James M. M. Francis – författare

Eschatology is an understudied theological topic in Dietrich Bonhoeffer studies. It is a doctrine that is either acknowledged in passing or ignored altogether. This is primarily due to the apparent drastic shift in the theological posture, language, and terminologies used by Bonhoeffer later in life, dovetailed with the dramatic circumstances surrounding his involvement with the conspiracy to overthrow Adolf Hitler’s regime and his subsequent imprisonment and execution. However, this book provides a detailed examination of the contours of Bonhoeffer’s key doctrines – Christology, ecclesiology, and the Christian life – and reveals that the eschatological concept of the kingdom of God is, in fact, an underlying thread that permeates, animates, and sustains his entire corpus.

Literature and theology have long been conversation partners. The great themes of human existence form the subject matter of their shared discussion. However, comedic literature has often been overlooked as a serious means to fostering such theological engagement. This book seeks to rectify this imbalance. By examining selected works of the eighteenth-century playwright and novelist Henry Fielding, we are shown that a comedic world has much to say that is of true theological significance. Recognizing the value of much traditional Fielding research, the author departs from its inherent determinism which, he believes, stifles more fruitful opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogue. Key to his desire to engage the comedic in this conversation, he introduces the interpretative tool of misplacement. By this is meant a continuous parting with the ineffable – the perpetual recognition that in comedic writing there is always a fragile sense of the other. Setting Fielding’s fiction alongside works of contemporary philosophical theology and postmodern works of fiction, the author allows common critical zones such as epistemology, ethics, mimesis, canonicity, and revelation to be investigated. In all these areas, the novel, in Fielding’s hands, displays a powerful comic resonance with a less deterministic theology, and subverts those assumed securities regarding the status of the individual in the world before God. Ultimately, the book offers the challenge of recognizing that the nature of the novel is inescapably theological and that theology itself is, indeed, fictive.

Any attempt to use the Bible as a basis for addressing contemporary economic issues needs to recognise the fundamental differences in underlying philosophy between economic theory and Christian belief. Neo-classical economic theory embodies a view of the world and of human nature, derived from the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, which has become immensely influential in recent times. ‘Economic man’ is a rational, independent being, set in an environment of scarcity, but able to improve his welfare by transactions in a market economy. This ‘anthropology’ is explained and examined systematically in this book, following broadly the pattern of an economics textbook, and drawing on some recent work in methodology. In each chapter, a second part presents a contrasting view of the same subject matter drawn from the Bible as interpreted by contemporary scholars. This gives a radically different account of human life and well-being, centred on the community and its relationship with God, in which prosperity, abundance and hope for the future are divine blessings and gifts. Despite the wide gaps between economic theory and Christian belief some points of contact can be made, and there are suggestions as to how a dialogue between them might be conducted.

Awarded the 2007 National Research Prize SAES/AEFA.This study is a reappraisal of John Bunyan in the light of the dissenting religious culture of the late-seventeenth century. Charges of schism and fanaticism were repeatedly levelled against Bunyan, both from within the dissenting community and without, but far from being chastened by these accusations, Bunyan responded with a religious discourse marked by a rhetoric of excess. The focus of this book is therefore upon Bunyan’s overwhelming spiritual experiences, especially the representation of torment, in his literary and polemical works. The believers’ suffering was an obsessive concern of dissenting ministers, even to the point where their writings are often remembered today for little else. Hitherto, most scholars have termed all the mental states that they invoke ‘despair’, but this simplifies the experiences at issue. A wealth of contemporary material helps to restore the nuances of seventeenth-century physical and spiritual conditions, from enthusiasm to melancholy and madness; from fear to desertion and sloth. These chapters explore fresh ways in which this subtle typology of torment and its extreme manifestations form the core of the literary expression of Restoration dissent, challenging Bunyan to represent spiritual equilibrium as the ultimate quest of the earthly pilgrimage.

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) has forced Evangelical theology to rethink its own perception and analysis of Roman Catholicism. Many Evangelical theologians have attempted to grapple with the new Roman Catholic outlook and the ecumenical challenges it brings. After describing the theological contours of Evangelicalism, the book critically surveys the works on Roman Catholicism by Gerrit Berkouwer, Cornelius Van Til, David Wells, Donald Bloesch, Herbert Carson, John Stott, and two on-going international dialogues between Evangelicals and Catholics. The Evangelical appraisal of Roman Catholicism has in general suffered from a lack of systemic awareness in dealing with it. The prevailing approach has been marked by an interpretative atomism, and the last two chapters propose the formulation of an Evangelical systemic analysis. First, by supporting the feasibility of the category of system as applied to Roman Catholicism, thus developing the basic theological hermeneutics proposed by Abraham Kuyper. Second, by indicating in the Roman Catholic articulations of the relationship between nature and grace and in the ecclesiological self-understanding of the Roman Church the two main theological foci of the system.

In the second decade of the twentieth century the cultural life of Germany was transformed by the emergence of Expressionism, a series of vigorous, youthful artistic movements which were to exert a lasting influence on modern culture. In the same decade a young Swiss pastor called Karl Barth began a theological revolution, laying the foundations for probably the most influential body of Christian theology in the modern age. Some relationship between these two revolutions has long been assumed by scholars; yet it has never been examined in detail. The first part of this study addresses this omission, offering the most detailed analysis to date of the important relationship between Barth and Expressionism. The second part of the book takes a broader look at both Barth’s theology and Expressionist culture, considering the relevance of the Enlightenment as a context for both. The key to this is a detailed discussion of Barth’s own analysis of the Enlightenment in his neglected book Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Barth’s view is also compared with Alasdair MacIntyre’s treatment of the Enlightenment in After Virtue. The examination of these two contexts, German Expressionism and the Enlightenment, yields valuable insights into Barth’s entire theological project.

