Understanding of sin and responsibility in the teaching of John Calvin

The understanding of sin and responsibility in Calvin differs radically from concepts later dominant in Reformed theology and in moral philosophy. In federal theology the covenant of works determines man's duty and culpability. Created Into an order of justice and moral law, men is or is supposed to be en autonomous creature who through his power, will, and ability lives by righteous works of merit. This is his responsibility. In this light sin is legal transgression, a failure to provide perfect moral works. This theology is linked with Hie parallel concept in Kantian ethics where responsibility is defined with reference to man's freedom and ability, and where culpability lies in moral failure.Calvin's teaching stands over against these ego-centric concepts, for Calvin begins with a divine order of grace. God as father cares for man; he assumes this responsibility. Man as son is to accept and acknowledge this care. Man is responsible as he responds to and participates in grace. Man is not independent, but dependent; he has no ability of his own, but is enabled and bound by grace in ell things. He is responsible as he in fidelity, trust, obedience, love, and gratitude, allows another to be responsible for him. but in sin man - Adam and humanity - disdains God's grace, as he strives to raise himself up in independence of grace and in dependence on his own ability. In infidelity, unbelief, disobedience, concupiscent self-will, and ingratitude, he disgraces himself, iie disorders and inverts the divine order of grace. The notion that man is or ought to be responsible to God on the basis of his own works is the essence of sin. As God does not give up his fatherhood or the end of his creation, but continues to offer his grace to men in nature end gives it again in law and gospel, man's culpability lies essentially in his free and voluntary rejection of grace. This involves an antinomy, for while man can resist God's grace and is culpable for so doing, he is not and is not supposed to be free and able to accept grace, but is to rely even in his acceptance upon the grace which enables him.With regard to responsibility, predestination, and original sin, Calvin teaches that the apparent conflicts here cannot always be rationally resolved. We are not to employ the more formal and rigid development of logical argument which characterised later Reformed thou^it, but have to acquiesce in truths of a partly irrational nature, and make place for human responsibility alongside our concepts of man's total depravity at birth and of God's predestination. Thus into his concept of an immutable providence of God, Calvin incorporates dynamic concepts, the importance of which has often been overlooked. At the same time, under the influence of reprobation and the bias of polemic or systematic treatment, he sometimes allows these concepts to deteriorate so that he makes errors he has warned against and prejudices the seriousness of his own concept of sin and responsibility

Panglobalism and pandemics: ecological and ethical concerns.

A pandemic is a human medical problem but must be understood at multiple levels. Analysis of social and commercial forces is vital, and, more comprehensively, an ecological framework is necessary for an inclusive picture. Ecological health webworked with political and social determinants surrounds issues of human health. In this constellation of both natural and social factors, ethical concerns will arise at these multiple levels, from human health to the conservation and health of wild nature

Perpetual perishing, perpetual renewal

Includes bibliographical references (page 123).Darwinian nature is in dialectic: conflict and resolution. Human life evolved out of such dialectical nature. If that began in Africa, it continues when humans migrate far North. Religious encounters with such nature, whatever their differences with Darwinism, also find that life is perpetually renewed in the midst of its perpetual perishing. Life is ever "conserved," as biologists might say; life is ever "redeemed," as theologians might say. In this generating of new life, nature is cruciform, beyond the dialectical. Such processes, set in their ecological settings, perennially transform disvalues in nature into prolific values, generating the global richness of evolutionary natural history and its exuberance of life. Such sombre beauty in life is nowhere better exemplified than in boreal and Arctic nature

Disvalues in nature

Includes bibliographical references (pages 276-278).Judgments from fact to disvalue are often made about nature. If natural things just are, absent value, such judgments commit a negative naturalistic fallacy. By parity of reasoning, those who find objective disvalue must also consider objective value. Numerous candidate disvalues are examined: predation, parasitism, selfishness, randomness, blindness, disaster, indifference, waste, struggle, suffering, death. Such disvalues are embedded in a larger systemic value and joined with values equally present, opposites in conflict and resolution

