What Pervades Theology But Absent From Textbooks

It never fails. In the classroom. A question from a student. A response from the professor. Some name is mentioned — Hodge, Barth, Tillich, a movement comes up — dispensationalism, Princetonianism, Neo-Orthodoxy, “post” conservative, or well-known methods are invoked — feminist, social gospel, etc..

“Can you explain that?” The conversation continues, some light is shed, and then we get back to the original question. Time is not wasted. But there is a collection of names, movements, and methods that pervade theological and biblical discussions that are not discussed in the books one reads.

There is now a book that covers many, if not most, of these names, movements and methods. It does so fairly, clearly, and it is pitched at the perfect level for the seminary or college student who needs to learn the vocabulary and grammar of how our conversations work. It’s by Kirk MacGregor, and it’s called Contemporary Theology: An Introduction — Classical, Evangelical, Philosophical, and Global Perspectives. The author’s famous for his work on Molina, he’s part of the evangelical theological movement, but my reading of this book is that he has tried as hard as one can to be fair-minded in description.

Your school’s library needs it, and it would not be unwise for seminary theology classes to require this book as supplementary reading to help students come to grips with all the names and terms used in our field.

I will not blog through each chp — 38 of them, about 10 pages per chp — but will today give a list of the chps.

I. Philosophical Backgrounds.
2. Friedrich Schleiermacher: Founder of Modern Liberal Theology
3. G. W. F. Hegel: Dialectical Theology.
4. Soren Kierkegaard: Existentialism
5. Early Dispensationalism
6. Princeton Theology
7. Charles Haddon Spurgeon: Practical Biblical Theology
8. Vatican I and Neo-Thomism
9. Revivalist Theology
10. The Social Gospel
11. Christian Fundamentalism
12. Karl Barth and Neo-Orthodoxy
13. Christian Realism
14. Pentecostalism and Latin American Pneumatology
15. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Picture Theory, and Language Games
16. The Birth of Contemporary Evangelicalism
17. Rudolf Bultmann: Demythologization
18. Paul Tillich: Theology of Culture
19. Death of God Theologies
20. Roman Catholic Theology from Vatican II to the Present
21. Process Theology
22. Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg: Theology of Hope
23. John Howard Yoder: Current Anabaptist Theology
24. Liberation Theology
25. Feminist Theology
26. Evangelical Complementarianism and Egalitarianism
27. Reformed Epistemology
28. African Christology: Healer and Ancestor
29. Postmodern Theology
30. Open Theism
31. Philosophy of Religion and Analytic Theology
32. Chinese Eschatology
33. Postliberal Theology
34. Theology and the Arts
35. A New Perspective on Paul and Justification
36. Theological Interpretation of Scripture
37. Evolutionary Creation
38. Postconservative Theology .