Article
Commentators in the media have often invoked the term biblical to describe the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, which has gone beyond our imagination and our explanatory categories. The term has not been used with any precision — it seems to mean simply vast or awe-inspiring. What would it mean to view the catastrophe in …
Article
Americans are, or at least claim to be, a Christian people. Almost 80 percent of us, including President Bush, practice Christianity in some form. Bush has openly stated that Jesus is his favorite philosopher and that "we ought to love our neighbor like we love our self, as manifested in public policy." Yet the president …
Article
Some problems that at first seem peculiar to one’s own calling, neighborhood or social circle turn out to be ubiquitous, duplicated everywhere. Such is the case with naysaying. Just as management experts employ the same principles from business to business, so naysayers practice the same art in various situations and professions. But what is naysaying? …
Continue reading “A Short Guide to the Fine Art of Naysaying”
Article
Religious pluralism and religious truth are topics that preoccupied H. Richard Niebuhr at in his work but nowhere more than in The meaning of Revelation. In the preface to that work Niebuhr recognizes both Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth as his teachers and notes that they are frequently thought to be “in diametrical opposition to …
Continue reading “At Home and Not at Home: Religious Pluralism and Religious Truth”
Article
In many important respects the ethics of Judaism and Christianity are similar. Both emphasize the oneness of the human family and the responsibility we have for each other. Jesus continued and at times intensified the Old Testament prophets’ defense of the poor and the powerless. But there is one matter on which the two traditions …
Book Chapter
How do we improve the lot of the poor, given the prevailing value and political facts of America today?
Book Chapter
Christian ethics is defined as the systematic study of the way of life set forth by Jesus Christ applied to the daily demands and decisions of human existence.
Book Chapter
Since the Christian’s ultimate loyalty is to God and not the state in its demand for obedience to the law, the Christian always tempers his loyalty with insistences on justice with love that calls for an equality and liberty that holds the state’s necessary powers of coercion under restraint and accountability to God.
Book Chapter
Christian ethics starts from the position that God created the world for good and that war involves great evil, and calls us to a stewardship that enjoys much convergence based on agape as redeeming love, but also significant divergences over the best strategies to establish peace with justice.
Book Chapter
For twenty centuries the Christian faith has struggled to come to terms with culture, and with the Christian ethic of love has both informed and challenged the various expressions of civilized culture, particularly in the areas of science, art and education.
Book Chapter
In tracing the source of Christian ethics to its Old Testament roots, the author explores the covenant and its developing radical monotheism, the law as it evolved from cultic ritual observances to a more humanitarian community of law, the prophets and their refining of Yahweh’s judgment and mercy, finally to Jesus’ unique understanding of God – centered moral living that moved beyond his Old Testament heritage to an exemplification of hope for the righteous rule of God in a redeemed community for this world and the next.
Book Chapter
The forces that are creating the society of tomorrow may be managed for the benefit of all by a cybernetic society democratically planned.
Book Chapter
What are the threats and promises posed by our increasing dependence on technological reason? The threats we face rise in direct proportion to the promises, and both are climbing at an exponential rate.
Book Chapter
The primary and final authority for Christian ethics is found in the life, teachings, ministry and death of Jesus Christ as the revelation of God. He clarified the ethical demands of a God-centered life by applying obedient love or agape to all human situations, both personal and social, and insisted this included the earthly as well as the eternal, and required our best actions amid the relativities of the present world.
Book Chapter
Expanding from a Jewish to a Gentile world the early church concluded that no legalism, Judaic or Gentile, was adequate to fulfill the gospel standard of agape, that the Kingdom of God was already present and yet to come, and that in living the gospel in this world with its political, economic and social challenges would require faithfulness and patience.
Book Chapter
Technological reason serves us best when it becomes the servant of creative thinking and is directed toward life-fulfilling goals. Unless technological reason is dominated by a vision that comes from beyond itself, it will lead us toward robotic efficiency, void of human ecstasy.
