Communication, punishment and virtue: the theological limitation of (post)secular penance

Bourne, Richard (2014) Communication, punishment and virtue: the theological limitation of (post)secular penance. Journal of Religious Ethics, 42 (1). pp. 78-107. Full text not available from this repository.

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jore.12045

Abstract

This essay suggests that while Antony Duff's model of criminal punishment as secular penance is pregnant with possibilities for theological reception and reflection, it proceeds by way of a number of separations that are brought into question by the penitential traditions of Christianity. The first three of these—between justice and mercy, censure and invitation, and state and victim, constrain the true communicative character of his account of punishment. The second set of oppositions, between sacrament and virtue, interior character and external action, and formal and moral reconciliation, subject the model of state punishment as secular penance to problematic liberal and libertarian constraints. A postsecular analogy, outlining a theology of the invitational nature of divine judgment, and drawing on Thomas Aquinas's account of penance as both sacrament and virtue, is proposed.

Item Type: Article
Journal / Publication Title: Journal of Religious Ethics
Publisher: Wiley
ISSN: 1467-9795
Departments: Academic Departments > Institute of Arts (IOA) > Humanities
Additional Information: Richard Bourne, Senior Lecturer in Theology, University of Cumbria, UK.
Depositing User: Insight Administrator
Date Deposited: 16 Nov 2015 11:11
Last Modified: 12 Jan 2024 12:31
URI: https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/1704
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