For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

Adam Eitel / Character As Authority: Theology as a Lived, Embodied Experience

Episode Summary

"Somewhere is better than anywhere." (Flannery O'Connor, as quoted by Wendell Berry in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community) Today, Christian ethicist Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School) sits with Matt Croasmun for a conversation on ethics and theology. Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Together, he and Matt discuss the demands of teaching and learning theology on personal character—holiness even; the relationship between ethics and theology; the locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics; and the rooted, framing question, that animates Adam Eitel's writing and teaching: "What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"

Episode Notes

"Somewhere is better than anywhere." (Flannery O'Connor, as quoted by Wendell Berry in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community) Today, Christian ethicist Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School) sits with Matt Croasmun for a conversation on ethics and theology. Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Together, he and Matt discuss the demands of teaching and learning theology on personal character—holiness even; the relationship between ethics and theology; the locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics; and the rooted, framing question, that animates Adam Eitel's writing and teaching: "What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"

About Adam Eitel

Adam Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School.

Show Notes

• Teaching theology as a vocation
• "Authority is linked to character"
• Instruction in holiness
• The millennial demand for personal character to matter in academic authority
• Formation
• "I see my work as a professor of Christian ethics as a theological vocation."
• Millennial entitlement, juxtaposed with vulnerability
• Theology as a lived, embodied enterprise
• The lines between the personal and the pedagogical
• Problems for Christian ethics
• It's hard for Christian ethics to stay theological
• Can Christian ethics appropriately express social criticism?
• "The temptation for Christian ethics to bracket the theological commitments, that fund a specifically Christian moral imaginary."
• Dichotomy between tradition and critique
• "So we end up sawing off the branch that we're sitting on..."
• Declaration of Independence's "All men are created equal." as both the impetus for reform and the object of reform.
• "When we're doing theology, when we're doing ethics, we are always looking backwards in some respect, concatenating texts, bringing their different manners of speaking together and to, in order to see what can now be said on the basis of what's been said, that doesn't require an uncritical attitude toward the text or the social arrangements they endorse."
• Locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics
• "What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Adam Eitel and Matt Croasmun
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give