150 words: The books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah contain oracles that address problems in and around ancient Judah in ways that are as incisive and critical as they are optimistic and constructive. Daniel C. Timmer’s The Theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah situates these books in their social and political contexts and examines the unique theology of each as it engages with imposing problems in Judah and beyond. In dialogue with recent scholarship, this study focuses on these books’ analysis and evaluation of the world as it is, focusing on both human beings and their actions and God’s commitment to purify, restore, and perfect the world. Timmer also surveys these books’ later theological use and cultural reception. Timmer also brings their theology into dialogue with concerns as varied as ecology, nationalism, and widespread injustice, highlighting the enduring significance of divine justice and grace for solid hope and effective service in our world.

50 words: This volume examines the powerful and poignant theology of the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Daniel C. Timmer situates these books’ theology in their ancient Near Eastern contexts and traces its multifaceted contribution to Jewish and Christian theology and to broader cultural spheres, without neglecting its contemporary significance.

20 words: This volume draws out the theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, attending to their ancient contexts, past use and reception, and contemporary significance.

This chapter summarizes the findings of each chapter, recognizing the project’s limitations as well as offering prospects for future research. Finally, in a more speculative register, it describes the implications of the preceding chapters for an account of catechesis guided by the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. Catechesis echoes the incarnation of the Word in its medial position. Bridging heavenly and earthly knowledge, catechesis is a concrete practice that proffers true knowledge of God, the transcendent source of being, from within the finite conditions of material life.

Generations of Christians, Janet Soskice demonstrates, once knew God and Christ by hundreds of remarkable names. These included the appellations ‘Messiah’, ‘Emmanuel’, ‘Alpha’, ‘Omega’, ‘Eternal’, ‘All-Powerful’, ‘Lamb’, ‘Lion’, ‘Goat’, ‘One’, ‘Word’, ‘Serpent’ and ‘Bridegroom’. In her much-anticipated new book, Soskice argues that contemporary understandings of divinity could be transformed by a return to a venerable analogical tradition of divine naming. These ancient titles – drawn from scripture – were chanted and sung, crafted and invoked (in polyphony and plainsong) as they were woven into the worship of the faithful. However, during the sixteenth century Descartes moved from ‘naming’ to ‘defining’ God via a series of metaphysical attributes. This made God a thing among things: a being amongst beings. For the author, reclaiming divine naming is not only overdue. It can also re-energise the relationship between philosophy and religious tradition. This path-breaking book shows just how rich and revolutionary such reclamation might be.

Theological compatibilists have considered the will of God and creaturely wills to be aligned, such that divine election or determination does not undermine but rather preserves the free will of the creature. In the person of Jesus Christ this compatibility is held to be utterly flawless, and the human will of Christ to “follow after” or conform itself perfectly, and without sin, to the divine will. As a theological compatibilist I am persuaded by this largely Augustinian and Cyrillian Christology. However, critics may well wonder whether Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane does not make such a view implausible, perhaps incoherent, and leads to an undermining of a proper doctrine of atonement. This essay undertakes to examine the narratives of Gethsemane in light of this criticism, and to offer a reply.

Focusing on the Christian concept of sin, this chapter explores the way in which Anti-Climacus in Part Two of The Sickness unto Death analyzes the concepts of despair, selfhood, spirit, sin, offense, faith, paradox, and God from the standpoint of a Christian understanding of these concepts in contrast to that of classical paganism and Christendom, especially the way in which these concepts are rooted scripturally in Christianity in not willing or doing what is right rather than not knowing or understanding what one should do, as in paganism. It focuses in particular on the Christian doctrine of hereditary sin and the paradox that sin is not a negation but a position before God that cannot be comprehended but must be believed through a revelation from and relation to God, thereby creating the possibility of offense.

Martyrdom is the running thread in this study. Chapter 6 turns its focus to the definitive martyr, Jesus Christ, whose stoic behavior at the Passion established a way forward for those who stood mute. When Herod summoned Jesus before him, the divine prisoner also stood mute. His silence functioned as a means of protest, an interpretation familiar to English communities, who watched the drama unfold annually in the mystery plays. Similarly, depictions of the ancient martyrs also presented silence and passivity as models for resistance. These narratives reinforced the notion that only a heroic martyr stood mute in a court of common law. The world of literature also had much to say on the subject of peine forte et dure. Analysis of works such as Chasteau d’Amour, the Seven Sages of Rome, and Bevis of Hampton all clarify that hard prison was a sentence inflicted by an unmerciful, and often distinctly unchristian, authority. Nonetheless, these stories place peine forte et dure in a positive light: the intense suffering supplies the falsely accused with the ideal surroundings to perform imitatio Christi (imitation of Christ), thus assuring his salvation.

