Engaging variously with the legacy of Paul L. Lehmann, these essays argue for a reorientation in Christian theology that better honours the formative power of the gospel to animate and shape doctrine and witness, as well as ethical and political life. The authors explore key themes in Christian theology and ethics - forgiveness, discernment, responsibility, spirituality, the present day tasks of theology and the role of faith in public life - making plain the unabated importance of Lehmann's work at this juncture in contemporary theology. The internationally recognized contributors draw crucial connections between the gospel of reconciliation, the form of Christian theology and witness, and the challenges of contemporary ethical and political reflection. This book demonstrates why this close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and author of Ethics in a Christian Context and The Transfiguration of Politics continues to influence generations of theologians in both the English-speaking world and beyond.

Traditionally, Catholic moral theology has been based upon an approach that over-emphasized the role of normative ethics and subsequently associated moral responsibility with following or disobeying moral rules. Reframing Catholic Theological Ethics offers an alternative ethical method which, without destroying any of the valuable insights of normative ethics, reorients the discipline to consider human motivation and intention before investigating behavioural options for realizing one's end. Evidence from the New Testament warrants the formation of a teleological method for theological ethics which is further elaborated in the approach taken by Thomas Aquinas. Unfortunately, the insights of the latter were misinterpreted at the time of the counter-reformation. Joseph A. Selling's analysis of moral theological textbooks demonstrates the entrenchment of a normative method aimed at identifying sins in service to the practice of sacramental confession. With a firm basis in the teaching of Vatican II, the 'human person integrally and adequately considered' provides the fundamental criterion for approaching ethical issues in the contemporary world. The perspective then turns to the crucial question of describing the ends or goals of ethical living by providing a fresh approach to the concept of virtue. Selling concludes with suggestions about how to combine normative ethics with this alternative method in theological ethics that begins with the actual, ethical orientation of the human person toward virtuous living.

The objective of Arab Criminology is to establish a criminological sub-field called 'Arab Criminology.' The ever-evolving field of criminology has advanced in the past decade, yet many impediments remain. Unlike criminology in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania based merely on geopolitical constructs, the Arab world has unique commonalities that do not exist in the other established sub-fields on criminology. The Arab world has largely remained in criminology's periphery despite the region's considerable importance to current international affairs. In response, this book explores two main questions: Why should we and how do we establish a sub-field in Arab Criminology? The authors examine the state of criminology in the Arab world, define its parameters, and present four components that bond and distinguish Arab criminology from other criminological area studies. They then identify the requirements for establishing Arab criminology and detail how local, regional, and international researchers can collaborate, develop, and expand the sub-field. Arab Criminology will challenge some of the recurrent Orientalist and Islamophobic tropes in Northern criminology and progress the discipline of criminology to reflect a more diverse focus that embraces regions from the Global South. Presenting compelling arguments and examples that support the establishment of this sub-field, Arab Criminology will be of great interest to Criminology, Criminal Justice, Legal Studies, and Middle Eastern/North African studies scholars, particularly those working on Southern Criminology, Comparative Criminology, International Criminal Justice Systems, and Arab studies.

Pope John Paul II is the second-longest serving pope in history and the longest serving pope of the last century. His presence has thrown a long shadow across our time, and his influence on Catholics and non-Catholics throughout the world cannot be denied. Much has been written about this pope, but until now, no one has provided a systematic and thorough analysis of the moral theology that underlies his moral teachings and its astonishing influence. And no one is better positioned to do this than Charles E. Curran, widely recognized as the leading American Catholic moral theologian. Curran focuses on the authoritative statements, specifically the fourteen papal encyclicals the pope has written over the past twenty-five years, to examine how well the pope has addressed the broad issues and problems in the Church today. Curran begins with a discussion of the theological presuppositions of John Paul II's moral teaching and moral theology. Subsequent chapters address his theological methodology, his ethical methodology, and his fundamental moral theology together with his understanding of human life. Finally, Curran deals with the specific issues of globalization, marriage, conscience, human acts, and the many issues involved in social and sexual ethics. While finding much to admire, Curran is nonetheless fiercely precise in his analysis and rigorously thoughtful in his criticism of much of the methodological aspects of the pope's moral theology - in his use of scripture, tradition, and previous hierarchical teaching; in theological aspects including Christology, eschatology, and the validity of human sources of moral wisdom and knowledge; and in anthropology, the ethical model, and natural law. Brilliantly constructed and fearlessly argued, this will be the definitive measure of Pope John Paul II's moral theology for years to come.

