Theology and Ethics
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Profile of Oliver O’Donovan by Brent Waters

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Oliver O’Donovan has made substantial contributions to the field of Christian moral theology. His work, however, is not confined to the academy; indeed, it informs the church’s mission and ministry. This brief essay cannot do justice to either the breadth or depth of his work, but some of the more significant strands can be sketched by focusing on three themes: (1) nature and social ordering, (2) eschatology and moral ordering, and (3) the church and …

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Note on Divorce as a Disqualification for the Episcopate (O’Donovan, 2010)

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This note from Professor Oliver O’Donovan was made available to the House of Bishops as background material for its consideration of these matters prior to its decision to release its statement at GS Misc 960, following its meeting in May 2010. Download full note as RTF document here

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A Sermon for Laetare Sunday (O’Donovan, 2006)

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We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, that we may walk in them. (Eph. 2:10) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the last theological work he laboured at before his imprisonment and death, the Ethics, wrote, pregnantly and provokingly, “It would seem that the knowledge of good and evil is the goal of all our ethical thinking. The first job of Christian Ethics is to get rid of that knowledge.” I don’t presume to …

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Archbishop Rowan Williams. Pro Ecclesia (O’Donovan, 2003).

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I remarked to John Macquarrie, as we ambled up Oxford’s Cornmarket early in 1984, that it seemed we had found him a worthy successor as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. “Ay, it will be fine,” the ironic Scot replied, “if only he’s out of jail at the time!” For the young professor designate, still Dean of Clare College, Cambridge, had just been newsworthily arrested accompanying his students on a protest sit-in at an American military …

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A Right To Health? (O’Donovan, 2010)

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If we refer to it as a slogan, that need not be in a pejorative sense.   It means simply that “the right to health” does useful duty as a shorthand reference.   A cluster of concerns are summed up compactly;  it gestures out towards a whole line of argument remaining to be traced.   If we discuss “the right to health” as a slogan, we do not discuss anything we are actually doing or proposing to do.   …

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Oral Evidence to Evangelical Alliance Faith and Nation Commission, (O’Donovan, 2003)

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I thought that the best point to start off on would be the nature of the purity of the church. I take it that the purity of the Church is something that is an inescapable practical concern to all Christians in obedience to the word of God. We purify ourselves as he is pure. And the question that I think underlies the issues at stake here is how we understand the purity of the Church …

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Freedom and its Loss: Hopes and Fears for the Political Order. Gore Lecture (O’Donovan, 2002)

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“Freedom” is a term with a range of meanings, and tonight we shall need to notice three of them. First and most formally, it is the power to act, the ownership of one’s behaviour that distinguishes intelligent agents from creatures of instinct. This is a power of individual human nature, and the assertion of freedom in this sense always imports some kind of individualism. We know the freedom-as-defiance of the existentialist philosopher – or of …

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Government as Judgment (O’Donovan, 1999)

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The democracies that emerged victorious from the Second World War tried to entrench human rights as a defense against the cruel politics of power. In so doing, however, they created a major problem of self-understanding, a cleft running deep through the heart of democratic theory. Democracy and human rights are not identical things, so it is necessary to ask whether they can coexist. It seems that the answer depends on two contingent factors: how the …