Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian Political Duty

by Ephraim Radner

Publisher:

Baker Academic

, 2024

Overview

One of today’s leading theologians examines how Christians might more faithfully and realistically imagine their political vocation.

This book by one of today’s leading theologians examines how Christians might more faithfully and realistically imagine their political vocation.

Ephraim Radner explains that our Christian calling is to limit our political concerns to the boundaries of our created lives: our birth, parents, siblings, families, brief persistence in life, raising of children, relations, decline, and death. He shows that a Christian approach to politics is aimed at tending and protecting these “mortal goods” and argues for a more constrained view of our mortal life and our political duty than is common in both progressive and conservative Christian perspectives.

Radner encourages us to take seriously what is most valuable in our lives and allow this to shape our social posture. Our vocation is to offer our limited life to God, give thanks for it, and glorify God by living our lives as a gift. Radner also shows how “catastrophe” reveals our time to be fragile, bounded, and easily overturned. And he exposes “betterment,” which lies behind most modern politics, as a false motive for human life. The book concludes with a vision of the good life articulated in the form of a letter to his adult children.

Key Features

• Examines how Christians might more faithfully and realistically imagine their political vocation
• Argues for a more constrained view of our mortal life and our political duty

Product Details

• Title: Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian Political Duty
• Author: Ephraim Radner
• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subject: Christianity and politics
• ISBNs: 9781493444618, 1493444611
• Resource ID: LLS:MRTLGDSPLTCLDTY
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-19T20:07:21Z

About Ephraim Radner

Ephraim Radner is professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto. He is the author or editor of seven books, including The Fate of Communion: The Agony of Anglicanism and the Future of a Global Church and Hope Among the Fragments: The Broken Church and Its Engagement of Scripture.