Hans Boersma

Surveying the barriers that contemporary thinking has erected between the natural and the supernatural, between earth and heaven, Hans Boersma issues a wake-up call for Western Christianity. Both Catholics and evangelicals, he says, have moved too far away from a sacramental mindset, focusing more on the here-and-now than on the then-and-there. Yet, as Boersma points out, the teaching of Jesus, Paul, and St. Augustine indeed, of most of Scripture and the church fathers is profoundly otherworldly, much more concerned with heavenly participation than with earthly enjoyment. In Heavenly Participation Boersma draws on the wisdom of great Christian minds ancient and modern Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, C. S. Lewis, Henri de Lubac, John Milbank, and many others. He urges Catholics and evangelicals alike to retrieve a sacramental worldview, to cultivate a greater awareness of eternal mysteries, to partake eagerly of the divine life that transcends and transforms all earthly realities. Hans Boersma makes a superb contribution to evangelical theological reflection in this well-designed book, and it goes a long way to drawing us back from the brink of a fashionable evangelical tendency to reductive historicism. His re-situation of the doctrine of the Incarnation in its historic sacramental language and thought opens up the way to a deeper understanding of the truths of faith that evangelicals and Catholics alike seek to comprehend and nurture. David Lyle Jeffrey Baylor University Theology at its best, says Hans Boersma, is less interested in comprehending the truth than in participating in it. Skillfully marshalling passages from the church fathers and medieval theologians and drawing judiciously on contemporary evangelical and Catholic thinkers, Boersma shows that theology is not primarily an intellectual enterprise but a spiritual discipline by which one enters into the truth and is mastered by it. Though this sacramental tapestry, as he calls it, is as old as the church, it is refreshing to have it presented anew in this engaging book. Robert Louis Wilken University of Virginia

The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry

Heavenly Participation

Scot McKnight

Five Things Biblical Scholars Wish Theologians Knew

Surveying the barriers that contemporary thinking has erected between the natural and the supernatural, between earth and heaven, Hans Boersma issues a wake-up call for Western Christianity. Both Catholics and evangelicals, he says, have moved too far away from a sacramental mindset, focusing more on the "here-and-now" than on the "then-and-there." Yet, as Boersma points out, the teaching of Jesus, Paul, and St. Augustine -- indeed, of most of Scripture and the church fathers -- is profoundly otherworldly, much more concerned with heavenly participation than with earthly enjoyment. In Heavenly Participation Boersma draws on the wisdom of great Christian minds ancient and modern -- Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, C. S. Lewis, Henri de Lubac, John Milbank, and many others. He urges Catholics and evangelicals alike to retrieve a sacramental worldview, to cultivate a greater awareness of eternal mysteries, to partake eagerly of the divine life that transcends and transforms all earthly realities.

In recent decades many fundamental Christian assumptions about the nature of God and the world have come under attack. No longer can one assume even in many church circles that historic Christian beliefs about the Trinity and providence are generally accepted or understood. Scientific knowledge and new technologies have also presented challenges for the church. How, for example, should Christians understand the ecological crisis? And how should the opening chapters of Genesis be understood in an age of genetic research and evolutionary science? This collection of essays attempts to chart a faithful path for postmodern Christians, exploring the foundational ideas and concepts of a Christian worldview and suggesting their implications for Christian living today.Contributors: Hans Boersma John Cooper Marva J. Dawn Michael W. Goheen Christopher D. Marshall Arnold E. Sikkema John G. Stackhouse, Jr. Rikki E. Watts John R. Wood

Christianity and Contemporary Challenges to the Gospel

Living in the Lamblight

Offers a new model for understanding the atonement, sensitive to both the Chrisitan tradition and its postmodern critics.

Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition

Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross

Richard Baxter's Doctrine of Justification in Its Seventeenth-century Context of Controversy

A Hot Pepper Corn

The relationship between theology and biblical studies is often marked by misunderstandings, methodological differences, and cross-discipline tension. With an irenic spirit as well as honesty about differences that remain, theologian Hans Boersma highlights five things he wishes biblical scholars knew about theology so that these disciplines might once again serve the church hand in hand.

Hans Boersma

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