Douglas John Hall – författare

Douglas John Hall demonstrates the continuing relevance of several of the twentieth century's greatest theologians--Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Emil Brunner, and Suzanne de Dietrich--suggesting that their neo-orthodox roots have much more in common than is traditionally acknowledged. Suitable for classroom use and individual study, Remembered Voices is a highly accessible introduction to twentieth-century theologians.

"e;In this book Douglas Hall presents the outline of a Canadian theology. . . . People hope that things will get better and better. . . . Douglas Hall contrasts this cultural optimism with Christian hope. . . . He argues that the divine promises do not assure us of progress in history; what they offer us instead is a qualitative transformation of society . . . hope for Canada."e;--Gregory Baum

This is a book about the importance of mentors in the lives of the young. But rather than developing the theme of mentoring theoretically, Douglas John Hall demonstrates its significance quite personally, autobiographically. In his twentieth year and hoping to study music professionally, Hall met a young minister whose different Christianity both surprised and intrigued him. In the end, this friendship altered the course of his life.The book traces the story of this friendship of more than half a century, and the impact of the times upon the lives of its two principal figures.

Christianity, as faith centered in Jesus as the Christ came to be called, got a foothold in the world, and for a vital and vocal minority changed the world, because it proclaimed a message that awakened men and women to possibilities for human life that they had either lost or never entertained. That message the first Christian evangelists (and Jesus himself, according to the record) called euangellion--good news, gospel. For its first two or three hundred years, Christianity was largely dependent for its existence upon the new zest for life that was awakened in persons who heard and were, as they felt, transformed, by that gospel; and at various and sundry points in subsequent history the Christian movement has found itself revitalized by the spirit of that same ''good news'' in ways that spoke to the specifics of their times and places.The lesson of history is clear: the challenge to all serious Christians and Christian bodies today is not whether we can devise yet more novel and promotionally impressive means for the transmission of ''the Christian religion'' (let alone this or that denomination); it is whether we are able to hear and to proclaim . . . gospel! We do not need statisticians and sociologists to inform us that religion--and specifically our religion, as the dominant expression of the spiritual impulse of homo sapiens in our geographic context--is in decline. We do not need the sages of the new atheism to announce in learned tomes (and on buses!) that ''God probably does not exist.'' The ''sea of faith'' has been ebbing for a very long time. --from the Introduction

What really is Christianity? If all the religious packaging in which it is wrapped were removed, what would remain? These were Bonhoeffer''s questions, and they must be ours today--even more urgently! For in many quarters Christianity is being so narrowly identified with some of its parts, cultural associations, and past ambitions that like all militant religion, it represents a threat to the planetary future.We may no longer speak clearly of the essence of Christianity, as von Harnack and other nineteenth-century thinkers did; but perhaps we may still have a sufficiently shared sense of the kerygmatic core of this faith to be able, in the face of these misrepresentations of it, to say what Christianity is not.

The deterioration of our natural environment under the impact of a rampant technological society is one of the major crises of our time. For many analysts, a primary cause of this crisis is the influence on Western culture of the Judaeo-Christian concept of the human being as having dominion over the rest of creation. In this book, Douglas John Hall does not attempt to exonerate historical Christianity from that charge. But, he argues, confession alone is not enough. The crisis of nature forces us to rethink our whole understanding of the relation between humanity and nature - an understanding that is based on the concept that human beings are created in the image of God ('imago Dei'). Hall carefully examines the biblical, historical, and theological meanings of this term, which, more than any other biblical expression, became Christianity's symbolic way of designating the essence of the human. Hall argues that the image of God is not an endowment - it is not something that human beings have; rather, it is a quality that pertains to our relationship with God. We should think of 'imago' as a verb, not a noun, he says. The human vocation within the created order is to image the Creator. When this is applied in a consistent and serious way, the idea of human dominion over all of nature must be radically reinterpreted. Taking the Lordship of Jesus as an authentic model for understanding our human relation to the natural order means that dominion is expressed not as mastery but as service - sacrificial service of the others with and for whom one is responsible. Thus the concept of dominion as stewardship eschews any idea of ownership or superiority in relation to nature, yet assumes a special accountability for its welfare. A provocative and original work, Hall's book retains the biblical centrality of 'homo sapiens' while at the same time raising both nature and God to a new kind of prominence in the dialogue that is life.