Protestant Virtue and Stoic Ethics

Protestant Virtue and Stoic Ethics
Author: Elizabeth Agnew Cochran
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2017-12-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567671364

The Stoics are known to have been a decisive influence on early Christian moral thought, but the import of this influence for contemporary Christian ethics has been underexplored. Elizabeth Agnew Cochran argues that attention to the Stoics enriches a Christian understanding of the virtues, illuminating precisely how historical Protestant theology gives rise to a distinctive virtue ethic. Through examining the dialogue between Roman Stoic ethics and the work of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards, Cochran illuminates key theological convictions that provide a foundation for a contemporary Protestant virtue ethic, consistent with theological beliefs characteristic of the historical Reformed tradition.

Protestant Virtue and Stoic Ethics

Protestant Virtue and Stoic Ethics
Author: Elizabeth Agnew Cochran
Publisher:
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2017
Genre: Christian ethics
ISBN: 9780567671387

"This book examines the dialogue between Roman Stoic ethics and the work of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards. Elizabeth Agnew Cochran illuminates key theological convictions that provide a foundation for constructing a contemporary Protestant virtue ethic consistent with a number of theological beliefs characteristic of the historical Reformed tradition. Building on this conversation, this book develops the claims that faith holds a unique value among possible moral goods; virtue has a unity that coincides with a soteriology that conceives justification as radically transforming a Christian from a sinner to one who is righteous before God; and moral responsibility is realized through a dispositional consent to God's loving providence."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Protestant Virtue and Stoic Ethics

Protestant Virtue and Stoic Ethics
Author: Elizabeth Agnew Cochran
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2017-12-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567671372

The Stoics are known to have been a decisive influence on early Christian moral thought, but the import of this influence for contemporary Christian ethics has been underexplored. Elizabeth Agnew Cochran argues that attention to the Stoics enriches a Christian understanding of the virtues, illuminating precisely how historical Protestant theology gives rise to a distinctive virtue ethic. Through examining the dialogue between Roman Stoic ethics and the work of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards, Cochran illuminates key theological convictions that provide a foundation for a contemporary Protestant virtue ethic, consistent with theological beliefs characteristic of the historical Reformed tradition.

Aquinas Among the Protestants

Aquinas Among the Protestants
Author: Manfred Svensson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2017-09-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1119265894

AQUINAS AMONG THE PROTESTANTS This major new book provides an introduction to Thomas Aquinas’s influence on Protestantism. The editors, both noted commentators on Aquinas, bring together a group of influential scholars to demonstrate the ways that Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed thinkers have analyzed and used Thomas through the centuries. Later chapters also explore how today’s Protestants might appropriate the work of Aquinas to address a number of contemporary theological and philosophical issues. The authors set the record straight and disavow the widespread impression that Aquinas is an irrelevant figure for the history of Protestant thought. This assumption has dominated not only Protestant historiography but also Roman Catholic accounts of the Reformation and Protestant intellectual life. The book opens the possibility for contemporary reception, engagement, and critique and even intra-Protestant relations and includes: Information on the fruitful appropriation of Aquinas in Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed theologians over the centuries Important essays from leading scholars on the teachings of Aquinas New perspectives on Thomas Aquinas’s position as a towering figure in the history of Christian thought Aquinas Among the Protestants is a ground-breaking and interdenominational work for students and scholars of Thomas Aquinas and theology more generally.

Stoic Virtues

Stoic Virtues
Author: Christoph Jedan
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2011-11-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441121722

Like its ancient rivals, Stoic ethics was a form of virtue ethics, yet while the concept of virtue was clearly central to Stoic ethics, the concept of Stoic virtue has not yet been fully explored. Instead, the existing literature tends to impose on the Stoic material philosophically quite alien non-Aristotelian interpretations of virtue. According to Christoph Jedan, however, a thorough examination of the Stoic concept of virtue leads to a reassessment of our understanding of Stoic ethics. This book emphasises in particular the theological underpinning of Stoic ethics, which Jedan contends has been underestimated in current accounts of Stoic ethics. Jedan argues that the theological motifs in Stoic ethics are in fact pivotal to a complete understanding of Stoic ethics. The book focuses on Chrysippus, the most important of the early Stoic thinkers, suggesting that his contribution, and in particular its religious aspect, remained a key point of reference for later Stoics. This fascinating book makes a crucial contribution to the field of ancient ethics.

Longing for the Good Life: Virtue Ethics after Protestantism

Longing for the Good Life: Virtue Ethics after Protestantism
Author: Pieter Vos
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-11-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567695085

This book argues that Protestant theological ethics not only reveals basic virtue ethical characteristics, but also contributes significantly to a viable contemporary virtue ethics. Pieter Vos demonstrates that post-Reformation theological ethics still understands the good in terms of the good life, takes virtues as necessary for living the good life and considers human nature as a source of moral knowledge. Vos approaches Protestant theology as an important bridge between pre-modern virtue ethics, shaped by Aristotle and transformed by Augustine of Hippo, and late modern understandings of morality. The volume covers a range of topics, going from eudaimonism and Calvinist ethics to Reformed scholastic virtue ethics and character formation in the work of Søren Kierkegaard. The author shows how Protestantism has articulated other-centered virtues from a theology of grace, affirmed ordinary life and emphasized the need of transformation of this life and its orders. Engaging with philosophy of the art of living, Neo-Aristotelianism and exemplarist ethics, he develops constructive contributions to a contemporary virtue ethics.

