Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, 2nd ed.

by David P. Gushee; Glen H. Stassen

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2016

Overview

Ever since its original publication in 2003, Glen Stassen and David Gushee’s Kingdom Ethics has offered students, pastors, and other readers an outstanding framework for Christian ethical thought, one that is solidly rooted in Scripture, especially Jesus's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.

This substantially revised edition of Kingdom Ethics features enhanced and updated treatments of all major contemporary ethical issues. David Gushee’s revisions include updated data and examples, a more global perspective, more gender-inclusive language, a clearer focus on methodology, discussion questions added

Key Features

• Presents a comprehensive update of the leading Christian ethics textbook of the 21st century
• Features modernized data, references and perspectives
• Includes discussion questions for reflection

Contents

• Part 1: Methodology for Kingdom Ethics
• Part 2: Core Moral Issues in Kingdom Ethics

Top Highlights

“The enshrinement of fearful/lustful male thinking about women creates sequestration systems for the women that men want to protect—and prostitution systems for the women men want to use for sex.” (Page 238)

“Many Christian ethicists have shifted their focus much more toward virtues and the formation of character, and away from moral rules and moral principles.” (Page 21)

“The Beatitudes are not about high ideals, but about God’s gracious deliverance and our joyous participation. We believe that people have put too much emphasis on the virtues (poverty of spirit, purity of heart, peacemaking, and so on), and not enough emphasis on what Jesus was emphasizing—God’s presence, God’s active deliverance, God’s giving us a share in that deliverance, and so blessedness and joy.” (Page 24)

“This ‘high ideals’ interpretation does not fit what Jesus in fact teaches. It imposes a foreign philosophy of idealism on the real Jewish Jesus who identifies with the realistic tradition of the Hebrew prophets, not with the tradition of Greek idealism.” (Page 22)

“Indeed, to put it more strongly, if Christ is the pivot point of the advance of the kingdom, God’s Son leading the redemption of the planet, we must study every aspect of his life and teachings, for he is the key to human history and all reality.” (Page 60)

Praise for the Print Edition

Freshly conceived, newly organized, carefully explicit about both method and the complexity of concrete moral judgments, this book exemplifies what we all want evangelical Christian ethics to be — centered on Jesus, deeply grounded in Scripture, and attentive to emerging issues and new concerns as God's people seek to discern the shape of a life lived in faithful response to the in-breaking kingdom.

—Sondra Wheeler, Wesley Theological Seminary

Kingdom Ethics is arguably the most significant and comprehensive Christian ethics textbook of our time. While such updates as a glossary make the book even more accessible, the real treasure of this edition is its deepened examination of critical topics such as racism, criminal justice, human sexuality, and peacemaking. Kingdom Ethics in this second edition will expand the hearts and minds of all those who desire to be formed by faithful scholarship in conversation with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

—Michelle A. Clifton-Soderstrom, North Park Theological Seminary

In Kingdom Ethics David Gushee and the late Glen Stassen have served an entire generation of students in Christian ethics. This second edition continues to challenge our thinking about many of the enduring social issues of our time. It remains focused on an ethics of Jesus based primarily on the Sermon on the Mount and traces out the implications of Jesus’s teaching for our contemporary setting. In this substantial revision Gushee tackles these issues in ways that will challenge some conventional Christian thinking. The text, in places, will prove controversial to some readers. This edition of Kingdom Ethics will nonetheless drive all who read it to pursue greater depths of theological reflection and faithfulness in Christian discipleship on important matters facing our world.

—Patrick T. Smith, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context
• Authors: David P. Gushee, Glen H. Stassen
• Edition: Second Edition
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2016
• Logos Release Date: 2019
• Pages: 549
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Christian ethics; Jesus Christ › Ethics; Sermon on the Mount › Criticism, interpretation, etc
• ISBNs: 9780802874214, 9780830826681, 0802874215, 0830826688
• Resource ID: LLS:KNGDMTHCSSCNDTN
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T01:02:14Z

About the Authors

David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, Atlanta, Georgia. His many other books include Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust: Genocide and Moral Obligation.

Glen H. Stassen (1936–2014) served as the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. His other books include Living the Sermon on the Mount and Just Peacemaking.