Grenz, Stanley J. The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. Author – Stanley Grenz Grenz traces the historical backdrop of the concept of self in the West in order to warrant his proposal of the ecclesial self as the best response to the postmodern deconstruction of self. The following sketch attempts to follow his logic. In the final analysis, then, the imago dei ...

Scharer, Matthias Hilberath Bernd Jochen. The Practice Of Communicative Theology: Introduction To A New Theological Culture. New York: Crossroad Pub. CO. 2008. The Authors — Matthias Scharer and Bernd Jochen Hilberath My Reflections Sharer and Hilberath are two German, Roman Catholic theologians who have adopted Ruth Cohn’s Theme-Centered Interaction (TCI) model as the means of doing theology. This pedagogy comes from a long history of Catholic theology and is rooted, most apparently, in Habermas’ communicative rationality. The combination ...

Simmons, Ernest L. The Entangled Trinity: Quantum Physics and Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2014. I need to give a special thanks to my friend, Pastor Kevin Doely, for recommending this book. The Author: Ernest Simmons My Summary Ernest Simmons proposes that Entangled Trinitarian Panentheism is the most helpful model for discussing God and the God-World relationship in the context of the twenty-first century Modern/late modern West. He pursues this proposal in three movements. First, he frames his argument in terms ...

Mark McIntosh’s work is important to my research. He has done an incredible job of connecting Trinitarian theology to spirituality. This is obviously important to my research question in which I ask how an increased awareness of social Trinity might impact spiritual formation. Holder, Arthur, ed. The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality Blackwell Companions to Religion. Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2005. Chapter 10 Trinitarian Perspectives on Christian Spirituality by Mark A. McIntosh “In a real sense, the whole ...

Polkinghorne, J. C. The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. 2010. Editor – John Polkinghorne This book is a collection of essays that deals directly with one of the core theological frames of my research: relational ontology. One of the essays is an article by Wildman that I have reviewed here. Simply put, relationality is the essence of God, and thus, the essence of ...

My research relies heavily on the Social Trinity and draws upon theologians like Lacugna, Moltmann, Zizioulas, among others. It is important to note that not everyone agrees with their theological constructs. Michel Barnes is a key voice that has pointed out a fundamental flaw in the recent Trinitarian conversation. The flaw centers on a misunderstanding and misappropriation of Augustines’s doctrine of the Trinity. Barnes statement can be summarized: I have argued that contemporary systematic appropriations of ...

Welker, Michael. God the Spirit. 1st English-language ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994. The Author – Michael Welker Welker is the Director of the Research Center for International and Interdisciplinary Theology at the University of Heidelberg. This book has had a significant impact on my research. The key ideas that I glean from Welker are that the Spirit is pluriform and polycentric. In other words, the Spirit takes on many different forms (pluriform) throughout the world, depending upon the ...

Holmes, Stephen R. The Quest for the Trinity. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2012. The Author – Stephen R. Holmes My Thoughts This book is a helpful and refreshing counterbalance to my growing bibliography concerning the 20th century Trinitarian conversation in the West. Stephen Holmes is a brilliant scholar from the UK who speaks to this topic from the English Evangelical perspective. The book itself is essentially an historical survey of the Doctrine of the Trinity in Western theology. What ...

I am very pleased to have found Edmund Hill’s Translation of Augustine’s De Trinitate. Previously I had been reading Phillip Schaff’s late 19th century translation and found it difficult to digest. Hill brings a brightness to the text that I find much more comprehensible, and actually enjoyable to read. Special thanks to Fred Sanders for the nudge. It is my goal to make a thorough reading of this text before the New Year dawns.

Book | Beyond Foundationalism by Stanley Grenz and John Franke

Volf, Miroslav. After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity Sacra Doctrina. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998. The Author Professor Volf is the founding Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. His books include Allah: A Christian Response (2011); Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (2006), which was the Archbishop of Canterbury Lenten book for 2006; Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, ...

Jenson, Robert W. Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. The Author After two decades of teaching at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Jenson moved in 1988 to the religion department of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He was joined in Northfield by his friend Carl Braaten, and together they founded the conservative Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology in 1991. The founding of this Center marked a new period of ...

Grenz, Stanley J. Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004. The Author While in the pastorate (1979-1981), Grenz taught courses both at the University of Winnipeg and at Winnipeg Theological Seminary (now Providence Seminary). He served as Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at the North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota from 1981-1990. For twelve years (1990-2002), Grenz held the position of Pioneer McDonald Professor of Baptist Heritage, ...

Simpson, Gary. “No Trinity, No Mission: The Apostolic Difference of Revisioning the Trinity.” Word and World, vol. XVIII, number 3, Summer 1998. No Trinity No Mission – Simpson – flattened – my annotated copy of the article. The Author Gary Simpson is a professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary on St. Paul, MN. He is also an ordained pastor in the ELCA. My Thoughts This article traces the history of Trinitarian thought in the west and demonstrates how, without the ...

