A Modern Introduction to Theology: New Questions for Old Beliefs

(, Annotated edition)

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Description

Philip Kennedy, here, offers the first book that any student - with or without religious convictions - can profitably use to get quickly to grips with the essentials of the Christian religion: its history and its key thinkers, its successes and its failures. Most existing undergraduate textbooks of theology begin from essentially traditional positions on the Bible, doctrine, authority, interpretation, and God. What makes Philip Kennedy's book both singularly important and uniquely different is that it has a completely new starting-point. The author contends that traditional Christian theology must extensively overhaul many of its theses because of a multitude of modern social, historical and intellectual revolutions. Offering a grand historical sweep of the genesis of the modern age, and writing with panache and a magisterial grasp of the relevant debates, conflicts and controversies, "A Modern Introduction to Theology" moves a tired and increasingly incoherent discipline in genuinely fresh and exciting directions, and will be welcomed by students and readers of the subject.

Reviews

Kennedy has a genuine passion to discover a Christianity which can proclaim truth. A Modern Introduction to Theology can serve as the principal textbook for introductory student courses in theology and doctrine, the history of Christianity, church history and philosophy of religion. - Diarmaid N J MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford. It is one of the unfortunate facts of our time that few books about theology manage to communicate beyond the circle of professional theologians. Even fewer are those that convey a sense of academic theology itself as an important, exciting, and challenging venture in human thought. Kennedy's book does just this. Vigorous, punchy, and fast-moving, it will excite, instruct, disturb and provoke. Accessible to students from sixth-form level upwards, it also contains much that calls for a response from academic colleagues and, no less importantly, the Churches themselves. - George Pattison, Lady Margaret Prof. of Divinity, Univ.of Oxford

Author Bio

Philip Kennedy is a member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Mansfield College. He is the author of a much-praised volume on the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx.