Robert P. George: the Thomistic Catholic scholar behind the Manhattan Declaration
NYTimes: The Conservative-Christian Big Thinker
His scholarship has earned him accolades from religious and secular institutions alike. In one notable week two years ago, he received invitations to deliver prestigious lectures at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Harvard Law School.
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that’s interesting, thanks for finding it
- Explains and exposes the Catholic thought behind the Manhattan Declaration
- That he would be a speaker at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary explains (perhaps) the Mohler / “Manhattan Declaration” link
- Highlights (perhaps) one of the key differences between a Conservative Evangelical and a Fundamentalist. No Fundamentalist seminary would have him speak on campus but Southern Baptist Theological Seminary would
Are you suggesting that Fundamentalists can’t have Catholics speak on the campuses (or haven’t)? That seems odd, to say the least, especially for an academic lecture series.
SBTS has tons of diverse academics speak, qua academics, in their academic lecture series. The kind of mentality you seem to suggest Fundies should have is one reason our educational standards are not as high as others. Not being able to distinguish academic functions from church ones is a pretty gross blindness in my view, especially for an academic institution.
Moreover, I don’t think it “exposes” anything if that term has the negative connotation in your usage that it usually has. Natural law ethics is nor somehow uniquely Catholic or dependent upon Catholic theological presuppositions, and this is especially and obviously (did you read about George’s position?!) the case with George. The whole idea of “natural law” tradition being distinctively Catholic or Protestant is by definition absurd because it would undermine the entire point of natural law theory. The only way to argue otherwise would be a particularly gross application of the genetic fallacy, and even this would fail because there are Protestant natural law theorists (e.g. Grotius to name only one).
SBTS has tons of diverse academics speak, qua academics, in their academic lecture series. The kind of mentality you seem to suggest Fundies should have is one reason our educational standards are not as high as others. Not being able to distinguish academic functions from church ones is a pretty gross blindness in my view, especially for an academic institution.
Moreover, I don’t think it “exposes” anything if that term has the negative connotation in your usage that it usually has. Natural law ethics is nor somehow uniquely Catholic or dependent upon Catholic theological presuppositions, and this is especially and obviously (did you read about George’s position?!) the case with George. The whole idea of “natural law” tradition being distinctively Catholic or Protestant is by definition absurd because it would undermine the entire point of natural law theory. The only way to argue otherwise would be a particularly gross application of the genetic fallacy, and even this would fail because there are Protestant natural law theorists (e.g. Grotius to name only one).
Re:
http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/
Are you suggesting that Fundamentalists can’t have Catholics speak on the campuses (or haven’t)?I did not suggest that. But consider that aside from perhaps Pat Buchanan at BJU (http://www.gwu.edu/~action/buch091800.html), and his being in a political role, I’m not aware of Catholics speaking at Fundamentalist institutions. Whether they should or not would be a good debate.
SBTS has tons of diverse academics speak, qua academics, in their academic lecture series. The kind of mentality you seem to suggest Fundies should have is one reason our educational standards are not as high as others. Not being able to distinguish academic functions from church ones is a pretty gross blindness in my view, especially for an academic institution.I probably agree with most of your point. I don’t think I suggested a mentality of the rightness or wrongness of George speaking at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The whole idea of “natural law” tradition being distinctively Catholic or Protestant is by definition absurd because it would undermine the entire point of natural law theory.I don’t think I said that. I noted that he is a Catholic and he wrote it. The Manhattan Declaration is ecumenical (as others have noted)
http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/
Christians … We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them.
Sometimes I think the academic distinction is overplayed… as though what one has to say academically can be entirely separated from what he has to say generally or what his actions generally teach.
I’ll grant that there is room for some slack there with appropriate disclaimers either understood or stated, but personally, if I operated an educational institution of a conservative evangelical/fundamentalist sort, I’m not sure I could get past my personal antipathy toward Romanism to have speakers from that POV in front of students. I guess it would depend on what their topic is and what their relationship with RCC is.
Speaking to a class on a very narrow topic is not the same as a general address to an entire student body.
I would not have a RC champion of social ethics come and speak to the student body on what we all ought to be doing as Christians in society, that’s for sure. This would probably qualify as a “Fundamentalist distinctive,” since we’d be drawing lines here that conservative evangelicals in general would not see the need to draw.
I’ll grant that there is room for some slack there with appropriate disclaimers either understood or stated, but personally, if I operated an educational institution of a conservative evangelical/fundamentalist sort, I’m not sure I could get past my personal antipathy toward Romanism to have speakers from that POV in front of students. I guess it would depend on what their topic is and what their relationship with RCC is.
Speaking to a class on a very narrow topic is not the same as a general address to an entire student body.