Book Chapter
Christian ethics begin with the assumption that Christian character is founded, not on naturalism or humanism, but on Jesus as the supreme revealer of God, that Christian virtues are not the exclusive possession of Christians, that sin is not a state of being but rebellious self-love and self-exaltation that leads to failure to be adequately responsive to the love commandment of Jesus, that humans are created free to make moral choices, and Christians are called to make these choices in light of the love commandment.
Book Chapter
The New Testament teaches that the Kingdom is primarily a gift of God, not a human achievement. The author offers suggestions how this Kingdom might be accepted.
Book Chapter
The author makes some specific proposals for creating a better world: 1. Income tax where all pay their fair share. 2. Replace the present welfare system guaranteeing a minimal family income plan. 3. Commit 1% of gross national product to assistance of the poverty-stricken countries.
Book Chapter
Jesus’ love commandment assumes we will love ourselves and calls us to expand beyond self-realization to devotion to God, and concern for others. Brotherly love should not be restricted to interpersonal relations, however primary they may be, but extend to wider service, including social service and social action to those persons and institutions not known to us directly, where social sin calls for our best response in the light of the gospel.
Book Chapter
Christian ethics establishes the family as primary in all social relations based on the explicit teachings of Jesus and their implications that monogamy is the standard, agape the controlling factor, divorce a compromise, and our relation to God the foundation.
Book Chapter
The ethics of economic life is second only to family life and covers the Christian vision of property, work and vocation, and economic justice, all stemming from the position that all things belong to God and we are to be faithful and loving stewards in managing God’s world and ourselves in it.
Book Chapter
While there is agreement in principle among Christians that all persons are equal before God, the reality of racial prejudice, whether based on biology, geography, education, economics, color, nationality or any other discriminating factor, must be addressed by the church in proclaiming its gospel and putting its own house in order.
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) Dr. Harkness has applied Christian ethical principles to the major issues of contemporary life. From the starting point of the revelation of the nature and will of God that has come to man through Christ, she has dealt first with the biblical foundations of Christian ethics followed by their application to specific contemporary problems, including self and society, marriage, economic life, race, the state, war, peace and others.
Article
Christian ethics has as its frame of reference Jesus’ idea of God. God is creator of heaven and earth, a loving God concerned about human beings — the children of God who are of infinite worth in his sight. We must reverence all of his creation: humanity as well as the earth. The psalmist sang: …
Article
Books Reviewed: Law, Love and Language. By Herbert McCabe, O.P. Continuum, 215 pp.. God Matters. By Herbert McCabe, O.P. Continuum, 264 pp. God Still Matters. By Herbert McCabe, O.P., edited by Brian Davies, O.P. Continuum, 256 pp. God, Christ and Us. By Herbert McCabe, O.P., edited by Brian Davies, O.P. Continuum, 224 pp. Though he …
Continue reading “Don‘t talk nonsense: Why Herbert McCabe Still Matters”
Article
Book Review: Ethics: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. English edition edited by Clifford Green. Fortress, 593 pp. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer died on April 9, 1945, few would have predicted his influence on theology at the beginning of the 21st century. As word of his execution reached his friends and colleagues during the chaotic days at …
Book Chapter
Proceeding from the purpose of presenting an understanding of Christian ethics that is biblically and theologically informed, as well as practically relevant and intelligible to theological students, laity and clergy, Dr. Harkness describes the direction she will take in developing her thesis that there is no fixed or inflexible code of Christian morality.
Article
The basic issue that this topic raises for me is that of universality and particularity. So far as I know, all the religions either arising in what Karl Jaspers called the axial time, or deeply shaped by insights developed during that period, have strong universal elements. Central to these are ideas of what we today …
Continue reading “Human Dignity and the Christian Tradition”
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The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. By Richard B. Hays. HarperSanFrancisco, 508 pp., $25.00 paperback. Richard B. Hays identifies our central problems in trying to use scripture for moral guidance today: With such diverse voices in the text, which voices do we take as authoritative? With such …
Continue reading “Is There Such a Thing as New Testament Ethics?”
