Abortion remains a controversial topic, with pro-life and pro-choice advocates clashing fiercely. However, public polling demonstrates that the vast majority of the Western public holds a middle position: being in favour of abortion but not in all circumstances nor at any time. The intuitions held by the majority seem to imply a contradiction: two early foetuses at the same point in development have different moral statuses. Providing coherent philosophical grounding for this intuition has proved challenging. Solutions given by philosophers such (...) as Feinberg, Harman and Räsänen are complex and do not fully account for the lived experience of pregnancy loss. This article argues for a relational ontological construction of human personhood as the basis of foetal personhood. This approach takes seriously the literature of pregnancy loss and the lived experiences of pregnant persons. Focusing on the manner in which persons relate to early foetuses (especially pregnant persons), provides a coherent ground for distinct foetal value. Importantly, this approach is both simple and intuitive. Therefore, it can be more easily adopted by middle. To counter an implied equality of human relationality, the article argues for a clear hierarchy based on relational proximity that affirms pregnant persons? primary role in deciding the moral significance of foetal termination. (shrink)

As a way forward in assessing how the Old Testament wisdom tradition might speak to decisions in a modern medical context, in this paper, I propose exploring the iconographic function of the “tree of life” in the Old Testament, which is consistently associated with both wisdom as well as life and health, in order to tease out two-related issues that can help in providing a Christian theological framework for thinking about the problem of the medicalization of risk: first, how should (...) the natural and good human desire for health and long life be framed in terms of the pursuit of wisdom? And, second, how might a sapientially formed character approach risk and uncertainty in making medical decisions? The answers to these questions help establish a framework in which more specific questions related to the medicalization of risk can be assessed. As such, this paper is deliberately programmatic and perspectival rather than prescriptive. (shrink)

Analytic skill can contribute to a theology of the Bible and a theological hermeneutic in two ways, by refining the formulation of a doctrine of Scripture and a correlative hermeneutic, and by illuminating how problematic hermeneutical presuppositions have in some cases become part of exegetical practice. The contribution that the analytic style of reflection can make to the theological enterprise need not be vitiated by a common criticism of analytic modes of engaging with texts, namely, that they tend toward being (...) ahistorical, though the objection deserves to be considered carefully. (shrink)

My argument proceeds in two stages. In §I, I sum up the intuitions of a popular argument for 'satisfaction accounts' of Purgatory that I label, TAP. I then offer an argument, taken from a few standard orthodox Christian beliefs and one axiom of Christian theology, to so show that TAP is unsound. In the same section, I entertain some plausible responses to my argument that are prima facie consistent with these beliefs and axiom. I find these responses wanting. In §II, (...) I offer a sorites problem for TAP, given the orthodox Christian understanding of Christ’s parousia, showing that TAP and the intuitions driving it are faulty. To attempt something of a corrective, I end by offering some modest theological suggestions for thinking through “the logic of total transformation.”. (shrink)

Love lies at the very heart of the Christian faith and its conception of both God and the human being. Nevertheless, the growing field of theological anthropology has yet to fully avail itself of philosophy’s and theology’s renewed attention to the theme of love. The Introduction to this special issue proposes the phrase ‘in the image of Love’ as an invitation to examine the relation between theological anthropology and love throughout the history of Christian thought. Guided by this motif, the (...) issue’s contributors consider ten historical thinkers on love and the human in relation to their philosophical conversation partners at the time. The volume thus has a genealogical dimension, delving into often forgotten layers beneath our current, late modern view of the human/love. It thereby assists future theological anthropological discussions in the much-needed task of both integrating the crucial theme of love and formulating more historically grounded perspectives. This special issue also reveals the ways in which theologians have attempted to respond to the challenge posed by the modern subject while retaining the idea that the human creature is called by Love and called to Love, and provides an alternative to Nygren’s opposition of agape and eros. (shrink)

In the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas More criticized Martin Luther’s purported denial of a conscious intermediate state between bodily death and bodily resurrection. In the same century, William Tyndale penned a response in defense of Luther’s view. His argument essentially defended the proposition: If the Intermediate State obtains, then bodily resurrection is superfluous for those in the paradisiacal state. In this article, I enter the fray and argue for the truth of this conditional claim. And, like William Tyndale, I use (...) the content and argument of a particular chapter in the Bible, namely, 1 Corinthians 15, to make the point. (shrink)

