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.

First published in 1976, Paul Johnson’s exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude—“a tour de force, one of the most ambitious surveys of the history of Christianity ever attempted and perhaps the most radical” (New York Review of Books). In a highly readable companion to books on faith and history, the scholar and author Johnson has illuminated the Christian world and its fascinating history in a way that no other has. Johnson takes off in the year AD 49 with his namesake the apostle Paul. Thus beginning an ambitious quest to paint the centuries since the founding of a little-known ‘Jesus Sect’, A History of Christianity explores to a great degree the evolution of the Western world. With an unbiased and overall optimistic tone, Johnson traces the fantastic scope of the consequent sects of Christianity and the people who followed them. Information drawn from extensive and varied sources from around the world makes this history as credible as it is reliable. Invaluable understanding of the framework of modern Christianity—and its trials and tribulations throughout history—has never before been contained in such a captivating work.

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.

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.