Article
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6) I misunderstood this text for years, for I did not know what righteousness meant. I vaguely associated it with being good or pure, or with obeying the Ten Commandments. Righteousness is not a central concern of the churches with …
Continue reading “Jesus’ Passion and Ours: To Love Justice Itself”
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Book Review: Democracy and Tradition. By Jeffrey Stout. Princeton University Press, 348 pp. Reading this book is like joining an ongoing conversation, since Jeffrey Stout has been discussing religion and democracy with Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard Rorty since the mid-1970s. Often when we interrupt an animated conversation, it’s best to politely excuse ourselves …
Continue reading “Living Faithfully in a Democratic Society”
Article
Our culture often portrays the prostitute as someone beautiful, sexy, seductive and in control. An aura of mystery surrounds her, and many may want to imitate what they perceive as her glamorous lifestyle. She seems to make a lot of tax-free money and to be totally independent. A mother once told me that her young …
Article
Put yourself, if you can, in his footsteps. You have long laid your life in the hands of the Lord. Told to leave the land of your fathers forever, you pack your bags and go forth. Told to cut off your foreskin and those of your servants, you see to it the same day. Your …
Article
In the past the Christian Century has asked religious thinkers to tell us either “How My Mind Has Changed” or “How I Am Making Up My Mind.” The current series belongs more in the latter than in the former category. We have asked more than a dozen people who range anywhere from “promising” to “mid-career” …
Continue reading “Morality-in-the-Making: A New Look at Some Old Foundations”
Article
An intriguing debate took place on the pages of The Christian Century in 1932 between brothers H. Richard Niebuhr and Reinhold Niebuhr. The immediate occasion for the publication of their articles was Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, and the concrete issue that the brothers addressed was the proper response of the United States to that invasion. …
Continue reading “Niebuhr Versus Niebuhr: The Tragic Nature of History”
Article
Once when Frederick II, an 18th-century king of Prussia, went on an inspection tour of a Berlin prison, he was greeted with the cries of prisoners, who fell on their knees and protested their unjust imprisonment. While listening to these pleas of innocence, Frederick’s eye was caught by a solitary figure in the corner, a …
Continue reading “On Honesty and Self-deception: ‘You Are the Man’”
Article
At dessert, we were in agreement: what is most lacking in America is belief in the Devil. The table dispersed. It was at the club. While waiting for the elevator, I said to the Philosopher: “That’s the trouble: if I talked about the Devil, here, I’m the one that would be considered diabolical or, who …
Article
The “unknown god” in America seems to be faith itself. Our politicians are always admonishing the people to have “faith.” Sometimes they seem to imply that faith is in itself redemptive. Sometimes this faith implies faith in something. That something is usually an idol, rather than the “God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” …
Article
The memorable discourses on love recorded in Plato’s Symposium were offered at a banquet where much wine flowed. According to the Greek tradition, such banquets always ended with libations of unmixed wines dedicated to the “good genius,” Zeus Olympus, the heroes and Zeus Soter. We are told in this dialogue — — which has sometimes …
Article
It would be a shame to die without winning some victory for humanity. Horace Mann I would not judge a man by the presuppositions of his life but by the fruits of his life. Reinhold Niebuhr [God] maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just …
Continue reading “Right and Wrong: A Framework for Moral Reasoning”
Article
The building was nondescript; four stories of modern concrete just down the street from Ottawa’s Civic Hospital. The receptionist greeted me politely, told me the doctor was running a little late. And so I sat on the couch next to the old and dog-eared magazines and read one more time the list of questions Dr. …
Article
“Confirm thy soul in self-control,” the hymn about the blessedness of America instructs us. For liberal societies, intellect and liberty are intimately related. Liberty is symbolized by a woman — not a warrior (nor a guerrilla with a submachine gun); by the light of intellect; and by a book. The American concept of liberty — …
Continue reading “The Challenges of Adulthood for a Liberal Society”
Article
