James Gustafson Quotes

James M. Gustafson is an American theological ethicist. He received an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University in 1985. He has held teaching posts at Yale Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies , the University of Chicago as professor of theological ethics in the Divinity School , and Emory University as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Humanities and Comparative Studies. He retired in 1998 after 43 years of teaching and research, after being Woodruff Professor of Comparative Studies and of Religion in the Emory College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award for “creative and lasting contributions to the field of Christian ethics” on January 7, 2011 at the Annual Meeting of The Society of Christian Ethics in New Orleans.Some of his prominent students include Stanley Hauerwas and Douglas Ottati. Wikipedia

✵ 2. December 1925

James Gustafson: 4 quotes 1 like

Famous James Gustafson Quotes

“Prophets do not help responsible Christian persons who seek to gain political and economic power as a means to serve the public good within the constraints of political, economic, medical, or other institutions.”

James Gustafson

Source: "Varieties of Moral Discourse: Prophetic, Narrative, Ethical and Policy", p. 55

“Prophets tend to be impatient with detailed analyses of particular choices made in the past—choices that determined how, month by month, we got to where we are from where we were. They tend to be equally impatient with how we can practically get from where we are today to some modest increments of improvement a month from now. To the prophet such preoccupation seems to be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

James Gustafson

Source: "Varieties of Moral Discourse: Prophetic, Narrative, Ethical and Policy", p. 50

“The legitimacy of prophetic moral discourse, I believe, is without question. It is not, however, sufficient as moral discourse. It undercuts preoccupation with meager thinking about means to short-range ends. … It does not concern itself with incremental choices that have to be made by persons and institutions in which good and evil are intricately intermingled.”

James Gustafson

Source: "Varieties of Moral Discourse: Prophetic, Narrative, Ethical and Policy", p. 55

“Many years ago I heard a paper read by a colleague who was very philosophically astute and informed. The paper was on ethics, and it was rigorously argued, proper distinctions were made, and the critique of other points of view was cogent. … When my colleague finished his paper the man chairing the meeting said, "That's not ethics. Ethics has to do with prophecy. I learned that from Rabbi Abraham Heschel."”

James Gustafson

Source: "Varieties of Moral Discourse: Prophetic, Narrative, Ethical and Policy", p. 47

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