Glossary

Glossary – Tradition-Based Rationality

Glossary – Tradition-Based Rationality By Dr. Brad J. Kallenberg July 24th, 2012 The term “tradition-based rationality” derives from the works of Alasdair MacIntyre. Human reasoning, argued MacIntyre, is both tradition-constitutive and tradition-constituted. By the first phrase he means that all reasoning, especially moral reasoning (i.e., thinking about what “good” means), involves people sharing a conceptual [...]

Glossary – Friendship in Virtue Ethics

Glossary – Friendship in Virtue Ethics David Burrell, C.S.C. July 6, 2012 Aristotle, the classical proponent of ‘virtue-ethics’, brought his ethical treatise–Nichomachean Ethics—to a climax with two remarkably perceptive chapters on friendship. Since his ethics focused on ‘the good’, he insisted that we could not find a good more durable or nourishing than friends. Moreover, [...]

Glossary – Charity

The Colossian Forum stresses that we must be empowered by the core virtue of “love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Col. 3:14). Without love such discussions become a noise like clanging cymbals – a noise no one wants to hear and that has some young adults running from the life of the church…

Glossary – Hospitality

When we look around us in worship, it becomes evident then that those with whom we are gathered in Christ is not up to us. We can invite, but the Spirit gathers. In the church’s worship, we see visibly the Spirit’s constant work of pulling all things together in Christ.

Glossary – Natural Theology

In ancient and medieval thought, this was sometimes described as the “book of nature” through which God spoke, alongside the book of Scripture. Thus the book of nature was sometimes described as a source of “natural” revelation whereas the Bible was…

Glossary – Virtue Ethics

The Colossian Forum emphasizes that before Christians can engage in a constructive, life-giving conversation about faith and science, we first need to acquire the requisite virtues to be able to have such a conversation. Before we can grapple with contentious issues, we need to be a people who…

Glossary – Worship: Expression and Formation

By “worship” we mean more than music or singing. In many contemporary churches, we have fallen into the habit of talking about the “song service” as “worship,” which is a prelude followed by “teaching” (i.e., the sermon)—perhaps with another opportunity to “worship with our giving” after the sermon. In some ways, this narrowing…