This book applies insights from feminist theology to highlight spiritual themes in twentieth-century fiction by women writers. The author traces the way women writers of the twentieth century have not only challenged religious discourse but employed spiritual themes in order to explore more fluid possibilities of gender and identity. The book is wide-ranging in its choice of authors. As well as British and American writers, Irish, African-American, Canadian, Jewish and Caribbean women writers are discussed. Spirituality in women’s fiction embraces a wide range of themes. After an introductory chapter sketching out developments in feminist theology for the non-specialist reader, there are chapters on the convent school and the role of the Virgin Mary, the Goddess, the female mystic, womanist spirituality and ecofeminism. The book demonstrates the way in which many women writers attempt to preserve a dialogue between traditional religious discourse and women’s contemporary religious experience. The determinedly secular stance of much feminist literary criticism has led to a downplaying of spiritual themes in twentieth-century women’s fiction. This study provides a bridge between feminist literary criticism and feminist theology.

How are the churches to say anything useful about the market economy which is so dominant in everybody’s life today? Too often, Christian responses have failed to take the moral arguments for markets seriously enough. The market’s assertions of liberal individualism and the impossibility of agreement about distributional justice undermine much Christian comment and church practice.Old divisions within Christian ethics offer little help. Liberal theologies share so many foundations with the market that their critique has been muted or incoherent. Yet communitarian theologies, currently in the ascendancy, show little interest in economics and are not alert to the central dilemmas which markets seek to address.The book critiques much of the churches’ recent work on economic issues and proposes a renewed theological seriousness for mission in the economy, where the Christian faith might contribute authentically to moral agreement in a plural age.

The book is the first major study to bring together the two early twentieth-century theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, and Simone Weil, French philosopher and convert to Christianity. Both were victims of Nazi oppression, and neither survived the war. The book explores the two theologians’ reflections on Christian responsiveness to God and neighbour, being the interdependence of the two great commandments of the Jewish Law reiterated by Jesus. It sets out the common ground and the differing emphases in their interpretations. For Bonhoeffer, responsiveness was the transformation of the whole person effected by faith (Gestaltung), and the responsibility (Verantwortung) for one’s actions which it implies. For Weil, responsiveness was the hope and expectation of grace (attente) reflected in attention, the capacity to listen to, understand and help others. Both Bonhoeffer and Weil faced a world dominated by aggression and horrendous suffering. Both endeavoured to articulate their responses, as Christians, to that world. The relevance of their thought to the twenty-first century is explored, in relation to perspectives on grace and freedom, on aggression, suffering, and forgiveness, and on the role of the church in society. Conclusions are illustrated by reference to contemporary theologians including Rowan Williams, Daniel Hardy, Frances Young and David Tracy.

This collection of essays reflects constructive engagement with a liberal and progressive programme of Christian theology over a number of years. The themes are diverse – from the renewal of Christology and the ecumenical dimensions of ecclesiology to human rights and emancipatory theology. Particular theologians, from Schleiermacher and Juengel in continental Europe, to Baillie and Lampe in the UK, are discussed. The preface and epilogue underline the urgent need for new and viable contemporary liberal theological voices to re-imagine the doctrinal, ethical and political implications of the Christian gospel. The final piece offers a progressive perspective on the sexuality debate in the churches.

In inter faith relations, the Trinity is often seen as an embarrassing or irrelevant problem. This study proposes a different approach, seeing Trinitarian thought as a resource for dialogue. Drawing on the suggestions of Paul Tillich and Raimundo Panikkar, the author identifies six key issues to be addressed in Trinitarian dialogue. These are traced in two historical examples: the encounters of patristic Christianity with Greek philosophical religion, and of medieval Christianity with Islam. The final chapter draws lessons from these experiences to suggest a reshaping of Christian dialogue with Hindus, Muslims and other people of faith.

This book is a study of the image of the child in the teaching of Jesus and the literature of the New Testament set against the background of the ancient world, the Old Testament and Judaism. It also reflects on the complex relationship between attitudes to children and the imaging of the child. It is suggested that child imagery serves, generally speaking, as a window on tradition, and in religious discourse in particular it offers perspectives on the relationship between believing and belonging. In exploring how child imagery informs the teaching of Jesus, it is argued that his own use of such imagery, whilst not unique, being influenced primarily by the wider imagery of Israel as God’s son (child) and servant, is nevertheless distinctive. As a metaphor symbolising primarily a call to change and renewal, it conveys in microcosm the central themes of his message of the kingdom of God. The study goes on to explore the meanings of child imagery in the theologies of the Gospel writers and in other New Testament literary contexts.

This book explores the idea of religious and theological interculturation from a Christian perspective as an approach to evangelisation. It explores aspects of culture and pluralism as these have been interpreted in post-Vatican II approaches to mission and evaluates interculturation from a number of perspectives, including language, symbol and metaphor. It draws insight from two New Testament encounters of Jesus with women, in Samaria (John) and in Tyre (Matthew and Mark), and goes on to explore some historical sources of interculturation in the missionary endeavours of the Jesuit Matteo Ricci. A particular case study is made of the contemporary experience of an African people (the Turkana of Kenya).