Nurture in Time and Eternity

The dimension of eternity has been lost from much contemporary religious consciousness. Liberals tend to focus on action within time, as do conservatives, who see history as a battleground for a war of good against evil. Spiritual life, however, also requires nurturing a sense of eternity within time. These sermons from Marsh Chapel at Boston University follow the lectionary in highlighting the places of temporal life within eternity, and the places eternity is found in temporal life. The liturgical year is employed as the venue for articulating a comprehensive theology on the themes of the temporal and eternal aspects of Christian nurture.

""Robert Cummings Neville's Nurture in Time and Eternity is a gem. Neville is a theologian of depth with a heart for preaching and it shows throughout this rich sermon collection. He demonstrates what a sermon in the tradition of the University Chapel can be and invites hearers more deeply into faith and engagement without requiring them to check their intellects at the church door.""
--David Schnasa Jacobsen, Professor of the Practice of Homiletics; Director of the Homiletical Theology Project, Boston University School of Theology

""Part artistic inspiration and part personal revelation, Neville speaks to us here as nowhere else. His thought expands in the presence of Scripture and contemporary events. Still the timelessness of the message holds the center. Devotional practitioners of the other axiological faiths will find in these offerings an unexpected revelation, where the Good, the Beautiful, and the True find their common ground, to the increase of all and the diminishment of none.""
--Randall Auxier, Professor of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

""Robert Neville's sermons are both intellectually compelling and spiritually edifying. This book is an extraordinary achievement, a rare and precious gift for readers. Not since Paul Tillich's The New Being and The Shaking of the Foundations has philosophical theology of the highest order found such perfect embodiment in homiletic form.""
--Michael L. Raposa, Professor of Religion Studies, E. W. Fairchild Professor of American Studies, Lehigh University

""Meditations that open the mind, expand the imagination, and rejoice the heart. With these sermons Robert Neville has provided a trove of amazing prisms. They provoke the reader to plumb the riches of the Christian Gospel while confronting the most profound questions of contemporary living. A book no one is likely to forget."" 
--William M. Sullivan, Senior Scholar at the New American Colleges and Universities; author of Work and Integrity, and coauthor of Habits of the Heart


Robert Cummings Neville is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Boston University and dean emeritus of the Boston University School of Theology. He is the author of Ultimates (2013), Existence (2014), and Religion (2015)--a series on philosophical theology. His previous books of sermons are Preaching the Gospel without Easy Answers (2005) and The God Who Beckons (1999).