|
Showing 1 - 24 of
24 matches in All Departments
In this volume in the Believers Church Bible Commentary (BCBC)
Series, Erland Waltner explains how 1 Peter applies Jesus' teaching
on loving the enemy to the life situation of scattered Christians
in Asia Minor. Peter empowers believers to be communities of hope,
not retaliating for abuse they suffer, but bearing witness to their
living Lord by word, transformed lifestyle, and doing good.
J. Daryl Charles admits that 2 Peter and Jude are hard for us to
understand. Yet he shows how these letters are relevant since the
church still faces ethical compromises and pastoral dilemmas. Their
apocalyptic imagery stresses that the concerns of Christian
faithfulness and faith are absolutely crucial. The church needs
such moral exhortation.
Every successive generation finds fresh reasons for the study of
natural law. Current interest in the natural law may well be due to
a pervasive moral pessimism in the Western cultural context and
wider contemporary geopolitical challenges. Those geopolitical
challenges result from two significant and worrisome global
developments - unprecedented violent persecution of religious
minorities on several continents and a growing climate of secular
hostility toward religious faith in Western societies. Natural Law
and Religious Freedom aims to address what is relatively absent
from the literature by demonstrating the importance of natural law
ethics in both establishing and preserving basic human rights, of
which religious freedom has pride of place. Probing contemporary
challenges to natural law thinking that are both internal and
external to religious faith, and examining the character and
constitution of natural law ethics, Natural Law and Religious
Freedom will be of interest to theologians, ethicists and
philosophers as well as policy analysts, politicians and activists
who are concerned to anchor religious freedom and human rights
policy considerations in an enduring way.
Every successive generation finds fresh reasons for the study of
natural law. Current interest in the natural law may well be due to
a pervasive moral pessimism in the Western cultural context and
wider contemporary geopolitical challenges. Those geopolitical
challenges result from two significant and worrisome global
developments - unprecedented violent persecution of religious
minorities on several continents and a growing climate of secular
hostility toward religious faith in Western societies. Natural Law
and Religious Freedom aims to address what is relatively absent
from the literature by demonstrating the importance of natural law
ethics in both establishing and preserving basic human rights, of
which religious freedom has pride of place. Probing contemporary
challenges to natural law thinking that are both internal and
external to religious faith, and examining the character and
constitution of natural law ethics, Natural Law and Religious
Freedom will be of interest to theologians, ethicists and
philosophers as well as policy analysts, politicians and activists
who are concerned to anchor religious freedom and human rights
policy considerations in an enduring way.
This much-needed anthology contains historically informed insights
and analysis about Christian just war thinking and its application
to contemporary conflicts. Recent Christian reflection on war has
largely ignored questions of whether and how war can be just. The
contributors to Just War and Christian Traditions provide a clear
overview of the history and parameters of just war thinking and a
much-needed and original evaluation of how Christian traditions and
denominations may employ this thinking today. The introduction
examines the historical development of Christian just war thinking,
differences between just war thinking and the alternatives of
pacifism and holy war, distinctions among Christian thinkers on
issues such as the role of the state and “lesser evil”
politics, and shared Christian theological commitments with public
policy ramifications (for example, the priority of peace). The
chapters that follow outline—from Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran,
Reformed, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, and Anabaptist
denominational perspectives—the positions of major church
traditions on the ethics of warfare. The contributors include
philosophers, military strategists, political scientists, and
historians who seek to engage various and distinctive
denominational approaches to the issues of church and state, war,
peace, diplomacy, statecraft, and security over two thousand years
of Christian history. Just War and Christian Traditions presents an
essential resource for understanding the Judeo-Christian roots and
denominational frameworks undergirding the moral structure for
statesmanship and policy referred to as just war thinking. This
practical guide will interest students, pastors, and lay people
interested in issues of peace and security, military history, and
military ethics. Contributors: John Ashcroft, Eric Patterson, J.
Daryl Charles, Joseph E. Capizzi, Darrell Cole, H. David Baer,
Keith J. Pavlischek, Daniel Strand, Nigel Biggar, Mark Tooley, and
Timothy J. Demy.
