Aquinas and Hauerwas on the Religious and the Secular. (6th January 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kim, Andrew
• Is Part Of: New Blackfriars. Volume 96:Number 1063(2015:May)
• Page Start: 311
• Page End: 325
• Publication Date: 2015-01-06
• Subjects: Periodicals; Periodicals; 271.2
• DOI: 10.1111/nbfr.12123
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0028-4289

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>This essay supports William Cavanaugh's thesis in The Myth of Religious Violence that the distinction between the "religious" and the "secular" is arbitrary. This essay also accepts the claim that this arbitrary distinction can be used to form unhelpful inversely‐valued dichotomies for the sake of ideological or sectarian ends. However, the current essay seeks to show that this binary goes in the opposite direction as well. Sectarian outlooks of various kinds also postulate a strict and inversely valued dichotomy between the believing community and the world, where the former is the locus of truth and life and the latter, falsehood and death. Instead of this model of ethics, I commend an approach that upholds the prospect of concord between the believing community and the world, of the religious and the secular, even if these are somewhat inevitably arbitrary categories. In this approach, religious and civil loyalties are not pitted against each other, but rather exist on a continuum of provenance and perfection.</p> </abstract>