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Formation and the ensuing transformation, then, are not elements of "practical" theology to be explored once we've learned the "systematic" (read: impractical) theology. The focus on disposition of belief that Thiselton brings to this discussion illumines all of who we are and shapes how we live. When belief is tied to the word "disposition," formation and transformation are at the table. Theology itself is praxis. And here's a potent idea that emerges from Thiselton's discussion of communally-shaped and ongoing confessions: to confess is to open oneself to be wounded. How so? Genuine confession of a creed involves the willingness for re-formation to occur at the hands of the truths of that confession. I like this: "Confessions declare a content, but they also serve to nail the speaker's colors to the mast as an act of first-person testimony and commitment."

A prominent feature of theological discussion today is emphasis on community. Thiselton swims in this stream, but he knows the currents that are merely faddish. Some postmodern appeals to one's community as the foundation of one's beliefs, he argues, are little more than wishful hopes that others will just go away. Genuine community, as Thiselton relentlessly proves in each chapter, involves commitment to listening to the whole Bible and to the voices of the Church throughout church history. Community-shaped theology is not just "my" community, but the community God formed with Abraham and that continues throughout the world to this day.

As I was reading The Hermeneutics of Doctrine a friend wrote me and said he had heard that Thiselton had died. I knew Tony had a stroke. Rosemary, his wife, wrote a short postscript to the Acknowledgments informing us that her husband "was devastated by a stroke." So I wrote to a friend at Nottingham, where I did my doctoral work and where Thiselton now teaches, and the friend told me that Thiselton had had a remarkable recovery and was now back at work. I am grateful and, Tony, I'm standing in line for your next dense book.

Scot McKnight is Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University.

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Collin Hansen's Theology in the News column occasionally discusses books on theology.

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March (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52