Richard J. Mouw: Virtue Ethics and the Public Calling of Reformational Thought

Richard J. Mouw

VIRTUE ETHICS AND THE PUBLIC CALLING OF REFORMATIONAL THOUGHT

Richard J. Mouw

Philosophia Reformata 71 (2006) 3–13

"In my conversations with students at Fuller Seminary in recent years, I have been surprised how many of them have been strongly influenced by Stanley Hauerwas’s views. This has been especially true of students who did their undergraduate studies at evangelical colleges. Typically, such students have been introduced to the Hauerwasian perspective by evangelical professors who see it as a healthy alternative to prevailing cultural attitudes within the evangelical community. And certainly many of the cultural attitudes within the evangelical community are in need of some healthy alternatives...It is encouraging to see the ways that the Hauerwasian emphases often serve as a healthy corrective for liberal Protestantism. And there is also something to be said in favor of moving from a classical evangelical pietist kind of cultural over-against-ness to the more nuanced Hauerwasian variety. However, from a Reformational perspective, I sense that there is something missing in an ethical perspective that gets its basic inspiration from a spirit of cultural over-against-ness. Before spelling out what I see to be the defects of the Hauerwasian perspective, however, it is important to distance ourselves from the centuries-old Reformed-versus-Anabaptist debates..."

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