Religious Ethics and the Environment

This essay discusses three recent books which each offer an integrative account of religious ethics and the environment. Religious environmental ethics is an area of inquiry within the larger field of religion and ecology. After a narrative that contextualizes the development of religious environmental ethics in relation to the environmental social movement, I describe the formation of the field including its focus on worldview, the “cosmological turn,” and its engagement with science, the “cosmic turn.” Elizabeth Johnson exemplifies the cosmic turn by developing a Christian theology of life in nature which explicitly accepts Darwin's theory of evolution. Willis Jenkins advocates a prophetic pragmatism and critiques a focus on worldview that is abstracted from practice and defers moral responsibility. Larry Rasmussen joins analysis of worldview with reflection on cross‐cultural resources for “anticipatory communities” of moral formation to catalyze change. I argue with Rasmussen that religious environmental ethics needs multiple approaches and should allow room for methodological pluralism.     

Can Bioethics be Lutheran?

Abstract :  A Lutheran bioethics must rest on a reconstructed version of Martin Luther's ethics. In the article it is shown that this ethics is Christian in that it has faith in Jesus Christ as its source. But the ethics of neighbor love is practiced in the secular world where it to some extent corresponds with natural law ethics. A Christian believer acts ethically both as an individual and as a citizen. Against the background of this understanding of Lutheran ethics, the position of Ted Peters and Gilbert Meilaender on genetics and stem cells is presented and criticized. One conclusion is that there is no Lutheran doctrine on the status of the human embryo.     

The Innocuous Legacy of Christian Ethics in Comparative Religious Ethics

I argue that even if the influence of Christian ethics on comparative religious ethics (CRE) is inevitable, it need not be problematic. The legacy would only be worrisome if it stacked the deck in favor of Christian ethics or predisposed comparative ethicists to conform to the methods or thematic concerns of Christian ethics. Following Gadamer, I suggest that the ideal of presuppositionless objectivity is an illusion that applies to not only those who emerge from a Christian cultural context but in every global context. Given the specific historical and cultural contexts of the emergence of CRE, the residue of Christian ethics in CRE is understandable and expected. Thus, the legacy of Christian ethics in CRE will only be problematic to the extent that the potential dangers of Christian hegemony remain hidden, which does not seem to be the case in the contemporary academic context.     

Theological Ethics, Moral Philosophy, and Natural Law

The article deals with the relationship between theological ethics and moral philosophy. The former is seen as a theoretical reflection on Christian ethics, the latter as one on secular ethics. The main questions asked are: (1) Is there one and only one pre-theoretical knowledge about acting rightly? (2) Does philosophy provide us with the theoretical framework for understanding both Christian and secular ethics? Both questions are answered in the negative. In the course of argument, four positions are presented: theological ‘unificationism’, philosophical ‘unificationism’, theological ‘separationism’ and Lutheran ‘dualism’. It is argued that the latter position is most convincing. It is dual in the sense of being both a theory of Christian ethics and of including a recognition of natural law. Hence, it unites a particularistic and a universalistic point of view. In the last section a reformulation of the Lutheran position is attempted in making use of the ethical theory of Knud E. Løgstrup's The Ethical Demand.     

Christian Ethics,Religious Ethics,and Secular Ethics: A Contemporary Reappraisal

In this essay, I argue that Christian ethicists should not think of themselves as religious ethicists. I defend this claim by arguing that the concept of religious ethics, as it has come to be understood as a discipline that is distinct from secular ethics, is incoherent. In part one, I describe the fraught attempts by theologians in the 20th century to identify the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. In part two, I argue that certain accounts of natural law unwittingly reinforce a problematic conception of secular ethics. Part three examines some trends in religious studies and comparative religious ethics to highlight problematic conceptions of religion. Drawing together these strands of inquiry, I contend that that the secular-religious dichotomy in contemporary ethics should be rejected, but by the same token, I suggest that comparative ethics remains a worthwhile enterprise.     

OF EAGLES AND CROWS, LIONS AND OXEN: Blake and the Disruption of Ethics

Why focus on the work of William Blake in a journal dedicated to religious ethics? The question is neither trivial nor rhetorical. Blake's work is certainly not in anyone's canon of significant texts for the study of Christian or, more broadly, religious ethics. Yet Blake, however subversive his views, sought to lay out a Christian vision of the good, alternated between prophetic denunciations of the world's folly and harrowing laments over the wreck of the world's promise, and wrote poetry as if poetry might mend the world. Setting imagination against the calculations of reason and the comfort of custom, Blake's poems inspire questions about the relationship of ethics to prophecy, and open the possibility that ethics itself would be markedly enriched could it find a place for what Thomas J. J. Altizer has called Christian epic poetry.     

A RAFT THAT FLOATS: EXPERIENCE,TRADITION, AND SCIENCES IN GUSTAFSON'S THEOCENTRIC ETHICS

Abstract. Although James Gustafson's use of the Christian Bible and tradition is not fully displayed in the essays published here, Bible and tradition are a crucial part of a composite rationale, which includes experience and the sciences, for his theocentric ethics. Gustafson's theocentric ethics employs the sciences to back, inform, and correct the Christian tradition and offers grounds for respecting the natural piety and morality of “nonreligious” persons while explaining and justifying why Christians draw on major themes and metaphors from their tradition that should penetrate their piety and morality. His proposal should reorient the thinking of theological ethics more than it has thus far.     

THE INTENSIFYING INTERSECTION OF ETHICS,RELIGION, THEOLOGY,AND PEACE STUDIES

The intersection of ethics, religion, theology, and peace studies is intensifying through increasingly multi‐disciplinary, contextual, explicitly normative scholarship. This book discussion demonstrates this claim through its profiles of an introduction to Christian ethics by Ellen Ott Marshall, a case study of the School of the Americas Watch by Kyle B. T. Lambelet, a case study of the American Jewish Palestine solidarity movement by Atalia Omer, and a global, historical study of Christian ethics by Cecilia Lynch. Though their methods and subjects vary, these authors are collectively renewing a history of mutual enrichment between religious ethics and peace studies, employing theories of lived, ambivalent religion. To begin, this essay provides introductory remarks about the field of peace studies, highlighting the evolving involvement of religious actors. To conclude, it makes a plea for greater use of conflict theory and peace practice in religious ethics.     

THEOLOGICAL ETHICS, THE CHURCHES, AND GLOBAL POLITICS

Several discourses about theology, church, and politics are occurring among Christian theologians in the United States. One influential strand centers on the communitarian theology of Stanley Hauerwas, who calls on Christians to witness faithfully against liberalism in general and war in particular. Jeffrey Stout, in his widely discussed Democracy and Tradition (2004), responds that religious people ought precisely to endorse those democratic and liberal American traditions that join religious and secular counterparts to battle injustice. Hauerwas, Stout, and many of their interlocutors envision liberal U.S. culture as the context of Christian social ethics. The ensuing debate rarely incorporates Catholic scholars, feminist scholars, scholars of color, or international and liberationist voices. Their inclusion could enhance an understanding of the role of the church in society, and support a common morality in the face of global pluralism. More importantly, it could broaden the scope of discourse on religion and politics to envision global Christian social ethics.     

Advent's Answer to the Problem of Evil

Traditional Christian answers to the problem of evil may be identified as either theistic or christological. While theistic theodicies enjoy greater philosophical interest, christological theodicies are more practical, remaining embodied in the semiotics of the worshipping church, and are utimately more successful. The Christian church's liturgical practice of Advent – where Christology, soteriology and eschatology come together – is a common and coherent response to the problem of evil. The practice of Advent comprises an eschatological ethics of justice and mercy which embraces their evil side-effects and the tension of present and future justice. Advent thus presents the problem of evil as a constructive part of Christian theology and ethics.     

God,vision and power

Enlightenment philosopher George Berkeley, Irish bishop of Cloyne (1695–1752) developed a theory of God's relation to the world both rooted in orthodox Western Theology and influential for European secular government. This article critically examines the notion of God in Berkeleian thought with special reference to its implications for his concrete recommendations and political projects in British government and empire building. To this end, it examines the application of early Christian ascetic techniques to enlightenment colonial government. Berkeley's thought exemplifies modernity's modelling of the governing autonomous self on a transcendent impassible God. His ethics represent a practice of cosmology, where the world is watched by the judging subject.     

MUST ETHICS BE THEOLOGICAL? A CRITIQUE OF THE NEW PRAGMATISTS

In the last decade there has been a pragmatic turn in the work of those doing Christian ethics, especially as represented by the work of Jeffrey Stout and Franklin Gamwell. The pragmatic turn represents a critique of the highly influential work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues for a strongly intra-church ethics. The pragmatists are correct in arguing that Christian ethics must engage the public sphere. However, I argue that they are deeply mistaken in their claim that this engagement must rest on a weak or non-existent theology. I show that the claim that robust theology adds nothing to ethics, and that we can get along without it, is unsustainable.     

Petro-theology: Critical engagement with theologies of energy and extraction

This essay serves as a more extended introduction to many of the themes, concerns, and aims of this issue. Along these lines, key terms and discourses like extractivism, energy humanities, and petroculture studies are introduced. The essay elaborates two key claims: energy has been theological (and not just techno-scientific) and analysis of current energy concerns (including climate change) need to be theorized and addressed in relation to land. These claims call for approaches to an energy-driven climate crisis that attend to theo-philosophical assumptions of energy and extraction and point to the significance of energy humanities approaches. Engagement with energy and extractivism humanities leads to a call for further attention to three different areas within Christian energy ethics and Religion & Environmentalism scholarship: (1) an approach to Christian energy ethics that better accounts for the theo-philosophical gendered, racialized, and colonial implications of energy concepts, (2) closer attention to mineralogies and geologies among ecotheologians and 3) critical assessment of convergences of creation and redemption theologies for extractive aims.     

CONSENT,CONVERSION, AND MORAL FORMATION: Stoic Elements in Jonathan Edwards's Ethics

The contemporary revival of virtue ethics has focused primarily on retrieving central moral commitments of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and the Neoplatonist traditions. Christian virtue ethicists would do well to expand this retrieval further to include the writings of the Roman Stoics. This essay argues that the ethics of Jonathan Edwards exemplifies major Stoic themes and explores three noteworthy points of intersection between Stoic ethics and Edwards's thought: a conception of virtue as consent to a benevolent providence, the identification of virtue as a singular and transformative good, and an account of moral formation as simultaneously self‐directed and received. Common ground between Edwards and the Stoics illustrates the value of recognizing Stoic moral thought as a philosophical framework that can enhance and undergird Christian ethicists' understandings of moral development and the nature of virtue.     

理论和处境:汉语基督教伦理研究的基本思路探究

本文探究汉语基督教伦理研究的基本思路问题,特别关注具体处境中基督教价值的公共意义问题,论文包括:第一部分,考察1980年以来汉语基督教伦理研究的主要内容,总体上看,其中包括两大方面:一是对基本伦理概念(比如人性、爱的观念)及其与中国传统思想相关观念进行比照的研究,二是实践和具体社会处境的角度,包括从基督教角度对于中国基督徒的道德生活以及全球和本土范围的社会公共问题的研究;第二部分依据相关的基督教伦理研究成果,参照中国思想资源和当代社会的道德议题,反思汉语基督教研究的处境性问题并寻求重新阐释某些基督教教义的可能性.研究采用基督教伦理研究中的实在的和处境化的进路,将之放在一个特定的文化和社会背景下并考虑到其具体和当下的条件来展开对基督教伦理思想的论述.     

Sociobiology and Human Nature: A Perspective from Catholic Theology

This paper addresses a nonspecialist audience on how sociobiological accounts of human nature might be relevant to Christian theology. I begin with some confessional remarks to clarify what I mean by Christian theology and how I understand it to be related to science. I indicate briefly why sociobiology might be of interest to theology and then move on to sketch some ways in which sociobiology might relate to theological ethics. My basic point is that sociobiology is directly relevant to theological ethics in its understanding of evolved human emotional predispositions but not in its normative reflection proper.     

Orientalism andAntivoluntarism in the History of Ethics: On Christian Wolff's Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica

Christian Wolff's 1721 Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese is generally read as championing the autonomy of ethics from religion. This is too simple: Wolff's ethics was an antivoluntarist religious ethics. The example of the Chinese confirmed for Wolff that revelation is not necessary for knowledge or practice of genuine virtue, though he held that the Chinese achieve only the first of three "degrees of virtue." (Most Christians, including the Pietists who drove Wolff from Halle shortly after he delivered the Discourse , did not, in his judgment, achieve even that.) China's being perceived as outside of Western (and sacred) history made it a congenial example for the ethics and moral anthropology that, in Wolff's time, were struggling against the voluntarism of a Christian ethics premised on original sin.     

ECONOMY OF “INVISIBLE DEBT” AND ETHICS OF “RADICAL HOSPITALITY”: Toward a Paradigm Change of Hospitality from “Gift” to “Forgiveness”

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct a Christian theology of “hospitality” through a critical reading of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche as well as through an in‐depth biblical and theological reflection on the ethics of hospitality. Out of this reconstructive investigation, I propose a new Christian ethics of hospitality as a radical kind. As a new paradigm, this radical hospitality is distinguished from other types in that it is no longer conceived on the model of “gift”. The new Christian ethics of hospitality is rather reconstructed on the model of “forgiveness” by critically appropriating the concept of “invisible debt” that lies between the hosting citizens and the migrants in the senses of “you owe us your presence” and “I owe you my security and success.” While the hospitality of the gift defines the relationship between the hosting citizens and the migrants as givers and givees, the new paradigm of hospitality identifies this relationship as between creditors and debtors. In this regard, a new Christian hospitality called for unto citizens of the hosting society is a radical kind that challenges them to transcend the creditor‐debtor consciousness.     

Asian and female in the white God's world: a qualitative exploration of discrimination in Christian academia

This study is a phenomenological exploration of discrimination experiences among 11 Asian/Asian-American female faculty at various Christian universities, with a specific focus on the characteristics of the Christian academic environment which contribute to those experiences. Participants completed a 90-minute semi-structured interview. Ten of the 11 women described experiences where they perceived being treated differently due to race and/or gender. Qualitative analyses of interview data resulted in the emergence of three themes related to the discrimination context (lack of diversity, naiveté and denial and “missionary mentality”). Resulting themes are discussed in light of existing research. Future research implications include the continued need for research on factors that contribute to discrimination in religious contexts.