God’s Patience and our Work: Hans Frei, Generous Orthodoxy and the Ethics of Hope

American biblical scholar and theologian Hans Frei is most famed as the father of ‘generous orthodoxy’, a minimalist approach to Christian faith which refused to hold tightly to matters of doctrine beyond the core Christian beliefs. Beyond this, though, on the basis of his Christology, ecclesiology and his account of providence Frei sketched a hopeful realistic ethics of reconciliation that offers a distinctive and significant contribution to Christian social ethics and political theology.

In his reassessment of a man who might conceivably be considered one of the most influential figures in modern Anglophone theology, Ben Fulford shines a spotlight on Frei’s ethics and political thought. Bringing Frei’s thinking into conversation with other key contemporary theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr, James Cone, Juan Luis Segundo, Beverley Harrison and Stanley Hauerwas, Fulford demonstrates that Frei’s thinking remains deeply pertinent to the challenges facing Christian theologians today.