After my long weekend hiking to the Thames source, I opted to take a break this week from my rambling. I’ve spent the entire week in Oxford. The rest has been refreshing, though it has renewed my eagerness to get back on the path, which I will be doing next week. Outside of my regular courses I’ve been teaching in Oxford, this semester I’ve also been leading an Honors College colloquium, “How Soccer Explains the World.” The students and I have attended a couple soccer matches together. We’ve read Franklin Foer’s book, from which I stole the title for the colloquium. On Wednesday evening I invited my students to O’Neill’s pub for the final evening of the Champions League soccer group stage. The Honors College paid for the meal (thanks, Jason Morris!), and we had a good time watching Chelsea in a pub filled with English football fans. The colloquium has been a fun thing to teach.
Yesterday, Jacque booked a cooking class for all of the students. We learned how to make fresh pasta. I’ve always wanted to learn how to do this. The teaching chef was fabulous, very informative about the craft and history of pasta making. The whole experience has me wanting to give pasta a go when I am back in Abilene. Having successfully complete our own batches of pasta, we shared a fabulous meal together, the fruit of our labor.
The cooking class and meal were a lot of fun, but for me the highlight of this week was a late morning coffee meetup I had on Thursday with Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Pastoral and Moral Theology at Oxford. I met Nigel almost ten years ago at the Society of Christian Ethics national conference. He attended a session in which I read a paper on the topic of Christian love and war. Nigel offered a very helpful critique of my paper during the session, one that drew from some of the important ideas he was exploring in his recently published book In Defence of War. After the conference, I read his book, which offers a full-throated defense of the Christian just war tradition alongside a critique of the Christian pacifism advocated by Christian ethicists like John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas. More recently I published a paper, “Can Love Walk the Battlefield? A Reply to Nigel Biggar,” in which I offer my own response to one facet of Nigel’s book. Generally speaking, I agree with much of Nigel’s defense of the Christian just war tradition. My argument focuses on the moral experience of the soldiers who wage war, and here I believe that Nigel’s argument is too optimistic about the actual experience of killing in war, which I believe evidence suggests is phenomenologically quite difficult to square with critical features of agape. Recognizing that the “price of love” in war may entail real moral injury in the lives of soldiers who ending up killing “for love’s sake” is, I think, a more realistic account of war. I also believe that recognizing this puts the Christian community in a better position to provide care to soldiers who, in returning home from war, continue to reap the consequences of the moral injuries borne, even in just wars.
Before arriving in Oxford, I emailed Nigel to let him know I would be in town. He replied most generously with an invitation to meet during the semester. He retired from his position at Oxford in August, though from what I can tell that word does not mean the same thing for him that it does for many. He has a new book coming out early next year on the topic of empire, and our conversation made it clear that he will be maintaining an active speaking and writing schedule. Our conversation yesterday was deeply gratifying. I probed some of the ideas that Nigel is exploring in some of his recent work, and he was curious about some of my recent work on the topic of Christian libertarianism. What I appreciate most about Nigel’s work is the historical nuance he brings to the topics he writes above, a nuance that challenges many of the taken-for-granted canards that frequent conversations about war, human rights, and empire. In particular, his book Behaving in Public: How to Do Christian Ethics offers a fabulous constructive account of Christian faith in public life. I strongly recommend it.
Visiting with Christian ethics colleagues is something that I’ve missed, a part of my life that Covid has derailed. My visit with Nigel was stimulating and has me excited about getting back to my own research and writing agenda when I’m back in Abilene. This weekend Tara and I are relaxing in Oxford. For Saturday lunch we are meeting on old student of mine who now lives in Reading with his wife and twin one-year olds. Catching up with students I’ve taught many years ago is such a thrill. Tara and I are happy to be in Oxford, but also looking forward to returning home to be with family and friends just over a month from now.
Return home…