Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical

This essay reviews the contributions of Charles S. McCoy in three areas: religion and higher education, theology and ethics. I analyze McCoy’s primary ideas as a blending of influences from covenantal theology, Plato, Michael Polanyi and H. Richard Niebuhr.

Charles McCoy’s lifework calls for covenantal understanding and commitment as a call to innovation in theology and ethics. McCoy embraces liberation, pluralism, and globalism as the solution to the current difficulties of theology. As he looks toward the future, McCoy rejects positions which lament and tend to obstruct the movement toward liberation, pluralism, and globalism.

Charles McCoy’s Christian theology and ethics are based in a covenantal understanding that provides a way for Christians to engage the many views in the modern university. McCoy’s approach has both openness and commitment; it is akin to and supported by the fiduciary thought of Johannes Cocceius, H. R. Niebuhr, and Michael Polanyi. By seeing the way faith as trust operates in human beings, McCoy has laid foundations for Christian theology in a muticultural and pluralistic age. Most important is McCoy’s argument that there are many theologies, even Christian theologies, and the life of Chrisitian faith is always one of growth and of exploration.

These anecdotes and a limerick humorously celebrate the life and work of Charles S. McCoy.

This brief essay comments on the several preceding essays analyzing Charles S. McCoy’s thought.

This article explores the Polanyi brothers’ publicly-stated views--and private debates--concerning the nature and origin of fascism and communism. In that connection, it examines their rival estimates of the Soviet regime.

Polanyi’s theory of spontaneous order is set in historical context, analyzed, and compared to Friedrich Hayek’s version.