The teaching of creation has been much misunderstood and under-developed because it has been taken to be primarily about how the world began a long, long time ago. Religious naturalists have often abandoned this teaching so as to give a more scientifically informed characterization of our cosmos and humanity’s place within it. Wirzba argues that this is a big mistake because the rejection of the idea that our world is a divinely created world makes it impossible to speak of life as a gift. This chapter develops what it means to say that each creature is gift cherished and sustained in its being by God. As such, it opens the idea of creation to encompass life’s meaning and purpose, and it creates a way for people to become involved in the nurture and healing of our world and our shared life. The logic of creation, upon further examination, is not about God’s power “over” the world but about God’s presence to the world in the forms of love that invite human participation in it.

To say that human beings are creatures is to say that they are finite, fallible, and defined by their need of others to nurture and support them. It is to understand that people must learn to receive and then share again the life that they have been given. This places people in positions of vulnerability that are often hard to bear. This chapter explores the contours of creatureliness, and examines the character of our interdependence while also describing the communal conditions that are necessary if the vulnerability of people is to be honored rather than violated. Put another way, to live into our creaturely condition it is important for people to exercise forms of power that are modelled on the love of God made incarnate in Jesus. Characterized this way, creatureliness is humanity’s way of participating in the divine love that creates and sustains all of life.

Chapter 7 conceptualizes how, if monotheism “separates” God from the political sphere this does not result in what Mouffe denounced as depoliticization. I examine Christ as manifesting the monotheistic “separation” from the political sphere while agonistically engaging the mechanisms of scapegoating. In Christ the victimized-divinity we do not have a regression into polytheism; nor yet do we find an “escape” from the sacrifice and exclusion that polytheism contained. Rejecting both as insufficient, I consider Girard’s paradox that Christianity is an “exit from religion in the form of a demythified religion.” Drawing cues from Mouffe’s critiques of liberalism, I see in monotheism not an escape from intolerance into an exclusion-free utopia, but something more like exclusion-in-reverse in which intolerance is a photographic negative. I thus illustrate Christ as embodying a monotheism that – precisely through, not despite, his intolerance – points us toward the marginalized other and pluralistic concerns today.

Justifying grace is for Kant the way religion symbolizes, in terms of our relation to God, our hope to overcome the propensity to evil through the change of heart. Divine forgiveness does not abolish or transcend morality but occurs in accordance with morality. The Son of God symbolizes as vicarious atonement our moral receptivity to God’s mercy. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross is the way Christianity symbolizes it in revealed religion. For Kant rational religion includes faith in God’s justifying grace. It does not include prevenient or sanctifying grace but does not exclude these either. They are religiously acceptable parts of revealed Christianity, but their reality and our need for them lie beyond what pure reason can know. Some critics claim that Kant’s account of divine grace is inconsistent with itself. But closer examination shows that it is self-consistent, and for Kant rational religion is even consistent with Augustinianism about grace, while neither affirming nor denying it.

The chronicle entry for the year 1015 recounts the murder of two of Vladimir’s sons, Princes Boris and Gleb. Once more, a series of close readings reveals a deep liturgical subtext underlying the chronicle text, only this time that subtext is Eucharistic: Prince Boris prepares for death in the exact way that an eastern Christian priest prepares for the Eucharistic sacrifice during the celebration of the divine liturgy. And just as the sacrifice offered in the Eucharist is Christ Himself, so the sacrifice that Boris offers in the chronicle is his own life, and the life of his brother Gleb. A second level of liturgical subtext is also discussed in the chapter, and it is connected to the Byzantine rite for consecrating a new church. The chroniclers in Rus were clearly familiar with this rite and it may have guided their large-scale conception of the founding of Christianity in Rus. Indeed, when we consider what a bishop says and does during the consecration rites—what he prays about and what he asks for—it reveals a crucial theological link between Vladimir’s role as bishop and the martyrdom of his sons Boris and Gleb.

In the third section of the book, a range of topics from doctrinal or systematic theology are considered, building on the survey of the first part of the book, which had dealt mainly with the doctrines of God and of creation. This chapter turns to Christology: to the doctrine of the Person of Christ and of the Incarnation, where participatory language and thinking have also been important. This is worked through in terms of a number of central contentions in traditional Christology. It also brings some less-often-considered aspects of the doctrine of Christ to the surface, such as Christ's participation in God through growth in virtues. A participatory account of Christology can bear witness to the full revelation and presence of God in, and as, Christ. This is contrasted with kenotic Christology.

In the third section of the book, a range of topics from doctrinal or systematic theology are considered, building on the survey of the first part of the book, which had dealt mainly with the doctrines of God and of creation. This chapter turns to Christology: to the doctrine of the Person of Christ and of the Incarnation, where participatory language and thinking have also been important. This is worked through in terms of a number of central contentions in traditional Christology. It also brings some less-often-considered aspects of the doctrine of Christ to the surface, such as Christ's participation in God through growth in virtues. A participatory account of Christology can bear witness to the full revelation and presence of God in, and as, Christ. This is contrasted with kenotic Christology.