"Offers an innovative theological look at what family might mean that cuts deeper than current, mostly polarised debates. The book taps literary, artistic and biblical sources and brings them into conversation with family studies from humanities and social science to understand why family is currently a controversial topic"--

Petruschka Schaafsma is Professor of Theological Ethics at the Protestant Theological University, The Netherlands. She runs a research program in ethics and theology on the meaning of family as part of a project on morality in times of pluralism and polarisation and is the editor of  'The Transcendent Character of the Good (2022).'

Prologue. The difficult question of what family is about; 1. Family as mystery; 2. The family tie as mystery; 3. Family and givenness as mystery; 4. Family and dependence as mystery; Epilogue. Morality of appeal and answer: Ethics and the sacred character of the family as mystery.