The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology

Rating:
Summary: An excellent reference
Review: This volume, 'The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology', edited by Alan Richardson and John Bowden, is part of a series of dictionaries produced by the Westminster Press -- other volumes include Christian Ethics, Christian Spirituality, Liturgy, and Church History. Having gone through several editions since Richardson's first dictionary, it remains a standard reference for seminarians, ministers, graduate students and scholars.

The contributors include members of Catholic, Anglican, Protestant and Orthodox communities, and from all over the world. As Richardson said in the introduction to the first edition, theology is an immensely wide subject, intertwined with history, philosophy, politics, science and fundamental communications theory. It is in this light that the dictionary continues to be updated, as theological enterprises continue to push boundaries and explore new dimensions of faith and practice.

The list of contributors reads like a who's who in Christian thought; the list goes on for eight pages. The entries, ranging from a few sentences to a few pages in length, number in the hundreds, and deal with a wide range of terms and topics of concern to theological issues -- biblical criticism, historical issues, theological terminology, philosophical intersections with theology, and religious studies topics.

Each of the significant entries (those that are more than basic definitions) include references to theologians and particular works that develop the ideas. Often, a single idea or topic (Justification, for example, or the Problem of Evil) will have divergent, sometimes even contradictory sections in the entry, which reflects the diversity of opinion within Christian thinking.

Bowden's introduction (he took over the project after Richardson) talks of this dictionary being, as was its predecessor edition, a product of the time -- as such, topics such as feminist theology, liberation theology, and other more recent topics are covered, but as they are developing quickly, the entries may be by necessity incomplete; some most recent topics are missing altogether. However, it is in the nature of volumes such as this to be incomplete, given that the field is continually developing.

This is one of my standard reference books. I keep it handy during all my seminary and scholarly work. It is an essential volume for students, and a very present help for ministers and other readers interesting in theological ideas.