Quotes by Ethicists

If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self-mastery.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self-mastery.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The true opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Hate bad as it is at least treats the neighbour as a thou whereas indifference turns the neighbour into an it a thing. This is why we may say that there is actually one thing worse than evil itself and that is indifference to evil. In human relations the nadir of morality the lowest point as far as Christian ethics is concerned is manifest in the phrase T couldn't care less.'
Joseph Fletcher
Man's capacity for evil makes democracy necessary and man's capacity for good makes democracy possible.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Forgiveness is the final form of love.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Faith is the final triumph over incongruity the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.
Reinhold Niebuhr
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr
I'm not afraid of too many things and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
Reinhold Niebuhr
O God give us serenity to accept what cannot be changed courage to change what should be changed and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Reinhold Niebuhr
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Don't ask whether it's going to be easy. Ask whether it's going to be worth it.
Michael Josephson
No wonder modern humanity, even as it loudly proclaims its freedom and power to choose, is really an impotent herd drive this way and that, paralyzed by the disconnectedness of it all. It's just one damn thing after another.
Stanley Hauerwas
When someone is nasty or treats you poorly, don't take it personally. It says nothing about you, but a lot about them.
Michael Josephson
The Christian catacombs represent simplicity and earthiness; the cathedrals, transcendence and wonder.
Russell Moore
It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Whatever it means to be a Christian, it at least involves the discovery of friends you did not know you had.
Stanley Hauerwas
The Bible Belt is collapsing. The world of nominal, cultural Christianity that took the American dream and added Jesus to it in order to say, 'you can have everything you ever wanted and Heaven too,' is soon to be gone. Good riddance.
Russell D. Moore
We use the word cross in our hymns, in our piety, in our prayers, and in our pastoral language. But we use it too cheaply. We say that a person has to live with some sort of suffering in life: a sickness that cannot be cured, an unresolvable personality conflict within the family, poverty, or some other unexplainable or unchangeable suffering. Then we say, “That person has a cross to bear.” Granted, whatever kind of suffering we have is suffering that we can bear in confidence that God is with us. But the cross that Jesus had to face, because he chose to face it, was not—like sickness—something that strikes you without explanation. It was not some continuing difficulty in his social life. It was not an accident or catastrophe that just happened to hit him when it could have hit somebody else. Jesus’ cross was the price to pay for being the kind of person he was in the kind of world he was in; the cross that he chose was the price of his representing a new way of life in a world that did not want a new way of life. That is what he called his followers to do.
John Howard Yoder
Immorality sanctified by tradition is still immorality.
Bernard E. Rollin
Gentleness is given to those who have learned that God will not have his kingdom triumph through the violence of the world, for such a triumph came through the meekness of a cross.
Stanley Hauerwas
Humor is a prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Behold divinity divine enough to abandon divinity. Behold majesty secure enough to proceed un-majestically. Behold strength strong enough to become weakness, goodness good enough to be unmindful of its reputation. Behold love plenteous enough to give and take not again.
Paul Ramsey
My father was a better bricklayer than I am a theologian. I am still in too much of a hurry. But if the work I have done in theology is of any use, it is because of what I learned on the job, that is, you can lay only one brick at a time.
Stanley Hauerwas
I fear that much of the Christianity that surrounds us assumes our task is to save appearances by protecting God from Job-like anguish. But if God is the God of Jesus Christ, then God does not need our protection. What God demands is not protection, but truth.
Stanley Hauerwas
Peace is a deeper reality than violence."p. 231
Stanley Hauerwas
The lives of the saints are the hermeneutical key to Scripture.
Stanley Hauerwas
Every human being is, by definition, a theologian.
Russell D. Moore
Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.
Stanley Hauerwas
Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.
Reinhold Niebuhr
In his temptation of Jesus, Satan quoted Scripture, and he didn't remember, misquote anything. God wants his children to eat bread, not to starve before stones. God will protect his anointed one with the angels of heaven. God will give his Messiah all the kingdoms of the earth. All this is true. What is satanic about all of this, though, is that Satan wanted our Lord to grasp these things apart from the cross and the empty tomb.
Russell D. Moore
We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price.
Stanley Hauerwas
The church is not to be judged by how useful we are as a "supportive institution" and our clergy as members of a "helping profession". The church has its own reason for being, hid within its own mandate and not found in the world. We are not chartered by the Emperor.
Stanley Hauerwas
Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.
