This article proposes that Calvin's ‘hardness of heart’ principle functions as a substantive limitation on political authority and the law, creating the legal space for meaningful moral pluralism. Calvin distinguished between the spiritual and civil uses of the law, as well as between the natural moral law and the civil law within the Mosaic law. He repeatedly used Jesus' concept of ‘hardness of heart’ to explain inadequacies within the Mosaic law and to articulate a general principle about the nature and limits of civil law. This approach has important implications for law and morality in contemporary contexts characterised by a degree of moral pluralism that Calvin scarcely could have anticipated.

Studies of the Rahab story in Joshua illustrate how, as interpreters, we can read our interests and convictions into a text, allow it no room to protest that it did not have these interests or convictions, and give it no opportunity conversely to question the interests and convictions that we bring to it as interpreters. This raises the question whether we actually want to discover things from texts or whether we simply want to provide illustrations of and support for what we think already.

The question of ecology is fundamentally a question of relatedness. Is the Christian tradition, at once incarnational and other-worldly, responsible for the ecological crisis? This article examines the position of Bonaventure whose unique theological-philosophical synthesis leads to a new understanding of created reality, which I term ‘kataphysics’. The foundation of kataphysics begins with Bonaventure's understanding of philosophy as a heteronymous discipline, insofar as philosophy is completed and perfected in theology. From this position he develops an understanding of Being as Goodness based on the Trinity. Bonaventure's integral relationship between Trinity and creation leads to an understanding of created reality as essentially good and intrinsically relational. The integral relation between Trinity and creation through the divine Word gives rise to a theological metaphysics; the metaphysical question becomes the christological question and hence a new understanding of created reality, kataphysics, emerges which involves relatedness. It is suggested that kataphysics undergirds a Christian philosophy of nature which has implications for an ecological stance today.

The notion of human commonness was a key interest of the nineteenth-century theologian-statesman Abraham Kuyper. As an orthodox Calvinist, Kuyper accepted the division of humankind into the categories of ‘elect’ and ‘non-elect’, but he was also convinced that this way of classifying human beings failed to account for the positive contributions of non-Christians. As a political leader, Kuyper was also concerned to enlist his fellow Calvinists in the quest for justice in the larger society and specifically focused on the ways in which Christian worship can nurture a sense of shared humanness that extends beyond the walls of the church. In our contemporary setting, where our loss of an emphasis on a shared humanness is becoming widespread, Kuyper's effort to ground human solidarity in the practices of worship has much to commend it.

Contemporary Catholic and Protestant theology has transposed the scientific debate on time into an eschatological discussion about subjective time and objective time. This discussion can be made intelligible in the context of modern cosmology if we allow contemporary eschatology to be transformed by a pneumatological approach to time. In the self-giving of the Holy Spirit into time, the ‘wheel of history’ is identical with the eschatological arrow of history. This is exemplified in a theology of the cross which locates the eternal power of the cross not in the human act of anamnesis by recalling in the present Christ's sacrifice as an event of the past, but in the Holy Spirit who liberates Christ's historical sacrifice on the cross from its temporal coordinates and propels the redemptive act throughout time towards any person in history. A pneumatological approach to time suggests that eschatology is determined not only by the end and the consummation of the present in the future but also by the perpetuation of the present moment through the power of God unfolding in time in the operation of the Holy Spirit. If it can be shown that this is true not only for a theology of the cross, then it may be possible to say, in general, that the unique finality and collective character of God's work of salvation at any moment in history is made possible by the perpetuating work of the Holy Spirit as the eternal lord of time and history.

Since at least the time of Albert Schweitzer's attempt to move justification from die Mitte to the margins, the question of the centre of Paul's theology has included a criticism of the Reformation's classification of justification as ‘the lord, ruler, and judge’ of theology. For the reformers, however, this designation is not so much a claim about the centrality of the vocabulary of justification as it is a claim about the grammar of the gospel: justification, because it is articulated as an antithesis, says both what the gospel is not and what the gospel is. With this understanding of the theological function of justification in view, the role of justification in Paul's letter to the Galatians can be reconsidered: the antithetical grammar of justification is a critical and hermeneutical criterion in Galatians, both identifying and negating the ‘other gospel’ even as it picks out and proclaims ‘the gospel of Christ’.

