Paul Among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology Beyond Christendom and Modernity - Softcover

Harink, Douglas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1625642687 ISBN 13: 9781625642684

Publisher: Wipf and Stock, 2013

Synopsis

Douglas Harink's Paul Among the Postliberals sheds new light on Paul's letters by creating links between contemporary scholarship and the writings of theologians such as Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder. Harink argues that Paul's central doctrine of justification by faith has been widely misunderstood; he emphasizes instead that the goal of the gospel is to free Christians for faithful action.

Reading Paul in dialogue with Yoder and Hauerwas, Harink outlines the political ramifications of Paul's writings, calling the church to embrace, rather than avoid, the political realm. Finally, drawing on the Pauline doctrine of God's election of Israel, Paul Among the Postliberals addresses the need for a Christian theology of Israel and Judaism.

Pastors, teachers, students, and anyone seeking a more thorough understanding of Paul's letters will take a keen interest in Paul Among the Postliberals.

About this title

About the Author:

DOUGLAS K. HARINK is associate professor of theology at The King's University College in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada).

Review:

This book is changing my mind on more themes...than any publication since Hans Frei's The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.
--George LIndbeck, Yale University

Harink brings several postliberal theologians - mainly Yoder and Hauerwas - into genuine conversation with the church's original apocalyptic theologian, the Apostle Paul. The engaging result is a call for the church to return to its true vocation as an uncompromising critic of the state's omnivorous appetite for our loayalties. But that is the vocation found in the politics of the cross, in which the suffering and victorious God has redemptively invaded the captive world, thus calling into being the community that Paul speaks of as 'the new creation.'... The attentive reader of Harink's book will come away, then, with an energized hope for the whole of humanity, a hope focused on the corporate, political nature of God's apocalyptic invasion in Christ.
--J. Louis Martyn, Union Theological Seminary

Sets new standards for all who dare to aspire to theological engagement with Scripture. -Michael Cartwright, University of Indianapolis

Doug Harink has knocked a hole in the artificial wall separating the theological disciplines and has established a working coalition between two scholarly enterprises--the various 'new perspectives' that seek to supplant older reformational models of interpreting Paul, and the work of various theologians who seek to subvert the established theological strategy of accommodating the gospel to the canons and criteria of modernity...A unique and highly significant contribution. -Terence L. Donaldson, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto

One of the most creative and exciting books that I have read in years. Instead of decrying the gap between theology and biblical studies, ...Harink simply closes the gap by bringing together the best in recent biblical and theological studies. In its direct reading of the biblical text, this book represents a new stage in the development of postliberal theology.
--Jonathan R. Wilson, Westmont College --Wipf and Stock Publishers

About this edition

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1625642687
• ISBN 13: 9781625642684
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 284