Christian Ethics

It was William Blake's insight that the Christian churches, by inverting the Incarnation and the dialectical vision of Paul, have repressed the body, divided God from creation, substituted judgment for grace, and repudiated imagination, compassion, and the original apocalyptic faith of early Christianity. Blake's prophetic poetry thus contributes to the renewal of Christian ethics by a process of subversion and negation of Christian moral, ecclesiastical, and theological traditions, which are recognized precisely as inversions of Jesus, and therefore as instances of (...) the forms of evil that God-in-Christ overcomes through Incarnation, reversing the Fall. Blake's great epic poems, particularly Milton (1804–08) and Jerusalem (1804–20), embody his heterodox representation of the final coincidence of Christ and Satan through which, at last, all things are made new. (shrink)

This book considers two different approaches to moral luck--the Aristotelian vulnerability to factors outside the agent's control and the Kantian ambition to make morality immune to luck--and concludes that both approaches have more in common than previously thought. At the same time, it also considers recent developments in the field of virtue ethics and neo-kantianism.

Kierkegaard faces an apparent dilemma. On the one hand, he concurs with the biblical injunction: we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. He takes this to imply that self-love and neighbor-love should be roughly symmetrical, similar in kind as well as degree. On the other hand, he recommends relating to others and to ourselves in disparate ways. We should be lenient, charitable, and forgiving when interacting with neighbors; the opposite when dealing with ourselves. The goal of my paper is (...) to solve this puzzle. I first consider addressing it by appealing to Gene Outka’s idea that equal love does not entail identical treatment. After rejecting this solution, I offer my own: Asymmetry between the two loves is not a moral ideal for Kierkegaard but a rehabilitative strategy. He recommends being more latitudinarian with others than with ourselves to correct against a common tendency toward the opposite extreme. (shrink)

Common Good, Uncommon Questions explores a variety of moral issues.

This book addresses such key ethical issues as euthanasia, the environment, biotechnology, abortion, the family, sexual ethics, and the distribution of health care resources. Michael Banner argues that the task of Christian ethics is to understand the world and humankind in the light of the credal affirmations of the Christian faith, and to explicate this understanding in its significance for human action through a critical engagement with the concerns, claims and problems of other ethics. He illustrates both the distinctiveness of (...) Christian convictions in relation to the above issues and also the critical dialogue with practices based on other convictions which this sense of distinctiveness motivates but does not prevent. The book's importance lies in its attempt to show the crucial difference which Christian belief makes to an understanding of these issues, whilst at the same time demonstrating some of the weaknesses and confusions of certain popular approaches to them. (shrink)

This book steers readers through these issues, providing a clear and decisive history of the main figures and texts in Christian ethics.

Machine generated contents note: Preface; Part I. Theory: Material Cooperation in Economic Life: 1. The nature of material cooperation and moral complicity; 2. Complicity in what?: The problem of accumulative harms; 3. Too small and morally insignificant? The problem of overdetermination; 4. Who is morally responsible in the chain of causation? The problem of interdependence; Part II. Application: A Typology of Market-Mediated Complicity: A. Hard Complicity: 5. Benefiting from and enabling wrongdoing; 6. Precipitating gratuitous harms; B. Soft Complicity: 7. Leaving (...) severe pecuniary externalities unattended; 8. Reinforcing injurious socioeconomic structures; Part III. Synthesis and Conclusions: 9. Toward a theology of economic responsibility; 10. Synthesis: Christian ethics and blameworthy material cooperation; References; Index. (shrink)

Markets can often be harsh in compelling people to make unpalatable economic choices any reasonable person would not take under normal conditions. Thus, workers laid off in mid-career accept lower-paid jobs that are beneath their professional experience for want of better alternatives. Economic migrants leave their families and cross borders in search of a livelihood. These are examples of economic compulsion. These economic ripple effects have been virtually ignored in ethical discourse because they are generally accepted to be the very (...) mechanisms that generate the market's much-touted allocative efficiency. Albino Barrera argues that Christian thought on economic security offers an effective framework within which to address the consequences of economic compulsion. (shrink)

Besonderes Augenmerk richtet Friederike Barth dabei auf den philosophischen Hintergrund dieses Werks, da die in derEthikentworfene ethische Theologie Bonhoeffers auf einem zumeist unausgewiesenen, differenzierten Rezeptions- und ...

The framework -- The universe without (human) morality -- Preparing the stage for morality -- Getting closer : pre-game decisions about the rules -- Crossing the threshold of moral good and evil -- Qualifying as a sinner -- Qualifying as morally virtuous -- Motives distinguished from consequences -- Consequences -- Motives -- Three major motives -- Self regard -- Duty or obligation -- Altruistic love -- Why duty and altruistic love should be combined -- Degrees of moral goodness -- The (...) minimum obligation to love others -- Is the minimum duty the only kind of laudable altruism? -- Have we ever praised those who excel in self-love? -- Relations of this thesis to other traditions -- Plato and Aristotle -- St. Thomas Aquinas -- Immanuel Kant -- The need for good theory to guide good practice -- Conclusion : is morality an intimation of beyond? (shrink)

This volume represents a translation of the majority of the essays in one of those collections.

The Anglican Tradition of Moral Theology Alan M. Suggate Hooker and the via media For the English who experienced the impact of the Reformation on the ...

Australian democracy has recently seen a new emphasis on ‘conscience votes’ in parliament. However, despite this increasing awareness, the Australian media, public and governments have failed to examine closely the concept of a ‘conscience vote’, and the important question of what conscience really is. I will examine a number of statements made by politicians, media commentators and other groups surrounding conscience votes to show the problems that emerge from lacking a clear account of conscience. From this, I will outline two (...) different classical views of conscience: that of Bishop Joseph Butler and that of St. Thomas Aquinas, and show the implications for politicians of adopting either view. I will suggest that the contemporary Australian usage of conscience has more in common with Butler than Aquinas, but that the Thomistic view could serve to better inform both the contemporary Australian usage, and Butler’s views. I will briefly suggest some ways that adopting the Thomistic view of conscience would impact on the Australian democratic system, and explain the problems with a philosophical view that upholds the primacy of conscience and fails to appeal to external moral truth. (shrink)