Loving God and Neighbor - by George Van Pelt Campbell & Derek Van Pelt Campbell (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy is the Bible's most elaborate explanation of what it means to love God and love neighbor. In fact, the book contains the Bible's first explicit command to love God in Deut 6:4-5, often referred to as the Shema. Jesus quoted heavily from Deuteronomy during his ministry, and this book still contains many practical teachings for his followers today. Drawing from recent understanding of the book's previously perplexing structure, we find that while the Ten Commandments are famously framed mostly as brief negatives such as "do not murder," they were written to teach an open-ended array of positive ways to demonstrate love for God and neighbor. This book offers a positive restatement of each commandment to establish how Deuteronomy presents each commandment's full meaning. This book will help readers discover the riches of the book of Deuteronomy by reading it with understanding. It will also offer the resources needed to lead a Bible study on or preach through Deuteronomy so that Christians are better prepared to love God and neighbor.

About the Author

George Van Pelt Campbell is professor of biblical studies and sociology at Grove City College, Pennsylvania. His ThM in Old Testament is from Dallas Theological Seminary, and his PhD in religion and sociology is from the University of Pittsburgh. He is author of Everything You Know Seems Wrong about globalization's impact on culture and religion, and Invitation to the Torah.



Derek Van Pelt Campbell has been in pastoral ministry for seventeen years, currently serving the Latrobe Presbyterian Church in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He earned an MDiv at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing a DMin through Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Several years ago, he fell in love with the book of Deuteronomy when he spent an entire year preaching through it. He contributed, among other things, the chapter on Deuteronomy to Invitation to the Torah.