Status Updates From Introducing Christian Ethics

"Emotivist ethics presupposes compartmentalized lives and manipulative social relations, and modernity calls this manipulative mode "managerial effectiveness."" (p. 205)

"Esther in particular is portrayed in the Bible as the savior of her people, and thus as a type of Jesus – yet she is almost overlooked in many traditions and lectionaries." (p. 179)

"Appealing to a tradition that goes back to John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion (1560), the [Kairos] document argues that a tyrannical government loses the blessing of God and the right to expect its people's obedience. "A regime that has made itself the enemy of the people has thereby also made itself the enemy of God."" (p. 174)

"Niebuhr focused more explicitly on the question of sin, arguing that the doctrine of Original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith. It is the limitation imposed by sin that keeps humanity in the finite and prevents it realizing its destiny in the infinite. Niebuhr regarded the agape love of Jesus as a religious ideal that could not be treated as a normative ethic." (p. 150)

"Plato regards evil as inherently unreasonable — that is, something one could never intend if wisdom were appropriately governing one's will and desire." (p. 66)