitional for the truth of God that is to be found in the self-giving of God in the cross. This is a most welcome and daring study that may indeed change the terms of our ongoing wonderment about how to read scripture and how to trust and obey the God who dwells therein.”

The Deepest Belonging

Christian Living

“The reader will cherish this well-written book and come to discern that the 'old old story' is always yet again becoming our 'new new song.'”

The Destruction of the Canaanites

Apologetics

“Anyone who has read the Old Testament attentively knows that its pages perform many acts of brutalizing God-willed savagery. This linkage of God and violence is, on any reading, deeply problematic and troubling. Charlie Trimm has faced this issue honestly and without flinching. He seeks to sort out different possible avenues of interpretation. The outcome is that his book is a difficult but nonetheless important read, for our own reading context is now one of acute and pervasive violence. The issue is deep and insistent and will not go away. Trimm invites us to think again in ways that are both honest and faithful.”

The Elohist

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Robert Gnuse has returned to an old question in the critical study of Israelite tradition. He does so with fresh insight and theological imagination. By mobilizing a wide and deep array of scholarship he exposits a particular strand of the tradition that on the one hand attests the transcendence of God, and on the other exhibits the urgency of civil disobedience. His book is compelling evidence of the way in which critical study of the Scriptures serves contemporary theological interpretation.”

The End Is the Beginning

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Matthew Fleming brings to his study of the book of Revelation his vivid personal memory, his alertness to popular culture, seriousness about the text, and a winsome imaginative sense of humor. The outcome of the work of his many gifts is an invitation to rescue the book of Revelation from the mistaken use made of it by fundamentalist literalists with their infallibility, inerrancy, and theology of fear. In the place of such distortion, he offers a reading of the book of Revelation through an engagement with its imagery and cadences. Fleming's rendering of the book will be much appreciated by those who receive the Bible and particularly the book of Revelation as the voicing of a world under God's gracious, relentless goodness. As Fleming reads it, that gracious, relentless goodness will, soon or late, prevail.”

The First Advent in Palestine

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“If you are wearied by or bored with the sentimentality and careless religious nostalgia of American Advent and Christmas, this is the book for you. Kelley Nikondeha takes a deep, alert dive into the natal poetry of the Gospels that has become for us too trite and jaded in its familiarity. She reads this poetry differently because she has, at the same time, made a deep investment in the contemporary life of real people in the actual circumstances of Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem, people who happen to be Palestinians who continue to be outsiders to imperial power. The outcome of her bold reading is to see that these Gospel texts initiated a peace movement into the world that defies and subverts the phony peace of every imperialism. This rich, suggestive book permits us to reappropriate in knowing ways the good news of Advent-Christmas, news that destabilizes and emancipates.”

The Forgotten Books of the Bible

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“This book is at the same time a summons, an invitation, and an aid to remembering what we have forgotten about the biblical text. Williamson’s work teems with compelling contemporaneity!”

The Genius of Justice

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

The God of Second Chances

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Readers [can] expect to find in this book a deep, pastoral sensibility, a compelling narrative art, and an awareness of systemic arrangements that continue to produce hopelessness and displacement among us. Clark provides ready access to the issues that concern us most now.”

The Green Good News

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Amid the explosion of literature concerning 'going green,' Wilson Dickinson has written an 'adult' book that requires adult attention from serious people. The book demands not only to be read but to be studied. Dickinson weaves together a shrewd, discerning understanding of Jesus, his gospel, and the realities of political-economic empire of a neo-liberal variety, both ancient and contemporary. Happily this book finishes with a winsome study guide of seven units that will serve well for sustained reflective study.”

The Heart of Christianity

Theology

“A winsome, accessible, pastoral offering ... Borg provides a way for an important, positive, and serious rethinking of the gospel.”

The Hebrew Prophets after the Shoah

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to the Old Testament

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“A remarkable, accessible, winsome guide to the complexity of the Old Testament for any reader who does not know where to begin. This book will be a rich resource for study groups that want to grow and are at ease with irreverence.”

The Incomparable God

Theology

“The ample, rich, deep gifts that Brent Strawn possesses are fully on exhibit in this collection: he is a master of textual detail borne of care and patience; he is at home amidst the riddles of ancient Near Eastern culture; and he has read and critically absorbed immense amounts of scholarly material that range from Tolkien to Gregory of Nyssa to the boy-mauling bears of Elisha to Trinitarian perichoresis. Still further, he evidences an acute theological sensibility. These gifts offer, in turn, two gifts to Strawn’s readers. First, you may expect to become freshly familiar with a great number of biblical texts. Second, you may expect to witness a model of reliable, informed interpretation that waits to be replicated. On all counts this is a grand articulation from one of our most generative interpreters.”

The Joshua Delusion?

Apologetics

“There is no doubt that the Bible-and the God of the Bible-are saturated with reams of violence . . . and nowhere more frontally than in the book of Joshua. Douglas Earl wades boldly into the problem of reading Joshua theologically. He brings to the task the rich resources of the Christian tradition and the best of current hermeneutical possibilities. The outcome is a rich, suggestive approach that invites deep rethinking of how we read such texts responsibly. His book is a welcome voice in an important, vexed, unfinished conversation.”