The concept of sustainable and responsible (SR) investments expresses that every investment should be based on the SR investor’s code of ethics. To a large extent the allocation of SR investments to more sustainable companies and ethical practices is based on the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) scores provided by rating agencies. However, a thorough investigation of ESG scores is a neglected topic in the literature. This paper uses Thomson Reuters ASSET4 ESG ratings to analyze the influence of firm (...) size, a company’s available resources for providing ESG data, and the availability of a company’s ESG data on the company’s sustainability performance. We find a significant positive correlation between the stated variables, which can be explained by organizational legitimacy. The results raise the question of whether the way the ESG score measures corporate sustainability gives an advantage to larger firms with more resources while not providing SR investors with the information needed to make decisions based on their beliefs. Due to our results, SR investors and scholars should reopen the discussion about: what sustainability rating agencies measure with ESG scores, what exactly needs to be measured, and if the sustainable finance community can reach their self-imposed objectives with this measurement. (shrink)

In this rejoinder, we respond to two commentaries on the study by Greiff, S.; Stadler, M.; Sonnleitner, P.; Wolff, C.; Martin, R. Sometimes less is more: Comparing the validity of complex problem solving measures. Intelligence 2015, 50, 100–113. The study was the first to address the important comparison between a classical measure of complex problem solving (CPS) and the more recent multiple complex systems (MCS) approach regarding their validity. In the study, we investigated the relations between one classical microworld as (...) the initially developed method (here, the Tailorshop) with three more recently developed multiple complex systems (MCS; here, MicroDYN, Genetics Lab, and MicroFIN) tests. We found that the MCS tests showed higher levels of convergent validity with each other than with the Tailorshop even after reasoning was controlled for, thus empirically distinguishing between the two approaches. The commentary by Kretzschmar and the commentary by Funke, Fischer, and Holt expressed several concerns with how our study was conducted, our data was analyzed, and our results were interpreted. Whereas we acknowledge and agree with some of the more general statements made in these commentaries, we respectfully disagree with others, or we consider them to be at least partially in contrast with the existing literature and the currently available empirical evidence. (shrink)

Institutional guidelines for transgender children and adolescent minors fail to adequately address a critical juncture of care of this population: how to proceed if a minor and their parents have disagreements concerning their gender-affirming medical care. Through arguments based on ethical, paediatric, adolescent and transgender health research, we illustrate ethical dilemmas that may arise in treating transgender and gender diverse youth. We discuss three potential avenues for providing gender-affirming care over parental disagreement: legal carve-outs to parental consent, the mature minor (...) doctrine and state intervention for neglect. Our discussion approaches this parent–child disagreement in a manner that prioritises the developing autonomy of transgender youth in the decision-making process surrounding medically assisted gender affirmation. We base our arguments in the literature surrounding the risks and benefits of gender-affirming therapy in transgender children and the existing legal basis for recognising minors’ decision-making authority in certain medical situations. (shrink)

Research on destructive leadership has largely focused on leader characteristics thought to be responsible for harmful organizational outcomes. Recent findings, however, demonstrate the need to examine important contextual factors underlying such processes. Thus, the present study sought to determine the effects of an organization's climate and financial performance, as well as the leader's gender, on subordinate perceptions of and reactions (i.e., whistle-blowing intentions) to aversive leadership, a form of destructive leadership based on coercive power. 302 undergraduate participants read through a (...) series of vignettes describing a fictional organization, its employees, and an aversive leader in charge of the company's sales department. They were then asked to envision themselves as subordinates of the leader and respond to several quantitative measures and open-ended questions. Consistent with Padilla and colleagues' (2007) toxic triangle theory, results suggest that both perceptions and reactions to aversive leadership depend on the three aforementioned factors. Specifically, aversive leaders were perceived more aversively and elicited greater whistle-blowing intentions in financially unstable organizations possessing climates intolerant of negative leader behavior. Moreover, female aversive leaders were perceived more aversively than their male counterparts under such conditions. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions are also discussed. (shrink)

GoalThis paper presents an immersive Virtual Reality system to analyze and train Executive Functions of soccer players. EFs are important cognitive functions for athletes. They are a relevant quality that distinguishes amateurs from professionals.MethodThe system is based on immersive technology, hence, the user interacts naturally and experiences a training session in a virtual world. The proposed system has a modular design supporting the extension of various so-called game modes. Game modes combine selected game mechanics with specific simulation content to target (...) particular training aspects. The system architecture decouples selection/parameterization and analysis of training sessions via a coaching app from an Unity3D-based VR simulation core. Monitoring of user performance and progress is recorded by a database that sends the necessary feedback to the coaching app for analysis.ResultsThe system is tested for VR-critical performance criteria to reveal the usefulness of a new interaction paradigm in the cognitive training and analysis of EFs. Subjective ratings for overall usability show that the design as VR application enhances the user experience compared to a traditional desktop app; whereas the new, unfamiliar interaction paradigm does not negatively impact the effort for using the application.ConclusionThe system can provide immersive training of EF in a fully virtual environment, eliminating potential distraction. It further provides an easy-to-use analyzes tool to compare user but also an automatic, adaptive training mode. (shrink)

Es besteht kein Zweifel, dass Hannah Arendt den klassischen republikanischen Tugenden des bürgerschaftlichen Engagements, der Partizipation und des politischen Handelns in ihrem Werk eine gewichtige Bedeutung verliehen hat. Ihr politisches Denken lebt von öffnenden Begriffen wie der Natalität, dem Anfang, der Pluralität, der Spontaneität oder der Freiheit des Menschen, etwas beginnen zu können. Und dennoch ist dieses Denken nur ein Teil von ihr und steht in einer konzeptionellen Beziehung zu einem dezidierten Ordnungsdenken, das in der Forschung bislang vernachlässigt wurde. Dieses (...) stärker in den Mittelpunkt der Auseinandersetzung zu rücken, ist das Anliegen dieses Bandes. ​​ ​. (shrink)

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

Introduction to the study of African Christian ethics -- Foundations of contemporary African ethics -- Foundations of Western ethics -- Foundations of Christian ethics -- Foundations of African Christian ethics -- Applying African Christian ethics -- Church and state -- War and violence -- Strikes -- Poverty -- Corruption -- Fund-raising -- Procreation and infertility -- Reproductive technologies -- Contraception -- Polygamy -- Domestic violence -- Divorce and remarriage -- Widows and orphans -- Rape -- Incest (...) -- Prostitution and sex trafficking -- Female circumcision -- Homosexuality -- HIV/AIDS -- Abortion -- Euthanasia and infanticide -- Strikes and medical services -- Drug and alcohol abuse -- Witchcraft. (shrink)

The story of God -- The story of the church -- The story of ethics -- The story of Christian ethics -- Universal ethics -- Subversive ethics -- Ecclesial ethics -- Good order -- Good life -- Good relationships -- Good beginnings and endings -- Good earth.

Samuel Clarke was by far the most gifted and influential Newtonian philosopher of his generation, and A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which constituted the 1704 Boyle Lectures, was one of the most important works of the first half of the eighteenth century, generating a great deal of controversy about the relation between space and God, the nature of divine necessary existence, the adequacy of the Cosmological Argument, agent causation, and the immateriality of the soul. Together (...) with the other texts presented in this edition, it also provides the best introduction to Clarke's philosophical views, which, in addition to their intrinsic interest, are historically important for the light they shed both on the philosophical positions within the Newtonian circle and on the exchange between Clarke and Leibniz, the most famous philosophical controversy of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

In Improvisation, Samuel Wells defines improvisation in the theater as "a practice through which actors seek to develop trust in themselves and one another in order that they may conduct unscripted dramas without fear." Sounds a lot like life, doesn't it? Building trust, overcoming fear, conducting relationships, and making choices--all without a script. Wells establishes theatrical improvisation as a model for Christian ethics, a matter of "faithfully improvising on the Christian tradition." He views the Bible not as (...) a "script" but as a "training school" that shapes the habits and practices of the Christian community. Drawing on scriptural narratives and church history, Wells explains six practices that characterize both improvisation and Christian ethics. His model of improvisation reinforces the goal of Christian ethics--to teach Christians to "embody their faith in the practices of discipleship all the time."--Publisher description. (shrink)

Research on the folk psychology of free will suggests that people believe free will is incompatible with determinism and that human decision-making cannot be exhaustively characterized by physical processes. Some suggest that certain elements of Western cultural history, especially Christianity, have helped to entrench these beliefs in the folk conceptual economy. Thus, on the basis of this explanation, one should expect to find three things: (1) a significant correlation between belief in dualism and belief in free will, (2) that people (...) with predominantly incompatibilist commitments are likely to exhibit stronger dualist beliefs than people with predominantly compatibilist commitments, and (3) people who self-identify as Christians are more likely to be dualists and incompatibilists than people who do not self-identify as Christians. We present the results of two studies (n = 378) that challenge two of these expectations. While we do find a significant correlation between belief in dualism and belief in free will, we found no significant difference in dualist tendencies between compatibilists and incompatibilists. Moreover, we found that self-identifying as Christian did not significantly predict preference for a particular metaphysical conception of free will. This calls into question assumptions about the relationship between beliefs about free will, dualism, and Christianity. (shrink)

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics presents a comprehensive and systematic exposition of Christian ethics, seen through the lens of Christian worship.

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

Throughout his philosophical career at Michigan, UCLA, Yale, and Oxford, Robert Merrihew Adams's wide-ranging contributions have deeply shaped the structure of debates in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, history of philosophy, and ethics. Metaphysics and the Good: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Merrihew Adams provides, for the first time, a collection of original essays by leading philosophers dedicated to exploring many of the facets of Adams's thought, a philosophical outlook that combines Christian theism, neo-Platonism, moral realism, metaphysical idealism, and (...) a commitment to both historical sensitivity and rigorous analytic engagement. Tied together by their aim of exploring, expanding, and experimenting with Adams's views, these eleven essays are coupled with an intellectual autobiography by Adams himself that was commissioned especially for this volume. As the introduction to the volume explains, the purpose of Metaphysics and the Good is to explore Adams's work in the very manner that he prescribes for understanding the ideas of others. By experimenting with Adams's conclusions, "pulling a string here to see what moves over there, so to speak," as Adams puts it, our authors throw into greater relief what makes Adams such an original and stimulating philosopher. In doing so, these essays contribute not only to the exploration of Adams's continuing interests, but they also advance original and important philosophical insights of their own. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager has to face the many gods objection. The wager goes wrong when it asks us to chose between Christianity and atheism, as if there are no other options. Some have argued that we’re entitled to dismiss exotic, bizarre, or subjectively unappealing religions from the scope of the wager. But they have provided no satisfying justification for such a radical wager-saving dispensation. This paper fills that dialectical gap. It argues that some agents are blameless or even praiseworthy for ignoring (...) all but one religion as they face the wager. The argument leads us to multiple Pascals: a Jewish one, a Christian one, a Muslim one, and more. (shrink)

Mission is shaped by the life and experience of the church, both past and present, and this in turn is the function of both the work of the Spirit of God and the interaction of the people of God with their contexts. In line with this position, we examine the impact of Covid-19, highlighting some elements of the global context of mission, trends in world Christianity and mission. We then explore how global mission is in a process of realignment that (...) has the potential to be enhanced through embracing the conditions Covid-19 has imposed on us. Finally, we consider the need for deep reflection on our identity if we are to take the opportunity to bear faithful witness in this moment. (shrink)

Research on the folk psychology of free will suggests that people believe free will is incompatible with determinism and that human decision-making cannot be exhaustively characterized by physical processes. Some suggest that certain elements of Western cultural history, especially Christianity, have helped to entrench these beliefs in the folk conceptual economy. Thus, on the basis of this explanation, one should expect to find three things: a significant correlation between belief in dualism and belief in free will, that people with predominantly (...) incompatibilist commitments are likely to exhibit stronger dualist beliefs than people with predominantly compatibilist commitments, and people who self-identify as Christians are more likely to be dualists and incompatibilists than people who do not self-identify as Christians. We present the results of two studies that challenge two of these expectations. While we do find a significant correlation between belief in dualism and belief in free will, we found no significant difference in dualist tendencies between compatibilists and incompatibilists. Moreover, we found that self-identifying as Christian did not significantly predict preference for a particular metaphysical conception of free will. This calls into question assumptions about the relationship between beliefs about free will, dualism, and Christianity. (shrink)

This article argues that contemporary polemics against critical reading, understood as the enduring legacy of “theory” in the humanities, overlook the unusual and generative concept of critique formulated by one of the literary scholars most closely associated with “theory,” the German-born American literary critic Geoffrey Hartman. For Hartman, critique amounts to a thinking that exposes itself to the alterity of the future and thus risks being wrong. Engaging two of Hartman’s essays from the mid-1980s, “The Struggle for the Text” and (...) “Meaning, Error, Text,” the article specifically argues that Hartman derives this concept of critique as thinking that risks error from rabbinic midrash. However, this does not mean that Hartman seeks to “do midrash” himself. To the contrary, what Hartman learns from midrash is that the very structure of linguistic repetition, citation, or imitation forecloses the possibility of absolute fidelity to tradition. In “The Struggle for the Text,” he demonstrates this lesson through subversive readings of Genesis 32 and a fragment from Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle; in “Meaning, Error, Text,” Hartman historicizes his hermeneutic in relation to Christian supersession and the Holocaust, claiming ethical and political significance for his “restitution” of midrash as a model of critique. (shrink)

In his warranted christian belief, Alvin Plantinga launches a forceful attack on apophaticism, the view that God is in some sense or other beyond description. This paper explores his attack before searching for a Plantinga-proof formulation of apophaticism.

The Impassioned Life argues that theology's task today is to rethink the nature of the emotions and their relation to human reason. Such rethinking is necessary because the Christian tradition feels ambivalently about the emotions. Armed with a commitment to body-soul dualism, many writers have equated the image of God with rationality and wondered whether emotion is an essential feature of human nature; however, the tradition has also affirmed the value of emotions such as love and compassion and has (...) sometimes asserted the value of so-called negative emotions such as anger. The question, then, is whether the tradition's pastoral insight into the importance of moderation and control of the emotions requires us to think dualistically about soul (identified with reason) and body (the seat of emotions). To answer this question, The Impassioned Life explores the vital resources of the Christian theological tradition and also of contemporary scientific and psychological research in order to achieve a more adequate theological understanding of the emotions and reason. At heart, it offers a holistic, integrated vision of the Christian life lived passionately in its full range of human feeling as life in the Spirit. (shrink)

Christian economic theology is distinguished from Christian social ethics by its methodological reflection on the emergence, formation, and proper boundaries of the economic sphere, as well as transcendental reflection on the conditions of possibility of economic science. In practice, this often amounts to anxiety about the authority of Christianity in the economic sphere, as well as about the extent to which Christianity can be held responsible for the system of impersonal economic domination known as capitalism. This review essay (...) draws upon three recent works on or about Christian economic theology, and argues that this genre's anxiety about Christian authority manifests in the ways that it draws temporal boundaries between ancient, medieval, and modern economies. Ultimately, its ambivalence about economy itself is traceable to Aristotle's understanding of money as containing two natures, one defined by quality (use value) and the other by quantity (exchange value). Christianity here becomes a cipher for quality. (shrink)

One striking feature of apocalyptic readings of Paul—and the Protestant dogmatics that follows after such a Paulinism—is the ‘widescreen’ portrayal of Sin as Power. This account stresses the ‘three-agent drama’ of salvation and the bondage of human persons to anti-God forces. It resists moralising interpretations of human sins in favour of a starker moral cosmology. In this way, it seems to leave ‘ethics’ and ‘freedom’ in suspension. Contrast the approach of the moral theologian Oliver O’Donovan. Here, sin is a case (...) study in the difference of perspectives between dogmatics and ethics. Dogmatics, ‘making sin exceedingly sinful, quickly resorts to apocalyptic largeness of scale’. Ethics is concerned instead with ‘possible’ sins. It describes sin in phenomenological rather than ultimate terms—something to be avoided in the next moment of free agency. This article distils the theological commitments each intends to secure, observes what each risks, and seeks to determine what is at stake. It draws them together in a synthetic moral ontology, but also looks further, to an integrative account that can inform moral discernment. To this end, the final section observes how subsequent work in Pauline studies converges with discussions about structural sin in Catholic social thought. (shrink)

This paper traces some changes in Catholic political theory eventually taken up and extended during World War II by Jacques Maritain, who became the foremost philosophical exponent of the idea of "human rights" on the postwar scene. I show that the invention of the idea of the "dignity of the human person" as embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights occurred not in biblical or other longstanding traditions, but instead in very recent and contingent history. In conclusion, I speculate (...) on what the restoration of Maritain's route to human rights to its proper contexts might suggest about the cultural meaning the idea had in postwar Continental Europe, which became its homeland. (shrink)

We began with the observation that language is often held to enact the world. We have examined several instances of this notion, beginning with a discussion of the folk etymology of certain words, moving through an example of Freud, to Morgenstern, Lettvin, and Stevens. The method shared by these examples assumes that words are literally saturated with meaning; that what appears arbitrary or senseless in them can be made to render up its sense and its motivation through a kind of (...) inspired analysis. Our intent has been to show how this principle of folk etymology lies behind some sophisticated creative thinking. In Freud, it is hypothesized to be a psychological mechanism of some depth. In Morgenstern and Lettvin, it forms the basis for a resonant poetic joke, while in Stevens it appears to have the same major status as the mythic principle of creation-through-language illustrated in our first examples from Egyptian mythology and from Genesis. Stevens, of course, uses the principle to create poetry, not religion; for as he says in section 5 of "The Man with the Blue Guitar": Poetry Exceeding music must take the placeOf empty heaven and its hymns . . . Samuel Jay Keyser, head of the department of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and editor of Linguistic Inquiry, is the coauthor of English Stress: Its Form, Its Growth and Its Role in Verse and of Beginning English Grammar. Alan Prince, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has written on stress and linguistic rhythm and is currently working, with Keyser, on the poetry of Wallace Stevens. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Biblical Foundations Post‐biblical Variations Modern Legacies References and Further Reading.

Written by two well-known theologians, the book encompasses Christian ethics in its entirety, but also offers a new way of viewing this subject.

We are pleased to annouce that God’s Companions by Samuel Wells has been shortlisted for the 2007 Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing. www.michaelramseyprize.org.uk Grounded in Samuel Wells’ experience of ordinary lives in poorer neighborhoods, this book presents a striking and imaginative approach to Christian ethics. It argues that Christian ethics is founded on God, on the practices of human community, and on worship, and that ethics is fundamentally a reflection of God's abundance. Wells synthesizes dogmatic, (...) liturgical, ethical, scriptural, and pastoral approaches to theology in order to make a bold claim for the centrality of the local church in theological reflection. He considers the abundance of gifts God gives through the practices of the Church, particularly the Eucharist. His central thesis, which governs his argument throughout, is that God gives his people everything they need to worship him, be his friends, and eat with him. Wells engages with serious scholarly material, yet sets out the issues lucidly for a student audience. (shrink)

Book 6 of Eusebius’ Church History contains a fascinating fragment of Porphyry’s Against the Christians in which the latter lambasts Origen’s allegorical reading of the Jewish Scriptures. Though many aspects of this text have received abundant scholarly attention, relatively little has been written on the theory underlying the critique, that is, why exactly Porphyry thought Christian allegories were illegitimate. Furthermore, among the few scholars who have treated this topic at any length, there is no consensus about the precise nature (...) of Porphyry’s objection. In this article I will argue that Porphyry denies the legitimacy of Christian allegories because he thinks the texts they exegete are clear and simple. They are not, for Porphyry, full of the mysteries and enigmas that indicate allegorical exegesis is appropriate. Consequently, Porphyry understands Christian allegories as an attempt to save a text that is plainly immoral rather than genuinely mysterious. (shrink)

A third electrical geophysical prospection campaign conducted at Philippi in September 2001 added 9 ha to the area already covered. The interpretation of the results in the West part of the town shows that it was organised in three rows of insulae of the same module (ca. 27 x 83 m). The first row on the south side of the principal axis, which is the Via Egnatia, comprises several monumental groups, induding a large Early Christian basilica and a double (...) stoa along a small public square. The second and third rows are more difficult to interpret because of disturbances associated with the presence of a fortified Byzantine redoubt around the marsh Gate. A comparison of these geophysical data with the records of the French excavations, the epigraphic and photographie evidence and a topographical survey, has considerably clarified their interpretation. (shrink)

This collection provides the first in-depth introduction to the theory of the religious imagination put forward by renowned philosopher Douglas Hedley, from his earliest essays to his principal writings. Featuring Hedley's inaugural lecture delivered at Cambridge University in 2018, the book sheds light on his robust concept of religious imagination as the chief power of the soul's knowledge of the Divine and reveals its importance in contemporary metaphysics, ethics and politics. Chapters trace the development of the religious imagination in (...) class='Hi'>Christian Platonism from Late Antiquity to British Romanticism, drawing on Origen, Henry More and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, before providing a survey of alternative contemporary versions of the concept as outlined by Karl Rahner, René Girard and William P. Alston, as well as within Indian philosophy. By bringing Christian Platonist thought into dialogue with contemporary philosophy and theology, the volume systematically reveals the relevance of Hedley's work to current debates in religious epistemology and metaphysics. It offers a comprehensive appraisal of the historical contribution of imagination to religious understanding and, as such, will be of great interest to philosophers, theologians and historians alike. (shrink)

Like process theism, Christian theology affirms the immanence of God in the world and of the world in God. Unlike process theism, it also affirms the ontological priority of God over the world. As a result, Christian theologians will object to describing God’s relation to the world by analogy with the mind’s relation to the body or in terms of whole-part relations. In Christian history, the God-world relation has been more often described in terms of “participation.” The (...) world is said to participate in God, keeping in mind that this language is highly metaphorical. The idea of participation is a development of themes enunciated by Plato and Aristotle, but adapted by Christian theologians to trinitarian ends. The created world participates in God by reflecting the trinitarian life of identity and difference. This establishes an organic and internal relation between God and the world. (shrink)

In this paper I first sketch out the field of Christian theological responses to Nietzsche with special reference to Merold Westphal and Giles Fraser. This forms the backdrop for my analysis of Taylor. I argue Taylor characterizes Nietzsche as deeply insightful but peculiarly inhuman and employs Nietzsche in his apologetic strategy to highlight the need for strong moral sources for the demands of humanism. I claim that Taylor also makes theological responses to Nietzsche. Taylor holds out hope that a (...) vision of the divine affirmation of the world provides the best sustenance for life together in the 21st century. Yet he concedes the continuing strength of Nietzsche’s critique and insight for Christianity. In the concluding part of my essay I offer reflections on the contribution Taylor’s response to Nietzsche makes to Christian theology, with recourse to the parable of the prodigal son. (shrink)

This book offers the first sustained, full-length treatment of the wide-ranging work of major Anglican theologian Oliver O'Donovan. Analysing key texts written across forty years, including Resurrection and Moral Order, The Desire of the Nations, and Ethics as Theology, Samuel Tranter focuses in particular on what he argues is an area of real tension in O'Donovan's evolving vision of moral theology: the relationship between eschatology and ethics. This tension is traced as it plays out with regard to a number (...) of important topics in O'Donovan's writing and contemporary discussion, including natural law, divine command, and human flourishing, as well as the distinctiveness or otherwise of Christian moral reasoning. Moreover, it is located alongside the broader doctrinal features of O'Donovan's project, in connection to themes such as creation, sin, and redemption, as well as to particular questions about the relationship between the cross and the resurrection. This volume also advances the reception of O'Donovan's thought by establishing and evaluating his influence upon a range of Christian ethicists and political theologians writing today (such as Luke Bretherton, Gilbert Meilaender, Jean Porter, and Brent Waters), and by engaging with critical readings of O'Donovan (such as those by Stanley Hauerwas and Gerald McKenny). Furthermore, in conversation with these scholars among an ecumenical cast of voices, Tranter offers an assessment of how O'Donovan's proposals may be appropriated and amended as a resource for theology and ethics going forward. (shrink)

This paper is a study of the origins of Leo Strauss's thought, arguing that its early development must be understood in the context of the philosophy of religion of late Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. More specifically, it shows that Strauss's early works were written against the background of Kantian philosophy and post-Kantian accounts of religious experience, and that his turn towards medieval law as a topic and ideal was precipitated by the critique of those accounts by radical Protestant theologians writing (...) in the post-World War I era of crisis. Ironically, then, Strauss's investment in premodern Judaism—and his related rejection of modern philosophy—had important Christian origins. (shrink)