Robin Lovin , Southern Methodist University

Both religion and international law face problems of authority and legitimacy at the beginning of the 21st century. For the most part, scholars and diplomats have assumed that international law is positive law, created and maintained by modern states. But positive international law does not connect with the religious traditions that guide most of the world’s moral commitments, and the historic origins of modern international law in moral theology are barely known, even to specialists.

Religion has its own problems of authority and legitimacy when it impinges on the international order. The problems of “religion in the public square” are multiplied when the public square is global, and many legal theorists argue that religious ideas and identities should be excluded from any formative role in international deliberations and judgments. Nevertheless, an order of international law that can sustain global consent will require more specific links to religious traditions and values, not a general avoidance of them.

Thus, one important task of theological scholarship at the present time is to identify sources of authority that support the order of international law, limit the scope of sovereign power, and engage the moral commitments of a global citizenry. This authority must be integral to religious tradition and, at the same time, open to other religious and secular ways of construing moral commitments. My inquiry into international law and Christian ethics continues a three-year project in which a CTI working group has explored the Christian tradition with a view to effective preparation for these essential interreligious and interdisciplinary discussions.

Robin W. Lovin is Cary Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University. He joined the SMU faculty in July, 1994, and served as Dean of Perkins School of Theology from 1994-2002. From 1991-94, he was Dean at the Theological School of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. His teaching career includes service as an instructor at Candler School of Theology of Emory University and thirteen years as a faculty member at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He is a graduate of Northwestern University (B.A.) and Harvard University (B.D. and Ph.D.). He is an ordained elder in the North Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church. His writings include two studies of twentieth century Christian social ethics: Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer (1984), and Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (1994). He has also written extensively on religion and law and comparative religious ethics. He is also the author Christian Ethics: An Essential Guide (2000), which provides a general reader’s introduction to Christian ethics, and Reinhold Niebuhr (2007), an introduction to Niebuhr’s work that is part of the Abingdon Press “Pillars of Theology” series. His most recent book is Christian Realism and the New Realities (2008).