Retail Price: $46.00
Web Price: $36.80
ISBN 10: 1-59752-744-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-59752-744-6
Pages: 448
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 09/01/2007
Division: Wipf and Stock
Series: Studies in Christian History and Thought
Category: Theology
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Enlightenment, Ecumenism, Evangel
Theological Themes and Thinkers 1550–2000
By Alan P. F. Sell
What is the Gospel, and how is it to be commended? This question encapsulates the running theme of this collection of papers. In five essays Professor Sell discusses some Puritans, Cambridge Platonists, Quakers, and critics of deism and pantheism who sought to articulate the Gospel in the intellectual environment in which they had been set. Their underlying concerns are of continuing relevance in current ecumenical discussion, as are questions of doctrinal change and development, the subjects of two further papers. A paper on spirituality echoes some of the concerns of the Separatists, Platonists, and Quakers, but views them in relation to the widespread interest in the topic at the present time. Two papers concern the ways in which the Gospel is shared in ecumenical circles, with special reference to the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology, and the Reformed contribution to interconfessional discussion. A bibliographical survey of Reformed theology in twentieth-century Britain shows the range of interest within one ecclesiastical tradition, while such wider issues as contextual theology, inclusivism, and the peril of sectarianism are discussed in a further paper. The book concludes with an attempt to answer the question, what is involved in proclaiming the Gospel of reconciliation today?
Author - Alan P. F. Sell
"An admirable study of those who, like the author, were 'rooted in the history and principles of dissent,' the book seems, in part at least, autobiographical, the several chapters arising out of the developments and interests of Sell's very diverse and rich career. Reflecting, but not burdened with, his wide-ranging historical scholarship and his determination to think theologically, the text ranges insightfully, and elegantly, from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries."
—John H.Y. Briggs, Regent's Park College, University of Oxford
"The triple 'E' in this work's title encapsulates the author's remarkable teaching and writing career, drawing on his command of the English history of doctrine to make the case for an Enlightenment to be neither 'utterly denounced' nor 'uncritically lauded' and a Reformed ecumenism of both evangelical catholicity and dissenting sensibility, all grounded in the evangel of the 'saving act of the God of all grace in the cross and
resurrection of Jesus Christ.' P. T. Forsyth lives again in the witness of Alan Sell."
—Gabriel Frackre, Andover Newton Theological School
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