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Rating: 
Summary: Superb Book on Theology / Ethics
Review: This is an excellent book on theology and ethics dealing with the nature of the "goodness of God" and focusing in particular how all social formations are to be ordered toward God's goodness as revealed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Steve Long engages helpfully with Kant and Nietzsche who serve as Long's modern and postmodern interlocutors. Long shows how Kant's attempt to ground ethics in freedom and then bring God in the back door subordinated theology to ethics. Enter Nietzsche who was smart enough to realize that without Christian theology, there is no basis for Christian ethics.
Here Long attempts to show how we must forget Kant's answer to avoid the problems that Nietzsche so rightly hits on. Thus, the first section of book deals with you ethics should be subordinated to theology. Thus, ethics become formulated and concretized through the revelation of the Triune God who is the source of all truth, goodness and beauty. Long thus reconstructs the three classic medieval transcendentals by situating them within God and made incarnate in Christ. Thus, the church participates in the truth, goodness and beauty of God insofar as they participate in Christ through the Spirit. Thus, the church becomes the social formation through which the good is mediated to us. We discover the good insofar as itis mediated to us by the Spirit through his work of 'membering' us into the body of Christ. This provides a way for Long acknowledge on the one hand that ethics are a constructive function of social groups (all moral norms are social constructions). However, given that the socially mediated ethical norms of the Church are the fruit of the Spirit who allows the church participate in the transendental goodness of God as revealed in the incarnate Christ, the transcendent nature of the good is retained. This is, I think an excellent move in that gives Christian ethics some good resources to stand with in light of the postmodern critique.
Long also focuses on the nature of evil, arguing persuasively for an Augustinian undersanding of evil as the privation of the good rather than as an ontologically existing foe of God. This has the utility of being able to avoid the Niebhurian idea that all good is acheived at the expense of some evil and that tragedy pervades all of life. When evil is understood as the privation of good it becomes apparent that genuine repentance and redemption is possible and that there is a transcendent goodness that goes beyond tragedy.
Long also reconfigures he notion of human freedom in some excellent ways. As he points out, being able to choose evil is not freedom but slavery. Freedom is choosing the good. Thus, Christian ethics does not ever seek to capitulate to evil but always turns the believer toward seeking the goodness that is God. Long hereby refutes proportionalism and the nominalist tradition, showing how certain actions (i.e. killing) are always wrong not because of anything inherent in the physical act (so to speak), but because those acts can never direct us to the goodness of God as they are not formed by the vision of love (caritas) revealed in Christ.
Long moves on in the second half of his book to discuss the relationship between the church and different social formations, the family (oikos), the market (agora) and the state (polis). All throughout he shows how the church as a nonnecessary society formed by Christ through the Spirit around the virtue of charity orders the Christian's participation in all other social formations.
In his analysis of the family, Long shows how the family as a social unit is subordinated (and fulfilled) under the church which orders the relations of the family toward the goodness of God.
Within this section, Long deals with issues of abortion, homosexuality, the aged and dying. he deftly surveys the abortion issue showing how a properly Christian approach to the issue does not argue on the basis of the liberal idea of 'rights' but rather focuses on recieving children as a gift of God. Likewise, Long emphasizes the ways in which economics play into the issue and argues that Christians must refuse to take part in the marketing and disposal of human flesh as a commodity to be consumed or thrown away.
Long does a good job at refuting the theological arguments that have been put forward in favor of homsexual unions and practice as viable Christian behaviour. Nevertheless, after deftly knocking down such arguments he doesn't take to strong of a stance on the issue, seemingly saying that it isn't preferable but must not be dealt with to quickly or severely. This seems to show both prudence and reserve which is both commendable and questionable (to me) at the same time. Personally, I would have liked more of a stance to be taken on this important issue. Nevertheless, the treatment of the issues and arguments surrounding the debate is excellent and seems to be maintianing a properly biblical and ecclesially based trajectory.
In his section on the market, Long offers and excellent treatment of the Christian practices of ecnomics as embodied in the eucharist and God's self-donation in Christ. Long rightly challenges the evils of capitalism and the market economy. Through an examination of ancient and medieval teachings on usary and possessions, Long greatly contributes to the discussion of what practices might sustain a countercultural economy embodied in the church.
In his final chapter, Long turns his attention to the relation between the church as state. What follows is an excellent treatment of issues of war and peace, crime and punishment and how the nature of the church as the social formation that orders people toward the goodness of God can be the primary locus of resistence to the nation-state. Long shows how the nation-state's attempt at being a "public" and "neutral" formun that maintains the common good is an illusion. The state is in fact a historical particularity that tyranically supresses other particularities and maintains a monopoly on coercion and the use of violece. As such, the church serves the state by providing a space for resistence against the state's hegemonic designs, thus fragmenting the state and allowing it to more adequately fulfill its role in God's economy in which the state's power is curtailed and not allowed to excercise totalizing power over other communites.
All in all, this is an excellent book that offers prfound treatments of the question of the nature of theological ethics, and the relation between the church and other social formations. It is lucid, provactive and highly persuasive. I reccommend it highly to all student of theology and those who care about the practices of the church in the present age.
Rating:
Summary: Steve Long is Da Bomb!
Review: Wow! I simply can't believe the knowledge that Steve L. is droppin on y'all with this erudite discussion. Suckers best be steppin back from this mind candy cuz the author be sellin the tickets and NOT standing in line! Seriously, though, there are scholars who be scholarizing that theology need to spring from ethics, and the Steve L. sets them fools stick straight with this work. Those mickeys can't be pretendin to be neutral and objective NO MO! Ethics comes from theology and only then can we participate in an infinite goodness which lies beyond us...otherwise you playa-haters be steppin to just another whack Enlightenment drum beat. Peace, out.
Rating:
Summary: Steve Long is Da Bomb!
Review: Wow! I simply can't believe the knowledge that Steve L. is droppin on y'all with this erudite discussion. Suckers best be steppin back from this mind candy cuz the author be sellin the tickets and NOT standing in line! Seriously, though, there are scholars who be scholarizing that theology need to spring from ethics, and the Steve L. sets them fools stick straight with this work. Those mickeys can't be pretendin to be neutral and objective NO MO! Ethics comes from theology and only then can we participate in an infinite goodness which lies beyond us...otherwise you playa-haters be steppin to just another whack Enlightenment drum beat. Peace, out.
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