There are religious and philosophical versions of the thesis that AIDS is a punishment for homosexual behaviour. It is argued here that the religious version is seriously incomplete. Because of this incompleteness and because of the indeterminacies that ordinarily attend religious argumentation, it is concluded that the claim may be set aside as unconvincing. Homosexual behaviour is then judged for its morality against utilitarian, deontological, and natural law theories of ethics. It is argued that such behaviour involves no impediment to (...) important moral goals and is not therefore immoral. Where natural law might be used to condemn homosexual behaviour, it is argued that the theory itself is not well established. Consequently there is a prima facie reason for rejecting the philosophical version of the punishment thesis. This conclusion is further supported by noting the lack of proportion between the purported immorality of homosexuality and a punishment as devastating as AIDS. (shrink)

Theologies may be divided into two distinct types which, for the purpose of this essay, may be called ‘interactionist’ and ‘dualist’. By an interactionist theology I mean one in which God is thought of as interacting closely with the world of nature and history without being confused with it, and by a dualist theology I mean one in which God is thought of as separated from the world of nature and history by a measure of deistic distance. Obviously there are (...) degrees of closeness and distance, while their extremes tend to pass over into each other. Thus a theology in which God is thought of as so transcendentally other that he cannot be the ‘object’ of our knowledge, as in the thought of Schleiermacher, can only acquire content through constructions out of our immanent religious consciousness. Nevertheless a working distinction between interactionist and dualist theologies may serve a useful purpose in helping us to get into the heart of the problem. (shrink)

A dominant force behind the Canadian nationalist movement of the 1970s, Grants books today help us understand the implications of globalization.