The Thirty-Nine Articles, together with the Book of Common Prayer, form the foundation of Anglican theology. Yet there are very few extended treatments of them. Oliver O'Donovan relates the Articles to the exhilarating and troubled century in which they took shape. He also shows how the distinctive insights and values of a past age relate to the demands of today's world. 'What I propose in this case ... is not to talk solely about the Articles, but to talk about God, mankind (sic!), and redemption, the central matters of the Christian faith, and to take the Tudor authors with me as companions in discussion. Two voices will be speaking ... each raising the questions that Christian faith in his time forces upon him.' Here is a new edition of his book on one of the key texts of Anglican identity by one of the UK's leading theologians. The book has been out of print for some time and there have been repeated calls for a new edition with a new introduction which engages with more recent developments and offers the text to a new generation.

The trial, conviction, and death of an innocent man 2,000 years ago have particular resonance today. Atrocities from around the world shake us nearly every day, and we all experience trials in our own lives too. In this book the former Archbishop of Canterbury looks in depth at the trial of Jesus, using it to teach readers how to face the challenges of life in today's trying times. Bringing the biblical accounts of Jesus' trial vividly to life, Rowan Williams highlights what can be learned about Jesus from each of the four Gospel portraits. Mark shows a mysterious figure revealed as the Son of God. Matthew describes the Wisdom of God tried by foolish men. Luke presents a divine stranger. John speaks of the paradox of divinity submitting to judgement. These illuminating discussions are followed by a reflection on Christian martyrdom and a meditation on tyranny, freedom, and truth. A set of discussion questions and a thought-provoking prayer after each chapter make Christ on Trial an ideal book for study groups. Throughout the book Williams draws not only from the Bible but also from fiction, drama, and current events, pointing up ways in which society today continues to put Christ on trial. Even more, he argues that all Christians stand with Jesus before a watching world. Though we may not be directly confronted with death, we are nevertheless called daily to respond to the falsehood of such lures as power, influence, and prestige. Several words aptly describe this book by Rowan Williams: Profound. Incisive. Literary. Contemporary. Relevant. Prophetic. Christ on Trial will move and change those who read it.

Two of today's leading experts on the Christian political tradition plumb significant moments in premodern Christian political thought, using them in original and adventurous ways to clarify, criticize, and redirect contemporary political perspectives and discussions. Drawing on the Bible and the Western history of ideas, Oliver and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan explore key Christian voices on "the political" - political action, political institutions, and political society. Covered here are Bonaventure, Thomas, Ockham, Wycliff, Erasmus, Luther, Grotius, Barth, Ramsey, and key modern papal encyclicals. The authors' discussion takes them across a wide range of political concerns, from economics and personal freedom to liberal democracy and the nature of statehood. Ultimately, these insightful essays point to political judgment as the strength of the past theological tradition and its eclipse as the weakness of present political thought.

In "Common Objects of Love" Oliver ODonovan, widely respected as one of todays wisest and most articulate Christian ethicists, takes readers on a journey of thought. Yet this journey, he warns, does not circle comfortably around its subject like a pleasant afternoon stroll, but sets out for a far country. The purpose of the journey is to trace what unifies a multitude of human agents into a community of action and experience sustained over time.

The books central theme, which arises out of Augustines idea that we know only as we love, is that moral reflection, or the identification of objects of love, has effect in organized community. This perspective provides a fruitful resolution to the traditional Aristotelian dichotomy of theoretical and practical reason and directs us as to how we may think from truths of Christian faith to conclusions in Christian action. ODonovans interest in this theme lies especially with its political possibilities, as he explores how love is key to the organization and coherence of political society.

Beginning with some lighthearted puzzles about teaching ethics, ODonovan explores a series of related historical and current issues -- the iconoclastic controversy of the ninth century, the nature of ethical deliberation, the deleterious role of publicity in late-modern liberal society, and more -- and he offers some reflections on the events of September 11, 2001. It is with John of Patmos, finally, that ODonovan brings his journey of thought to an evangelical conclusion, one that rests on the narrative of the fall and redemption of society and of the vindication of created order in the coming of Gods kingdom.

