Overview
"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.
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.
Table of Contents
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
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
“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
Author
Brian Brock
Brian Brock (PhD, King's College, London) is chair of moral and practical theology at the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland. He has written scholarly works on the use of the Bible in Christian ethics, the ethics of technological development, and the theology of disability, including Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture. He is managing editor of the Journal of Disability and Religion, founder and managing editor of the T&T Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics, and president of the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics.