The basic idea of the article is to explain how free will relates to the progression from the status integritatis to the status corruptionis to the status gratiae to the status gloriae, contrasting libertarian and compatibilist views. We argue that either account can give an account of these stages (even though it might seem that compatibilist views would have it easier).

Given the need for global action on climate change, it is crucial to comprehend which factors motivate people in different countries to act more pro-environmentally. Lithuania is a post-socialist country that has recently increased commitment to foster pro-environmental behavior of individuals, by implementing interventions that target mainly the personal costs and benefits of relevant behaviors. Yet, research suggests that people’s general environmental considerations, namely biospheric values and environmental self-identity, can drive people’ pro-environmental behavior and may be important targets for interventions. (...) These studies, however, have been mostly conducted in Western Europe and the United States, with limited evidence of relationship between people’s biospheric values, environmental self-identity and pro-environmental behaviors across different countries and cultures. We performed a correlational study with a convenience sample in Lithuania (n = 334). Consistent with previous studies and the theory, our study revealed that people’s general environmental considerations were positively related with recycling and environmental activism, but not with fuel-efficient driving and the use of sustainable transportation in Lithuania. We conclude that general environmental considerations are related to pro-environmental behaviors beyond Western Europe and the United States. Yet, future studies need to examine the boundary conditions of this relationship and test whether i... (shrink)

"[Jenson] demonstrates how to liberate a religious tradition from subservience to Enlightenment rationalisms without depriving it of philosophic discipline....In this way, his work serves...as a partner to new conversations within religious studies programs."--The Journal of Religion.

Over the last years the association ‘the Christian articles of faith’ in which protestant and catholic dogmatic theologians working at various Dutch universities participate has organized a autumn-conference. The theme of the 2005 conference was: the notae ecclesiae especially the holiness. One of the guest speakers was Robert Jenson, who read his paper Can holiness be a nota ecclesiae?. He starts with a critical examination of the qualifications ‘proprietas’ and ‘nota’, but the main burden of the paper is a (...) discussion of ‘holiness’. Taking his clue from the use of holy in the story of the Annunciation Jenson argues that holiness is to be understood in a Trinitarian way: ‘actual holiness and the triune God are, by an extension of an ancient theological rule, the very same thing. From which it follows that creatures can be holy only by sharing the triune life.’ Since the holiness of the church is the holiness of the Body of Christ, decisive for understanding the holiness of the Church is the understanding of the holiness of Christ. Instead of the traditional ‘metaphysical’ interpretation of Chalcedon, Jenson puts forward a ‘somewhat riskier’ Christology: the humanity of Christ is not just the receptacle for some created graces , but is the holiness. As with Christ the holiness of the Church is visible sub contrario. (shrink)

At the time of his death in the autumn of 2017, Robert W. Jenson was arguably America's foremost theologian. Over the course of a career spanning more than five decades, much of Jenson's thought was dedicated to the theological description of how Scripture should be read-what has come to be called theological interpretation. In this rapidly expanding field of scholarship, Jenson has had an inordinate impact. Despite its importance, study of Jenson's theology of scriptural interpretation has (...) lagged, due in large part to the longevity of his career and volume of his output. In this book, all of Jenson's writings on Scripture and its interpretation have been collected for the first time. Here readers will be able to see the evolution of Jenson's thought on this topic, as well as the scope and intensity of his late-period engagement with it. Where other twentieth-century thinkers rely on non-theological, secular methods of scriptural investigation, Jenson is willing to let go of "respectability" for the sake of a truly Christian theological interpretation. The result is a genuinely free, intellectually invigorating exercise in reading and theory from one of the greatest theologians in the last century. (shrink)

In September 1950, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) dedicated its annual meeting to a "Golden Jubilee of Genetics" that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the rediscovery of Mendel's work. This program, originally intended as a small ceremony attached to the coattails of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) meeting, turned into a publicity juggernaut that generated coverage on Mendel and the accomplishments of Western genetics in countless newspapers and radio broadcasts. The Golden Jubilee merits historical attention as both (...) an intriguing instance of scientific commemoration and as an early example of Cold War political theatre. Instead of condemning either Lysenko or Soviet genetics, the Golden Jubilee would celebrate Mendel – and, not coincidentally, the practical achievements in plant and animal breeding his work had made possible. The American geneticists' focus on the achievements of Western genetics as both practical and theoretical, international, and, above all, non-ideological and non-controversial, was fully intended to demonstrate the success of the Western model of science to both the American public and scientists abroad at a key transition point in the Cold War. An implicit part of this article's argument, therefore, is the pervasive impact of the Cold War in unanticipated corners of postwar scientific culture. (shrink)

