Abstract

DE VILLIERS, D. Etienne. Do the prophetic and reformist approaches in Christian ethics exclude one another? A responsibility ethics attempt at reconciliation. In Skriflig (Online) [online]. 2012, vol.46, n.1, pp.1-8. ISSN 2305-0853.

In the article the view that was expressed in, inter alia, the Kairos Document, that the prophetic and reformist approaches in Christian Ethics exclude one another, was challenged. A case was argued against this view by drawing on Reinhard Kratz's book on the latest research findings on prophecy in the Old Testament, James Gustafson's distinction of four modes of moral discourse and Walter Brueggemann's view that prophetic texts are acts of imagination that offer and purpose 'alternative worlds'. The conclusion was that the prophetic and reformist approaches rather complement, overlap and interpenetrate one another. In the last part of the article an argument was presented that both of the two approaches can be accommodated and integrated in a Christian ethics of responsibility.

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