These aren’t necessarily books that all came out this year, but simply the most memorable and/or helpful books I happened to read this year.  My best read, I would have to say is Herbert McCabe’s What Ethics is All About: A Re-Evaluation of Law, Love, and Language.  A better analysis of Christian ethics, particularly in the context of modernity and capitalism I have yet to find.  In fact, I think it is McCabe’s work that has influenced me the most this year out of all the theologians I have read.  His work is not only brilliant theology, but passionately rooted in homiletical practice and ecclesial piety.  His writings on prayer and sin are truly some of the best discussions I’ve encountered on the topic.

Some other runners up for great reads this year include:

• Thomas P. Rausch, Towards a Truly Catholic Church: An Ecclesiology for the Third Millennium
• D. Stephen Long, Calculated Futures: Theology, Ethics, and Economics
• Chris K. Huebner, A Precarious Peace: Yoderian Explorations on Theology, Knowledge, and Identity
• Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshipping Community
• Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man
• Robert Barron, The Priority of Christ: Towards a Postliberal Catholicism
• John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church
• Paul Louis Metzger, Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church
• Douglas Knight, The Eschatological Economy: Time and the Hospitality of God
• Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens
• N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God
• John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Second Edition – some very important changes and updates)

And here are some of the books that I have not yet gotten to which I am most excited about this year:

• Rowan Williams, Wrestling with Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology
• Stanley Hauwerwas, The State of the University
• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age
• Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God