Chapter Seven: Ecclesial Ethics
Ecclesial ethics suggests that Christian ethics should first of all be concerned with the life made possible in Christ for Christians.
Persuasive Narratives
Ecclesial ethics today is largely a response to modernity. Several persuasive narratives are considered.
- Karl Barth. One of Barth’s primary contributions is the rejection of cultural norms as necessarily right. This was a reaction to the church in Nazi Germany.
- Alasdair MacIntyre. Rejects Kant and duty and obligation in favor of emotivism which perceives moral preferences in terms of attitude and feeling. Advocates a return to Aristotle’s ethics as interpreted by Aquinas.
- John Milbank. Inspired by Augustine. Radical Orthodoxy is the movement he spawned.
- Stanley Hauerwas. Three narratives: 1) American Methodism. 2) Christian social ethics in America. 3) the church and the academy. He proposes an ecclesial ethics—ethics for the church.
- Oliver O’Donovan. Sees ethics as concerned with fulfillment of the created order.
- Jennifer Herdt. Christian practices, especially liturgy, and both form and malform.
- The (Re)Turn to Virtue in Catholic Moral Theology.
A New Aristotelianism
A broad consensus based on the work of MacIntyre, Hauerwas, and Lindbeck.
- People, Not Decisions. A decisive break with universal ethics. Ethics is a matter of making good people, not good decision. Character, rather than decision, is the center of ecclesial ethics.
- Virtue and Practices. The idea of virtues comes from Plato and Aristotle. Both Augustine and Aquinas talk about virtues. Three other terms. 1) Practice. 2) Telos. The final end, the ultimate purpose of life. 3) Tradition. All three are needed to understand the notion of virtue.
- Habits and Formation. It takes a community to form morality, just like it does to learn language. “Character is the regular and disciplined performance of practices that after long exercise emerge as habits.
- Narrative. Four ways of thinking about narrative described.
The Christological Turn
John Howard Yoder’s ethics and his complicated legacy.
- Jesus as Normative for Ethics. Yoder believes that the example of Jesus is the key to Christian ethics.
- Discipleship and Constantinianism. The conversion of Constantin was a watershed moment (for the worst) for CE.
- Nonviolence as Key.
Critiques and Future Promise
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