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9780567713568

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Addiction mystifies all who experience or observe it. Anyone new to this field encounters a maelstrom of studies, models, and competing claims for what drives addiction, and for what its sufferers might need. Dr Geppert’s extensive expertise in ethics, medicine, and theology guides us through this terrain by conversing modern theories of addiction with Augustine's theological anthropology. The result is highly readable, nuanced, and integrative. Her work interleaves the latest literature in the neuroscience and psychology of addiction, with a profound apprehension of the bottomless grace of God. She points sufferers and their helpers toward a new, yet also a very ancient, kind of hope. * Andrew Cameron, St Mark’s National Theological Centre, Australia; Charles Sturt University, Australia * Drawing on her professional experience in addiction medicine, Cynthia Geppert sets up an intensive and well-resourced dialogue between the neuroscience of addiction, Augustine’s theological anthropology, and recent theological accounts of addiction. The result is a sophisticated and important contribution that advances the theological understanding of addiction, offers critical and constructive insights for scientists and clinicians, and suggests lessons for the churches’ pastoral practice. Anyone wishing to understand and respond well to the human predicament of addiction should read this book. * Neil Messer, Baylor University, USA * Augustine’s sensitive portrayal of the nature and limits of his own agency in his Confessions makes him an illuminating dialogue partner in our own attempts to respond to addiction—especially when he is read in light of recent scholarship on his ideas about freedom. As she wrestles with the dilemma of how to hold addicts accountable without shaming them, Geppert’s training in both psychology and theology are put to good use. This is the most scientifically well-informed theological discussion of addiction and human agency published in recent years, and a helpful introduction to key aspects of Augustine’s thought. * Jesse Couenhoven, Villanova University, USA *

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Cynthia Geppert is Professor of Psychiatry & Internal Medicine and Director of Ethics Education at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, USA. She is also Adjunct Professor of Bioethics at Alden March Bioethics Institute, Albany Medical College, USA.

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