Theologians have often been very critical about utilitarianism—despite the fact that the first versions of utilitarianism have been developed by Christian thinkers.
Vesa Hautala and I now got the opportunity to write an encyclopedia article on Christian Theology and Utilitarianism for the St Andrews Encyclopedia of Theology (SAET). SAET is a new project – a theological analogue of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
This is the first such overview as far as we know. It touches on both historical developments as well as points of overlap and tension. If anyone has criticism to offer of our treatment, we’d happily take it.
This is cool, thanks for doing it and sharing the work here
I’m very excited to see this.
One minor correction: Toby Ord assigns a 1-in-6 chance of existential catastrophe this century, which isn’t equivalent to a 1-in-6 chance of human extinction.
oh dear. Thanks for spotting this—really appreciated. We’ll add the correction.
Fantastic! Looking forward to reading this properly, looks super interesting at first read, especially appreciated the section on animal welfare.
Thank you! I hope utilitarians and Christians can cooperate more on our points of agreement. An evangelical Christian friend of mine who’s a Young Earth Creationist surprised me when he expressed sympathy for utilitarianism. The catch being that he doesn’t care about the welfare of non-human animals. (On that note, I’d argue that the first statement of utilitarianism, and one which referenced all sentient beings, was made by the Buddhist philosopher Santideva in the 8th Century).