Timothy Gorringe explores justice, empowerment, and redemption in how humanity encounters and builds within spaces and places in creation.

Arens, Edmund. Christopraxis: A Theology of Action. 1st Fortress Press ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. The Author Edmund Arens is a catholic theologian and professor of Fundamental Theology at the University of Luzern, Switzerland. Fundamental Theology is “a relatively recent theological discipline whose object and method has not altogether been clarified by theologians themselves. It is clear, however, that a task of fundamental theology is to verify the foundations of theology. Thus, before deepening in the knowledge ...

LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. God for Us : The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. A Substantial Inquiry into  Catherine LaCugna’s God With Us, focusing on Part I | by Steve Thomason | A Term Paper Presented to Professor Gary Simpson | Luther Seminary | As a Requirement in Course CL8950 Trinity and Mission | St. Paul, Minnesota | 2012 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to engage in dialogue with the first part of Catherine LaCugna’s book God for Us: Trinity and Christian Life. The scope and ...

Zizioulas, Jean, and Paul McPartlan. Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church. New York: T & T Clark, 2006. Author John Zizioulas (Greek: Ιωάννης Ζηζιούλας; born 10 January 1931, Kozani) is the Eastern Orthodox metropolitan of Pergamon. He is the Chairman of the Academy of Athens and a noted theologian. My Thoughts on Communion and Otherness I will be brief and to the point in this reflection. There is one thing that I glean from this ...

Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991. Author Wolfhart Pannenberg (born on October 2, 1928) is a German theologian. He has made a number of significant contributions to modern theology, perhaps most notably his concept of history as a form of revelation centered on the Resurrection of Christ, which has been widely debated in both Protestant and Catholic theology, as well as by non-Christian thinkers. My Thoughts on Pannenberg On Pannenberg’s Methodology In his Introduction to Systematic Theology, ...

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God. 1st HarperCollins paperback ed. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. Author Jürgen Moltmann (born 8 April 1926) is a German Reformed theologian who is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen. Moltmann is a major figure in modern theology and was the recipient of the 2000 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, and was also selected to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures in 1984-1985. He has ...

Kaiser, Christopher B. “The Incarnation and the Trinity: Two Doctrines Rooted in the Offices of Christ.” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 43, no. 1-4 (1998): 221-255. Author Chris Kaiser began his professional life as a scientist and went on to become a theologian, and his teaching vocation has always included working to build bridges between his two disciplines. He has been part of Western’s faculty since 1976. He has also served as lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and at ...

E. Byron Anderson says: In their attempts to work out a practical theology of the Trinity, LaCugna, Moltmann, and Boff share three points. They argue, first, that language about the Trinity is inherently and primarily doxological. Second, a reading of the ...

Abstract This paper argues that there is value in a systematic philosophical approach to relations and surveys some of the major issues in the philosophy of relations. Rather than siding withrelational ontology over substantivist ontology, however, the paper argues that the best philosophical approaches are causal theories of relation in which both relations and entities take their rise from an ontologically fundamental causal flux. The causal theories of relation and entities discussed here are Neoplatonist participation ...

Spirituality and Theology by Philip Sheldrake This book is a gold mine for my research. Sheldrake connects the contemporary study of Christian Spirituality directly to the Social Trinity. He also provides an excellent historical summary of why spirituality and theology have been estranged since the dawn of the modern era. My Annotated Scan of the section  The Significance of Trinitarian Theology. (75-83) He defends Augustine against accusations of individualism. The fundamental truth of our existence is that human beings ...

Appropriating the Divine Presence Reading Augustine as Transformative my annotated copy This article contributes to my case that I must delve deeply into Augustine’s On The Trinity. The paper I wrote back in the spring is proving to be a bit prophetic for the course of study. Here Howells helps me understand Augustine’s pre-modern understanding of the relationality of the trinitarian persons and the better understanding of interiority. Dr. Edward Howells is a lecturer in Christian Spirituality at ...

Sheldrake, Philip. “Spirituality and Social Change: Rebuilding the Human City.” Spiritus 9, no. 2 (2009): 137-156. “To be human embodies a common life and a common task…it is important to note the intimate link between human identity and a Trinitarian theology of God.” (138) This article is important for my work. It addresses some of my main points: Trinity, Augustine, space and place, urban/suburban planning, interiority and exteriority in spirituality.

This book is a collection of essays written by female theologians from around the world. Each essay speaks into Christology and demonstrates how women played a critical role in Jesus’ ministry.

Bouman, Stephen P. 2013. The Mission Table: Renewing Congregation and Community. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress).   Author Stephen P. Bouman is the Executive Director of Congregational and Synodical Mission in the ELCA Churchwide Office. My Thoughts This book provides a clear, accessible plan for how to transform the local congregation into a missional community. Bouman draws from his own vast experience in the urban context and punctuates his proposals with a compelling interplay of scriptural and personal stories. His proposal ...

