Renewing Christian intellectual life in the world's research universities
In-depth scholarly responses exploring links between the theology and specific research areas.
Kyoto University
I have often pondered on the issues that Nicholas Wolterstorff has lucidly raised during almost fifty years of working to reduce disaster risks. The key passage in Micah chapter 6 has always presented a powerful challenge for anyone working in the disaster field- how to balance the need for ‘doing j…
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
This is a brief, speculative, and exploratory response from the perspective of a physicist to the understanding of justice proposed by Nicholas Wolterstorff in his Theology Brief for the Global Faculty Initiative. His key points may be summarized as follows.
University of Cambridge
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Theology Brief on ‘Justice and Rights’ offers an exceptionally rich and stimulating analysis of how Old and New Testament might shape a Christian approach to these topics. Prof. Wolterstorff argues, persuasively, that a strong emphasis on social (or systemic) justice not only…
Auckland University of Technology
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s stimulating Theology Brief on ‘Justice and Rights’ majors on justice as rendering persons their right or due in terms of their worth or dignity or excellence. He comments rightly that the Old Testament focuses on social or systemic injustice rather than on individual cases, a…
Bakke Graduate University
Professor Wolterstorff’s Theology Brief on Justice and Rights demonstrates deep Christian thinking on a very important subject. Not only does it reinforce the centrality of justice in both the Old and New Testaments, it also shows the nexus between justice and rights, and makes the pertinent point t…
University of Melbourne
Wolterstoff’s Brief on ‘Justice and Rights’ clarifies the central role of justice in the academy (writ large). I find his distinction between first and second order justice to be useful in organizing my own thinking on the matter. The Brief has provoked me to reflect on two aspects of academia which…
American Bar Foundation
The world confronts enormous problems that very often, perhaps always, require responses beyond the capacity of single national governments or states. Indeed, in my view, we can no longer think about the solution of any vexing problem of any magnitude entirely within the bounds of a single state. In…
The University of Queensland
In his Theology Brief on Justice and Rights , Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff has offered an account of justice that distinguishes between first order justice , in which individuals and institutions act justly in their everyday affairs, and second order justice , which concerns the laws, sanctions a…
University of Queensland
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s fascinating and helpful essay on justice and rights is thought-provoking in many respects. As a lawyer, I hardly need reminding, of course, of the centrality of justice in all that I do. Without what Wolterstorff calls second order justice, (that is, the laws, sanctions and s…
Harvard University School of Public Health
Public health has been defined “the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts of society” (Acheson, 1988; WHO). The term “public health” might thus concern the study of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health, or the ac…
Australian National University
I found the theology brief Justice and Rights very stimulating, in particular the attention paid to the relationship between justice and love, righteousness, and rights as action oriented. Each of these aspects provide a strong justification for orienting Christian scholarship towards research that …
The call for climate justice has come from many environmental campaigners in recent months, not least from the lips of Greta Thunberg and her young followers. It is less evident in the vocabulary of environmental economists, but a type of ‘justice’ is implicit in the analysis that economists present…
University of Leicester
Humans are storytelling animals, and our debates about justice involve debates about history. As Nicholas Wolterstorff observes in his theology brief, ‘Justice and Rights’, there are rival accounts of the genealogy of human rights. This is high stakes history, and hence we find philosophers, theolog…
The Australian National University
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Theology Brief on Justice clearly illustrates that the notion of justice pervades virtually every element of human existence. In contrast, my objective in this Disciplinary Brief is much more narrow and modest: to capture the trajectory of my evolving thinking concerning how …
Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Wolterstorff’s lucid and perceptive account of a Christian conception of justice and rights provides an excellent framework for locating the distinctive concerns of restorative justice theory and practice, as well as for helping navigate some of the current debates in the field, especially…
Australian National University
In his theology brief for the Faculty Initiative, Nicholas Wolterstorff talks about justice in the language of rights. Fair enough. He has done this to great effect in earlier work too. [ 1 ] Some, including myself, might like to see greater acknowledgement not only of the corollary relationship bet…
Garrett-Evangelical Seminary
Prof. Nicholas Wolfterstorff has written an insightful and thoughtful theological brief (hereafter NWTB) on justice and rights . Any response to such rich, dense and evocative piece is mainly an expression of my gratitude for the gift of friendship afforded by the Global Faculty Initiative (GFI) pla…
Fundación Universitaria Seminario Bíblico de Colombia
It initially felt like a bit of a misnomer to call what follows a “Disciplinary Brief,” since the ensuing text engages with Prof. Wolterstorff’s Brief, not in my capacity as a New Testament scholar, but from my experience working with victims of forced displacement in Colombia. Here at the Biblical …
Harvard University
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s theology brief on “ Justice and Rights ” offers a characteristically lucid distillation of some key themes from his wide-ranging work on justice as (in Ulpian’s classic definition), “rendering to each his right (or due).” [ 2 ] In particular, Wolterstorff argues convincingly,…
Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum)
Prof. Wolterstorff helpfully points out that justice is based on healthy and well-ordered relationships between persons. For Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian influenced by Aristotle and Augustine, such order emerges from natural human inclinations to seek happiness in virtuous and constructiv…
No disciplinary briefs in that discipline.