Classical approaches to the idea of the imago Dei in the theology of creation have tended to postulate a distinctive element of the human being not found in other creatures, with the possible exception of angels. This is often combined with attempts to use the imago concept as an organizing principle within Christian theology. Such approaches are now problematic not merely on account of their exegetical findings, but for methodological reasons. In light of recent exegesis, the imago Dei in Genesis (...) 1:26–27 should be seen as a signifier of human life under God, rather than a single determining characteristic or essential attribute. Following the wisdom literature, the imago Dei can be understood, in a more diffused manner, as represented by human persons over long periods of evolutionary history in their characteristic quotidian forms of life, thus signifying the providential ordering of human life everywhere. The recent work of David Kelsey on theological anthropology is engaged in this context. (shrink)

Despite the fact that Stanley Hauerwas has not taken up many of the topics normally associated with virtue ethics, has explicitly distanced himself from the enterprise known as “virtue ethics,” and throughout his career has preferred other categories of analysis, ranging from character and agency to practices and liturgy, it is nevertheless clear that his work has had a deep and transformative impact on the recovery of virtue within Christian ethics, and that this impact has largely to do with the (...) ways in which his thought resists normalization. This essay traces the evolution of Hauerwas's reflections on virtue and the virtues over the course of his career, with special attention to how this has been bound up with an increasingly emphatic theological particularism that has remained ambivalent between what I term “comprehensive” versus “exclusive” particularism. I argue that it is important to distinguish between these, and suggest that grasping the destructive tendencies of “exclusive” particularism should cement our commitment to shouldering the responsibilities associated with comprehensive particularism. (shrink)

In this article, we argue two points in relation to the challenge to human distinctiveness emerging as artificial intelligence systems and humanlike robots simulate various human capabilities. First, that, in the context of theological anthropology, it is advisable to respond to this challenge by turning toward the human body. Second, following this point, we propose the responsive body hypothesis, suggesting that what makes us distinct from androids are capacities that rise from and depend on our responsive bodies.

“Pale Blue Dot” and “Anthropocene” are common tropes in astrobiology and often appear in ethical arguments. Both support a decentering of human life relative to biological life in terms of value. This article introduces a typology of life-value narratives: hierarchical narratives with human life above other life and holistic narratives with human life among other life. Astrobiology, through the two tropes, supports holistic narratives, but this should not be viewed as opposed to Christianity. Rather, Christian scriptures provide seeds of both (...) hierarchical and holistic narratives, each of which may flourish in different environments. By attending to which aspects of human life are valued—or disvalued—relative to biological life, we can better understand how life-concepts do work in ethics, anthropology, and soteriology in secular as well as theological contexts. (shrink)

Traditional Christian descriptions of homosexuality as a “sin against nature” rely on a claim about the transparency of the sexed body to universal reason: homosexual acts are sins against nature because natural law renders them obviously unnatural. This moral description “unnatural” subverts itself for two reasons. First, neo-traditionalist descriptions conflate “natural” and “normal.” Dialogue with Didier Eribon's work on the “insult” shows how such moral descriptions self-subvert and render chastity impossible. Second, neo-traditionalists use the description to require celibacy, which the (...) tradition teaches is likely impossible without a special gift. This use of natural law thus fails to be self-consistent or true to reality and so undermines its ability to serve as a critical principle in the search for truth. A critical use of natural law allows for an alternative, non-insulting description of homosexual characters. This essay outlines the character description through immanent critique of two spheres of Catholic teachings about sex: Augustinian sexual ethics and nuptial theology. (shrink)

ABSTRACTStanley Hauerwas's contribution to the study of Christian ethics is analyzed in the course of offering an overview of his work, including his early reflections on “vision,”“narrative,” and moral agency; his continuing focus on Christian virtues and practices in contrast to the ethos of moral and political liberalism; and his specific attention to the meaning of peaceableness and the rejection of violence. The essay concludes by considering Hauerwas's legacy as a postliberal theologian, a critical participant in American Protestant ethics, and (...) a conversation partner with Roman Catholics. (shrink)

Debates about the theological implications of recent research in the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion have tended to focus on the question of theism. The question of whether there is any disagreement about the conceptualization of the individual human being has been largely overlooked. In this article, I argue that evolutionary and cognitive accounts of religion typically depend upon a view of cognition that conceptually isolates the mind from its particular social and physical environmental contexts. By embracing this view (...) of the mind, these accounts also unwittingly embrace an abstract individualist view of individual personhood that Christian theologians have explicitly battled against. Taken as a whole, the field leaves sufficient room for supplementary theories that are compatible with theological accounts of the relational individual, but in practice, no effort has been made to engage, or even to accommodate, any other view of individual personhood. (shrink)