Zscheile, Dwight. 2014. The Agile Church: Spirit-Led Innovation in an Uncertain Age. New York: Morehouse. Author: Dwight Zscheile Assistant Professor at Luther Seminary; Episcopal Priest. PhD – Luther Seminary M.Div – Yale Table of Contents Introduction Agility and Innovation Faith and Spirituality in and Insecure Age Forming and Restoring Community in a Nomadic World Failing Well, or What the Church Can Learn from Silicon Valley Disciplines of a Learning Church Organizing for Innovation Conclusion My Reflection Zscheile does an excellent job of framing the situation that the church in North ...

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans; WCC Publications 1989. The Author – Lesslie Newbigin Key Quotes “If the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society, if Christians are to occupy the “high ground” which they vacated in the noontime of “modernity,” it will not be by forming a Christian political party, or by aggressive propaganda campaigns. Once again it has to be said that there can be no ...

Newbigin, Lesslie. Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1986. Author – Lesslie Newbigin My Reflection (this reflection was originally written in January, 2012 for the course Vocation of the Theologian) God reignited my call to ministry in 1994. ((meaning the full-time pastor/teacher role as opposed to the universal vocation that Luther suggests)) I was convinced that if I were to be an effective leader in the church that I ...

Bass, Diana Butler. Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. 1st ed. New York: HarperOne, 2012. I heard Diana Butler Bass speak at the Festival of Homiletics a couple years ago, and she was fantastic. These are the notes I took from that presentation. It changed the way I look at the Creed, and has impacted how I teach Catechism. I believe these notes essentially express the thrust of ...

Roxburgh, Alan J. Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition. 1st ed. Leadership Network. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010. The Author Alan Roxburgh Quotes “My thesis is a very simple one: I do not believe that epistemology is a bloodless abstraction; the way we know has powerful implications for the way we live. I argue that every epistemology tends to become an ethic and that every way of knowing tends to become a way of living.”⁠1 “The task ...

Keifert, Patrick R. Testing the Spirits: How Theology Informs the Study of Congregations. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2009. The Authors Ronald W. Duty Pat Taylor Ellison David Fredrickson Donald Juel Patrick Keifert Lois Malcolm Gary Simpson Three Shifts (from Van Gelder’s Foreword) The return of the congregation to theological education. The role of the Bible in the life of congregations. The role of congregations living in their particular contexts as public moral companions Congregational Studies Research Team (CRST) Mission Statement “We are a theological learning organization in ...

Simpson, Gary M. Critical Social Theory: Prophetic Reason, Civil Society, and Christian Imagination Guides to Theological Inquiry. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002. The Author Gary Simpson is a professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN and an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). From the Foreword by Paul Lakeland “Gary Simpson initiates a dialogue between critical social theory and the Protestant prophetic imagination. On the one hand, he charts the emergence of ...

Engelsviken, T. “Missio Dei: The Understanding and Misunderstanding of a Theological Concept in European Churches and Missiology.” International Review of Mission 92, no. 367 (2003): 481-497. Missio Dei- The Understanding and Misunderstanding – E. Engelsviken – my annotated copy The Author Tormod Engelsviken is Professor at the MF Norwegian School of Theology and Editor of Norwegian Journal of Missiology. Summary Englesviken provides an important exploration of the key terms involved in 20th century missiology in the West–missio Dei, Kingdom of God, ...

Scharen, Christian Batalden. Faith as a Way of Life: A Vision for Pastoral Leadership. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2008. The Author Christian Scharen is assistant professor at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN., His main research and teaching interests center on worship and practical theology. A leading scholar working at the intersection of ethnography and theology, he lectures and writes in the areas of ministry, worship, ethics, ecclesiology, and popular culture. Scharen is Co-Director ...

Keifert, Patrick R. Welcoming the Stranger: A Public Theology of Worship and Evangelism. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. The Author Patrick Keifert is Professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. He has also been an adjunct professor at the School of Law, Hamline University, St. Paul, since 1984. Ordained in 1978, Keifert served congregations in Chicago, Washington state, Wyoming and Minnesota. He has been the general editor of the Journal of Law and Religion, and served ...

Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, and Arthur Emery Farnsley. Congregation & Community. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997. The Author Dr. Nancy Ammerman has spent much of the last decade studying American congregations. Her most recent book, Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and their Partners (University of California Press, 2005), describes the common patterns that shape the work of American’s diverse communities of faith. Her 1997 book, Congregation and Community, tells the stories of twenty-three congregations that encountered various ...

Keifert, Patrick R. We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era, a Missional Journey of Spiritual Discovery. Eagle, ID: Allelon Publishing, 2006.   The Author Patrick Keifert is Professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. He has also been an adjunct professor at the School of Law, Hamline University, St. Paul, since 1984. Ordained in 1978, Keifert served congregations in Chicago, Washington state, Wyoming and Minnesota. He has been the general editor of the Journal of ...

