This essay suggests that while Antony Duff's model of criminal punishment as secular penance is pregnant with possibilities for theological reception and reflection, it proceeds by way of a number of separations that are brought into question by the penitential traditions of Christianity. The first three of these—between justice and mercy, censure and invitation, and state and victim, constrain the true communicative character of his account of punishment. The second set of oppositions, between sacrament and virtue, interior character and external (...) action, and formal and moral reconciliation, subject the model of state punishment as secular penance to problematic liberal and libertarian constraints. A postsecular analogy, outlining a theology of the invitational nature of divine judgment, and drawing on Thomas Aquinas's account of penance as both sacrament and virtue, is proposed. (shrink)

Opponents of abortion have traditionally responded to Judith Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” by denying that her example of the unconscious violinist is analogous to a pregnancy that results from rape. In this article, I argue that this strategy does not work. Although there are differences between Thomson’s violinist and pregnancies that result from rape, the differences are not morally relevant. The appropriate strategy for the opponent of abortion, I argue, is to simply bite the bullet: the opponent of abortion (...) should simply reply that Thomson’s innocent victim is not free to unplug himself from the violinist. (shrink)