Eric Gregory

Politics and Beatitude

The limits and secularity of political life have been signature themes of modern Augustinianism, often couched in non-theological language of realism and the role of religion in public life. In dialogue with Gilbert Meilaender, this article inverts and theologizes that interest by asking how Augustinian pilgrims might characterize the positive relation of political history to saving history and the ways in which political action in time might teach us something about the nature of salvation that comes to us from beyond history. This relation of continuity and discontinuity eludes dogmatic formulation, but the goal of the present article is to see where a shared Augustinianism and a shared commitment to aspects of the liberal political tradition might find illuminating disagreement.

A Protestant View: The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition

This paper offers a Protestant perspective on Roman Catholic debates regarding the moral permissibility of transferring and adopting genetically unrelated embryos that have been abandoned or designated for donation. The relative silence in Protestant bioethics on these issues stands in contrast to the vigor of Catholic discussions. This neglect is striking in light of both the significant role of mainline Protestants in supporting the practice of in vitro fertilization (IVF) which gave rise to such novel possibilities and the growing support of embryo adoption by evangelical Protestants (Berkman, 2002; Cooperman, 2005; Ennis, 2005; Saake, 2005). The essay affirms the inherent morality of both the transfer and adoption of abandoned embryos. But, it also expresses reservations about the current practice. For theological reasons, it encourages a critical attitude toward potentially vicious reasons for which it is promoted in our cultural context. Given the neglect of Protestant analysis and the characteristic diversity of Protestant reflection, I enlist themes from two influential twentieth-century theologians in order to achieve my aim of offering a distinctively Protestant contribution. In particular, I turn to H. Richard Niebuhr’s theological appeal to “responsibility” and Karl Barth’s eschatological discussion of marriage, parenthood, and children. Bringing together these often contrasted authors will serve as a route into defending the licitness of embryo transfer while calling into question embryo adoption as a social practice for the Christian community unless it is disciplined by Christian agape and does not contribute to an idolatry of the nuclear family. Embryo adoption

What Hippo and Grand Rapids Have to Say to Each Other

This essay situates James K. A. Smith’s Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology in the context of contemporary social criticism, Augustinian politics, and the cultural turn in religious ethics. While commending Smith’s liturgical ambitions and newfound appreciation for the democratic tradition, I raise critical questions pertaining to eschatology, war and nationhood, and the extent to which he overcomes familiar debates in Christian social ethics.

What Do We Want from the Just War Tradition? New Challenges of Surveillance and the Security State:

The nature and scope of government surveillance have intensified debates about liberty and security in a post-9/11 world. Critics of the just war tradition argue it is not able to constructively address these new challenges. Defenders often simply re-affirm its various criteria in making retrospective judgments or clarifying principles. By contrast, this article argues that our political moment—marked by the arbitrary exercise of power, the prospect of permanent war, and the rapid speed of global politics—reinforces the need to frame just war thinking within a constructive account of statecraft and practical reasoning. In particular, I highlight moral (rather than simply legal) dimensions of authority and intention which reveal a fundamental question about what we want from the just war tradition in relation to democratic social criticism and the possibility of political morality.

Review Essay The Jewish Roots of the Modern Republic

A concise study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant Hebraica does not immediately suggest a provocative contribution to contemporary debates about secularization, religion, and politics. But that is what Eric Nelson’s learned yet accessible book about the Jewish sources of early modern republicanism provides. 1 According to Nelson, Professor of Government at Harvard University, the distinctive authority of the Hebrew Republic made possible the Protestant development of three central ideas: republican liberty, care for equality, and religious toleration. Nelson’s rehabilitation of the neglected Christian Hebraism of the late Renaissance and Reformation seeks to challenge historiographies which characterize modern political thought in terms of a rationalist independence from theology. These dominant narratives roughly describe a transition from political theology to political science that excludes religious conviction from political argument. 2 Nelson invokes (but does not engage) Mark Lilla’s description of “the Great Separation” of religion and politics as one expression of this threshold of disenchantment. 3 He also associates this narrative with figures as diverse as Hans Blumenberg, Leo Strauss, C. B. Macpherson, Michael Oakeshott, John Rawls, and Jonathan Israel. The book, therefore, contributes to scholarship that complicates the primacy of the “Enlightenment” origins and character of Western politics. It also raises complex questions about our relation to these origins. Much like Nelson’s own argument about the way Jewish sources helped reorganize accepted categories, his book opens new spaces for scholarly conversation across multiple fields of study. This review briefly raises normative implications of Nelson’s book for scholars of theology, ethics, and religious studies. I examine stronger and weaker versions of Nelson’s historical narrative as well as his gestures at their implications.