Van Gelder, Craig, and Dwight J. Zscheile. The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation The Missional Network. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011. The Authors Craig Van Gelder “At age 15, Craig Van Gelder made a personal profession of faith. Three years later as a freshman in college, he answered a call to Christian ministry. Since then he has focused on helping the church participate fully in God’s mission to bring salvation to all ...

Kelsey, David H. To Understand God Truly: What’s Theological About a Theological School. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992. An Appreciative Response to David Kelsey’s book To Understand God Truly | by Steve Thomason | A Term Paper Presented to Professor Patrick Kiefert | Luther Seminary | As a Requirement in Course ST8475 The Congregation | St. Paul, Minnesota | 2013  Author and Occasion David H. Kelsey was a professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School when this book was written in 1992. The book—To Understand God Truly: ...

Bevans, Stephen B., and Roger Schroeder. Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today American Society of Missiology Series ; No. 30. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004.   Authors Stephen Bevans is Louis J. Luzbetak, S.V.D., Professor of Mission and Culture. He is a Roman Catholic priest in the Society of the Divine Word, an international missionary congregation, and served for nine years (1972-1981) as a missionary in the Philippines. He has been on the CTU faculty for 26 years. Roger Schroeder ...

Hunsberger, George R., and Craig Van Gelder, eds. The Church between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1996. This book is a collection of essays written in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many of them are in response to the work of Lesslie Newbigin as he responded to the post-Christian culture of England and greater Europe. Newbigin’s questions spread to the United States and Canada, ...

Van Gelder, Craig. The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007. Author read about Craig Van Gelder in this post. My Thoughts This book covers the bulk of the material we discussed in the class that Van Gelder taught called The Hermeneutics of Leading in Mission. Our conversations centered around Van Gelder’s model of Spirit-Led decision making in the last half of the book. Our final project for that ...

Van Gelder, Craig. The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000. The Author “At age 15, Craig Van Gelder made a personal profession of faith. Three years later as a freshman in college, he answered a call to Christian ministry. Since then he has focused on helping the church participate fully in God’s mission to bring salvation to all of life. Following college, Van Gelder worked with The Navigators ...

Bosch, David Jacobus. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission American Society of Missiology Series. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991. The Author Early life Bosch was born in Kuruman, Cape Province, South Africa, and died in a motor accident in 1992, aged 62. He was raised in a nationalist Afrikaner home with little regard for his nation’s black citizens and in 1948 when the National Party (South Africa) came to power and began implementing its program of apartheid Bosch welcomed it. That same year however Bosch began ...

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1995. The Author: Lesslie Newbigin “Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Newbigin’s elementary and high school education took place in Leighton Park, the Quaker public boarding school in Reading, Berkshire. He went to Queens’ College, Cambridge in 1928. On qualifying, he moved to Glasgow to work with the Student Christian Movement (SCM) in 1931. He returned to Cambridge in ...

Visual notes from Spirituality: A Brief History by Philip Sheldrake. “What is Spirituality”

Chapter Six of Dallas Willard’s book Hearing God is titled “The Word of God & the Rule of God.” It is a fabulous exploration of how the word of God is the source of and intertwined with reality itself. He says, “The very phrase ‘still small voice’ might seem to suggest that what lies at the heart of a relationship with God is something weak and marginal. But that is far ...

I was reading God, Sexuality, and the Self by Sarah Coakley today. Chapter Four, “The Charismatic Constituency: Embarrassment or Riches?” reports her ethnographic research of two Charismatic congregations in a University town in England. The chapter itself was fascinating in that it provided a helpful example of how to do Trinitarian theology with social science methodology in local congregations. This is the heart of my research, so it is always beneficial when I can find ...

Grenz, Stanley J. The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. Author – Stanley Grenz Grenz traces the historical backdrop of the concept of self in the West in order to warrant his proposal of the ecclesial self as the best response to the postmodern deconstruction of self. The following sketch attempts to follow his logic. In the final analysis, then, the imago dei ...

Van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel and Erik P. Wiebe. In Search of Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Personhood. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2011. The following two paragraphs provide a good flavor for this collection of essays that explore the human self in an interdisciplinary conversation. “While neuroscientists like Daniel Siegel, Louis Cozolino, and John Cacioppo have argued for a deep neurological basis for interpersonal attachment, neuroscientist and anthropologist Terrence Deacon has take a different direction in developing ...

Dreyer, Elizabeth and Mark S. Burrows, editors. Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. The following Prezi is a visual way to interact with the notes that come below it. I created this Prezi during an independent study with Dr. Mary Hess in the Fall of 2012. My Notes Preface A.Definition: the daily lived aspect of one’s faith commitment in terms of values and behaviors; how one appropriates beliefs about God ...

