Download or read book Agape Ethics written by William Greenway and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-12-22 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consider intense moments when you have been seized by joy or, in different contexts, by anguish for another person, or a cat or dog, or perhaps even for a squirrel or possum struck as it dashed across the road: whether glorious or haunting, these are among the most profound and meaningful moments in our lives. Agape Ethics focuses our attention on such moments with utter seriousness and argues they reveal a spiritual reality, the reality of agape. Powerful streams of modern Western rationality reject the idea of agape. This has created a crisis of foundations in modern ethics and alienated us from love for all creatures. Working wholly within the bounds of reason, Agape Ethics joins an increasingly vibrant struggle to legitimate the spiritual reality of agape, to awaken people to its power, to clarify its ethical implications, and to validate our spiritual communion with all creatures in all creation. The result is a powerful, inclusive, and wholly reasonable defense of moral realism that should speak to all who are passionate about creating a maximally loving and good world.

Download or read book Agape written by Gene H. Outka and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1977-09-10 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the most comprehensive account to date of modern treatments of the love commandment. Gene Outka examines the literature on agape from Nygren’s Agape and Eros in 1930. Both Roman Catholic and Protestant writings are considered, including those of D’Arcy, Niebuhr, Ramsey, Tillich, and above all, Karl Barth. The first seven chapters focus on the principal treatments in the theological literature as they relate to major topics in ethical theory. The last chapter explores further the basic normative content of agape and discusses some of the most characteristic problems. “The book is in my judgment the best recent work in religious ethics. Outka brings together analytic moral philosophy and theological ethics, providing a masterly survey of views and issues arising in the past forty years. . . . I can think of few books of interest to scholars in both philosophy and theology, but Outka’s is one. Unlike some scholars who are at home in continental theology, Outka is also at home in secular analytic philosophy; he brings them together in a mutually illuminating way.”—Donald Evans “Outka has mastered this vast literature on love, and has brought a critical and clarifying analysis to bear upon it. This is a most important book on a most important subject, and brings the whole discussion into a new phase.”—John Macquarrie “The first thing to be said about Outka’s book quite simply is that it is excellent; in fact, it is probably the very best available book about contemporary Christian ethical theory.”—The Humanities Association Review

Download or read book The Supremacy of Love written by Eric J. Silverman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-five years ago Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue established virtue ethics as a major challenger to competing visions of morality, but there is still considerable disagreement concerning which version of virtue ethics provides the best approach. The Supremacy of Love describes and advocates an agape-centered vision of Aristotelian virtue ethics that portrays love as the most important moral virtue, and the goals of love as a partial constituent of every genuine virtue. This structural improvement to Aristotelian virtue ethics—found originally in the ethics of Thomas Aquinas—enables this account to address several controversial topics in contemporary virtue ethics, including why the virtues cannot be used badly, in what sense is there a unity between the virtues, how the virtues benefit the virtuous person, and how virtues provide action guidance. Eric J. Silverman demonstrates how and why a distinctly love-centered approach to virtue ethics should make the view widely attractive in comparison to alternative accounts of virtue ethics, duty based deontological theories, as well as results-based consequentialist views.

Download or read book Paul Ramsey s Ethics written by Michael McKenzie and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2001 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the moral philosophy of Paul Ramsey—one of the 20th century's most influential ethicists—from a theological perspective illustrating that religion can still play a substantial role in our ongoing moral inquiries. Ramsey wrote prodigiously on ethical issues including politics, medical research, the Vietnam war, and nuclear proliferation. His ethical theory, which concentrates on divine love, or `agape,' as well as justice and order, provides a middle ground between fundamentalism and secularism. Therefore, Ramsey's ethics will appeal to the 21st-century social conscience. McKenzie grounds his theological exploration in a comprehensive history of the theological and philosophical influences on Ramsey's thought, including Jonathan Edwards' theory of natural morality. He also explores a multidisciplinary selection of Ramsey's writings. In conclusion, McKenzie argues that Ramsey's natural law theory will continue to have significant and increasing relevance for morality in the postmodern world. This is the most thorough study of Paul Ramsey's work as well as a significant contribution to philosophy and theology.

Download or read book Political Agape written by Timothy P. Jackson and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-29 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the place of Christian love in a pluralistic society dedicated to liberty and justice for all ? What would it mean to take both Jesus Christ and Abraham Lincoln seriously and attempt to translate love of God and neighbor into every quarter of life, including law and politics? Timothy Jackson addresses such questions in Political Agape: Prophetic Christianity and Liberal Democracy. Jackson argues that love of God and neighbor is the perilously neglected civil virtue of our time and that it must be considered even before justice in structuring political principles and policies. To indicate the specific implications of civic agapism, he looks at such issues as the death penalty, Christian complicity in the Holocaust, the case for same-sex marriage, and the morality of adoption. The book concludes with Jackson s reflections on Martin Luther King Jr. as a Christian hero.

