Theology of the Love of God (Traces of Liberality: The George Newlands Reprint)

How can we make theology more constructive? Twentieth-Century British discussion about the Christian image of God and myth of the Incarnation has been widely admired for its honesty but criticized as being too insular and too negative. Neither criticism applies to this book the first major publication to come from the author who is now Professor Emeritus of Divinity at the University of Glasgow. He offers a systematic exposition of the most characteristic Christian doctrine in dialogue with other thinkers around the world and across the centuries. His aspiration is to do for love what eminent German theologians have recently done for faith and hope. He knows well that the idea of the love of God although so prominent in the Bible has been under fire in the modern world -- for many serious reasons here taken seriously. Talk to God is notoriously complex he writes and talk of love notoriously sentimental. But he carefully demonstrates that the tradition that begins in the Bible is still vital enough to help crucially in the new urgent reconstruction of Christian belief. From a more profound theology of the love of God at work in the creation and redemption of man a renewal of faith and hope would follow. This book brings theology to focus in terms of its central truth. It is a book written lucidly and with a refreshing unwillingness to be satisfied with conventional rhetoric. The readership will consist not only of professional theologians and their students but also of reading clergymen of all denominations and lay people who recognize the importance of the subject. -- Professor John Hick University of Birmingham George Newlands is Professor Emeritus of Divinity in the University of Glasgow and an Honorary Fellow in the University of Edinburgh. A Fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh he is a former Dean of Trinity Hall Cambridge. Recent publications include Christ and Human Rights (2006) and Hospitable God (2010).