Greyson, Bruce. “Near-Death Experiences and Spirituality.” Zygon 41, no. 2 (2006): 393-414. NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES AND SPIRITUALITY by Greyson – flattened my annotated copy Annotation Summary for: NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES AND SPIRITUALITY by Greyson   Page 1, Underline (Custom Color: #4c4ccc):   Content: “Some individuals when they come close to death report Abstract. having experiences that they interpret as spiritual or religious. These so-called near-death experiences (NDEs) often include a sense of sepa­ ration from the physical body and encounters with religious figures ...

Bass, Diana Butler. Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. 1st ed. New York: HarperOne, 2012. I heard Diana Butler Bass speak at the Festival of Homiletics a couple years ago, and she was fantastic. These are the notes I took from that presentation. It changed the way I look at the Creed, and has impacted how I teach Catechism. I believe these notes essentially express the thrust of ...

Foster, Richard J. “Spiritual formation agenda: Richard Foster shares his three priorities for the next 30 years.” Christianity Today 53, no. 1 (January 1, 2009): 28-33. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed March 20, 2014) A member of the Research team asked me to read this article. We are five years into it, now, but I think Foster has named some important things. Foster takes the traditional inside-out approach. Spiritual formation begins with the transformation of the Heart. Then it ...

Black, Gary. The Theology of Dallas Willard: Discovering Protoevangelical Faith. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013. The Author – Dr. Gary Black, Jr. This essay is both a reflection on Gary Black’s book The Theology of Dallas Willard, and a huge note of gratitude to Gary for shedding light on a much needed subject. This book has not only helped me make sense out of my own spiritual journey, but it has greatly enhanced my dissertation work in ...

Wuthnow, Robert. After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. The Author Robert Wuthnow Professor of Sociology at Princeton University Selected Quote “It is thus practice, rather than a spirituality of dwelling, that is most capable of generating a balanced perspective on the sacredness of the world. By engaging in spiritual practices, the practitioner retreats reflectively from the world in order to recognize how it is broken and in need of healing; then, in ...

Volf, Miroslav, and Dorothy C. Bass. Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002. The Authors Dorothy C. Bass Craig Dykstra Amy Plantinga Pauw Serene Jones Sarah Coakley Tammy Williams Christine D. Pohl Gilbert I. Bond Nancy E. Bedford L. Gregory Jones Reinhard Hütter Kathryn Tanner Miroslav Volf From the Introduction by Dorothy Bass “Within this context, those who lead theological communities need to find ways of learning with and from people of varied views and histories while also preventing theological reflection from becoming overly ...

Farley, Edward. Practicing Gospel: Unconventional Thoughts on the Church’s Ministry. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003. The Author Edward Farley is Professor Emeritus of Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. He has written a number of books on theology and theological education. William Edward Farley has distinguished himself as a scholar and teacher in the field of theology.A native of Louisville, Dr. Farley majored in philosophy at Centre and was a member of ...

Dreyer, Elizabeth. Earth Crammed with Heaven: A Spirituality of Everyday Life. New York: Paulist Press, 1994. The Author Elizabeth Dreyer, professor of Religious Studies, has been a member of the Fairfield Faculty since 1999. Previous faculty appointments include the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota; the Catholic University of America, and The Washington Theological Union in Washington, D.C. Dreyer is the author or editor of 9 books and numerous articles, chapters in books, and dictionary/encyclopedia ...

Arens, Edmund. Christopraxis: A Theology of Action. 1st Fortress Press ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. The Author Edmund Arens is a catholic theologian and professor of Fundamental Theology at the University of Luzern, Switzerland. Fundamental Theology is “a relatively recent theological discipline whose object and method has not altogether been clarified by theologians themselves. It is clear, however, that a task of fundamental theology is to verify the foundations of theology. Thus, before deepening in the knowledge ...

Boa, Kenneth. Conformed to His Image: Biblical and Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001. Author: Kenneth Boa Boa outlines twelve distinct types of Christian spiritualities. He describes them each as facets to the diamond that is Christian Spirituality. The chart below provides a helpful visualization of the landscape that Boa has mapped out for us. Boa’s Twelve Facets Facet 1—Relational Spirituality: Loving God Completely, Ourselves Correctly, and Others Compassionately Facet 2—Paradigm Spirituality: Cultivating an Eternal versus ...

Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ by Dallas Willard I must confess my bias and internal struggle before I begin a review of this book. God used this book to move me from the mega-church experience to the house church experience in 2002. I have been deeply influenced by the writing of Dallas Willard for many years. Now, on this side of my journey through Emergent theology, Lutheran theology, and the PhD ...

Spirituality and Theology by Philip Sheldrake This book is a gold mine for my research. Sheldrake connects the contemporary study of Christian Spirituality directly to the Social Trinity. He also provides an excellent historical summary of why spirituality and theology have been estranged since the dawn of the modern era. My Annotated Scan of the section  The Significance of Trinitarian Theology. (75-83) He defends Augustine against accusations of individualism. The fundamental truth of our existence is that human beings ...

