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24The Question of Consuetudo Carnalis in Confessions 7.17.23Augustinian Studies 31 (2): 165-171. 2000.
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27Some Thoughts on The Anachronism in ForgivenessJournal of Religious Ethics 27 (1): 83-102. 1999.Consider that forgiveness is always given ahead of time. Set within a moral context, this claim is apt to sound suspect, as it seems to invite transgression and all manner of immoral indulgence. When the context shifts to one of religious possibility, however, the claim can be read to entertain a redemptive anachronism: a memory of future innocence. The author examines forgiveness in both contexts and makes a case for the religious possibility
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71Augustine and the limits of virtueCambridge University Press. 1992.Augustine's moral psychology was one of the richest in late antiquity, and in this book James Wetzel evaluates its development, indicating that the insights offered by Augustine on free-will have been prevented from receiving full appreciation as the result of an anachronistic distinction between theology and philosophy. He shows that it has been commonplace to divide Augustine's thought into earlier and later phases, the former being more philosophically informed than the latter. Wetzel's conte…Read more
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Appendix. A broken vessel, or What it means to be an agent : Stanley Hauerwas on theology and practical reasonIn Vivasvan Soni & Thomas Pfau (eds.), Judgment and Action: Fragments toward a History, Northwestern University Press. 2017.
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24Review of John Peter Kenney, The Mysticism of Saint Augustine: Rereading the Confessions (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (8). 2007.
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54God in the Cave: A Look Back at Robert Merrihew Adams's "Finite and Infinite Goods" (review)Journal of Religious Ethics 34 (3). 2006.When "Finite and Infinite Goods" was published in 1999, it took its place as one of the few major statements of a broadly Augustinian ethical philosophy of the past century. By "broadly Augustinian" I refer to the disposition to combine a Platonic emphasis on a transcendent source of value with a traditionally theistic emphasis on the value-creating capacities of absolute will. In the form that this disposition takes with Robert Merrihew Adams, it is the resemblance between divine and a finite e…Read more
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27Augustine's Love of Wisdom (review)Review of Metaphysics 47 (1): 136-137. 1993.The series of which Bourke's study is a part has two professed aims: to engage students with the history of philosophy by way of text and commentary, and to offer teachers of philosophy a summary account of scholarly perspectives on important historical figures. In principle these somewhat disparate aims can both be served if the text selected touches upon the central concerns of the philosopher under discussion, and if the commentary develops the appropriate connections. Naturally this task wil…Read more
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31Splendid Vices and Secular Virtues: Variations on Milbank's AugustineJournal of Religious Ethics 32 (2). 2004.John Milbank's case against secular reason draws much of its authority and force from Augustine's critique of pagan virtue. "Theology and Social Theory" could be characterized, without too much insult to either Augustine or Milbank, as a postmodern "City of God". Modern preoccupations with secular virtues, marketplace values, and sociological bottom-lines are likened there to classically pagan preoccupations with the virtues of self-conquest and conquest over others. Against both modern and anti…Read more
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21Predestination, Pelagianism, and foreknowledgeIn Eleonore Stump & Norman Kretzmann (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, Cambridge University Press. pp. 49--58. 2001.
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7Parting knowledge: essays after AugustineCascade Books. 2013.Roughly half the essays in this collection engage directly with Augustine's theological animus and follow his thinking into self-division, perversity of will, grief, conversion, and the aspiration for transcendence.
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33Infinite Return: Two Ways of Wagering with PascalReligious Studies 29 (2). 1993.Pascal's wager has fascinated philosophers far in excess of its reputation as effective apologetics. Very few of the wager's defenders, in fact, have retained more than an academic interest in its power to persuade. Partly this is a matter of good manners. Pascal is supposed to have pitched his wager at folks who understand only self-interested motivations, and today it is no longer fashionable for defenders of theism to disparage the character of their opponents. But partly the low-key concern …Read more
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28The Schleiermacher Gambit and the Desacralization of Culture: Retrospective Remarks on Wayne Proudfoot’s Religious ExperienceAmerican Journal of Theology and Philosophy 38 (1): 20-26. 2017.When Religious Experience went into production with the University of California Press, I was still in residence as a graduate student at Columbia, where I was working with Wayne Proudfoot on issues in the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Although this is now more than thirty years ago, I distinctively remember having a conversation with him about whether Religious Experience should have a subtitle and, if so, what. Proudfoot’s disposition as a writer is hardly baroque, and so …Read more
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20Infinite return: Two ways of wagering with PascalReligious Studies 29 (2): 139-149. 1993.Pascal's wager has fascinated philosophers far in excess of its reputation as effective apologetics. Very few of the wager's defenders, in fact, have retained more than an academic interest in its power to persuade. Partly this is a matter of good manners. Pascal is supposed to have pitched his wager at folks who understand only self-interested motivations, and today it is no longer fashionable for defenders of theism to disparage the character of their opponents. But partly the low-key concern …Read more
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5Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2012.Augustine's City of God has profoundly influenced the course of Western political philosophy, but there are few guides to its labyrinthine argumentation that hold together the delicate interplay of religion and philosophy in Augustine's thought. The essays in this volume offer a rich examination of those themes, using the central, contested distinction between a heavenly city on earthly pilgrimage and an earthly city bound for perdition to elaborate aspects of Augustine's political and moral vis…Read more
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11The Will and Human Action: From Antiquity to the Present Day (review)Religious Studies 41 (2): 242-246. 2005.
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27Can theodicy be avoided? The claim of unredeemed evil: James WetzelReligious Studies 25 (1): 1-13. 1989.Theodicy begins with the recognition that the world is not obviously under the care of a loving God with limitless power and wisdom. If it were, why would the world be burdened with its considerable amount and variety of evil? Theodicists are those who attempt to answer this question by suggesting a possible rationale for the appearance of evil in a theocentric universe. In the past theodicists have taken up the cause of theodicy in the service of piety, so that God might be defended against lib…Read more
Villanova, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |