This study offers a postcolonial, intersectional rereading of John 4:1–42 that juxtaposes the Johannine encounter of the Samaritan woman with the historical legacy of Korean “comfort women” to illuminate the ethnosexual dynamics of colonial and patriarchal power. Employing an intersectional lens that foregrounds ethnosexuality—how ethnic boundary-making and sexualized stigma mutually constitute regimes of exclusion—the essay proceeds in three steps. First, a historical and discursive analysis of the contested public memory surrounding Korean “comfort women” shows how Japanese colonialism and postcolonial Korean patriarchal nationalism sustain mechanisms of sexualized ethnonational marginalization. Second, a close rereading of the Samaritan woman's dialogue with Jesus exposes how ethnosexual identity and nation-building shape the narrative's power relations. Finally, the essay reflects on the implications of the Samaritan woman's decolonizing agency for understanding the testimony and resilience of formerly enslaved and stigmatized women. The study argues that the Samaritan woman, as an ethnosexual other , enacts a form of decolonizing agency by transforming personal stigma into persuasive public witness, thereby disrupting the communal and imperial structures that seek to silence her. A postcolonial, intersectional reading of John 4 thus uncovers the Gospel's embedded colonial tensions and invites both transformative engagement with contemporary injustices and advocacy for the marginalized in the name of solidarity.

This article presents the keynote address from the conference on Nicaea at Princeton Theological Seminary held on November 6, 2025.

This article explores the concept of “divine will” in the context of Javanese ethics and John D. Caputo's philosophical thought on “theology of the event.” The article argues that weakness, often understood as lack, is the key to understanding the manifestation of divine will. In Javanese ethics, the concept of “nrima” reflects the acceptance of divine will that often comes through uncertainty and suffering. Meanwhile, Caputo, through his reading of Derrida, deconstructs the concept of an omnipotent and omnipresent God into a God who is present through unexpected and uncontrollable “events.” In this frame of thought, weakness is understood as a space open to surprise and wonder, a place where the divine will reveals itself. This article seeks to find common ground between Javanese ethics and Caputo's thinking in understanding the meaning of “divine will” in a world full of uncertainties. The contribution of this article is to provide a new perspective in discussing the problem of theodicy by focusing on the positive meaning of weakness and uncertainty in understanding God's actions.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, a leading theologian of the twentieth century, has dedicated his life to dialogue with the natural sciences. In this article, I argue that Pannenberg's discourse on science and religion is founded upon his theological methodology. To demonstrate, I initially explain Pannenberg's three main methods, and show how each method is related to the dialogue between religion and science. I then explore how Pannenberg discusses specific fields of science in relation to theology, such as field theory and evolution, and how he interprets these within the discourses of Christian doctrine, that is, the doctrines of God and creation.

This article examines the standard English translation of the Theological Declaration of Barmen, by Arthur C. Cochrane, and argues that a more literal translation demonstrates more forcefully just how much the Declaration challenges notions of “lordship” that continue to distort the life of the church and of society. While Cochrane's translation is fluid and reliable, it does not convey the way in which the Declaration plays with the cognates of certain key German words. Moreover, Cochrane uses the RSV for biblical quotations, rather than translating Barmen's Luther Bible. The article focuses especially on how Barmen pairs and contrasts “lording” (and its cognates) with “serving” (and its cognates). Further, the article carefully explicates the Declaration's attention to Christ as the Word who, as free and enduring, frees and claims us for this service. The article concludes with a retranslation of the Declaration as a whole

Religious communities have shown a growing interest in social innovation as a way to have impact in their communities, leading some observers to wonder if we are in the beginning of a new social gospel movement. This article explores Christian social innovation's relationship to “social Christianity,” but cautions that faith formation of participants must be improved if we are to expect Christian social innovation to become a social “gospel” movement. Current levels of religious instruction in the US do not seem to help people distinguish Christianity from concepts like “niceness” and “helping,” making it easy to confuse Christian social innovation with secular humanitarianism. This is a problem the original social gospel movement avoided, thanks largely to the era’s practices of religious formation practiced in families and congregations. If the impact of Christian social innovation is to parallel that of the social gospel movement, it needs a coherent theological vision and moral vocabulary to guide social innovators. The author recommends creating systems of formation that will help faith communities embody as well as espouse social Christianity.

This article examines Reinhold Niebuhr’s understanding of tolerance as a response, in significant part, to the epistemic distortions that inhibit the self’s comprehension of truth. His concept of tolerance emphasizes its subjective dimension, and involves a recognition of tendencies of the self to favor its own preferences and perspectives. Acknowledgment of one’s preferential perspectives requires self-critical scrutiny in light of what Niebuhr sees as the paradoxical character of truth. While he proposes a provocative basis for tolerance that deserves renewed attention, he does not address some of its practical challenges, such as distinguishing the tolerable from the intolerable. Nevertheless, Niebuhr’s notion of tolerance contributes to a deepened understanding of its grounding in the capabilities and constraints of selfhood.