Exploring Spirituality and Culture in Adult and Higher Education by Elizabeth Tisdell My Notes… Assumptions about Spirituality: spirituality and religion are not the same, but for many people they are interrelated spirituality is an awareness and honoring of wholeness and the interconnectedness of all things through the mystery of what many refer to as the Life-force, God, higher power, higher self, cosmic energy, Buddha nature, or Great Spirit spirituality is fundamentally about meaning making spirituality is always present (though often unacknowledged) ...

Read Filling the Governance Gap by Allan Wallis, my annotated copy of this article. Wallis, Allan D. “Filling the Governance Gap.” National Civic Review 87, no. 1 (1998). Notes The dominant vision for regional growth Ownership of a detached single-family house; Automobile ownership; Low-rise workplaces; Small communities with strong local governments; Environment free from signs of poverty. Downs says the dominant vision succeeds admirably in satisfying short-term needs, while simultaneously making it more difficult to solve long-term problems. (103) Past solutions, notably those that are essentially ...

Orfield, Myron. Metropolitics: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability. Cambridge, MA: Brookings Institution Press; Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1997. Author – Myron Orfield Myron Orfield identifies six distinct types of suburban communities: at-risk segregated, at-risk older, at-risk low density, bedroom-developing, affluent job centers, and very affluent job centers. These six types represent one of the greatest challenges of suburbia: the socio-economic stratification of the suburban population. (31-48) Social separation leaves middle-class children in overcrowded, underfunded schools, but its more powerful harms accrue to ...

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. The Author Kenneth Jackson Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University My Thoughts Jackson’s work—Crabgrass Frontier—is the most ubiquitous citation in my experience of studying suburbia. He published this history of the Suburbs in 1985. It was on the front edge of a wave of suburban studies and framed much of the academic imagination thereafter. Most of his work is ...

Hayden, Dolores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. The Author Dolores Hayden She is a professor at Yale University and past president of the Urban History Association. The triple dream: house, yard, and neighborhood. The following paragraph summarizes the intent of this book: “Arguing for the metropolitan context of suburban landscapes, this history attempts to reconnect city and suburb, showing that since the early nineteenth century, suburbs have been important to the ...

Fishman, Robert. Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia. New York: Basic Books, 1987. The Author Robert Fishman Fishman is a professor of architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan. Annotated Reviews The following are reviews that I have marked up: Review of bourgeois – Haine Review of Bourgeois Utopias – Howland “Seen in historical perspective, suburbia now appears as the point of transition between two decentralized eras: the preindustrial rural era and the postindustrial information society. Suburbia originated when ...

Diamond, Etan. Souls of the City: Religion and the Search for Community in Postwar America Polis Center Series on Religion and Urban Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. The Author Etan Diamond Etan Diamond is a senior research associate. An urban and religious historian, he studies changes in the Indianapolis religious and urban landscapes since World War II. Summary Diamond is a historian. He traces the historical development of the metropolitan area around Indianapolis during the last half of the ...

DeKruyter, Arthur H., and Quentin J. Schultze. The Suburban Church: Practical Advice for Authentic Ministry. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. The Author Arther DeKruyter Founding pastor of Christ Church in Oak Brook, IL.   Summary DeKruyter offers a case study of how he started with the calling from five couples in the suburban Oak Brook Village, to watch the the Holy Spirit grow a dynamic suburban ministry. I appreciated his humble and practical approach to contextual ministry. ...

The Author David Goetz is president of CZ Marketing, a creative strategy agency that repositions organizations for new growth. Dave is also the founder of www.RealityRN.com, a social media community for new nurses. Dave is the author of Death by Suburb (HarperCollins) and is working on a follow-up book tentatively titled, Jesus at Midlife, a spirituality for the second half of life. (http://www.qideas.org/contributors/david-goetz.aspx)

Marshall, Alex. How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken. 1st ed. Constructs Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. The Author A journalist and writer for a quarter century, Alex Marshall is the author of The Surprising Design of Market Economies (University of Texas 2012), as well as How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and The Roads Not Taken (University of Texas 2000), and Beneath the Metropolis: The Secret Lives of Cities (Carroll & Graf ...

Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. 10th anniversary ed. New York: North Point Press, 2010. The Author Andrés Duany (born September 7, 1949) is an American architect and urban planner. Duany was born in New York City but grew up in Cuba until 1960. He attended The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) and received his undergraduate degree in architecture and urban planning from ...

Timothy Gorringe explores justice, empowerment, and redemption in how humanity encounters and builds within spaces and places in creation.

Teaford, Jon C. The American Suburb: The Basics. New York: Routledge, 2008.  The Author Jon C. Teaford is Professor Emeritus of Urban History at Purdue University. I was not able to find much biographical information about him. However, his students rated him extremely high on ratemyprofessors.com. One student said, “Dr. Teaford was the BEST teacher I ever had in my entire educational career and I am a teacher now because of HIM! He made history come to ...

The Christian Imagination by Dr. Willie Jennings offers an historical, theoretical, and theological framework to understand why racism is so pervasive in Western Christianity that most White Western Christians are completely blind to it.

