Read more
List of contents
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Complexities of Practical Reason in the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle
2. The Nature and Foundation of Moral Reasoning in Thomas Aquinas
3. Practical Reason and the Ways of Wisdom
4.World Order and Deliberation in the Work of Oliver O’Donovan
5. Wisdom, Creation, and Christian Ethics
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Andrew Errington is Lecturer at St Mark’s National Theological Centre, and Research Fellow of the Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre, Charles Sturt University, Australia.
Summary
Andrew Errington brings the book of Proverbs into discussion with two significant accounts of the nature and foundation of practical reason in Christian ethics: those of Thomas Aquinas and Oliver O’Donovan. Aiming to move towards a framework for understanding Christian moral reasoning, this book develops a significant critique of aspects of Aquinas’s thought and provides a major engagement with O’Donovan’s moral theology.
Errington argues that the way the Book of Proverbs conceives of wisdom presents an important challenge to the Western theological and philosophical tradition. Instead of a perfection of theoretical knowledge, wisdom in Proverbs is a practical knowledge of how to act well, grounded in the reality of the world God has made. Discussing the complexities of practical reason, moral reasoning in Aquinas, world order and deliberation in the work of O’Donovan, and the place of created order in Christian Ethics, this volume is invaluable for scholars and general readers in reconfiguring moral theology.
Foreword
Discusses how the way the Book of Proverbs understands wisdom can illuminate and reconfigure the structure of Christian ethics.
Additional text
In this original and fascinating book, Andrew Errington brings Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, the Book of Proverbs, and the work of Oliver O’Donovan into a fruitful conversation about the nature of practical reason and its role in Christian ethics.
