In a 2023 lecture at the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding, moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan makes an argument for the consistency of the idea of law when it is conceived in a theological context. We cannot speak of a Creation without law, O’Donovan says, because law is the inner coherence of Creation and is what makes the reality of the ordered cosmos intelligible to us. It is the consciousness of this order that allows us to take meaningful action, and this ground of meaningful action is what we know as history. O’Donovan explains how our own practical existence as creatures means we are beholden to law — to the created order of things — and yet there is a fundamental compatibility between freedom and this created order.
Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan discusses the first two volumes of his three-volume set, Ethics as Theology. During the interview, O’Donovan identifies important touchstones that have guided his thinking about moral reflection, including his insight in Resurrection and Moral Order (1986) that moral thinking and action proceed from, and must resonate with, the realities of the created order. O’Donovan also reflects upon the significance of the thinking moral subject as well as what form of moral inadequacy the “life of the flesh” suggests.
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