I would not have a RC champion of social ethics come and speak to the student body on what we all ought to be doing as Christians in society, that’s for sure. This would probably qualify as a “Fundamentalist distinctive,” since we’d be drawing lines here that conservative evangelicals in general would not see the need to draw.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Aaron,
I understand your attitude and perspective, but I they it would change drastically if you were, like me, someone who had concerns in certain areas (in my case, intellectual and cultural), in which the Catholic contribution is simply incredible and incommensurate with anything Protestants have done; there are a number of areas where Catholics have been far more nourishing to my soul and mind than any Protestant, and there are even certain areas of the intellectual life in which Catholics really are the only place to turn for rich, Christian reflection.
Narrowness is hardly always blameworthy; I’m incredibly narrow on a huge range of issues and concerns for which I don’t think I should be reproached. So I think part of your attitude comes from a different set of concerns than what people like me have. Narrowness on the level of specific things, which is entailed by our being finite, can lead, however, to a kind of higher-order narrowness, in which we enshrine the limitations of our perspective into a norm that applies without respecting the contribution of others who are not narrow in the same ways we are.
I am by no means of accusing you of this, although you mention something that provides a good example: educators, ideally, are not narrow in the specific intellectual areas in which they work, and they are therefore more qualified to discern something like the Catholic contribution to an intellectual area, etc. At a minimum, educational institutions should rate the beliefs of the professional educators very highly on these issues. This speaks to the autonomy mentioned in the recent series you posted on the church and colleges. Pastors can often have very narrow conceptions of what it significant about a group, like Roman Catholicism, which are justified, so far as their judgments are restricted to their own justified positions and not extended in a way that assumes greater knowledge and sympathy than they have. Similarly, professors or laypeople can have very narrow views of what the pastorate is like - and just as pastors appreciate people recognizing how significant what they don’t know about their job and areas of concern is, and how different their viewpoint and sympathies might be if they themselves were pastors, so academics and educators appreciate the same recognition of the significance of ignorance as a limiting factor in judgement from those outside of their areas.
I think this could have salutary applications to the issue of Catholics speaking at Protestant universities.
I understand your attitude and perspective, but I they it would change drastically if you were, like me, someone who had concerns in certain areas (in my case, intellectual and cultural), in which the Catholic contribution is simply incredible and incommensurate with anything Protestants have done; there are a number of areas where Catholics have been far more nourishing to my soul and mind than any Protestant, and there are even certain areas of the intellectual life in which Catholics really are the only place to turn for rich, Christian reflection.
Narrowness is hardly always blameworthy; I’m incredibly narrow on a huge range of issues and concerns for which I don’t think I should be reproached. So I think part of your attitude comes from a different set of concerns than what people like me have. Narrowness on the level of specific things, which is entailed by our being finite, can lead, however, to a kind of higher-order narrowness, in which we enshrine the limitations of our perspective into a norm that applies without respecting the contribution of others who are not narrow in the same ways we are.
I am by no means of accusing you of this, although you mention something that provides a good example: educators, ideally, are not narrow in the specific intellectual areas in which they work, and they are therefore more qualified to discern something like the Catholic contribution to an intellectual area, etc. At a minimum, educational institutions should rate the beliefs of the professional educators very highly on these issues. This speaks to the autonomy mentioned in the recent series you posted on the church and colleges. Pastors can often have very narrow conceptions of what it significant about a group, like Roman Catholicism, which are justified, so far as their judgments are restricted to their own justified positions and not extended in a way that assumes greater knowledge and sympathy than they have. Similarly, professors or laypeople can have very narrow views of what the pastorate is like - and just as pastors appreciate people recognizing how significant what they don’t know about their job and areas of concern is, and how different their viewpoint and sympathies might be if they themselves were pastors, so academics and educators appreciate the same recognition of the significance of ignorance as a limiting factor in judgement from those outside of their areas.
I think this could have salutary applications to the issue of Catholics speaking at Protestant universities.
Joseph… I don’t think I disagree with that. When you’re talking about an institution that has been around for well over a thousand years—and for many of those years there was virtually nothing else “Christian,”—you’re going to want to study whatever of value was produced in connection w/it during those years. But I would repeat…
In this particular case, it’s not like there aren’t any protestant experts of great stature in Thomistic studies or natural law.
[Aaron Blumer]…it would depend on what their topic is and what their relationship with RCC is.
Speaking to a class on a very narrow topic is not the same as a general address to an entire student body.
I would not have a RC champion of social ethics come and speak to the student body on what we all ought to be doing as Christians in society, that’s for sure. This would probably qualify as a “Fundamentalist distinctive,” since we’d be drawing lines here that conservative evangelicals in general would not see the need to draw.
In this particular case, it’s not like there aren’t any protestant experts of great stature in Thomistic studies or natural law.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Discussion