In this original interpretation and critique of Paul Ramsey’s ethical thought, D. Stephen Long traces the development of one of the mid-twentieth century’s most important and controversial religious social thinkers. Long examines Ramsey’s early liberal idealism as well as later influences on his work, including the just war doctrine, Reinhold Niebu

The modern ethics of war is a field of disparate, competing voices based on often unexplored theological and metaphysical assumptions. Therese Feiler approaches them from the borderline area between systematics, philosophical theology and religious studies. With reference to G. W. F. Hegel's and like-minded thinkers' 'theo–logic' that negotiates Christ's mediation and immanent dialectics, Feiler identifies the logic and problem of mediation as the core concern of political ethics. Feiler unites five representative authors from now disparate strands of contemporary just war ethics, testing whether they offer a meaningful possibility of mediation and subsequent reconciliation: a sovereign realist and a cosmopolitan idealist; a rationalist individualist, an idealist Christian ethicist, and finally, an evangelical theologian. Opening the just war debate for comparative critical engagement, Feiler creates a fascinating study that locates a “dynamic point” at which faithful, free political action can be wrestled from irony, tragedy, and melancholic inertia in the face of totalitarian suffocation.

In his masterpiece An American Tragedy, the naturalist writer Theodore Dreiser depicts different pains of American society as it was stepping into the modern age. The youths from the lower rung of the society detested the traditional norms and values and sought ways of transformation in the job market and opportunities brought about by industrialization. However, their dreams, ambitions and efforts to ascend the social ladder ended up in a tragedy. Dreiser, the pioneer of naturalism in the American literary arena effectively depicts such phenomena through the life of his protagonist, Clyde. Brought up in a strict religious family characterized by abject poverty, Clyde struggles to overcome the life of deprivation. However, he does not possess the mental ability and skills to overcome the difficulties of life and succumbs to vicious circle of circumstances. Whereas realism portrays events and incidents of a society in a realistic manner naturalists go beyond realism to come up with the causes and explanations behind a real event. By relying on psychology, chemism, mechanism and social forces, Dreiser portrays how human life is devoid of free will. Dreiser effectively shows that lack of education, religiously stringent home environment and pangs of poverty throughout his childhood had charted out a gloomy fate for Clyde, who heads towards the death bed and is executed at the prime of youth. In his works, Dreiser often uses animal metaphors and similes to effect his point that human beings are no different from animals for their lack of free will and, are prey to circumstances. Though at the face value the school of naturalism seems gloomy, dark and negative it does offer optimism and hope. Naturalists believe on evolution and hence, human beings can improve themselves and can learn to overcome beastly nature. In the due process of evolution they can learn to live by reason instead of being ruled by instincts. Thus, human beings have the potential to achieve a similar ideal world as envisioned by spiritualism. Works inspired by naturalism also impart a guiding lesson to the society that the society and its stake holders are responsible for existing social ills/evils. In the case of the tragic hero, it was the social structure that denied access to education and better opportunities for poor youths to embrace a good life.

What is the relationship between the command to love one’s enemies and the use of violence and/or other coercive political means? This work examines this question by comparing and contrasting two important contemporary approaches to Christian ethics, neoAugustinian and the ecclesial or neoAnabaptist. It traces the complicated conversation that has taken place since John Howard Yoder took on Reinhold Niebuhr’s interpretation of the Anabaptists in the 1940’s. It consists of three parts. The first part traces the development of the Augustinian-Niebuhrian approach to ethics from Niebuhr through those who have advanced his work including Paul Ramsey, Timothy Jackson, Charles Mathewes, Eric Gregory, and Jennifer Herdt. It also examines the Augustinian ethics of Oliver O’Donovan, John Milbank and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Along with tracing the Augustinian approach and its trajectories through agapism, theology and the interpretation of Augustine, it identifies fifteen criticisms that this approach brings against the neoAnabaptists. The second part traces the origin of the ecclesial or neoAnabaptist approach, and then examines its relationship to, and criticism of, agapism, what theological doctrines are central and its interpretation of Augustine. Its purpose is primarily constructive by explaining the role that ecclesiology, Christology and eschatology have among the neoAnabaptists. The third part addresses the criticisms levied by Augustinians against the neoAnabaptists by drawing on the constructive theology in the second part. It intends to show where the Augustinian critics are correct, where they have missed key theological teachings, and where they misrepresent. It also assesses the summons to the nationalist project the Augustinians put to the neoAnabaptists. If this work is successful, this third part will not be defensive. It will instead illumine the reasons for the criticisms and suggest means by which the conversation that began between Yoder and Niebuhr can continue and possibly bear fruit for theological ethics in both its ecclesial and nationalist projects for generations to come.

