Persons In Community

William H. Lazareth (ed), 2004 , Persons in Community: Theological Voices from the Pastorate, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans

While Philip Rolnick in Person, Grace and God deals with the theological and philosophical concept of personhood, this book deals with the pastoral aspects of persons. Its main thesis is that persons can only be understood in community. This community is God's people who are faithful stewards and prudent managers of the world.

William Lazareth, the editor is the Jerald C. Brauer Distinguished Professor of Lutheran Studies at Carthage College, Kenosha in Wisconsin. He is also a program associate of the Pastor-Theologian Program at the Center of Theological Inquiry. This program is supported by an endowment by the Lilly Foundation. The program is set up because some Christians have perceived that there is a separation of theology and the church.

"A significant part of the current crisis in the church is the hiatus between academic theology as an intellectual discipline and ecclesial theology as a confessional stance" notes Wallace M. Aston, Jr. the director of the Center of theological Inquiry (p.ix).

The Pastor-Theologian Program "would seek to focus attention on the ordained ministry as a theological vocation and on the church as a theological community' (p.xiii). Sixty pastors were involved in the program and discussion. Twenty of these contributed articles to this volume.

The articles are easy to read and give a significant pastoral perspective on many of the issues dealing with personhood. It is a ground up theological investigation on what it means to be human.

.