The Daily Stoic

The Daily Stoic
Author: Ryan Holiday
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0735211744

From the team that brought you The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy, a daily devotional of Stoic meditations—an instant Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestseller. Why have history's greatest minds—from George Washington to Frederick the Great to Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with today's top performers from Super Bowl-winning football coaches to CEOs and celebrities—embraced the wisdom of the ancient Stoics? Because they realize that the most valuable wisdom is timeless and that philosophy is for living a better life, not a classroom exercise. The Daily Stoic offers 366 days of Stoic insights and exercises, featuring all-new translations from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the playwright Seneca, or slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus, as well as lesser-known luminaries like Zeno, Cleanthes, and Musonius Rufus. Every day of the year you'll find one of their pithy, powerful quotations, as well as historical anecdotes, provocative commentary, and a helpful glossary of Greek terms. By following these teachings over the course of a year (and, indeed, for years to come) you'll find the serenity, self-knowledge, and resilience you need to live well.

On the Path to Virtue

On the Path to Virtue
Author: Geert Roskam
Publisher: Leuven University Press
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2005
Genre: Ethics
ISBN: 9789058674760

In the first part about the specific Stoic doctrine on moral progress (prokop ) attention is first given to the subtle view developed by the early Stoics, who categorically denied the existence of any mean between vice and virtue, and yet succeeded in giving moral progress a logical and meaningful place within their ethical thinking. Subsequently, the position of later Stoics (Panaetius, Hecato, Posidonius, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius) is examined. Most of them appear to adopt a basically 'orthodox' view, although each one of them lays his own accents and deals with Chrysippus' tenets from his own personal perspective. Occasionally, the 'heterodox' position of Aristo of Chios proves to have remained influential too. The second part of the study deals with the polemical reception of the Stoic doctrine of moral progress in (Middle-)Platonism. The first author who is discussed is Philo of Alexandria. Philo deals with the Stoic doctrine in a very ideosyncratical way. He never explicitly attacked the Stoic view on moral progress, although it is clear from various passages in his work that he favoured the Platonic-Peripatetic position rather than the Stoic one. Next, Plutarch's position is examined, through a detailed analysis of his treatise 'De profectibus in virtute'. Finally, attention is given to two school handbooks dating from the period of Middle-Platonism (Alcinous and Apuleius). In both of them, the Stoic doctrine is rejected without many arguments, which shows that a correct (and anti-Stoic) conception of moral progress was regarded in Platonic circles as a basic knowledge for beginning students.The whole discussion is placed into a broader philosophical-historical perspective by the introduction (on the philosophical tradition before the Stoa) and the epilogue (about later discussions in Neo-Platonism and early Christianity).

One True Life

One True Life
Author: C. Kavin Rowe
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2016-03-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300182104

In this groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary work of philosophy and biblical studies, New Testament scholar C. Kavin Rowe explores the promise and problems inherent in engaging rival philosophical claims to what is true. Juxtaposing the Roman Stoics Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius with the Christian saints Paul, Luke, and Justin Martyr, and incorporating the contemporary views of Jeffrey Stout, Alasdair McIntyre, Charles Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, Pierre Hadot, and others, the author suggests that in a world of religious pluralism there is negligible gain in sampling from separate belief systems. This thought-provoking volume reconceives the relationship between ancient philosophy and emergent Christianity as a rivalry between strong traditions of life and offers powerful arguments for the exclusive commitment to a community of belief and a particular form of philosophical life as the path to existential truth.

Longing for the Good Life: Virtue Ethics after Protestantism

Longing for the Good Life: Virtue Ethics after Protestantism
Author: Pieter Vos
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2020-11-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567695107

This book argues that Protestant theological ethics not only reveals basic virtue ethical characteristics, but also contributes significantly to a viable contemporary virtue ethics. Pieter Vos demonstrates that post-Reformation theological ethics still understands the good in terms of the good life, takes virtues as necessary for living the good life and considers human nature as a source of moral knowledge. Vos approaches Protestant theology as an important bridge between pre-modern virtue ethics, shaped by Aristotle and transformed by Augustine of Hippo, and late modern understandings of morality. The volume covers a range of topics, going from eudaimonism and Calvinist ethics to Reformed scholastic virtue ethics and character formation in the work of Søren Kierkegaard. The author shows how Protestantism has articulated other-centered virtues from a theology of grace, affirmed ordinary life and emphasized the need of transformation of this life and its orders. Engaging with philosophy of the art of living, Neo-Aristotelianism and exemplarist ethics, he develops constructive contributions to a contemporary virtue ethics.