Friendship A Study In Theological Ethics

Download or read book Friendship written by Gilbert Meilaender and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certain relationships are of profound importance for human life and of great significance for the moral life. In Friendship: A Study in Theological Ethics, Gilbert C. Meilaender explores some of the tension which Christian experience discovers in one such relationship, that of the bond of friendship. These tensions help to explain why friendship was a more important topic in the life and thought of the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome than it has usually been within Christendom. The bond of friendship--philia--involves special preference; Christian love--agape--is thought to be like the love of the heavenly Father who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Philia requires that love be returned; agape is to be shown even the enemy, who does not love in return. Friendships sometimes fade away; Christians are enjoined to be faithful in love. These tensions have permeated our lives and helped to shape our world, one in which politics is a more important sphere than the private friendship bond. We seek fulfillment in and identify ourselves with our vocations and not our friendships. And, in a world where politics and vocation are all-important, lasting friendships become more difficult to sustain. Friendship examines the tension between philia and agape and probes its significance for Christian thought and experience.

Download or read book Friendship written by Neera Kapur Badhwar and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been a marked revival of interest among philosophers in the topic of friendship. This collection of fifteen essays presents an admirable range of the diverse contemporary approaches to friendship within philosophy. The book is divided into three sections. The first centers on the nature of friendship, the difference between friendship and other personal loves, and the importance of friendship in the individual's life. The second section discusses the moral significance of friendship and the response of various ethical theories and theorists (Aristotelian, Christian, Kantian, and consequentialist) to the phenomenon of friendship. The last section deals with the importance of personal and civic friendship in a good society. Badhwar's introduction is a comprehensive critical discussion of the issues raised by the essays: it relates them to each other, as well as to historical and contemporary discussions not included in the anthology, thus providing the reader with an integrated overview of the essays and their place in the larger philosophical picture. Contributors: Robert M. Adams; Julia Annas; Neera Kapur Badhwar; Marcia Baron; Lawrence Blum; Nathaniel Branden; John M. Cooper; Marilyn Friedman; C. S. Lewis; H. J. Paton; Peter Railton; Amelie O. Rorty; Mary Lyndon Shanley; Nancy Sherman; Michael Stocker; Laurence Thomas

Download or read book Receiving the Gift of Friendship written by Hans S. Reinders and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2008-04-14 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does what we are capable of doing define us as human beings? If this basic anthropological assumption is true, where can that leave those with intellectual disabilities, unable to accomplish the things that we propose give us our very humanity? Hans Reinders here makes an unusual claim about unusual people: those who are profoundly disabled are people just like the rest of us. He acknowledges that, at first glance, this is not an unusual claim given the steps taken within the last few decades to bring the rights of those with disabilities into line with the rights of the mainstream. But, he argues, that cannot be the end of the matter, because the disabled are human beings before they are citizens. "To live a human life properly," he says, "they must not only be included in our institutions and have access to our public spaces; they must also be included in other people's lives, not just by natural necessity but by choice." Receiving the Gift of Friendship consists of three parts: (1) Profound Disability, (2) Theology, and (3) Ethics. Overturning the "commonsense" view of human beings, Reinders's argument for a paradigm shift in our relation to people with disabilities is founded on a groundbreaking philosophical-theological consideration of humanity and of our basic human commonality. Moreover, Reinders gives his study human vividness and warmth with stories of the profoundly disabled from his own life and from the work of Jean Vanier and Henri Nouwen in L'Arche communities.

Download or read book Friendship and Virtue Ethics in the Book of Job written by Patricia Vesely and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines friendship as a moral category in the Book of Job through an Aristotelian virtue ethics perspective.

Download or read book Politics in Friendship: A Theological Account written by Guido de Graaff and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guido de Graaff explores the political dimension and significance of friendship, arguing that its specific contribution lies not only in its theological approach, but also in its particular focus distinguishing the 'political' from the 'social' and/or 'civic'. The book's explorations are framed around a particular story of friendship: the story of Bishop George Bell and German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Drawing on Hannah Arendt and Oliver O'Donovan, de Graaff argues that Bell and Bonhoeffer's story can be read as one of friends assuming the responsibility of political judgment in an emergency situation - their story casts doubts on secular politics as the primary context for interpreting the friends' judgments. Thus the book provides a more comprehensive account of the story, also interpreting it against the background of the life of the church (with special attention to John 15 and Romans 12). De Graaff concludes by showing how a theological account is vital for discerning the distinct politics of the church, including opportunities for Christian engagement in secular politics.

Download or read book Open Friendship in a Closed Society written by Peter Slade and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-09 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Slade examines Mission Mississippi's model of racial reconciliation (which stresses one-on-one, individual friendships among religious people of different races) and considers whether it can effectively address the issue of social justice. Slade argues that Mission Mississippi's goal of "changing Mississippi one relationship at a time" is both a pragmatic strategy and a theological statement of hope for social and economic change in Mississippi.

Download or read book Understanding Friendship written by Gary Chartier and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Friendship illustrates friendship as an expression of Christian love that can enrich one's life and be socially, culturally, and politically significant. The book examines what friendship is, how its distinctive moral status can be supported by multiple approaches to Christian ethics, and its part in Christian spirituality.