Bible and Ethics in the Christian Life: A New Conversation

by Bruce C. Birch, Jacqueline E. Lapsley, Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, Larry L. Rasmussen

Overview

Earth is changing in ways it hasn't for hundreds of thousands of years. At the same time, Christianity is breaking away from its millennium-long geographical and cultural center in the Euro-West. Its growth is in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, primarily in Pentecostal, evangelical, and independent churches. These dramatically changed planetary and ecclesial landscapes have led many to conclude that we need a new way of thinking about our collective existence: who are we and what is the nature of our responsibility in this deeply altered world? To address that question, biblical scholars Bruce C. Birch and Jacqueline E. Lapsley and Christian ethicists Larry L. Rasmussen and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda carry on "a new conversation" that engages how Christians are to understand the authority and use of Scripture, the basic elements of any full-bodied Christian ethic attuned to our circumstances, and the nature of our responsibility to our planetary neighbors and creation itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780800697617
Publisher:	1517 Media
Publication date:	05/01/2018
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Bruce C. Birch is dean and professor of biblical theology at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Jacqueline E. Lapsley is associate professor of Old Testament and director of the Center for Theology, Women, and Gender at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda is professor of theological and social ethics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and Graduate Theological Union. She is founding director of the PLTS Center for Climate Justice and Faith. The author of numerous books, including Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation (Fortress, 2013), Moe-Lobeda is the editor of Fortress Press's Building a Moral Economy series.

Larry L. Rasmussen, a renowned Christian environmental ethicist, is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, emeritus, at Union Theological Seminary. He is the author of Earth Community, Earth Ethics; winner of the Grawemeyer Award; and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Christian Ethics. He has mentored a generation of scholars in eco-theology and green religion, rooted in practices of environmental justice within community contexts. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Table of Contents

Figures vii

Preface ix

Introduction: A New Conversation xiii

Part I The Bible as Moral Witness

1 A Two-Part Consensus 3

2 Foundations of the Biblical Text in Community Witness 13

3 Biblical Authority 39

4 Interpreting the Biblical Witness 61

Part II Elements of the Moral Life

5 What Are Morality, Ethics, and Christian Ethics? 91

6 Moral Formation 109

7 Moral Discernment and Action 151

Part III The Bible, Ethics, and the Moral Life

8 Witness and Practice 201

9 The Church and the Moral Life 227

10 Summary and Challenge 257

Bibliography 269

Name and Subject Index 283

Scripture Index 293