Mortal Goods

Reimagining Christian Political Duty

Ephraim Radner Release Date: 3/19/24

Overview

This book by one of today's leading theologians examines how Christians might more faithfully and realistically imagine their political vocation.

Ephraim Radner explains that our Christian calling is to limit our political concerns to the boundaries of our created lives: our birth, parents, siblings, families, brief persistence in life, raising of children, relations, decline, and death. He shows that a Christian approach to politics is aimed at tending and protecting these "mortal goods" and argues for a more constrained view of our mortal life and our political duty than is common in both progressive and conservative Christian perspectives.

Radner encourages us to take seriously what is most valuable in our lives and allow this to shape our social posture. Our vocation is to offer our limited life to God, give thanks for it, and glorify God by living our lives as a gift. Radner also shows how "catastrophe" reveals our time to be fragile, bounded, and easily overturned. And he exposes "betterment," which lies behind most modern politics, as a false motive for human life. The book concludes with a vision of the good life articulated in the form of a letter to his adult children.

Author

Ephraim Radner

Ephraim Radner (PhD, Yale University) is professor emeritus of historical theology at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including A Profound Ignorance, All Thy Lights Combine: Figural Reading in the Anglican Tradition, Time and the Word, A Time to Keep, A Brutal Unity, The End of the Church, and Leviticus in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. A former church worker in Burundi and an Anglican priest, he has served parishes in various parts of the United States and has been active in the affairs of the global Anglican Communion.