Tag: <span>04 Chapter</span>

Excerpt from Knowing Jesus, regarding “justification by faith” (Alison, 1993)

There is one further dimension to the presence of the crucified and risen Jesus I would like to bring out, and that is a dimension which cannot be separated from the dimension with which we have just been dealing. At the same time as the crucified and risen Lord is the foundation of the new Israel, so it is his crucified and risen presence that is the basis of the holiness of this new people. What is traditionally called ‘justification by faith,’ is inseparable from the universality of the new community, or society, that the victim founds. There is no grace, no faith, that is not by that very fact immediately related to the new reconciled community. The new Israel is not tacked on to the making of humans holy, as an additional extra. Making us holy is identical with making us part of the new Israel of God.

Theology & The Four Principles of Bioethics (Finnis, 1993)

‘The four principles of bioethics’ have their rational basis and truth only within the wider set of moral principles. Outside that context, they demarcate a rather legalistic ethic while also, paradoxically, providing labels for rationalising almost any practice.

The Unfreedom of the Free Market (Cavanaugh, 2003)

There is a gap between dual perceptions of the market economy that seems to be getting wider in the age of globalization. On the one hand, we are told that we live in an era of unparalleled freedom of choice…On the other hand, there is a profound sense of resignation to fate in attitudes toward the market…The argument of this essay is that there is a fundamental connection between these two types of perception of the market. In the ideology of the free market, freedom is conceived as the absence of interference from others. There are no common ends to which our desires are directed. In the absence of such ends, all that remains is the sheer arbitrary power of one will against another. Freedom thus gives way to the aggrandizement of power and the manipulation of will and desire by the greater power. The liberation of desire from ends on the one hand, and the domination of impersonal power on the other, are two sides of the same coin. If this is the case, then true freedom requires an account of the ends of human life and the destination of creation.

Stan the Man: A Thoroughly Biased Account of a Completely UnObjective Person (excerpts) (Cavanaugh, 2001)

William Cavanaugh has penned a thoroughly entertaining introduction to the (in)famous Methodist theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwaus in “Stan the Man: A Thoroughly Biased Account of a Completely UnObjective Person” (The Stanley Hauerwas Reader, Duke UP, 2001). Hauerwas, for those who aren’t aware, is a Texan with a mouth of a sailor, a low tolerance for bullshit, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and a taste for Mexican food. Here are some choice excerpts from Cavanaugh’s introduction.