Religous Studies
Old Main, 108
651-696-6141
Toni Schrantz
Recent Faculty Publications
Willing the Good: Jesus, Dissent and Desire by Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Christian Theology Paula Cooey Willing the Good undertakes to articulate a vision of a common good located in God’s desire, hence a common good without closure, one humans cannot fully know or control. God’s desire, rather than humans, challenges human presumptions to project self-interest, specifically white middle class self-interest, as universal. By beginning with the early Jesus movement as a dissident movement, the book locates this vision historically from the perspective of dissent rather than orthodoxy, thus undermining authoritarian ecclesiastical institutions and theological impulses as well. To mitigate theological authoritarianism further, the book approaches Christian ethics and christology from a perspective that assumes ongoing human construction rather than divine revelation as central to how Jesus is historically apprehended. Consistent with historical, ecclesiastical, and theological antiauthoritarianism, Willing the Good proposes a radical, progressive Christian ethic for today that is as critical of secularism and Christian liberalism as it is of evangelical and fundamentalist thought and practice. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, rather than representing Jesus as a single figure, the ideal moral subject to emulate, Willing the Good proposes Jesus as the supreme object of ethical concern. Jesus is the one who resides in the multiple faces of the many dispossessed others of society, those whom his followers are called to serve.
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