Christianity's demographics, vitality, and influence have tipped markedly toward the global South and East. Addressing this seismic shift, one of today's leading Christian scholars reflects on what he has learned about justice through his encounters with world Christianity. Philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff's experiences in South Africa, the Middle East, and Honduras have shaped his views on justice through the years. In this book he offers readers an autobiographical tour, distilling the essence of his thoughts on the topic. After describing how he came to think about justice as he does and reviewing the theory of justice he developed in earlier writings, Wolterstorff shows how deeply embedded justice is in Christian Scripture. He reflects on the difficult struggle to right injustice and examines the necessity of just punishment. Finally, he explores the relationship between justice and beauty and between justice and hope. This book is the first in the Turning South series, which offers reflections by eminent Christian scholars who have turned their attention and commitments toward the global South and East.

Christianity's demographics, vitality, and influence have tipped markedly toward the global South and East. Addressing this seismic shift, a noted Christian literary scholar recounts how her focus has shifted from American to African literature. Susan VanZanten began her career working on nineteenth-century American literature. A combination of personal circumstances, curricular demands, world events, and unfolding scholarship have led her to teach, research, and write about African literature and to advocate for a global approach to education and scholarship. This is the second book in the Turning South series, which offers reflections by eminent Christian scholars who have turned their attention and commitments beyond North America.

Christianity's demographics, vitality, and influence have tipped markedly toward the global South and East. Addressing this seismic shift, one of America's leading church historians shows how studying world Christianity changed and enriched his understanding of the nature of the faith as well as of its history. Mark Noll illustrates the riches awaiting anyone who gains even a preliminary understanding of the diverse histories that make up the Christian story. He shows how coming to view human culture as created by God was an important gift he received from the historical study of world Christian diversity, which then led him to a deeper theological understanding of Christianity itself. He also offers advice to students who sense a call to a learned vocation. This is the third book in the Turning South series, which offers reflections by eminent Christian scholars who have turned their attention and commitments beyond North America.

It is remarkable that African Americans, the descendants of slaves, embrace Christianity at all. The imagination that is necessary to parse biblical text and find within it a theology that speaks to their context is a testimony to their will to survive in a hostile land. Black religion embraces the cross and the narrative of Jesus as savior, both theologically and culturally. But this does not suggest that African Americans have not historically, and do not now, struggle with the reconciliation of the cross, black life, suffering. African Americans are well aware of the shared relationship of Christianity with the white oppressors of history. The religion that helped African Americans to survive is the religion that was instrumental in their near genocide.

Christianity's demographics, vitality, and influence have tipped markedly toward the global South and East. Addressing this seismic shift, a noted Christian literary scholar recounts how her focus has shifted from American to African literature. Susan VanZanten began her career working on nineteenth-century American literature. A combination of personal circumstances, curricular demands, world events, and unfolding scholarship have led her to teach, research, and write about African literature and to advocate for a global approach to education and scholarship. This is the second book in the Turning South series, which offers reflections by eminent Christian scholars who have turned their attention and commitments beyond North America.

Analyzes the structure of the modern social order and examines the Christian's proper goals of working for peace and justice.

Wide-ranging and ambitious, Justice combines moral philosophy and Christian ethics to develop an important theory of rights and of justice as grounded in rights. Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses what it is to have a right, and he locates rights in the respect due the worth of the rights-holder. After contending that socially-conferred rights require the existence of natural rights, he argues that no secular account of natural human rights is successful; he offers instead a theistic account. Wolterstorff prefaces his systematic account of justice as grounded in rights with an exploration of the common claim that rights-talk is inherently individualistic and possessive. He demonstrates that the idea of natural rights originated neither in the Enlightenment nor in the individualistic philosophy of the late Middle Ages, but was already employed by the canon lawyers of the twelfth century. He traces our intuitions about rights and justice back even further, to Hebrew and Christian scriptures. After extensively discussing justice in the Old Testament and the New, he goes on to show why ancient Greek and Roman philosophy could not serve as a framework for a theory of rights. Connecting rights and wrongs to God's relationship with humankind, Justice not only offers a rich and compelling philosophical account of justice, but also makes an important contribution to overcoming the present-day divide between religious discourse and human rights.

How cultivating a healthy fear of God liberates us from our fear of others, our fear of the future, and even our fear of death itself. At times the world feels like it's losing its mind. From politics to the pandemic, we live with an ever-increasing uncertainty, and many of us have grown to fear the rapid disintegration of our society and our own lives. Recovering Our Sanity is not another self-help book about how to beat your daily fears for a better life. It's a book that will show you the gravity and glory of a God who's worthy of our fear. It’s a book that will reveal how these two biblical phrases—Fear God and Do Not Be Afraid—are not contradictory but actually one coherent message. Michael Horton—Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary—shows us that we cannot fight our fears by seeking the absence of fear altogether, but by living with a fear of God that drives out the fear of everything else. Horton will walk you through the case for the fear of God by: Developing what it means to fear God, biblically and theologically, and what this kind of fear looks like in practice. Categorizing different types of fears—from cultural anxiety to pain and hardship—and what they stem from. Focusing on how to confront our earthly fears with our hope in Christ, rooted in the gospel. Reminding us that God does not exist for us; we exist for God. Humbling, thought-provoking, and hope-igniting, Recovering Our Sanity delivers a timely message that will help you shift your focus from a human-centered obsession with self-preservation to a fixation on Christ and his salvation. Rather than clinging to false securities and promises of immediate gratification, you can gain the lasting joy of knowing the One who has given himself to save us and who says to us, "Do not be afraid."

A sweeping intellectual history of the role of wealth in the church in the last days of the Roman Empire Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity. Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven. Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.