Stanley Hauerwas
It's hard to imagine a more biblical definition of devil worship than an exaltation of the self, an exaltation of the ego, and a tearing down of that countercultural sign of the cross," Moore argued. This pride – doing things our way instead of following God's plan
Russell D. Moore
If outrage were a sign of godliness, then the devil would be the godliest soul in Creation.
Russell D. Moore
When Christians sing about the wrath of God, we are singing about ourselves.
Russell D. Moore
Practicing gratitude in the moment of frustration can really be a game changer.
Bruce Weinstein
We need more worship wars, not fewer. What if the war looked like this in your congregation--the young singles petitioning the church to play more of the old classics for the sake of the elderly people, and the elderly people calling on the leadership to contemporize for the sake of the young new believers? This would signal a counting of others more important than ourselves (Phil 2:3), which comes from the spirit of the humiliated, exalted King, Christ (Phil 2:5-11).
Russell D. Moore
Mary-born Lord, humble us so that we also might say, "Let it be with me according to your word.
Stanley Hauerwas
Jim Crow repeated the old strategies of the reptilian powers of the air: to convince human beings simultaneously and paradoxically that they are gods and animals. In the Garden, after all, the snake approached God's image-bearer, directing her as though he had dominion over her (when it was, in fact, the other way around). He treated her as an animal, and she didn't even see it. At the same time, the old dragon appealed to her to transcend the limits of her dignity. If she would reach for the forbidden, she would be "like God, knowing good and evil." He suggested that she was more than a human; she was a goddess.
Russell D. Moore
We're a divided country on sexual issues. That's why every news cycle brings more controversy.
Russell D. Moore
It is not, in Calvin’s view, that we sin because we believe the wrong things; it is, rather, that we believe the wrong things because we sin.
Russell D. Moore
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Reinhold Niebuhr
A strong work ethic is a form of accountability, because it involves keeping a promise to one's employer. It is not the same thing as workaholism.
Bruce Weinstein
Maybe such questions bothered me so much because they are being asked about me, all the time, within the echo chamber of my own fallen psyche and by unseen rebel angels all around. Are you really a son of the living God? Does your God really know you? Does this biblical story really belong to you? Are these really your brothers and sisters? Do you really belong here?…
Russell D. Moore
A Christian understanding of the world sees a child's character not as genetically determined but as shaped to a significant degree by parental discipleship and discipline.
Russell D. Moore
The smart employer looks not for perfection but for an explanation of how the consequences of a dishonorable act affected the candidate and others.
Bruce Weinstein
The problem with carnal anger and outrage is that it's one of the easiest sons to commit while convincing oneself that he is being faithful.
Russell D. Moore
The problem with carnal anger and outrage is that it’s one of the easiest sins to commit while convincing oneself that one is being faithful. . . . how many angry, divisive, perpetually outraged Christians are convinced that they are reincarnated Old Testament prophets, calling down fire from heaven? Now to be sure there is a time to call down fire from heaven . . . The prophets of Baal called down fire from heaven too, and they screamed and raved for a fire that never fell (1 Kings 18:29). James and John . . . wanted to call down fire from heaven on the Christ-rejecting villages of Samaria. Jesus wanted nothing to do with that spirit because he saw it for what it really was (Luke 9:54ff).
Russll D. Moore
On the other hand, activist Christians who talk much about justice promote a notion of justice that envisions a society in which faith in God is rendered quite unnecessary, since everybody already believes in peace and justice even when everybody does not believe in God.
Stanley Hauerwas
You learn who you are only by making yourself accountable to the judgment of others.
Stanley Hauerwas
Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.
Reinhold Niebuhr
As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and and self-expression.
Stanley Hauerwas
If the apostles reminded even Paul himself to remember the poor (Galatians 2:10), then surely the rest of us need such a reminder.
Russell D. Moore
The culture around us knows what it means when they see a church in perpetual bluster and outrage. They know that we are scared.
Russell D. Moore
All believers in Christ, the Scripture teaches, will suffer-all of us. You will be glorified, Paul says, if you suffer with him. The problem with too many of us is not that we don't suffer, but that we assume that only Third World Christians or heroic missionaries are suffering. My boys didn't know that they were suffering in Russia; they would feel it as suffering now.
Russell D. Moore
The point of the calling was, quite simply, that it was appointed by God to serve neighbors. If along the way some self-fulfillment came as well, there was nothing wrong with that, but it was hardly the point of the calling.
Gilbert Meilaender