Dr. Allen Verhey of the Hope College religion faculty is the author of a new book that explores how the Bible can illuminate and guide medical ethics.

His book, "Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine," has been released by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. of Grand Rapids/Cambridge.

Verhey argues that churches are called to think and speak clearly about bioethical concerns. He shows how the Bible can be applied to questions such as suffering, genetic intervention, abortion, reproductive technologies, end-of-life care, physician-assisted suicide and more.

In his review, Ron Hamel of the Catholic Health Association noted, "Anyone interested in the relevance of Scripture to a wide range of bioethical issues confronting medicine and society would do well to read this volume meditatively."

In his preface, Verhey singles out the assistance of Hope senior Nicolas Grzegorczyk of Midland, Mich., "who patiently read a draft of this manuscript and identified a number of places that required clarification and development."

Verhey is the Evert J. and Hattie E. Blekkink Professor of Religion at Hope. He is the author or editor of 10 other books, including "Remembering Jesus: Christian Community, Scripture, and the Moral Life," "The Great Reversal: Ethics and the New Testament," and the anthology "On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives on Medical Ethics," the latter of which won a CHOICE award as one of the outstanding academic books of 1987.

He has written some 200 articles which have appeared in journals, as chapters of scholarly books or as contributions to encyclopedias. His work is discussed in the 1997 book "Theological Ethics and Holy Scripture: The Use of Scripture in the Works of James A. Gustafson, R. Paul Ramsey, and Allen D. Verhey," a dissertation written by Laurens Wouter Bilkes.