This was given to me as a student by an evangelically-minded friend. It’s really ‘Issues facing Christians in the mid-1980’s’. I’m aware that more recent editions have appeared, but there’s some interest in seeing what ethical questions and issues were uppermost in those days.
The date of my edition shows through in the contents of chapters on work and unemployment, industrial relations, the nuclear threat and race relations (in which supposed justifications for apartheid are considered). Stott was prescient in also writing about natural resources and the environment at this time.
The author assumes that the reader is also an evangelical Christian, although Catholic theologians of all periods are approvingly quoted. It’s written for the general reader, though the author occasionally forgets this. (What, for example, is the ‘Anabaptist view … of church-state relations’ referred to on p. 13?) Because of the wide range of the book and the limited space for each topic I found that chapters tended to come to an end just as the discussion was getting interesting. I also found myself wanting more of Stott’s illuminating biblical commentary. But the exposition of relevant Bible passages and the main positions on each topic (at least as they were c. 1984) is fairly done and a useful starting point for further investigation.
- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Zondervan; Revised edition (November 30, 1984)
- ISBN-10: 0551011580
- ISBN-13: 978-0551011588