Christ Crucified: A 21st Century Missiology of the Cross

The author's theological reflection is seasoned by long years of engagement in mission and interfaith relations. On each page the reader is drawn into the author's passionate concern both to affirm Luther's theology of the cross and free it from a fortress of tradition that must be copied in every place and clime. He argues rather that the Lutheran tradition of the theology of the cross must be stretched in many ways as it responds to the needs of Christians in the third world and through dialogue with the world's other religions. For Thomsen there is no God other than the God embodied and identified in the Crucified. At the heart of the universe is a God whose love, concretized in the life and suffering of Jesus, embraces the whole cosmos. It's this deep Christcentric understanding of God that frees us, says Thomsen, to be radically open to the world, to one another and to all people. Thomsen's cross-based missiology is a welcome theological guide for Christians who wish to be in a relationship of witness, dialogue and service with the neighbor who is also religious other.