The roots of religious faith–and the provenance of ethical thought–may be sought in the human sciences, the physical sciences, literature, religious traditions, and deep human intuitions. Gustafson's religious stance and the author's, while different on their face, in common reflect a mingling–and tangling–of skepticism, understanding, and transcendence. Let all of us hope and believe what we can.

Typically people make ethical judgments with reference to unchanging principles, standards, rights, and values. This essay argues that such an ahistorical approach to ethics should be supplemented by a due regard for history. Invoking precedents by authors such as Jonsen and Toulmin, McIntyre, Niebuhr, Weber, De Tocqueville, Machiavelli and others, this essay explores several important ways in which a due regard for history can and should shape the practice of business ethics. Thus a due regard for history helps us both (...) to cultivate fitting appreciation of cultural mores and to understand how current problems and issues have developed as they have; it helps us to gauge current responsibilities with respect legacies of problems inherited from the past; it helps us to develop a lively sense of what is possible in the present, given current contingencies and past experiences; and it moves us to rethink the practice of ethical auditing: not just as a backward-looking effort to gauge compliance but as a forward-looking way of learning from actual experiences and developing fitting responses. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, this essay argues—largely against Carl Schmitt—that political theology as a critical analytic should examine the ‘afterlife’ of theological tropes with respect to the sense of time and history that they compel. Benjamin’s The Origin of German Tragic Drama argues that sovereignty as a political concept gains prominence as a response in the wake of the erosion of the concept of salvation history in the Baroque. The consequence of this rise of sovereignty as a (...) political key concept is a philosophy of history based on the permanently impending catastrophic end of the world. This continuously urgent situation is not only one that leaves little room for political critique and action, but also a perplexing one in its perpetuation, since the end of the world never actually arrives. To answer why political urgency can be perpetuated seemingly infinitely and why sovereigns can fail without eroding the ongoing desire for sovereignty, Benjamin’s work suggests that we must broaden our view of political theology to consider the survival of further theological concepts to include original sin as a master trope of philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

Among the many dichotomous cleavages among philosophers and theologians few seem to me as questionable as the Procrustean division into supematuralists and naturalists. “Naturalism” and “supernaturalism” have become party labels whose original meanings have been lost in the heat of banner-waving and slogan shouting. Even the great minds of the past, who were innocent as yet of this philosophical two-party system, are being herded into one pen or the other. And apparently few of the penkeepers are aware of the fact, (...) pointed out almost apologetically by Professor Randall, that “the usage is hardly fashionable abroad, even in England.” I, for one, confess that, not having been acclimatized in my European cave to this stern disjunction, I have to this day felt rather uneasy, if not evasive, at the outspoken or tacit expectation to line up with one faction or the other, much as my leanings were toward the other rather than toward the one. I therefore decided that some day I had to get to the bottom of this uneasiness. (shrink)

The worldwide transhumanist movement upgrades technological hopes and expectations to a level of religious fervor. When looking through the eyes of the public theologian, we see in H+ a disguised religion replete with faith in techno-salvation and even immortality. This is unrealistic. Apologetic theologians can offer the wider public a more realistic assessment of technology's potential while providing genuine hope in a future vision based on divine promise.

Did the God of the Bible create a Darwinian world in which violence and suffering (disvalue) are the means by which the good (value) is realized? This is Christopher Southgate's insightful and dramatic formulation of the theodicy problem. In addressing this problem, the Exeter theologian rightly invokes the Theology of the Cross in its second manifestation, that is, we learn from the cross of Jesus Christ that God is present to nonhuman as well as human victims of predation and extinction. (...) God co‐suffers with creatures in their despair, abandonment, physical suffering, and death. What I will add with more force than Southgate is this: the Easter resurrection is a prolepsis of the eschatological new creation, and it is God's new creation which retroactively determines past creation. Although this does not eliminate the theodicy question, it lessens its moral sting. (shrink)

A challenge confronting the human person in contemporary society is the abuse to his personality which constitutes a bane to his dignity and well-being which has continued to be on the increase despite various theoretical attempts at addressing the issue of abuse to human dignity. One of such theoretical attempts, which is atheistic humanism, has failed in its quest to enhancing the dignity of man because it has neglected the theistic background necessary for understanding, relating to and the treatment of (...) the human person. This paper therefore, aims at a critical analysis of atheistic humanism in its quest for human dignity with a view to showing its implications for the dignity and well-being of man. The paper employs the critical method of philosophy with a view to showing the inconsistencies and the implications of an atheistic humanistic understanding of man. The paper thereafter states that a theistic humanistic understanding and treatment of the human person better provides the ground for the pursuit and realization of human dignity and well-being. (shrink)

Stanley Hauerwas's Gifford Lectures are, at least in part, an interpretation of the Giffords that came before him. As a contribution to intellectual and theological history, however, I wish Hauerwas had given witness to Santayana's Hermes the hermeneut, along with the considerable, indeed considerate, witness he does give to his own Christian faith. Hauerwas seems to dislike Reinhold Niebuhr and, by my account, misreads William James. Thus I have to conclude that With the Grain of the Universe does not measure (...) up to his own more capacious and incisive works. (shrink)

Augustine's ontology, ecclesiology, and soteriology have recently been mined to help Christian realists and liberals respond to the problems that pluralism and conflict create for democratic societies. The results challenge those secularists who object to the late antique prelate's “moralizing” as well as others who insist that “public reason”—not religious traditions—makes for more meaningful political conversations and for collaboration “across differences.” But the results also raise the question whether Augustine would have gone along with the realists and liberals he has (...) inspired and outfitted. (shrink)

The late influential American intellectual Michael Novak was a self-declared devotee of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably the foremost twentieth-century American theologian. Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982) was an attempt to fill the political-economic lacuna in Niebuhr’s thought. The present article offers a Niebuhrian irony–focused response to Novak’s democratic capitalism in view of climate change as probably the greatest threat facing humanity. Novak quite successfully extended Niebuhrian ideas into a theology-based vision of democratic capitalism as the only political-economic system effective (...) in widely lifting people out of poverty. Yet he failed to acknowledge human-induced climate change as beyond reasonable doubt and rooted in the predominantly American invention of a fossil energy–based capitalist political economy. This article’s thesis is that Novak’s democratic capitalism entails Niebuhrian irony: the virtue it displays about resources becomes a vice due to Novak’s irresponsible post–Spirit of Democratic Capitalism attempt to represent democratic capitalism as innocent of any dangerous climate-change implications. (shrink)

This article revisits theologian Ulrich Duchrow’s three-decade-old use of the Protestant notion of status confessionis to denounce the capitalist global economy. Scholars quickly dismissed Duchrow’s argument; however, philosopher Thomas Pogge has developed a remarkable “negative duty”—based critique of the current global economic order that might help revitalize Duchrow’s position. The article argues that sound reasons exist for the churches to declare the contemporary world economy a—provisionally termed—status confessionis minor. After explaining the inadequacy of Duchrow’s original position and summarizing Pogge’s account, (...) the article develops a twofold argument. First, Pogge’s in-depth inquiry into the world economy gives Duchrow’s call for a status confessionis a strong yet narrowing economic foundation. Second, to declare the world economy a status confessionis minor is theological-ethically justifiable if the limited though indispensable “prophetic” significance of doing so is acknowledged. Thus, Duchrow’s approach is justified, but only partially. (shrink)

A comparison of E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature and Abraham Heschel's Who Is Man? introduces a discussion of how descriptions and explanations of the human are related to valuations of the human. More intense comparative analysis focuses on Melvin Konner, The Tangled Wing, and Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Similarities of outlook toward life in the world are noted, although the supporting information, concepts, and arguments are radically different. The article illustrates how a subject matter, here the (...) human, that is addressed by different disciplines and methods can yield fruitful interdisciplinary analysis. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between virtue and understandings of time through a comparative examination of two medieval Christian writers, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas. By locating temporal dimensions of virtue primarily in discussions of prudence, this essay compares Thomas's account of the virtue of counsel as preparatory to prudent judgment with Bernard's earlier account of consideration as an integrating virtue that coordinates an examination of physical surroundings and social responsibilities with an examination of one's own inner life and (...) history of moral decisions. The essay argues that accounts of virtue ethics focusing on tradition-specific views of the human good and practical reasoning are insufficient if they do not also examine how practical reasoning interprets and responds to religious interpretations of time that disclose the distinctive kinds of moral problems arising in each historical period. (shrink)