Pastoral Virtues for Artificial Intelligence (AI) acknowledges that human destiny is intimately tied to artificial intelligence. AI already outperforms a person on most tasks. Our ever-deepening relationship with an AI that is increasingly autonomous mirrors our relationship to what is perceived as Sacred or Divine. Like God, AI awakens hope and fear in people, while giving life to some and taking livelihood, especially in the form of jobs, from others. AI, built around values of convenience, productivity, speed, efficiency, and cost reduction, serve humanity poorly, especially in moments that demand care and wisdom. This book explores the pastoral virtues of hope, patience, play, wisdom, and compassion as foundational to personal flourishing, communal thriving, and building a robust AI. Biases of determinism, speed, objectivity, ignorance, and apathy within AI's algorithms are identified. These biases can be minimized through the incorporation of pastoral virtues as values guiding AI.

The first book to argue for the concept of tragic dilemmas in Christian ethics Moral dilemmas arise when individuals are unable to fulfill all of their ethical obligations. Tragic dilemmas are moral dilemmas that involve great tragedy. The existence of moral and tragic dilemmas is debated in philosophy and often dismissed in theology based on the notion that there are effective strategies that completely solve hard ethical situations. Yet cases from real-life events in war and bioethics offer compelling evidence for the existence of tragic dilemmas. In Tragic Dilemmas in Christian Ethics, Jackson-Meyer expertly explores the thought of Augustine and Aquinas to show the limits of their treatment of hard cases, as well as where their thought can be built on and expanded in relation to tragic dilemmas. She recognizes and develops a new theological understanding of tragic dilemmas rooted in moral philosophy, contemporary case studies, and psychological literature on moral injury. Jackson-Meyer argues that in tragic dilemmas moral agents choose between conflicting nonnegotiable moral obligations rooted in Christian commitments to protect human life and the vulnerable. Personal culpability is mitigated due to constrained situations and society is also culpable when tragic dilemmas are a result of structural sin. In response, Jackson-Meyer implores Christian communities to offer individual and communal healing after tragic dilemmas and to acknowledge their own participation in injustice. Tragic Dilemmas in Christian Ethics offers practical strategies that Christian communities can use to provide healing to those who have acted in tragic dilemmas and to transform the unjust structures that often cause these tragedies.

The first examination of predictive technology from the perspective of Catholic theology Probabilistic predictions of future risk govern much of society. In business and politics alike, institutional structures manage risk by controlling the behavior of consumers and citizens. New technologies comb through past data to predict and shape future action. Choosing between possible future paths can cause anxiety as every decision becomes a calculation to achieve the most optimal outcome. Tomorrow's Troubles is the first book to use virtue ethics to analyze these pressing issues. Paul Scherz uses a theological analysis of risk and practical reason to show how risk-based decision theory reorients our relationships to the future through knowledge of possible dangers and foregone opportunities-and fosters a deceptive hope for total security. Scherz presents this view of temporality as problematic because it encourages a desire for stability through one's own efforts instead of reliance on God. He also argues that the largest problem with predictive models is that they do not address individual reason and free will. Instead of dwelling on a future, we cannot control, we can use our past experiences and the Christian tradition to focus on discerning God's will in the present. Tomorrow's Troubles offers a thoughtful new framework that will help Christians benefit from the positive aspects of predictive technologies while recognizing God's role in our lives and our futures.

From a theological viewpoint, this book explores the junction between the philosophical existential idea of the authentic self and its cultural appropriation. The text builds on the theology of John Macquarrie and the narrative formation of identity to construct a theological definition of authentic selfhood. It then contrasts this definition with the common idea that authenticity, in the moral sense, can be used to justify any action. The author argues that this is not genuine authenticity. Instead, they consider that authenticity rests upon loyalty to something greater than oneself, and for Christians this is the character of the God in whose image they are created and are being formed. This book is illuminating reading for students and scholars of theological anthropology, pastroral theology, ethics and moral philosophy.

Original, prescient and very different from most finance books which are highly technical and inaccessible, and also impersonal and exclusive/neoliberal. The book is informed by academic research and thinking, but not written in academic jargon and language. This research has significant global potential in reviving business education to embrace different cultural approaches to finance, long ignored by the mainstream. It helps retain timeless wisdoms and cultural values and reinvigorate social enterprise and sustainable business practices. This is a unique book, it is plural and inclusive, and at the same time, shows a solid understanding of the theory and practice of finance.

Why does American law allow the recreational use of some drugs, such as alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, but not others, such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin? The answer lies not simply in the harm the use of these drugs might cause, but in the perceived morality-or lack thereof-of their recreational use. Despite strong rhetoric from moral critics of recreational drug use, however, it is surprisingly difficult to discern the reasons they have for deeming the recreational use of (some) drugs morally wrong. In this book, Rob Lovering lays out and dissects various arguments for the immorality of using marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other drugs recreationally. He contends that, by and large, these arguments do not succeed. Lovering's book represents one of the first works to systematically present, analyze, and critique arguments for the moral wrongness of recreational drug use. Given this, as well as the popularity of the morality-based defense of the United States' drug laws, this book is an important and timely contribution to the debate on the recreational use of drugs.

Argues for a return to a positive view of the other via a personalist philosophy of being offered by Mounier, Marcel, and Wojtyla, and deepened by participation, belonging, and possibility of contributing to the good of all. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, philosophy and anthropology. Disability studies are often regarded as practical studies as opposed to the apparently inevitable theorizing of philosophy or theology. However, this book's methodology of explicitly linking disability studies with philosophy and theology demonstrates their complementarity.

Original, prescient and very different from most finance books which are highly technical and inaccessible, and also impersonal and exclusive/neoliberal. The book is informed by academic research and thinking, but not written in academic jargon and language. This research has significant global potential in reviving business education to embrace different cultural approaches to finance, long ignored by the mainstream. It helps retain timeless wisdoms and cultural values and reinvigorate social enterprise and sustainable business practices. This is a unique book, it is plural and inclusive, and at the same time, shows a solid understanding of the theory and practice of finance.

Spiritual abuse occurs when an individual, church or a belief system, whether well intentioned or not, dominates, manipulates or castigates individuals through fear tactics, mind control, or some other psychological or emotional abuse. Breaking the Silence of Spiritual Abuse provides the first sustained examination of spiritual abuse within the Christian faith, exploring the definitions and historical context of spiritual abuse while giving voice to survivors' stories of their personal experiences. Providing a balance of empirical research and practical concerns, this ground-breaking book outlines a process model for the different stages of spiritual abuse and includes strategies for therapists working with survivors of spiritual abuse.

The relationship between musical activity and ethical significance occupies long traditions of thought and reflection both within Christianity and beyond. From concerns regarding music and the passions in early Christian writings through to moral panics regarding rock music in the 20th century, Christians have often gravitated to the view that music can become morally weighted, building a range of normative practices and prescriptions upon particular modes of ethical judgment. But how should we think about ethics and Christian musical activity in the contemporary world? As studies of Christian musicking have moved to incorporate the experiences, agencies, and relationships of congregations, ethical questions have become implicit in new ways in a range of recent research - how do communities negotiate questions of value in music? How are processes of encounter with a variety of different others negotiated through musical activity? What responsibilities arise within musical communities? This volume seeks to expand this conversation. Divided into four sections, the book covers the relationship of Christian musicking to the body; responsibilities and values; identity and encounter; and notions of the self. The result is a wide-ranging perspective on music as an ethical practice, particularly as it relates to contemporary religious and spiritual communities. This collection is an important milestone at the intersection of ethnomusicology, musicology, religious studies and theology. It will be a vital reference for scholars and practitioners reflecting on the values and practices of worshipping communities in the contemporary world.

