New Wine Tastings: Theological Essays of Cultural Engagement

This collection of essays provides samplings of a theological engagement of culture that Paul Louis Metzger has been developing over the years in his work as founder and director of The Institute for the Theology of Culture: New Wine New Wineskins at Multnomah Biblical Seminary of Multnomah University. Metzger espouses an incarnational over against a predominantly worldview-oriented or market-driven theological approach to engaging culture and situates his work in Trinitarian communal and co-missional thought forms. This volume of biblically and theologically framed and compassion-driven essays addresses such themes as postmodernity structural evil cultural genocide sexuality HIV/AIDS the prison system the global slave trade and the arts. It will be welcomed by those analyzing and developing theological-cultural paradigms and engaging key issues in the contemporary setting. No single specimen--or vintage--of evangelical cultural engagement more ably and deliciously demonstrates itself than the profoundly theological cultural criticism of Paul Louis Metzger. His work occasions a hearty toast and is worth the repeated tastings this volume so richly invites. --Rodney Clapp author Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction New Wine Tasting enables us to lift our heads and with eyes wide open learn how to engage our culture as we are called to do. Cutting-edge theology for our times. We need this volume. --Michael O. Emerson author of Divided by Faith United by Faith People of the Dream The Institute for the Theology of Culture: New Wine New Wineskins from which this volume of essays emerges is at the cutting edge of todays wholistic ministry movement. And because its connected to a university and seminary its in a great position to challenge future leaders. I am highly impressed. --John M. Perkins author of Let Justice Roll Down: This bottling collects a decades worth of Metzgers distinctive engagement with the Bible the Church and our culture. You wont find the dreary arcanum of the academy in New Wine Tastings; these essays bristle with biblical and practical perspective on the most pressing issues of our times. They reveal the heart and mind of a passionate insightful and often humorous theologian who shows us all how to live into our calling as witnesses to the Gospel. The perfect compliment to your favorite beverage! --Robb Redman author of The Great Worship Awakening: Singing a New Song in the Postmodern Church Paul Metzgers robust Trinitarian theology shaped through Barth and the Church Fathers is the engine that drives his insightful and provocative cultural criticism allowing him to explore with equal confidence Native American missions and Johnny Cash. Metzgers confident yet winsome approach to culture charts a new path for a Christian witness in and for culture in the twenty-first century. His is a voice to which I will listen closely. --Daniel Siedell author of God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art Paul Metzger and his New Wine New Wineskins project in theology and culture have gathered together here a collection of occasional essays that are indeed tastings-suggestive samples of what a Trinitarian and incarnational theology of cultural engagement might look like. Some brief and anecdotal and others longer and more theoretically developed they all bear witness to a form of cultural engagement deeply rooted in the theological tradition of the Church and attuned to the currents of contemporary culture. Though I prefer fermented grain to grapes this is good drink! --Eric G. Flett author of Persons Powers and Pluralities: Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Culture Paul Louis Metzger is Professor of Christian Theology and Theology of Culture at Multnomah Biblical Seminary and Multnomah University. He is the author of Consuming Jesus (2007) and coauthor of Exploring Ecclesiology (2009).