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1. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2

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selected essays

2. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
M. Cathleen Kaveny

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This essay invites Christian ethicists to engage in a mutually beneficial conversation with the secular law, particularly the common law. It argues that the common law's feature of narrative accountability provides a natural bridge to Christian ethics. It also points out contact points between the two fields regarding normative concepts of persons, actions, norms, and the common good. Finally, it illustrates the possibilities of a conversation between law and Christian ethics by delving into the leading case on the doctrine of unconscionability, which permits courts to refuse to enforce contracts that shock the conscience.
3. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Mary Ellen O'Connell

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The international law regulating resort to armed force, still known by the Latin phrase, the jus ad bellum, forms a principal substantive subfield of international law, along with human rights law, international environmental law, and international economic law. Among theologians, philosophers, and political scientists, just war theory is a major topic of study. Nevertheless, only a minority of scholars and practitioners know both jus ad bellum and just war theory well. Lack of knowledge has led to the erroneous view that the two areas are in conflict. This article responds to this misapprehension, explaining the deep compatibility of international law and just war theory. Today's jus ad bellum, especially the peremptory norm against aggression, is not only the law; it also forms the minimum threshold of a just war under just war theory. In other words, for a war to be morally just, it must at least be lawful. To go to war in violation of the jus ad bellum is both a legal and a moral wrong. Compliance not only fulfills the general moral good of obedience to law; it forms the first step toward fulfilling moral obligations in the grave area of war. This characterization of the relationship between law and morality is seen in the history of the legal prohibition on force and in the actual set of rules that make up the contemporary regime. Comprehensive and persuasive accounts of the jus ad bellum and just war theory consistently reflect this thesis.
4. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Nigel Biggar

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The following remarks were prepared as a response to Mary Ellen O'Connell's plenary address, "The Just War Tradition and International Law against War: The Myth of Discordant Doctrines," at the 2015 annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics. O'Connell's essay appears in this issue of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics (vol. 35, no. 2). After noting some points of agreement, the response discusses five main issues: the moral complexity of "peace," the consonance of a peremptory norm against aggression with just war thinking, the formative role of controversial political convictions in the interpretation of international law, the political defects of the current international legal system, and the efficacy of military intervention.
5. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Elise M. Edwards

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This essay assesses the possibilities for poetic-liturgical compositions, such as requiems, to promote Christian public engagement when legal frameworks are perceived to be inadequate for securing justice. This essay addresses the perception that legal statutes and procedures failed to honor the personhood of two particular African American males and discusses how aesthetic responses have been used to counter the devaluing of their lives. One such response, Marilyn Nelson's poem Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem, questions the law's failure to protect an eighteenth-century enslaved man. Another requiem memorializes Michael Brown after the teen's killing by a police officer in 2014. This essay discusses these particular aesthetic responses and then evaluates the possibilities for the requiem as a Christian practice of civic engagement by appropriating Charles Mathewes's articulation of hopeful citizenship. In cases when the law is perceived to be complicit in devaluing African American personhood, liturgy can be a meaningful Christian response.
6. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Thomas J. Bushlack

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Henri de Lubac's (1896–1991) treatment of the relationship between nature and grace helped the Catholic Church to move beyond the antagonisms that had defined its relationship with the modern nation-state. In critiquing de Lubac, some recent scholarship has presented an interpretation of Aquinas that is remarkably similar to the problems associated with the neo-Scholastic method. These approaches indicate that in order for late modern democratic states to achieve their connatural ends of justice and the common good, they must directly advert to revealed knowledge and Church teaching. This essay proposes an alternative correction to de Lubac that both maintains a distinction between nature and grace and facilitates a capacity for Christians to engage in a nuanced dialogue of affirmation and critique of the human goods sought by late modern political and legal institutions. In the conclusion, this nature-grace distinction is used to analyze the way the US Catholic Bishops have engaged in moral, political, and legal debates over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
7. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
David VanDrunen

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Political and legal theorists sometimes assign attempts to define the purpose of law and government into one of two categories: protectionism indicates that law and government should protect people from the violation of their rights while perfectionism indicates that law and government should also actively promote virtue in the human community. In this essay I draw primarily from the biblical covenant with Noah (Gn 8:21–9:17), supplemented with other biblical and moral-theological considerations. I argue that protectionism, contrary to common assumptions, need not be individualist, subjectivist, or indifferent to the broader well-being of society. Furthermore, and chiefly, I argue that a strong (yet rebuttable) protectionist presumption ought to govern Christian ethical reflection upon the purpose of law and government.
8. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Karen V. Guth

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John Howard Yoder's reclamation of Christ's law of love as normative for Christian ethics makes important contributions to the field, but this pacifist legacy is tainted by his sexual violence against women. Prominent "witness" and "feminist" ethicists either defend or condemn Yoder, reflecting retributive approaches to wrongdoing. Restorative justice models—with their emphasis on truth-telling, particularity, and communal responses to violence—illuminate common ground between these often antagonistic groups of ethicists, whose specific resources are needed to "do justice" to Yoder's legacy. Yoder claimed that "Christian identity itself calls for feminist engagement," but he failed to fully develop this claim in his theology or embody it in his life. By collaborating in such a truly feminist pacifist politics, witness and feminist ethicists not only strengthen their own internal projects with respect to the church's mission and the promotion of women's flourishing but also more effectively address sexual violence.
9. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
David P. Gushee

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Most evangelical Christians have understood their faith, rooted in a high view of biblical authority, to be irreconcilable with "homosexuality." This has meant that devoted LGBT people raised as evangelical Christians must choose between their sexuality and their faith/religious community. This creates enormous psychic distress, turns LGBT Christians and their allies away from (evangelical) Christianity, and contributes to intense alienation between the gay community and evangelicals all over the world. But traditional evangelical attitudes on LGBT people and their relationships are beginning to change. This paper offers a description of the state of the conversation in the North American evangelical community on this issue, and summarizes my own normative proposal.
10. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Celia Deane-Drummond

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This essay lays out preliminary grounds for an alternative theological approach to animal ethics based on closer consideration of natural law theory and ethological reports of wild justice compared with dominant animal rights perspectives. It draws on Jean Porter's interpretation of scholastic natural law theory and on scientific narratives about the laws of nature to navigate the difficult territory between nature and reason in natural law. In Western societies, attempts to detach from our animal roots have fostered forms of legal provisions that treat animals as property rather than as living, social beings entangled with human societies.
11. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Paul Scherz

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Powerful interest groups have responded to evidence of environmental or health risks by manufacturing doubt, partially through attacks on scientists. The current legal standard for the admissibility of scientific evidence in court enables such strategies for generating doubt. In the face of attacks on their reputations and careers, researchers working on public interest science need the courage to speak the truth despite risk, which Michel Foucault described as the virtue of parrhesia. Parrhesia is also a Christian virtue shown in the willingness to witness to truth in the face of risk because of one's confidence in God. This essay argues that Christianity possesses resources to form individuals in parrhesia in ways that support the dedication to scientific truth.

book reviews

12. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Nancy M. Rourke

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13. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Ilsup Ahn

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14. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Kevin J. O'Brien

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15. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Stephen M. Vantassel

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16. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Myles Werntz

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17. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Andrew C. Wright

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18. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Dallas J. Gingles

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19. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
Matthew R. Jantzen

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20. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 35 > Issue: 2
John C. Shelley

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