Download or read book Agape Justice and Law written by Robert F. Cochran, Jr and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a provocative essay, philosopher Jeffrie G. Murphy asks: 'what would law be like if we organized it around the value of Christian love, and if we thought about and criticized law in terms of that value?'. This book brings together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to address that question. Scholars have given surprisingly little attention to assessing how the central Christian ethical category of love - agape - might impact the way we understand law. This book aims to fill that gap by investigating the relationship between agape and law in Scripture, theology, and jurisprudence, as well as applying these insights to contemporary debates in criminal law, tort law, elder law, immigration law, corporate law, intellectual property, and international relations. At a time when the discourse between Christian and other world views is more likely to be filled with hate than love, the implications of agape for law are crucial.

Download or read book Eros Agape and Philia written by Alan Soble and published by Paragon House Publishers. This book was released on 1989 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of loveFor centuries, popular writers and respected scholars have written about and analyzed the phenomenon of love without exhausting its potential for contemporary debate. By representing the three major traditions in the philosophy of love--Platonic eros, Christian agape, and Aristotelian philia--editor Alan Soble has not only examined the intellectual problem of what "love" is, but has designed a dialogue among the three traditions in genuine philosophical style. "Eros is acquisitive, egocentric or even selfish; agape is a giving love. Eros is an unconstant, unfaithful love, while agape is unwavering and continues to give despite ingratitude. Eros is a love that responds to the merit or value of its object; while agape creates value in its object as a result of loving it... Finally, eros is an ascending love, the human's route to God; agape is a descending love, GodÆs route to humans... Philia is caught between eros and agape."--From the Introduction to Eros, Agape and Philia ISSUES EXPLORED: --What is the state of love today as seen through the eyes of Plato, Aristotle, and Paul? --How do relations between the sexes illustrate the difficulties of love? --What are the nature and effects of exclusivity, reciprocity, and constancy? --What are the conceptual and psychological ties between sex and love? --Does it make any sense to think of love in moral terms?

Download or read book In the Light of Agape written by William Greenway and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We see children squealing with delight in new-fallen snow. We see shocked survivors of the tsunami hugging broken bodies. We are not first objective, detached, or neutral. Instantly we are joyful or horrified. A singular force fuels our joy and our horror: agape. Agape is as palpable as gravity. As weight is to gravity, so good is to agape (or, in violation, so evil is to agape). Predominant Western rationalities preclude theorizing of agape. So secular intellectuals, awakened to agape but conceptually hobbled, lament a “crisis of foundations” in ethics and a “legitimization crisis” in political theory. In the light of agape, however, there is no question about any sovereign’s basic ethical responsibilities nor about myriad ethical issues (the evils of pedophilia, rape, slavery, racism, exploiting illness for profit). Thus, agape can ground ethics globally. Moreover, insofar as “faithful” signifies not propositional assent but living fidelity to agape, agape can ground interfaith spiritual consensus. Engaging intellectuals from Augustine and Dostoevsky to Emmanuel Levinas and Peter Singer, tackling issues from animal rights and the essence of spirituality to the passion of Torah and interfaith relations, Greenway demonstrates the spiritual fecundity and real-world ethical potentials that flow from philosophical exploration of agape.

Download or read book Agape Eros Gender written by Francis Watson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-13 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issues of gender and sexuality have recently come to the fore in all humanities disciplines, and this book reflects this broad interdisciplinary situation, although its own standpoint is broadly theological. In contrast to many contemporary feminist theologies, gender and sexuality (eros) are here understood within a distinctively Christian context characterized by the reality of agape - the New Testament's term for the comprehensive divine-human love that includes the relationship of man and woman within its scope. The central problem is concern with key Pauline texts relating to gender and sexuality (1 Cor. 11, Rom. 7, Eph. 5), texts whose influence on western theology and culture has been enduring and pervasive. They are read here in conjunction with later theological and non-theological texts that reflect that influence - ranging from Augustine and Barth to Virginia Woolf, Freud and Irigaray.

Download or read book Agape Justice and Law written by Robert F. Cochran and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses key contemporary legal debates from the perspective of the central Christian ethical category of love, agape.

Download or read book The Priority of Love written by Timothy P. Jackson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the relation between agape (or Christian charity) and social justice. Timothy Jackson defines agape as the central virtue in Christian ethical thought and action and applies his insights to three concrete issues: political violence, forgiveness, and abortion. Taking his primary cue from the New Testament while drawing extensively from contemporary theology and philosophy, Jackson identifies three features of Christian charity: unconditional commitment to the good of others, equal regard for others' well-being, and passionate service open to self-sacrifice for the sake of others. Charity, prescribed by Jesus for his disciples and named by Saint Paul as the "greatest" theological virtue, is contrasted with various accounts of justice. Jackson argues that agape is not trumped by justice or other goods. Rather, agape precedes justice: without the work of love, society would not produce persons capable of merit, demerit, and contract, the elements of most modern conceptions of justice. Jackson then considers the implications of his ideas for several questions: the nature of God, the relation between Christian love and political violence, the place of forgiveness, and the morality of abortion. Arguing that agapic love is to be construed as a gift of grace as well as a divine commandment, Jackson concludes that love is the "eternal life" that makes temporal existence possible and thus the "first" Christian virtue. Though foremost a contribution to Christian ethics, Jackson's arguments and the issues he takes up will find a broader readership.

Download or read book Love and Christian Ethics written by Frederick V. Simmons and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of Christian ethics is the biblical commandment to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself. But what is the meaning of love? Scholars have wrestled with this question since the recording of the Christian gospels, and in recent decades teachers and students of Christian ethics have engaged in vigorous debates about appropriate interpretations and implications of this critical norm. In Love and Christian Ethics, nearly two dozen leading experts analyze and assess the meaning of love from a wide range of perspectives. Chapters are organized into three areas: influential sources and exponents of Western Christian thought about the ethical significance of love, perennial theoretical questions attending that consideration, and the implications of Christian love for important social realities. Contributors bring a richness of thought and experience to deliver unprecedentedly broad and rigorous analysis of this central tenet of Christian ethics and faith. William Werpehowski provides an afterword on future trajectories for this research. Love and Christian Ethics is sure to become a benchmark resource in the field.

Download or read book The Four Loves written by Clive Staples Lewis and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1991 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes the feelings and problems involved in different types of human love, including familial affection, friendship, passion, and charity.

Download or read book Love Human and Divine written by Edward Collins Vacek, SJ and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 1994-04-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the two great commandments to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves are central to Christianity, few theologians or spiritual writers have undertaken an extensive account of the meaning and forms of these loves. Most accounts, in fact, make love of God and love of self either impossible or immoral. Integrating these two commandments, Edward Vacek, SJ, develops an original account of love as the theological foundation for Christian ethics. Vacek criticizes common understandings of agape, eros, and philia, examining the arguments of Aquinas, Nygren, Outka, Rahner, Scheler, and other theologians and philosophers. He defines love as an emotional, affirmative participation in the beloved's real and ideal goodness, and he extends this definition to the love between God and self. Vacek proposes that the heart of Christian moral life is loving cooperation with God in a mutually perfecting friendship.

Download or read book The Challenge of Evil written by William Greenway and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2016-12-02 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belief in God in the face of suffering is one of the most intractable problems of Christian theology. Many respond to the spiritual challenge of evil by ignoring it, blaming God, or insisting on the inherent meaninglessness of life. In this book, William Greenway contends that we don't have to deny our moral selves by either ignoring evil or abandoning our moral sensibilities toward it. We can open our eyes fully to suffering and evil, and our own complicity in them. We can do so because it is only in this full acceptance of the world's guilt and our own that we make ourselves fully open to agape, to being seized by love of others and God. Inspired by the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the Christian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Challenge of Evil lovingly explains how we can look squarely at the overwhelming suffering in the world and still, by grace, have faith in a good and loving God.

Download or read book The Love Commandments written by Edmund N. Santurri and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents Introduction ix Gene Outka Universal Love and Impartiality 1 Edmund N. Santurri Who Is My Neighbor? Love, Equality, and Profoundly Retarded Humans 104 William Werpehowski "Agape" and Special Relations 138 David Little The Law of Supererogation 157 Timothy P. Jackson Christian Love and Political Violence 182 John H. Whittaker "Agape" and Self-Love 221 Jean Porter Salvific Love and Charity: A Comparison of the Thought of Karl Rahner and Thomas Aquinas 240 Ronald M. Green Kant on Christian Love 261 John P. Reeder, Jr. Analogues to Justice 281

Download or read book Agape and Hesed Ahava written by David L. Goicoechea and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-02-19 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goicoechea presents his third volume in a series on agape. In this book he shows in four ways how the agape of Jesus fulfills the ahava and hesed of the Hebrew Bible. First, he shows existentially how he learned and lived this for six years in a Benedictine Minor Seminary and then for three years in a Sulpician Major Seminary. Second, he demonstrates how ahava or our love for God and neighbor and hesed or God's love for us develop through the Hebrew Bible. Goicoechea argues that St. Matthew's Gospel explains the fulfilment of ahava and hesed with Jesus' agape. He concludes by drawing attention to how Levinas and Derrida, two Jewish postmodern philosophers, treat Jewish and Christian love.