Throughout his life, Augustine faced the charge that, despite his apparent conversion to the orthodox Christian faith of the Catholic Church, his thought nonetheless retained vestiges of his roughly ten-year sojourn with the Manichees. No one was more relentless in this accusation than Augustine's Pelagian nemesis of his twilight years, Julian of Eclanum. Throughout most of church history, Augustine's reputation was little troubled by these allegations of crypto-Manichaeism. However, over the last century or so, the charge has once again taken on life. This article begins with a brief orientation to some of the main philosophical and theological tenets of Manichaeism, with an emphasis on those elements that will be important for assessing the Augustine question. Next, the history of the accusation that the Christian Augustine remained, in important if unconscious ways, a crypto-Manichaean will be traced from the time of Augustine to the present. Finally, one methodological direction in which an eventual resolution to this long-standing question may lie will be considered.

I am grateful to John Perry for his deft and illuminating review, which nudges in productive ways at the unity and shape of the story I have told in Putting on Virtue. In brief, Perry reads my book as a defence of Christian eudaimonism against charges of hypocrisy. He judges the defence to be a success, but suggests that I am conflating two distinct issues, only one of which is helpfully construed as hypocrisy. As a result of this conflation, I end up including topics and thinkers which don't properly belong under the same umbrella, and failing to do justice to those that do. I overlook the significance of the journey metaphor for Augustine's construal of pagan virtue, and so miss some of his most valuable resources for coming to terms with the character of all virtue in via. Furthermore, while Luther might appear to be the villain of my narrative, Perry argues that in fact he hardly deserves a place in it. Luther's rejection of eudaimonism is so complete that he doesn't really contribute at all to an ongoing conversation about it; his real concern is justification, with an unfortunate spillover into the foreign territory of ethics. It is Hume, Perry proposes, who is the proper villain, undermining the eudaemonist tradition by unashamedly setting aside the task of differentiating objective goods from subjective goods.

A colleague commented that it is difficult to give a clear brief summary of Eccentric Existence because it has so many moving parts. That's fair, and for that reason Tom Greggs offers not a précis but, as he says, a ‘tour’ of EE. I am grateful to him for this perceptive, perspicuous and generous tour of the book's premises and conclusions. I want to address as best I can here Greggs's several ‘unsystematic probes’. The probes seem to me to fall into two broad groups, one raising formal or methodological concerns and the other substantive concerns. I shall begin with the first group, taking them up in more or less the order in which they were made.

The renaissance of virtue ethics in Christian moral discourse has led a handful of Reformed theologians to consider whether or not the Reformed tradition is compatible with classical and medieval concepts of virtue. Barthians, in particular, express doubt regarding the prospect of such a retrieval, arguing that classical notions of virtue compromise the Reformed hallmark of divine sovereignty and Luther's dictum simul justus et peccator. This essay counters that the Reformed tradition is broad enough to find more productive ways to engage virtue ethics. In particular, the Westminster Standards provide both the formal space for a significant theological exploration of human agency and the material content for the development of something like a classical virtue ethic. Barthian concerns regarding divine sovereignty and moral progress are satisfied by a demonstration that Westminster's attention to human agency is always within the context of a greater emphasis on divine agency.

Gregory Nazianzen spoke of a suffering Christ ‘who became weak for us’ in the context of an oration, On Love of the Poor, which dealt at length with the extreme suffering the lepers had endured. The outcasts of the ancient world, lepers figured prominently in Jesus’ ministry as recorded in the Gospels. By juxtaposing their human suffering with divine weakness, Gregory implied that Christ had suffered with the lepers. The comparison not only gave meaning to the human experience of suffering, it also explored the extent of Christ's suffering in the divine economy. There was no affliction too grotesque for Christ to have assumed.

Throughout his life, Gregory developed a notion of collective suffering which is relevant to understanding the magnitude of the suffering of Christ. It made the limitless suffering of humanity seem manageable and contained. It normalised the overwhelming sense of misery by expanding individual suffering into the suffering of the group, the suffering of the group into the suffering of neighbours and finally the suffering of neighbours into the collective suffering of the body of Christ. Christ then experienced the fullness of the human condition as the head of this body.

