Natural Law for Reformed Theology

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-130
Author(s):  
David VanDrunen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Divine Judgment ◽  
Twenty First Century

This paper outlines a constructive account of natural law for the twenty-first century, rooted in the Reformed theological and confession heritage. It suggests how natural law can provide us with a deep theological way of affirming the existence of an objectively meaningful natural order, discusses the importance of natural law for maintaining the accountability of all human beings before the divine judgment, and reflects on how natural law serves as crucial foundation for the church’s ministry of the gospel to a hurting and needy world.

Liberal Order in the Twenty-First Century: Searching for Eunomia Once Again

2019 ◽  
Vol 139 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 271-284
Author(s):  
Amichai Magen
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Liberty ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Good Order ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Unique Potential

Adherents of economic and political liberty are again compelled to ask fundamental questions about the nature and prospects of good order (or Eunomia). This article: (1) offers a quaternary definition of the concept of “order;” (2) contends that Eunomia is essentially about the creation, adaptation, and protection of the conditions necessary for human beings to live lives that are free from fear so as to maximize each individual’s unique potential for human flourishing; and (3) outlines an evolutionary understanding of Eunomia, whereby contemporary liberal orders represent the cumulative outcome of three sets of elite-selected “wins” over illiberal ones. To survive and thrive in the twenty-first century liberalism must once again contest and defeat rival orders.

The Spark That Still Shines: John Calvin on Conscience and Natural Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Y Lee
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Moral Discernment ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Sufficient Knowledge

Abstract John Calvin (1509–64), a central figure in Reformed theology, is perhaps best known for his bleak doctrine of total human depravity. This dismal view of human reason has commonly overshadowed his statement that ‘some sparks still shine’. This article proposes that Calvin’s account of conscience, by conserving an illuminated space in human nature, makes possible a formal doctrine of natural law. Calvin enlists the interconnectedness between the knowledge of God and human reason to frame his anthropology. According to this, human reason was originally created to perfectly access knowledge of God but after the Fall, can only attain imperfect access. Within this broader framework, by adopting a dialectic of dual perspectives, Calvin maintains that, however fallen, human nature still partially reflects the Imago Dei as first intended. As through a glass darkly, this divine image is reflected in human conscience endowing it with sufficient knowledge for moral discernment. Calvin’s emphasis on ‘common grace’ in the preservation of this knowledge allows him to simultaneously maintain human ignorance and their universal accountability to objective norms. In this way, Calvin’s account of conscience enables him to hold both apparent extremes in tension: the immanent fallibility of human beings with the external normative standards they ought to pursue.

The Poetic Power of Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Alexander Kluge
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Silicon Valley ◽  
Second Order ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract The roots of theory lie in the spirit of resistance and “essential powers” that Karl Marx and Immanuel Kant ascribed to human beings. The poetic power of social life seeks and finds counter-algorithmic expression through narrative capacities of differentiation, and the poetic power of theory operates as a political alliance out of which emancipation of any kind becomes subjectively possible, without being subjectively controlled. What twenty-first-century forms of theoretical practice, sensory intelligence, and storytelling allow for the courage of cognition in a world dominated by Silicon Valley? If one dissolves the word power into the labor contained in it, petrified concepts are secretly changed, and heterogeneous “second-order” experience is made.

scholarly journals Becoming-After: The Lives and Politics of Quinine’s Remains

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Townsend Middleton
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Twenty First Century

This article explores the aftermath of quinine in India. Derived from cinchona, the fever tree, quinine was once malaria’s only remedy—and, as such, vital to colonial power. But it has left grave uncertainty in its wake. Today, little market exists for Indian quinine, but government cinchona plantations established by the British remain in Darjeeling. What will become of these dilapidated plantations and their 50,000 inhabitants is unclear. Crumbling quinine factories and overgrown cinchona may evoke ruination, but these remains are not dead. They have instead become the site of urgent efforts—and a periodically charged politics—to redefine land and life for the twenty-first century. This essay develops an analytics of becoming-after to ask not only, how do empires and human beings become-with world-historical substances like quinine but also, what do we make of life after they run their course?

