Theology & corporate conscience

essays in honor of Frederick Herzog

Plot

The essays of this volume were originally written to honor Frederick Herzog on his seventieth birthday. His unexpected and greatly mourned death on October 9, 1995, just weeks before his birthday, prevented the presentation of the volume to him, but it now appears as an expression of our gratitude to God for his life and a way of keeping alive for the church and the academy the passion of his spirit. Our hope is that these essays will serve to enhance the sound theology for which he worked so diligently and the deep spirituality that we saw in him, a spirituality that unstintingly witnessed to the grace of God overflowing in love, doing justice and making peace. Herzog described the church in the latter part of the twentieth century as a "ship on the ocean where at times the captain changes course unexpectedly. God has changed course on us," he wrote. "Part of the price we pay for not paying attention to the change is that we do not know where we are (in North America). In a world becoming increasingly complex we are ignorant of our tasks." To get our bearings, he believed, we have to look for the polestar, traveling again with the biblical story, listening for the Word of God who meets us in grace. For Herzog, Jesus Christ remained "Immanuel," neither an "adornment to the world" nor a "feeling with which one toys," but the meaning of human existence. Frederick Herzog has been a vital teacher for so many because he has understood that theological work in the period after the Holocaust has to take place in conversation with the victims of human arrogance and the cruel use of power. It is among the wretched of the earth that Easter hope is enfleshed. Theology, faithfully done, bears the wounds of Jesus. It sees the crucifixion of Christ taking place daily across the blood-stained earth. The church is summoned not to greatness, but to humbly listen for that voice and to respond with the discipleship of the cross. Book jacket.