A brief inquiry into the meaning of sin and faith: with On my religion

286 Pages·2010·0.947 MB·English

by  Rawls, John;Nagel, Thomas;Cohen, Joshua

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith

John Rawls
A BRIEF INQUIRY INTO THE
MEANING OF SIN AND FAITH
WITH “ON MY RELIGION”
Edited by Thomas Nagel
With commentaries by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel,
and by Robert Merrihew Adams
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, En gland 2009
Copyright © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rawls, John, 1921–2002.
A brief inquiry into the meaning of sin and faith :
with “on my religion” /
John Rawls ; edited by Thomas Nagel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-03331-3 (alk. paper)
1. Philosophical theology. 2. Philosophy and religion.
3. Sin. 4. Faith.
5. Rawls, John, 1921–2002—Religion.
I. Nagel, Thomas. II. Title.
BT40.R39 2009
230—dc22 2008033809
Contents
Introduction 1
Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel
The Theological Ethics of the Young Rawls and Its Background 24
Robert Merrihew Adams
A BRIEF INQUIRY INTO THE MEANING OF SIN AND FAITH 103
A Note on the Text 104
Preface 107
chapter one A General Prospectus 110
chapter two Vindication of the Natural Cosmos 129
chapter three The Extended Natural Cosmos 157
chapter four The Meaning of Sin 179
chapter five The Meaning of Faith 214
Bibliography 253
ON MY RELIGION 259
General Index 271
Index of Biblical Passages 277

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith

Introduction
Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel
1. When John Rawls died in 2002, there was found among his files
a short statement ent i tled “On My Religion,” the second of the two
texts included in this volume. He had apparently written it in the
1990s,1 not for publication but perhaps for the interest of family and
friends—though he did not distribute it. Rawls describes the history
of his religious beliefs and attitudes toward religion, and refers to a
period during his last two years as an undergraduate at Princeton
(1941–42) when he “became deeply concerned with theology and its
doctrines,” and considered attending a seminary to study for the
Episcopal priesthood. But he decided to enlist in the army instead, “as
so many of my friends and classmates were doing.” By June of 1945, he
had abandoned his orthodox Christian beliefs. With characteristic
tentativeness and a disclaimer of self-knowledge, Rawls speculates
that his beliefs changed because of his experiences in the war and
his re flections on the moral sig nifi cance of the Holocaust. When he
1. The version published here comes from a file created on his computer in
1997.