Contemporary theological anthropology is now almost united in its opposition toward concepts of the abstract individual. Instead there is a strong preference for concrete concepts, which locate individual human being in historically and socioculturally contingent contexts. In this paper I identify, and discuss in detail, three key themes that structure recent theological opposition to abstract concepts of the individual: (1) the idea that individual human beings are constituted in part by their relations with their environments, with other human beings, and (...) with God; (2) the idea that individual human beings are unique entities; (3) the idea that individual human beings cannot be conceptualized in atemporal terms. Subsequently, I seek to demonstrate that theories of embodied cognition offer broad, if not unconditional, support for the concept of the concrete individual. As such, I suggest, theories of embodied cognition provide a valuable resource for dialogue between contemporary science and theological anthropology. (shrink)

A number of analytic philosophers of religion have asserted what we will call proposition : If God creates the best possible world from an internal necessity alone, then God cannot be thankworthy with respect to creating the best possible world. According to, there is inconsistency between divine thankworthiness and the idea that God creates the best possible world from an internal necessity alone. In this article, however, I develop an argument for the consistency of divine thankworthiness and the idea that (...) God creates the best possible world from an internal necessity alone, thus claiming that proposition is false. An exploration into the Judeo-Christian doctrine of divine grace will expedite the argument. This doctrine will provide sufficient grounds for thinking that God is thankworthy with respect to creating the best possible world. I also argue that the idea that God creates the best possible world from an internal necessity alone can also be a gracious act. Along the way, I will consider possible objections to my argument. (shrink)

Zygon®, Volume 56, Issue 4, Page 898-921, December 2021.

Abstract. Don Browning's intellectual artfulness is particularly evident in three areas: as analyst of basic assumptions in intellectual systems, as fundamental ethicist, and as mediating theologian. His work in each area has been extraordinarily fruitful, both theoretically and practically. In each area, however, his skillful handling of complex issues also has subtle limitations. This paper identifies those limitations, analyzes them as facets of an articulate but preemptive defense of a preferred theological outlook, and thus as a limited failure of Browning's (...) otherwise broadly successful implementation of a critical hermeneutical method. (shrink)

Human death is natural from the perspective of evolutionary biology but unnatural from the vantage point of classical Christian theology. The biblical notion that death entered the world as a result of sin seems hard to square with the view that (human) death has been an integral part of the natural order all along. I suggest an ecumenical solution to this conundrum by retrieving and elaborating the Augustinian modal distinction between strong and weak immortality. It is argued on exegetical and (...) theological grounds that the human being can best be seen as being created in a state of posse mori et posse non mori, and that—when conceptual ambiguities in their writings are dissolved—this is what theologians as diverse as the prelates of the Council of Trent, John Calvin, Louis Berkhof, and Wolfhart Pannenberg had in mind. It is also argued that this solution is compatible with contemporary evolutionary science and can be accepted by creationists of various stripes. (shrink)

Traditionally the central trope in Christian theological anthropology, “the image of God” tends to function more as a noun than a verb. While that has grounded significant interplay between specific Christian formulations and the concepts of nontheological disciplines and cultural constructs, it facilitates the withdrawal of the image and of theological anthropology more broadly from the context of active relation with God. Rather than a static rendering of the image a more interactionist, dynamic, and relational view of “imaging God” is (...) commended as a key anthropological term. Engaging with Psalm 8 suggests that, biblically, asking the anthropological question “What is humanity?” is tied to the answer to the theological question: who is God? This locates theological anthropology securely within the interactive context of being related to by God and suggests that theological anthropology might be a matter of performance rather than definition: actively imaging God. (shrink)

Present knowledge of evolutionary history challenges traditional concepts of the Christian salvation history. In order to overcome these challenges, theology needs to articulate a wider, more open and more universal approach to the understanding of God's salvific action. One way of doing this is to employ the notion of “deep incarnation” suggested by Danish theologian Niels Henrik Gregersen. His suggestion may also blur the lines that mark a sharp distinction between the history of creation and the history of salvation, in (...) a way that safeguards some of the basic tenets of classical theology. (shrink)