Any Universal Ethic Minimalist and Dangerous

"Because of the framework of antithesis assumed by both RO and Hauerwas, any notion of a ‘common’ morality or universal ethics must be jettisoned, along with any project of deriving morality from a perduring ‘natural law’ that holds for all communities (because nature has been obfuscated by sin such that there is no perduring ‘humanity’). Rather, as Hauerwas puts it, ‘Ethics always requires an adjective or qualifier.’ An ethic is tied to a particular ethos and thus must always be a qualified ethic (whether Jewish, Christian, pagan, liberal, etc.)."

"Hauerwas’s critique of natural law ethics is insightful here: ‘Emphasis on the distinctiveness of Christian ethics does not deny that there are points of contact between Christian ethics and other forms of the moral life. While such points frequently exist, they are not sufficient to provide a basis of a ‘universal’ ethic grounded in human nature per se. Attempts to secure such an ethic inevitably result in a minimalistic ethic and often one which gives support to forms of cultural imperialism,’ which can be taken to underwrite coercion (Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 60-61)."

James K.A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, p. 240

Confronting, Not Correlating Values

"…the way to engage the contemporary world is not by trying to demonstrate a correlation between the gospel and cultural values but rather by letting the gospel confront these (apostate) values."


James K.A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, p.69

No Such Thing as Safe Love or Ethics

"No ethic is worthy that does not require potentially the suffering of those we love. Nothing cuts against liberal ethical sentimentality more than this. We wish that there were some means of holding convictions without requiring the suffering of our friends and families. We try to make 'love' an individual emotion that does not ask someone else to suffer because of our love. Of course, such thinking makes activities like marriage and childbearing incomprehensible since these practices inextricably involve those we love suffering as part and parcel of our joint endeavors."

Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens p. 148

Morality as Language

"Learning to be moral is much like learning to speak a language. You do not teach someone a language (at least nowhere except in language courses at a university!) by first teaching that person rules of grammar. .. No. You learn to speak by being initiated into a community of language, by observing your elders, by imitating them. The rules of grammar come later, if at all, as a way of enabling you to nourish and sustain the art of speaking well."

Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens p. 97

Church as Interest Group

"The way most of us have been conditioned to think about an issue like abortion is to wonder what laws, governmental coercion, and resources would be necessary to support a 'Christian' position on this issue. The first ethical work, from this point of view, is for Christians to devise a position on abortion and then to ask the government to support that position. Because we are fortunate enough to live in a democracy, we Christians can, like every other pressure group in this society, push for the legislative embodiment of our point of view. ... In acting as if the church's ethics were something that makes sense to every thinking, sensitive, caring American despite his or her faith or lack of it, the church is underestimating the peculiarity of Christian ethics."

Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens p. 70-71

Against the Nice God of Progress

"If you already know what the goods are on grounds different from Christian practice, then I remain unclear why one should worry too much whether being Christian makes much difference one way or the other."

"I am wondering on what grounds [one] believes [one] can take a position for or against the tradition to decide to submit to it or not."

"By modernity, I mean that project to create social orders that would make it possible for each person to have no story except the story you choose when you had no story."

"As Paul Ramsey was fond of saying, "God intends to kill us all in the end." I assume that also means the human species. I see no reason to believe that God's salvation through Jesus' cross and resurrection was about insuring that all of this is going to come out all right in the end."

"Those Christians who thought they were following the "present working of Christ" through their acceptance of violence made a disastrous mistake. The reasons for that acceptance were various but certainly, for many, it represented the attempt to be on the progressive side of history."

"If all Jesus was about was helping us see that God is that "factor in the world that introduces freedom, novelty, spontaneity, life, creativity, responsibility, and love," I cannot see why anyone would think it worth their time to kill him."

"Now that I am back among the Methodists, I have discovered they do have a conviction: God is nice. Moreover, since we are a sanctificationist people, we have a correlative-we ought to be nice also. I must admit one of the things that bothers me about Cobb's God is that she is just too damned nice."

"I do not believe that the trinitarian Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is an image, Rather, Trinity is a name. Christians do not believe we know something called God and then further identify God as Trinity. Rather, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is God."

"I seek to know how to go on when I do not know where I am. I assume that is not a new condition for Christians to be in because being a member of the church becomes necessary exactly because the claims of Jesus are meant to put us out of control. However, once we Christians get over the need to run the world, to pretend that we know not only where we are but where everyone else is or should be, maybe we will be able to live lives so joyful others may actually be attracted to the celebration we, call worship."

Stanley Hauerwas from Knowing How to Go On When You Do Not Know Where You Are: A Response to John Cobb, Jr.