Book Description

Christian universalism has been explored in its biblical, philosophical, and historical dimensions. For the first time, The God Who Saves explores it in systematic theological perspective. In doing so it also offers a fresh take on universal salvation, one that is postmetaphysical, existential, and hermeneutically critical. The result is a constructive account of soteriology that does justice to both the universal scope of divine grace and the historicity of human existence. In The God Who Saves David W. Congdon orients theology systematically around the New Testament witness to the apocalyptic inbreaking of God's reign. The result is a consistently soteriocentric theology. Building on the insights of Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Kasemann, Eberhard Jungel, and J. Louis Martyn, he interprets the saving act of God as the eschatological event that crucifies the old cosmos in Christ. Human beings participate in salvation through their unconscious, existential cocrucifixion, in which each person is interrupted by God and placed outside of himself or herself. Both academically rigorous and pastorally sensitive, The God Who Saves opens up new possibilities for understanding not only what salvation is but also who the God who brings about our salvation is. Here is an interdisciplinary exercise in dogmatic theology for the twenty-first century.