Oliver O'Donovan's Ethics as Theology project began with Self, World, and Time In this third and final volume of his magnum opus, O'Donovan turns his attention to the forward horizon
Oliver O'Donovan's Ethics as Theology project began with Self, World, and Time, an "induction" into Christian ethics as ordered reflection on moral thinking within the life of faith. Volume 2, Finding and Seeking, shifted the focus to the movement of moral thought from a first consciousness of agency to the time that determines the moment of decision.
In this third and final volume of his magnum opus, O'Donovan turns his attention to the forward horizon with which moral thinking must engage. Moral experience, he argues, is necessarily two-directional, looking both back at responsibility and forward at aims. The Pauline triad of theological virtues (faith, love, and hope) describes a form of responsibility, and its climax in the sovereignty of love opens the way to a definitive teleology.
Entering into Rest offers O'Donovan's mature reflections on questions that have engaged him throughout his career and provides a synoptic view of many of his main themes.
Sarah Coakley
— University of Cambridge
"Oliver O'Donovan here completes his magisterial trilogy on theological ethics with an invitation to consider what it would be to 'fall away in God's glory,' to 'learn love anew' at the end of time. Intense, complex, and closely argued, this deceptively short volume on love recapitulates many of the neo-Augustinian themes of O'Donovan's earlier writing, but with a directness and brilliance that are utterly compelling."
Eric Gregory
— Princeton University
"Learned, stylish, and wise, this climactic volume of O'Donovan's trilogy on ethics as theology is the work of a master craftsman. Entering into Rest makes Christian ethics exciting and surprising again; and, more importantly, by stretching categories of religious and secular thought with eschatological horizons, it has something constructive to say to our spiritual and intellectual lives and the communities that sustain them."
Luke Bretherton
— Duke Divinity School
"A profound meditation on the nature and form of moral action with and for others in which theology is no mere adornment; rather, it is the bone and sinew of the position developed. This book forms the capstone of O'Donovan's theological ethics and concludes what is a remarkable testimony not just to his erudition and insight but also to his desire that the church be sanctified so that it might inhabit and bear witness to a faithful, hopeful, and loving way of being alive."
Hans Boersma
— Regent College
"Entering into Rest blows the dust off the word 'devotion.' Devotion, explains O'Donovan, is about uniting knowledge and energy in the supremacy of love. To explore what this means for the duties and ends of ethics, O'Donovan takes us back, yet again, to the Christian Scriptures—always in profound dialogue with the wisdom of the centuries, drawn from philosophers and theologians, from novelists and poets. Itself the mature fruit of devotion, this book is a profound encouragement on our pilgrimage to the God of love."
— Expository Times
"Entering into Rest continues in the spirit of the previous two volumes, offering wide-ranging and spiritually-infused insights. O'Donovan masterfully blends academic rigor with a pastoral tone, a quality frequently missing in much contemporary ethical writing."
— Times Literary Supplement
"With Entering into Rest, O'Donovan brings to completion Ethics as Theology, a masterly trilogy that cements his position as one of the world's finest living theologians."
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Oliver O'Donovan is a fellow of the British Academy and professor emeritus of Christian ethics and practical theology at the University of Edinburgh. His other books include The Desire of the Nations, The Ways of Judgment, andResurrection and Moral Order.
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