Faith In A Hard Ground

Elizabeth Anscombe’s forthright philosophy speaks directly to many religious and ethical issues of current concern.This collection of her essays forms a companion volume to the critically acclaimed Human Life, Action and Ethics, published in 2005.

Food, Farming, and Faith looks at agricultural sustainability and Christianity. Using scripture and science, Gary W. Fick—a Christian agricultural scientist—demonstrates that faith can inform decisions about creating, managing, even consuming our food. The book highlights such topics as food and celebration, environmental care, ecology and faith, soil and water stewardship, animal welfare, and the impact of poverty on women and our food supply. Throughout, Fick presents and discusses biblical passages that comment on these areas and provides insight from personal experiences growing up in a ranching family, in teaching sustainable agriculture, and as a scientist. Ultimately, Fick challenges the reader to think about eating more thoughtfully so that we have good food, a healthy environment, and a comfortable lifestyle all at the same time.

The greatest challenge for the twenty-first-century church is the lack of catechesis--training in biblical and doctrinal knowledge. As J. I. Packer states, "where wise catechesis has flourished the church has flourished, and where it has been neglected the church has floundered." It is increasingly apparent that we are raising up generations of Christians who often have little idea what they should believe and why they should believe it. Grounded in the Faith takes up that challenge with twenty-four low-prep, in-depth sessions that will ground believers in the basics of their faith. This new innovative guide is a transformational disciple-making tool that leaders can immediately use to activate discipleship in the church. It presents individuals, small groups, and Sunday school classes with a cohesive understanding of historic, sound, biblical theology that serves as a catalyst for deeper intimacy with Christ. It is a user-friendly guide to growth in the Christian faith that covers important topics such as justification, overcoming temptation, sanctification, evidence for the inspiration of the Bible, the value of prayer, the guidance of God, the Trinity, the uniqueness of Christ, and the attributes of God.

Is religious faith consistent with being an intellectually virtuous thinker? In this volume 14 original essays, written by a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers, offer new approaches to the central issues and controversies surrounding the place of intellectual virtue in religious faith.

Pope Benedict XVI memorably remarked that the Christian faith is a lot like a Gothic cathedral with its stained-glass windows. From the outside, the Church can appear dark, dreary, and worn with age—the crumbling relic of an institution that no longer speaks to men and women living in our modern world. Indeed, for many people today, Christian morality with all of its commandments appears to be a source not of life and joy but instead of suffering and oppression. Even within the Church, many wonder: why should I submit to ancient doctrines and outdated practices that restrict my freedom and impede my happiness? In this timely and original book, his third exploring the riches of Benedict XVI’s vast corpus, theologian Matthew Ramage sets out to meet this challenge with an in-depth study of the emeritus pontiff’s wisdom on how to live Christian discipleship in today’s increasingly secularized world. Taking as his starting point Benedict’s conviction that the truth of Christianity—like the beauty of a cathedral’s glorious windows—can be grasped only from the inside, Ramage draws on Benedict’s insights to show how all Christians can make the “experiment of faith” by living the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity in daily life. Along the way, he shares his personal reflections on how Benedict’s wisdom has helped him to navigate difficulties in embracing the faith and provides a way forward to those struggling to live as disciples in a way that is intellectually serious without remaining merely intellectual. In so doing, he also presents a highly nuanced yet accessible approach to defending the truth of the gospel in a world where life in Jesus Christ tends to be seen as unfulfilling, irrelevant, or just one lifestyle choice among others.

Militant atheists often mirror the worst kind of ignorance and hostility that they condemn in traditional believers. Writing both as a philosopher and an Anglican Christian, Professor Clark explores this initial perception, considering such topics as the alleged openness of ‘scientists' compared with the ‘dogmatism' of ‘believers’; the difficulty of reading ‘scripture’ outside ‘the community of faith’ that has selected and elaborated it; the problems of moral realism (and the problem with abandoning it); why Darwinian and neo-Darwinian Theory has been unpopular with some believers, and what if anything can still be affirmed from it; what can be learnt from modern biology (especially) about our relations with other creatures; the nature of God; the metaphor of ‘waking up’ as applied to our hopes of heaven; the varieties of possible world orders founded on differing religious schemata (including some atheistical ones); and the place of religion in the State. He concludes, appropriately, with some remarks about the End.

This addition to the St Andrews Studies series contains a wide-ranging collection of essays on all aspects of moral philosophy and its impact upon public life in the twent-first century. The book brings together ethicists from a variety of traditions interested in moral truth and its relation to religious faith. A key theme is interaction between major Catholic thinkers with philosophers from non-religious traditions. Topics include reason and religion, natural law, God and morality, anti-consequentialism, rights and virtues.

Of the sermons Cardinal Newman composed after becoming a Catholic, and of which the autograph has been preserved, only nine seem to have escaped publication, and these are now printed here for the first time. If the most striking of them is that intended for the opening of the Seminary at Olton in 1873, with its grim forecast of the future course of unbelief, the earlier ones have a special interest of their own. They were preached at St. Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham, in the Spring of 1848, almost at once after Newman’s return from Rome as a priest of the Oratory. They are thus the first sermons he preached in England after he had left Oxford and the Anglican Communion. Aeterna Press