Eric Gregory

Position
Faculty
Role
Director of Graduate Studies
Title
Professor of Religion
Office Phone
Office
236 - 1879 Hall
Bio/Description

Eric Gregory joined the faculty in 2001, and was promoted to Professor in 2009. He is the author of Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (University of Chicago Press, 2008), and articles in a variety of edited volumes and journals, including the Journal of Religious Ethics, Modern Theology, Studies in Christian Ethics, and Augustinian Studies. His interests include religious and philosophical ethics, theology, political theory, law and religion, and the role of religion in public life. In 2007 he was awarded Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. A graduate of Harvard College, he earned an M.Phil. and Diploma in Theology from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and his doctorate in Religious Studies from Yale University. He has received fellowships from the Erasmus Institute, University of Notre Dame, the Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and The Tikvah Center for Law & Jewish Civilization at New York University School of Law. Among his current projects is a book tentatively titled, The In-Gathering of Strangers: Global Justice and Political Theology, which examines secular and religious perspectives on global justice. Former Chair of the Humanities Council at Princeton, he also serves on the the editorial board of the Journal of Religious Ethics and sits with the executive committee of the University Center for Human Values.

Selected Publications
  • “Realism in an Age of Global Dysfunction,” in The Future of Christian Realism: International Conflict, Political Decay, and the Crisis of Democracy, edited by Dallas Gingles, Joshua Mauldin, and Rebekah Miles, Lexington (2023), xvii-xxii.
  • “Supererogation for Protestants?,” The Ethics of Grace: Engaging Gerald McKenny, edited by Michael Mawson and Paul Martens, (New York: Bloomsbury, 2023), 53-68.
  • “Democracy,” The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, edited by Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin, Oxford University Press (2021), 427-447.
  • “Religion, Pandemic, and Humanitarianism,” with Toni Alimi, in “COVID-19 and Religious Ethics,” Journal of Religious Ethics (September 2020): 365-367
  • “Beyond Critique: Just War as Theological Political Theology,” Modern Theology 36:3 (July 2020): 524-537.
  • “The Double Love Command and the Ethics of Religious Pluralism”, Georgetown University Press. (2016)
  • “Plowshares into Swords? Reflections on Religion and Violence”, Essays from the Institute for Theological Inquiry (2014).
  • “Politics and Beatitude”, Studies in Christian Ethics (2017), Vol. 30(2) 199–206.
  • “Remember the poor: Duties, Dilemmas, and Vocation”, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014)
  • “What Do We Want from the Just War Tradition? New Challenges of Surveillance and the Security State” Studies in Christian Ethics (2014), Vol. 27(1) 50–62.
  • “Putting Religion Back into Religious Ethics,” Journal of Religious Ethics 47.1 (March 2019): 166-179.
  • “What Hippo and Grand Rapids Have to Say to Each Other” Studies in Christian Ethics (2018): 119-123.
  • “Taking Love Seriously: Elshtain’s Augustinian Voice and Modern Politics,” Jean Bethke Elshtain: Politics, Ethics, and Society, edited by Debra Erickson and Michael Le Chevallier (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018), 177-190.
  • “‘The Gospel within the commandment’: Karl Barth on the Parable of the Good Samaritan,” Reading the Gospels with Karl Barth, edited by Daniel Migliore (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 34-55
  • “Politics and Beatitude,” Studies in Christian Ethics (2017): 1-8.
  • “Strange Fruit: Augustine, Liberalism, and the Good Samaritan,” Christianity, Democracy, and the Shadow of Constantine, edited by George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 98-110.
  • “The Double Love Command and the Ethics of Religious Pluralism,” Love and Christian Ethics: Tradition, Theory, and Society, edited by Frederick V. Simmons and Brian C. Sorrells. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2016), 332-346.
  • “Augustinianisms and Thomisms,” co-authored with Joseph Clair, Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology, edited by Craig Hovey and Elizabeth Phillips. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 176-196.
  • “The Boldness of Analogy: Civic Virtues and Augustinian Eudaimonism,” The Authority of the Gospel: Explorations in Moral and Political Theology in Honour of Oliver O’Donovan, eds., Brent Waters and Robert Song. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 72-85.
  • “What Do We Want from the Just War Tradition? New Challenges of Surveillance and the Security State,” Studies in Christian Ethics 27:1 (January 2014): 50-62.
  • “‘Remember the Poor’: Duties, Dilemmas, and Vocation,” God, the Good, and Utilitarianism: Perspectives on Peter Singer, ed. John Perry. (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 192-208.
  • “Enfleshment and the Time of Ethics: Taylor and Illich on the Parable of the Good Samaritan,” co-authored with Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Aspiring to Fullness in a Secular Age: Essays on Religion and Theology in the Work of Charles Taylor, eds. Carlos D. Colorado and Justin D. Klassen. (University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 217-239.
  • “Christianity and the Rise of the Democratic State,” Political Theology for a Plural Age, ed., Michael Kessler. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 99-107.
  • “America and the Church: John Courtney Murray, Reinhold Niebuhr, and H. Richard Niebuhr,” An Eerdmans Reader in Contemporary Political Theology, eds., William T. Cavanaugh, Jeffrey W. Bailey, and Craig Hovey. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 217-222.
  • “The Jewish Roots of the Modern Republic,” Harvard Theological Review 105.3 (July 2012): 372-380.
  • “Politics & The Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship?” 2008
  • “Sympathy and Domination: Adam Smith and the Virtues of Augustinianism,” Adam Smith as Theologian, ed. Paul Oslington. (New York: Routledge, 2011), 33-45.
  • “Augustinians and the New Liberalism,” Augustinian Studies 41.1 (2010): 315-332.
  • “Politics,” The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology, ed. Gerald McDermott. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 389-401.
  • “The Spirit and the Letter: Protestant Thomism and Nigel Biggar’s ‘Karl Barth’s Ethics Revisited’,”Commanding Grace: Studies in Karl Barth’s Ethics, ed. Daniel Migliore. (Eerdmans 2010), 50-59.
  • “Religion and Bioethics,” A Companion to Bioethics: Second Edition, eds. Peter A. Singer and Helga Kuhse. (Blackwell 2009), 46-55.
  • “Response to John Finnis: Inviting More Explication and More Economy,” The Naked Public Square Reconsidered: Religion and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Christopher Wolfe. (ISI Books 2009), 141-150.
  • “Agape and Special Relations in a Global Economy: Theological Sources,” Global Neighbors: Christian Faith and Moral Obligation in Today’s Economy, eds. Douglas Hicks and Mark Valeri. (Eerdmans 2008), 16-42.
  • “A Protestant View: The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition,” in The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition: Moral Arguments, Economic Realities, and Social Analysis, eds. Sarah-Vaughn Brakman and Darlene Fozard Weaver. (Springer 2007), 199-218.
  • “Before the Original Position: The Neo-Orthodox Theology of the Young John Rawls,”Journal of Religious Ethics 35.2 (June 2007): 179-206.