Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Not long ago I purchased the book Christian Theism and Moral Philosophy, ed. Michael Beaty, Carlton Fisher, and Mark Nelson, reason for which purchase was that Dr Fisher was one of my professors at Houghton and I have some interest in moral philosophy. Some of the essays in the book are just terrific. J H Yoder's "Walk and Word: Alternatives to Methodologism" is highly readable despite its title, plus I had read it in another form earlier so this wa my second shot at it. The article "A Consequentialist Ethical Theory" by James Keller was an amazing example, from my perspective, of how to argue as a christian for a moral theory. I don't know if I'm wiling to accept his conclusion, but the way he went about the article was pleasing in and of itself. Also, and I'm not done with this one, the entry "Norms of Loving" by J L A Garcia contains this gem:

Contrast this [those who want to call christians to new and higher standards] with the permissive thrust of some contemporary writing in religious ethics. Where Christian ethics needs to stand boldly as a sign of contradiction to this age's image of itself as rational, compassionate, and progressive, there is a sad tendency among such writers in religious ethics to snivel before these very idols. Such thinkers strain to find within Christianity resources with which to loose the moral bonds that still sometimes constrain those who thirst for the blood of the retarded, the unborn, and the hopeless; who hunger for the bodies of the children of Lesbos and Sodom; who spit at any church that dares offer them God's forgiveness for the sins in which they take perverse pride.


This I would call an example of truthful speaking.

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