Originating as the 2001 Stob Lecturesdelivered at Calvin College and Seminary, "Common Objects of Love" provides a thought-provoking look at social and political behavior as it is -- or should be -- informed by Christian love.

Oliver O'Donovan's Ethics as Theology project began with Self, World, and Time, an "induction" into Christian ethics as ordered reflection on moral thinking within the life of faith. Volume 2, Finding and Seeking, shifted the focus to the movement of moral thought from a first consciousness of agency to the time that determines the moment of decision. In this third and final volume of his magnum opus, O'Donovan turns his attention to the forward horizon with which moral thinking must engage. Moral experience, he argues, is necessarily two-directional, looking both back at responsibility and forward at aims. The Pauline triad of theological virtues (faith, love, and hope) describes a form of responsibility, and its climax in the sovereignty of love opens the way to a definitive teleology. Entering into Rest offers O'Donovan's mature reflections on questions that have engaged him throughout his career and provides a synoptic view of many of his main themes.

Political theology as we know it today reacts against the attempt to insulate theology from political theory which has generally characterised the modern era. But its own intellectual parentage in the idealist historicism of the nineteenth century has left it still entrammelled in the suspicions and inhibitions from which it has wanted to break free. Oliver O'Donovan contends that to pass beyond suspicion and totalised criticism of politics and to achieve a positive reconstruction of political thought, theology must reach back behind the modern tradition, achieving a fuller, less selective reading of the Scriptures and learning from an older politico-theological discourse which flourished in the patristic, medieval and Reformation periods. Central to that discourse was a series of questions about authority, generated by Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God. This book, now published in paperback, makes an important contribution to contemporary political theology and Christian ethics.

In this seminal work Oliver O'Donovan delineates a convincing theological ethics from an evangelical standpoint that illumines such important concepts as freedom, authority, nature, history, and revelation. For this revised edition O'Donovan has added a substantial prologue that, taking account of critical responses to the first edition, more fully locates his argument and position in relation to some current alternatives.

The title 'the Son of Man' evokes the different aspects of the whole Christ: the humanity and divinity of Christ, his earthly ministry, his sacramental presence, and the eschatological consummation of his work. It is also a term of relationship, suggestive of both the relations constitutive of the life of the Holy Trinity, and also of the way that our knowing and loving the Son of Man is always an invitation to communion - with the Triune God, as the Body of Christ, and for the life of the world. Contributors to this collection explore some of the many registers of the mystery of Christ, both historically and thematically. Contributors include some of today's leading theological thinkers, including N.T. Wright, Rowan Williams, Lydia Schumacher, Kallistos Ware and Oliver O'Donovan. With poetic reflections from Malcolm Guite. Chapters include: "Son of Man and the New Creation" (N.T. Wright), "The Son of Man in the Gospel of John" (John Behr), "Sound and Silence in Augustine's Christological Exegesis" (Carol Harrison), "According to the Flesh?: The Problem of Knowing Christ in Chalcedonian Perspective" (Ian Mcfarland), "Christ and the Moral Life" (Oliver O'Donovan), "Christ and the Poetic Imagination" (Malcolm Guite)

A reference tool that provides an overview of the history of Christian political thought with selections from second century to the seventeenth century.From the second century to the seventeenth, from Irenaeus to Grotius, this unique reader provides a coherent overview of the development of Christian political thought. The editors have collected readings from the works of over sixty-five authors, together with introductory essays that give historical details about each thinker and discuss how each has contributed to the tradition of Christian political thought. Complete with important Greek and Latin texts available here in English for the first time, this volume will be a primary resource for readers from a wide range of interests.

