The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth and Jeremy Taylor

The article traces the centrality of the patristic doctrine of theosis in the work of four significant figures in seventeenth century Anglican theology. Particular attention is paid to their understanding of reason as a participation in the incarnate Logos. Attention is drawn to their pedagogical method, which sees theology as 'rather a divine life than a divine knowledge' (Taylor), and to their reticence in defining too precisely the content of doctrine. Finally the Anglican via media is seen not as a political compromise, but as one way of fruitfully expressing the mediating grace between Creator and creation.     

Richard Hooker and the Principle of Sola Scriptura

The traditional view that Richard Hooker argued for the religiousauthority of Scripture, reason, and tradition, in that order,has come under sustained criticism in recent years, especiallyfrom those scholars who assert that Hooker was in fact an orthodoxReformed theologian. Although Hooker placed a distinctivelyhigh value on the role of reason in authenticating Holy Scripture,it is claimed that this is fully compatible with the Protestantprinciple of sola Scriptura, and reflects wider developmentsin the Reformed tradition on the role of reason in proving thatScripture is divine revelation. This article seeks to refutethese claims by examining Reformed thought on the religiousauthority of Scripture and reason in matters of Christian doctrine,looking at representatives from the Reformers, early orthodoxy,and high orthodoxy. This is then compared with Hooker's work,where, it is argued, the Reformed doctrine that Scripture isthe principium cognoscendi theologiae, with reason merely anancillary ‘handmaid’, is replaced by the radicalposition that Scripture and demonstrative reasoning are bothprincipial authorities in matters of Christian doctrine. Inpropounding his triple-source theory of religious authority,therefore, Hooker is concluded to have broken fundamentallywith the principle of sola Scriptura.     

Making Ideas Work: Ralph Bedell and the NDEA Institutes

Ralph Bedell, professor emeritus of educational and counseling psychology, was interviewed to gain insight info the influence of the National Defense Counseling and Guidance Institutes on the history of counseling and to learn about the man who was responsible for the NDEA program.     

Pardoning Puritanism: Community,Character, and Forgiveness in the Work of Richard Baxter

The English Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–1691) developed an account of forgiveness that resonates with twentieth‐century virtue ethics. He understood forgiveness as one component of a larger disposition of character developed in community as human beings recognize themselves as sinful creatures engaged in complex relationships of dependency and responsibility, with both God and one another. In the midst of these relationships, persons experience divine and human forgiveness and discover opportunities to practice forgiveness in return. Baxter thus negotiated a distinctive relationship between Christian hope for reconciliation and more stereotypical Puritan emphases on punishment, civil order, and justice. At the same time that recent moral reflection allows us to raise questions about some features of Baxter's argument (such as his treatment of anger), his work provides important resources for correlating dispositions with concrete obligations, establishing a place for forgiveness in the public realm, and counterbalancing the modern emphasis on individual rights.     

Pardoning Puritanism: Community, Character, and Forgiveness in the Work of Richard Baxter

The English Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–1691) developed an account of forgiveness that resonates with twentieth-century virtue ethics. He understood forgiveness as one component of a larger disposition of character developed in community as human beings recognize themselves as sinful creatures engaged in complex relationships of dependency and responsibility, with both God and one another. In the midst of these relationships, persons experience divine and human forgiveness and discover opportunities to practice forgiveness in return. Baxter thus negotiated a distinctive relationship between Christian hope for reconciliation and more stereotypical Puritan emphases on punishment, civil order, and justice. At the same time that recent moral reflection allows us to raise questions about some features of Baxter's argument (such as his treatment of anger), his work provides important resources for correlating dispositions with concrete obligations, establishing a place for forgiveness in the public realm, and counterbalancing the modern emphasis on individual rights.     

“Paid to Endure”: Paid Research Participation,Passivity, and the Goods of Work

A growing literature documents the existence of individuals who make a living by participating in phase I clinical trials for money. Several scholars have noted that the concerns about risks, consent, and exploitation raised by this phenomenon apply to many (other) jobs, too, and therefore proposed improving subject protections by regulating phase I trial participation as work. This article contributes to the debate over this proposal by exploring a largely neglected worry. Unlike most (other) workers, subjects are not paid to produce or achieve anything but to have things done to them. I argue that this passivity is problematic for reasons of distributive justice. Specifically, it fails to enable subjects to realize what Gheaus and Herzog call “the goods of work”—a failure not offset by adequate opportunities to realize these goods outside of the research context. I also consider whether granting subjects worker-type protections would accommodate this concern.     

