Gilbert Meilaender

Between Pacifism and Jihad

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Daryl Charles has read widely and thought carefully about the role of government and the place of warfare in Christian thought. Arguing for a view that neither baptizes force whenever it is used for patriotic purposes nor rejects force when it is needed to serve just ends, Charles provides both helpful historical background and probing moral argument. Christians who want to reflect more carefully about these matters will find here a valuable resource.”

BioEngagement

Science & Faith

“At a time when the church can expect relatively little help from the culture to shape lives in Christian ways, we need to think carefully about how faith engages our culture — and nowhere more so than in the area of bioethics, where the very meaning of our humanity often seems at stake. BioEngagement opens up fruitful lines of inquiry for such reflection by all who work in medicine, law, and education.”

Bioethics for Nurses

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Christian bioethics for nurses—what a strange idea! If we know anything about the discipline of bioethics, we know that its development has tended to discard the religious insights that often marked its early years, and we know that most of its central concerns have tended to focus on the work of physicians. This book, rich with case studies, provides something different, needed, and useful. It focuses specifically on the work of nurses, and it attends to ways Christian beliefs might shape their work. We can hope that it will be used in many schools of nursing.”

Christian Socialism

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“By means of both historical retrieval and theological exploration, Philip Turner examines—appreciatively, though not uncritically—the continuing relevance of the Christian Socialist tradition in England. His study will be a significant vehicle for a deeper and renewed appreciation of ‘the promise of an almost forgotten tradition.’”

Common Objects of Love

“How can members of a society truly share a common life? How can a political community represent its shared identity without falling into an idolatry that fails to honor Christ, in whom alone humanity's true identity can find its representative image? And how might theology teach us to think about such questions? In these three tightly argued essays Oliver O'Donovan explores Augustine's famous definition of a people, arguing that a secular society alone cannot supply the expectant patience or eschatological hope it needs to sustain a nonidolatrous shared life in the face of a seemingly irreducible pluralism. In a world torn by conflicts between those who can seem to share no identity, O'Donovan's work will repay our careful attention.”

Essays in Theology of Culture

Theology

“Here is evidence that serious theology is neither an esoteric nor a purely private undertaking. In learned, provocative, and innovative theological explorations of politics, education, and the arts, Robert Jenson discusses and exemplifies the calling of Christians to learn to love God with the mind.”

Ethics and Moral Reasoning

Discipleship & Christian Education

“C. Ben Mitchell has written what a volume appearing in a student’s guide series should be. Both concise and precise, his guide to ethics and moral reasoning within the Christian tradition will give readers a sense of the questions they should explore and the resources to use in that exploration. For students whose cultural context leaves them adrift in a sea of conflicting moral claims, Mitchell is a seasoned, reliable navigator.”

Ethics beyond Rules

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“not only natural reason but also Christian Scripture and tradition. Stanglin approaches disputed moral problems in thoughtful, often imaginative ways that will be accessible to many sorts of readers.”

Finding and Seeking

Philosophy

“Architectonic in structure and richly developed in conversation with many strands of Christian tradition, this is a learned and mature work that deserves the careful reading it also demands.”

In the Face of Death

History & Biography

“In this exhaustively researched and carefully developed study Fabian Grassl uncovers the experiential roots of Helmut Thielicke’s theology. In particular, Thielicke’s experience of life-threatening illness as a young man and his constant encounters with death during the years of Nazi rule left an indelible mark on the shape of both his theology and his preaching. Grassl examines these influences in detail, offering an appreciative but also critical assessment of a theology marked deeply by the experience of suffering and death. Both those who have a particular interest in Thielicke’s work and those who want to think about the strengths and weaknesses of a theology shaped so strongly by experience will profit from Grassl’s excellent work.”

Just Capitalism

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Brent Waters has written a book about global capitalism with which almost every reader will find some reason to disagree—and that is exactly what makes it significant and well worth reading. Central to his theological analysis of both the necessity and the insufficiency of global capitalism is a Christian concept of `communication’ that is neither market exchange nor governmental coercion. He argues that a global economy shaped with that in mind offers the most promising way to take seriously in our world a preferential option for the poor. This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book.”

Keeping the Soul in Christian Higher Education

History & Biography

“Using both the 175-year history of Roanoke College and his own experience as a member of its faculty as a case study, Robert Benne examines the current state of Christian higher education in this country. The story he tells is one of constant struggle to discern the place of faith in academic life. Whether readers are drawn to his ‘glass half full’ or his ‘glass half empty’ assessment, they will be in Benne’s debt for drawing them into reflection on this important subject.”

Loving Later Life

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“There is no lack of books about aging. But what Frits de Lange offers goes well beyond discussion of the phenomenon. He develops a theological and ethical framework within which to think about aging — both our own and that of others. Drawing on an exceptionally wide range of literature, de Lange will provide readers of various persuasions with much food for thought.”

Loving Samuel

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“Wordsworth wrote of 'emotion recollected in tranquility,' and that is what Aaron Cobb gives us in this beautiful recollection of Samuel, the son with trisomy 18, given to Aaron and his wife Alisha to hold for four hours and fifty-eight minutes, but to love for a lifetime. Probing deeply the experience of love and loss, of sorrow and gratitude, this is a work for us, its readers, to learn from in grateful silence.”

Most Certainly True

Preaching & Worship

“To many people today ‘catechetical preaching’ might sound like an oxymoron. But in Most Certainly True, a collection of sermons based on Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, we see how an experienced, thoughtful pastor can make catechetical preaching come alive. Michael Kasting’s sermons manage to be simultaneously clear and deep, gentle yet bracing. The church is well served by such preaching.”

On Thinking the Human

Philosophy

“Here are some rules for reading this 'little' book by Robert Jenson: Do not think of it as bedtime reading. Eliminate the word skim from your vocabulary. Rid yourself of the idea that philosophers and theologians are engaged in fundamentally different enterprises. Throw out the idea that human existence is unproblematic but that God's is a puzzle and can be understood only by reference to our own. Follow these rules, and this little book about the most basic aspects of human life will seem little no more.”

Patience

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“A beautifully written book, both welcome and unusual. This is less a book to be summarized than to be read and contemplated. It may inspire fresh thought about the sort of people we should strive to be. It is a book that a young man could probably not have written, inviting and encouraging us, as it does, to accept--indeed, to accept with gratitude--'the slowness of the good.'”

The Minister as Moral Theologian

Theology

“For pastors faced with the challenging task of living as Christians and teaching others to do so as well, Sondra Wheeler has written a book that is both learned and wise. She wears her considerable learning lightly, writing prose that is simultaneously winsome and direct. Even more important, every page displays wisdom--a mature insight that will be her greatest gift to her readers.”

The Problem of Self-Love in St. Augustine

Theology

“Some thinkers never become unimportant; some topics always repay renewed attention. St. Augustine is such a thinker; self-love is such a topic. It is, therefore, good that Oliver O'Donovan's analysis of the problem of self-love in Augustine's thought is again in print and available for study. It is a careful unraveling of the development of Augustine's thinking on self-love, and it is also an important guide for our own attempts to probe various aspects of one of the most complicated problems in the moral life.”

Tragedy, Tradition, Transformism

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Paul Ramsey's contribution to twentieth-century Christian ethics in this country was immense, and it deserves attention and careful study. Stephen Long provides just that--offering a thorough account of the development of Ramsey's thought, some little-known information (from the Ramsey papers at Duke) about Ramsey's early years, and the kind of probing theological analysis that Ramsey himself always attempted. This book will help make possible a continued reappropriation of the riches of Ramsey's writings.”