Sin, Grace, and Free Choice in Post-Reformation Reformed Theology

2014 ◽  
pp. 227-241
Author(s):  
Stephen Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Strong Commitment ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Theological Vision ◽  
Moral Capacity

This chapter discusses Reformed thought on sin, grace, free choice, and ethics, by focusing on some prominent theologians—particularly Samuel Maresius, Francis Turretin, Petrus van Mastricht, and Pierre Du Moulin. It argues that the freedom and moral capacity of human beings is central to the Reformed theological vision. The Reformed deploy careful distinctions to demonstrate that the fundamental contingency of human action is compatible with the divine decrees. The disastrous effects of the Fall are highlighted, but the persistence of natural human faculties is also underlined. God’s grace is conceived as working so powerfully within the elect, that it invariably achieves its end, but not by undermining the rational faculties of its recipients. In ethics, the Reformed are shown to have a strong commitment both to natural law and virtue ethics, without tension with their overarching commitment to God’s revealed law.

Margaret Cavendish

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cunning
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
First Century ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Universe

Margaret Cavendish, a seventeenth-century philosopher, scientist, poet, playwright, and novelist, went to battle with the great thinkers of her time, and in many cases arguably got the better of them, but she did not have the platform that she would have had in the twenty-first century. She took a creative and systematic stand on the major questions of philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and political philosophy. She defends a number of theses across her corpus: for example, that human beings and all other members of the created universe are wholly material; that matter is eternal; that the universe is a plenum of contiguous bodies; that matter is generally speaking knowledgeable and perceptive and that non-human creatures like spiders, plants, and cells exhibit wisdom and skill; that motion is never transferred from one body to another, but bodies always move by motions that are internal to them; that sensory perception is not via impressions or stamping; that we can have no ideas of immaterials; and that creatures depend for their properties and features on the behavior of the beings that surround them. Cavendish uses her fictional work to further illustrate these views, and in particular to illustrate the view that creatures depend on their surroundings for their social and political properties. For example, she crafts alternative worlds in which women are not seen as unfit for roles such as philosopher, scientist, and military general, and in which they flourish. This volume of Cavendish’s writings provides a cross-section of her interconnected writings, views, and arguments.

Sustainability in the Twenty-first Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gian Carlo Delgado Ramos ◽  
Mireya Imaz Gispert ◽  
Ana Beristain Aguirre
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Chemical Systems ◽  
Global Spread ◽  
Twenty First Century

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">I</span><span class="s2">t is we</span><span class="s3">ll </span><span class="s2">estab</span><span class="s3">l</span><span class="s2">ished </span>that there is a differentiated historic responsibility in the progressive erosion of the bio-geo-chemical systems that support life on the planet due, principally, to the action of human beings<span class="s4">. </span>The damage has reached such a degree and global spread that many are beginning to talk about a new geological era: the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002).</p>

scholarly journals Theory's Children; or, The New Relevance of Musicology

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Stephen McClatchie
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
New Faculty ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The University ◽  
Music Study

The recent theoretical turn in musicology has made the discipline more relevant, both within the university itself, and in the larger society within which it is situated. I consider what this development may mean for younger scholars, both as graduate students and as new faculty members, and explore the paradox that critical theory is often attacked for its impenetrability, yet has allowed us to communicate more easily with our colleagues in other disciplines. Finally, I argue that the primary aim for music study in the twenty-first century should be an ethical one: the creation of whole, musical human beings, literate in, and accustomed to thinking about, musics, plural, rather than Music.

scholarly journals Review Article: The Crises of Civilization: Exploring Global and Planetary Histories (2018) by Dipesh Chakrabarty

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shikha Vats ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Review Article ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Line P ◽  
Entire Planet

W. E. B. Du Bois (1903) had famously said that the problem of the twentieth century “is the problem of the color-line” (p. 13). Dipesh Chakrabarty declares, in this new volume, that the question of the twenty-first century will be that of climate crisis. The major events of the twentieth century, including the processes of imperialism, colonization, and globalization led to widespread migration of people all across the globe framing new intersubjective equations such as oppressor-oppressed, privileged-marginalized, mostly along what Du Bois called ‘the color-line’. The major fallout of this colonial and capitalist project in the last century has been global warming which is set to affect the entire planet and hence needs to be at the forefront of all policy decisions in the twenty-first century. In order to grapple with this new age of the Anthropocene, whereby human beings have become a geophysical force capable of altering the course of the planet, Chakrabarty urges a rethinking and reformulation of the discipline of history

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