Self, World, and Time

Ethics as Theology 1

an induction

Oliver O’Donovan

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

© 2013 Oliver O’Donovan

All rights reserved

Published 2013 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 / P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

O’Donovan, Oliver.

Self, world, and time / Oliver O’Donovan.

pages cm.—(Ethics as theology 1 an induction)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8028-6921-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Christian ethics. I. Title.

BJ1251.O365 2013

241—dc23

2013005017

www.eerdmans.com

Contents

Preface

1. Moral Awareness

Introduction

Waking

World, Self, and Time

The Mishaps of Ethics

2. Moral Thinking

Reasonable Action

The Poles of Reason

Responsibility

Ethics and Prayer

3. Moral Communication

The “I” and the “We”

Advice

Authority

Moral Teaching

4. Moral Theory

Ethics between Science and Practice

Moral Theology and the Narrative of Salvation

5. The Task of Moral Theology

The Shape of Moral Theology

Faith, Love, and Hope

6. The Trajectory of Faith, Love, and Hope

The Root of Action

Love and the World

Hope and the Future

Work and Rest

Index of Names and Subjects

Index of Scripture References

Preface

And is there room for yet another turn around the floor with that “bad idea” (as it has been called by a contemporary with a gift for a phrase), Christian Ethics? If Christian Ethics has proved a bad idea, it must be in part because it has been too much the playground of good ideas. Fresh starts, new methods, programs for reconfiguration, new special foci, chase one another bewilderingly through the issues of its journals and the proceedings of its conferences—like the unveiling of the year’s new cars at the annual auto show, though with less sense of familiarity. Twenty years ago Johannes Fischer complained that “in Protestant circles, at least, Theological Ethics has seemed in danger of disintegrating in a series of arbitrary new initiatives.”1 And perhaps it was always so. Some disapproving observations of one of those condescending philosophical pagans of the early fourth century paint a picture we can recognize all too well:2

The Christian philosophy is said to be simple. Though it includes some teasing niceties about God, the sum of which preoccupation is a fairly uncontroversial claim of a creative cause—sovereign, original, and source of all that is—the greater part of its attention is given to moral instruction. Leaving to ethicists such harder questions as the nature of virtue and moral reason, the relation of morality to the passions and so on, its teachers ply the highways of edification, not proposing detailed guidance for acquiring each virtue in particular, but heaping one general exhortation on another unsystematically. To this the masses respond well, one may see, by growing more civilized and by imprinting their common morality with a stamp of piety, so ...

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About Self, World, and Time: Ethics as Theology, vol. 1

Self, World, and Time takes up the question of the form and matter of Christian ethics as an intellectual discipline. What is it about? How does Christian ethics relate to the humanities, especially philosophy, theology, and behavioral studies? How does its shape correspond to the shape of practical reason? In what way does it participate in the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Oliver O’Donovan discusses ethics with self, world, and time as foundation poles of moral reasoning; and with faith, love, and hope as the virtues anchoring the moral life. Blending biblical, historico-theological, and contemporary ideas in its comprehensive survey, Self, World, and Time is an exploratory study that adds significantly to O’Donovan’s previous theoretical reflections on Christian ethics.

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