This book takes up the question of Christian queer theology and ethics through the contested lens of "redemption." Starting from the root infinitive "to deem," the authors argue that queer lives and struggles can illuminate and re-value the richness of embodied experience that is implied in Christian incarnational theology and ethics. Offering a set of virtues gleaned from contemporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and asexual (LGBTIQA) lives and communities, this book introduces a new framework of ethical reasoning. Battered and wrongly condemned by life-denying theologies of redemption and dessicating ethics of virtue, this book asserts that the resilience, creativity, and epistemology manifesting in queer lives and communities are essential to a more generous and liberative Christian theology. In this book, queer "virtues" not only reveal and re-value queer soul but expose covert viciousness in the traditional (i.e., inherently colonial and racist, and thus ungodly) "family values" of dominant Christian ethics and theology. It argues that such re-imagining has redemptive potential for Christian life writ large, including the redemption of God. This book will be a key resource for scholars of queer theology and ethics as well as queer theory, gender and race studies, religious studies, and theology more generally.

In the context of growing concern over climate change and other environmental pressures, Biblical Prophets and Contemporary Environmental Ethics explores what an ecological reading of the biblical text can contribute to contemporary environmental ethics. The Judaeo-Christian tradition has been held partly to blame for a negative attitude to creation - one that has legitimised the exploitative use of the earth's resources. Hilary Marlow explores some of the thinking in the history of the Christian tradition that has contributed to such a perception, before discussing a number of approaches to reading the Old Testament from an ecological perspective. Through a detailed exegetical study of the texts of the biblical prophets Amos, Hosea, and First Isaiah, Marlow examines the portrayal of the relationship between YHWH the God of Israel, humanity and the non-human creation. In the course of this exegesis, searching questions emerge: what are the various understandings of the non-human creation that are present in the text? What assumptions are made about YHWH's relationship to the created world and how he acts within it? And what effect do the actions and choices of human beings have on the created world? Following this close textual study, Marlow examines the problem of deriving ethical norms from the biblical text and discusses some key ethical debates in contemporary environmental theory. The book explores the potential contribution of the biblical exegesis to such debates and concludes by proposing an inter-relational model for reading the Old Testament prophets in the light of contemporary environmental ethics.

Despite heightened attention to virtue, contemporary philosophical and theological literature has failed to offer detailed analysis of how people attain and grow in the good habits we know as the virtues. Though popular literature provides instruction on attaining and growing in virtue, it lacks careful scholarly analysis of what exactly these good habits are in which we grow. Growing in Virtue is the only comprehensive account of growth in virtue in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Mattison offers a robust account of habits, including what habits are, why they are needed, and what they supply once possessed. He draws on Aquinas to carefully delineate the commonalities and differences between natural (acquired) virtues and graced (infused) virtues. Along the way, Mattison discusses the distinction between disposition and habit; the role of "custom" in virtue formation; the nature of virtuous passions; the distinct contribution of the gifts of the Holy Spirit to graced life; explanations for persistent activity after the loss of virtue; and the possibility of coexistence of the infused and acquired virtues in the same person. For readers interested in virtue and morality from a philosophical perspective and scholars of theological ethics and moral theology in particular, Mattison offers compelling arguments from the work of Aquinas explicitly connected to contemporary scholarship in philosophical virtue ethics.

In The Dynamics of Human Life in the Bible: Receptivity and Power, Martin J. Buss describes the dynamics of human life that are encouraged in the Bible and how biblical guidance compares with other religious traditions. The dynamics include both receptivity ("from" another) and power ("for" or "over" another), often in combination ("with" another). For example, love joins receptive cognition of worth with energetic support. Receptivity, the only way to deal with fundamental values, seeks material and religious benefits and is the human side of revelation and salvation. Public acknowledgement strengthens divine influence. Furthermore, receptivity accepts challenges. These include individual and social growth and semi-identification with others, which has societal rather than concrete individual consequences. Power is crucial in legal remedies and penalties. Life with others is important in practical "wisdom" and in Christian "mutual love." Busse finds that biblical directives parallel those of non-Christian religious traditions. This situation is in line with biblical views of general revelation and developments in history.

