By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine

I am reading this book for a theological discussion class in divinity school. Charry has great overviews of some of the major theologians in church history. The first chapter is a little difficult to get through (lots of theological terminology), but Charry is brilliant and has much to offer. This is a great book for theological studies for a lay person who wishes to delve deep in study or for a student.

Dr. Ellen Charry is professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and has over 70 published works, including scholarly contributions, commissioned essays, and journal articles. She has served in an editorial capacity for many issues of Theology Today, and provides itinerant lectures at academic and faith-based venues around the world. Charry's book By the Renewing of Your Minds examines Christian doctrine from the Apostolic era through the Reformation era, challenging church leadership that the central theological task must be to assist people to come to God (p. 5). Accordingly Charry calls on pastors to use Christian doctrine to help people flourish through both knowing and loving God.The book is organized into six sections, each with one or more chapters. To begin, the author coins the term aretegenic to describe virtue-shaping qualities; it is from this lens that Charry challenges leadership to employ theology specifically to foster character formation as she judiciously examines texts from the New Testament to the Reformation period. Part two teaches about Paul and his school, reminding us that God's plan to save people is from eternity past (p. 37). Equally important the author writes how the Spirit and the cross are agents of humility, reminding us of the aretegenic life we ought to lead ourselves. Another chapter provides a duteous study of the Sermon on the Mount, canvasing the historical landscape of Christ's extraordinary message in the likely face of Pharisaic opposition.Parts three through five survey selected historical texts from patristic, medieval and sixteenth-century voices including Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil of Caesarea, Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, St. Thomas, Dame Julian, John Wesley, and John Calvin. In these works Charry examines a wide range of subjects and the importance of teaching these as a great pastoral function, including the virtue of knowing God; the Trinity; the absolute divinity of the Holy Spirit; Christ's incarnation, death, and resurrection; the Holy Spirit as the agent of sanctification; divine mercy and divine justice; and baptism.In part six, the author summarizes well her compelling case "that Christian doctrine can guide the Christian life because it forms identity and character" (p. 240). Charry highlights a distinguishing characteristic persistently observed by examining 1600 years of theological writings: the intensity of one's devotional life is commensurate to one's inner yearning for God; and whilst initial yearning is also a gift from the Holy Spirit, once ignited it must be individually practiced and honed.In summary, Charry's book is well organized, highly researched, and convicting. She makes a careful case to church leadership to beware of merely academic or cognitive theology. She notes that responsible pastoring is also a theological art of practice - a practice that starts from within; for in the exercise of making Christ known, we must first know him. To be sure, every eager learner or church leader would do well to read and reflect upon Charry's insightful and well researched book.

Excellent

Readers of this volume will be taken on a crash course ride through some of the major names of pre-modern theology. By putting these foundational theologians back into the pre-modern context in which they wrote, Charry succeeds in giving both the Pastor and the layperson the space to reclaim the aretological power of these works.However, I feel that the real center of gravity of Charry's work is the theoretical and theological framework that she sets up for this exploration. By engaging in an essentially post-modern critique of the limitations of the thinking of modernity while not claiming the (problematic) label of "post-modernity," Charry gives the readers the tools s/he needs to reclaim the aretological power of not just these texts, but other pre-modern texts and in fact the Faith itself.Not intended to be a works of apologetics, this framework can serve as a strong apologetic critique the twin fundamentalisms of the religious right and the insurgent "new atheism."Strongly recommended to all theologians, laypeople, and pastors interested in freeing themselves from tyranny of modernity that is found in its rigid dualism.

Dr. Ellen Charry understands the writings of early patristic fathers and mothers to be more than just apolgetics. Dr. Charry gets to the core of their writings by discovering that the authors are calling for excellence (aretology) in each and every Christian. This book brings clarity and flavor to the classical Theologians of early Christian history.

great book.

This is a really excellent book bringing together a wide variety of historical writings from the Bible, patristic writings, and other classical texts upto Calvin. it is a book to return to and get more each time.