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This chapter draws on theological resources in developing a theological anthropology that coheres with the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Human body-soul (psychosomatic) unity is the conceptual basis for speech about sanctification. Such a grammar is needed as we seek to understand the body as integral to holiness.

This chapter presents a constructive proposal about the theology of the body understood through the doctrine of the resurrection. Using gender as a key illustration, the chapter explores the claim that sanctification is God's action on human beings as psychosomatic unities. Using the framework of Christology and eschatology, it is argued that bodies are meant to bear holy witness to the redemptive intention of the Triune God.

It is typical to approach Karl Barth's ethics by identifying one dimension—for example, the relation of dogmatics and ethics, of gospel and law, or of divine and human action, or the nature and practice of moral reasoning—as the key to the whole. This overview focuses instead on the centrality of God's covenant with humanity to Barth's theology, arguing that ethics is grounded in election and sanctification: the determination of humanity as God's covenant partner and the summons to humanity to exist as God's covenant partner. This determination and summons are actualized in the movement in which God resolves on the good from eternity, fulfills it in time in Jesus Christ, and summons, empowers, and directs us to confirm it in each moment of our lives. But how is ethics possible if, as Barth stresses, it is Jesus Christ who fulfills the good in our place? The structure of Barth's ethics is supplied by his distinctive notions of responsibility and gratitude, in which human action is established not as gradual approximation to the divine goodness but as a thankful response to grace. All of this amounts to a vision of the moral life as a human analogy to God's grace, and this vision contrasts with the bourgeois vision of the moral life as an expression of human capability.

For Barth, God is not only the ground or source of the good but also accomplishes the good in our place. God's grace is expressed not only in God's response to our sinful rejection of the good but also, and even more fundamentally, in the events in which God both resolves on the good and brings it about. As such, grace interrupts our striving for the good, yet it also demands to be expressed in our action. But how can our action express grace without betraying it? This, for Barth, is the problem of ethics, and this chapter examines the major stages in the development of his moral theology to show how they formulate and attempt to resolve this problem.

If Jesus Christ has accomplished the good in our place and summons us to confirm it in our own conduct, it is clear that there is a place for human action in Barth's moral theology. But if the good is already accomplished, what significance can human action possibly have? This chapter examines the meaning, reality, and limitations of human action in Barth's moral theology in light of the central notion of Christ's accomplishment of the good in our place. His fundamental claim is that God's grace does not nullify human action or deprive it of significance but rather establishes it by empowering it to be, in its very creaturely nature, an analogy of grace.

The strategy of ecojustice organizes Christian environmental ethics around the theological status of creation. In doing so, it follows the secular strategy of nature's standing: by illuminating the moral standing of nature within Christian experience, ecojustice integrates environmental issues into frameworks of obligatory respect. By recuperating creation itself “as an integral part of the Christian tradition's vision and concern”, ecojustice ethicists can extend traditional Christian concepts of respect to address the natural world's vulnerability. For with creation's integrity illuminating a kind of natural value, Christian moral practices must give the earth its due. By naming and theologically describing the “integrity of creation”, ecojustice secures modes of Christian respect for nature's standing.

The concluding chapter argues that while the role of the witness has given survivors a sense of purpose, their testimony is inextricably mediated by the post-war concept of the Holocaust and by collective memory. It can be seen that the function of collective memory is not to focus on the past in order to find out more about the Holocaust, but to use the past to inform and address present concerns. Also, it shows how the role of the witness has expanded, so that survivors – who are considered unique – are now expected to educate us not just about the Holocaust, but provide universal lessons regarding morality and the human condition. The sanctification of testimony further serves to entrench and concretize the position of accepted Holocaust narratives and forms of representation.

This chapter argues that Calvin's idea of salvation taking the form of a ‘double grace’ (duplex gratia), justification and sanctification, two distinct but inseparable gifts, is a stroke of genius. In fact it is an important theme throughout his writings, not only the Institutes but also in his view of the sacraments, and his catechetical instruction. The chapter examines the background to this in Augustine, exploring his view of justification, which is said to be by faith but also embraces subjective renewal. Calvin's own views, the logic of his position, and his treatment of Augustine, raise the question of why, even in the Reformation conflict, he is only mildly critical of Augustine's ‘Catholic’ view of justification. The answer is likely to be because of Augustine's resolute defence of sola gratia. The position of Francis Turretin is considered, which though showing considerable analytical nuance reverts to considering justification and sanctification separately (largely on account of his adoption of a locustheological method). Finally, the views of John Hare on Calvin in his book The Moral Gap are discussed.

