From marital infidelity to global war, the world is obviously broken, leaving people desperate to find an explanation for our universal sin problem. In the latest addition to the Theology in Community series, Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson have assembled an interdisciplinary team of evangelical thinkers to explore the biblical doctrine of sin from a variety of angles. Among other contributors, popular scholar D. A. Carson discusses the contemporary significance of sin; seasoned professor Paul House details sin in the Old Testament law, prophets, and writings; and New Testament expert Douglas Moo explores sin from Paul's vantage point. This team of top-notch scholars offers modern readers a comprehensive overview of this oft-neglected, biblical theme so that readers might learn to live better in a sinful world. Part of the Theology in Community series.

John Rawls never published anything about his own religious beliefs, but after his death two texts were discovered which shed extraordinary light on the subject. A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith is Rawls’s undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. At that time Rawls was deeply religious; the thesis is a significant work of theological ethics, of interest both in itself and because of its relation to his mature writings. “On My Religion,” a short statement drafted in 1997, describes the history of his religious beliefs and attitudes toward religion, including his abandonment of orthodoxy during World War II. The present volume includes these two texts, together with an Introduction by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel, which discusses their relation to Rawls’s published work, and an essay by Robert Merrihew Adams, which places the thesis in its theological context. The texts display the profound engagement with religion that forms the background of Rawls’s later views on the importance of separating religion and politics. Moreover, the moral and social convictions that the thesis expresses in religious form are related in illuminating ways to the central ideas of Rawls’s later writings. His notions of sin, faith, and community are simultaneously moral and theological, and prefigure the moral outlook found in Theory of Justice.

What it means to be a man or a woman is questioned today like never before. While traditional gender roles have been eroding for decades, now the very categories of male and female are being discarded with reckless abandon. How does one act like a gentleman in such confusing times? The Catholic Gentleman is a solid and practical guide to virtuous manhood. It turns to the timeless wisdom of the Catholic Church to answer the important questions men are currently asking. In short, easy- to-read chapters, the author offers pithy insights on a variety of topics, including • How to know you are an authentic man • Why our bodies matter • The value of tradition • The purpose of courtesy • What real holiness is and how to achieve it • How to deal with failure in the spiritual life

"Plantinga's treatment of sin is comprehensive, articulate, and well written. It confirms the orthodox and neo-orthodox doctrine of sin, lavishly illustrates it from contemporary events, and plumbs depths in understanding sin's complexities and banalities...

Much has been written of late about what the apostle Paul really meant when he spoke of justification by faith, not the works of the law. This short study by Stephen Westerholm carefully examines proposals on the subject by Krister Stendahl, E. P. Sanders, Heikki Raisanen, N. T. Wright, James D. G. Dunn, and Douglas A. Campbell. In doing so, Westerholm notes weaknesses in traditional understandings that have provoked the more recent proposals, but he also points out areas in which the latter fail to do justice to the apostle. Readers of this book will gain not only a better grasp of the ongoing theological debate about justification but also a more nuanced overall understanding of Paul.

Commentators have long argued about whether to read Paul's personification of Sin in Romans literally or figuratively. Matthew Croasmun suggests both that the cosmic power Sin is nothing more than an emergent feature of a vast network of human transgression and that this power is nevertheless a real person.

This landmark work, which has shaped a generation of scholarship, compares the apostle Paul with contemporary Judaism, both understood on their own terms. E. P. Sanders proposes a methodology for comparing similar but distinct religious patterns, demolishes a flawed view of rabbinic Judaism still prevalent in much New Testament scholarship, and argues for a distinct understanding of the apostle and of the consequences of his conversion. A new foreword by Mark A. Chancey outlines Sanders‘s achievement, reviews the principal criticisms raised against it, and describes the legacy he leaves future interpreters.

The controversial evangelical Bible scholar and author of The Bible Tells Me So explains how Christians mistake “certainty” and “correct belief” for faith when what God really desires is trust and intimacy. With compelling and often humorous stories from his own life, Bible scholar Peter Enns offers a fresh look at how Christian life truly works, answering questions that cannot be addressed by the idealized traditional doctrine of “once for all delivered to the saints.” Enns offers a model of vibrant faith that views skepticism not as a loss of belief, but as an opportunity to deepen religious conviction with courage and confidence. This is not just an intellectual conviction, he contends, but a more profound kind of knowing that only true faith can provide. Combining Enns’ reflections of his own spiritual journey with an examination of Scripture, The Sin of Certainty models an acceptance of mystery and paradox that all believers can follow and why God prefers this path because it is only this way by which we can become mature disciples who truly trust God. It gives Christians who have known only the demand for certainty permission to view faith on their own flawed, uncertain, yet heartfelt, terms.

The apostles and early Christians believed and worshiped in unity-in doctrine and practice following Jesus' wish that "they may be one" (John 17:21). But today, Christianity is splintered by the Reformation and its 500-year legacy of division, with Protestant groups divided among themselves and separated from Catholicism by a set of seemingly non-negotiable differences. Traditionally, Catholic apologetics has tried to bridge that separation by using Scripture, history, and logic to help Protestants see the truth of Church teaching. In With One Accord, former Evangelical professor Douglas Beaumont takes another approach: working for accord with Protestants by reasoning from the things they already believe and do. Using principles that orthodox, Bible-believing Protestants broadly affirm, he arrives at particulars of Catholic belief, showing that in many cases the division isn't as wide or deep as we thought. Splitting the difference between ecumenism and apologetics, With One Accord is a sign of hope for Christian unity and a great resource Catholics looking to have friendly and productive conversations with their Protestant friends. Book jacket.