Visual notes from Homebrewed Guide to Jesus by Tripp Fuller. Chapters 5-7.

Homebrewed Guide to Jesus chapters 2-4

These images visualize an Open and Relational Theology as described by Tripp Fuller and John Cobb.

Andy Root is a professor at Luther Seminary and a thought leader in youth ministry, young adults, family, church, and culture. I had the privilege to hear Andy present the big concepts in his book Faith Formation in a Secular Age at Luther this week. I was on campus all week co-teaching a group of Doctor of Ministry students with Terri Elton in the course Missional Leadership. We took a field trip to hear Andy’s presentation. ...

Van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel and Erik P. Wiebe. In Search of Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Personhood. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2011. The following two paragraphs provide a good flavor for this collection of essays that explore the human self in an interdisciplinary conversation. “While neuroscientists like Daniel Siegel, Louis Cozolino, and John Cacioppo have argued for a deep neurological basis for interpersonal attachment, neuroscientist and anthropologist Terrence Deacon has take a different direction in developing ...

Grondin, Jean. Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1994. Author – Jean Grondin The following illustration represents the history that Grondin sets forth in this book. It provides a nice frame for understanding how hermeneutics shifted in the mid-twentieth century from positivism to a more communicative, constructivist perspective. This was not an overnight switch, nor was it a complete shift, of course. The perspective that is now considered post-modern, or late-modern is actually the ...

Black, Gary. The Theology of Dallas Willard: Discovering Protoevangelical Faith. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013. The Author – Dr. Gary Black, Jr. This essay is both a reflection on Gary Black’s book The Theology of Dallas Willard, and a huge note of gratitude to Gary for shedding light on a much needed subject. This book has not only helped me make sense out of my own spiritual journey, but it has greatly enhanced my dissertation work in ...

The Author – Charles Taylor A key concept that comes from the book is that of the buffered self. Taylor argues that modern, western civilization has disenchanted the cosmos and moved away from a porous self—in which the person can be influenced and interpenetrated by forces and spirits of the cosmos—to the buffered self which lives primarily from its own lived, internal experience of reality. The self is detached, or buffered, from direct contact with reality ...

Book | Beyond Foundationalism by Stanley Grenz and John Franke

Brown, Delwin, Sheila Greeve Davaney, Kathryn Tanner, and American Academy of Religion. Converging on Culture: Theologians in Dialogue with Cultural Analysis and Criticism The American Academy of Religion Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion Series. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.  The Editors Delwin Brown Dean emeritus of Pacific School of Religion (PSR), as a lay theologian equally at ease in academia and the public square, Brown was a leading national voice of progressive Christianity. Sheila ...

Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. The Postmodern Turn Critical Perspectives. New York: Guilford Press, 1997. The Authors Steven Best Bio Associate Professor of Philosophy at UTEP, Dr. Steven Best is an award-winning and prolific writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist Research Interests Continental philosophy, applied ethics (animal rights, environmental ethics, bioethics), social and political philosophy, media theory and cultural studies, Marxism and critical theory, science and technology studies, security and terrorism studies/ Education Ph D – Philosophy, University of Texas at ...

Sanneh, Lamin O. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. 2nd ed. American Society of Missiology Series.Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009. The Author Lamin Sanneh is the D. Willis James Professor of Missions & World Christianity at Yale University. He, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is descended from the nyanchos, an ancient African royal house, and was educated on four continents. He went to school with chiefs’ sons in the Gambia, West Africa. He subsequently came to ...

Farley, Edward. Practicing Gospel: Unconventional Thoughts on the Church’s Ministry. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003. The Author Edward Farley is Professor Emeritus of Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. He has written a number of books on theology and theological education. William Edward Farley has distinguished himself as a scholar and teacher in the field of theology.A native of Louisville, Dr. Farley majored in philosophy at Centre and was a member of ...

https://prezi.com/8gvpcewvzqun/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy Introduction Hans-Georg Gadamer was born in 1900 and died in 2002. One could say that he was truly a man of the 20th century. This is fitting since his life and work demonstrated the transitional nature of the 20th century as the academic disciplines made a turn from Enlightenment thinking to a postmodern sensibility. Gadamer’s presentation of philosophical hermeneutics was one of the pivotal contributions that brought about that turn. His Life and Work A Biographical Sketch Gadamer spent ...

Tanner, Kathryn. Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology Guides to Theological Inquiry. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. A Paper I Wrote on This Book A Presentation and Reflective Response to Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology by Kathryn Turner Introduction The purpose and scope of this paper is to provide a starting point for discussion amongst the members of the course CL8520 Gospel and Culture around Kathryn Tanner’s book Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology. A more specific ...

Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. The Author – Jürgen Habermas Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas’s work focuses on the foundations of social theory and epistemology, the analysis of advanced capitalistic societies and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, and contemporary politics, particularly German politics. Habermas’s theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and ...

