"What does fidelity of heart mean? What does it mean to follow Jesus and not merely admire him? How can moral truths be universally intelligible and at the same time meaningful to a particular, local community? What is the role of empathetic emotions in shaping the Christian's moral life? How can Christian virtues, such as love, peace, justice, and compassion, be put into practice?" "In addressing these questions, James Gilman provides an approach to Christian ethics that is both practical and provocative. He begins by arguing that modern Christianity is involved in a peculiar deception: the mistaken belief that admiring Jesus is the same as following him. Gilman seeks to expose this deception and to show how communities of faith can make the shift from merely admiring Jesus to actually following his pattern of life.^
This shift involves a new understanding of Christian virtue as not only a matter of cultivating certain dispositions of character, but a matter of evoking certain empathetic emotions that will lead to the practice of Christian virtues. Gilman examines traditional virtues like love, peace, justice, and compassion, but he rejects traditional understandings that are based on conventional theologies of admiration. Instead, he views these ordinary virtues in new and extraordinary ways. He argues that love of God, self, and others requires of followers a joyful sorrow that transforms enemies into friends. The peace of Christ, says Gilman, requires not merely peacemaking but pacifism, while Christian justice requires not merely justice as equal fairness but justice as equal mercy.^
Finally, Gilman shows that compassion, as the seminal experience in which love, peace, and justice converge, is the experience through which the Christian community is able to participate in and shape the character of public life." "For readers searching for the true beating heart of Christian faith, and who want to know what the practice of Christian virtue can and should be, this thoughtful and carefully argued book supplies an answer."--Jacket.
