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Readings in Christian Theology
From Augustine to Gutierrez, from Creation to Eschatology, this volume: provides a rich selection of the most important readings from classical, modern, and contemporary theologians covers all the major doctrines of Christian belief is carefully edited to provide key passages and concentrated readings can be used in conjunction with such introductions as Christian Theology and Reconstructing Christian Theology.
418 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1985
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 1, 2020
Not great. Useful for a historical comparison of different viewpoints, but includes writers that cannot rightly be called Christian. I wrote out a longer review but accidentally deleted it, so here we are.
August 25, 2018
Worthwhile overview of many topics in Christian theology through the centuries.
May 9, 2014
This was the main textbook for a course in which I served as teaching fellow. We chose it in order to set out a number of primary sources, both historical and contemporary, for thinking through each basic locus of systematic theology. It does do that, but in a fashion I found didn't teach well on its own.
My main complaints:
1) Out of context, it's very difficult to understand what's at stake in many of the authors, or even what they're saying at all. A chapter on revelation, for instance, might include excerpts from Origen, Augustine, Luther, and Hegel. All of them need to be put in some sort of historical or doctrinal-historical frame for their real significance to come clear, and two of them (Origen and Hegel) are legitimately tricky for most students to decode.
2) Nearly every chapter is arranged dialectically, with alternating arguments that come to crowning synthesis in some 20th-c. liberal or other (usually Protestant, occasionally Rahner). Any textbook will have its slant—it's all in the game—but an ideal historical sourcebook would be a bit less consistently teleological IMHO.
My main complaints:
1) Out of context, it's very difficult to understand what's at stake in many of the authors, or even what they're saying at all. A chapter on revelation, for instance, might include excerpts from Origen, Augustine, Luther, and Hegel. All of them need to be put in some sort of historical or doctrinal-historical frame for their real significance to come clear, and two of them (Origen and Hegel) are legitimately tricky for most students to decode.
2) Nearly every chapter is arranged dialectically, with alternating arguments that come to crowning synthesis in some 20th-c. liberal or other (usually Protestant, occasionally Rahner). Any textbook will have its slant—it's all in the game—but an ideal historical sourcebook would be a bit less consistently teleological IMHO.
November 8, 2009
Is a good book to get a basic grasp of the theological writings of the Western Church theologians but completely misses the wide breadth of Eastern and Coptic Christian writings and theologies, especially Christian theologians under the caliphate.
April 28, 2010
A solid collection of some of the most influential writings on theology out there. I would say it surpassed its companion volume in its variety and diversity of thought. See my review of the companion to this volume, Christian Theology: an Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews