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[1] I was recently asked by a group of Canadian college professors what “public theology” — a term that was not familiar in their intellectual world — was all about. I said that “public theology” was the engagement of theology and theological ethics with many facets of the public world — politics, economics, education, culture, […]

[1] Almost 10 years have passed since the publication of this interesting and challenging book from the pen of a theological ethicist in the “Radical Orthodoxy” circle of John Milbank. Bell’s work is at once a validation of the fundamentally Christian concerns of Latin American Liberation Theology and a penetrating theological critique of the latter […]

[1] You would think that Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic, might generally have more sympathy for one another’s cosmological views than either would for the cosmological views of an atheist. And in last year’s The Monstrosity of Christ, British Catholic theologian John Milbank does mount an elaborate defense of traditional beliefs against Slovenian critical theory […]

The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child will put his hand into the viper’s nest. – Isaiah 11:8 If your ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.1 – Stephen R. Covey [1] Though Covey is not […]

[1] As Thomas Pearson’s essay so succinctly illustrates, questions about the usefulness of Roman Catholic versions of natural law theory to Lutheran ethics — or even to ecumenical conversation about ethics in which both traditions participate — have many layers. Does natural law exist? If it exists, in what exactly does it consist, and what […]

Introduction [1] However deeply ensconced the suspicion of natural law might seem among 20th-century Protestant thinkers, it cannot be attributed to the 16th-century Reformers themselves. Both Lutheran and Reformed streams of the magisterial tradition readily affirmed the doctrine of lex naturalis and cognito Dei naturalis. While it is decidedly true that they championed a particular […]

I’d like to begin by thanking all contributors to this symposium on natural law for their thoughtful papers. One thing those papers illustrate quite nicely, I think, is that “natural law” is not so much a position, but a group of positions. The term “natural law theory” designates a set of intellectual commitments together with […]

[1] Calvin dedicated a great deal of attention to the nature and scope of the Christian life, and even wrote a section of the Institutes dedicated to this theme (Inst. III.vi-x), which was often published on its own. However, rather than summarize the teaching of that section, I would like to raise up five themes […]

[1] The chocolate shop nearby is encouraging people not to give up chocolate for Lent. “Just give up something like red meat,” they say, “or your negative attitudes.” Over the years, I’ve been using Lent as a time to get my life back on track. I’ve given up things like desserts, drinking, and dining out […]

[1] The latest atrocious news from Haiti, thanks to a mesmerized CNN (view Child Trafficking in Haiti) seems to be that fears that the countless children orphaned or lost before and during the earthquake are not only at risk from their physical circumstances. They are also at an even greater risk than previously of being […]