The Power of Reconciliation will come to be seen as Archbishop Welby's most important book to date. Today there is so much intolerance of views that are other than our own as we demonize those we do not agree with. Conflict is widespread. With the after-effects of Covid, changes in science and technology, inequality, and increasingly polarized political and social strife, moves towards reconciliation are more necessary than ever. This book is full of practical and insightful advice relating to both religious and secular communities, from the household to the international, on how to bring about reconciliation. There is even a step-by-step guide, drawn from the author's own experience, which is extensive - both before ordination and since, Welby has seen conflict first-hand. His earlier career as a corporate executive gave him important insights on conflict resolution, and as leader of the global Anglical Communion, he has spent many years helping people work through their differences all over the world. Welby writes about Reconciliation as seeking to disagree well, also pointing out the dignity of difference. The book is thus down-to-earth, plugged into reality and devoid of pointless optimism, and yet hopefulness for the future can be found in Welby's words throughout.

Why do we have children and what do we raise them for? Does the proliferation of depictions of suffering in the media enhance, or endanger, compassion? How do we live and die well in the extended periods of debility which old age now threatens? Why and how should we grieve for the dead? And how should we properly remember other grief and grievances? In addressing such questions, the Christian imagination of human life has been powerfully shaped by the imagination of Christ's life Christs conception, birth, suffering, death, and burial have been subjects of profound attention in Christian thought, just as they are moments of special interest and concern in each and every human life. However, they are also sites of contention and controversy, where what it is to be human is discovered, constructed, and contested. Conception, birth, suffering, burial, and death are occasions, in other words, for profound and continuing questioning regarding the meaning of human life, as controversies to do with IVF, abortion, euthanasia, and the use of bodies and body parts post mortem, indicate. In The Ethics of Everyday Life, Michael Banner argues that moral theology must reconceive its nature and tasks if it is not only to articulate its own account of human being, but also to enter into constructive contention with other accounts. In particular, it must be willing to learn from and engage with social anthropology if it is to offer powerful and plausible portrayals of the moral life and answers to the questions which trouble modernity. Drawing in wide-ranging fashion from social anthropology and from Christian thought and practice from many periods, and influenced especially by his engagement in public policy matters including as a member of the UK's Human Tissue Authority, Banner develops the outlines of an everyday ethics, stretching from before the cradle to after the grave.

The first examination of predictive technology from the perspective of Catholic theology Probabilistic predictions of future risk govern much of society. In business and politics alike, institutional structures manage risk by controlling the behavior of consumers and citizens. New technologies comb through past data to predict and shape future action. Choosing between possible future paths can cause anxiety as every decision becomes a calculation to achieve the most optimal outcome. Tomorrow's Troubles is the first book to use virtue ethics to analyze these pressing issues. Paul Scherz uses a theological analysis of risk and practical reason to show how risk-based decision theory reorients our relationships to the future through knowledge of possible dangers and foregone opportunities-and fosters a deceptive hope for total security. Scherz presents this view of temporality as problematic because it encourages a desire for stability through one's own efforts instead of reliance on God. He also argues that the largest problem with predictive models is that they do not address individual reason and free will. Instead of dwelling on a future, we cannot control, we can use our past experiences and the Christian tradition to focus on discerning God's will in the present. Tomorrow's Troubles offers a thoughtful new framework that will help Christians benefit from the positive aspects of predictive technologies while recognizing God's role in our lives and our futures.

