A couple discussions in theological ethics have caught my attention recently:

• Last year, Villanova hosted a conference on Jean Porter’s latest book, Ministers of the Law. I’ve only recently discovered that the panels are posted online in video form. I’d especially highlight Nicholas Wolterstorff’s comments on Porter’s view of natural inclinations and communal authority (starting at the 57 minute mark). Porter responds in the final panel discussion, and draws out an provocative distinction: The community has more than a “permission right” when it comes to the authority of law (a thesis which is especially interesting if the status of natural law is itself permissive.) Also, check out Wolterstorff’s comment that Porter’s view of law operates more effectively in a “unified” society, and perhaps not a more plural one like our own (around the 20 minute mark in the final panel).
• Jamie Smith’s AAR presentation and critique of Eric Gregory’s Politics and the Order of Love has been translated into essay format in the latest JRE (academic subscription required, sadly). There are many things to discuss in Smith’s ecclesiological critique of Gregory’s reading of Augustine. However, one particular distinction is quite telling. Smith reads Gregory’s Augustine as a Barthian, which he argues effectively distorts the “historical” Augustine’s particularist pneumatology. Leaving aside the textual critiques for the moment (important though they are), I do think there’s a critical turn here which Smith helpfully points out. At the same time, I wonder whether Gregory’s more open (even secular) pneumatology is merely Barthian. Is there also a sense in which Gregory’s Augustinianism is simply more Protestant, while Radical Orthodoxy’s Augustinianism lacks deeper Protestant commitments?