Here are some excellent new theology books * that were released in March 2026 :
* broadly interpreted, including ethics, church history, biblical studies, and other areas that intersect with theology
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On the Love of Christ: The Encyclical Dilexit Nos and the Apostolic Exhoration Dilexi Te
Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV
(Orbis Books)
This book combines two complementary papal documents: the last encyclical by Pope Francis and the first apostolic exhortation of Pope Leo XIV. Francis’s encyclical, Delexit Nos: On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ, was issued six months before his death, timed for the 350th anniversary of the revelations on the Sacred Heart to St. Mary Alacoque. He had drafted a companion document, Dilexi Te: On Love for the Poor, which was completed by Pope Leo and published in 2025. Together they present a comprehensive reflection on Christ’s love, the first with emphasis on the spiritual dimensions; the second on the social implications.
Dilexit Nos, “He loved us,” takes its title from Romans 8:37. It is a deeply contemplative exploration of how the love of Jesus’s Heart awakens and transforms the human heart until we are able to share radically in his mission. The title of Dilexi Te, “I loved you,” comes from Revelations 3:9. In that scripture text the risen Christ addresses a community of “little power” that has nevertheless kept God’s word faithfully. The Exhortation affirms that our faith will not be authentic unless we share in, and learn from, God’s special love of the poor.
In her introduction, Mary Frohlich reflects on the background of each document, especially the tradition of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the teachings of the Latin American church on the preferential option for the poor, which shaped both Pope Francis and his successor. Together, they issue “a call to simplicity of life, personal encounter with Jesus, seeing with the eyes of the heart, being brothers and sisters with the poor, missionary discipleship, and active building of a society based in gospel values. It is this communion with ‘the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ’ that will enable the embers of the church’s renewal at Vatican II to come to life again in in the twenty-first century and beyond.”
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Kingdom Apprenticeship: Dallas Willard’s Formational Theology and Missional Vision
Keas Keasler
( IVP Academic )
A Groundbreaking Analysis of Dallas Willard’s Theology of Spiritual Formation
Dallas Willard’s formational theology begins with the claim that the aim of God in human history is the formation of a community of loving persons apprenticed to Jesus―and ends with the promise that such apprenticeship prepares us to share in God’s governance of the cosmos.
This apprenticeship to Jesus is the path to human flourishing, the renewal of the church, and the healing of the world.
In Kingdom Apprenticeship, Keas Keasler offers the first comprehensive study of Willard’s theology of spiritual formation. He argues that while the three D’s of disciples, discipleship, and disciplines made Willard famous, his formational theology is much deeper than that. Willard’s unique grammar of transformation is grounded in ordinary life, for it is in our present reality that we are trained to participate in God’s eternal purposes.
Mining Willard’s philosophical works, theological writings, recorded lectures, and unpublished papers, Keasler shows:
Willard’s theology serves as a practical curriculum for spiritual growth, offering a remedy for the character crisis we see in the church and in society.
Apprenticeship to Jesus is both for growth in Christlikeness and preparation for reigning with God in the fullness of his kingdom.
Spiritual formation is not secondary or supplementary to God’s mission; it is its very strategy.
Against the drift of modern theology into abstraction, Willard calls the church back to a clinical theology―one aimed at the transformation of character through an interactive life with God. Formation and mission, contemplation and action, inner renewal and outward vocation―all are inseparably linked in Willard’s vision.
Kingdom Apprenticeship offers a fresh and urgent call: to recover apprenticeship to Jesus as the heart of the Christian life―and the hope of the world.
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