Theology and Climate Change examines Progressive Dominion Theology (PDT) as a primary cultural driver of anthropogenic climate change. PDT is a distinctive and Western form of Christian theology out of which the modern scientific revolution and technological modernity arises. Basic attitudes to nature, to instrumental power over nature, and to an understanding of humanity's relationship with nature are a function of the deep theological preconditions of Western modernity. Much of what we like about Western modernity is indebted to PDT at the same time that this tacit cultural theology is propelling us towards climate disaster. This text argues that the urgent need to change the fundamental operational assumptions of our way of life is now very hard for us to do, because secular modernity is now largely unaware of its tacit theological commitments. Modern consumer society, including the global economy that supports this way of life, could not have the operational signatures it currently has without its distinctive theological origin and its ongoing submerged theological assumptions. Some forms of Christian theology are now acutely aware of this dynamic and are determined to change the modern life-world, from first assumptions up, in order to avert climate disaster. At the same time that other forms of Christian theology - aligned with pragmatic fossil fuel interests - advance climate change skepticism and overtly uphold PDT. Theology is, in fact, crucially integral with the politics of climate change, but this is not often understood in anything more than simplistic and polemically expedient ways in environmental and policy contexts. This text aims to dis-imbed climate change politics from polarized and unfruitful slinging-matches between conservatives and progressives of all or no religious commitments. This fascinating volume is a must read for those with an interest in environmental policy concerns and in culturally embedded first-order belief commitments.

The overturning of Roe v Wade makes the ethical consideration of abortion more important than ever. Appealing to reason rather than religious belief, this book is the most comprehensive case against the choice of abortion yet published. This third edition of The Ethics of Abortion critically evaluates all the major grounds for denying basic rights to fetal human beings, including the views of those who defend not only abortion but also post-birth abortion. It also provides several (non-theological) justifications for the conclusion that all human beings, including those in utero, should be respected as persons. This book also critiques the view that abortion is not wrong even if the human fetus is a person. The Ethics of Abortion examines hard cases for those who are prolife, such as abortion in cases of rape or in order to save the woman's life, as well as hard cases for defenders of abortion, such as sex selection abortion and the rationale for being "personally opposed" but publicly supportive of abortion. It concludes with a discussion of whether artificial wombs might end the abortion debate. Answering the arguments of defenders of abortion, this book provides reasoned justification for the view that all intentional abortions are ethically wrong and that doctors and nurses who object to abortion should not be forced to act against their consciences. Updates and Revisions to the Third Edition Include: Discusses Achas Burin's 2014 essay, "Beyond Pragmatism: Defending the 'Bright Line' of Birth" in chapter 3 Incorporates into chapter 8 David Boonin's cogently argued 2019 book, Beyond Roe: Why Abortion Should be Legal - Even if the Fetus is a Person Expands chapter 9 to examine tragic cases in which prenatal diagnosis determines with certainty that a fetus will die shortly after birth Includes an updated and expanded section in chapter 11 on recent debates about conscience protections Considers in chapter 12 recent arguments that parents have a right to kill if the product of conception is in an artificial womb Updates statistics on numbers of abortions in the United States, including corrections to statistics that were once thought true but are now known as erroneous Updated bibliography

This book examines the history, theological beliefs and current contextual practices of faith-based NGOs who work in the area of human trafficking that involves the sex industry. There are hundreds of religious organizations around the globe who minister with human trafficking survivors and sex workers, but what is really happening on the ground and how do theological beliefs support a faith-based response? Many of these groups represent their work as a cosmic battle against evil forces, yet important structural critiques are ignored in the urgency to rescue women and children. Using perspectives from both NGO staff and sex workers, an interdisciplinary panel of contributors examine specific organizations, highlight marginalized voices, and analyze undergirding methodologies. In doing so, the authors provide clear critiques and establish best practice guidelines for faith-based NGOs and future religious leaders, affirming an intersection of justice based upon critical reflection and careful action. This book addresses with nuance an important topic that is often over-simplified. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars studying the interaction of religion to sex work and human trafficking, as well as academics of religious studies and theology more generally.

This book offers a comprehensive history of the principle of double effect and its applications in ethics. Written from a non-theological perspective, it makes the case for the centrality of the double effect reasoning in philosophical ethics. The book is divided into two parts. The first part thoroughly examines the history of double effect reasoning. The author's history spans from Thomas Aquinas's opera omnia to the modern and influential understanding of the principle known as proportionalism. The second part of the book elucidates the principle and addresses various objections that have been raised against it, including those that arise from an in-depth discussion of the trolley problem. Finally, the author examines the role of intentions in ethical thinking and constructs a novel defense of the principle based on fine distinctions between intentions. The Principle of Double Effect: A History and Philosophical Defense will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in moral philosophy, the history of ethics, bioethics, medical ethics, and the Catholic moral tradition.

