By Robert Gascoigne
Western liberal societies are characterised by means of tales: a favorable tale of freedom of moral sense and the popularity of group and human rights, and a adverse tale of unrestrained freedom that results in self-centeredness, vacuity, and the harmful compromise of human values. Can the Catholic Church play a extra significant position in helping liberal societies in telling their larger tale? Australian ethicist Robert Gascoigne thinks it may. In "The Church and Secularity" he considers the that means of secularity as a shared house for all voters and asks how the Church can give a contribution to a sensitivity to - and recognize for - human dignity and human rights. Drawing on Augustine's "City of God" and "Vatican II's Gaudium et spes", Gascoigne translates the which means of freedom in liberal societies during the lens of Augustine's "two loves," the affection of God and neighbor and the affection of self, and divulges how the 2 are hooked up to our modern adventure. "The Church and Secularity" argues that the Church can serve liberal societies in a good manner and that its personal social id, rooted in Eucharistic groups, needs to be sure up with the fight for human rights and resistance to the commodification of the human in all its types.
Read or Download The Church and Secularity: Two Stories of Liberal Society (Moral Traditions) PDF
Similar theology books
How can the physique and Blood of Christ, with no ever leaving heaven, become rather current on eucharistic altars the place the bread and wine nonetheless appear to be? 13th and fourteenth century Christian Aristotelians proposal the reply needed to be "transubstantiation. "
Acclaimed thinker, Marilyn McCord Adams, investigates those later medieval theories of the Eucharist, focusing on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham, with a few connection with Peter Lombard, Hugh of St. Victor, and Bonaventure. She examines how their efforts to formulate and combine this theological datum provoked them to make major revisions in Aristotelian philosophical theories in regards to the metaphysical constitution and site of our bodies, changes among substance and injuries, causality and causal powers, and basic varieties of switch. environment those advancements within the theological context that gave upward thrust to the query attracts cognizance to their understandings of the sacraments and their objective, in addition to to their understandings of the character and future of human beings.
Adams concludes that their philosophical changes have been regularly no longer advert hoc, yet systematic revisions that made room for transubstantiation whereas permitting Aristotle nonetheless to explain what mostly and of course occurs.
Born in Saxony in 1096, Hugh turned an Augustinian monk and in 1115 moved to the monastery of Saint Victor, Paris, the place he spent the rest of his lifestyles, finally turning into the top of the varsity there. His writings conceal the full diversity of arts and sacred technology taught in his day. Paul Rorem bargains a uncomplicated creation to Hugh's theology, via a entire survey of his works.
The Turnings of Darkness and Light: Essays in Philosophical and Systematic Theology
This choice of essays, written among 1975 and 1987, covers themes together with the doctrine of analogy, the Trinity, theological realism, the problims of evil and affliction, ecclesiology, and the so-called theistic proofs. the sooner writings relect the author's education as a thinker within the Anglo-Aamerican analytic culture.
- The Philosophy of Language (Oxford Readings in Philosophy)
- The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life
- The Theology and Philosophy of Eliade: Seeking the Centre
- Knowing the Truth About Jesus the Messiah (Defenders Series)
- Holiness and the Will of God. Perspectives on the Theology of Tertullian
Extra resources for The Church and Secularity: Two Stories of Liberal Society (Moral Traditions)
Example text
46. 8. Augustine, City of God V:26. Rowan Williams, in “Politics and the Soul: 4 A Reading of the City of God,” Milltown Studies 19/20 (1987): 55–72, notes that Augustine praised Theodosius because he was not subject to the libido dominandi; he was capable of sharing power and accepting humiliation (65). For Williams, Augustine emphasizes “consulere,” spiritual nurturing, within the context of both small and large communities, which are “essentially purposive, existing so as to nurture a particular kind of human life” (63).
However, in contrast to Milbank and Cavanaugh, Kraynak does not interpret Augustine as condemning the “earthly City” in this sense (as secular order) and rightly notes that Augustine’s “political teaching is thus a kind of moderate authoritarianism that respects the limited boundaries of the earthly city” (94). However, Kraynak builds on this to develop an Augustinian theory of contemporary politics and a critique of the “Kantian Christianity” of democracy based on human rights (152–54), arguing that the contemporary import of Augustine’s work is that it “gives sanction to all constitutionally limited governments under God, even those that are not based on human rights or social contract theory” (191).
55 The two loves have their outcomes in different expressions of freedom. The love of God and neighbor seeks its glory not in itself but in God and expresses itself in “the witness of a good conscience,” in a humility and trust that recognizes God’s Lordship, and in community between those who are entrusted with government and those who are governed. The love of self is expressed in contempt for God, by an obsession with its own glory and power, and by the libido dominandi, a lust that binds not only the ruled but also the rulers themselves who are captive to it.