Covenant vs. Contract

Abstract

The influence of modern philosophy and modern economics can be felt in the perception of the role engineering plays in contemporary society. To be specific, despite their advances, STEM disciplines are typically conceived one-dimensionally. The missing dimension can be recovered by mining the Ancient Jewish-Christian concept of “covenant.” I begin with the Hebrew Bible’s dual account of creation in order to show how two distinct modes of human rationality have given rise to two distinct modes of ethics and thus also two distinct modes of engineering. I conclude by showing how the reception by Christians of the Jewish concept of “covenant” affords the clearest lens for Christian ethicists who are concerned with issues of twenty-first-century engineering.