Communio viatorum is a theological journal from Central European perspectives founded in 1958 by J. L. Hromádka and J. B. Souček, published by the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague three times a year.
Communio Viatorum seeks to promote research and scholarly debate in all theological disciplines. Since its foundation special attention has been paid to both biblical studies and Czech Protestant history. The journal is also interested in articles that reflect new accents within the field of theology as well as relevant challenges from neighbouring disciplines, developments in the Church worldwide as well as new moves within society. It seeks to promote an ongoing process of theological debate from a specific Central European Protestant background, but open to authors from all around the world and all denominations who wish to engage in such a conversation.
As of 2024, the journal Communio Viatorum has transitioned to an open-access publication, issued by Charles University Karolinum Press.
Articles published here are indexed in the ATLA Religion Database® and are included in the full-text ATLASerials® (ATLAS®) collection. They are also indexed and abstracted in the Web of Science – Arts and Humanities Citation Index® of Clarivate Analytics, in Scopus, in CEEOL, and in ERIH PLUS.
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COMMUNIO VIATORUM, Vol 68 No 2 (2026), 245–265
ArticleFrom Decision to Vision: Virtue, Community, and Hauerwas’ Critique of Fletcher’s Situation Ethics
Renzhong Cui
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/30296374.2026.18
published online: 23. 10. 2026
abstract
In the 1960s and 70s, Joseph Fletcher’s “situation ethics” (or “new morality”) emerged as a prominent attempt to loosen Christian moral reflection from inherited legalism and dogmatism amid new dilemmas in medicine and public life. While influential, it also provoked sustained criticism from many Christian ethicists, not least because its appeal to love risked reinforcing a decision-centered account of moral agency. This essay reconstructs that debate and highlights Stanley Hauerwas’s early engagement with Fletcher in Vision and Virtue, where Hauerwas affirms the ambiguity of moral notions yet resists reducing ethics to case-by-case adjudication. Drawing on Iris Murdoch and Wittgenstein, Hauerwas describes Christian ethics as an “aesthetics” in the limited but important sense that moral life depends on trained perception: we can act only within the world we are able to see. Crucially, such “vision” is not an individual achievement but is learned through participation in the community of believers – its narratives, practices, and disciplines – that forms the virtues by which the world can be truthfully described. The result is a reorientation from deciding well in isolated cases to becoming the kind of people who can see and live faithfully.
keywords: New Morality; Situation ethics; Community; Narrative; Moral vision
From Decision to Vision: Virtue, Community, and Hauerwas’ Critique of Fletcher’s Situation Ethics is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
148 x 210 mm
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ISSN: 0010-3713
E-ISSN: 3029-6374
