In this truly seminal work, the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University illuminates the distinctive nature of Christian ethics with profound thought and massive learning. By grounding Christian ethics in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he avoids both a revealed ethics that has no contact with the created order and one that is purely naturalistic. For this second edition Professor O'Donovan has added a prologue in which he enters into dialogue with John Finnis, Martin Honecker, Karl Barth and Stanley Hauerwas. Essential reading for advanced students of theology and ethics and their teachers.
Self, World, and Time takes up the question of the form and matter of Christian ethics as an intellectual discipline. What is it about? How does Christian ethics relate to the humanities, especially philosophy, theology, and behavioral studies? How does its shape correspond to the shape of practical reason? In what way does it participate in the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Oliver O'Donovan discusses ethics with self, world, and time as foundation poles of moral reasoning, and with faith, love, and hope as the virtues anchoring the moral life. Blending biblical, historico-theological, and contemporary ideas in its comprehensive survey, Self, World, and Time is an exploratory study that adds significantly to O'Donovan's previous theoretical reflections on Christian ethics.
Leading political theologian Oliver O'Donovan takes a fresh look at some traditional moral arguments about war. Christians differ widely on this issue. The book re-examines questions of contemporary urgency, including the use of biological and nuclear weapons, military intervention, economic sanctions, and the role of the UN. It opens with a challenging dedication to the new Archbishop of Canterbury and proceeds to shed light on vital topics with which that Archbishop and others will be very directly engaged. It should be read by anyone concerned with the ethics of warfare.
This is the second of three volumes in Oliver O’Donovan’s masterful “Ethics as Theology” project. In his first volume -- Self, World, and Time -- O’Donovan discusses Christian ethics as an intellectual discipline in relation to the humanities, especially philosophy, theology, and behavioral studies, and in relation to the Christian gospel. In Finding and Seeking O’Donovan traces the logic of moral thought from self-awareness to decision through the virtues of faith, hope, and love. Blending biblical, historico-theological, and contemporary ideas in its comprehensive survey, this second volume continues O’Donovan’s splendid study in ethics as theology and adds significantly to his previous theoretical reflection on Christian ethics.
This book offers the first sustained, full-length treatment of the wide-ranging work of major Anglican theologian Oliver O'Donovan. Analyzing such key texts as Resurrection and Moral Order, The Desire of the Nations and Ethics as Theology, Samuel Tranter shows that the relationship between eschatology and ethics is an area of significant tension in O'Donovan's evolving vision of moral theology. Tranter traces this tension as it relates to O'Donovan's writing and contemporary discussion around natural law, divine command and human flourishing, as well as to particular topics such as poverty, marriage and singleness and biotechnology. He also connects it with the broader doctrinal features of O'Donovan's project, such as his accounts of creation, sin and redemption, and his understanding of the relationships between the cross and the resurrection, on one hand, and Christology and pneumatology, on the other. Throughout, Tranter indicates the implications of these themes for our understanding of the Christian life. This volume establishes and evaluates O'Donovan's influence on contemporary Christian ethicists and political theologians (such as Luke Bretherton, Gilbert Meilaender, Jean Porter and Brent Waters), and engages with critical readings of O'Donovan (such as those by Stanley Hauerwas and Gerald McKenny). In conversation with these and other voices from a range of perspectives, Tranter shows how O'Donovan's proposals may be appropriated and amended as a resource for theology and ethics going forward.
Widely respected as one of today's wisest and most articulate Christian ethicists, Oliver O'Donovan here explores the nature of personal and political behavior as it is -- or should be -- informed by Christian love. This profound look at contemporary life focuses on how moral reflection upon common objects of love has an effect on organized community -- in grandest terms, political society itself. O'Donovan begins with some lighthearted puzzles about teaching ethics and ends with an intense critique of the role of publicity in late-modern liberal culture. Showing, as Augustine believed, that we know only as we love, O'Donovan takes readers on a journey of thought through a series of current and historical issues ranging from the iconoclastic controversy of the ninth century to the terrible events of September 11, 2001. Based on the 2001 Stob Lectures at Calvin College, this volume will help readers learn how to think "from truths of Christian faith to conclusions in Christian action."
In this probing book Oliver O'Donovan extends the exploration into the correspondence between theology and politics that he began in The Desire of the Nations. While that earlier work took as its starting point the biblical proclamation of God's authority, The Ways of Judgment approaches political theology from the political side. Responsive to developments such as the uncertain role of the United Nations after the Cold War and the expansion of the European Union, O'Donovan also draws on the extensive tradition of Christian political thought and a range of contemporary theologians. Rather than supposing, as does some political theology, that the right political orientations are well understood and that theological beliefs should be renegotiated to fit them, O'Donovan considers contemporary social and political realities to be impenetrably obscure and elusive. Finding the gospel proclamation luminous by contrast, O'Donovan sheds light from the Christian faith upon the intricate challenge of seeking the good in late-modern Western society. Pursuing his analysis in three movements, O'Donovan first considers the paradigmatic political act, the act of judgment, and then takes up the question of forming political institutions through representation. Finally, he tackles the opposition between political institutions and the church, provocatively investigating how Christians can be the community instructed by Jesus to "judge not."
Andrew Errington brings the book of Proverbs into discussion with two significant accounts of the nature and foundation of practical reason in Christian ethics: those of Thomas Aquinas and Oliver O'Donovan. Aiming to move towards a framework for understanding Christian moral reasoning, this book develops a significant critique of aspects of Aquinas's thought and provides a major engagement with O'Donovan's moral theology. Errington argues that the way the Book of Proverbs conceives of wisdom presents an important challenge to the Western theological and philosophical tradition. Instead of a perfection of theoretical knowledge, wisdom in Proverbs is a practical knowledge of how to act well, grounded in the reality of the world God has made. Discussing the complexities of practical reason, moral reasoning in Aquinas, world order and deliberation in the work of O'Donovan, and the place of created order in Christian Ethics, this volume is invaluable for scholars and general readers in reconfiguring moral theology.
