That All May Believe: A Theology of the Gospel and the Mission of the Church

Karl P. Donfried -- Smith College A penetrating analysis of western Christianity in crisis as well as an incisive and compelling guide for course correction. Written with clarity insight and conviction That All May Believe is Braaten at his very best. A must-read for Christians in the northern hemisphere. Gabriel Fackre -- author of The Church Who else but Carl Braaten could show us an ecumenical vision of theology as evangelical but not simply Protestant catholic but not just Roman orthodox but not only Eastern? Here is a needed call to share our ecclesial gifts with mutual affirmation on classical convictions and mutual admonition regarding teachable differences. Yet all this is done with a well-known Braaten edge -- indictment of conventional Christianity and a drifting academic theology. We are in the authors debt for charting the right course toward visible unity and full communion for a church solid in its centralities and passionate about its mission. Frank C. Senn -- Immanuel Lutheran Church Evanston Illinois Employing his gift for incisive analysis of theological movements and trends according to the criterion of the saving gospel of Jesus Christ Braaten affirms the catholic tradition with its canon of Scripture and historic dogmas as the indispensable bearer of the gospel. With evangelical passion for the missionary enterprise he shows how the church must move toward ecumenical unity in order to bring the world to belief. He does not ignore the reality of the powers of evil that strive against the mission of the gospel. Nor does he shrink from saying that dialogue with the religions must not blunt the apostolic imperative to proclaim the gospel and bring converts into the community of faith in the crucified and risen Christ. This timely book confessionally anchored and ecumenically hopeful will engage theological readers from beginning to end. Carl E. Braaten is one of the leading theologians in American Lutheranism. He taught Systematic Theology for a generation at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and was founding editor of the popular theological journal Dialog. He has written or edited many foundational works in Lutheran theology among them is a two-volume Christian Dogmatics (1985) edited with Robert Jenson and Justification: The Article by Which the Church Stands or Falls (1990). For thirteen years Braaten has been director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology and editor of its journal Pro Ecclesia.