Charles T Mathewes
Biographic Data
| ID | 449841 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charles T Mathewes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charles T |
| FAMILY NAME | Mathewes |
| SIGNATURE | MATHEWES C T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Virginia |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 30 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Augustine’s Late Style
This essay makes three points. First, in his work Augustine sought to craft something like what Theodor Adorno called a “late style”—a style achieved after maturity has been realized, when a thinker or artist finds their work frustrated by the received cultural expectations, and they seek to overcome those expectations. So understood, a “late style” expresses both frustration and hope. However, second, Augustine’s late style differs from Adorno’s…
The Cambridge Companion to Augustine’s “City of God.”
Teaching Religion and Upholding Academic Freedom
The editors of the JRE collected short essays from scholars of religion in response to a recent incident at Hamline University that made national headlines. Last fall, Hamline University administrators refused to extend a contract to an adjunct professor of art history after a Muslim student accused her of Islamophobia for showing a 14th‐century image of Mohammad in an online class. The event provoked intense conversations about issues of academi…
A Response to Oliver O’Donovan’s Ethics as Theology Trilogy
“Be Instructed, All You Who Judge the Earth”
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Engaging Douglas Hedley's Imagination Trilogy
Love in a Time of Capital”
The essays gathered here display the vitality of humanities scholarship about what must be considered a basic question for today: what are the powers enabling, and challenges facing, human efforts
Justice in This World
There is a good case to be made that the American criminal justice system is itself criminal. Up until around 1980, all statistics we have suggest that the incarceration rate varied at around 100 inmates per 100 000 people. After about 1977, and especially after about 1982, the rate began to rise; in 2008 it was over 700 prisoners per 100 000, and while it seems to have begun a modest decline in the past few years, it remains over 700. In this co…
Political Affections
Journal Article Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology . By Joshua Hordern Get access Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology . By Joshua Hordern. Oxford University Press, 2013. viii + 312 pages. $ 125.00. Charles Mathewes Charles Mathewes The University of Virginia [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol…
Just War and Tragedy
In his memoir, The Brass Ring, World War II military journalist and cartoonist Bill Mauldin recalled a Memorial Day address given in May 1945 at the Anzio-Nettuno U.S. Military Cemetery by Lt. Gen. Lucian Truscott. Mauldin was the creator of cartoon strips about the two poor U.S. Army infantrymen Willie and Joe and was a well-known disrespecter of military officiousness and martinets. But Truscott was not among his targets. Truscott had commanded…
Feasting on Glory
In Memoriam
Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future
Journal Article Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future: The Trento Conference. James Keenan Get access Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future: The Trento Conference. James Keenan, ed. Orbis Books, 2011. 337 pages. $40.00. Charles Mathewes Charles Mathewes University of Virginia [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volu…
Jaar Editor Apology
Prof. Celia Schultz's essay, “The Romans and Ritual Murder,” that appears in this issue, was meant to appear in the December 2009 issue as part of the “Sanctified Violence in Late Antiquity” focus unit. Due to mistakes by the Editor, and no one else, this piece did not appear in that issue. The Editor apologizes for his mistake and we are delighted to include the piece here.
