Foreward
not strait-jacket types/
to understand the other...other options
gnosticism
Albrecht Ritchl "culture-Protestantism"
Abelard
Aquinas
Tillich paradox lutheran
Calvin Preface
Critics:
Stanley Hauerwas Will Willimon Resident AliensPurchase Hourwas Online |
Hourwas at Duke | Hourwas from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford Willimon on Wikipedia |Clergy Resources Willimon
George Marsden:
Marsden at Notre Dame
-thinks forget our conception of Christ is cultural/
-Yoder's critique of Niebuhr's term "culture"
J. Yoder
New Introduction: "Types of Christian Ethics" (gives better understanding)
not a history...understand alternatives...plus and minuses of different types Terms/vocab
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INTRODUCTION: TYPES OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS
**later addition from a speach of RH Niebuhr that helps guard against misreadings and some of the arguments of the book's critics I. The Typological Method (or Geisteswissenschaften)
limitations in that "the type is a mental construct of which no individual wholly conforms"
Correlations not determinations can be dealt with
not about explanation or evaluation, but understanding and appreciation. II The Various Ways of Typing Christian Ethics William JamesW. James on Wikipedia | His types of religious experience (once-born, twice born, healthy minded, sick soul)
"these types can be used to distinguish the ethical convictions and attitudes of Christians also."
Weber-Troeltsch distinction between churches and sects (with the addition of a third heterogeneous class of mystics),
& socio-economic?
teleological
vs
deontological
Roman Catholicism (Augustinian & Thomistic),
& liberal Christianity
Early Christian, Calvinist & most sectarian ethics
V The Natural Law Type [Christ of Culture: The Accommondationalist Type]
-"ought be called cultural type, since nature is known only through culture and since the members tendt o interpret and seek good and right as members of the cultural society"
-interpret revelation of values and imperatives through Christ from the standpoint of the common reason of their culture
-in general at home in their culture
In more Detail
1. "imperatives of Jesus regarded as republications of the law of reason and nature"
2. "interpretation of gospel values and demands through culture."
"elements most intelligible to culture are taken as primary and they are understood in the context of the culture"
3. "those elements in culture ethics are selected as normative which are most in agreement with the New Testament
("does not simply sanction prevailing culture...it emphasizes the "ideal" in that morality")
4. harmony; melioristic (depends on human action) rather than separatist or revolutionary
Examples
James bro of Jesus: Christianity a kind of party progress within Judaism
(see: Wikipedia Entry)
Clement of Alexandria:
"the spirit and content of his ethics seem wholly derived from his culture rather than from the church,
yet the content has been selected by the use of the culturally interpreted gospel."
--unaware of how these elements of his ethics not always fit together??
(see: Wikipedia Entry | in Catholic Encyclopedia | in Early Christian Writings )
Abelard: "to him law known by reason is basic; in content it is, of course, the law known by cultural reason." gospel as republication of law of nature
(Wikipedia |
Catholic Encyclopedia | Midieval Sourcebook | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Public Education Site )
Liberal Christianity (German, English, American etc)
Wikipedia entry |
ethics made on basis for theology
Christian liberalism..."not only interprets the ethics of the gospel from the point of view of culture
but also selects those elements in culture thics which appear ideal from a Christian point of view
Schleiermacher Glaubenslebre
Ritschl moral conscience as independent of religion and as prior to revelation
bais for ethics found by
inquiry into the first principles of the moral consciousness and these are then used for the interpretation of the demands and values of the gospel
in its teleological form
in its deontological form
"In the synthesis...a certain hiatus remains discernible, though there is a tendency among liberals to ignore it"
VI The Median Types
Common features of the Median groups
1. Trinitarian, or at least Bi-nitarian whereas new law and natural law types are essentially unitarian
2. recognize that divine values are apprehended in two situations or from two points of view,
in the church and in culture and that divine imperatives come through two mediators Christ (Bible, church) and nature (reason, culture)
3. They find it impossible to reconcile the two sets of values or imperatives by interpreting the one through the other
or to find peace by eliminating one set (two-worldly as oposed to one-worldly of the other types).
differ by methods of combinging elements in Christian ethics
Three groups (the synthesists (architectonic), the dualists (Oscillatory), and the conversionists.
A. The Architectonic Type [Christ Above Culture]
Thomas of Aquinas, "modern" Roman Catholic Church Thomas Aquinas on Wikipedia |
Thomas's points on synthesis between natural and new law, this-worldly and other-worldly values, culture and gospel
1. though divine law is in part a republication of natural law, there are in it some things which cannot be apprehended by reason
2. no antithesis in discontinuity.
values and imperatives of nature known through culture prepare for the reception of values and imperatives of the gospel, though they do not mediate them
3. practical emphasis on natural law as there is a prepatory function (so at times confused with natural law type even though different)
4. recognizes that two sets of values and imperatives do not lie on the same level,
imperatives of the gospel edo not atequately supply directives for the life of men in culture and
those of nature don't supply adequate motivation or guidance for life of man in spiritual relation to God and fellow-man
|
Jung at Wikipedia