This much-needed anthology contains historically informed insights
and analysis about Christian just war thinking and its application
to contemporary conflicts. Recent Christian reflection on war has
largely ignored questions of whether and how war can be just. The
contributors to Just War and Christian Traditions provide a clear
overview of the history and parameters of just war thinking and a
much-needed and original evaluation of how Christian traditions and
denominations may employ this thinking today. The introduction
examines the historical development of Christian just war thinking,
differences between just war thinking and the alternatives of
pacifism and holy war, distinctions among Christian thinkers on
issues such as the role of the state and “lesser evil”
politics, and shared Christian theological commitments with public
policy ramifications (for example, the priority of peace). The
chapters that follow outline—from Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran,
Reformed, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, and Anabaptist
denominational perspectives—the positions of major church
traditions on the ethics of warfare. The contributors include
philosophers, military strategists, political scientists, and
historians who seek to engage various and distinctive
denominational approaches to the issues of church and state, war,
peace, diplomacy, statecraft, and security over two thousand years
of Christian history. Just War and Christian Traditions presents an
essential resource for understanding the Judeo-Christian roots and
denominational frameworks undergirding the moral structure for
statesmanship and policy referred to as just war thinking. This
practical guide will interest students, pastors, and lay people
interested in issues of peace and security, military history, and
military ethics. Contributors: John Ashcroft, Eric Patterson, J.
Daryl Charles, Joseph E. Capizzi, Darrell Cole, H. David Baer,
Keith J. Pavlischek, Daniel Strand, Nigel Biggar, Mark Tooley, and
Timothy J. Demy.
America and the Just War Tradition examines and evaluates each of
America's major wars from a just war perspective. Using moral
analysis that is anchored in the just war tradition, the
contributors provide careful historical analysis evaluating
individual conflicts. Each chapter explores the causes of a
particular war, the degree to which the justice of the conflict was
a subject of debate at the time, and the extent to which the war
measured up to traditional ad bellum and in bello criteria. Where
appropriate, contributors offer post bellum considerations, insofar
as justice is concerned with helping to offer a better peace and
end result than what had existed prior to the conflict. This
fascinating exploration offers policy guidance for the use of force
in the world today, and will be of keen interest to historians,
political scientists, philosophers, and theologians, as well as
policy makers and the general reading public. Contributors: J.
Daryl Charles, Darrell Cole, Timothy J. Demy, Jonathan H. Ebel,
Laura Jane Gifford, Mark David Hall, Jonathan Den Hartog, Daniel
Walker Howe, Kerry E. Irish, James Turner Johnson, Gregory R.
Jones, Mackubin Thomas Owens, John D. Roche, and Rouven Steeves
Description: This delightfully multifaceted volume, comprised of
thoughtful essays by an esteemed array of cultural critics, probes
the intersection of Christian faith and culture to honor the memory
of A. J. ""Chip"" Conyers, a remarkably ecumenical Christian
scholar and cultural ""warrior"" whose premature death in 2004 cut
short a remarkable career in teaching and writing. As those who
knew him can attest, Conyers lived his life at the intersection of
Christian theology and cultural concern with a singular blend of
astuteness, gracefulness, and Christian conviction. This
festschrift, as esteemed theologian and Conyers's mentor Jurgen
Moltmann indicates in the foreword, is intended to mirror Conyers's
own commitment to incisive cultural criticism and theological
faithfulness in the mold of the ""great tradition."" This is no
small achievement even for so venerable a cast of scholars as the
contributors to this volume, as Conyers crossed interdisciplinary
boundaries--in a day of escalating hyper-specialization--with the
greatest of ease. He was comfortable discussing contemporary church
life or the christological controversy of the patristic era,
Heideggerian hermeneutics or human dignity and the imago Dei, faith
and the Enlightenment or the fatherhood of God, Catholic
""substance"" or Protestant reform. Yet Conyers always did this
through the lens of historic Christian orthodoxy. Though he was a
most incisive student of culture, in a most refreshing way he
steered clear of being co-opted by the currents of culture. Neither
retreating into pious devotionalism nor opting for the
theologically unreflective activism that has become so chic in our
post-consensus climate, he embodied a theological perspective that
blends responsible cultural engagement with eschatological hope.
The reader is sure to encounter the same blend in this festschrift,
and to come away both challenged and edified toward fulfilling the
message and hope of Conyers' life and work: to faithfully thrive in
Babylon. Endorsements: ""Chip Conyers was a remarkable Christian
scholar, one who combined an intense desire for God with an
unbounded love of learning. Like a meteor against the night, he
illuminated the world around him and showed the church a more
faithful way to follow Christ. The essays presented here give a
sense of Conyers' breadth and wisdom and his courage to engage the
culture for Christ's sake. This is a worthy tribute to one of the
most generous, insightful, and humane theologians I have known.""""
