Bishop Willimon Tackles Question of Salvation in New Book
Bishop Willimon was one of several United Methodist authors who held book signings at Cokesbury at General Conference 2008.
Who Will Be Saved? is the central question of Bishop William H. Willimon's newest book, published last week by Abingdon Press
"In the last few years, teaching and preaching in our churches, I've found a good deal of interest, and some confusion, in regard to what Christians believe about salvation in Jesus Christ," commented Bishop Willimon. "We Wesleyans have always taken an orthodox view of how and whom Jesus Christ saves. But we have also stressed salvation as part of the active, seeking, relentlessness of God into all corners of creation, all types of humanity."
Professor Walter Brueggemann of Columbia Theological Seminary says Who Will Be Saved? "is Willimon, teaching Bishop, at his best." He praised Willimon's exposure of "distorted, moralistic, exclusionary notions of ‘being saved'" as well as his "nerve for the truth."
Professor Stanley Hauerwas of Duke says, "With his usual wit and wisdom Willimon makes what we thought we understood odd."
The book deals with issues of the scope of God's salvation in Jesus Christ, the place of other faiths in Christian views of salvation, heaven, forgiveness, eternal damnation, universal salvation and many other matters related to the main theme of salvation. Dr. Robert Ratliff, Willimon's editor at Abingdon Press, says, "I think this may be Will Willimon's best book. His many readers will really appreciate the quality of his thought and his writing in this engaging book."