MY BOOKS
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the best-attested facts of history. But believing in the resurrection is one thing. Knowing what it means is another. Although much has been written about the apologetics of the resurrection, little has been written about its theological meaning. This book reveals the hidden depths of the theological significance and ongoing relevance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for our being, our salvation, Christian life, ethics, and our future hope.
Pastoral Ethics: Moral Formation as Life in the Trinity
Ethics is freedom in Christ to pursue the good, true, and beautiful.
Pastors regularly face concrete ethical questions. And they, too, pursue a moral life. In the busyness of ministry, it can be tempting to think pragmatically or derive one’s ethics from the latest cultural concerns. But standard approaches to ethics, whether deontological, utilitarian, or virtue-ethical, all fall short of being distinctly Christian. Ethics ought to be grounded in the gospel and in our triune God ....
Theological Ethics: The Moral Life of the Gospel in Contemporary Context
There is probably no greater challenge the church faces today than in the realm of ethics. How is the church to think ethically in a way that is faithful to Scripture, that is culturally sensitive but not culturally captive? How is the church to speak in the public square about ethical issues? These questions prompted me to write this book on theological ethics in order to offer a foundation for how the church should think, act and speak. That foundation is Trinitarian and evangelical ....
Total Atonement: Trinitarian Participation in the Reconciliation of Humanity and Creation
Total Atonement re-imagines the “apprehended mystery” of the atonement in light of the triune nature of God and the person and work of the incarnate Christ. W. Ross Hastings proposes participation as a theory or framework of atonement that holds all other models within it. He argues that God’s participation in humanity in order that humans might participate in God invites a total approach to the mystery of the atonement, that is, one that involves the whole Trinity, the whole person and history of Christ, and all the biblical motifs and theological models of atonement–– including penal substitution (properly nuanced to overcome its caricatures), Christus victor, satisfaction, vicarious life, and moral exemplar. Hastings re-examines the scope of the atonement in light of these Trinitarian, incarnational realities.
Echoes of Coinherence
Trinitarian Theology and Science Together
This book re-imagines the universe (and the scientific study of it) through the lens of a triune Creator, three persons of irreducible identity in a perichoretic or coinherent communion. It modestly proposes that Trinitarian theology, and especially the coinherent natures of the Son in the incarnation, provides the metaphysic or ""theory of everything"" that manifests itself in the subject matter of science. The presence of the image of the triune God in humanity and of traces of this God in the non-human creation are discussed, highlighting ontological resonances between God and creation (resonances between the being of God and his creation), such as goodness, immensity-yet-particularity, intelligibility, agency, relationality, and beauty ....
Where Do Broken Hearts Go?: An Integrative, Participational Theology of Grief
Grounded in the narrative of the loss of his own wife, Ross Hastings seeks to provide insight into the universal human condition of loss and grief . . . and speaks comfort. All kinds of losses produce grief--loss of jobs, homes, friendships, health, losses through divorce, and loss through death of parents, children, and spouses--and we are often unprepared for it. Applicable to all who go through loss, this book will also offer skills for pastors, pastors-in-training, and friends seeking to offer comfort to grieving people. It will weave together first-order theological, as well as integrated psychological insights that relate to loss and grieving, interspersed with personal stories ....
Missional God, Missional Church
Hope for Re-evangelizing the West
"As the Father has sent me, I am sending you" (John 20:21).
With the reality of broad-scale secularization in the West and the attendant cloud of insignificance hanging over the church, is there any hope for the re-evangelization of the West?
In this comprehensive theology of mission, Ross Hastings directs the fretful gaze of the church to the trinitarian commission of John 20. There we find Jesus granting peace to his disciples by breathing his Spirit on them. He formed them into his community of shalom. Leaving their locked room, these "sent ones" went out to participate in God's own ongoing mission to the world ....
Jonathan Edwards and the Life Of God
Toward an Evangelical Theology of Participation
Jonathan Edwards and the Life of God aims to offer a retrieval of Edwards's theology of participation for contemporary evangelical theology. It critically expounds and elucidates the concept of participation in God, or theosis, in Edwards's Trinitarian theology as it relates to around three unions: the three persons of the Trinity, the hypostatic union of the divine and human in Christ, and that of believers with Christ. This volume brings Edwards's rich theological work into conversation with the patristic (Augustine and the Cappadocians) and Reformed traditions (Calvin and, especially, Barth), in order to construct with Edwards a more hopeful, liberating, and truly human version of Christian life ....