The Dialogical Spirit : Christian Reason and Theological Method in the Third Millennium

Engaging with a diverse range of views, this study offers a new approach to theological method informed by Pentecostal and Evangelical traditions. Contemporary proposals for Christian theology from post-Liberalism to Radical Orthodoxy and beyond have espoused their own methodological paradigms. Those who have ventured into this domain of theological method, however, have usually had to stake their claims vis-à-vis trends in what might be called the contemporary “post-al” age, whether of the post-modern, post-Christendom, post-Enlightenment, post-Western, or post-colonial varieties. This volume is unique among offerings in this arena in suggesting a way forward that engages on each of these fronts, and does so from a particularistic Christian perspective without giving up on Christian theology’s traditional claims to universality. This is accomplished through the articulation of a distinctive dialogical methodology informed by both Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism, one rooted in the Christian salvation-history narrative of Incarnation and Pentecost that is yet open to the world in its many and various cultural, ethnic, religious, and disciplinary discourses. Amos Yong here engages with twelve different interlocutors representing different ecumenical, religious, and disciplinary perspectives. The Dialogical Spirit thus not only proffers a model for Christian theological method suitable for the twenty-first century global context but also exemplifies this methodological approach through its interactions across the contemporary scholarly, inter-religious, and theological landscape.