Rev. Dr. Paul W. Newman

Professor Emeritus in Systematic Theology

This page contains links to books and articles written by Dr. Newman.   If you would like to contact him to discuss these ideas, there is an e-mail link on the home page.

The time has come for a paradigm shift in Christian theology. Evidence of the need for some basic changes in our tradition has been growing along with the knowledge explosion that characterizes the twentieth century. The explosion of knowledge has ignited the imaginations and curiosity of Christian scholars to look with fresh eyes at every aspect of Christian tradition and thought. The result is that countless new insights have emerged, some with profound implications for the very framework in which Christian faith is understood. While there has been a lot of joy in the creative liberty of discovering new aspects of our tradition there has also been tension in realizing the unresolved conflicts between the new discoveries and what the church has held for many centuries to be orthodox theology.

Did Jesus, the Jew, simply ignore the faith of his own religious tradition and expound a new and different way of atonement? Or did Christianity, independent of Jesus, develop the logic of atonement by the blood of Jesus as substitutionary satisfaction to God for the offense of all human sins? 

Book:   A Spirit Christology

Article:  Jesus on Atonement

Publications

This chapter appears in a book titled Where The Spirit is There is Freedom  published by CANEC, United Church of Canada, 1985.  Dean Salter Ed.

Chapter: The Holy Spirit: What’s It All About?

Dr. Newman presents this chapter of the book titled  Aging and Dying: Legal, Scientific and Religious Challenges (Harold Coward, Ed.)

Article:  The Buddhist Minister: Interfaith Sharing of Rituals at the Time of Death

Dr. Newman reviews the book titled  The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, by John Dominic Crossan (Harper, 1991).

Book Review:  The Historical Jesus...

Dr. Newman published this article in the Christian CENTURY magazine in January 1991.

Article:  Identifying with Jesus: Atonement as Royal Metaphor

Published in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 28:1, Winter 1991.

Article:  The Word Proceeds from the Spirit

Published in the Scottish Journal of Theology.  Vol. 34, pp. 415-426

Article:  Humanity With Spirit

The Front Page of the July 1991 United Church Observer magazine.

UCC Observer Front Page:  Examinations of scriptural Authority should look at discrimination of women.  That would be an important step toward true inclusiveness.

What does Jesus ask of the people whom you and I see walking and talking with him on the top of the mountain of Transfiguration? Are we listening more to the voice of Jesus or more to the others? Has Jesus been transfigured yet for us?

Sermon:  Transfiguration…  Matthew 19: 1-8

Love came down at Christmas---but, of course, it was here all the time. We cannot imagine a world without love.  This is what the Prologue to John’s Gospel says. If we change one word in the first chapter of John we get the picture.

Sermon:  Christmas…      John 1: 1-5