ABSTRACT

Karl Barth once wrote that the proper place to begin a systematic theology lies in ethics—with the way in which those who believe actually live. The Catholic Church canonizes saints far more often than it honors theologians, out of the conviction that lives speak louder than words. Indeed, an ethical agent must normally invoke several moral principles simultaneously, since some principles limit or counter the others. Some writers use the concept story in an external, artificial way, as though the mere claim to be living by a story is that same as actually living by it. The concept story, then, points to the tangled nests of our inner lives. One of the virtues of the concept story is to enable to approach the problem of belief and unbelief in a more illuminating light. Many philosophers and theologians have stressed either the elements of reason in human action, or the elements of the irrational.