A comprehensive and scholarly treatise on Christian living. After highlighting the dignity of lay Christian life and its mission to transform the world, it contrasts the lay and consecrated vocations and then proceeds to explore the splendid love and mystery of the consecrated life from the Scriptural, historical, conciliar and theological perspectives. It deals at length with the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience which are the principal elements of the religious life, with the common life and apostolic work of consecrated men and women. It also addresses the mutual influence of consecrated life and ministerial priesthood in the lives of religious who are ordained. Besides tracing the origin and development of the three evangelical counsels, the books presents a lucid and balanced exposition of the real meaning and essential features of the allied virtues and suggests practical ways and means of avoiding pitfalls and of growing in each virtue. Of special interest is the sensitive treatment of delicate issues like friendship with the same or opposite sex among consecrated persons.

Most contemporary theologies of Holy Orders consider priesthood mainly in its diocesan context and most contemporary theologies of religious life do not consider how ordained ministry functions when it is internal rather than external to religious life. Understanding the Religious Priesthood provides a history and theology of religious priesthood that contributes to our understanding of this vocation’s identity and mission. It uncovers what religious priesthood shares with diocesan priesthood and non-ordained religious life and what makes it different from both those other vocations. Christian Raab begins by tracing the history of religious priesthood from its origins in the early Church to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. He demonstrates that religious priests often faced questions about how to reconcile their two callings, but that they also provided answers in their theologies and spiritualities of priesthood and religious life. Meanwhile, they made key contributions to the Church’s life and mission. Raab then investigates the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on priesthood and religious life. Observing that the Council presented priesthood according to a diocesan typology and presented religious life without sacerdotal associations, he argues that the lack of imagery of religious priesthood contributed to a post-conciliar vocational identity crisis among religious priests. He then seeks to remedy this lacuna by appealing to the biblical images for religious priesthood Hans Urs von Balthasar offered in his theology of vocations. Raab argues that Balthasar’s imagery is a promising way forward for understanding the identity and mission of religious priesthood. In a final part, Raab provides a substantial theological articulation of religious priesthood which illuminates its liturgical signification, ecclesial mediation and mission, and ministerial identity. Here he draws not only from Balthasar but also from Pope John Paul II, Yves Congar, Jean-Marie Tillard, Brian Daley, and Guy Mansini to construct his profile.

Diversity in the Structure of Christian Reasoning examines the effect of Christian commitments on rationality. When Christians read scripture, traditions supply concepts that shape what counts as normal, good, and true. This book offers an account of how different communities produce divergent readings of the Bible. It considers two examples from World Christianity, first a Bakongo community in central Africa, and then a Tamil bishop in southern India. Each case displays a relation between tradition and reason that reconfigures the hermeneutical picture developed by Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. To see what transpires when readers decide about a correct interpretation, this book offers theologians and scholars of religion a fresh strategy that keeps in view the global character of modern Christianity.

The Stob Lectures, sponsored annually by Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary, have drawn some of today's most celebrated Christian thinkers in the fields of ethics, apologetics, and philosophical theology. This volume collects under one cover each of the Stob Lectures delivered from 1986 to 1998. Comprised of thirteen learned, relevant, and well-crafted addresses, Seeking Understanding presents a diverse range of significant topics, illumined in engaging ways by the scholars who know them best. Lewis B. Smedes's inaugural lecture examines the subject of commitment. James M. Gustafson follows with a look at moral discourse,while Peter Kreeft speaks on immortality. Alvin Plantinga explores the nature of Christian scholarship, and Marty E. Marty surveys the denominational landscape. Allen D. Verhey probes key issues in medical ethics, while Nicholas P. Wolterstorff compares neo-Calvinism and "Yale theology." Other lectures feature Dewey J. Hoitenga Jr. on happiness, John Feikens on conflict, George I. Mavrodes on philosophy, Arthur F. Holmes on Christian education, and J. Harold Ellens on dysfunction. Eleanore Stump rounds out the volume with an insightful discussion of the problem of evil. Illustrative of the same depth of thinking, scholarly passion, and clarity of expression that characterized the work of the man whom these lectures honor, Henry J. Stob, Seeking Understanding is both a valuable omnibus and a superb introduction to a rich and influential tradition of Christian scholarship.

Between the years 350 and 500 a large body of Latin artes grammaticae emerged, educational texts outlining the study of Latin grammar and attempting a systematic discussion of correct Latin usage. These texts—the most complete of which are attributed to Donatus, Charisius, Servius, Diomedes, Pompeius, and Priscian—have long been studied as documents in the history of linguistic theory and literary scholarship. In Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World, Catherine Chin instead finds within them an opportunity to probe the connections between religious ideology and literary culture in the later Roman Empire. To Chin, the production and use of these texts played a decisive role both in the construction of a pre-Christian classical culture and in the construction of Christianity as a religious entity bound to a religious text. In exploring themes of utopian writing, pedagogical violence, and the narration of the self, the book describes the multiple ways literary education contributed to the idea that the Roman Empire and its inhabitants were capable of converting from one culture to another, from classical to Christian. The study thus reexamines the tensions between these two idealized cultures in antiquity by suggesting that, on a literary level, they were produced simultaneously through reading and writing techniques that were common across the empire. In bringing together and reevaluating fundamental topics from the fields of religious studies, classics, education, and literary criticism, Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World offers readers from these disciplines the opportunity to reconsider the basic conditions under which religions and cultures interact.

This book deconstructs the boundaries between Jewish and Christian cultures while at the same time redefining what it means to be Jewish in relation to Christianity in the twentieth century. Consequently, this analysis reveals the emergence of modern Jewish theologies out of the complex negotiations between Jewish thinkers and their Christian milieu.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.