Product Description
by Frederick V. Simmons (Editor), Brian C. Sorrells (With)
At the heart of Christian ethics is the biblical commandment to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself . But what is the meaning of love? Does love require self-sacrifice? Doe it involve eros, or sexual desire? Or is love an enlightened form of friendship? Scholars have wrestled with these questions since the recording of the Christian gospels, and in recent decades teachers and students of Christian ethics have engaged in vigorous debates about appropriate interpretations and implications of this critical norm. Simmons and Sorrells have assembled a who's who in the field of Christian ethics--including Lisa Cahill, Stephen Pope, Cathy Kaveny, Ron Green, Margaret Farley, John Kelsay, Emilie Townes, Ed Vacek, and Mark Jordan, among many others--to analyze and assess love from a variety of perspectives. The anthology includes three parts: Tradition, addressing biblical issues and great thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas and Kant and Kierkegaard; Theory, focusing on various meanings of love; and Society, exploring an array of contemporary concerns such as law and health care and sex and religious pluralism. William Werpehowski of Georgetown University provides an afterword on future trajectories for this research.
Author Biography
Frederick V. Simmons is the J. Houston Witherspoon Fellow in Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Center of Theological Inquiry. Previously an assistant professor of ethics at Yale Divinity School, he has also taught at Amherst College, La Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, and La Universidad Politécnica Salesiana. Brian C. Sorrells has taught courses on Christian ethics, world religions, human rights, biomedical ethics, and sexual ethics at Yale Divinity School, Harvard Divinity School, Brown University, and Amherst College.