The lepers served a purpose in this vision of collective suffering. By making the lepers a synecdoche for all human suffering, Gregory allowed Christ to assume their misery without his listeners having to imagine Christ suffering every aspect of their physical and emotional distress. This transference of collective suffering to the body of Christ worked in the following way: the individual suffering of the leper flowed into the collective suffering of the group, which connected with, and was incorporated into, the collective suffering of the Christian body. The result was a relationship of mutual imitation between Christ and humanity. It implied that human beings suffered with Christ, and that Christ suffered with human beings.

By integrating literary techniques and contexts into theological analysis, this article examines the various ways in which Gregory construed the suffering of Christ.

How do a generous orthodoxy and contemporary feminist theology relate and work together, if at all? Can feminist theology have something to say to a generous orthodoxy other than blatant critique? Orthodoxy is seen as that view expressed in the rule of faith as early as Irenaeus and Tertullian, and is a constellation of beliefs which link Creator with Christ, OT with NT, and which employs the interpretation of scripture ‘according to itself’. A definition of generous orthodoxy means a Christ-like submission to the Other, and reasoning about God, three in one, through meditation on the scriptures and tradition of the church such that one's soul is turned to praise. A simple definition of feminist theology is ‘the radical notion that women are people too’ (so Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Sharing Her Word: Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Context, 1998). Can these two ways of envisioning the theological task work together, and if so, to what extent? With key doctrines and concepts of feminist theology such as patriarchy, women's experience, feminist consciousness, one questions the fit between orthodoxy and feminist theology, but of course this is purposefully so on the basis of feminist principles and dogmas. We will examine and compare the construction of sin, Christology and the trinity in feminist theologies and generously orthodox theologies to clarify the discussion.

The broad contours of Augustine's critique of Stoic virtue theory in De civitate dei 19.4 finds a fascinating analogue in Theodor Adorno's theory of immanent critique: Augustine ‘enters’ into Stoic virtue theory and criticises it from its own postulates, illustrating the striking implausibility of Stoic orthodoxy when lived out in concreto and the absurd, but logical, conclusions to which one is necessarily carried by Stoic ethics. Through this deconstruction, Augustine clears a space to propose his own virtue ethic. Augustine maintains that a Stoic virtue ethic fails to deliver on its promised eudaimonistic ends because it lacks a robust eschatological vision. For Augustine, the Christian faith offers a more viable virtue ethic.

This paper offers a reading of two representative texts – the 1917 lecture ‘Die neue Welt in der Bibel’ and the preface to the first Römerbrief – that seeks to highlight the theological basis of Barth's early characterisation of the task of biblical interpretation. It further suggests that by describing the engagement of the contemporary reader with scripture in terms drawn from the text itself, Barth makes a distinctive and still relevant contribution to church's attempt to account for its reading practices.

Modern conversations between the natural sciences and theology on the human soul have not so far engaged extensively with relevant debates in the early church. Contemporary neuroscience tends to operate within a monistic paradigm, often referred to as ‘physicalism’, that understands human mental activity entirely in naturalistic terms. While there is ongoing scientific debate about the degree to which human consciousness can be reduced entirely to biology, physicalism is often cited as making traditional religious belief in the soul obsolete, or at least modifying it significantly. The Apollinarian question of whether Jesus has a soul therefore reappears. This article considers the contemporary relevance of the Apollinarian controversy, suggesting that fourth-century insights possess key points of contact with the modern non-reductive physicalist position and thus raising important considerations for the science–theology conversation on the soul.

Contrary to what might be expected from such a thinker, Jonathan Edwards was restrained in conversation with the Reformed debate about the order of the divine decrees, known as the infralapsarian/supralapsarian debate. I will address Edwards's caution regarding this particular debate: first, by tracing the contours of the broader Reformed debate on the divine decrees and its evolution from engagement of Arminian theology to that of theodicy; second, by noting where Edwards does not speak to this debate and exegeting the few passages where he does take it up; third, by analysing the particular questions that Edwards addresses when he does engage the debate; fourth, by pointing to constructive lessons gained by understanding why a careful thinker might be atypically silent. I will demonstrate that Edwards engaged the lapsarian debate insofar as was necessary to rebuke the Arminian denial of unconditional election, yet he refused to engage the debate as a means of articulating a theodicy. In both his engagement and disengagement, Edwards refused to answer the debate on its standard terms and offers an example of carefully crafting doctrine according to theological and contextual concerns.