This first of four volumes explores how Christian doctrine is lived, and the way in which beliefs are not simply cognitive sets of ideas but embodied cultural, and as such formative, practices. Christians learn how to understand the contents of their faith, learn the language of the faith, through engagements that are simultaneously somatic, affective, imaginative, and intellectual. The first part of this volume examines the complex levels of these engagements through three historical developments in the systematic organization of doctrine: the Creeds, the Summa, and Protestant dogmatics. On t ... More

This first of four volumes explores how Christian doctrine is lived, and the way in which beliefs are not simply cognitive sets of ideas but embodied cultural, and as such formative, practices. Christians learn how to understand the contents of their faith, learn the language of the faith, through engagements that are simultaneously somatic, affective, imaginative, and intellectual. The first part of this volume examines the complex levels of these engagements through three historical developments in the systematic organization of doctrine: the Creeds, the Summa, and Protestant dogmatics. On the basis of this examination a methodology is outlined for exploring and doing systematic theology that captures how the faith is lived in cultural, social, and embodied engagements. Part two examines several fundamental theological concepts and how they are to be understood from the point of view of an engaged systematics: truth, revelation, judgement, discernment, proclamation, faith seeking understanding, and believing as it relates to and grounds the possibilities for faith. The examination is conducted in an interdisciplinary manner through poetry, art, film, contemporary science, the Bible, and theological discourse, investigating the human condition and theology as the deep dream for salvation. In the third and final part, theology as a lived and ongoing pedagogy concerned with individual and corporate formation is related to biological life, social life, and life in Christ. Here an approach to living theologically is sketched that is the primary focus for all four volumes: ethical life.