Grace and Social Ethics
Gift as the Foundation of Our Life Together
About
Grace and Social Ethics demonstrates why the doctrine of grace has significant implications for social ethics and for Christian engagement with culture. The book reframes Christian social ethics by illuminating how grace shapes human identity and community.
Angela Carpenter integrates theology and social science to articulate a vision of human persons as constituted by gift rather than merit. This graced anthropology compellingly bridges theology and contemporary research on human dependence and mutuality. Carpenter insightfully applies this graced identity to pressing issues in social ethics such as criminal justice, labor practices, and gun violence.
Scholars and students of theological ethics as well as pastors seeking resources for moral formation will find illuminating perspectives in this integrative work, which situates social justice imperatives within God's gracious purposes.
Introduction
Part 1: An Anthropology of Grace
1. Christian Grace and the Reformation Psychology
2. Human Evolution and the Myth of Self-Sufficiency
3. Belonging and Self-Worth in Contemporary Psychology
4. Grace and the Interdependence in Human Society
Part 2: Social Ethics and Grace
5. Work
6. Criminal Justice
7. Gun Control
Epilogue: A Spirituality for Graced Identity
Index
Endorsements
"This is a wonderfully smart, effortlessly learned, and deeply insightful book. Angela Carpenter weaves together the best ideas from science, theology, and ethics to help us understand what it means to be human, and she explains all of it in prose that is not only clear but a genuine pleasure to read. I heartily commend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about these subjects."
Kevin W. Hector, Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor of Theology and of the Philosophy of Religions, University of Chicago
"In a culture obsessed with success and achievement, anxiety is always lurking. How easily even Christians lose sight of the fact that all we are and all we have is gift. In this wise and wide-ranging book, Carpenter deftly guides her readers through the findings of evolutionary anthropology and social psychology and into the thickets of contemporary debates around work, criminal justice, and gun control. Along the way, she uncovers the profound implications of the experience of grace for human sociality and builds a robust case for a social ethics deeply rooted in Reformation theology. Grace and Social Ethics is balm in Gilead!"
Jennifer A. Herdt, Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics, Yale Divinity School
"Angela Carpenter powerfully reminds us that grace is deeper than individual salvation because God is deeper than individual salvation, making redemptive action what individual salvation comes to in the life of God. The gift structure of creation comes with remarkable implications for ethics, ones we'd often rather forget on the way to forgetting ourselves. Grace and Social Ethics calls us back to ourselves by calling us back to divine grace, the first and final site of creaturely possibility."
Jonathan Tran, Baylor University
"We human beings are relational creatures who need gifts of love. Without God's love we would not even exist, but what does our need for grace mean for our life together? Angela Carpenter's wonderfully erudite yet remarkably accessible book insightfully reveals an overlapping consensus in theological, biological, and psychological understandings of our dependent nature. She then draws out important implications concerning the ways we deal with fear and anxiety and encourages us to seek out meaning in life."
Jesse Couenhoven, Villanova University
The Author
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Angela Carpenter
Angela Carpenter (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is the Leonard and Marjorie Maas Associate Professor of Reformed Theology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Her first book, Responsive Becoming: Moral Formation in Theological, Evolutionary, and...
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