Oikonomia,Incarnation and Immediacy: The Figure of the Jew in St John of Damascus

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of oikonomia in the writings of St John of Damascus and how that role is integral to the construction of the figure of the Jew.     

TECHNO‐SECULARISM,RELIGION, AND THE CREATED CO‐CREATOR

Abstract. I take up the challenge posed by John Caiazza (2005) to face down the religiously vacuous ethics of techno‐secularism. Techno‐secularism is not enough for human fulfillment let alone human flowering. Yet, communities of faith based on the Bible have a positive responsibility to employ science and technology toward divinely appointed ends. We should study God's world through science and press technology into the service of transforming our world and our selves in light of our vision of God's promised new creation. This warrants invocation of the concept of the human being as the created co‐creator developed in the theology of Philip Hefner.     

THE CONTINUING INTERACTION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. Stephen I Gould's notion of non‐overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is neither experientially supported nor rationally justifiable. Influence flows between science and religion, as when evolutionary thinking encouraged theology to adopt a kenotic view of the Creator's act of allowing creatures to be and to make themselves. Alleged simplistic dichotomies between science and religion, such as motivated belief contrasted with fideistic assertion, are seen to be false. Promising topics in the currently vigorous dialogue between science and religion include relational ontology, eschatological credibility, and ethical issues relating to advances in human genetics.     

The Embodiment Thesis

In this essay I articulate and defend a thesis about the nature of morality called “the embodiment thesis”. The embodiment thesis states that moral values underdetermine the obligations and entitlements of individual persons, and that actual social institutions must embody morality by specifying these moral relations. I begin by presenting two thought experiments that elucidate and motivate the embodiment thesis. I then proceed by distinguishing the embodiment thesis from a Rawlsian doctrine about the nature of justice, from the doctrine of moral relativism, and from solutions to the coordination problem of rational choice theory.     

TILLICHIAN TELEODYNAMICS: AN EXAMINATION OF THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL UNITY OF EMERGENT LIFE

Abstract Emergence theory has generated many significant new questions for dialogue between theology and science. My work will examine the models of one emergence theorist, Terrence Deacon, and consider the constructive potential of Tillich's multidimensional unity of life for responding to the theological ramifications of this account of emergence theory. Such a Tillich‐inspired constructive process will rely upon Robert Russell's method of “Creative Mutual Interaction.” Building on the interactive quality of Russell's method, I will also begin to offer suggestions for how Tillich's theological themes might influence scientific research programs using Deacon's emergence theory by contributing to the process of defining life. Finally, I will conclude by identifying three facets of continued research that stem from this analysis, focusing primarily on its implications for theological anthropology and what it means to be in the image of God.     

GAPS IN THE ARGUMENT: A DISCUSSION OF CERTAIN ASPECTS OF COSMOLOGY

In this discussion review of Robert John Russell's collection of essays I agree with him about the necessity of human existence given the claims of Christian theology. I look in detail at his suggestions for speaking to this issue, especially his thesis of NIODA—noninterventionist objective divine action. I end up disagreeing with the suggestion and argue that in respects Russell is tackling the science-religion relationship in the wrong way.     

Justice and Civic Friendship： An Aristotelian Critique of Modern Citizenry

Modem moral and political theorists make a sharp separation between justice and civic friendship, arguing that justice deals with the fair terms of co-operation in the social sphere whereas civic friendship is about an individual＇s contingent affections in the political domain. In addition, they also argue that the principles of justice must determine the nature and function of civic friendship in modem liberal society. Even though the historical origin of the above view can be traced to the writings of Immanuel Kant （2007）, John Rawls provides us with its most cogent formulation in recent times. In his book A Theory of Justice （1971）, Rawls argues that the considerations of right are prior to the considerations of good; therefore the principles of justice must determine the limits of civic friendship. Against RaMs, I argue that justice and civic friendship are intrinsically connected and that they cannot be separated in experience. I draw upon Aristotle＇s theory of virtue to strengthen my arguments. Following Aristotle, I show that both justice and friendship are virtues and that all virtues hold together. The Aristotelian coherence of virtues, I argue, can be useful in redefining the obligations of justice and civic friendship in contemporary liberal democracies.     

“Bodyheartminding” (Xin 心): Reconceiving the Inner Self and the Outer World in the Language of Holographic Focus and Field

In this essay, inspired by the somatic turn in philosophy initiated by Richard Shusterman, I want to invoke the language of classical Confucian philosophy to think through the best efforts of William James and John Dewey to escape the mind-body and nature-nurture dualisms—that is, to offer an alternative vocabulary that might lend further clarity to the revolutionary insights of James and Dewey by appealing to the processual categories of Chinese cosmology. What I will try to do first is to refocus the pragmatist’s explanation of the relationship between mind and body through the lens of a process Confucian cosmology. And then, to make the case for James and Dewey, I will return to the radical, imagistic language they invoke to try and make the argument that this processual, holistic understanding of “vital bodyminding” is in fact what they were trying to say all along.