Sean the Baptist

Blogging has been rather light these past couple of weeks, but I have a few moments to give information about one or two new books that are out there and look interesting and/or are important.

First up is my good friend John Colwell's extraordinary (in the sense of wonderfully better than the ordinary rather than the strange or eccentric) Promise and Presence: An Exploration of Sacramental Theology (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005).

Here is the blurb:

A ground-breaking, evangelical sacramentalist approach to the seven sacraments.

Following an introduction that briefly reviews the development of sacramental theology the book begins with an exploration of God’s Triune identity and the implications of this doctrine for the gracious and mediated nature of God’s relatedness with the world.

A central section follows in which a doctrine of the Church and a doctrine of Scripture are expounded in response to this understanding of the gracious and mediated nature of God’s relatedness. Both Church and Scripture are identified as conferring context, definition, and validity on all other sacramental events.

But this cannot do justice to the importance of this book for Baptists.  Every minister should read it, every one of the students at NBC (and I know some of you read this) and at other Colleges! should understand what John is arguing, why he is arguing and why it makes all the difference in the world if he is right.  Plus, there are some good jokes.

 In addition, a couple of more technical monographs looks fascinating.

Luke Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral (Ashgate, 2006)

We live amid increasing ethical plurality and fragmentation while at the same time more and more questions of moral gravity confront us. Some of these questions are new, such as those around human cloning and genetics. Other questions that were previously settled have re-emerged, such as those around the place of religion in politics. Responses to such questions are diverse, numerous and often vehemently contested. Hospitality as Holiness seeks to address the underlying question facing the church within contemporary moral debates: how should Christians relate to their neighbours when ethical disputes arise? The problems the book examines centre on what the nature and basis of Christian moral thought and action is, and in the contemporary context, whether moral disputes may be resolved with those who do not share the same framework as Christians. Bretherton establishes a model - that of hospitality - for how Christians and non-Christians can relate to each other amid moral diversity. This book will appeal to those interested in the broad question of the relationship between reason, tradition, natural law and revelation in theology, and more specifically to those engaged with questions about plurality, tolerance and ethical conflict in Christian ethics and medical ethics.

Douglas Knight, The Eschatological Economy: Time and the Hospitality of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).  More information about this book can be found on Douglas' great webiste and blog.  Look here.  He has been kind enough to send me a pre-publication .pdf copy which I am looking forward to reading.