Quotes About Ethics

When we ask, "Is the fetus a person?" we are asking the same sort of limiting, self-justifying question that the lawyer asked Jesus: "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus, by answering the lawyer's question with this parable, rejects casuistic attempts to circumscribe our moral concern by defining the other as belonging to a category outside the scope of our obligation.

It is not possible to use the just war tradition as a hermeneutical device for illuminating the New Testament, nor have the defenders of the tradition ordinarily even attempted to do so.

This would mean, practically speaking, that Christians would have to relinquish positions of power and influence insofar as the exercise of such positions becomes incompatible with the teaching and example of Jesus.

Rarely, however, has the church fundamentally questioned whether military service is consistent with Christian service

Barth identifies three temptations that beset Christian ethics: (1) apologetics: the temptation to justify theological ethics on nontheological grounds; (2) differentiation: the temptation to isolate theological ethics as a special sphere of inquiry sharply distinguished from philosophical ethics; (3) coordination: the temptation to correlate theological ethics and philosophical ethics as mutually complementary.

John Barclay has well summarized the ethical issue at stake: "The problem here is not legalism (in the sense of earning merit before God) but cultural imperialism—regarding Jewish identity and Jewish customs as the essential tokens of membership in the people of God.

First, we should guard against falling into a habit of reading New Testament ethical texts in one mode only. If we read the New Testament and find only laws, we are obviously enmeshed in grave hermeneutical distortion. Likewise, if we read the New Testament and find only timeless moral principles, we are probably guilty, as Barth warned, of evading Scripture's specific claims upon our lives.

The New Testament has a normative role in Christian theology and ethics that is different from the Old Testament's role. We do not have a simple, undifferentiated canon running from Genesis to Revelation. The claim that Jesus' death and resurrection is the central decisive act of God for the salvation of humankind means that the cross becomes the hermeneutical center for the canon as a whole. Thus, within the canon the New Testament has a privileged hermeneutical function.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

Blaze himself was pretty sure he himself was going to hell, as were most other people. It was a dirty world, and the longer you lived, the dirtier you got.

It is a palpable error of some ministers, who make such a disproportion between their preaching and their living; who study hard to preach exactly, and study little or not at all to live exactly.

Of two duties we must choose the greater, though of two sins we must choose neither (556).

Oh! what a potent instrument for Satan is a misguided conscience(93)!

Hard studies, much knowledge, and excellent preaching are but a more glorious hypocritical sinning if the ends are not right.

That physician is no better than a murderer, that negligently delayeth till his patient be dead or past cure (389).

Good ends will not justify evil actions. What

There've been more campaigns sunk by people who feel they've gotta write a memo ... so when you put anything on paper, just assume it's gonna be on the front page the next day. If it can't be—don't write it.

Americans believe that the bottom line isn't everything, it's the only thing, and America is strangling on that lack of vision."13 Bennis also noted, "It isn't either a bull or a bear market anymore, it's a pig market."14

Most "necessary evils" are far more evil than necessary.

There have been times when I could have succumbed to some form of bribe, or could have had my way by offering one. But ever since that night in Dover prison I have never been tempted to break my vow.. My Parents always drummed into me that all you have life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name you'll never be happy.

Never do anything if it means you can't sleep at night.' It's a good rule to follow.

never just try to make money. Long-term success will never come if profit is the only aim.