Evil and the Augustinian Tradition
Prophesies of Godlessness
This book explores the surprisingly similar expectations of religious and moral change voiced by major American thinkers from the time of the Puritans to modern times. These predictions of “godlessness” in American society — sometimes by those favoring the foreseen future, sometimes by those fearing it — have a history as old as America, and indeed seem crucially intertwined with it. This book shows that there have been and continue to be pattern…
Jaar Letter of Apology
IN THE MARCH 2007 issue (75[1]) of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, we published a review of two books, The Hindu World and The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, which did not meet the criteria by which we at the JAAR seek to hold ourselves accountable. Apart from poor editorial control of the review itself, what is crucial is that the review was done by a person with no recognized scholarly competency in the field of religious stu…
An Augustinian Look at Empire
This paper uses an Augustinian construal of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity to analyze and assess the diversity of challenges facing faithful Christian witness, particularly in the United States, since 9/11. After describing the diverse challenges to proper inhabitation of these virtues and how attempts properly to inhabit them will inevitably put adherents in some tension with the culture as a whole, it ends with some general…
Reconsidering the Role of Mainline Churches in Public Life
Recent sociological research suggests that the typical narrative of the “collapse” of mainline Protestantism's influence in American public life is misleading; rather than disappearing from public life altogether, the mainline churches are “quietly influential,” serving more as stewards of civil society and sites of potential civic engagement. As social scientists have shown time and again, in serving this role the churches remain of foundational…
The liberation of questioning in Augustine's Confessions
Concluding his Confessions, Augustine chose as the work's final word aperietur, 'will be' or 'shall be opened'. The oddity of ending and closing a book on a conjugation of to open provokes reflections into the nature of questioning, reflections that open into a larger investigation concerning how Augustine understood the nature of religious belief and faithful life. For him, faithful life is a project of resisting our always premature attempts at…
Original Sin and the Hermeneutics of Charity
Looking for a way to read the classic texts of Christian antiquity without treating them either as if they were written yesterday or as if they were archeological artefacts, the author endorses Meilaender's endeavor to develop the insights of Augustine in the modern context. He nevertheless suggests that a different way of drawing the analogy between sex and eating would better capture Augustine's distinctive way of joining theology and ethics an…
The Christian Moral Life
Agency, Nature, Transcendence, and Moralism
Recent work in moral and philosophical psychology provides valuable resources for religious ethicists, and this review examines contributions by Julia Annas, Annette Baier, John Bowlin, John McDowell, and William Wainwright. This literature raises important questions about the character of human moral beingas naturalistic, about whether an explicitly supernatural morality can be other than inevitably “moralistic,” and about how that might be so. …
Reply by Charles T. Mathewes
A Tale of Two Judgments
Love and Saint Augustine. Hannah Arendt , Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott , Judith Chelius Stark
Pluralism, Otherness, and the Augustinian Tradition
Recent work on religious pluralism profits from the systematic theological framework offered by the Augustinian tradition, which uses interrreligious dialogue in the service of its larger “conversionist” purposes. In so using dialogue, the tradition transforms our vision of the epistemic problem of pluralism into the theological problem of otherness; interreligious dialogue reflects the self's inescapable dialogue with God, and reveals the self a…
The Academic Life as a Christian Vocation The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship . George M. Marsden Religious Advocacy and American History . Bruce Kuklick , D. G. Hart God, Philosophy, and Aca…
Augustinian Anthropology
Our appreciation and appropriation of Augustine's thought is hindered by assumptions which serious engagement with his thought makes both visible and dubious. His account of the dynamics of human knowing seems, at first glance, a jumble of confusions, but, once better understood, it helps transform both the terms and the framework of our epistemology. His account of human agency seems similarly confused, but also works, once rightly understood, t…
The Resurrection. Stephen Davis , Daniel Kendall , Gerald O'Collins
Descartes and Augustine. Stephen Menn
Agency, Nature, Transcendence, and Moralism
Recent work in moral and philosophical psychology provides valuable resources for religious ethicists, and this review examines contributions by Julia Annas, Annette Baier, John Bowlin, John McDowell, and William Wainwright. This literature raises important questions about the character of human moral beingas naturalistic, about whether an explicitly supernatural morality can be other than inevitably “moralistic,” and about how that might be so. …
Reply by Charles T. Mathewes
A Tale of Two Judgments
Original Sin and the Hermeneutics of Charity
