Brian Clayton

This work arises out of the efforts of two college teachers to explain to their beginning students how believing and reasoning are two human activities that may be integrated to form a complete Christian view of human existence. Two Wings takes its title from the opening of John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio, which speaks of how the human spirit rises on the two wings of faith and reason to stretch toward truth. The book offers a basic yet engaging encounter with traditional arguments for and against God's existence, including such troubling topics as the question of evil and Christian belief. It also grapples in non-technical language with arguments arising from the encounter between contemporary natural science and traditional Christian theology. These chapters include accessible discussions of the implications of Big Bang cosmology, arguments from design, and Darwinian evolution. The final chapters of the book take up questions from ethics and politics that impact decisions on how we should structure our lives in light of the engagement between faith and reason. This book is non-dogmatic; it seeks to probe and question the contours of the problems involved in the debate. It addresses arguments supporting and opposing its own viewpoint, and abounds in analogies designed to speak to non-specialists. Today even Christians who do not work in academic environments need to be familiar with such philosophical and theological arguments. Two Wings provides the best available starting point for their efforts to engage with confidence the contemporary situation of Christian believers because it arises directly from the questions of the inquisitive.

Every political theory contains a conception of human nature. Such a conception can become the source of significant and unrecognized normative constraints. The importance of these claims is heightened by the fact that the meaningfulness and utility of the concept of human nature has been frequently denied. This work first attempts to defend the concept of human nature against the charge of meaninglessness. It then attempts to defend against the preemption of the concept by the sciences, especially sociobiology. The utility of the concept of human nature is pursued by examining the role of conceptions of human nature in particular political theories. ;Two case studies are provided to illustrate both the presence of conceptions of human nature in diverse political theories and the usefulness of examining such conceptions in political theories. C. B. Macpherson's philosophical anthropology is found to contain two different conceptions of human nature. Because the relationship between these conceptions is unclear and because these conceptions figure significantly in his political theory, the status of his political theory is called into question. John Rawls, on the other hand, has denied that he has a conception of human nature. It is argued that both his conception of citizens as persons and his view that citizenship is legitimately separable from the rest of moral personality does constitute a conception of human nature. His political theory is called into question insofar as it relies upon an overlapping consensus on human nature--a consensus which may well not exist. ;Finally, a sketch is offered of further work to be undertaken along the lines of this dissertation. An example is offered involving the concept of freedom, which has often come to be considered freedom from polity as opposed to freedom to participate in polity. A conception of human nature might help us to decide which of these two conceptions of freedom is more appropriately pursued, or it might lead us to appreciate some other understanding of political freedom.