A Human-Shaped God
Theology of an Embodied God
Published on 26. October 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
300 pages
978-0-664-26500-7 (ISBN)
Description
A Human-Shaped God approaches the humanlike accounts of God in the Old Testament as the starting places for theology and uses them to build a picture of the divine. This understanding of God is then brought into conversation with traditional conceptions that depict God as a being who knows everything that happens, is at every place at the same time, is constant and unchanging, and does not ultimately have material form. But instead of pitting the Old Testament's humanlike view of God against traditional theology and assuming that only one of these understandings is correct, A Human-Shaped God posits that theologians should embrace both of these constructions simultaneously. This is a new way of theological inquiry that embraces both the humanlike characteristics of God and the transcendence of God in traditional theology. By seeing and understanding the humanlike depictions of God in the Old Testament and by using the rich language of traditional theology together in tandem, the reader acquires a much deeper and meaningful understanding of God.
Reviews / Votes
"Halton's proposal is bold, and boldly constructivist. A Human-Shaped God offers a readable, deeply humane presentation of the embodied biblical God, and it makes a daring constructive case for the relevance of that human-like God to our lives today." - InterpretationMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Louisville
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
402 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-664-26500-7 (9780664265007)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2021
1st Edition
Westminster John Knox Press
from
€53.99
Available for download
Person
Charles Halton is External Affiliate at the Centre of the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary's University, Twickenham. He formerly served as an assistant professor of theology at Houston Baptist University, taught Old Testament and Semitic languages at Southern Seminary, and was a fellow of the Advanced Seminar in the Humanities in Venice, Italy. He was a Founder, Managing Editor, and Director of Media for the Marginalia Review of Books, a magazine of intellectual culture and a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He currently serves as the editor of Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither? and coauthor, editor, and translator (with Saana Svaerd) of Women's Writing of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Anthology of the Earliest Female Authors. He translated the cuneiform collection of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and has contributed to various academic journals, including the Journal of Biblical Literature, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and the Cuneiform Digital Library Notes. He has also contributed to publications including the monograph Reading Akkadian Hymns and Prayers and The Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings.