What is Reddit's opinion of A Case for Character: Towards a Lutheran Virtue Ethics?

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> Turns out, nobody's gone to the Good Place for centuries because the points system focuses so much on this exact problem.

I feel like this is actually closer to what I learned as the Protestant all-sins-are-equally-sinful sort of ethics than what I'd like to see. Acts can be more or less bad and the same act can also be more or less good, at the same time.

I agree with The Good Place that an ethical model that would condemn a person for buying the apple is absurd... but that's because I can evaluate the situation in light of its remoteness, the intentions and knowledge of the buyer, the effect of the decision on the evil, how free the decision is, etc.

Buying the organic apple directly from a known wife-beating farmer at his farm stand when other options are freely available would certainly be in a different points category than the stated scenario.

> a simple one-size-fits-all appeal to authority won't help us

I'd like a one-size-fits-all default model at least, a sort of framework that laypeople can quickly apply to ethical decisions. Laypeople need a model we can all agree on so that we can have the discussion at all. "Is this remote or proximate cooperation with evil? Is there a good component to it? Let's discuss. How should our behavior reflect our conclusion?"

If the model produces outcomes that are clearly absurd in some situation, we can (since we are not Catholics) swap out what model we use for that specific decision, but we ought to need to be explicit about the swap.

> There are Lutheran theologians in the past and present who have developed Lutheran ethical frameworks.

I haven't read Bonhoeffer's Ethics, though I have it and really ought to do so.

I did read Joel Biermann's <em>A Case for Character</em>, in which he argues that virtue ethics are not incompatible with Lutheranism and that we should adopt that framework.

You're actually right that Luther and Melanchthon differed on the topic of virtue ethics! Joel Biermann wrote a whole book about it a few years ago, arguing that Lutherans need to take Melanchthon's more classically-philosophical view seriously. This caused some consternation in people who hold your view of things.

I think it's important to emphasize that Lutherans follow the Lutheran tradition, which has developed over time. We do not follow Luther himself.

Luther was a person who can and was often mistaken, particularly when arguing heatedly. There are many ways that Luther would not be a fully-compliant Lutheran, and that's okay.