Tom Greggs

- Introduces readers to the biblical foundations and key methodological questions for theology: faith and reason, the nature of religious authority, the place of experience, revelation, Scripture and tradition, orthodoxy and heresy, and the importance of context (both historical and geographical) - Provides a comprehensive overview of all the major doctrinal topics (loci) of the Christian faith (the Trinity, Christology, pneumatology, soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology, etc.), with emphasis on their coherence and interdependence - Highlights the most important issues currently being debated within each topic (including perspectives from black, feminist, postcolonial, queer and other theologies) - Profiles the major theologians who have contributed to each topic, offering a broader perspective on the angles taken by distinct figures in the history of theology - Encourages readers to think theologically in connection with contemporary questions, e.g. the local vs. the global, issues of gender, race, ecology and the theology of religions - Adopts a balanced, ecumenical approach, looking at the contributions of all the major branches of the Church to the inheritance of theology today, and demonstrating the breadth and richness of Christian tradition

This book is devoted to understanding the confessional foundations of church unity in the earlier theology of Karl Barth. This book follows Barth's academic and ecclesiastical career from the years 1921 to 1938 as he moves from a nonconfessional pastor in Switzerland prior to his first teaching post in Gottingen to articulating, in his first volume of Church Dogmatics, the critical and essential authority of the church's confession in its public witness at the start of his final teaching post in Basel. During these years, each academic placement and public ecclesiastical assignment is crucial for understanding the development of Barth's confessional theology in order to make sense of his mature dogmatic understanding of the authority of the church's confession in CD I/2.

In this collection of essays, Tom Greggs explores the nature of the church in a world of many religions. Greggs’ writings on the Church and on other religions emphasize the importance of attentiveness to Christ and the Holy Spirit, and both are simultaneously generous and particularist. The first part of the book addresses the Church as it is brought into being by the Spirit in glorifying God, celebrates the sacraments, respects the authority of the creeds, is generously Catholic, and critiques its own religion. The second part looks at the church in a pluralist context as it engages in inter-faith dialogue, expresses both particularism and universalism, speaks of Christ with many names, and reads scripture and understands the many covenants found there. Greggs offers a programmatic conclusion, setting an agenda for theologies of the church and of other religions and their simultaneous relationality.

This volume uncovers Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s influences on one another and reads them side-by-side, revealing the insights both theologians bring to today’s secular and religious context. Greggs addresses the meaning and the extent of salvation, God’s relation to time and eternity, sin and confession, and inter-faith dialogue for a church that critiques its own practice of religion.This is a lively exploration of the implications of two great theologians' work for a completely secular and religious world.

This volume uncovers Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s influences on one another and reads them side-by-side, revealing the insights both theologians bring to today’s secular and religious context. Greggs addresses the meaning and the extent of salvation, God’s relation to time and eternity, sin and confession, and inter-faith dialogue for a church that critiques its own practice of religion.This is a lively exploration of the implications of two great theologians' work for a completely secular and religious world.

In this collection of essays, Tom Greggs explores the nature of the church in a world of many religions. Greggs’ writings on the Church and on other religions emphasize the importance of attentiveness to Christ and the Holy Spirit, and both are simultaneously generous and particularist. The first part of the book addresses the Church as it is brought into being by the Spirit in glorifying God, celebrates the sacraments, respects the authority of the creeds, is generously Catholic, and critiques its own religion. The second part looks at the church in a pluralist context as it engages in inter-faith dialogue, expresses both particularism and universalism, speaks of Christ with many names, and reads scripture and understands the many covenants found there. Greggs offers a programmatic conclusion, setting an agenda for theologies of the church and of other religions and their simultaneous relationality.

All too often, the Christian understanding of salvation has been one-dimensional, reducing all that God has done for us to a single conception or idea. Tom Greggs, one of today's leading theologians, offers a brief, accessibly written, but theologically substantive treatment of the doctrine of salvation. Drawing on the broad tradition of the church and the Christian faith in explaining the Christian understandings of salvation, Greggs challenges the contemporary church to be captured afresh by the immeasurable height, depth, and breadth of God's saving actions.

Ecclesiology is a key issue for the present age of church history. This groundbreaking work by one of today's leading theologians offers a major Protestant ecclesiology for the church catholic. This volume, the first of three, considers the priesthood of the church in light of the priesthood of Christ. Tom Greggs shows the connection between Christ's work as high priest and the universal church's role in salvation. All together, the three volumes will offer a major statement on the doctrine of the church for Christians from a variety of backgrounds.

A constructive approach from a theological perspective about the category of religion in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth. What does it mean to speak of Christianity as a religion? What are the implications of this to relations with secular bodies? If Christianity is identified as a 'religion', how does it relate to other similar human phenomena with which it might loosely be grouped? How should these others be understood in relation to Christianity from the perspective of a Christian theology of religion (as a prior engagement before a theology of the religions)? What makes, for example, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam theologically distinctive as entities from other communities or organizations such as trade unions, political parties or large non-governmental organizations? How should Christianity relate to a complexly pluralistic, religious and secular world? This book considers the question of how to understand religion theologically. The category of 'religion' is one which continues to be used politically and generally, and this book seeks to consider this category theologically, rather than sociologically, ethnographically, philosophically or anthropologically. In order to answer these questions, this book draws constructively on Bonhoeffer and Barth's theologies of religion/religionlessness.

This title gives a constructive approach from a theological perspective about the category of religion in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth. What does it mean to speak of Christianity as a religion? What are the implications of this to relations with secular bodies? If Christianity is identified as a 'religion', how does it relate to other similar human phenomena with which it might loosely be grouped? How should these others be understood in relation to Christianity from the perspective of a Christian theology of religion (as a prior engagement before a theology of the religions)? What makes, for example, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam theologically distinctive as entities from other communities or organizations such as trade unions, political parties or large non-governmental organizations? How should Christianity relate to a complexly pluralistic, religious and secular world? This book considers the question of how to understand religion theologically. The category of 'religion' is one which continues to be used politically and generally, and this book seeks to consider this category theologically, rather than sociologically, ethnographically, philosophically or anthropologically. In order to answer these questions, this book draws constructively on Bonhoeffer and Barth's theologies of religion/religionlessness.

Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation offers a bold new presentation of universal salvation. Building constructively from the third- century theologian, Origen, and the twentieth-century Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, Tom Greggs offers a defence of universalism as rooted in Christian theology, showing this belief does not have to be at the expense of human particularity, freedom, and Christian faith. Examining Barth's doctrine of election and Origen's understanding of apokatastasis, Greggs proposes that a proper understanding of the eternal salvific plan of God in the person of Jesus Christ points towards universal salvation. The relationship between the work of the Spirit and the Son in salvation is central to this understanding. Universal salvation is grounded in the person of Christ as himself historic and particular, and the Spirit makes the reality of that universal work of Christ present to individuals and communities in the present. The discussion includes creative suggestions for the political and ecclesial implications of such a presentation of salvation.