The Transformations of Tragedy explores different Christian influences, from the Early Modern to Modern periods, upon the development of post-classical Western tragedy.

The evolutionary origins of human beings, and in particular the origins of human morality, have always attracted debate and speculation, not just in the academic community but in popular science and the wider general population as well. The arguments and explanations put forward over the years seem to thoroughly catch the popular imagination, but there is the danger that these explanations tend to step outside the bounds of scientific theory and become powerful popular myths instead. In Neil Messer's "Selfish Genes and Christian Ethics", the author is challenging this tendency. Instead, he provides a Christian theological anthropology, which, among other things, aims to give Christians and the churches the confidence to engage with assumptions that evolutionary theory and religious beliefs are untenable. This is a valuable resource for anyone engaged in the study of theology, providing the reader with the ability to consider both the theoretical and the practical questions raised by evolutionary discussions of ethics and morality.

Not long ago, Paul Ramsey (1913-1988) was a leading voice in North American Christian ethics. Today, however, his intellectual legacy is in question, and his work is largely ignored by current scholars in the field. Against the tide of that neglect, Adam Edward Hollowell argues in Power and Purpose that Ramsey's work can still yield considerable insight for contemporary Christian political theology. Hollowell shows the influences of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Barth on Ramsey's early work; discusses his conversations with political theologians of his generation, including Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr and Joseph Fletcher; considers his influence on the early virtue theory of Jean Porter and Oliver O'Donovan; and places Ramsey's work in conversation with more recent voices in Christian ethics, including John Bowlin, Jennifer Herdt, Charles Mathewes, Eric Gregory, and Daniel Bell. Hollowell thus forges new connections between Ramsey and contemporary debates in political theology on such issues as political authority, power, just war, and torture. Hollowell's Power and Purpose also revisits well-known aspects of Ramsey's work -- for example, his insistence on the political significance of God's covenant with creation -- and offers an original account of the role of judgment in his theology of repentance. The book dedicates considerable attention to Ramsey's description of practical reasoning and highlights his commitment to the virtues, especially prudence. This accessible introduction to Paul Ramsey will appeal to a wide swath of scholars and students in Christian ethics and political theology.

Engaging variously with the legacy of Paul L. Lehmann, these essays argue for a reorientation in Christian theology that better honours the formative power of the gospel to animate and shape doctrine and witness, as well as ethical and political life. The authors explore key themes in Christian theology and ethics - forgiveness, discernment, responsibility, spirituality, the present day tasks of theology and the role of faith in public life - making plain the unabated importance of Lehmann's work at this juncture in contemporary theology. The internationally recognized contributors draw crucial connections between the gospel of reconciliation, the form of Christian theology and witness, and the challenges of contemporary ethical and political reflection. This book demonstrates why this close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and author of Ethics in a Christian Context and The Transfiguration of Politics continues to influence generations of theologians in both the English-speaking world and beyond.

B. Andrew Lustig, Baruch A. Brody, and Gerald P. McKenny In this second volume of the “Altering Nature” project, we situate specific religious and policy discussions of four broad areas of biotechnology within the context of our interdisciplinary research on concepts of nature and the natural in the first volume (Altering Nature, Concepts of Nature and the Natural in Biotechnology Debates). In the first volume, we invited five groups of scholars to explore the diverse conc- tions of nature and the natural that shape moral judgments about human alterations of nature, as especially exemplified by recent developments in biotechnology. A careful reading of such developments reveals that assessments of them—whether positive or negative—are often informed by different conceptual interpretations of nature and the natural, with differing implications for judgments about the app- priateness of particular alterations of nature. These varying interpretations of nature and the natural often result from the distinctive perspectives that characterize va- ous scholarly disciplines. Therefore, in an effort to explore the variety of meanings that attend discussions of the concepts of nature and the natural, the contributors to the first volume of Altering Nature addressed those concepts from five different disciplinary vantages. A first group of scholars analyzed a range of religious and spiritual perspectives on concepts of nature and the natural. Their research highlighted the thematic, h- torical, and methodological touchstones in those traditions that shape their persp- tives on nature.