Articles
A Convergence of Persons: Berdyaev and MacIntyre on Christian Faith and Moral Agency
T. Adam Van Wart
Issue 3
Volume 2
pp. 721 - 743
https://doi.org/10.65172/QYCYNoFDtqGUxIxX
Abstract
T. Adam Van Wart relies principally on Berdyaev’s The Destiny of Man and MacIntyre’s famous trilogy on virtue ethics to argue that both thinkers’ theologically informed understandings of personhood and moral agency share, despite their differences, several essential features that both complement and improve each other’s respective ethical projects in productive ways. The unique contributions of Berdyaev’s and MacIntyre’s work help to locate and strengthen potential deficiencies in the respective projects of the other, and in a manner that is instructive for the work of ethicists and moral theologians in the present.
Citations
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Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 3rd ed. (San Paolo Edizioni, 1999)
Olivier Clément, Berdiaev (not provided in text, but inferred from context of full citation rule, however, the text only provides a short citation for Clément and a short citation for Clarke).
Oliver Clarke, Introduction to Berdyaev (not provided in text).
John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Blackwell Publishing, 1993), 326–79.
Nicolas Berdyaev, Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography (Geoffrey Bles, 1950), 101.
MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 350.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).
Berdyaev, Destiny of Man, 8.
Berdyaev, Dream and Reality, 46.
Berdyaev, Dream and Reality, 98–99.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
Berdyaev, Divine and the Human, 195–202.
Fuad Nucho, Berdyaev’s Philosophy: The Existential Paradox of Freedom and Necessity (Victor Gollancz, 1967), 192.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Open Court, 1999), 155–66.
George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, 25th anniversary ed. (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009).
Nicholas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man (Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 12.
Berdyaev, Destiny of Man, 284–98.
Nikolai Berdyaev, Christian Existentialism: A Berdyaev Anthology, ed. and trans. Donald A. Lowrie (Harper Torchbooks, 1965).
Olivier Clément, Berdiaev: Un Philosophe Russe En France (Desclée De Brouwer, 1991), 13–167.
Berdyaev, Destiny of Man, 2.
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Bruce D. Marshall, Trinity and Truth (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 91–103.
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Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (Fortress Press, 1993), 42.
Nicolas Berdyaev, Solitude and Society (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938), 52.
Frederick C. Copleston, Philosophy in Russia: From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev (University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 379.
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David Matzko McCarthy and M. Therese Lysaught, eds., Gathered for the Journey: Moral Theology in Catholic Perspective (Eerdmans, 2007).
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Nicholas M. Healy, Thomas Aquinas: Theologian of the Christian Life (Ashgate, 2003).
Bruce D. Marshall, “Christ the End of Analogy,” in The Analogy of Being: The Invention of the Antichrist or the Wisdom of God?, ed. Thomas Joseph White (Eerdmans, 2011), 280–313.
T. Adam Van Wart, “He That Is Spiritual: Aquinas, Paul, and the Primacy of Cruciform Wisdom,” Nova et Vetera 23, no. 1 (Winter 2025): 23–38.
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