At Home in a Strange Land: Using the Old Testament in Christian Ethics

The Old Testament is a problem for many Christians. Some find it puzzling, or even offensive; others seem to glibly misuse it for their own ends. There are few resources aimed at enabling ordinary Christians to understand the OT and use it in their lives as followers of Jesus.

In this book At Home in a Strange Land: Using the Old Testament in Christian Ethics, Andrew Sloane seeks to address this need. He outlines some of the problems that ordinary Christians face in reading the Old Testament as part of Christian Scripture and provides a framework for interpreting the Old Testament and using it in Christian ethics. He identifies some of the key biblical texts of both the Old Testament and the New Testament that both inform Christian ethics and challenge us to live as God's people. Using the paradigm of learning to travel in unfamiliar places, Sloane seeks to equip the reader with tools for understanding many of the puzzling and difficult passages found in the Old Testament. In sum, the book aims to "rehabilitate" the Old Testament for ordinary, even skeptical, twenty-first century Christians.

While many of the issues have been covered elsewhere, there is very little that seeks to bring together questions of interpretation and "ethical application" in one book aimed at lay people. The book would also be valuable in a college course on Christian ethics.

Andrew Sloane joined the faculty of Morling College (the Baptist Theological College of NSW) in 2002 as lecturer in Old Testament and Christian thought. He initially trained as a doctor before turning to theology. He completed his theological education at Morling College and has worked in Baptist churches in Sydney and Newcastle and lectured at Ridley College in Melbourne. He has written on Old Testament, interpretation, ethics and philosophy. On April 15, 2008, Andrew Sloane spoke in a forum at the University of Melbourne opposite Peter Singer (professor of practical ethics at Princeton and Melbourne University