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Natural Law and Evangelical Political Thought
Natural law has long been a cornerstone of Christian political thought, providing moral norms that ground law in a shareable account of human goods and obligations. Despite this history, twentieth and twenty-first-century evangelicals have proved quite reticent to embrace natural law, casting it as a relic of scholastic Roman Catholicism that underestimates the import of scripture and the division between Christians and non-Christians. As recent critics have noted, this reluctance has posed significant problems for the coherence and completeness of evangelical political reflections. Responding to evangelically-minded thinkers’ increasing calls for a re-engagement with natural law, this volume explores the problems and prospects attending evangelical rapprochement with natural law. Many of the chapters are optimistic about an evangelical re-appropriation of natural law, but note ways in which evangelical commitments might lend distinctive shape to this engagement.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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July 7, 2017
A fine collection of decent essays, though not spectacular. Most of them focus on one or two key theologians from history to explore and interact with - Karl Barth, for instance, or Augustine of Hippo, or Thomas Aquinas, or Abraham Kuyper... one gets the picture.
The book presents a thorough and quite persuasive defense for a positive evangelical approach to natural law, with obvious implications for political engagement. But none of the essays really attempt to illustrate how that might look - they talk about natural law (or, more particularly, about people talking about natural law!), but do not here put it into practice.
Still, there were some highlights. A few of the authors engaged in splendid critiques of John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas, and that was, as always, a delight. And David VanDrunen's chapter was one of the better ones.
The book presents a thorough and quite persuasive defense for a positive evangelical approach to natural law, with obvious implications for political engagement. But none of the essays really attempt to illustrate how that might look - they talk about natural law (or, more particularly, about people talking about natural law!), but do not here put it into practice.
Still, there were some highlights. A few of the authors engaged in splendid critiques of John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas, and that was, as always, a delight. And David VanDrunen's chapter was one of the better ones.
Displaying 1 of 1 review