Redemptive Change: Atonement and the Christian Cure of the Soul

(Paperback)

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Change is a daily fact of life, one that people often have a hard time embracing. But when change does come, people do want it to be meaningful to them and to have some enduring value for their lives. In Redemptive Change, R. R. Reno argues that modern culture fails to offer people the hope of meaningful and enduring change. He shows how modern philosophers have argued that people are self-sufficient, that they do not need God to complete their identities, and that whatever changes they experience are momentary and of no ultimate significance. Countering modern philosophy, Reno contends that the only meaningful change occurs in Christ. At the moment of atonement, people experience an enduring change that has momentous consequences for their lives. We matter, he says, only insofar as we are more dependent upon and changed by Christ. R. R. Reno is Associate Professor of Theology, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, and co-author of Heroism and the Christian Life: Reclaiming Excellence.

Reviews

"This is not a "how to" book on pastoral care, but it is a book on pastoral care. Care as in "cure," as in "redemptive change." Those in search of healing, and those charged with the task of guiding that search, are offered a wealth of reflection on how various thinkers have understood what it means to be whole. This study of the history of ideas leads also through practical experience to a Christological conclusion that undergirds a vibrant humanism that makes secular humanisms pale by comparison."--First Things, Aug/Sept. 2002 * Blurb from reviewer *
"With intellectual clarity and literary grace, Reno provides a vision of Christian humanism that should both inform and embolden our testimony to the redemption that really redeems." -- Richard John Neuhaus * First Things *

Author Bio

R. R. Reno is Associate Professor of Theology, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska.