Christian Kinship - (T&t Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics) by David A Torrance (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Ideas of kinship play a significant role in structuring everyday life, and yet kinship has been neglected in Christian ethics, moral philosophy and bioethics. Attention has been paid in these disciplines to the ethics of 'family, ' but with little regard to the evidence that kinship varies widely from culture-to-culture, suggesting that it is, in fact, culturally constructed.

Surveying notions of shared substance (e.g. blood ties), house, gender and personhood, as theorised and practiced in the Christian tradition, Torrance critiques the special privileging of the 'blood tie'. In the place of European and American cultural assumptions to the contrary, it is kinship in Christ that is presented as the basis of a truly Christian account for social ties. Torrance also aims to stimulate the moral imagination to consider Christian kinship might be lived out in miniature, in everyday life.

Review Quotes

Christian ethics has too often been satisfied with an understanding of the family it has presumed to be universal. David Torrance's conceptually astute account of kinship, reflecting the recent turn to social anthropology in moral and systematic theology, is a fine demonstration of the rich theological rewards such interdisciplinary engagement can bring.

Christians - and not only Christians - have tended to think of kinship as simply 'natural'. Such a thought silences the radical and distinctive call of the Gospel. With this study, David Torrance offers an original, critical and constructive approach to the topic, and one which will allow that call to be heard afresh.

In this thorough, careful discussion, David Torrance considers theology and anthropology in relation to Christian kinship. Torrance shows that Christians are not limited only to nuclear families for living faithfully, but that an array of creative Christian communities not bound by procreation can also yield lives of faithful discipleship.

About the Author

David A. Torrance is a Mission Partner with Church Mission Society, working in theological education in Tanzania.