Moral Reasoning in “the World”

Abstract

While moral theology fundamentally relies on human reason, scholarship on social sin now raises complex questions about the connection between understanding and moral responsibility. Considering these within the frame of reflection on “the world,” this essay proposes reading our culturally mediated defects of reason as a kind of worldliness that is both imposed from without and yet also reflects humanity’s sinful rebelliousness. In this theological register, following the recommendation of liberation and contextual theologians to learn from the “other” appears necessary as a practice of epistemic humility appropriate to humanity’s finite and fallen condition, and is thus useful for tempering moral theology’s longstanding confidence in reason. It also offers a way to make ourselves vulnerable to grace.