The term desire in the Hebrew Bible covers a wide range of human longings, emotions, and cravings. The direct and explicit term of desire is nevertheless limited to only two roots found in the Decalogue-the verb forms of the lexical roots and , which reflect not only the dynamics of desire occurring in human beings, but also in God. With an comprehensive semantic analysis and an overview of the synonyms and antonyms, the author shows that the verb form of the lexical root denotes a variety of needs related to human existence including aspiration for God while the verb form of the lexical root denotes the desire to acquire material wealth and possessions beyond basic needs. All the findings are compared on two levels-in relation to human beings (objects and people) and in relation to God-and ultimately serve for the interpretation of the roots in both versions of the Decalogue (Exod 20:17 and Deut 5:21) to resolve questions concerning the meaning of the desire in Tenth Commandment and substantiate whether the answers to life's questions provided by the Bible correspond to modern society.

From the concrete experience of war, Michael S. Yandell constructs a phenomenology of "negative revelation" in which false or distorted claims of goodness and justice disintegrate, becoming meaningless. Yandell argues that the disintegration of meaning in war is itself a meaningful experience; "revealing" comes to signify the presence of goodness and justice through the profound experience of their absence. The heart of this work adds a layer of complexity or depth to the term "moral injury" as a negative revelation. Yandell emphasizes the context and logic of war itself beyond the actions of individuals, paying specific attention to the U.S. led Global War on Terror. Moral injury as a negative revelation is a disintegration of false normative claims of goodness and justice, as well as a disintegration of one's sense of self oriented toward those normative claims. This disintegration is prompted by the recognition of life in the midst of war's diminishment of life.

Icon of modern-day fundamentalist movements, firebrand religious purist, tireless polemicist against the intellectual schools of his timeathe Ibn Taymiyya we know is a thinker we often associate with hard attitudes and dogmatic stances. Yet there is another Ibn Taymiyya that stands out from the pages of his work, the thinker who fashions himself as a master of the via media and as a defender of the harmony between human reason and the religious faith. The aim of this book is to shed fresh light on Ibn Taymiyya's intellectual identity by a close investigation of his ethical thought. Earlier Muslim thinkers debating ethical value had been exercised by a number of core questions. What makes actions right or wrong? How do human beings know it? And what is God's relationship to the evaluative standards discerned by the human mind? An investigation of Ibn Taymiyya's engagement with such questions has much to teach us about his intellectual program and particularly about the role of reason and the linchpin concept of human nature (fitra) within this program. It also has much to teach us about Ibn Taymiyya's relationship to the intellectual landscape of his time, bringing us up against a rich tapestry of ethical discussions unfolding within theology, philosophy and legal theory in the classical period. At the same time, a close reading of Ibn Taymiyya's ethics invites us to confront not only the content of his thought but its form, and more particularly those features of his writing that fracture our efforts to unify his thought.

The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard brings together some of the most distinguished contemporary contributors to Kierkegaard research together with some of the more gifted younger commentators on Kierkegaard's work. There is significant input from scholars based in Copenhagen's Soren Kierkegaard Research Centre, as well as from philosophers and theologians from Britain, Germany, and the United States. Part 1 presents some of the philological, historical and contextual work that has been produced in recent years, establishing a firm basis for the more interpretative essays found in following parts. This includes looking at the history of his published and unpublished works, his cultural and social context, and his relation to Romanticism, German Idealism, the Church, the Bible, and theological traditions. Part 2 moves from context and background to the exposition of some of the key ideas and issues in Kierkegaard's writings. Attention is paid to his style, his treatment of ethics, culture, society, the self, time, theology, love, irony, and death. Part 3 looks at the impact of Kierkegaard's thought and at how it continues to influence philosophy, theology, and literature. After an examination of issues around translating Kierkegaard, this section includes comparisons with Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, as well as examining his role in modern theology, moral theology, phenomenology, postmodernism, and literature.

* Equips readers including criminal justice students and justice system agents, as well as clergy and lay people, with knowledge regarding sex crimes and sexual offenders so they can better recognize potential sexual exploitation in church settings. * Ideal as a primary or supplementary text in a criminal justice curriculum or in religious colleges and seminaries preparing clergy and church leaders. * Offers a unique in-depth review of the vulnerabilities associated with church environments and sexual crimes.

Constructing Solidarity offers a critical path toward the transformation of white worldviews, theologies, ethics, and praxis for scholars, activists, religious leaders, and those seeking guidance.

