Liberal Theology: A Radical Vision

In this incisive work, distinguished theologian Peter Hodgson reflects on the precarious yet vital role of theology today and its nearly lost and sometimes discredited tradition of liberal thought, especially liberal theology. Liberal theology has been the main thread of Christian thinking over the last 200 years, but it threatens to be obscured by a rising tide of conservative and even fundamentalist Christianity, on the one hand, and a secular materialism, on the other. Hodgson's sure-footed work offers a way of seeing our religious and political situations together. He calls for liberal theology to reinvent itself and to fulfill its crucial historical roles as a mediator between Christian commitment and the cultural situation and as a critical lens through which to retrieve and reconstrue key Christian doctrines. The heart or root of Christian commitment, Hodgson finds, lies in its radical vision of freedom - God's, nature's, and our own. In the end, Hodgson's proposal embraces not only theology but Christianity itself and its relevance to today's most pressing problems.