Shameless Promotion of My Forthcoming Book about Modern Theology

What’s a blog for if one cannot use it to promote his books? The new InterVarsity Press catalog (“New Title Announcement/Winter 2014”) has just been published. It includes (on page 28) my forthcoming magnum opus The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction which will actually be about 710 pages in length (scheduled for publication in November). It’s a radical revision of Stan Grenz’s and my 20th Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age published in 1992. I would say this is a whole new book as you can tell by comparing the two books’ tables of contents. Some of the subjects are the same (e.g., Schleiermacher, Barth, and Tillich) but the chapters about them have been completely rewritten.

Below I paste here the book’s Table of Contents for your perusal. But please go to amazon.com and read the four outstanding recommendations of the book by leading theologians including Francis Schussler Fiorenza (Harvard) and Veli-Matti Karkkainen (Fuller). This book is the culmination of years and years of study and teaching modern theology–from the Enlightenment to postmodern theology. The organizing theme is “Christian theological responses to modernity.” In each chapter I discuss how the theologian or movement under consideration responded to the “acids of modernity” (which I explain in the first chapters).

Table of Contents

Preface.…………………………………………………………………………………………

Introduction.……………………………………………………………………………………

1. Modernity Challenges Traditional Theology: the Context of Early Modern Theology……

1.a. Science Revises the Heavens………………………………………………………………..

1.b. Philosophers Lay New Foundations for Knowledge………………………………………..

1.c. Deists Create a New Natural Religion………………………………………………………

1.d. Critical Philosophers Limit Religion to Reason…………………………………………….

1.e. Realists, Romanticists and Existentialists Respond………………………………………..

2. Liberal Theologies Reconstruct Christianity in Light of Modernity…………………………

2.a. Friedrich Schleiermacher Launches a Copernican Revolution in Theology………………

2.b. Albrecht Ritschl and His Disciples Accommodate to Modernity…………………………

2.c. Ernst Troeltsch Relativizes Christianity……………………………………………………

2.d. Catholic Modernists Attempt to Bring Rome up to Date………………………………….

3. Conservative Protestant Theology Defends Orthodoxy in a Modern Way………………….

3a. Charles Hodge Constructs a Modern Form of Protestant Orthodoxy……………………

4. Mediating Theologies Build Bridges between Orthodoxy and Liberalism………………….

4a. Isaak August Dorner Bridges the Gap between Liberal and Orthodox Theologies………..

4b. Horace Bushnell Searches for a Progressive Orthodoxy…………………………………..

5. Neo-Orthodoxy/Dialectical/Kerygmatic Theology Revives the Reformation in a Modern Context

5.a. Karl Barth Drops a Bombshell on the Theologians’ Playground………………………….

5.b. Rudolf Bultmann Existentializes and Demythologizes Christianity………………………

5.c. Reinhold Niebuhr Rediscovers Original Sin and Develops Christian Realism……………

6. Chastened Liberal Theologies Renew and Revise the Dialogue with Modernity…………..

6.a. Paul Tillich Describes God as the Ground of Being, a “God above God”……………….

6.b. Process Theology Brings God Down to Earth…………………………………………….

7. Radical Theologies Envision a Religionless Christianity (includes Bonhoeffer)…………….

8. Theologians Look to the Future with Hope…………………………………………………

8.a. Jürgen Moltmann Renews Confidence in the Final Triumph of God……………………..

8.b. Wolfhart Pannenberg Revitalizes Rational Faith in History’s God……………………….

9. Liberation Theologies Protest Injustice and Oppression…………………………………….

10. Catholic Theologians Engage with Modernity……………………………………………..

10.a. Karl Rahner Finds God in Human Experience……………………………………………

10.b. Hans Küng Advocates a New Paradigm of Catholic Theology………………………….

10.c. Hans Urs von Balthasar Bases Christian Truth on Beauty……………………………….

11. Evangelical Theology Comes of Age and Wrestles with Modernity………………………

12. Postmodern Theologians Rebel against Modernity…………………………………………

12.a. Postliberal Theologians and Stanley Hauerwas Develop a Third Way in Theology……..

12.b. John Caputo Deconstructs Religion with the Kingdom of God………………………….

Conclusion………………………………………………………………