Paul Martens – författare

This volume performs a critical and vibrant reconstruction of Anabaptist identity and theological method, in the wake of the recent revelations of the depth of the sexual abuse perpetrated by the most influential Anabaptist theologian of the 20th century, John Howard Yoder. In an attempt to liberate Anabaptist theology and identity from the constricting vision appropriated and reformulated by Yoder, these essays refuse the determinative categories of the last half century supplied by and carried beyond Harold Bender’s The Anabaptist Vision.While still under the shadow of decades of trauma, a recontexualized conversation about Anabaptist theology and identity emerges in this volume that is ecumenically engaged, philosophically astute, psychologically attuned, and resolutely vulnerable. The volume offers a Trinitarian and Christological framework that holds together the importance of Scripture, tradition, and the lived experience of the Christian community, as the contributors examine a wide variety of issues such as Mennonite feminism, Anabaptist queer theology, and Mennonite theological methods. These essays interrogate the operations of power, violence, exclusion, and privilege in methodology in this changed context, offering self-critical constructive alternatives for articulating Anabaptist theology and identity.

This volume performs a critical and vibrant reconstruction of Anabaptist identity and theological method, in the wake of the recent revelations of the depth of the sexual abuse perpetrated by the most influential Anabaptist theologian of the 20th century, John Howard Yoder. In an attempt to liberate Anabaptist theology and identity from the constricting vision appropriated and reformulated by Yoder, these essays refuse the determinative categories of the last half century supplied by and carried beyond Harold Bender’s The Anabaptist Vision.While still under the shadow of decades of trauma, a recontexualized conversation about Anabaptist theology and identity emerges in this volume that is ecumenically engaged, philosophically astute, psychologically attuned, and resolutely vulnerable. The volume offers a Trinitarian and Christological framework that holds together the importance of Scripture, tradition, and the lived experience of the Christian community, as the contributors examine a wide variety of issues such as Mennonite feminism, Anabaptist queer theology, and Mennonite theological methods. These essays interrogate the operations of power, violence, exclusion, and privilege in methodology in this changed context, offering self-critical constructive alternatives for articulating Anabaptist theology and identity.

This volume draws together leading theologians and Christian ethicists from across the globe to critically engage with and reflect upon Gerald McKenny, widely acknowledged as one of the most original and important Christian ethicists working today. The essays highlight the significance of McKenny’s interventions with a range of important debates in contemporary theological ethics, ranging from analyses of the Protestant conception of grace to bioethics and medicine.Reaching far beyond the work of Gerald McKenny, this multifaceted volume is a high-level resource for students and scholars of theological and philosophical ethics.

What happens when a five-century tradition of Christian pacifism no longer needs Jesus to support nonviolence? Why does secularity cause this dilemma for Mennonites in their theology of peace? Layton Boyd Friesen offers an ancient theology and spirituality of incarnation as the church's response to the non-resistance of Christ. He explores three key aspects of von Balthasar's Christology to help Mennonite peace theology regain its momentum in the secular age with a contemplative union with Christ.This volume argues that the way to regain a Christ-formed pacifism within secularity is to contemplate and enter the mystery unveiled in the Chalcedonian Definition of Christ, as interpreted by Hans Urs von Balthasar. In this mystery, the believer is drawn into real-time participation in Christ’s encounter with the secular world.

This volume draws together leading theologians and Christian ethicists from across the globe to critically engage with and reflect upon Gerald McKenny, widely acknowledged as one of the most original and important Christian ethicists working today. The essays highlight the significance of McKenny’s interventions with a range of important debates in contemporary theological ethics, ranging from analyses of the Protestant conception of grace to bioethics and medicine.Reaching far beyond the work of Gerald McKenny, this multifaceted volume is a high-level resource for students and scholars of theological and philosophical ethics.

Contemporary theologians tend to associate the Holy Spirit with the formation of local communities, social movements, and fluid relational networks—and not with institutions such as denominations or global church bodies. In this work, Jamie Pitts argues that this pneumatological-sociological picture misses important aspects of the Spirit’s work.Pitts draws on a wide range of theological and theoretical resources to depict the Spirit as organizing the complex, dynamic, and relationally entangled structures that constitute creation. Human organizing that seeks to participate in the Spirit can take a variety of analogous structural forms, including formal organizations or institutions. Organizational participation in the Spirit is not a function of an organization’s scale, mobility, or relative informality, but rather of its practical orientation toward the Spirit’s goals of life, solidarity, healing, and inclusive justice. A series of case studies clarifies and extends the implications of the argument in connection to organizing for environmental, gender, sexual, and racial justice. In the final chapter, Pitts addresses the role of a political theology of the organizing Spirit in imagining organizational alternatives to the global neoliberal order.

This book examines, from a contemporary perspective, one of the most influential document in Anabaptist tradition: the Schleitheim Confession. Van Hoogstraten develops seven constructive readings of the Confession’s articles, each of which discuss practices to shape the church community.Written in the wake of defeat at the Peasants’ rising in 1527, the Confession represents the attempt by radical reformers to outline collective, nurturing practices in the wake of external catastrophe. Van Hoogstraten sets loose a lively conversation with this text that illuminates a sense of life and togetherness in trying times. In the of this hands sophisticated and interdisciplinary scholar, the Confession becomes a vital source for constructive theology and ethics in the Anabaptist tradition.This fresh take on the Confession is sure to be of interest to Anabaptist theologians as well as students of the wider fields of political theology, Continental philosophy and ecclesiology.

Kierkegaard and Christian Faith responds directly to the perennial and problematic concern of how to read Kierkegaard. Specifically, this volume presses the question of whether the existentialist philosopher, who so troubled the waters of nineteenth-century Danish Christendom, is a ""Christian thinker for our time."" The chapters crisscross the disciplines of philosophy, theology, literature, and ethics, and are as rich in argument as they are diverse in style. Collectively the chapters demonstrate a principled agreement that Kierkegaard continues to be relevant, even imperative. Kierkegaard and Christian Faith reveals just how Kierkegaard's work both defines and reconfigures what is meant by ""Christian thinker."" Following an autobiographical prologue by Kathleen Norris, this volume gathers the chapters in pairs around crucial themes: the use of philosophy (Merold Westphal and C. Stephen Evans), revelation and authority (Richard Bauckham and Paul J. Griffiths), Christian character (Sylvia Walsh and Ralph C. Wood), the relationship between the church and the world (Jennifer A. Herdt and Paul Martens), and moral questions of forgiveness and love (Simon D. Podmore and Cyril O'Regan). The volume underscores the centrality of Christianity to Kierkegaard's life and thought, and rightly positions Kierkegaard as a profound challenge to Christianity as it is understood and practiced today.