The theme that God suffers with his world has become a familiar one in recent years, overturning centuries of belief in an impassible deity. This book both surveys recent thought about the suffering of God and proposes future directions for this important area of Christian theology. Fiddes discusses four trends of current thought-the "theology of the cross" in modern German theology as represented in the works of Barth, Moltmann, and Jungel; American process theology; "the death of God" theology; and the rejection of the idea of divine passibility by modern followers of classical theism-while reflecting on the main theme of his study. The book affirms that God freely chooses to limit himself, to suffer change, to journey through time, and even to experience death while remaining the living God.

The Creative Suffering of God (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Literature & Fiction

Fiddes, Paul S.

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press, USA

The theme that God suffers with his world has become a familiar one in recent years, overturning centuries of belief in an impassible deity. This book both surveys recent thought about the suffering of God and proposes future directions for this important area of Christian theology. Fiddes discusses four trends of current thought--the "theology of the cross" in modern German theology as represented in the works of Barth, Moltmann, and Jüngel; American process theology; "the death of God" theology; and the rejection of the idea of divine passibility by modern followers of classical theism--while reflecting on the main theme of his study. The book affirms that God freely chooses to limit himself, to suffer change, to journey through time, and even to experience death while remaining the living God.

The Creative Suffering of God

Oxford University Press

This book aims to create a Christian theology of wisdom for the present day, in discussion with two sets of conversation-partners. The first are writers of the "wisdom literature" in ancient Israel and the Jewish community in Alexandria. Here, special attention is given to the biblical books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. The second conversation-partners are philosophers and thinkers of the late-modern age, among them Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricoeur and Hannah Arendt. In the late-modern period there has been a reaction against an inherited conception of the conscious and rational self as mastering and even subjugating the world around, and there has been an attempt to overcome the consequent split between the subject and objects of observation. Paul S. Fiddes enters into dialogue with these late-modern concerns about the relation between the self and the world, proposing that the wisdom which is indicated by the ancient Hebraic concept of .hokmah integrates a "practical wisdom" of handling daily experience with the kind of wisdom which is "attunement" to the world and ultimately to God as creator and sustainer of all. Fiddes brings detailed exegesis of texts from the ancient wisdom literature into interaction with an account of the subject in late-modern thought, in order to form a theology in which seeing the world is knowing a God whose transcendent reality is always immanent in the signs and bodies of the world. He thus argues that participation in a triune, relational God shapes a wisdom that addresses problems of a dominating self, and opens the human person to others.

Seeing the World and Knowing God: Hebrew Wisdom and Christian Doctrine in a Late-Modern Context

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Writers of novels, plays, and poems use their imaginations with evident freedom; by contrast, makers of Christian doctrine seem to impose limits, reducing the open-ended meaning of images to exact concepts and summing up the loose ends of stories in one unified Story. But the author of this study sets out to show how images and stories in literature can actually help the theologian to make doctrinal statements, while at the same time careful theological thinking can assist the critical reading of literary texts.   "In this beautifully written and argued work, theologian Fiddes asserts that the reading of literature can aid theologians in doing theologyspecifically, in developing doctrinal statements. Conversely, theologians can provide valuable critical tools for "hearing" the theology embedded in literature. Fiddes’ observations are a valuable aid for thinking through how to open a dialogue between theology and people’s culturally-conditioned views of their lives, between the authority of Scripture and the events of present history, where God is still authoring God’s story within ours." —Wendy Wirth-Brock, Trinity Seminary Review, Fall/Winter 2000-2001  "His readings testify eloquently to the power of literature as a mode of theological reflection. A useful text for anyone, student or faculty, studying the relation between religion and literature."—John A. McClure, Rutgers University, in Religious Studies Review, January 2001

Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue Between Literature and Christian Doctrine

St.Martin's Press

Iris Murdoch and the Others: A Writer in Dialogue with Theology

The 'others' examined by Fiddes are mainly those with whom Murdoch entered into explicit dialogue in her novels and philosophical writing - including Immanuel Kant, Simone Weil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolph Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Don Cupitt, Donald Mackinnon and Jacques Derrida. This 'historic' dialogue is, however, placed within a wider dialogue between literature and theology being conducted by the author, and 'others' are brought into relation with Murdoch in order to illuminate this more extensive conversation - notably the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and the feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva.\nThe book demonstrates that characteristic themes in Murdoch's novels and philosophy - the love of the Good, the death of the ego, illusory consolations, the death of God, the modifying of the will by 'waiting', the sublime and the beautiful, and attention to other things and persons - all take on a greater meaning when placed in the context of her life-long conversation with theology. The exploration of this context is deepened in this volume by reference to annotations and notes that Murdoch made in a number of theological books in her personal library.

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

T&T Clark

The 'others' examined by Fiddes are mainly those with whom Murdoch entered into explicit dialogue in her novels and philosophical writing - including Immanuel Kant, Simone Weil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolph Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Don Cupitt, Donald Mackinnon and Jacques Derrida. This 'historic' dialogue is, however, placed within a wider dialogue between literature and theology being conducted by the author, and 'others' are brought into relation with Murdoch in order to illuminate this more extensive conversation - notably the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and the feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva. The book demonstrates that characteristic themes in Murdoch's novels and philosophy - the love of the Good, the death of the ego, illusory consolations, the death of God, the modifying of the will by 'waiting', the sublime and the beautiful, and attention to other things and persons - all take on a greater meaning when placed in the context of her life-long conversation with theology. The exploration of this context is deepened in this volume by reference to annotations and notes that Murdoch made in a number of theological books in her personal library.

This book brings Christian theology, creative literature, and literary critical theory into dialogue on the theme of 'the end'.

The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature (Challenges in Contemporary Theology)

British & Irish

Wiley/Blackwell

The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature

In Participating in God, Paul Fiddes seeks to develop an image of God that is both appropriate to the demands of pastoral care and firmly grounded in the revelation of God. He explores the way in which pastoral care shapes our doctrine of God and how faith in the triune God in turn shapes the practice of pastoral care. Fiddes elaborates on the Trinitarian context for the pastoral acts of intercessory prayer, suffering, granting forgiveness, the facing of death, the exercising of spiritual gifts, and the sacraments.

Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity

Westminster/John Knox Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fiddes, Paul S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Fiddes, Paul S.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fiddes, Paul S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Creative Suffering of God (Clarendon Paperbacks)

The Creative Suffering of God

Seeing the World and Knowing God: Hebrew Wisdom and Christian Doctrine in a Late-Modern Context

Seeing the World and Knowing God: Hebrew Wisdom and Christian Doctrine in a Late-Modern Context

Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue Between Literature and Christian Doctrine

Iris Murdoch and the Others: A Writer in Dialogue with Theology

Iris Murdoch and the Others: A Writer in Dialogue with Theology

The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature (Challenges in Contemporary Theology)

The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature

Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity