New Blackfriars, Volume 102, Issue 1101, Page 795-814, September 2021.

The dispute between two of Princeton Theological Seminary's leading Barth scholars concerning theological ontology invites engagement from the contemporary Thomistic tradition. On the one hand, McCormack argues that, in a fully Barthian theological ontology, divine triunity is constituted by the pretemporal election of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, Hunsinger contends that this election is expressive of an antecedent trinity. In the light of scholastic disputes between Dominican and Franciscan theologians, McCormack's proposal is seen to resemble aspects of the Bonaventurean (...) account of triune relationality, particularly the account of procession as constitutive of personal distinction and the affirmation of a primordial ‘primity’ adhering to the Father's innascibility. Whilst McCormack seeks to avoid an undetermined originary plenitude, his treatment of the divine attributes as logically consequent to election risks attributing to pretemporality a status akin to originary primity. Affirming, with Hunsinger, an eternal trinity antecedent to election, the Thomistic tradition nonetheless contains the resources necessary to prevent this antecedence becoming a dissociative antecedence. As such, Thomism preserves divine aseity whilst equally safeguarding against the disconnection of logos asarkos from logos incarnandus that McCormack regards as an unwarranted metaphysical speculation that bypasses the particularity of revelation in Jesus Christ. (shrink)

At the heart of any ethics of human enhancement must be some normative assumptions about human nature. The purpose of this essay is to draw on themes from a Protestant theological anthropology to provide a basis for understanding and evaluating the tension between maintaining our humanity and enhancing it. Drawing primarily on the work of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, I interpret enhancement as proceeding from the anxiety that characterizes human experience at the juncture of freedom and finiteness. Religious and moral dimensions (...) of human sinfulness are considered in relation to cultural values that motivate human enhancement generally. I employ these dimensions in a series of benchmarks to suggest a background of theological, anthropological, and moral considerations against which enhancement is not to be condemned but rather critically evaluated. (shrink)

In this series of essays the author argues that the mission of Greece and Rome to defend and promote freedom and the rule of law had a religious foundation.

Creativity has become an oft-used word in UK public policy, but perhaps it is also under-imagined. This paper contends that there is an instrumental tendency to narrowly frame creativity as innovation, implying a reproducible product, instead of more openly as improvisation, a situational, embodied and temporal process. This is not a simple dichotomy (innovation and improvisation, product and process, can be mutually informing concepts), nor is it specifically a question of definition; rather, it relates to an ontological orientation, and related (...) to that are issues of epistemological implications. In particular the paper is concerned with the value of the arts in public policy, as situated in the social, and therefore human, spaces of health and care; and more generally the arts in society. The paper brings together a broad discussion from across disciplines, not in an interdisciplinary attempt to solve a problem, or to be reductive in the analysis, but to begin to approach a reorienting of understandings of creativity and the human value and foundation of the arts in society. (shrink)

(2007). Youth and Sexualities: Pleasure, Subversion, and Insubordination In and Out of Schools. Edited by Mary Louise Rasmussen, Eric Rofes, and Susan Talburt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 250 pp. $75.00 (hardcover), $24.95 (paper) Educational Studies: Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 88-92.

We make some remarks on the mathematics and metaphysics of the hole argument, in response to a recent article in this journal by Weatherall ([2018]). Broadly speaking, we defend the mainstream philosophical literature from the claim that correct usage of the mathematics of general relativity `blocks' the argument.

This volume offers an array of newly commissioned essays, addressing the topic of love in the Christian tradition. Drawn from a range of expert theologians and philosophers in contemporary analytic and non-analytic theology, these essays join current debates within the theology of love, and aim to propose new avenues for future research. Including the last essay written by Marilyn McCord Adams, Love, Divine and Human deals with a rich variety of issues related to divine and human love. The broad scope (...) of the book includes divine transcendence and its methodological bearing on the doctrine of divine love, the nature and scope of divine love, the interrelation between God's love and wrath, the plausibility of an impassable God of love, and the application of various conceptions of divine love to the problem of divine hiddenness, human ethics, and human free will, among other topics. This unified collection of cutting-edge papers will advance discussion for all those focused on the theology of love. (shrink)

Background -- The moral manualists -- Initiating reform : Odon Lottin -- Retrieving Scripture and charity : Fritz Tillman and Gérard Gilleman -- Synthesis : Bernard Häring -- The neo-manualists -- New foundations for moral reasoning, 1970-89 -- New foundations for a theological anthropology, 1980-2000 -- Toward a global discourse on suffering and solidarity -- Afterword: The encyclicals of Pope Benedict XVI.

Orthodox bioethics is distinctive in how it reflects on issues in bioethics. This distinctiveness is found in the relationship of spirituality and liturgy to ethics. Eber's essay, however, treats the distinctiveness as absolute uniqueness. In so focusing on the incommensurability of Orthodox bioethics Eber fails to tell his reader what Orthodox bioethics is about. Furthermore, his description of Western Christian ethics is seriously inaccurate.