The Christian church has not dealt seriously according to Biblical standard, with the violence and destruction brought by the principalities and powers. By and large, the churches have lived by adapting themselves to the reality of the power rather than transforming it. The churches has sought to live in a friendly political atmosphere rather than …
Continue reading “The Christian Churches’ Response to the Principalities and Powers”
Article
Not only is the church set amid racial tensions, but there are racial tensions in the church, too. These racial tensions we bring in with us; they are the evidence of our unregenerateness. We do not like the thought that it may be our own unconvertedness, our own unregenerateness, that causes racial tension within the …
Article
Dillery-Dollarly Stanley M. Hauerwas Ethicist Scholarly Ph.D. Yale, Spent his life outlining Ethical disciplines — Inconsequentially Ended in Hell. Anne Harley Hauerwas My wife composed this double dactyl at about the time I finished my doctorate and became a "certified" theological ethicist. A framed copy of the verse hangs on my office wall as a …
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) Can the church help citizens of the emerging postindustrial society be more "saintly" in their "scientific" endeavors? What does it mean to be a morally responsible citizen in a complicated world?
Article
Book Review: Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement. By Christine Rosen. Oxford University Press, 286 pp. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. By Edwin Black. Four Walls Eight Windows, 550 pp. In the early 1920s progressive high schools and YMCAs took part in the Keeping …
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Book Review: Raising the Dead: Organ Transplants, Ethics, and Society, by Ronald Munson (Oxford University Press). Are we morally obligated to extend every life that we have the technological or medical ability to extend? The claim that we are underlies Ronald Munson’s book. He provides a fairly comprehensive survey of the ethical issues involved in …
Continue reading “The Organ Business: Second Thoughts on Transplants”
Article
We are all aware that the word “family” eludes definition, as do other important things like nation, race, culture, gender, species; like art, science, virtue, vice, beauty, truth, justice, happiness, religion; like success; like intelligence. The attempt to impose definition on indeterminacy and degree and exception is about the straightest road to mischief I know …
Article
One recent Sunday morning my pastor called to the front of the sanctuary four members of the local high school basketball team. The team had just won the state tournament and the pastor, caught up in the enthusiasm of a little town swept away by such glory, wanted to congratulate these boys. To his credit, …
Article
When it comes to ethics, even truisms are telling. Once in a religion class I observed that the author we were discussing drew a pretty sharp line on a particular moral issue. “Well,” the instructor reminded the class, “we all draw the line somewhere.” And so we do. Both street gangs and military academies have …
Article
Love is primary for any adequate ethic. At least that is what most Christian traditions say. Most Christians also believe that love is the heart of the virtuous life. But can human minds and neural systems – especially of those who love often and well – tell us anything about love and a life of …
Continue reading “Types of Love and Types of Exemplars: Implications for Virtue Science”
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Havel wonders at the tremendous strength of an oppressed people who "seemingly believed in nothing," yet who cast off a totalitarian system within a few short weeks, "in an entirely peaceful and dignified manner." Text: On December 29 at the Hradcany Castle, high above the Vlatava River that wends its way through the city of …
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The recent change in the cultural climate, one that everyone from fundamentalists to People for the American Way helped produce and to which each responded, has occasioned fresh talk about civic responsibility. The grand shift in experience and thought throughout the West, as it loses its center, makes such reflection and talk urgent. In the …
Article
You could make the case that Peter Singer has done more good than anyone else alive. A professor of ethics at Princeton University, Singer is the author of Animal Liberation (1975), which instigated the modern animal rights movement. Singer didn’t give us cruelty-free cosmetic production or vegetarian restaurants, but he has done more than anyone …
Continue reading “Who Lives? Who Dies? The Utility of Peter Singer”