What is the nature of affections such as joy, compassion, sorrow, and shame and what role do they play in politics? While political experience is replete with affectivity, the affective dimension of political experience has typically been under-conceptualised in political theory. Joshua Hordern argues that Christian political theology and contemporary theory of emotions have resources to respond to this challenge and, in so doing, to offer diagnoses and remedies for the political alienation and democratic deficit which trouble contemporary political life. Hordern contends that affections have a cognitive aptitude whereby they become enduring features of shared political reasoning. In conversation with Martha Nussbaum, Jurgen Habermas, Roger Scruton, Oliver O'Donovan and other political thinkers both classical and contemporary, his argument interrelates affections with memory, moral order, death, suffering, virtue, neuroscience, familial life and national identity. In contrast to dualisms which would separate reason from affection and theology from politics, Hordern describes the way that affections' role in politics is shaped by the eschatological commitments of political thought. Through close attention to Deuteronomy, Luke and Acts, Hordern considers the role of affections in institutions of political representation, law and healthcare. Over against post-national visions which underplay locality in human identity, the account of political affectivity which emerges suggests that civic participation, critical patriotic loyalties, social trust and international concern will be primarily galvanised by the renewal of local affections through effective political representation. Moreover, churches, shaped by the affective vision of their Scriptures, are to embody the joyful, hopeful affective life of the Kingdom of God and thereby offer renewal to social and political experience at local, national and international levels.

Provides an accessible introduction to the Environmental Humanities, a complex and interdisciplinary area, and designed to provide a foundation for future study, projects and pursuits. Written by academics with experience of teaching and writing in the field. Content is engaging and includes case studies, discussion questions, annotated bibliographies, and links to online resources. Organised by subject, this book could be used on general environmental humanities courses, or individual chapters could be used on subject specific courses i.e. Environmental History, environmental film etc.

What global future would ensure hope, justice and peace to the human mankind? In view of a fast evolving post-Covid world order, this volume explores a novel Christian post-colonial approach to global affairs. It examines the existing 'sociology of the powers' theoretical scheme, the debate between Christian realism and Christian pacifism, the method and practice of prophetic witnessing, to elaborate a new Christian approach to statecraft and futurology in terms of theory, methodology and ontology. This book: * Uses the COVID-19 pandemic as the background to examine why and how the pandemic has accelerated the US's decline, and to identify the tacit game rules that contributed to the UK government's mishandling of the pandemic; * Compares the political systems between China and the West, and engages with selected theoretical narratives from the Global South to envision an alternative 'shared globalisation' project; * Argues why it is important for post-colonial Christian individuals and communities to get involved in this global discussion for a new world order of complex realist interdependencies grounded on hope, social justice and peace. A fresh take on global politics and international relations, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political science, religious studies, peace studies, theology and future studies.

The essays in Religion and Public Reasons seek to argue for, and illustrate, a central element of John Finnis's theory of natural law: that the main tenets of personal and political morality, and of a good legal order, are taught both by reason (arguments accessible to everyone) and by authentic divine revelation (teachings accessible to all who have a reasonable faith in its witnesses). The author's main books each include arguments for rejecting atheism and agnosticism; several papers here take up these arguments and indicate ways in which they open onto the reasonable grounds for accepting that more about God's nature, and about the meaning of Creation (including ongoing natural evolution), is disclosed by the revelation carried far forward among the Jewish people, and given definitive form by the Jews and Greeks who assembled in the universal Church, as witnesses of Christ, to carry forward that revelation into our present. Several papers argue that "public reason" properly includes such a religion, and that Humeian, Nietzschean, Deweyian, Rawlsian or other atheistical or deistic understandings of a reasonable secularism are badly mistaken. Many substantial papers record the author's position in controversies within Catholicism since the 1960s: on social justice, contraception and abortion; nuclear deterrence; Newman on conscience before pope; Maritain's hopes for a new Christendom and von Balthasar's for a hell empty of human persons; and on "proportionalism" and Lonerganian "historical consciousness" as moral-theological methods. Previously unpublished papers include several University and college sermons, and a substantial introduction.