Wealth as Peril and Obligation: The New Testament on Possessions

By Sondra Ely Wheeler

Book Overview

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable.

This timely study of the New Testament helps bring clarity to one of the great ethical dilemmas of the modern church -- the moral status of wealth and the ownership of property and possessions in relation to Christian faith.

Sondra Ely Wheeler shows how Scripture can both form and inform contemporary moral discernment regarding wealth. After first developing a sound methodology for interpreting the New Testament's moral witness on this sticky ethical question, Wheeler gives a responsible exegesis of the key New Testament texts that deal with wealth and possessions. What results is a practical, biblically based statement regarding the ethics of wealth and ownership and a useful set of criteria for sound moral discernment concerning economic life within the contemporary Christian church.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080280733X
• ISBN13: 9780802807335
• Release Date: June 1995
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

We Christians seem to have missed a message!

This book by Dr. Wheeler starts out reading like a turgid doctoral dissertation, which it was. (Well, at least a doctoral dissertation, to which I'd apply the adjective "turgid" generically.) But once she makes her way to the intense examination of four New Testament passages on our relationship with wealth, this book explodes with power. She then sets those four and their key themes within the whole canon, so this is a book about much more than just four Bible passsages. And she brings you home to your life and your own relationship with wealth, possession, "stuff," by inviting you to ponder a series of questions, all growing out of scriptures. If you are a preacher, there's a whole series of important, riveting sermons here; if you are a lay person, there is a radical transformation, a metanoia, that you may find in this book. Thank you, Dr. Wheeler!

This book will not let you go.

Do you ever sit in church just before the collection plate is passed and listen to the minister try to tell you why to give? Usually, a brief piece of scripture is quoted telling you how much God loves cheerful givers. You will be anything but cheerful after reading this thorough account of what the Bible actually says about wealth and posessions. This is not for people looking for a nice quote to use in a stewardship campaign. This book is for people who really want to wrestle with what it means to be Christian. Read this book, and you will give up the idea entirely, or you will be haunted by its inescapable truth for the rest of your life.