Two Christian Ethics eBooks: Dec 21/25

The Fourfold Office of Christ: A New Typology for Relating Church and World
Author(s): John Nugent
Publisher: Cascade Books
Price: $2.99       (Ends Dec 31)

How should the church relate to the world?

For over seven decades, the classic categories of Christ and Culture have monopolized Christian answers to this question. Nearly everyone bought into H. Richard Niebuhr’s lofty, world-transforming vision. And now that everyone’s trying to make the world better, we keep clashing about how to do so.

We all want God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven, but deep disagreements about how to get there keep fracturing Christ’s body and subverting our testimony. Jesus was right: our witness to the world depends on our unity and our love for one another. In recent years, we’ve been failing at both. Political partisanship and constant infighting have wounded the vulnerable and driven countless people from the pews.

It’s time to revisit church-world relations with fresh eyes and a stubborn commitment to God’s revelation in Scripture. Offering a new typology for the twenty-first century, The Fourfold Office of Christ lucidly examines the most common ways of relating church and world. John C. Nugent employs the memorable categories of prophet, priest, king, and servant to showcase the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches. He then charts a rigorously scriptural and surprisingly hopeful path forward.

Is It God’s Will?: Making Sense of Tragedy, Luck, and Hope in a World Gone Wrong
Author(s): Brandon Ambrosino
Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
Price: $2.99       (Limited Time Only)

“Brandon Ambrosino offers a compelling conversation about God’s role in human affairs, and our response to God’s sometimes mysterious activity.” ― James Martin, SJ, New York Times bestselling author of Learning to Pray

From an acclaimed journalist and a rising star in theological academia, a provocative book about human and divine agency in an era of political extremism, climate catastrophe, and rising violence.

In the wake of two foiled assassination attempts while Donald Trump was campaigning for President, many of his supporters claimed Trump’s survival was an act of Divine intervention, and a sign that Trump was favored by God. In his victory speech, Trump alluded to this. But his survival prompts other questions: Why did God spare Trump, but not the retiree sitting behind him? Why couldn’t God have spared everyone that day? And if God is truly omnipotent, why do so many children die in gun violence every year?

To award-winning journalist and theologian Brandon Ambrosino, these mortal questions provide us with an opportunity to explore the great questions about Divine and human agency, especially in relation to human tragedy and a world that seems to be slipping into chaos. In this powerful and searching enquiry—in the vein of N.T. Wright and C.S. Lewis— Ambrosino argues that theologians have been poorly equipped to confront these questions, because many hang on to an omnipotent model of God. Exploring the daily tragedies that so many of us must contend—as well as a provocative and challenging reading of Christ’s death and resurrection—Ambrosino provides us with the tools to understand and process grief but also presents a refreshing portrait of less a God of power, and more of one of persuasion, who can still provide a residue of hope in a world gone wrong.