This bold work culminates Hall's three-volume contextual theology, the first to take the measure of Christian belief and doctrine explicitly in light of North American cultural and historical experience.
Hall is deeply critical of North American culture but also of sidelined Christian churches that struggle to gain dominance within it. "We must stop thinking of the reduction of Christendom as a tragedy!" he says. The disestablishment that the churches reluctantly enjoy can enable them to develop genuine community, uncompromised theology, and honest engagement with the larger culture. To a failed culture and a struggling church Hall shows the radical implications of a theology of the cross for the shape and practice of church, preaching, ministry, ethics, and eschatology.
Hall's frank and prophetic volume is the trilogy's most practical, and the most sustained probe to date of Christian life in a post-Christian context.

confessing_the_faith_a02

Douglas John Hall

Augsburg Fortress Publishers

Minneapolis: Fortress Press

1517 Media

United States, United States of America

First Edition, PS, 1998

Minneapolis, 1996

March 23, 1998

xii, 534 pages ; 24 cm
Originally published in 1996
Includes bibliographical references and indexes
Introduction to Volume Three: Confessing the Faith -- pt. I. The Church. Ch. 1. The Confessing Church. Ch. 2. Contours of the Church. Ch. 3. Mission, Message, and Ministry -- pt. II. Metamorphosis: From Christendom to Diaspora. Ch. 4. Disestablishment and the Crisis of Mainline Protestantism. Ch. 5. Christian Life in a Post-Christian Context -- pt. III. The Forms of Faith's Confession. Ch. 6. Christian Confession as Word, Deed, and Stance. Ch. 7. Theological Ethics -- pt. IV. The Reign of God and Christian Hope. Ch. 8. Confessing Hope. Ch. 9. Creaturely Destiny

2023-06-28