DOI: / A Contemporary Theology for Ecumenical Peace

Transcription

1 DOI: / A Contemporary Theology for Ecumenical Peace

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3 A Contemporary Theology for Ecumenical Peace James E. Will DOI: /

4 a contemporary theology for ecumenical peace Copyright James E. Will, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN PDF ISBN Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. First edition: DOI /

5 Contents Introduction vi 1 History s Ambiguous Tide toward Divine Peace 1 2 Universal Creator and Historical Redeemer 13 3 Just Love: The Integral Relation of Love and Justice 33 4 The Ecumenical Church in National Civil Religion 43 Index 54 DOI: / v

6 Introduction There can be little doubt that witness and action for peace is mandated for Christians and Jews in their scripture, and it has played an important, but intermittent, role in their social witness for thousands of years. Judaism s and Christianity s prophetic teachings reveal the Creator s eternal will to guide the creation to a just peace. The realization that Islam also proclaims to its faithful in its scripture the same prophetic mandate, however, is a far more recent learning for most in our synagogues and churches. This growing awareness is part of the larger recognition that these three religions share a prophetic tradition that began with Abraham, continued through the Mosaic prophets of Israel, and culminated for Christians in Jesus and for Muslims in Muhammad. These three faiths are often gathered, as here, under the designation of Abrahamic religions. The crucial theological question needing to be answered to sustain the believer s peace witness lies in properly understanding the Creator s relation to a continuingly violent world. The answer explored in chapter 2 understands the eternal God as affected by, and active in, human history, focusing more on God s wisdom, compassion, and justice than ultimate power, enabling an interactive human cocreative praxis in an unfinished creation. The philosophy of panentheism is used to explicate this theological position. The axiom proposed for the human praxis cocreating ecumenical peace is just love, expressing the integral relation of love and justice. And the strategy proposed is vi DOI: /

7 Introduction vii for the church (synagogue and mosque) fully to accept their role in the national civil religion, while standing guard against any form of holy nationalism. Though the author has had a long career in higher education, the style of this book is designedly less academic, making large use of metaphor and memoir. The reader is invited to visit the author s 1994 volume The Universal God: Love, Justice and Peace in the Global Village if wanting to find a more academic discussion with reference to the relevant literature, especially in its 27 pages of endnotes. DOI: /