Seeking What Is Right

Iain Provan is the Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent College. He lives in the Vancouver, Canada area. He is the author of The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture, Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was, and Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters.

Part 1. Foundations 1 The Good Life and How to Recognize It A Short Introduction 2 The Twenty-Five Percent Bible Scripture and the Good Life 3 In the Beginning Design, Sin, and Redundancy Part 2. Explorations 4 The Emperor's New Clothes Constantine as Biblical Hero 5 Not Wholly Roman The Carolingian Empire 6 Journey to the Center of the Earth The First Crusade and Jerusalem 7 The Foulness of Fornication Sex and Marriage in John Calvin's Geneva 8 Apocalypse Now The New Jerusalem in Mu?nster 9 Men of Blood The English Revolution 10 A City upon a Hill The Godly Republic in New England 11 God's Servant for Your Good Tyranny, Freedom, and Right Government 12 Conceived in Liberty? Race, Slavery, and the People Of God 13 A Monstrous Regiment? The Vocation and Rights of Women 14 Staying Alive Jews, Palestinians, and the Holy Land 15 On Looking After the Garden The Good Life and Environmental Ethics Part 3. Conclusions 16 The Sword of the Spirit The Cutting Edge of Biblical Ethics 17 The Moral Maze of the Moment A Brief Guide for the Perplexed 18 Who Am I? Questions of Identity 19 The Landscape of Exile On Living in Dangerous Times 20 The Disciplines of Exile On Hearts and Minds

On the whole, Provan's project is a masterful and sweeping attempt to look at a historically informed ethic rooted in the grand narrative of Scripture. It is reminiscent of a kind of broad and interdisciplinary project that one rarely sees in today's academic climate of specialization and atomization. The broad picture of the Old Testament view of the good life and its relation to our contemporary context is its strength. --Benjamin J. M. Johnson "Review of Biblical Literature" This volume guides the audience to read the Bible deeply and accurately so that they can live a good life according to it. --Larisa Levicheva "Themelios" Combining hermeneutics, ethics, and church history Provan points toward how the Bible can and should shape life, making this a helpful resource for thinking about how we preach and disciple. --Ray Van Neste "Preaching Magazine" Provan's Old Testament ethics invites the reader into an exceptional and rich interdisciplinary conversation. --Andrew Myers "Catholic Biblical Quarterly"