Models of Contextual Theology

Stephen B Bevans's Models of Contextual Theology has become a staple in courses on theological method as a handbook used by missioners other Christians concerned with the Christian tradition's understanding of itself in relation culture. First published in 1992 now in its seventh printing in English, with translations underway into Spanish, Korean, Indonesian, Bevans's book is a judicious examination of what the terms to contextualize mean. In the revised expanded edition, Bevans adds a counter-cultural model the five presented in the first edition -- the translation, the anthropological, the praxis, the synthetic, the transcendental model. This means that readers will be introduced the way in which figures such as Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank, Lesslie Newbigin, and (occasionally) Pope John Paul II need be taken into account. The author's revisions also incorporate suggestions made by reviewers enhance the clarity of the original three chapters on the nature of contextual theology the five models.