With its many voices that are joined together, Isaiah is akin to a massive choir or symphony, and it sometimes strikes dissonant notes. Matthew R. Schlimm, in “Theological Tensions in the Book of Isaiah,” looks at a number of different themes on which the book contains contrasting testimonies: God is portrayed as both a loving savior and a wrathful punisher; God is said to be a mighty sovereign, and yet humans frequently do not act according to his will; God is universal and transcendent, and yet is also portrayed as intimate with his people, particularly Zion; humans are sometimes seen as pervasively sinful, but are exhorted to do good; the creation, too, is sometimes good and blessed, and yet elsewhere seen as corrupted; and the same leaders and empires are alternately condemned and used as divine agents. Schlimm reflects on the way in which these complexities press readers beyond simple answers.

150 words: The books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah contain oracles that address problems in and around ancient Judah in ways that are as incisive and critical as they are optimistic and constructive. Daniel C. Timmer’s The Theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah situates these books in their social and political contexts and examines the unique theology of each as it engages with imposing problems in Judah and beyond. In dialogue with recent scholarship, this study focuses on these books’ analysis and evaluation of the world as it is, focusing on both human beings and their actions and God’s commitment to purify, restore, and perfect the world. Timmer also surveys these books’ later theological use and cultural reception. Timmer also brings their theology into dialogue with concerns as varied as ecology, nationalism, and widespread injustice, highlighting the enduring significance of divine justice and grace for solid hope and effective service in our world.

50 words: This volume examines the powerful and poignant theology of the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Daniel C. Timmer situates these books’ theology in their ancient Near Eastern contexts and traces its multifaceted contribution to Jewish and Christian theology and to broader cultural spheres, without neglecting its contemporary significance.

20 words: This volume draws out the theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, attending to their ancient contexts, past use and reception, and contemporary significance.

150 words: The books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah contain oracles that address problems in and around ancient Judah in ways that are as incisive and critical as they are optimistic and constructive. Daniel C. Timmer’s The Theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah situates these books in their social and political contexts and examines the unique theology of each as it engages with imposing problems in Judah and beyond. In dialogue with recent scholarship, this study focuses on these books’ analysis and evaluation of the world as it is, focusing on both human beings and their actions and God’s commitment to purify, restore, and perfect the world. Timmer also surveys these books’ later theological use and cultural reception. Timmer also brings their theology into dialogue with concerns as varied as ecology, nationalism, and widespread injustice, highlighting the enduring significance of divine justice and grace for solid hope and effective service in our world.

50 words: This volume examines the powerful and poignant theology of the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Daniel C. Timmer situates these books’ theology in their ancient Near Eastern contexts and traces its multifaceted contribution to Jewish and Christian theology and to broader cultural spheres, without neglecting its contemporary significance.

20 words: This volume draws out the theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, attending to their ancient contexts, past use and reception, and contemporary significance.

This chapter analyzes devotional experience, especially as it is displayed in contemporary evangelical approaches. Devotion is examined not as a singular practice but as a way of living out religion in daily life, within regular social, economic, and political structures without radical withdrawal from them. Devotional experience is marked by a deeply personal affective experience of a loving God who is seen to accept even the most evil and wretched person. This serves as a horizon of friendship that enables the devotional self to confront its faults and shortcomings. Devotional experience is marked by its intensely emotional and individual forms of expression. It accompanies people in their concrete daily lives and is experienced as suffusing and transforming daily and ordinary experiences without separating oneself from the society or the world. Devotional experience thus capitalizes on the human need for loving relationship and personal guidance in daily life.

This chapter asks whether Robert Dodaro and John Milbank are correct in their claim that Augustine thought that the earthly city was necessarily a place of political vice. To this end, this chapter examines Augustine’s idea of the love of material possessions, the love of glory, and the love of domination, and finds that while he looked on these loves as always sinful, he held that they did not necessarily lead people to commit politically vicious actions, but could in fact act as a restraint on people’s actions, ensuring that people conformed their lives to the highest political and social standards.

This chapter notes that current scholarship on Augustine’s idea of pagan virtue and current scholarship on his political thought contain different, and conflicting, interpretations of his notions of virtue and vice, or sin. This chapter proposes that to determine which interpretation is correct we need to situate Augustine’s moral thought in relation to the ancient moral tradition of eudaimonism. Oliver O’Donovan and Nicholas Wolterstorff have proposed that Augustine broke with classical eudaimonism, but this chapter argues that their interpretation of the Stoic and Platonic tradition in eudaimonism is incorrect, and that a correct understanding of this tradition leads to the conclusion that Augustine in fact remained faithful to the eudaimonist approach to ethics.

This chapter asks whether Augustine criticised Stoicism and Platonism because he thought that there was something fundamentally flawed about the eudaimonist approach to ethics, or whether he criticised Stoicism and Platonism because he thought that these philosophies had insufficiently understood eudaimonism itself. It finds that the latter explanation is correct: in reaching this conclusion, this chapter establishes that Augustine defined virtue and vice, or sin, from within the eudaimonist tradition, making use of the ideas of love as eros and philia, and of the highest good, or summum bonum.

This chapter offers a theology of the Atonement, building on Augustine’s account of the Cross. It argues that, on the Cross, Jesus opens and joins himself fully to the death-dealing that is the inner logic of all sinful human community, and overcomes it in the Resurrection.

The connections between senses and morality are located in politics, religion, music, food, and other practices and metaphors of consumption. Such associations point to desired or positive values that are demonstrated through particular sensory behaviour. These together form social structures that reflect propriety and moral decorum. The governance of good behaviour and subscription to moral codes similarly extend to the metaphysical world of spirits through a variety of corporeal and cognitive modalities. Building upon the phenomenological anthropology of morality, I show how the senses serve as intermediaries of moral binaries. Cases are drawn from myths, legends, folktales, poetry, and ethnographies. Overall, varying sociocultural associations of the different senses with morality, virtue, and disposition present a type of sensory attunement to apprehend moral economies and social structures. I argue that sensory moral economies are, in effect, the product of specific sensory action. Social actors are expected to perform particular ways of being that actualise alignment with ideal, righteous states or dispositions mediated through the senses. The outcome of such sense acts is a combination of immaterial interests and moral sentiments. As sociocultural arbiters, the senses bring to light the moral organisation of society.