Ryan Andrew Newson – författare

I have come not to bring peace, but a sword." These words of Christ echo in our current times. In recent years, a growing number of commentators have decried a lack of civility in public discourse. Considered in isolation this concern is innocent enough, but no call for civility happens in a vacuum, and there is good reason to be suspicious of civility in our current political context. Calls for civility can encourage passivity and blunt prophetic action against injustice; further, truly heinous policies can be pursued under the guise of civility. And yet civility should not be dismissed outright, especially as presented by its more nuanced defenders--when it is presented as a limited good in a pluralist society.In The End of Civility, Ryan Andrew Newson analyzes the development of the concept of "civility" as we know it in modern discourse and names some of the criteria Christians can use to judge between healthy and toxic appeals to civility. The challenge, Newson contends, is discerning when civility is called for and when its pursuit becomes vicious. Pleas for civility cannot be assessed without considering the context in which they are made. Some appeals to civility merely seek to lessen conflict, even conflict necessary in the struggle for a more just world. But when issued by people struggling for justice on the margins of society, calls for civility can name the types of conflict that might lead to liberation.One must be attentive to what counts as "civil" in the first place and who gets to make that determination. Which bodies are considered civil and "ordered," and which people are under suspicion of being "uncivil" before they ever say a word? For Christians, civility can never be an ultimate good but remains subordinate to the call to follow Christ--in particular, the Christ who is not always "civil" but who calls people to an ethic of resistance to injustice and solidarity with people who are suffering.

Beginning with her award-winning book Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (1990), Nancey Murphy has used philosophy of science as a way into, and catalyst for, fresh thinking in cosmology, divine action, epistemology, cognitive neuroscience, theological anthropology, philosophy of mind, and Christian virtue ethics. The essays in this book, written by her students and colleagues, creatively honor Murphy by extending a number of her core insights within their respective disciplines. An introduction provides both an account of Murphy''s unique location (an Anabaptist teaching at an evangelical graduate institution) and a summary of her contributions to theology as a philosopher of science whose corpus more than any other epitomizes the paradigm shift in philosophy sometimes called "Anglo-American postmodernity." Subsequently, fourteen essays provide unique engagements with Murphy on subjects including divine action, the interaction between science and theology, epistemology, the nature of humanity, and political theology. In its entirety, Practicing to Aim at Truth provides the first in-depth interaction with and extension of Nancey Murphy''s unique school of thought, providing a resource both for those wishing to extend her research program as well as those wishing to understand it charitably in order to critique it.