Charles Bellinger

Jesus v. Abortion

Charles Bellinger

There are three main positions that people adopt within the abortion debate: pro-life, muddled middle, and pro-choice. Jesus v. Abortion critiques the pro-choice and muddled middle positions, employing several unusual angles:
(1) The question «What would Jesus say about abortion if he were here today?» is given very substantial treatment.
(2) The abortion debate is usually conducted using moral and metaphysical arguments; this book adds in anthropological insights regarding the function of violence in human culture.
(3) Rights language is employed by both sides of the debate, to opposite ends; this book leads the reader to ask deep questions about the concept of «rights.»
(4) The use of historical analogies in the abortion debate goes both directions, in the sense that both sides accuse the other of being similar to the defenders of slavery; this book contains what is probably the most sophisticated and sustained analysis of the meaning and legitimacy of such analogies.
(5) Many important thinkers are brought into this conversation, such as Soren Kierkegaard, Eric Voegelin, Julien Benda, Simone Weil, Kenneth Burke, Richard Weaver, Rene Girard, Philip Rieff, Giorgio Agamben, Chantal Delsol, Paul Kahn, and David Bentley Hart.

The Trinitarian Self

Charles Bellinger

The Trinitarian Self argues that the insights of three key authors–Soren Kierkegaard, Eric Voegelin, and Rene Girard–can be synthesized to produce a Trinitarian theological anthropology. Their reflections on the deep roots of human behavior illuminate three structural dimensions of human existence: the temporal trajectory of selfhood, the vertical axis (God and nature), and the horizontal plane of cultural formation. An understanding of these dimensions and how they interrelate proves very fruitful in making sense of a wide variety of pathological forms of behavior that human beings have engaged in during the modern era. This work links together in thought-provoking ways various realms of thought, such as Trinitarian theology, a plea for a «New Copernican Revolution» that will result in a broadly held psychological understanding of violence, the ethics of war and peace, atonement theologies, and critical commentaries on terrorism and the war on terror. The interplay between these topics will likely prove very stimulating to a wide variety of readers.