What is Christian wisdom for living in the twenty-first century? Where is it to be found? How can it be learnt? In the midst of diverse religions and worldviews and the demands and complexities of our world, David Ford explores a Christian way of uniting love of wisdom with wisdom in love. Core elements are the 'discernment of cries', the love of God for God's sake, interpretation of scripture, and the shaping of desire in faith. Case studies deal with inter-faith wisdom among Jews, Christians and Muslims, universities as centres of wisdom as well as knowledge and know-how and the challenge of learning disabilities. Throughout, there is an attempt to do justice to the premodern, modern and postmodern while grappling with scripture, tradition and the cries of the world today. Ford opens up the rich resources of Christianity in engaging with the issues and urgencies of contemporary life.

David F. Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He is author of Self and Salvation: Being Transformed (1999) and co-editor with Ben Quash and Janet Martin Soskice of Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-First Century (2005).

Introduction: theology as wisdom; 1. Wisdom cries; 2. A wisdom interpretation of scripture; 3. Job!; 4. Job and post-holocaust wisdom; 5. Jesus, the spirit and desire: wisdom Christology; 6. Learning to live in the spirit: tradition and worship; 7. Loving the God of wisdom; 8. Inter-faith wisdom: scriptural reasoning between Jews, Christians and Muslims; 9. Interdisciplinary wisdom: knowledge and formation in the negotiable university; 10. Interpersonal wisdom: L'Arche, learning disability and the Gospel of John; Conclusion: love's wisdom.