Looking for a way to read the classic texts of Christian antiquity without treating them either as if they were written yesterday or as if they were archeological artefacts, the author endorses Meilaender's endeavor to develop the insights of Augustine in the modern context. He nevertheless suggests that a different way of drawing the analogy between sex and eating would better capture Augustine's distinctive way of joining theology and ethics an…
The Christian Moral Life
Reconsidering the Role of Mainline Churches in Public Life
Recent sociological research suggests that the typical narrative of the “collapse” of mainline Protestantism's influence in American public life is misleading; rather than disappearing from public life altogether, the mainline churches are “quietly influential,” serving more as stewards of civil society and sites of potential civic engagement. As social scientists have shown time and again, in serving this role the churches remain of foundational…
The liberation of questioning in Augustine's Confessions
Concluding his Confessions, Augustine chose as the work's final word aperietur, 'will be' or 'shall be opened'. The oddity of ending and closing a book on a conjugation of to open provokes reflections into the nature of questioning, reflections that open into a larger investigation concerning how Augustine understood the nature of religious belief and faithful life. For him, faithful life is a project of resisting our always premature attempts at…
An Augustinian Look at Empire
This paper uses an Augustinian construal of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity to analyze and assess the diversity of challenges facing faithful Christian witness, particularly in the United States, since 9/11. After describing the diverse challenges to proper inhabitation of these virtues and how attempts properly to inhabit them will inevitably put adherents in some tension with the culture as a whole, it ends with some general…
Jaar Letter of Apology
IN THE MARCH 2007 issue (75[1]) of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, we published a review of two books, The Hindu World and The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, which did not meet the criteria by which we at the JAAR seek to hold ourselves accountable. Apart from poor editorial control of the review itself, what is crucial is that the review was done by a person with no recognized scholarly competency in the field of religious stu…
Prophesies of Godlessness
This book explores the surprisingly similar expectations of religious and moral change voiced by major American thinkers from the time of the Puritans to modern times. These predictions of “godlessness” in American society — sometimes by those favoring the foreseen future, sometimes by those fearing it — have a history as old as America, and indeed seem crucially intertwined with it. This book shows that there have been and continue to be pattern…
Evil and the Augustinian Tradition
Jaar Editor Apology
Prof. Celia Schultz's essay, “The Romans and Ritual Murder,” that appears in this issue, was meant to appear in the December 2009 issue as part of the “Sanctified Violence in Late Antiquity” focus unit. Due to mistakes by the Editor, and no one else, this piece did not appear in that issue. The Editor apologizes for his mistake and we are delighted to include the piece here.
Feasting on Glory
In Memoriam
Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future
Journal Article Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future: The Trento Conference. James Keenan Get access Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future: The Trento Conference. James Keenan, ed. Orbis Books, 2011. 337 pages. $40.00. Charles Mathewes Charles Mathewes University of Virginia [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volu…
Just War and Tragedy
In his memoir, The Brass Ring, World War II military journalist and cartoonist Bill Mauldin recalled a Memorial Day address given in May 1945 at the Anzio-Nettuno U.S. Military Cemetery by Lt. Gen. Lucian Truscott. Mauldin was the creator of cartoon strips about the two poor U.S. Army infantrymen Willie and Joe and was a well-known disrespecter of military officiousness and martinets. But Truscott was not among his targets. Truscott had commanded…
Justice in This World
There is a good case to be made that the American criminal justice system is itself criminal. Up until around 1980, all statistics we have suggest that the incarceration rate varied at around 100 inmates per 100 000 people. After about 1977, and especially after about 1982, the rate began to rise; in 2008 it was over 700 prisoners per 100 000, and while it seems to have begun a modest decline in the past few years, it remains over 700. In this co…
Political Affections
Journal Article Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology . By Joshua Hordern Get access Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology . By Joshua Hordern. Oxford University Press, 2013. viii + 312 pages. $ 125.00. Charles Mathewes Charles Mathewes The University of Virginia [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol…
Love in a Time of Capital”
The essays gathered here display the vitality of humanities scholarship about what must be considered a basic question for today: what are the powers enabling, and challenges facing, human efforts
Philosophy (28 works) · Political science (17 works) · Theology (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Art (9 works) · Augustinian Studies and Theology (9 works) · History (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works)