Casuistry is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending abstract rules from a particular case,and reapplying those rules to new instances. This method occurs in applied ethics and jurisprudence. The term is also used pejoratively to criticise the use of clever but unsound reasoning,especially in relation to ethical questions. It has been defined as follows:
Study of cases of conscience and a method of solving conflicts of obligations by applying general principles of ethics,religion,and moral theology to particular and concrete cases of human conduct. This frequently demands an extensive knowledge of natural law and equity,civil law,ecclesiastical precepts,and an exceptional skill in interpreting these various norms of conduct....
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American Reformed theologian,ethicist,commentator on politics and public affairs,and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of America's leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. A public theologian,he wrote and spoke frequently about the intersection of religion,politics,and public policy,with his most influential books including Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man.
The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) is a consortium of eight private independent American theological schools and eleven centers and affiliates. Seven of the theological schools are located in Berkeley,California. The GTU was founded in 1962 and their students can take courses at the University of California,Berkeley. Additionally,some of the GTU consortial schools are part of other California universities such as Santa Clara University and California Lutheran University. Most of the GTU consortial schools are located in the Berkeley area with the majority north of the campus in a neighborhood known as "Holy Hill" due to the cluster of GTU seminaries and centers located there.
Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge,Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion,government,and service. It also caters to students from other Harvard schools that are interested in the former field. HDS is among a small group of university-based,non-denominational divinity schools in the United States.
Liberal Christianity,also known as liberal theology and historically as Christian Modernism,is a movement that interprets Christian teaching by prioritizing modern knowledge,science and ethics. It emphasizes the importance of reason and experience over doctrinal authority. Liberal Christians view their theology as an alternative to both atheistic rationalism and theologies based on traditional interpretations of external authority,such as the Bible or sacred tradition.
Stanley Martin Hauerwas is an American Protestant theologian,ethicist,and public intellectual. Hauerwas originally taught at the University of Notre Dame before moving to Duke University. Hauerwas was a longtime professor at Duke,serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law. In the fall of 2014,he also assumed a chair in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen. Hauerwas is considered by many to be one of the world's most influential living theologians and was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001. He was also the first American theologian to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in over forty years. His work is frequently read and debated by scholars in fields outside of religion or ethics,such as political philosophy,sociology,history,and literary theory. Hauerwas has achieved notability outside of academia as a public intellectual,even appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
John Edmund Hare is a British classicist,philosopher,ethicist,and currently the Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University.
Richard Bevan Braithwaite was an English philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science,ethics,and the philosophy of religion.
Nancey Murphy is an American philosopher and theologian who is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary,Pasadena,CA. She received the B.A. from Creighton University in 1973,the Ph.D. from University of California,Berkeley in 1980,and the Th.D. from the Graduate Theological Union (theology) in 1987.
Catholic moral theology is a major category of doctrine in the Catholic Church,equivalent to a religious ethics. Moral theology encompasses Catholic social teaching,Catholic medical ethics,sexual ethics,and various doctrines on individual moral virtue and moral theory. It can be distinguished as dealing with "how one is to act",in contrast to dogmatic theology which proposes "what one is to believe".
Peter W. Ochs is the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia,where he has served since 1997. He is an influential thinker whose interests include Jewish philosophy and theology,modern and postmodern philosophical theology,pragmatism,and semiotics. Ochs coined the term "scriptural reasoning" and is the co-founder of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning,which promotes interfaith dialog among Christians,Jews,and Muslims through scriptural study groups. He is also a co-founder of the Children of Abraham Institute,which promotes interfaith study and dialog among members of the Abrahamic religions.
Christians have had diverse attitudes towards violence and nonviolence over time. Both currently and historically,there have been four attitudes towards violence and war and four resulting practices of them within Christianity:non-resistance,Christian pacifism,just war,and preventive war. In the Roman Empire,the early church adopted a nonviolent stance when it came to war because the imitation of Jesus's sacrificial life was preferable to it. The concept of "Just War",the belief that limited uses of war were acceptable,originated in the writings of earlier non-Christian Roman and Greek thinkers such as Cicero and Plato. Later,this theory was adopted by Christian thinkers such as St Augustine,who like other Christians,borrowed much of the just war concept from Roman law and the works of Roman writers like Cicero. Even though "Just War" concept was widely accepted early on,warfare was not regarded as a virtuous activity and expressing concern for the salvation of those who killed enemies in battle,regardless of the cause for which they fought,was common. Concepts such as "Holy war",whereby fighting itself might be considered a penitential and spiritually meritorious act,did not emerge before the 11th century.
James M. Gustafson was an American theological ethicist.
M. Cathleen Kaveny is an American legal scholar and theologian. She is the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology at Boston College. She holds a joint appointment at both the Law School and Department of Theology at Boston College,the first person to hold a faculty appointment in two schools at that university.
Dennis P. McCann is the Wallace M. Alston Professor of Bible and Religion at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta/Decatur,Georgia,where he teaches in the fields of religious social ethics,comparative religious ethics,philosophy of religion,and Catholic studies. Before his tenure at Agnes Scott College beginning in 1999,McCann was Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. In 1992 he was named the first annual holder of the Wicklander Chair in Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul University.
Mark Douglas is a professor of Christian ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary and he is known for his work on religious language in the public sphere,medical and business ethics,the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism,the environment,just war and pacifism,and the role of religion in political philosophy.
Judaeo-Christian ethics is a supposed value system common to Jews and Christians. It was first described in print in 1941 by English writer George Orwell. The idea that Judaeo-Christian ethics underpin American politics,law and morals has been part of the "American civil religion" since the 1940s. In recent years,the phrase has been associated with American conservatism,but the concept—though not always the exact phrase—has frequently featured in the rhetoric of leaders across the political spectrum,including that of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Mark D. Jordan is a scholar of Christian theology,European philosophy,and gender studies. He is currently the Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of the Studies of Women,Gender,and Sexuality in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Anna L. Peterson is an American scholar of religious studies who is currently a professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida,where she has worked since 1993. Her research variously concerns religion in Latin America and ethics—including religious ethics,Christian ethics,environmental ethics,animal ethics and social ethics. She is the sole or co-author of seven monographs:Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion;Being Human;Seeds of the Kingdom;Everyday Ethics and Social Change;Being Animal;Works Righteousness;and Cats and Conservationists.
Geoffrey Claussen is an American rabbi and scholar who serves as a professor of Religious Studies at Elon University. His scholarship focuses on Jewish ethics,theology,and the Musar movement.
