In Your Light: Theological Religious Studies in the Evangelical Tradition

Debates surrounding both the definition and study of ’religion’ are longstanding and continue to have far-reaching implications for religious literacy and education at all levels of society. From a confessionally evangelical perspective with its commitment to sola Scriptura, this volume joins the voices of those who recognise the impossibility of ’neutrality’ in the study of religion and who advocate a theological religious studies, contending that the fullest understanding and interpreting of the religions are seen ’in the light of the triune God who is the fullness of truth. Only from this theological narrative can other religions be truly understood, simply because Christianity is true.’ (D’Costa).

This volume justifies this methodology for the study of religion, exploring not only these epistemological concerns but also the definitional scope of ’religion’ and its relation to ’worldview’ ’culture’ and the ’secular’. Having laid this foundation, Daniel Strange offers a constructive proposal for an evangelical theological religious studies, building on the theological anthropology of the missiologist J.H. Bavinck and his morphology of a universal religious consciousness which he calls the ’magnetic points, ’ and which are both subverted and fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

College Director and lecturer in Culture, Religion and Public Theology at Oak Hill College, London. Author of ’For Their Rock Is Not as Our Rock’ (Apollos/Zondervan) (Award of Merit, Christianity Today 2016), Plugged In (GBC), The Possibility of Salvation Amongst the Unevangelized (Paternoster). Co-editor of Engaging with Barth (Apollos). Co-founder and co-chair of The Southgate Fellowship.