Wittgenstein, one of the most influential, and yet widely misunderstood, philosophers of our age, confronted his readers with aporias -- linguistic puzzles -- as a means of countering modern philosophical confusions over the nature of language without replicating the same confusions in his own writings. In Ethics as Grammar, Brad Kallenberg uses the writings of theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas as a foil for demonstrating how Wittgenstein's method can become concrete within the Christian tradition. Kallenberg shows that the aesthetic, political, and grammatical strands epitomizing Hauerwas's thought are the result of his learning to do Christian ethics by thinking through Wittgenstein.

Kallenberg argues that Wittgenstein's pedagogical strategy cultivates certain skills of judgment in his readers by making them struggle to move past the aporias and acquire the fluency of language's deeper grammar. Theologians, says Kallenberg, are well suited to this task of "going on" because the gift of Christianity supplies them with the requisite resources for reading Wittgenstein. Kallenberg uses Hauerwas to make this case -- showing that Wittgenstein's aporetic philosophy has engaged Hauerwas in a life-long conversation that has cured him of many philosophical confusions. Yet, because Hauerwas comes to the conversation as a Christian believer, he is able to surmount Wittgenstein's aporias with the assistance of theological convictions that he possesses through grace.

Ethics as Grammar reveals that Wittgenstein's intention to cultivate concrete skill in real people was akin to Aristotle's emphasis on the close relationship of practical reason and ethics. In this thought-provoking book,Kallenberg demonstrates that Wittgenstein does more than simply offer a vantage point for reassessing Aristotle, he paves the way for ethics to become a distinctively Christian discipline, as exemplified by Stanley Hauerwas.

Kallenberg employs design reasoning to illustrate how technological artifacts can be assessed for their inherent moral properties, thus bringing engineering ethics into conversation with Christian theology in order to show how each can be for the other a catalyst for the revolutionary task of living by design.

Sermons from Mind and Heart attempts to show the week-by-week theological work that a pastor does. The combining of the intellectual with the emotional is rooted in the categories of logos and pathos from Aristotle's Rhetoric. Some of the sermons have substantive theological reflections with multiple sources and are thus heavily footnoted; other sermons have no footnotes. This doesn't mean that any sermon lacks logos or pathos but that there is an interplay, a back-and-forth, of a pastor struggling to communicate the Gospel in a "this is that" way that honors both the "then" of Scripture and the "now" of contemporary life. Rhetorical scholarship and methodology are important in understanding the content and the structure of the sermons. What matters most is the sense that these sermons are an ongoing theological conversation between the pastor and his congregation. Sermons, after all, are meant to be heard, and they exist in the moment as authentic rhetorical acts. All other versions of the sermon, including this written form, are only echoes of the primal sermonic experience.

Description: Technologies are deeply embedded in the modern West. What would our lives be like without asphalt, glass, gasoline, electricity, window screens, or indoor plumbing? We naturally praise technology when it is useful and bemoan it when it is not. But there is much more to technology than the usefulness of this or that artifact. Unfortunately, we tend not to consider the inherently social and moral character of technology. As a result, we are prone to overlook the effects of technology on our spiritual lives. This book investigates the role technology plays in helping and hampering our Christian practice and witness. Endorsements: ""Only Brad Kallenberg could have written this book. Drawing on an engineering background, schooled by Wittgenstein's philosophical work, and shaped by Christian theological convictions, he enables us to see how technology can exercise power over us to our detriment without asking us to abandon technology in service to human life."" --Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School ""Kallenberg does a masterful job of helping his reader see the blind spots of modern, technological culture. His insights are provocative, instructive, and often redemptive. You will find yourself asking a whole new set of questions after reading this book--questions you might wish you started asking long ago "" --Rick Langer Talbot School of Theology/Biola University ""Brad Kallenberg brings a strong philosophical and theological acumen to God and Gadgets. The very idea that technology is a mixed blessing is a true act of Christian witness in a culture immersed in all that is 'new-fangled' and thus considered almost in god-like terms. Kallenberg addresses in trenchant and true ways the claims of God and the Gospel on our gadget-infested culture. His prophetic voice rings true from a Christian perspective, much as an earlier philosopher, Ernesto Grassi, did in his insistence that technology has its own set of hazards. This is a must read for preachers and other scholars in our time."" --Rodney Wallace Kennedy Baptist House of Studies, United Theological Seminary About the Contributor(s): Brad J. Kallenberg is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Dayton He is the author of Live to Tell: Evangelism for a Postmodern Age (2002) and Ethics as Grammar: Changing the Postmodern Subject (2001).

Wittgenstein, one of the most influential, and yet widely misunderstood, philosophers of our age, confronted his readers with aporias-linguistic puzzles-as a means of countering modern philosophical confusions over the nature of language without replicating the same confusions in his own writings. In Ethics as Grammar, Brad Kallenberg uses the writings of theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas as a foil for demonstrating how Wittgenstein's method can become concrete within the Christian tradition. Kallenberg shows that the aesthetic, political, and grammatical strands epitomizing Hauerwas's thought are the result of his learning to do Christian ethics by thinking through Wittgenstein.

Synopsis: Both engineering and human living take place in a messy world, one chock full of unknowns and contingencies. "Design reasoning" is the way engineers cope with real-world contingency. Because of the messiness, books about engineering design cannot have "ideal solutions" printed in the back in the same way that mathematics textbooks can. Design reasoning does not produce a single, ideally correct answer to a given problem but rather generates a wide variety of rival solutions that vie against each other for their relative level of "satisfactoriness." A reasoning process analogous to design is needed in ethics. Since the realm of interpersonal relations is itself a fluid and highly contingent real-world affair, design reasoning offers the promise of a useful paradigm for ethical reasoning. This volume undertakes two tasks. First, it employs design reasoning to illustrate how technological artifacts can be assessed for their inherent moral properties. Second, it uses the design paradigm as a means for bringing engineering ethics into conversation with Christian theology in order to show how each can be for the other a catalyst for the revolutionary task of living by design. Endorsements: "By Design first draws a parallel between the discipline of engineering and the discipline of ethics by identifying both as areas that (to use the author's term) are 'messy, ' and hence require the use of heuristics. It is extremely well written, well researched, and well illustrated, with numerous authoritative examples carefully chosen from engineering and religion. I highly recommend this book." --Billy V. Koen, Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin "Kallenberg's understanding and use of the design process allows readers to embrace problems of increasing ethical density. Not only will this appeal to engineers, but it will guide them toward appreciating all the gray areas in real decision making." --Andrew P. Murray, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Dayton Author Biography: Brad J. Kallenberg is Professor of Theology at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio. He is author of Ethics as Grammar (2001), Live to Tell (2002), God and Gadgets (2011), and numerous scholarly articles.

Contributors to Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition use Alasdair MacIntyre’s work as a methodological guide for doing ethics in the Christian tradition. These essays are grouped in three sections: descriptions of MacIntyre’s approach to ethics as developed in After Virtue, reflections on the moral issues that come to the fore when viewing the Christian tradition from a MacIntyrean perspective, and selected essays on family, homosexuality, abortion, pacifism, feminism, business ethics, medical ethics, and economic justice.