This article examines the life, thought and activism of the prominent Baptist minister John Gershom Greenhough. Existing scholarly and popular narratives generally focus on the key role played by Nonconformity in nurturing the labour movement in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Using Greenhough as a case study this article posits an alternative interpretation of this relationship, contending that the individualistic religious culture of Nonconformity was often deeply hostile to socialism. This hostility motivated Greenhough, and others like him, to abandon their historical allegiance to the Liberal party in the early twentieth century in favour of the Conservatives. More broadly, this article investigates the process of political and ideological conversion and challenges dominant historical readings that characterize anti‐socialism as being synonymous with middle‐class economic self‐interest.
assertion that the indissolubility of marriage is demanded by the secondary precepts of natural law led us, in the first part of this study,i into a long discussion on the possible variability of some precepts of natural law. Our analysis centred round the proper interpretation of St. Thomas's dictum natura iiostra variabilis est, and the conclusion seemed justified that in St. Thomas's teaching certain precepts of the natural law are mutable and contingent. But what is even more important than this rle facto variability is the understanding of natural law and human nature which underlies the contingency of these secondary precepts. The natural law is partially necessary and partially contingent because it is a reflection of the existential ordinations of a concrete human nature which is itself necessary in its basic structure and contingent in its accidental modifications. Since proposing this interpretation, we have had occasion to read Dr. M. B. Crowe's scholarly article2 on this same topic. In the light of his remarks we would like to preface this concluding section by tying up the loose ends of our previous interpretation of St. Thomas's position on the variability of human nature.
Natitra Nostra Variabilis EstAs Dr. Crowe remarks, &dquo;human nature&dquo; is one of the most ambiguous of philosophical terms. St. Thomas, in the context of morality, does not define his use of the word, yet from a close examination of the relevant texts we can deduce four distinct elements included under the term: what we may call the philosophical, biological, cllltural, and personal constituent elements of man. Because of the possible ambiguity of the terms a word of clarification may be necessary. The term philosophical is here used to denote the constant unchanging essence of man; only that which is essential, which is found in all men at all times, truly deserves the name philosophical. As a technical term, culture is here used in the sociological sense, and has nothing to do with appreciating Beethoven or reading Shakespeare. The culture of any society is simply its way of life: the whole organized mass of patterned behaviours, know-1 See IRISH THEOL.
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