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Brown is an incredibly gifted prose stylist. Chapter on Paul and the Corinthians is exegetically weak. No contemporary Jew OR Roman would recognize Brown's Paul, who seems to come as a bolt out of the blue. But the sections on Tertullian, Tatian, and the Encratites are all very well done. Connections drawn between sex and death and the melancholy of procreation are fascinating.

Many, many quotable moments in this book. Given that my daughter is named after Dorothy Day, the chapter on Day is especially touching to me. It suffers however from the choppiness of books of this sort, trying to weave together the biographical and the sentential.

The first chapter offers well placed criticisms of the 'stewardship' model of creation care that animates most environmentally concerned Christians insofar as the model implies a hierarchical relationship with creation and assumes that dominion in gen 1 applies to the whole environment rather than sentient and vegetative creatures.

I'm always grateful for evangelicals who are willing to say on any particular theme that 'to be disrespectful of tradition and of historical theology is to be disrespectful of the Holy Spirit who has been actively enlightening the church in every century' 18

I'm always grateful for evangelicals who are willing to say on any particular theme that 'to be disrespectful of tradition and of historical theology is to be disrespectful of the Holy Spirit who has been actively enlightening the church in every century' 18

I'm always grateful for evangelicals who are willing to say on any particular theme that 'to be disrespectful of tradition and of historical theology is to be disrespectful of the Holy Spirit who has been actively enlightening the church in every century' 18

I'm always grateful for evangelicals who are willing to say on any particular theme that 'to be disrespectful of tradition and of historical theology is to be disrespectful of the Holy Spirit who has been actively enlightening the church in every century' 18

Chapter on gratitude is severe in its criticism of envy and the unholy attitudes and actions produced by it-resentment and grumbling. 'Grumbling as a way of life' is a felicitous expression.

Ch. 2 is a devastating critique of Yoder. By arguing that states are fallen powers, such that they have 'power' but not 'authority', Yoder ironically undoes his commitment to 'body theology' and resistance to all forms of political 'inwardness' by insisting that the only proper Christian response to the defective state is submission.