CHRISTIAN ETHICS

CHRISTIAN ETHICS

AN INTRODUCTORY READER

"The selection of readings is excellent and I'd happily have my students devour them."
Esther Reed, University of Exeter

"Clear, sharply focused, and precisely what is needed. This book is enlightening and potentially transformative. It presents Christian ethics as an exciting theological enterprise and offers a rich, deep, and accessible way of practicing ethics."
John Swinton, University of Aberdeen

"Wells and Quash have put together a wonderfully comprehensive survey of Christian ethics while at the same time offering a distinctive and fresh perspective ... With the array of primary texts and judicious and very well-informed commentary that the two volumes represent, they have succeeded in constructing an extremely valuable resource for teachers and students of Christian ethics."
Michael S. Northcott, University of Edinburgh (of Introducing Christian Ethics and Christian Ethics: An Introductory Reader)

Christian Ethics: An Introductory Reader provides a comprehensive anthology of primary documents and materials relating to the emergence and study of key approaches to Christian ethics.

The volume seeks to encompass the entire canon of Christian ethics, including first-hand accounts from major figures in the theological and ecclesial tradition. Readers are introduced to foundational figures such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth, as well as contemporary voices including Rosemary Radford Ruether, James Cone, Jürgen Moltmann, Stanley Hauerwas, Oliver O'Donovan, Wendell Berry, and many others. Other notable figures not usually associated with the study of formal theoretical ethics, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., are also represented.

The significance of each extract is summarized through useful introductory sections, placing the author or text in the context of broader developments in Christian ethical theory. Whether it is used independently or alongside the accompanying textbook, Introducing Christian Ethics, this engaging and informative volume offers students a window into the fascinating evolution of Christian ethical thought.

2020 Christianity Today Award of Merit for Missions
2020 Outreach Magazine Cross-Cultural and Missional Resource of the Year

A deeper understanding of the grand history of mission leads to a faithful expression of God's mission today.

From the beginning, God's mission has been carried out by people sent around the world. From Abraham to Jesus, the thread that weaves its way throughout Scripture is a God who sends his people across the world, proclaiming his kingdom. As the world has evolved, Christian mission continues to be a foundational tradition in the church.

In this one-volume textbook, Edward Smither weaves together a comprehensive history of Christian mission, from the apostles to the modern church. In each era, he focuses on the people sent by God to the ends of the earth, while also describing the cultural context they encountered. Smither highlights the continuity and development across thousands of years of global mission.

The line that separated Eastern Christendom from Western on the medieval map is similar to the "iron curtain" of recent times. Linguistic barriers, political divisions, and liturgical differences combined to isolate the two cultures from each other. Except for such episodes as the schism between East and West or the Crusades, the development of non-Western Christendom has been largely ignored by church historians. In The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, Jaroslav Pelikan explains the divisions between Eastern and Western Christendom, and identifies and describes the development of the distinctive forms taken by Christian doctrine in its Greek, Syriac, and early Slavic expression.

"It is a pleasure to salute this masterpiece of exposition. . . . The book flows like a great river, slipping easily past landscapes of the utmost diversity--the great Christological controversies of the seventh century, the debate on icons in the eighth and ninth, attitudes to Jews, to Muslims, to the dualistic heresies of the high Middle Ages, to the post-Reformation churches of Western Europe. . . . His book succeeds in being a study of the Eastern Christian religion as a whole."--Peter Brown and Sabine MacCormack, New York Review of Books

"The second volume of Professor Pelikan's monumental work on The Christian Tradition is the most comprehensive historical treatment of Eastern Christian thought from 600 to 1700, written in recent years. . . . Pelikan's reinterpretation is a major scholarly and ecumenical event."--John Meyendorff

"Displays the same mastery of ancient and modern theological literature, the same penetrating analytical clarity and balanced presentation of conflicting contentions, that made its predecessor such an intellectual treat."--Virgina Quarterly Review