Benjamin B. Warfield and Right Reason: The Clarity of General Revelation and Function of Apologetics – Owen Anderson

Book reviewed:
Benjamin B. Warfield and Right Reason: The Clarity of General Revelation and Function of Apologetics , Owen Anderson, University Press of America 2005 (0-7618-3288-2), v + 69 pp., pb $19.95     

Rhyme and Reason: Emotional Capability and the Performance of Knowledge-Intensive Work Groups

Organizations greatly depend on the performance of small, autonomous, knowledge-intensive work groups. These groups can be perceived as bundles of knowledge-based resources that reside in the groups' individual members. In addition to developing individual skills and know-how, performance of knowledge-intensive work groups depends on the successful integration of diverse individual skills. In particular, the integration of highly specialized individual knowledge can occur only when groups foster an atmosphere that encourages cooperation and divergent thinking. In this article, we develop a general model on the role of emotions in knowledge-intensive work groups by integrating literatures in the areas of psychology, organizational behavior, organization theory, and strategic management. Intense social interactions within knowledge-intensive work groups, and the turbulence that characterize their environments, generate many events that elicit emotions among group members. Moreover, through social interaction, emotions transmit from member to member. Consequently, it is critical that knowledge-intensive work groups develop emotional capability, or the ability to recognize and regulate emotions of group members.     

The Contemporary Relevance of Schillebeeckx's Political Theology: On Ecclesial Participation in the Saving Work of Christ

In this article I explore the relation between God's absolute governance of the world and ecclesial dominion over other communities in a shared political forum that seeks the greatest good of all. On this question I compare the positions of Colin Gunton, Robert Jenson, and Edward Schillebeeckx as representatives of three distinct political theologies. Whereas Gunton's reservation regarding the participation of the church's politics in divine governance shows excessive deference to human sinfulness, Jenson on the contrary tends to absorb God's Rule into ecclesial politics. Drawing upon Schillebeeckx's Christology, I argue that God's absolute Rule is compatible with ecclesial sovereignty; however, this does not allow for unilateral ecclesial dominion over others, inasmuch as God's Rule is disclosed as forgiveness.     

The Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms: Miracles,Monotheism, and Reason in Spinoza

Spinoza insists in the Theological Political Treatise that philosophy and theology are two separate kingdoms. I argue here that there is a basis in the psychology of the Ethics for one of the major components of the doctrine of the two kingdoms. Under the kingdom of theology, religion's principal function is to overcome the influence of harmful passion that prevents people from living life according to a fixed plan: people can live according to a fixed plan because they can obey. Through a series of arguments I show that Spinoza takes obedience to arise through devotion; devotion to associate with ideas of miracles and imaginative monotheism; and these ideas to be imaginative ideas of singular objects. On the psychology of the Ethics, ideas of this sort, although highly irrational, nevertheless give minds a power to resist harmful passion similar to that of ideas of reason. Although problems remain for the interpretation of the doctrine of the two kingdoms, this argument shows that Spinoza's psychology grounds his claim that theology, although different from philosophy, can help us to live well.     

On the Common Origin of Music and Philosophy: Plato,Nietzsche, and Benjamin

The essay shows the common ground between music and philosophy from the origin of Western philosophy to the crisis of metaphysical thinking, in particular with Nietzsche and Benjamin. At the beginning, the relationship between philosophy and music is marked by the hegemony of the word on the sound. This is the nature of the Platonic idea of music. With Nietzsche and Benjamin this hegemony is denied and a new vision of the relationship becomes possible. The sound is the origin both of language and of music. In thinking about this origin, philosophy shows that “thinking about music” is “thinking in music”, and that this thinking is the origin of philosophy itself.     

Tradition and Reason: Two Uses of Reason, Critical and Contemplative

Abstract: Reason, as it is proper to the task of theology, has two uses: critical and contemplative. This twofold appropriation of reason sets the stage for this article, a stage occupied in turn by Newman and by Aquinas. The critical function of theological work is expressed via the 1877 preface which Newman wrote for his Lectures on the Prophetic Office of the Church. The critical office of theology is vital not only to the practice of theology itself but to the liturgical and spiritual life of the church, and to the exercise of church leadership if that leadership is not to descend into tyranny. For the theologian, reason is not antithetical to contemplation; rather, contemplation includes a form of reasoning. Theology is ‘a schooling in the discipline of contemplating the self‐revealing God’, a discipline of ‘metaphysical ascesis’ which compels both intellectual conversion and moral practice. Such an ascesis was practised well by Aquinas, and Kerr reflects on the Summa Theologiae as ‘a training in a form of metaphysical reasoning’, being schooled in the knowledge of God which strips away our ‘idolatorous inclinations’.