Tag Archives: philosophy

WP-8: Moral Credit and the License to Offend

Posted on June 13, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This brief defends a single claim: that a record of good deeds, real and even admirable, can be converted by the deceitful heart into a private permit to break the very standard the good deeds appeared to honor — … Continue reading →

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White Paper 5: The Pedagogical Model: Peer Learning at Scale

Posted on May 31, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract The cost advantage examined in White Paper 2 and the access advantage examined in White Paper 4 are not the foundation of the University of the People (UoPeople) model; they are consequences of a particular teaching design. That design—small … Continue reading →

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Legitimacy Before Fair-Minded Audiences: An Integrated Model

Posted on May 29, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This concluding paper of the suite and of the whole work integrates the elements developed across the preceding papers into a unified model of how credible authority is established before fair-minded hearers, and argues that legitimacy of this kind … Continue reading →

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Steelmanning the Critic: Surfacing the Counter-Texts Yourself

Posted on May 29, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This paper argues that the most credible move available to a biblicist authority is to raise the strongest objections to his own position before his critics do, and to invite testing rather than resist it. Building on the costly-signaling … Continue reading →

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Office and Person: The Distinction That Defenders Collapse and Should Restore

Posted on May 28, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This paper argues that the great majority of illegitimate defenses of authority depend upon a single move — the fusion of the honor due an office with immunity for the person who holds it — and that Scripture consistently … Continue reading →

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The Whole Counsel on Obedience: What a Balanced Account of Biblical Authority Requires

Posted on May 28, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This paper, which opens the second suite, argues that a fair and biblically faithful account of authority must present the texts commanding obedience together with their qualifications and their reciprocal duties, rather than isolating the command, and that an … Continue reading →

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Patterns of Reckoning: A Taxonomy of Divine Judgment on Priests

Posted on May 27, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This concluding paper of the suite argues that the divine judgments on priestly abuse, surveyed across the preceding seven papers, are not arbitrary or merely various but fall into a small set of recognizable forms, each keyed to the … Continue reading →

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White Paper 20: The Universal Human Temptation Toward Exemption: Anthropological and Civilizational Perspective

Posted on May 23, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This paper closes the fourth cluster of the volume and the substantive analytical work of the twenty white papers, drawing together the cumulative findings of the previous nineteen papers into a comprehensive consideration of the universal human temptation toward … Continue reading →

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Field Identity, Public Engagement, and Self-Critique: The Reflexive Commitments of Neglect Studies

Posted on May 13, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary This paper concludes the series by addressing the questions that the preceding papers have deferred: what the field is to be called, how it should present itself to non-specialist audiences, how it should distinguish its work from adjacent … Continue reading →

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Deference, Exemption, and the Credibility of Moral Demand: Costly Action as a Test of Sincere Conviction

Posted on May 11, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This paper examines two contested features of contemporary movements for social change: the demand for deference to expert and moralized authority, and the practice by which elite advocates exempt themselves from the standards they wish to impose on others. … Continue reading →

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