This volume addresses issues of moral pluralism and polarization by drawing attention to the transcendent character of the good. It probes the history of Christian theology and moral philosophy to investigate the value of this idea and then relates it to contemporary moral issues.

To take a journey, travelers must know where they are, where they are going, and how to get there. Moral theology examines the same three truths. The Christian Moral Life is a handbook for moral theology that uses the theme of a journey to explain its key ethical concepts. First, humans begin with their creation in the image of God. Secondly, the goal of the journey is explained as a loving union with God, to achieve a share in his eternal happiness. Third and finally, the majority of the book examines how to attain this goal. Within the journey motif, the book covers the moral principles essential for attaining true happiness. Based on an examination of the moral methodology in the bible, the book discusses the importance of participating in divine nature through grace in order to attain eternal happiness. It further notes the role of law, virtue, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit in guiding and transforming humans into friends of God, who participate in his happiness. Following this section on moral theology in general, the book analyzes the individual virtues to give more concrete guidance. The entire project builds upon the insights of great Christian thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, Therese of Lisieux, and John Paul II, to uncover the moral wisdom in scripture and to show people how to be truly happy both in this life and the next. This book will be of great interest to undergraduate students of moral theology, priests and seminarians, parents and teachers seeking to raise and to form happy children, and anyone interested in discovering the meaning of true happiness.

This book advances that history by exploring stories, images and discourses across a worldwide range of geographical, cultural and confessional contexts. Its twelve authors not only enrich our understanding of the significance of the contextual method, but also produce a new range of original ways of doing theology in contemporary situations. The authors discuss some prioritised thematic perspectives with an emphasis on liberating paths, and expand the ongoing discussion on the methodology of theology into new areas. Themes such as interreligious plurality, global capitalism, ecumenical liberation theology, eco-anxiety and the anthropocene, postcolonialism, gender, neo-pentecostalism, world theology, and reconciliation are examined in situated depth. Additionally, voices from Indigenous lands, Latin America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe and North America enter into a dialogue on what it means to contextualise theology in an increasingly globalised and ever-changing world. Such a comprehensive discussion of new ways of thinking about and doing contextual theology will be of great use to scholars in Theology, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, Political Science, Gender Studies, Environmental Humanities, and Global Studies.

Constructing Moral Concepts of God in a Global Age focuses on what people say and think about God, rather than on arguments about God's existence. It advances a theological method, or step-by-step approach to explore and reframe personal convictions about God and the worldviews shaped by those convictions. Since a moral God is more likely to foster a moral life, this method integrates an ethical check to ensure that understandings of God and their associated worldviews are validly moral. The proposed method builds on the work of twentieth-century theologian Gordon Kaufman during the Kantian phase of his work. It anticipates a person-like God who hears prayers, loves without end, and comforts in times of hardship. To accommodate today's pluralistic and globalized world, the ethical check integrated in the method is a widely collaborative and vetted global ethic, the Parliament of the World's Religions "Declaration Towards a Global Ethic." This volume of constructive philosophical theology is written for seminary students, educators, clergy, study groups, and anyone interested in delving more deeply and systematically into understandings of God, whether their own or those of others.

This book provides extensive and critical engagement with some of the most recent and compelling arguments favoring abortion choice. It features original essays from leading and emerging philosophers, bioethicists and medical professionals that present philosophically sophisticated and novel arguments against abortion choice.

This book, first published in 1962, is an analysis of the history of the philosophy of a country that has never distinguished philosophy from religion. Indian philosophy is not merely metaphysical speculation, but has its foundation in immediate perception. This insistence upon immediate perception rather than abstract reasoning is what distinguishes the Indian philosophy of religion from philosophy as Western nations know it.

