Addiction and the Captive Will

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 *