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List of contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Sources of the Good Life
2. Challenging Eudaimonism
3. Calvinism and the Breakdown of Teleology
4. Retrieving Reformed Scholastic Virtue Ethics
5. Character Formation as Kierkegaardian Edification
6. Putting on Christ
7. The Frailty of Human Virtue
8. The Sanctification of Ordinary Life
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Pieter Vos is Professor of Military Chaplaincy Studies and Associate Professor of Ethics at Protestant Theological University, The Netherlands.
Summary
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.
Foreword
Argues that Protestant theological ethics not only reveals basic virtue ethical characteristics, but also offers highly relevant contributions to a viable contemporary virtue ethics.
Additional text
[A]n excellent example of retrieval. Vos’s engagement with the sources adds to the efforts of Manfred Svensson and David Sytsma to clarify the place of virtue in classical Protestantism...he makes great strides in reconnecting Protestant ethics to the wider Christian tradition.
