For readers eager to seek an improved understanding of the Good News, this book provides a way of better construing the Christian message. It begins with the church fathers, continues with the medieval thinkers, and covers modernity's doubters who published critiques of faith and elaborated new conceptions of faith. It thus surveys the various theological methods that were employed over two thousand years of Christian experience. The principal theologians and philosophers that are presented here are Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Schleiermacher, Lonergan, Ricoeur, Congar, and Geffre. The author also presents several modern authors' nuanced assessments of historicity, which fashioned and are still fashioning a large variety of cultures. This sense of history has allowed scholars to appreciate both the particular and the permanent in religious studies that convey meanings. The originality of the author of this volume consists in combining a competence in systematic interpretations with an expertise in pastoral theology. In addition, readers will find in these pages a living ecumenical dialogue characterized by correct construals of those "others" whose understandings of religion may appear as contradicting one's own views.
