Jesse Covington (editor) - Natural Law and Evangelical Political Thought

Vincent Bacote is an associate rofessor of theology and the director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. He is the author of The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (Baker Academic: 2005), is a regular columnist for Comment (wrf.ca/comment) and has also had articles appear in magazines such as Books and Culture, Christianity Today and re:generation quarterly and journals such as Christian Scholars Review, Urban Mission and the Journal for Christian Theological Research.

J. Budziszewski (PhD Yale, 1981), professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, has written about virtue ethics, family and sexuality, toleration and moral judgment, faith and reason, law and politics, and the nature of the human person. However, he is most well known for his work on natural law, conscience, and moral self-deception. His most recent book is On the Meaning of Sex (ISI, 2012), and he is preparing a commentary on Thomas Aquinass Treatise on Law, to be published by Cambridge University Press.

J. Daryl Charles is director and senior fellow of the Bryan Institute for Critical Thought & Practice. He is author, coauthor, or coeditor of eleven books, including (with David B. Capes), Thriving in Babylon: Essays in Honor of A. J. Conyers (Wipf & Stock, 2010), Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First Things (Eerdmans, 2008), and, most recently, (with David D. Corey), The Just War Tradition: An Introduction (ISI Books, 2012).

Jesse Couenhoven, associate professor of moral theology at Villanova University, has published articles on Barthian, Augustinian, and feminist theologies of sin and grace, freedom, virtue ethics, and forgiveness. His first book, When We Were Yet Dead in Our Sins: An Augustinian Essay on Responsibility, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. In 20122013, he will be writing Predestination: A Guide for the Perplexed while on a Big Questions in Free Will fellowship from Florida State University.

Jesse Covington, Westmont College, is assistant professor of political science at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame and his masters in Religion at Westminster Theological Seminary. His research and teaching interests focus on the interrelation of religion and politics in constitutional law, political theory, and theology.

Paul R. DeHart earned his PhD in government from the University of Texas at Austin. He is presently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas State UniversitySan Marcos. DeHart is author of Uncovering the Constitution's Moral Design (University of Missouri Press, 2007) as well as The Dangerous Life: Natural Justice and the Rightful Subversion of the State, which appeared in the July 2006 edition of Polity, and Covenantal Realism: The Self-Referential Incoherency of Conventional Social Contract Theory in the July 2012 issue of Perspectives on Political Science.

Robert P. George is McCormick professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He serves on the U.S. Commission in International Religious Freedom, and previously served on the Presidents Council on Bioethics and the U.S Commission on Civil Rights. He is author of Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (Oxford University Press, 1993), In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford University Press, 1999), and The Clash of Orthodoxies (ISI Books, 2001).

Bryan McGraw is an assistant professor of politics and international relations at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. He earned his PhD in political science at Harvard University and has taught at the University of Georgia, Notre Dame University, and Pepperdine University. His first book, Faith in Politics: Religion and Liberal Democracy, was published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press. His research interests focus on the intersection between religion and liberal political thought, Christian political thought, just war theory, and other topics too many and varied to be healthy.

David VanDrunen is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, an attorney, and the Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Eerdmans, 2010).

Micah Watson is director of the Center for Politics & Religion and assistant professor of political science at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. When this volume was written he was the 20102011 William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion and Public Life at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He received his PhD in Politics from Princeton University and an MA in Church-State Studies from Baylor University.

Matthew Wright is assistant professor of government at the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University in La Mirada, CA. He completed his PhD in political theory at the University of Texas at Austin. Working within the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, his work focuses on the value of political association relative to other forms of community. His assessment of John Finniss influential account of Thomistic political thought has recently appeared in The American Journal of Jurisprudence.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Natural law and evangelical political thought / edited by Jesse Covington, Bryan McGraw, and Micah Watson.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7391-7322-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-7391-7323-7 (electronic) (print) 1. Natural law. 2. Natural lawReligious aspectsEvangelicalism. 3. Religion and lawUnited States. I. McGraw, Bryan T., editor of compilation. II. Covington, Jesse David, editor of compilation. III. Watson, Micah Joel, 1973- , editor of compilation.

K460.N3475 2012

340'.112dc23

2012032439

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

The editors would like to express their gratitude for those who made this volume possible and indeed enjoyable to complete. We are particularly thankful for Westmont Colleges support for the gathering at which the early drafts of these chapters were discussed. It was a stimulating and delightful time of intellectual fellowship that would not have been possible without the generous support from the offices of President Gayle Beebe and Acting Provost Rick Pointer. We are also grateful for the institutional support offered by Wheaton College, Union University, and the Department of Political Science at Westmont Collegeespecially the logistical support of Ruby Jeanne Shelton, Tyler Castle, and Hannah Cochran Byrnes.