Reviving Evangelical Ethics: The Promises and Pitfalls of Classic Models of Morality

"Combining appreciation and critique, Wyndy Corbin Reuschling skillfully teases out the particular dynamics at work in the moral thinking of many evangelicals. By carefully analyzing the impact of several moral traditions on evangelicalism, she invites readers into a fuller recognition of the shaping power of scripture and Christian community, and into more robust practices of Christian discipleship. This book is an important contribution to understanding and strengthening evangelical ethics."--Christine D. Pohl, Asbury Theological Seminary"This book honors evangelical commitments to the authority of scripture, to a personal relation with Jesus, and to evangelism. But it challenges some of the ways evangelicals have brought those commitments to bear on Christian ethics, and it suggests better ways, ways that might indeed revive evangelical ethics."--Allen Verhey, Duke University"Wendy Corbin Reuschling's text provides a fresh, insistently self-critical study of the construction of evangelical ethics offered by an evangelical 'insider.' Her personal honesty and thought-provoking analysis makes this a compelling and timely basic resource on the content of Christian ethics."--Traci C. West, Drew University Theological School"Evangelical writers in the field of social ethics have for too long given only narrow slices of God's rich and complex vision for how we are to live. At last here is a book that helps us see the limitations of evangelical ethics built on Aristotelian, Kantian, and Millian ethical reflection. Corbin Reuschling deconstructs current evangelical approaches to Christian social ethics in order to construct a truly biblical vision of what it is to be a people of God."--Alice Mathews, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary"Reviving Evangelical Ethics offers an appreciative but rigorous critique of the ways that classical moral theory has limited ethics to reflection on the demands of duty, the achievement of certain results, or personal virtue. This important book redefines the boundaries of evangelical ethics in salutarily progressive ways, while raising timely cautions concerning the therapeutic models of spiritual formation that further inhibit the development of the social dimension of Christian ethics."--David A. deSilva, Ashland Theological Seminary"An important book for evangelicals. It seeks nothing less than a fresh, biblical, and formational direction in evangelical ethics. The book carefully assesses common contemporary evangelical stances and points the biblical and theological way forward toward truly evangelical ethics. It is a delightfully written, insightful book and deserves a wide reading."--Robert L. Hubbard, North Park Theological Seminary