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their traditions and draw on the broader trinitarian tradition that they share to modify the ways of thinking about Christology, pneumatology, and grace in their respective traditions. In pushing boundaries, I think they remain within the parameters of their respective traditions but tease out the implications of their traditions in the areas of Christology and pneumatology. My project has the same agenda. I use the Augustinian mutual love model, as modified by Edwards and Coffey, and apply it to two issues in contemporary theology—the nature of redemption and the theology of religions. In this respect, I see my work as continuing their form of theology in substance (like them, I use the Augustinian mutual love model) and spirit (like them, I apply the insights of trinitarian theology to important issues in contemporary theology). Thus, I think the facts that both Edwards and Coffey sit within a major trajectory of trinitarian theology, represent significant forms of theology within their respective traditions, and develop those traditions in innovative ways make them excellent partners for ecumenical dialogue and constructive theology. Having outlined the historical and ecumenical program of this project, I turn to its constructive goals.
Theology is (or at the least, it should be) a contextual and dynamic discipline. It is so because the call of Christ to fellowship with God comes to human beings in the particular circumstances of their lives, and they seek to respond to that call within those circumstances. Indeed, the contextual nature of the Christian life inevitably leads to the dynamism of theology. That is to say, theology is dynamic because discipleship is dynamic. At its best, theology assists Christians to understand and to bring their relationship with God to concrete expression in the vicissitudes of their personal, family, civic, professional, and church lives. To be sure, theology “guards the good deposit entrusted” to it, or what is sometimes referred to in evangelical theology as the “timeless truths” (2 Tim. 1:14). Nevertheless, the churches and individual Christians understand and actualize that Gospel in terms of the culture in which they live.
This is not a dismissal of the achievements of the past. After all, I teach systematic and historical theology to graduate students, and one of my primary areas of research is Jonathan Edwards, an eighteenth-century