Oliver O'Donovan – författare

Begotten or Made?

The Thirty-Nine Articles, together with the Book of Common Prayer, form the foundation of Anglican theology. Yet there are very few extended treatments of them. Oliver O'Donovan relates the Articles to the exhilarating and troubled century in which they took shape. He also shows how the distinctive insights and values of a past age relate to the demands of today's world. 'What I propose in this case - is not to talk solely about the Articles, but to talk about God, mankind (sic!), and redemption, the central matters of the Christian faith, and to take the Tudor authors with me as companions in discussion. Two voices will be speaking - each raising the questions that Christian faith in his time forces upon him.' Here is a new edition of his book on one of the key texts of Anglican identity by one of the UK's leading theologians. The book has been out of print for some time and there have been repeated calls for a new edition with a new introduction which engages with more recent developments and offers the text to a new generation.

Political theology as we know it today reacts against the attempt to insulate theology from political theory which has generally characterised the modern era. But its own intellectual parentage in the idealist historicism of the nineteenth century has left it still entrammelled in the suspicions and inhibitions from which it has wanted to break free. Oliver O'Donovan contends that to pass beyond suspicion and totalised criticism of politics and to achieve a positive reconstruction of political thought, theology must reach back behind the modern tradition, achieving a fuller, less selective reading of the Scriptures and learning from an older politico-theological discourse which flourished in the patristic, medieval and Reformation periods. Central to that discourse was a series of questions about authority, generated by Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God. This book, now published in paperback, makes an important contribution to contemporary political theology and Christian ethics.

Leading political theologian Oliver O'Donovan here takes a fresh look at some traditional moral arguments about war. Modern Christians differ widely on this issue. A few hold that absolute pacifism is the only viable Christian position, others subscribe in various ways to concepts of 'just war' developed out of a Western tradition that arose from the legacies of Augustine and Aquinas, while others still adopt more pragmatically realist postures. Professor O'Donovan re-examines questions of contemporary urgency including the use of biological and nuclear weapons, military intervention, economic sanctions, war crimes trials and the roles of the Geneva Convention, international conventions and the UN. His enquiry opens with a challenging dedication to the new Archbishop of Canterbury and proceeds to shed new light on vital topics with which the Archbishop and others will be very directly engaged. It should be read by anyone concerned with the ethics of warfare.

Political theology as we know it today reacts against the attempt to insulate theology from political theory which has generally characterised the modern era. But its own intellectual parentage in the idealist historicism of the nineteenth century has left it still entrammelled in the suspicions and inhibitions from which it has wanted to break free. Oliver O'Donovan contends that to pass beyond suspicion and totalised criticism of politics and to achieve a positive reconstruction of political thought, theology must reach back behind the modern tradition, achieving a fuller, less selective reading of the Scriptures and learning from an older politico-theological discourse which flourished in the patristic, medieval and Reformation periods. Central to that discourse was a series of questions about authority, generated by Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God. This book, now published in paperback, makes an important contribution to contemporary political theology and Christian ethics.

Leading political theologian Oliver O'Donovan here takes a fresh look at some traditional moral arguments about war. Modern Christians differ widely on this issue. A few hold that absolute pacifism is the only viable Christian position, others subscribe in various ways to concepts of 'just war' developed out of a Western tradition that arose from the legacies of Augustine and Aquinas, while others still adopt more pragmatically realist postures. Professor O'Donovan re-examines questions of contemporary urgency including the use of biological and nuclear weapons, military intervention, economic sanctions, war crimes trials and the roles of the Geneva Convention, international conventions and the UN. His enquiry opens with a challenging dedication to the new Archbishop of Canterbury and proceeds to shed new light on vital topics with which the Archbishop and others will be very directly engaged. It should be read by anyone concerned with the ethics of warfare.