Adolescents today face the negative outcomes of climate change, and their pro-environmental behavior is crucial to mitigate these negative outcomes. Yet, we know little about what influences adolescents’ pro-environmental behavior. Research shows that people’s biospheric values and environmental self-identity, elicit personal norms to act environmentally friendly, which can induce a wide range of pro-environmental actions. Yet there is no evidence that these factors can influence pro-environmental behavior of adolescents, because this has only been studied for adults. Given that in adolescence, (...) values, identities and moral structures undergo intense development, the question is whether these factors can motivate adolescents to act pro-environmentally. To address this question, we have conducted three studies with adolescents in Lithuania (Study 1: N = 256; Study 2: N = 349; Study 3: N = 905). We found support that adolescents’ biospheric values and environmental self-identity were associated, via personal norms, with a wide range of pro-environmental behaviors, including recycling, environmentally friendly travelling, purchasing environmentally friendly goods and drinking tap water. Based on theory and the current findings, we suggest directions for policies aimed at promoting pro-environmental behavior of adolescents. (shrink)

Scientific and public discourses on the current mass extinction event tend to focus their attention on the decline of ‘species’ and ‘biodiversity’. Drawing on insights from the humanities, this article contends that the processes of extinction also produce a diverse range of subjects. Each of these subjects, it argues, raises specific ethical challenges and creates opportunities for cosmopolitical transformation. To explore this argument, the article engages with several subjects of extinction: ‘species’ and ‘biodiversity’; ‘humanity’; ‘unloved’ subjects; and absent or non-relational (...) subjects. In each case, it examines how attention to these subjects can highlight the exclusions and inequalities embedded in dominant discourses, and to identify possibilities for plural ethico-political responses to mass extinction. (shrink)

Je soutiens qu’Héraclite développe une théorie implicite de l’action : l’accomplissement réussi d’une action intentionnelle dépend de la compréhension du logos, qui constitue une explication causale de toutes les choses dans le cosmos. Mon analyse d’Héraclite repose principalement sur le concept de gnome, qui, comme j’entends le montrer, est une manifestation de la convergence entre la compréhension du logos et l’action intentionnelle. Gnome, qui permet au feu divin de guider « tout à travers tout » en B41, se compose de (...) trois éléments : la capacité à élaborer un plan, le plan lui-même, et son exécution. J’illustre comment l’échec à accomplir une action réussie résulte d’un déficit de gnome en mettant l’accent sur deux aspects particuliers : l’exécution et le plan. J’examine la relation entre la compréhension et le contrôle, ainsi que la manière dont le (manque de) contrôle physique affecte l’exécution d’un plan pour l’homme ivre en B117. J’étudie en outre comment la connaissance peut influencer la pertinence du plan lui-même en examinant les fragments d’Héraclite sur la religion. (shrink)

Under the leadership of Joshua Lederberg, some American biologists and chemists proposed exobiology as the most legitimate program for space research. These scientists used the fear of contamination—of earth and other planets—as a central argument for funding “nonpolitical,” “scientifically valid” experiments in extraterrestrial life detection. Exobiology's resemblance to popular science fiction narratives presented a significant challenge to its advocates' scientific authority. Its most practical applications, moreover, bore an unseemly resemblance to the United States Army's research on biological weapons. At the (...) same time that exobiologists wanted to use the media to attract support for their program, they had to monitor their statements carefully in order to maintain their view of exobiology as a peaceful, scientifically valid research program. In examining how exobiology's creators positioned their work in comparison to other space sciences as well as science fiction, this case study highlights how cultural and political imperatives entered science through practice and narrative during the Cold War. Since there are still so many unanswered scientific questions and problems all around us on earth, why should we start asking new questions and seeking out new problems in space? How can the results justify the costs?—“Introduction to Outer Space” (1958). (shrink)

‘Never just about language’ is a recurring theme that is powerfully embossed into this book. Cushing vividly plunges into the linkages of how the curation of standardised English functions as a mec...

For well over a millennium, public institutions have sought to limit the spread of disease. This article claims that shared political narratives about collective solidarity and belonging expressed in ideas about citizenship shape and constrain public health interventions. While a Sanitarian medical paradigm fit the mid-nineteenth-century British citizenship regime better than one based on limiting contagion by quarantine, full implementation of the “sanitary idea” had to wait upon adjustments after 1870 in the predominantly liberal citizenship regime, and particularly in the (...) institutions of governance and ideas about the responsibility mix. (shrink)

Ritual cannot be interpreted by a root metaphor of evolution, without reducing ritual's necessary intention. We must rather understand ritual as humanizing revolution. We have therefore two questions. First, What part does ritual have in human reckoning with reality? Second, What part does ritual have in the step to the specifically human? To the first question, the answer is proposed: ritual is that embodiment of our discourse with God and one another, by which we are made available and vulnerable to (...) reality. To the second question, the answer is proposed: as embodied prayer, ritual is the complement to that address of God which posits our ontologically specific humanity, Parodying Aristotle, we may say that we are the sacrificing animals. (shrink)

