“Liberty both inward and outward”: George Keith and Opposition to Slavery

by Matthew Gaetano In an earlier post, I discussed George Keith (d. 1716), a learned Quaker in colonial America, and his discussion of Platonism and religious experience. His 1693 Exhortation and Caution about any Quakers keeping or buying slaves, particularly those of African descent, was an unusually bold statement of opposition to slavery, even among… Read More “Liberty both inward and outward”: George Keith and Opposition to Slavery

Review of Nigel Biggar, What’s Wrong with Rights, Part 2

by Garrett Robinson In 1409, a dispute broke out between some of the local parishioners using part of Wymondham Abbey as their parish church and the prior of that abbey. At its height, the parishioners boarded up doors to prevent the monks from accessing the high altar, destroyed parts of the church, and assaulted the… Read More Review of Nigel Biggar, What’s Wrong with Rights, Part 2

Review of Nigel Biggar, What’s Wrong with Rights

by Garrett Robinson             Rights form the foundation of contemporary thought about politics and the responsibilities of government. Governments exist to guarantee rights and become illegitimate when they are unable to provide for and protect those rights. To this end, the Declaration of Independence recognizes “certain unalienable rights” including “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of… Read More Review of Nigel Biggar, What’s Wrong with Rights

“[His] only care was not to please”: Eusebius’s Tribute to Socrates

by Joshua Shaw When we tried in a previous series to take in Eusebius’s apologetic argument against Plato at a glance, we skipped over a few passages in the middle of Book XIII (of the Praeparatio Evangelica). In this book Eusebius is slowly building his case against Plato by thoughtfully curating passages from Socrates’s last… Read More “[His] only care was not to please”: Eusebius’s Tribute to Socrates

Thomas Aquinas on Subjective Rights

by Matthew Gaetano Andrew Kuiper’s reflections (here, here, and here) on the theological context for Dan Edelstein’s account of natural rights inspired me to revisit Fr. Dominic Legge’s piece for Nova et Vetera, “Do Thomists Have Rights?” He responds to Brian Tierney’s essential work, The Idea of Natural Rights. In this work, Tierney argues that… Read More Thomas Aquinas on Subjective Rights

Review of Dan Edelstein’s On the Spirit of Rights: Of Rights and Rites

by Andrew Kuiper This is the third installment of Kuiper’s review: part 1 and part 2. For somewhat understandable reasons, the French Revolution has acquired a reputation for inaugurating an era of aggressive, and aggressively secular, revolutionary politics. Many religious conservatives, particularly Roman Catholics fond of Donoso Cortes, Joseph de Maistre, and the counter-revolutionary tradition… Read More Review of Dan Edelstein’s On the Spirit of Rights: Of Rights and Rites

Review of Dan Edelstein’s On the Spirit of Rights (part 2)

by Andrew Kuiper Any genealogy of modernity that fails to explain the development and dominance of political economy risks irrelevance. Economics is one of the master-discourses of our age and evaluating how and why it emerged has always been a site of bitter contestation. The framing of the narrative already includes certain models of human… Read More Review of Dan Edelstein’s On the Spirit of Rights (part 2)

Review of Dan Edelstein’s On the Spirit of Rights: Introduction

by Andrew Kuiper Editorial Note: In the following series, Andrew Kuiper continues his own reflection on the roots of concepts like religious liberty that we generally associate with the modern world. This series also develops some earlier posts at the Regensburg Forum on how careful interconfessional inquiry about early modern theology and about the Augustinian… Read More Review of Dan Edelstein’s On the Spirit of Rights: Introduction

Voices Crying in the Wilderness – Moirans, Jaca, and Silva

by Matthew Gaetano Recent events have brought to mind the stories of the injustices and violence of the original encounters of Christians with native Americans in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Dominicans Antonio de Montesinos (d. 1540) and Bartolomé de las Casas (d. 1566) spoke out against the unjust enslavement of these peoples, while… Read More Voices Crying in the Wilderness – Moirans, Jaca, and Silva

Book Reviews: Law, Freedom, Emotion, and Pilgrimage in Early Modern Christianity

by Ulrich L. Lehner Merio Scattola and Andreas Wagner, Prinzip und Prinzipienfrage in der Entwicklung des Modernen Naturrechts = The Question of Principles and the Development of Modern Natural Law (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: 2017), 336 pp. Merio Scattola, who died in 2015, belongs to the important historians of natural law, but is too little known outside… Read More Book Reviews: Law, Freedom, Emotion, and Pilgrimage in Early Modern Christianity