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In 1958 Marvin Halverson and Arthur A. Cohen jointly edited A Handbook of Christian Theology, a volume of 101 essays that served admirably to introduce students and interested laity to a basic understanding of theological terms, concepts, and trends. The volume went through more than twenty printings and helped four generations of students, including the co-editors and many of the contributors to the present work, to become fluent in the field. But because the cultural and religious situation has changed dramatically since the 1950s, the time has come for A New Handbook of Christian Theology, a compendium of 148 fresh articles to map the contours of a changed theological terrain.

The earlier Handbook appeared in a cultural and religious situation defined in the wake of World War II and the Korean War and in the initial gusts of the chilling winds of the cold war. Distinctly Protestant in focus, it bore the imprint of the neoorthodox (or neo-Reformation) theology and existential philosophy that characterized that era. Its bibliographies make frequent reference to the European giants of neoorthodox thought (Karl Barth, Donald and John Baillie, Emil Brunner, Rudolf Bultmann, Martin Buber, and Nicholas Berdyaev) and the progenitor of modern existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard. The voices of Roman Catholics, women, and minorities are barely audible in its pages.

More than three decades have passed since the initial publication of Cohen and Halverson’s Handbook, and theology has entered a revolutionary period in light of a new cultural situation. Theologians now work in the wake of the knowledge of the Holocaust, which has called for reappraisal of the doctrines of God and human being and suffering; the civil rights movement, which raised issues about the theological meaning of economics and justice and led to black theology; the Vietnam War, which brought fresh thought about peace and idolatry; the Second Vatican Council, which engaged Roman Catholicism with modern thought; the dialogue between the principal religious traditions in the world, which made pluralism a household word; the rise of feminism, which engendered alternative readings of the Bible and the history of doctrine and has led to proposals to rethink radically the content of the principal doctrines; and ecological threats to the future of the planet, which brought issues about science into the mainstream of theology. Classic theological topics in method and ethics boldly came to the forefront; new subjects such as the liberation theologies burst into view.

Although Catholic and Protestant theologians now collaborate more than ever because of the influence of the ecumenical movement, theology today claims no established method, no unified doctrine of revelation, and no common approach to appropriate the history of theology. Consequently, theologies have proliferated in a cultural situation dominated by multiple emphases and cascading streams of thought, each of the new theological movements often having a unique method and focus that lead to content that has new contours. For example, A New Handbook of Christian Theology contains articles on theologies that have been born since the 1950s; namely, black, confessional, death of God, deconstructionist, feminist, liberation, Marxist, narrative, political, postmodern, process, and womanist theologies.

Theologians, students, and laity respond variously to the present theological situation. Some dive deeply into one of the new methodologies and become immersed in radically venturous thought. Others, more conservative in nature, retain allegiance to older approaches, attempting to reform and refine established paradigms of theological thought. Still others, who become more like spectators than participants, view the situation as a revolution in theology that awaits the outcome of the debate and the rise of new, normative approaches. Another group, hearing a cacophony of dissident voices, retreats from theological reflection altogether in anger or despair.

Believing that the present theological situation is diffuse (because no globally recognized figures or methods dominate) but not chaotic (because clearly defined theological options and promising thinkers are emerging), we have included a pluralism of perspectives in selecting topics and authors. A faint outline of a vaguely defined theological future gestates within the essays in this volume.

We initiated conversations about editing A New Handbook of Christian Theology in 1987. First, we determined to include only articles on subjects of current interest, not articles of strictly historical significance. We culled possible topics from the initial Handbook, other reference works, but most significantly from our joint understanding of today’s theology. Early on, we recognized that we are not only describing the field; in some sense we are defining the field. We therefore proceeded cautiously and in collaboration with other scholars in the subfields of theology to chart the relevant theological topics that represent the variegated terrain of Christian theological studies. In the several years that we have worked on the project, we have added a couple of topics to our original list (Space and Womanist Theology, for example) because the emerging and communal character of Christian theology has continued to touch new concerns, express new voices, and inspire new visions.

Because we perceived the current theological scene not to be dominated by any one powerful movement or dominant voice, we ranged across the theological spectrum and the globe to pinpoint writers appropriate for our topics. In some cases we chose established experts with a magisterial command of a topic; in others we tapped younger scholars whose work is known so far only in the proceedings of the theological professional societies and articles tucked away in journals, but whom we judged to have promising futures. Only four of the authors of articles in the earlier Handbook, all of whom were just starting their careers at the time, have been retained to write for A New Handbook of Christian Theology. Fresh voices, including those of women and minorities, are heard in these pages. The authors represent diverse geographical regions and assorted confessional traditions; in fact, some stand outside any explicit version of the Christian tradition. Our aim is to present a set of perspectives that adequately and comprehensively records the situation in theology at the end of the twentieth century.

Donald W. Musser

Joseph L. Price

June 1991