Responsive Becoming: Moral Formation in Theological, Evolutionary, and Developmental Perspective
Overview
This volume offers an interdisciplinary study of Reformed sanctification and human development, providing the foundation for a constructive account of Christian moral formation that is attentive both to divine grace and to the significance of natural, embodied processes. Angela Carpenter’s argument also addresses the impressions that such theologies give; namely either solitude in the face of adversity, or sheer passivity.
Through careful examination of the doctrine of sanctification in three Reformed theologians—John Calvin, John Owen and Horace Bushnell—Carpenter argues that human responsiveness in the context of fellowship with the triune God provides a basic framework for a theological account of moral transformation. Her relational approach brings together divine and human agency in a dynamic process where both are indispensable. Supplying an account of moral formation located within Christian salvation, while also being attentive to embodied human nature and the sciences, this book is vital to all those interested in spiritual formation and the human capacity for love.
- Reflects on the Reformed view of sanctification
- Focuses on the importance of the divine–human relationship
- Addresses common questions and conundrums about sanctification
- Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child
- John Owen and the Pelagian Threat
- Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace
- Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect
- Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective
- Sanctification Revisited
Doctrine meets life, theology meets the human sciences, and the scholarly meets the practical in this beautifully written and persuasively argued account of how God’s grace relates to our ordinary humanity. This is theological ethics at its very best. I recommend it enthusiastically.
—Gerald McKenny, Walter Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame, USA
- Title: Responsive Becoming: Moral Formation in Theological, Evolutionary, and Developmental Perspective
- Author: Angela Carpenter
- Series: T&T Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics
- Publisher: T&T Clark
- Publication Date: 2019
- Pages: 200
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Moral Theology