by: Brian Brock

• Format

  Hardcover

  ISBN

  9781540963260

  Dimensions

  6 x 9

  Pub. Date

  Aug 2025

  SRP

  $74.99

  Carton Quantity

  80

  Number of pages

  1216

  Buy

About

"In the beginning, God created . . ." Thus begins the Bible's story of a long conversation between God and creatures, one in which humans are often the least edifying contributors. They need to learn what it means to confess themselves creatures if they are to begin to understand what it means to be human and how to live.

Joining Creation's Praise, a major statement by a leading Christian ethicist, shows how confessing that we are creatures deeply reshapes every aspect of Christian thinking and living. Human beings are made to embody Christ's image in the world--not as dominators but as conduits of divine life.

In this comprehensive yet clear volume of theological ethics, Brian Brock follows the first few chapters of Genesis in order to discover the things that the sages of Israel took to be crucial for the ethical life of human beings among other creatures in God's world. Informed by theological rigor and careful exegesis, the many ethical reflections in this volume allow an ancient wisdom to shed fresh light on very postmodern ethical questions about conversion, life with God, knowledge and wisdom, dominion, Sabbath, vocation, economics, human dignity, our relationship with the rest of creation, sexuality, marriage, family, sin, death, and politics.

Prologue: Where Are You at Home? 
Introduction
Part 1: Creation and Worship
1. "In the Beginning": Living with God; Wayfinding and Scripture (Gen. 1:1)
2. "Let the Earth Bring Forth Living Creatures": Creating and Converting (Gen. 1:2-25)
3. Knowing and Doing; Wisdom and Spirit
4. "Let Us Make Humankind in Our Image": Relating Moral and Systematic Theology (Gen. 1:26-27)
5. "Fill the Earth and Subdue It; and Have Dominion": The Problem of Dominion (Gen. 1:28-31)
6. "Blessed the Seventh Day and Hallowed It": Sabbath Time (Gen. 2:1-3)
Part 2: Emplacement in Creation
7. "Put in a Place": Vocation and the Estates (Gen. 2:4-8)
8. "In the Midst of the Garden": The Tree and the Church (Gen. 2:9, 16-17)
9. "To Till and to Keep": Worship and Work (Gen. 2:8, 10-15)
10. "Freely Eat": Economics and the Myth of Original Markets (Gen. 2:15-16)
11. Waste as Revealer of Creatures Made "to Till and to Keep" (Gen. 2:15)
Part 3: Persons in Creation
12. "To See What He Would Name Them": Naming, Dominion, and Domination (Gen. 2:18-20)
13 "All the Cattle, and the Birds and Every Animal": Living with Animals (Gen. 2:18-20 Cont.)
14. "This One, This One--This One!": Recognizing Persons (Gen. 2:21-23a)
15. "Flesh of My Flesh": Sexual Desire and Human Identity (Gen. 2:23)
16. "Become One Flesh": Difference and Covenant (Gen. 2:24b)
17. "A Man Clings to His Wife": Singleness, the Institution of Marriage, and the Reconstitution of Counterhearers (Gen. 2:24a)
Part 4: Disunion in Creation
18. "Did God Say?" Attack on the Word (Gen. 3:1-5)
19. "Saw That It Was Good": Antidoxology and the Body of Sin (Gen. 3:6a)
20. "Took, and Ate": A New Kind of Eating (Gen. 3:6b)
21. "Surely You Will Not Die": What Does It Mean to Die? (Gen. 3:7)
22. "Sewed Fig Leaves Together": Skin, Nakedness, and Dressing (Gen. 3:7, 21)
Part 5: Living Together in Fallen Creation
23. "I Have Produced a Man": Kinship and Homemaking in a Fallen World (Gen. 3:16-4:1)
24. "Rose Up against His Brother and Killed Him": Political Authority and Violence (Gen. 4:6-8)
25. "Put a Mark on Cain": Judgment and Political Authority (Gen. 4:8-16)
26. "Enoch Built a City": The Beginning of Cities, Building, and Technology (Gen. 4:17-26)
27. What Is a "Public"? Babel and Pentecost (Gen. 11:1-9)
Appendix A: Relating Scriptural to Natural Reasoning; Science and Faith
Appendix B: Gateways to a Renewed Economy
Appendix C: Animals in Word and Image
Appendix D: Bodies in Womb and Grave
Appendix E: Cosmetic Remaking as Disorientation in Relational Space
Appendix F: Woman as Icon of Alterity and Threat to Moral Order
Appendix G: Not All Armies Are the Same
Appendix H: The Birth of Modern Political Thought from the Ashes of Eden
Appendix I: Worship, Building, and Bodies
Appendix J: Augustine's Two Cities and Luther's Two Churches as Ethical Heuristics
Indexes

Endorsements

"Wise, insightful, judicious, faithful, comprehensive, clarifying--these are just a few apt descriptions of Brock's magisterial Joining Creation's Praise. As a leading theological ethicist in our post-Christendom era, Brock shows us how we might find ourselves at home. Without certainty, without moralism, without avoiding the difficulties we face, he successfully brings us to where we can and should be. This work deserves to be the standard Christian ethics text for the foreseeable future."