Karl Barth is recognized throughout the world as the twentieth century's leading Protestant theologian. His thought has determined much of the shape of today's Christian thinking, yet it is thoroughly misunderstood. He is a systematic theologian who writes with great complexity and in a scholastic vein. This fine and lucid study isolates Barth's most specific themes and focuses on the relevance of his radically trinitarian doctrine of God to the post-religious situation. The book opens with a discussion of the death (...) of historical religion and Barth's early attempts to deal with the decline of belief in a transcendent God contrasted with contemporary views of the situation. It goes on to treat Barth's further studies, especially his attack on the theology of religion, and there is a discussion in depth of Barth's doctrine of the Trinity as a definition of God. It concludes with an analysis of the different interpretations that can be have been made of Barth's theology. "This scholarly work . . . is a thoroughgoing approach to Barth's leading contribution to twentieth-century dialectical theology. Barth's insights are shown to be far beyond their time. Especially relevant is his application of God's transcendence to man's practical responsibilities. Readers may well ponder whether Barth's Commentary on Romans may not clearly merit more than its present place on well-respected shelves of past history." -Library Journal Robert W. Jenson is a leading American Lutheran theologian. He has taught at many institutions, including Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg, and Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. With Carl Braaten, he founded the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology in Northfield, Minnesota. He was a Senior Scholar for Research at the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, where he now resides. Among his many books are his two-volume Systematic Theology, Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings (with Eric Gritsch), and A Map of Twentieth-Century Theology (editor with Carl Braaten). (shrink)

If we desire God with everything in us, how can we also love our created neighbor? Gilbert Meilaender displays Dante’s Paradiso as a resolution of this ancient problem. Jenson admires the beauty of Dante-according-according-to-Meilaender, but proposes that it must be tweaked a little to be fully satisfactory.

I offer a new argument for the elimination of ‘beliefs’ from cognitive science based on Wimsatt’s concept of robustness and a related concept of fragility. Theoretical entities are robust if multiple independent means of measurement produce invariant results in detecting them. Theoretical entities are fragile when multiple independent means of detecting them produce highly variant results. I argue that sufficiently fragile theoretical entities do not exist. Recent studies in psychology show radical variance between what self-report and non-verbal behaviour indicate about (...) participants’ beliefs. This is evidence that ‘belief’ is fragile, and is thus a strong candidate for elimination. 1 Introduction2 Robustness and Fragility2.1 A historical example of robustness2.2 Fragility and elimination3 The Received View4 Evidence for the Fragility of Belief4.1 Contamination and fragility4.2 Implicit association tests and fragility5 Attempts to Preserve the Belief Category for Cognitive Science5.1 Beliefs and aliefs5.2 Contradictory beliefs5.3 In-between beliefs and the unity assumption5.4 Belief sub-classes5.5 Self-deception6 Alternative Mental States7 Conclusion. (shrink)

Value and responsibility are two central concepts in philosophy and bioethics. The articles that comprise this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy engage topics of moral injury, madness, transhumanism, cognitive enhancement, and the woman’s responsibility to assist her fetus. Clearly diverse in matter, these subject articles univocally present fruitful ground for engagement with contemporary questions that impact society today. The ability to cure or to enhance, to treat or to terminate through advances in medical technology are all actions (...) that come with personal and social responsibility for their consequences. By approaching each article through the dual lens of value and responsibility, the reader is challenged to think seriously about the values we hold as human persons and the responsibility we take to pursue and protect these values. (shrink)

Attempts to explain the authority of Scripture by theories of inspiration and inerrancy are futile. The authority of Scripture resides in its several actual functions, indispensable to Christian worship, thought, and life.

Should madness be recognized as grounds for identity? Should society recognize and validate madness as diversity, be it psychological, behavioral, or emotional? To answer these questions, we might turn to medical consensus about which mental, behavioral, or emotional states count as mental illness. Unfortunately, the criteria for determining which mental health phenomena fall within the boundary of mental illness remain open to debate, creating what is known as "the boundary problem." Common approaches to resolving the boundary problem include naturalism, a (...) position that aims to answer the problem by positing a scientific concept of disorder based on value-free judgments about species-typical functioning. In An... (shrink)

Dieser Aufsatz geht der Frage nach: Was wäre, wenn die Aussagen des Evangeliums nicht als Ausdruck religiöser Erfahrungen, als grammatische Regeln oder als Vorstellungen zu werten, sondern in einem ganz alltäglichen Sinne als wahr zu verstehen wären? Vor dem Hintergrund der Beobachtung, daß die Einheit der Wahrheit, die in der Neuzeit als Resultat einer einheitsschaffenden Tätigkeit des menschlichen Subjekts verstanden wird, in der christlichen Tradition als Konsequenz ihrer Begründung in der Einfachheit und Einzigkeit Gottes interpretiert wurde, geht der Verf. den (...) Implikationen des Wahrheitsanspruches des Evangeliums an drei Fallbeispielen nach. Wird die Schöpfungsaussage des Glaubensbekenntnisses in diesem Sinne interpretiert, erscheint die Schöpfung als Begründung und Vollendung der Geschichte alles Geschaffenen, als die »Meistererzählung«, innerhalb derer sich die »Erzählungen« der Kosmologie, der Evolution des Lebens und der soziopolitischen Geschichte als wahr oder falsch erweisen müssen. Menschliche Wirklichkeitsinterpretation und gestaltung in den Wissenschaften gewinnen so Grund, Maß und Ziel am Verständnis der Wirklichkeit als der Geschichte Gottes mit seiner Schöpfung. Ist die Aussage des Chalcedonense, der Sohn Gottes und Jesus von Nazareth sei »ein und dieselbe Person«, in diesem Sinne wahr, würde das eine gravierende Differenz für unser Gottes- und Wirklichkeitsverständnis konstituieren. Würde das Bekenntnis zum Geist als »Herr« und »Lebensspender« in diesem Sinne als faktisch wahr verstanden, hätte das zur Folge, daß z. B. die Vergebung als Tun des Geistes in einem radikalen Sinn als Eröffnung neuen Lebens verstanden werden müßte. Die Trinitätslehre wäre dann als »Summe des Evangeliums« die zusammenfassende Antwort auf die Frage: Was wäre, wenn das Evangelium ganz einfach wahr wäre? (shrink)

Matthew Lavine’s The First Atomic Age is intended as a corrective to what has by now become a familiar story of postwar US nuclear culture. The popular enthusiasm for and fear of all things nuclear, as described in such works as Paul Boyer’s By the Bomb’s Early Light , was not in fact a new development but rather a repeat of a phenomenon that first manifested half a century earlier. Working with newspapers, magazines, trade journals, advertisements, product labels, pulp fiction, (...) poetry, and scientific biography, Lavine unequivocally demonstrates the ubiquity of references to both X-rays and radiation in popular culture in the first half of the twentieth century. This, he argues, constitutes the “First Atomic Age”.Lavine divides the book into three long chapters according to how much the public might reasonably know about radiation and radioactivity. In the first period, the era of discovery, the lack of con .. (shrink)

A Theology in Outline: Can These Bones Live? began with an undergraduate course taught by Robert W. Jenson at Princeton University in the spring of 2008. Based on a series of twenty-three course lectures, it offers a concise and accessible overview of Christian theology while retaining the atmosphere of Jenson's classroom. Much as does Jenson's Systematic Theology, A Theology in Outline treats a standard sequence of doctrines in Christian theology--God, Trinity, creation, humanity, sin, salvation, church, among others. (...) However, its organizing principle and leitmotiv are less traditional. Reflecting his recent interest in theological interpretation of scripture, Jenson frames the whole of Christian theology as a response to the question posed to the prophet Ezekiel: "Son of man, can these bones live?" For Jenson, to ask this question is to ask whether Christian theology itself is a pile of dead bones. Can the story that God lives with his people be told today? From first to last the chapters of this book proceed under the impelling pressure of this question. They thus comprise a single sequence of illustrative conversations for the purpose of introducing beginners to Christian theology. (shrink)

Systematic Theology is the capstone of Robert Jenson's long and distinguished career as a theologian, being a full-scale systematic/dogmatic theology in the classic format. The two volumes are dedicated to the service of the one church of the creeds, and not to any particular denomination.

There is no one New Testament interpretation of baptism, but there is one New testament way of interpreting baptism. Its structural characteristics should inform our own gospel-interpretation of baptism.

Five different Latin American experiences help us to understand the impacts of corporate social responsibility on communities. We focus on communities composed of low-income populations to compare types of interventions, their main characteristics, spaces for community participation, and some results and impacts. Some of the findings indicate that (a) a company’s enlightened self-interest in its CSR program ensures its commitment to the program and the program’s sustainability; (b) community involvement from the outset in defining a project increases the probability of (...) success, since corporations cannot assume they understand the needs of a community by taking them at face value; (c) projects do not create untenable expectations in local communities when they consider the whole life cycle and the sustainability of the investment after an appropriate exit strategy is executed; and (d) financial resources are only part of the equation because corporations can have enormous impacts with limited financing if programs are well defined and supported. (shrink)

Invoking three desiderata (empirical adequacy, conceptual precision, and sensitivity to social positioning), this paper argues that poverty is best understood as the deprivation of certain human capabilities. It defends this way of conceiving of poverty against standard alternatives: lack of income, lack of resources, inequality, and social exclusion.