Covenant and Communication: A Christian Moral Conversation with Jürgen Habermas

by Hak Joon Lee

In dialogue with Jürgen Habermas's communicative ethics, Covenant and Communication constructively explores a covenantal-communicative model of Christian ethics. Hak Joon Lee analyzes themes of freedom, equality, and reciprocity in Habermas's theory of communication from the perspective of Reformed Christian doctrines of covenant and the Trinity. This reconstruction of Christian ethics based upon communicative rationality has profound implications for the reinterpretation of Christianity and its relationship with liberal political institutions. It offers fresh perspectives on important Christian theological concepts, such as divine economy, church, communion, conscience, law and gospel, and the social sphere. A communicative ethics rooted in a rich Christian spiritual tradition provides new energies for the kind of revitalization of democracy and human rights advocated by Habermas against the colonizing power of money and bureaucracy. This work tests its plausibility in dialogue with contemporary theories of Christian ethics, such as narrative ethics, Catholic human rights theory, and liberation ethics.

250 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2006

About the author

Hak Joon Lee is Professor of Theology and Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Lee’s research focuses on covenant, public theology, global ethics, and Asian American theology and ethics. He has also centered much of his attention on the ethics and spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr.