Deus Misereatur

Faithful: A Theology of Sex by Beth Felker Jones My rating: 4 of 5 stars This 112 page paperback is a short, sweet, mildly sassy little thing. Beth Felker Jones, professor of Theology at Wheaton College, has compiled a handy set of chapters in "Faithful: A Theology of Sex". It's an easy-to-read dossier that takes on sex, both our birth sex and procreative sex, and is mature, unencumbered, and comprehensible. The working premise of "Faithful" is that sex "has to do with who God really is and who we really are" (13); that sex "matters to God because bodies matter to God, because God created our bodies and has good plans for us as embodied people" (18). This means, according to Jones, that the "Christian faith is profoundly for the body and for the joys of the bodily life" (22). The author hammers out the implications of her thesis, walking the reader through celibate singleness, faithful marriedness, and the goodness of sexu...

The Image of God in an Image Driven Age: Explorations in Theological Anthropology by Beth Felker Jones My rating: 5 of 5 stars What does it mean for humankind to be created in the image of God? Are there ways this should play out in our social, inter-racial, and marital relationships? Is there anything restorative and health-giving for the battered, abused and molested in knowing that they are in the image of God? Many of these questions, and more, are tackled in a new 272 page paperback anthology, “The Image of God in an Image Driven Age: Explorations in Theological Anthropology.” This compilation is edited by Beth Felker Jones, associate professor of theology at Wheaton College, and Jeffrey W. Barbeau, associate professor of theology in the Graduate School at Wheaton College. It is a collection of twelve essays are drawn from the 2015 Wheaton Theology Conference, and are penned by authors across the ecclesiastical-theological-racial-gender spectrum. These papers, pulled together, ...