Passion for change

Charles Amjad-Ali (Ph.D. in Political Philosophy and Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary) served as the Director of the Christian Study Centre, Rawalpindi, Pakistan from June 1985 till June 1995, and is presently Martin Luther King Jr. Professor for Justice and Christian Community at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Passion For Change: Reflections on the Healing Miracles in St. Mark is the result of his returning to Pakistan after years of teaching in the west, and finding that those skills did not serve him well outside the western academy. This discovery led him to "unlearn and restudy the necessities for doing theology...in the context of Pakistan and Asia" (from the Preface). This was to be carried out through a study of the miracles of Jesus in the Gospel of St. Mark. While the debate about biblical miracles in the Euro-American understanding has tended to focus on the distinction between the natural and the supernatural, "between rationality and faith, and the role of the power of God to intervene in natural and human affairs, etc." (from the Introduction), Amjad-Ali argues here "that these healing miracles of Jesus have to be understood largely as paradigms (or models) for social, political and economic activity of Christians, rather than just as an act performed for an individual's healing. My argument is that Mark's narrating of some selective miracles in great detail has to be seen as the bearer of significance for a theology of change" (Introduction).