D. Stephen Long, Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics, Southern Methodist University

"How can we late moderns experience being at home in the cosmos? Brian Brock proposes an answer that lies in an ethic of creatureliness, unfolded through a wide-ranging interpretation of the primeval history of Genesis. Seeing creation through the ethos of scriptural peoples challenges a host of contemporary assumptions, freeing Christians to abandon anthropocentrism and find Sabbath rest. Although this book is sure to delight some and disturb others, even readers who construe creatureliness in ways different from Brock will learn much from the workings of his expansive scriptural imagination."

Jennifer Herdt, Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics, Yale Divinity School

"Here Brock undertakes nothing less than the conversion of common sense in our industrialized, militarized society. By locating creatureliness at the heart of a biblically grounded Christian ethos, he points to the only genuine possibility for human flourishing into the future. The creativity, breadth, and thoroughness of this study, as well as the gracefulness of its exposition, will reward those who accept his challenge to think deeply and live differently in this God-formed world."

Ellen F. Davis, Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology, Duke Divinity School

"Brian Brock argues that Christian ethics must be a thoroughly 'doxological' undertaking, formed from start to finish in the language of worship and imaginatively nourished from sacred texts. As a program this has been heard before, but I cannot think of another book that undertakes to implement that program with such thoroughness. Taking creatureliness as a privileged starting point, strongly in tension with the suppositions of the secular West, Brock explores the paths of practical thought that open out from it, while warning us away from the false trails he sees as barred off."

Oliver O'Donovan, emeritus professor, University of Edinburgh

"Brian Brock's Joining Creation's Praise is a monumental triumph, in that only a consummate scholar of his reputation, tenacity, and skill could have created such a comprehensive piece of work. The challenge of 'How should we live?' is one that has concerned theological ethicists for centuries. This expansive appraisal of theological ethics is rooted in our creatureliness, as beings created for mutuality and relationship, by the ultimate, master Creator. Brock demonstrates that generosity is at the heart of what it means to be human. This is a must read!"

Anthony G. Reddie, professor of Black theology, Oxford University

"Brian Brock's Joining Creation's Praise is an absolute tour de force. But that's beside the point. The point that matters is that contemporary Christianity desperately needs a theology of creation that is about all that creation is about. Finally it has one."

Jonathan Tran, Duke Divinity School

"This major new book is the culmination of a gifted and creative scholar's work. Seamlessly interweaving systematic theology and ethics, Brian Brock explores what it means to feel at home in the world. Brock explores creation through fascinating studies of ecology, economics, work, sex, war, and more. The entire text is permeated by a sense that God is alive and active and that responding to God is not a burden but a pleasure."

William T. Cavanaugh, DePaul University

"In this foundational text Brian Brock has firmly established 'creatureliness' as a category of decisive theological and ethical significance. His wide-ranging and deeply probing reflections demonstrate that the implications are enormous and cannot be ignored, especially as we confront today's multiple social and ecological crises."

Norman Wirzba, Duke Divinity School

"Professor Brian Brock opens a new chapter in the study of Christian ethics, albeit within a familiar book. By reference to the biblical creation narratives of Genesis 1-3, Brock joins with other theological ethicists who have derived from them an interpretation of Christian normativity. His engagement is contemporary, thorough, and relevant. This is a helpful contribution to the study of Christian ethics."

Reggie L. Williams, associate professor of theology, Saint Louis University

"This presentation of theological ethics impressively shows how the hermeneutics of biblical texts and the ethical hermeneutics of the reality of life are intertwined. In vivid language, Brock shows the ethical formation of the reality of life (ethos) through the revelatory power of the narrative of Genesis 1-11. It becomes apparent how being attuned to this ethos involves the eschatological renewal of one's understanding and the actualizing of this messianic-eschatological vision in life. The book offers excellent access to this practice of ethical learning."

Hans G. Ulrich, professor emeritus, Department of Theology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, Erlangen, Germany