It may be an oversimplification to say that faith, hope, and love are all we need. But with an understanding of what these three are, we have a better understanding of what they can do in our lives. Our focus will turn from our needs and wants to what leads us into the answer of all these things-faith, hope, and love, which we find through our relationships with Jesus. It is simple but not always easy to allow the control of our life to transfer from us to God. It is important to know these three, what they are, and how we interact with them. We want to look at these three as the following: - Faith, the God-Possible - Hope, the God-Perspective - Love, the God-Power In these three we make all things about Jesus and less about us. The more we live in these three, the more we become like Him. These three, faith, hope, and love, will do the work to establish the kingdom of God in us and in others.

Jan-Olav Henriksen investigates the close relationship between God and human beings via an understanding of religion as clusters of practices that relate humans to ultimacy by different types of representation. Christian religion articulates its belief in God as creator (manifest in the power to be) and redeemer (represented in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ). Christ thus is the primary representation of God as the ultimate reality of love. He is also the true image of God, and the model for how humans are also called to represent God in love. The human features of desire and vulnerability, as these express elements that shape, form, and articulate challenges for human life, present humans with the need for orienting themselves, and for different types of transformation. Christian religion articulates a specific mode of how to cope with these challenges presented by desire and vulnerability: by living in love. Against this backdrop, Henriksen argues that neither how one understands religion, God, nor how to live a life that relates to ultimacy, can be tasks fulfilled as long as history goes on.

This work speaks of the challenges of religious life today where the essentials of Christian living and union with God are sought with "a different touch." Reflecting on the history of religious life since the nineteenth century, Sister Judith comments on how each of the traditional vows shape the ongoing adult development of the religious, and she relates these vows to current cultural and sociopolitical issues. A Different Touch is addressed both to those in religious formation and to congregations that are engaged in theological renewal.

Faith, hope, and love, traditionally called theological virtues, are central to Christianity. This book renews faith, hope, and love in the context of the many contemporary challenges in many unique ways. It is an ecumenical collection of papers, equally divided between Catholic and Protestant positions, that seek to radically renew the classical doctrine of faith, hope, and love, and argues for their essential connection to the praxis of justice. It contains eight different approaches, each represented by a distinguished theologian and addressing different aspects of the issues and followed by insightful and critical responses. It does not merely seek to renew the theological virtues but to also reconstruct them in the demanding context of justice and the contemporary world, nor is it simply a treatise on justice but a theoretical and practical reflection on justice as vital expressions of faith in God, hope in God, and love of God. A non-dogmatic and non-ideological approach, it accommodates both conservative and liberal positions, and avoids the separation of the theological virtues from the demands of the contemporary world as well as the separation of justice talk from the theological context of faith, hope, and love. It seeks above all to renew, not merely repeat, the classical doctrine of faith, hope, and love in the contemporary context of the urgency of justice, and to do so ecumenically, comprehensively, and from a variety of perspectives and aspects.

We live in a world full of challenges. The three graces can almost be seen as motors for Christian life in today's world, but the words faith, hope, and love have so many everyday uses that their technical, theological meanings are, for many, difficult to appreciate. Modern life also leaves many yearning for authenticity and meaning. Many religions have answered that need by calling to mind the image of a path. Always profound progressions, religious paths tend to be motivated either by practices (the act of walking the path) or focal points. Christianity has a focal point, an object, and it sees the three graces as distinctively content filled. The heart of this book is about helping people find the Christian path and their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual balance--an equilibrium that is sustained by a strong personal faith, an enduring hope for the future, and genuine love that will withstand the worst of times. It contributes to the category of Christian literature that provides a pattern for Christian living without surrendering the intellect to the more popular side of this genre.

Jan-Olav Henriksen reconstructs and analyzes Christianity as a cluster of practices that manifest a distinct historically and contextually shaped mode of being in the world. Henriksen suggests that these practices imply a complicated relationship between the tradition in which they originate, the community that emerges from and is constituted by that tradition, and the individuals who appropriate the tradition that these communities mediate through their practices. Thus, to think of Christianity simply in terms of belief is misleading and represents an underdetermination of its distinct character. Henriksen further argues this relationship needs to be described primarily as practices aimed at orientation and transformation. His analysis points to Christianity's similarity to other religions in regard to the functional or pragmatic dimensions it displays. Examining facets such as prayer, the use of scripture, preaching and doctrine, Henriksen emphasizes that the element that makes a practice distinctively Christian is how it relates to and is informed by the Jesus story.

Christian ethics is less a system of principles, rules, or even virtues, and more of a free and open-ended responsible witness to God's gracious action to be with and for others and the world. Postmodernity has left us with the risky uncertainty of knowing and doing the good. It also leaves us with the global risks of political violence and terrorism, economic globalization and financial crisis, and environmental destruction and global climate change. How should Christians respond to these problems? This book creatively explores how Christian ethics is best understood a witness to God's action, thereby providing the ethical framework for addressing the various problematic social issues that put our world at risk. Haddorff develops the notion of witness through a detailed study of Karl Barth's theological ethics. Barth, he argues, provides a language enabling us to know what a Christian ethics of witness actually looks like in both theory and in practice. In correspondence to God's gracious action, Christians remain free to think and act in faith, hope, and love in respondence to their unique circumstances, even in a world at risk. In their witness, Christians remain confident that God has not abandoned the world but loves and cares for its future.

The textbook emphasizes the Catholic tradition in health care ethics without separating it from the broader Christian tradition. The third edition incorporates issues that have arisen since the 1994 second, and is somewhat differently arranged. Appended are the 2001 Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Facilities and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR