Semantics At Work: Developing A Properly Christian Description Of Human Activity

[Alex Johnson]

Abstract:

The Christian conversation about work continues to be re-examined under new light and new lenses. Most of these efforts produce beneficial conclusions about how Christians ought to work or approach work; however, most begin with a simple definition of work which assume the dichotomy between work and leisure, which I argue fundamentally undermines the Christian approach to work. I argue that the language of leisure ought to be superseded by the distinction between sloth and rest. Attempting to then deal with the remaining problem of work I suggest a modified Gricean semantic for how to make sense of what we mean when we talk about ‘work.’ Hopefully the delineation is beneficial for both pastoral and scholarly attempts to deal with the concept of work and human activity.

The full paper is attached to this post.