In Self, World, and Time, volume 1 of Ethics as Theology, Oliver O'Donovan established Christian ethics as an intellectual discipline. He argued that it is distinct from both moral thinking and moral teaching but offers to each of them an ordered reflection on their assumptions and procedures in light of the Christian gospel.In this second volume of his ethics-as-theology project, O'Donovan traces the logic of moral thought from self-awareness to decision through the virtues of faith, hope, and love. Blending biblical, historico-theological, and contemporary ideas in its comprehensive survey, Finding and Seeking continues O'Donovan's exploratory study in ethics as theology and adds significantly to his previous theoretical reflections on the subject."

Self, World, and Time takes up the question of the form and matter of Christian ethics as an intellectual discipline. What is it about? How does Christian ethics relate to the humanities, especially philosophy, theology, and behavioral studies? How does its shape correspond to the shape of practical reason? In what way does it participate in the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Oliver O'Donovan discusses ethics with self, world, and time as foundation poles of moral reasoning, and with faith, love, and hope as the virtues anchoring the moral life. Blending biblical, historico-theological, and contemporary ideas in its comprehensive survey, Self, World, and Time is an exploratory study that adds significantly to O'Donovan's previous theoretical reflections on Christian ethics.

Amor Dei - a study of the religion of St Augustine -was first published as the Hulsean Lectures for 1938 when John Burnaby was a classics Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Later, after ordination he became Regius Professor of Divinity in 1952 until his retirement. Professor Oliver O'Donovan, in his Foreword to this new paperback re-issue says of the author: . . . he had found in Augustine of Hippo a Christian whose thought was large enough for a modern believer to devote a lifetime to. A new generation of Burnaby's readers will sense something of that largeness, and will, I hope, also appreciate the largeness of the sympathy that could communicate it so well.'

Oliver ODonovan has been preaching and teaching for over three decades, committed to the perpetual voyage of service to the word of God. The Word in Small Boats offers thirty-two select sermons that he preached over the course of some twenty years as Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

With Christian views differing widely on the morality of war, this book seriously re-examines ethical questions of contemporary urgency. The text covers the use of biological and nuclear weapons, military intervention, economic sanctions, and the role of the U.N. Opening with a challenging dedication to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, it proceeds to analyze vital topics which the Archbishop and others will find relevant to the discussion of the ethics of warfare.

With Christian views differing widely on the morality of war, this book seriously re-examines ethical questions of contemporary urgency. The text covers the use of biological and nuclear weapons, military intervention, economic sanctions, and the role of the U.N. Opening with a challenging dedication to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, it proceeds to analyze vital topics which the Archbishop and others will find relevant to the discussion of the ethics of warfare.

Political theology as we know it today reacts against the attempt to insulate theology from political theory which has generally characterised the modern era. But its own intellectual parentage in the idealist historicism of the nineteenth century has left it still entrammelled in the suspicions and inhibitions from which it has wanted to break free. Oliver O'Donovan contends that to pass beyond suspicion and totalised criticism of politics and to achieve a positive reconstruction of political thought, theology must reach back behind the modern tradition, achieving a fuller, less selective reading of the Scriptures and learning from an older politico-theological discourse which flourished in the patristic, medieval and Reformation periods. Central to that discourse was a series of questions about authority, generated by Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God. This book, now published in paperback, makes an important contribution to contemporary political theology and Christian ethics.

An examination and defence of the concept of personality, long central to Western moral culture but now increasingly under attack, by a leading European philosopher. It takes issue with major contemporary philosophers, especially in the English-speaking world (such as Parfit and Singer), who have contributed to the eclipse of the idea, and traces the debate back to the foundations of modern philosophy in Descartes and Locke. There are extended discussions of the sources of the idea in Christian theology and its development in Western philosophy. There are also a number of pointed discussions of pressing practical questions - for example, our treatment of the severely disabled human and the moral status of intelligent non-human animals. The book covers a great deal of ground before coming to a focused conclusion: all human beings are persons - and perhaps all porpoises, too!