This chapter advocates that Origen achieves a place for Christian faith and practice through the person of the Holy Spirit within a theology which points towards universalism. The Spirit provides for the place of growth towards God in salvation, and for human involvement in God's saving act. While the end may well be as the beginning, the Spirit is the person who, after Christ has ascended to the Father, works between creation and the eschaton. The chapter considers the relationship between Spirit and Son in Origen's Trinitarian theology, and then moves to discuss the role of the Spirit in bringing Christ to humans and in establishing faith in Christ. The economic ‘remit’ of the Spirit is further considered with regard to sanctification in the present, through which the Spirit establishes Christian particularity. Concludes with a discussion of the role of human involvement in the economy of God's salvation.

Francis Asbury was born in August 1745 at Great Barr, about four miles outside of Birmingham, England, to Joseph and Elizabeth Asbury. Joseph was a gardener and Francis attended common school until about age thirteen. At fourteen he became an apprentice to a local metalworker as part of the Birmingham area’s booming metalworking industry, a key component in the early stages of the industrial revolution. Elizabeth Asbury sank into a deep depression following the death of Sarah Asbury, Francis’s only sibling, at age six in 1749. Elizabeth eventually found solace in Methodism and directed her son to Methodist meetings, where he experienced conversion and then sanctification by age sixteen.

At about age sixteen Asbury began to pray in public meetings and then to “exhort and preach.” He also joined a class meeting at West Bromwich and a band at Wednesbury. Classes and bands were Methodist small group meetings designed to encourage spiritual development. Classes were mandatory for all members, while bands were optional, intended for those most earnestly seeking sanctification. As a Methodist, Asbury embraced John Wesley’s teachings about the value of diligence and the danger of hoarding wealth. In 1766, at age twenty, Asbury apparently completed his apprenticeship and took the place of the traveling preacher assigned to the Staffordshire circuit. In August 1767 he officially joined Wesley’s connection of traveling preachers and was assigned to the Bedfordshire circuit. In 1771 Asbury volunteered to go to America, where Methodist societies had taken shape in New York, Philadelphia and Maryland.

Gregory refers to God the Holy Spirit in biblical terms as good and holy, princely, principal, quickening, governing, and sanctifying of all creation. This allows him to present the Spirit as a correlative of both the Father and the Son; there is no gap between Christ and his anointing, between the king and his kingdom, between wisdom and the Spirit of wisdom, between truth and the Spirit of truth, between power and the Spirit of power. All three persons rejoice eternally in the presence of each other and know each other perfectly. This is communion, and it allows for both the distinction of each person and the perfect unity among them.

Offers a critical summary, under the rubric of divinization, of Cyril’s account of salvation and offers a hypothesis for why Cyril made use of the technical vocabulary of divinization so infrequently. Explores the exegetical foundations of Cyril’s narrative and attempts to describe the theological shape of his account of divine life in the human race.

Taking a complementary approach to ch. 3, this chapter examines the reason and the will of (elect) Christians, who are in receipt of sanctifying (and justifying) grace. Hooker’s views on justification are discussed initially, where it is argued that although throughout his life he was a firm advocate of forensic theory, he moved in the Lawes and his late writings to the position that justification can be lost, and then subsequently regained with the aid of repentance, and that in this context it makes sense to speak of a person congruously meriting justification. This is then allied to his views on sanctification, involving a discussion of the three theological virtues, mortal and venial sin, and supererogation, all of which are again contrasted with the approach of contemporary Reformed theology. Then moves on to look at Hooker’s views on the interaction between Christians and the Holy Spirit, principally through the authentication and interpretation of Holy Scripture, and knowledge of election, all of which say a good deal about his theological development. This makes an excellent springboard for a final analysis of religious authority, where it is argued that Hooker, as has traditionally been claimed, upheld the authority of scripture, reason, and tradition, in that order, contrary to the Reformed, and more generally Protestant, doctrine of sola scriptura.

This chapter considers the way in which human moral wrongdoing fragments the psyche of the wrongdoer. It examines the theological doctrine of original sin and argues against attempts to show that a human tendency to moral wrongdoing, of the sort postulated by the doctrine of original sin, is incompatible with the existence of a perfectly good, omniscient, omnipotent God. It then presents the remedies for the human proclivity to moral wrongdoing as Aquinas sees them. These consist in the processes of justification and sanctification. The chapter argues that each of these processes requires a certain kind of passivity and surrender on the part of the person engaged in the process. Contrary to Harry Frankfurt's position that passivity is inimical to the true self and to human flourishing, it is argued that some significant goods for human beings, including the love of friendship, are impossible without some reciprocal passivity.