Methods and Cases in Social Ethics is an SBTS doctoral seminar I inherited, but one I happily embraced, having written a good deal in the field, including books on justice and bioethics, as well articles on a wide range of public policy topics, including waterboarding, Obama’s immigration policies, the religious liberties of cults, coal mining, perfidy in war, and the moral status of Edward Snowden (which I addressed in a talk at the Defense Intelligence Agency in DC).
Though we worked with the assumption that there were right/better answers to be found in the disputes which populate this field, I didn’t require that they come to particular conclusions to be rewarded with a good grade. Rather, I was more concerned that their discourse be thoughtful. In that connection, I supplied them with a list of items I’ve distributed to my seminars for several years, questions meant to initiate and advance philosophical thinking. (Frustrated with an earlier class’s reluctance to press or risk pointed discussion, I scribbled these ten on napkin on a noon break, and, with a few tweaks, they’ve held up pretty well.) In this course, I ask the students to employ them throughout their work, whether in the on-line discussion, the paper, the classroom discussion, or the extemporaneous writing exercise.
Elements of Dialogue
- Can you give an example? (illustration)
- What’s at stake? What difference does it make? (application)
- Where are you going with this? (destination)
- But wouldn’t that mean . . . ? (implication)
- What exactly do you mean by . . .? (clarification)
- So it is kind of like . . . ? (analogy; comparison)
- But what about . . . ? (counter-example)
- Wouldn’t it be better to look at it this way? (alternative paradigm)
- So you’re saying . . . ? (summarization)
- But how does this square with . . . ? (cohesion)
The students were generally grateful for the multiple-choice/true-false quizzes that pushed them to get the reading done in a timely and comprehensive manner. On the quizzes, I didn’t require them to reach learned conclusions; rather, I framed the questions so that they would do well if they merely read it, and blow it if they didn’t, e.g., Which of these four criteria is not embraced by the author?; Which example does he use to illustrate his take on X?
As for the texts themselves, they appreciated the range of perspectives, from the more “progressive” Wytsma to the more conservative Novak (who also served to introduce Catholic thinking in the course). Each book garnered a word of thanks from at least one student, whether for Claar’s treatment of an often-unexamined cause to Dalrymple’s ground-level description of social pathologies. Several were surprised by a black writer’s conservatism (Sowell). And they were pleased to have secular writings (Walzer and the Stanford Encyclopedia articles) along with the deliverances of evangelical presses (Zondervan and IVP).
My only regret is the complexity of the “Canvas Discussion,” in which we lost our way in the “equants, eccentrics, and epicycles.” I made a mid-course correction, requiring only four entries per book, not six.
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Mark Coppenger
Mark Coppenger (BA, Ouachita; PhD Vanderbilt; MDiv, Southwestern) has taught philosophy at a number of colleges and seminaries, and also served as an Army officer and pastor. A good introduction to his work is available at his website, markcoppenger.com. Two new books are forthcoming this spring—Apologetical Aesthetics (Wipf and Stock), featuring a dozen of his doctoral students in theology and the arts, and a commissioned work from the Scottish publisher, Christian Focus (If Christianity Is So Good, Why Are Christians So Bad?).
