Reviving Evangelical Ethics

This accessible ethics text introduces students to classical models of ethics and evaluates them from a biblical perspective.

Just as it is impossible to understand the American religious landscape without some familiarity with evangelicalism, one cannot grasp the shape of contemporary Christian ethics without knowing the contributions of evangelical Protestants. This newest addition to the Library of Theological Ethics series begins by examining the core dynamic with which all evangelical ethics grapples: belief in an authoritative, inspired, and unchanging biblical text on the one hand, and engagement with a rapidly evolving and increasingly post-Christian culture on the other. It explores the different roles that scholars and popular figures have played in forming evangelicals' understandings of Christian ethics. And it draws together the contributions of both senior and emerging figures in painting a portrait of this diverse, vibrant, and challenging theological and ethical tradition. This book represents the breadth of evangelical ethical voices, demonstrating that evangelical ethics involves nuance and theological insight that far transcend any political agenda. Contributors include David P. Gushee, Carl F. H. Henry, Jennifer McBride, Stephen Charles Mott, William E. Pannell, John Perkins, Soong-Chan Rah, Gabriel Salguero, Francis Schaeffer, Ron Sider, Helene Slessarev-Jamir, Glen H. Stassen, Eldin Villafañe, Allen Verhey, Jim Wallis, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and John Howard Yoder. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important, and otherwise unavailable, texts—English-language texts and translations that have fallen out of print, new translations, and collections of significant statements about problems and themes of special importance—in an easily accessible form. This series enables sustained dialogue on new and classic works in the field.

In this truly seminal work, the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University illuminates the distinctive nature of Christian ethics with profound thought and massive learning. By grounding Christian ethics in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he avoids both a revealed ethics that has no contact with the created order and one that is purely naturalistic. For this second edition Professor O'Donovan has added a prologue in which he enters into dialogue with John Finnis, Martin Honecker, Karl Barth and Stanley Hauerwas. Essential reading for advanced students of theology and ethics and their teachers.

Christianity Today Book of the Year What is ethics? Why should Christians care? Beginning with these basic questions, Stanley Grenz masterfully leads his readers into a theological engagement with moral inquiry. In The Moral Quest he sets forth the basics of ethics, considers the role and methods of Christian ethics in particular, and examines the ethical approaches of the Old Testament, the Gospels and Paul. He introduces the foundational theological ethics of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Luther and the Reformers. And he concludes with an evenhanded discussion of modern and contemporary Christian ethicists, including Albert Ritschl, Walter Rauschenbusch, Karl Barth, James Gustafson, Paul Ramsey, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., Gustavo Gutiérrez, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Stanley Hauerwas, Carl F. H. Henry and Oliver O'Donovan. Clear, concise, and well apprised of relevant literature, Grenz (a theologian recognized for the excellence of his own theological and ethical work) provides in this book a first-rate introduction to Christian ethics. The Moral Quest will well serve students, pastors and interested laypersons alike.

The Christian ethic...is an ethic that cannot be assimilated into the moral consensus of the wider community.... The way of the cross cannot be reconciled with the way of the world, just as the gospel cannot be conjoined with the laws that gave stability to social order... The thesis of this book is that human justice can never be a substitute for divine justification...but it can be a sign and witness to the justifying grace of God in Jesus Christ. Humanitarian works can never reach the heights of deeds of sacrificial love and mercy, but they can point to this higher righteousness and awaken a thirst for it... We must always be on guard against two perils: the Scylla of legalism and rigorism and Charybdis of antinomianism. An ethics of the divine commandment, by uniting law and grace, the imperative and the indicative, shows how we can live the authentic Christian life in obedience to the highest, which is not a law but a person, not an ideal but the reality of the New Being, the power of crucified love, as we see this in Jesus Christ.Ó - (from Freedom for Obedience)

J. Daryl Charles urges the evangelical church to better equip (in character and moral vision) its pastors, leaders and members to constructively and effectively engage the ethical debates of the twenty-first century.

"Supererogation" is an awkward term but a useful concept. While not a term that we use every day, the concept is very familiar to most of us. It is an act that is neither obligatory nor forbidden and that possesses moral worth. While Roman Catholics and a large number of moral philosophers affirm the possibility and value of such acts, Evangelicals from the time of the Reformation have rejected them. Yet, this is to their detriment. Relying on Gregory Mellema's insight that acts of supererogation are possible without compromising the orthodox Evangelical doctrine of justification, I argue that there is clear evidence for supererogation in the New Testament and that performing such deeds with a proper motive is essential in an Evangelical account of supererogation. It is my hope that Evangelicals will reconsider the possibility of supererogation and embrace the concept as a useful tool in counseling contexts, biblical interpretation, and homiletics.