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Zusatztext Jenkins expounds his exemplary theologians with proper seriousness in a masterly exposition backed by an immense range of reference and scholarly detail. What emerges without intrusive emphasis is the way governing ideas control our take on the text, and the way they can achieve life after death in theologies claiming contemporary relevance. There is a brilliant choice of texts to illustrate the pressure of a selective hermeneutic: the "I AM THAT I AM" of Exodus 3: 14, the encounters of Jesus with his mother, the cries of agony in the garden and of dereliction on the cross. Klappentext Educated people have become bereft of sophisticated ways to develop their religious inclinations. A major reason for this is that theology has become vague and dull. In The Character of God! author Thomas E. Jenkins maintains that Protestant theology became boring by the late nineteenthcentury because the depictions of God as a character in theology became boring. He shows how in the early nineteenth century! American Protestant theologians downplayed biblical depictions of God's emotional complexity and refashioned his character according to their own notions! stressing emotionalsingularity. These notions came from many sources! but the major influences were the neoclassical and sentimental literary styles of characterization dominant at the time. The serene benevolence of neoclassicism and the tender sympathy of sentimentalism may have made God appealing in the mid-1800s! but by the end of the century! these styles had lost much of their cultural power and increasingly came to seem flat and vague. Despite this! both liberal and conservative theologians clung to these characterizations of God throughout the twentieth century.Jenkins argues that a way out of this impasse can be found in romanticism! the literary style of characterization that supplanted neoclassicism and sentimentalism and dominated American literary culture throughout the twentieth century. Romanticism emphasized emotional complexity and resonated withbiblical depictions of God. A few maverick religious writers-- such as Harriet Beecher Stowe! W. G. T. Shedd! and Horace Bushnell--did devise emotionally complex characterizations of God and in some cases drew directly from romanticism. But theirstrange and sometimes shocking depictions of God werelargely forgotten in the twentieth century. s use "theological" as a pejorative term! implying that an argument is needlessly Jenkins urges a reassessment of their work and a greaterin understanding of the relationship bet Zusammenfassung In this work, the author maintains that theology became boring because the depiction of God as a "character" became boring, fashioned according to theologians' notions of character, derived from contemporary literature. He considers why a romantic characterization of God was problematic....