Dominion

Inlcudes bibliographical references (page 111).That humans have dominion over the Earth, a claim of Abrahamic faiths, has been interpreted as the cause of the contemporary ecological crisis. Other interpretations emphasize that stewardship of the Earth is included in the idea of appropriate dominion. Humans may choose to be conquerors, gardeners, developers, trustees, or caretakers

Ecology

Includes bibliographical references (page 31).Article also appeared in previous edition: Encyclopedia of science, technology, and ethics (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, ©2005).Ecology is the logic of living creatures in their homes. Ecology mixes with ethics, an ecological (or environmental) ethics urging that humans ought to find a lifestyle more harmonious with nature. Humans have always had to rest their cultures on a natural life support system. Environmental engineers may now claim that the principal novelty of the new millennium is that Earth will be a managed planet in an Anthropocene epoch. Such claims bring increasing concern how far nature can and ought to be transformed into humanized nature. Thinking of humans as fitting themselves into a sustainable biosphere is a better logic of being at home on Earth

Loving nature: Christian environmental ethics

Includes bibliographical references (pages 330-331).The two great commandments are to love God and neighbor; but ought we to love a loveless nature? Agape seems nowhere there to be found. Most of the sensibilities we nourish in civilized beings--being fair or kind, respect for rights--are not there in the wild. Is any sense of "love gone wild" plausible? The better category might be intrinsic values found in creation, to which we are drawn in respect and care. Loving the land is a central theme in Hebrew faith, a land for which God cares. In the landscape surrounding him Jesus found ample evidence of the presence of God. In Genesis, God enjoys biodiversity. Words translated as "wilderness" occur nearly 300 times in the Bible. Jesus is regularly found returning to the wilderness. Anciently Palestine was a promised land. Today the call is to see Earth as a planet with promise, destined for abundant life

Rights and responsibilities on the home planet (Yale)

Includes bibliographical references.A condensed version of this article published in the Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science is available: https://hdl.handle.net/10217/210746In this paper, "nature" refers to natural forces operating independently of deliberate human activity, that is, spontaneous or wild nature. Human cultural processes interrupt such natural forces. Little pristine nature remains, though some marine areas, Antarctica, or designated wildernesses can approximate it. At the same time, spontaneous natural forces everywhere permeate the cultures superimposed on them. Global natural forces - the ocean currents, the changing seasons, photosynthesis and oxygen balance, regional ecosystems - though not beyond the adverse affects of human action, still proceed spontaneously. Spontaneous "nature" exists within humans in the form of biochemical processes that proceed without deliberation, but the most characteristic property of humans is to build cultures, which typically rebuild spontaneous nature, intentionally redirecting the course of nature to human utility. Humans arrive in the world rather unfinished by nature, and cultural education and formation, coupled with active career choice, largely complete our identity. By contrast, identities in nonhumans are genetically determined. In short, human nature is to be artificial, or cultured. In one sense nothing that humans do breaks any laws of nature; we simply rearrange natural forces to our benefit. In this sense, a rocket is as natural as an oak tree, Manhattan as natural as Yellowstone Park. But this concept is not helpful in the present analysis, since an Earth destroyed by humans would be as natural an event as an Earth with several billion years of natural history before humans arrived, or an Earth carefully conserved by humans thereafter

Trail log - 2019

Summary: March: "bomb cyclone," heavy snow. April: Pasqueflowers on Good Friday; June: Templeton Annual Meeting in Nassau. July: International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) Annual Meeting in H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon. Spotted owls vs. barred owls. August 31-September 1. Redfeather Lakes to visit daughter Shonny on her newly acquired property there. Trip to Creedmore Lakes. November 25-26. 15.5 inches of snow - second most snow on record in Fort Collins in November

Trail log - 2020

Summary: January: Nashville, TN, and memorial service Robert Crumby; CSU and city shut-down from Coronavirus; April-May: record cold in U.S. Northeast; Comet Neowise; wildfires, Cameron Peak Fire, Pine Gulch Fire