In crafting racial visions of the modern world, European thinkers appropriated the Christian doctrine of providence, constructing the idea of European humanity's rule over the globe on the model of God's rule over the universe. As a powerful ordering theory of the relationship between God and creation, time and space, self and other, the doctrine served as an intellectual framework for the theorization of whiteness, as the male European subject replaced Jesus Christ as the human being at the center of world history. Through an analysis of the work of G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Barth, and James H. Cone, God, Race, and History examines this subversion of the Christian doctrine of providence, as well as subsequent attempts within modern Protestant theology to liberate the doctrine from its captivity to whiteness. It then develops a constructive political theology of providence in conversation with Delores S. Williams and M. Shawn Copeland, discerning Jesus Christ at work through the Holy Spirit in the struggles of ordinary, overlooked, and oppressed human creatures to survive and to carve out a flourishing life for themselves, their communities, and their world.

In Anton Boisen: Madness, Mysticism, and the Origins of Clinical Pastoral Education, Sean J. LaBat provides a critical re-assessment of Anton Boisen's life and work. Based in thorough archival research, LaBat argues that Boisen, who suffered from intermittent severe mental illness, was a creative visionary, a mystic who re-imagined pastoral care and envisioned possibilities for the institutionalized other than shame and stigma. He shows how Boisen elucidated new possibilities in patient-centered health care, community care for the mentally ill, and reconciliation and dialogue between religion and science. Boisen explored the borderland of madness and mysticism, illness and inspiration, and practiced an interdisciplinary approach to his craft that is surprisingly modern and more relevant to the practice of medicine and the practice of religion than ever before.

This work details the theological sources and moral significance of the life and work of the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790). The panel of contributors deepens our understanding of Adam Smith in his religious and theological context and the significance of this understanding for contemporary moral, economic, and political challenges to modern social life. The chapters cover a broad range of disciplinary and historical concerns, from Smith's view of providence and his famous "invisible hand" to the role of self-interest and benevolence in Smith's social and economic thought. A better appreciation for the moral and theological dimensions of Smith's thought provides not only a better understanding of Smith's own context and significance in the Scottish Enlightenment but also promises to assist in meeting the perennial challenges of properly connecting economic realities to moral responsibility. The book is of interest to advanced students and scholars of the history of economic thought, historical and moral theology, intellectual history, political science, and philosophy.

The book combines intellectual, cultural and social history to address a major area of encounter between Christianity and British culture: the world of leisure. This book traces the rise and fall of the evangelical movement, the powerhouse of Victorian religion, via its preoccupation with pleasure. Victorian evangelicalism demonstrated an ability to excite the affections but also a corresponding suspicion of worldly pleasures. Suspicion developed into hostility, and a movement premised on freedom became coercive and alienating. The crisis of Victorian religion began. It is generally held that the mid-Victorian turn to recreation and sport solved the problem, 'justifying God to the people' through cricket, cycling and football. This book argues otherwise - that the problem of pleasure was inflamed by the ecclesiastical remedy. The problem of overdrawn boundaries between church and world gave way to a new and subtle confusion of gospel and culture. Historians have praised the mood of engagement but the costs were profound. In fact, sport became the perfect vehicle for that humanistic, 'unmystical' morality that defines the secularity of the twentieth century. Secularisation did not wait for the Dionysian rebellions of the 1960s: it emerged - almost a hundred years earlier - in the Victorian transformation of religion into ethics. Central to the process was the problem of pleasure. DOMINIC ERDOZAIN is Lecturer in the History of Christianity, King's College London

This volume examines the relationship between Christian legal theory and the fields of private law. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in private law theory, and this book contributes to that discussion by drawing on the historical, theological, and philosophical resources of the Christian tradition. The book begins with an introduction from the editors that lays out the understanding of "private law" and what distinguishes private law topics from other fields of law. This section includes two survey chapters on natural law and biblical sources. The remaining sections of the book move sequentially through the fields of property, contracts, and torts. Several chapters focus on historical sources and show the ways in which the evolution of legal doctrine in areas of private law has been heavily influenced by Christian thinkers. Other chapters draw out more contemporary and public policy-related implications for private law. While this book is focused on the relationship of Christianity to private law, it will be of broad interest to those who might not share that faith perspective. In particular, legal historians and philosophers of law will find much of interest in the original scholarship in this volume. The book will be attractive to teachers of law, political science, and theology. It will be of special interest to the many law faculty in property, contracts, and torts, as it provides a set of often overlooked historical and theoretical perspectives on these fields.