--Timothy George Dean, Beeson Divinity School General Editor of the
Reformation Commentary on Scripture About the Contributor(s): David
B. Capes is Dean of the Graduate School and Director of the School
of Theology at Houston Baptist University. He has authored a number
of books including Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul's Christology
(1992) and Rediscovering Paul (2007). J. Daryl Charles is Director
and Senior Fellow of the Bryan Institute for Critical Thought &
Practice at Bryan College. Among the number of books he has
authored are Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First
Things (2008) and The Unformed Conscience of Evangelicalism:
Recovering the Church's Moral Vision (2002).
Pacifism. Jihad. Militarism. Are these our only alternatives for
dealing with global injustice today? J. Daryl Charles leads us to
reconsider a Christian view of the use of force to maintain or
reestablish justice. He shows how love for a neighbor can warrant
the just use of force. Reviewing and updating the widely recognized
but not necessarily well-understood just-war teaching of the church
through the ages, Charles shows how it captures many of the
concerns of the pacifist position while deliberately avoiding, on
the other side, the excesses of jihad and militarism. Aware of our
contemporary global situation, Charles addresses the unique
challenges of dealing with international terrorism.
Virtue amidst Vice represents an attempt to probe a relatively
obscure portion of a relatively obscure New Testament document. 2
Peter reflects a social setting that presents a most daunting
pastoral challenge. The danger confronting the Christian community
is a lapse in ethical standards and a return-whether by mere
forgetfulness or in wholesale apostasy-to the former way of life. 2
Peter's prophetic and paraenetic response borrows from the moral
grammar of contemporary moral philosophers in exhorting the readers
to recall-and validate through virtuous living-the faith they have
received. The theme of the moral life runs throughout 2 Peter, with
the various components of the author's literary arsenal
subordinated to this thematic development. It is the function of
the catalogue of virtues (1.5-7) both to introduce and to anchor
the author's call to repel moral scepticism and reinvigorate the
moral life.
Natural Law Today: The Present State of the Perennial Philosophy
explains and defends various aspects of traditional natural law
ethical theory, which is rooted in a broad understanding of human
nature. Some of the issues touched upon include the relation of
natural law to speculative reason and human ends (teleology), the
relationship between natural law and natural theology, the
so-called naturalistic fallacy (deriving "ought" from "is"), and
the scope of natural knowledge of the precepts of the natural law,
as well as possible limits on it. It also takes up certain
historical and contemporary questions, such as the various stances
of Protestant thinkers toward natural law, the place of natural law
in contemporary U.S. legal thought, and the relationship between
natural law and liberal political thought more generally. It brings
together a number of the leading exponents of a more traditional or
classical form of natural law thought, who claim to root their
arguments within the broader philosophy of Thomas Aquinas more
deeply than other major representatives of the natural law
tradition today.
America and the Just War Tradition examines and evaluates each of
America's major wars from a just war perspective. Using moral
analysis that is anchored in the just war tradition, the
contributors provide careful historical analysis evaluating
individual conflicts. Each chapter explores the causes of a
particular war, the degree to which the justice of the conflict was
a subject of debate at the time, and the extent to which the war
measured up to traditional ad bellum and in bello criteria. Where
appropriate, contributors offer post bellum considerations, insofar
as justice is concerned with helping to offer a better peace and
end result than what had existed prior to the conflict. This
fascinating exploration offers policy guidance for the use of force
in the world today, and will be of keen interest to historians,
political scientists, philosophers, and theologians, as well as
policy makers and the general reading public. Contributors: J.
Daryl Charles, Darrell Cole, Timothy J. Demy, Jonathan H. Ebel,
Laura Jane Gifford, Mark David Hall, Jonathan Den Hartog, Daniel
Walker Howe, Kerry E. Irish, James Turner Johnson, Gregory R.
Jones, Mackubin Thomas Owens, John D. Roche, and Rouven Steeves
Natural Law Today: The Present State of the Perennial Philosophy
explains and defends various aspects of traditional natural law
ethical theory, which is rooted in a broad understanding of human
nature. Some of the issues touched upon include the relation of
natural law to speculative reason and human ends (teleology), the
relationship between natural law and natural theology, the
so-called naturalistic fallacy (deriving "ought" from "is"), and
the scope of natural knowledge of the precepts of the natural law,
as well as possible limits on it. It also takes up certain
historical and contemporary questions, such as the various stances
of Protestant thinkers toward natural law, the place of natural law
in contemporary U.S. legal thought, and the relationship between
natural law and liberal political thought more generally. It brings
together a number of the leading exponents of a more traditional or
classical form of natural law thought, who claim to root their
arguments within the broader philosophy of Thomas Aquinas more
deeply than other major representatives of the natural law
tradition today.
Science, Virtue, and the Future of Humanity addresses each of the
key public policy issues of our techno-future from the perspective
of deeply informed and philosophically inclined public
intellectuals. Among the issues addressed are the detachment of our
idea of justice from any credible foundation; Tocqueville's
prescience on how a "cognitive elite" might be the aristocracy to
be most feared in our time; robotization and the possibility of
being ruled by morally challenged robots; organ markets; the
degradation of liberal education by obsessive techno-enthusiasm;
biotechnology and biological determinism; the birth dearth and the
inevitable erosion of our entitlements; the possibility that our
techno-domination is basically an unfolding of the Lockean logic of
our foundation; and the future of the free exercise of religion in
an aggressively libertarian time. All in all, this book should
provoke widespread discussion about the relationship between
scientific/technological progress and the one true moral/spiritual
progress that takes place over the course of every particular human
life.
Science, Virtue, and the Future of Humanity addresses each of the
key public policy issues of our techno-future from the perspective
of deeply informed and philosophically inclined public
intellectuals. Among the issues addressed are the detachment of our
idea of justice from any credible foundation; Tocqueville's
prescience on how a "cognitive elite" might be the aristocracy to
be most feared in our time; robotization and the possibility of
being ruled by morally challenged robots; organ markets; the
degradation of liberal education by obsessive techno-enthusiasm;
biotechnology and biological determinism; the birth dearth and the
inevitable erosion of our entitlements; the possibility that our
techno-domination is basically an unfolding of the Lockean logic of
our foundation; and the future of the free exercise of religion in
an aggressively libertarian time. All in all, this book should
provoke widespread discussion about the relationship between
scientific/technological progress and the one true moral/spiritual
progress that takes place over the course of every particular human
life.
Natural law has long been a cornerstone of Christian political
thought, providing moral norms that ground law in a shareable
account of human goods and obligations. Despite this history,
twentieth and twenty-first-century evangelicals have proved quite
reticent to embrace natural law, casting it as a relic of
scholastic Roman Catholicism that underestimates the import of
scripture and the division between Christians and non-Christians.
As recent critics have noted, this reluctance has posed significant
problems for the coherence and completeness of evangelical
political reflections. Responding to evangelically-minded thinkers'
increasing calls for a re-engagement with natural law, this volume
explores the problems and prospects attending evangelical
rapprochement with natural law. Many of the chapters are optimistic
about an evangelical re-appropriation of natural law, but note ways
in which evangelical commitments might lend distinctive shape to
this engagement.
The authors speak from a just-war moral perspective toprovide
Christians with expert and accessible answers to more thanone
hundred common questions concerning the ethics of war.
With issues of war and peace at the forefront of current events,
an informed Christian response is needed. This timely volumeanswers
104 questions from a just-war perspective, offeringthoughtful yet
succinct answers.
Ranging from the theoretical to the practical, the volume
looksat how the just-war perspective relates to the philosopher,
historian, statesman, theologian, combatant, andindividual--with
particular emphases on its historicaldevelopment and application to
contemporary geopoliticalchallenges. Forgoing ideological extremes,
Charles and Demy givemuch attention to the biblical teaching on the
subject as theyprovide moral guidance.
A valuable resource for considering the ethical issues
relatingto war, Christians will find this book's user-friendly
format ahelpful starting point for discussion.
Restating what all people intuit and what this means in moral,
specifically bioethical, discourse is the raison d'etre for this
volume. J. Daryl Charles argues that a traditional metaphysics of
natural law lies at the heart of the present reconstructive
project, and that a revival in natural-law thinking is of the
highest priority for the Christian community as we contend in,
rather than abdicate, the public square.
Nowhere is this more on display than in the realm of bioethics,
where the most basic moral questions - human personhood, human
rights versus responsibilities, the reality of moral evil, the
basis of civil society - are being debated. With his timely
application of natural-law thinking to the field of bioethics,
Charles seeks to breathe new life back into this key debate.
Traditionally, New Testament scholarship has subsumed examination
of Jude under the study of 2 Peter, concentrating primarily on the
question of literary dependence. The present work, however, with
its focus on the unique features of the epistle, endeavors to
penetrate the distinct literary and theological world of Jude and
thus illuminate what for many has been an obscure part of the New
Testament canon.
|
|