Kegan, Robert. In over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. The Author – Robert Kegan Kegan is a professor of Adult Learning at Harvard, specializing in cognitive developmental psychology. He has dedicated his career to studying what he has come to call “the evolving self.” Prior to his quest, which began in the 1980s, the conventional wisdom regarding human cognitive development was that all significant cognitive development ceased in late adolescence. ...

I read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. I had seen it in the bookstore, and heard it mentioned a few places, most notably by Tripp Fuller on the Homebrewed Christianity podcast. So, I thought I should read it. I’m so glad I did. This is one of those books that has caused me to go back and reshuffle some of the building blocks in my worldview. The main reason I appreciate this book is that ...

Kieran Scott‘s article “Alternating Currents: Sacramental and Prophetic Imagining and Church Education” in Religious Education, offers a hopeful framework for the local church to educate people in the emerging post-modern context. He argues that we must embrace two seemingly contradictory imaginations and hold them in constant tension, like alternating currents. On the one side is the sacramental imagination that seeks the divine in all things. On the other is the prophetic imagination which sees the corruption ...

Scharer, Matthias Hilberath Bernd Jochen. The Practice Of Communicative Theology: Introduction To A New Theological Culture. New York: Crossroad Pub. CO. 2008. The Authors — Matthias Scharer and Bernd Jochen Hilberath My Reflections Sharer and Hilberath are two German, Roman Catholic theologians who have adopted Ruth Cohn’s Theme-Centered Interaction (TCI) model as the means of doing theology. This pedagogy comes from a long history of Catholic theology and is rooted, most apparently, in Habermas’ communicative rationality. The combination ...

Kegan, Robert. The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. The Author – Robert Kegan My Thoughts I read the Prologue to this book today. I have already read In Over Our Heads and Immunity to Change, so I am familiar with Kegan’s theory. Mary Hess suggested that I read this book, and include it in my bibliography, since it is the foundation to his theory. Reading the prologue, in this context, reminds me again ...

Fowler, James W. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981. The Author James Fowler Charles Howard Candler Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University. Stages of Faith Infancy and Undifferentiated Faith Stage 1: Intuitive-Projective Faith Stage 2: Mythic-Literal Faith Stage 3: Synthetic-Conventional Faith Stage 4: Individuative-Reflective Faith Stage 5: Conjunctive Faith Stage 6: Universalizing Faith Selected Quotes “In these pages I am offering a theory of growth in faith. At the heart of the ...

Exploring Spirituality and Culture in Adult and Higher Education by Elizabeth Tisdell My Notes… Assumptions about Spirituality: spirituality and religion are not the same, but for many people they are interrelated spirituality is an awareness and honoring of wholeness and the interconnectedness of all things through the mystery of what many refer to as the Life-force, God, higher power, higher self, cosmic energy, Buddha nature, or Great Spirit spirituality is fundamentally about meaning making spirituality is always present (though often unacknowledged) ...

Mezirow, Jack. Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress. 1st ed. The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000. The Author – Jack Mezirow a pdf of learning as Transformation by Jack Mezirow my notes “Transformative learning refers to the process by which we transform our taken-for-granted frames of reference (meaning perspectives, habits of mind, mind-sets) to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective so that they ...

Kegan, Robert. In over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. The Author – Robert Kegan Kegan is a professor of Adult Learning at Harvard, specializing in cognitive developmental psychology. He has dedicated his career to studying what he has come to call “the evolving self.” Prior to his quest, which began in the 1980s, the conventional wisdom regarding human cognitive development was that all significant cognitive development ceased in late adolescence. ...

Fowler, James W. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981. The Author James Fowler Charles Howard Candler Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University. Stages of Faith Infancy and Undifferentiated Faith Stage 1: Intuitive-Projective Faith Stage 2: Mythic-Literal Faith Stage 3: Synthetic-Conventional Faith Stage 4: Individuative-Reflective Faith Stage 5: Conjunctive Faith Stage 6: Universalizing Faith Selected Quotes “In these pages I am offering a theory of growth in faith. At the heart of the ...

Conn, Walter E. Christian Conversion: A Developmental Interpretation of Autonomy and Surrender. New York: Paulist Press, 1986.   The Author Walter E. Conn is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University. He is also the editor of Horizons, journal of the College Theology Society. My Thoughts Walter Conn explores the idea Christian conversion through the filter of developmental psychology. “Because the great advances in psychology of the last half century have added enormously to our knowledge of moral-religious consciousness, ...

Groome, Thomas H. Sharing Faith: A Comprehensive Approach to Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry: The Way of Shared Praxis. 1st ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. The Author Areas of Interest: His primary areas of interest and research are the history, theory and practice of religious education, pastoral ministry and practical theology. About: Dr. Thomas H. Groome was born in County Kildare, Ireland. Professor Groome holds the equivalent of an M.Div. from St. Patrick’s Seminary in Carlow, Ireland, an MA from ...