How the Light Gets In ─ Ethical Life I

How the Light Gets In: Ethical Life I presents a systematic account of the teachings of the Christian faith to offer a vision, from a human, created, and limited perspective, of the ways all things might be understood from the divine perspective. It explores how Christian doctrine is lived, and the way in which beliefs are not simply cognitive sets of ideas but embodied cultural practices. Christians learn how to understand the contents of their faith, learn the language of the faith, through engagements that are simultaneously somatic, affective, imaginative, and intellectual.

In the first of four volumes, Graham Ward examines the complex levels of these engagements through three historical developments in the systematic organization of doctrine: the Creeds, theSumma, and Protestant dogmatics. He outlines a methodology for exploring and practicing systematic theology that captures how the faith is lived in cultural, social, and embodied engagements. Ward then unpicks several fundamental theological concepts and how they are to be understood from the point of view of an engaged systematics: truth, revelation, judgement, discernment, proclamation, faith seeking understanding, and believing as it relates to and grounds the possibilities for faith.

This groundbreaking work offers an interdisciplinary investigation through poetry, art, film, the Bible and theological discourse, analysing the human condition and theology as the deep dream for salvation. The final part relates theology as a lived and ongoing pedagogy concerned with individual and corporate formation to biological life, social life, and life in Christ. Here an approach to living theologically is sketched that is the primary focus for all four volumes: ethical life.

Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. His previous publications includeUnbelievable: Why We Believe and Why We Don't (I.B.Taurus, 2013), The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Post-material Citizens (SCM, 2009), andTrue Religion (Wiley Blackwell, 2002). He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Theology and Modern European Thought (OUP, 2013).