A Cultural Theology of Salvation

There aren't many serious works of systematic theology which engage with Breaking Bad, The Big Bang Theory, Crazy Heart, theories of capital and positive psychology, as well as the Isenheim Altarpiece and Handel's Messiah. This lively, contemporary study of salvation does precisely that. Christian doctrine cannot simply repeat what has gone before, even as it recognises the value and richness of the traditions Christianity carries with it. Clive Marsh acknowledges this in exploring how doctrine interweaves with life experience and cultural consumption.

A Cultural Theology of Salvation considers how salvation is to be understood and articulated now, when the theme of 'redemption' appears outside of Christianity in the arts and popular culture. Marsh also assesses whether contemporary interest in 'happiness' has anything to do with salvation. The first part of the book sets the enquiry in the context of how theology operates as a discipline, and the cultural climate in which theology has to be done. The second part offers a number of case-studies (in art, music, TV, film, positive psychology, and economic life) exploring how the concerns of a doctrine of salvation are addressed directly and indirectly in Western culture. The third part distils the results of the case-studies in formulating a contemporary exposition of salvation, and concludes by showing what this means in practice.

Clive Marsh is Academic Head of the Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of Leicester and International Research Consultant and Research Fellow, Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham

Clive Marsh is Academic Head of the Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Leicester and International Research Consultant and Research Fellow at the Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham.

Part I: The Doctrine of Salvation as Cultural Theology
1. The Current Western Cultural Context for a Re-Worked Doctrine of Salvation
2. Cultural Theology after Tillich: Beyond Correlationalism
Part II: Understanding Salvation within Western Culture
3. Salvation in Aesthetic Perspective: Grunewald and Handel
4. Salvation in Affective Perspective: Crazy Heart and Breaking Bad
5. Salvation in Therapeutic Perspective: Positive Psychology and The Big Bang Theory
6. Salvation in Economic Perspective: Capital and Money
Part III: Salvation Reworked
7. Salvific Themes in Contemporary Western Culture: The Shape of Soteriology in Secular Societies
8. Reconstructing a Christian Approach to Salvation in the Contemporary West
Conclusion
Bibliography
Biblical Index
Name and Subject Index