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Christian morality consists of living one’s life with guidance and inspiration from the Christian scriptures and traditions. Christian ethics as an academic discipline uses these scriptures and traditions in developing and critiquing ethical norms and theories and applying them to ethical issues. Most Christian ethicists agree that the sources for doing ethics include revelation (scripture) and tradition, as well as human reason and experience.
Being shaped by Biblical revelation is the primary way that Christian ethics can be distinguished from alternative ethical perspectives, both religious and secular; thus one important question for a Christian ethicist is how morality (the practice) or ethics (ideas about the practice) depends on religion (convictions and commitments) or theology (critical discussion about those convictions and commitments).
Few people, whether religious or not, would deny an historical dependency; the great ethical teachers tended to be prophets or founders of religion, and for most of human history the influential ethical authorities tended to be religious authorities. Of course, atheists could cheerfully admit this historical point and then claim that, in western culture at least, the 18th century Enlightenment changed that dependency, encouraging ethicists to avoid religious or theological assumptions and, as Immanuel Kant famously put it in his essay “What is Enlightenment?” to dare to think for themselves.
Christian ethicists can affirm the need to think for one’s self but claim that such thinking reveals that ethics depends on theology in ways other than merely historical. One venerable view is the meta-ethical theory that ethics requires a theological foundation in order to avoid nihilism (no real values) or subjectivism (values are relative to each person). This claim has been developed in at least two different ways, the first being what is called “The divine command theory of ethics.” One version of this theory is to claim that only God’s will makes things right or wrong; it is sometimes stated as “X is good (or obligatory)” just means “God approves of (or demands) X.” Divine command theorists admit that, of course, atheists and others can use moral ideas without realizing their foundation; people can use a building, for example, without giving a thought to its foundation. Only when they start questioning will they see a need for a foundation.
Continued below.
What is Christian Ethics? | A Guide to Ethics
Being shaped by Biblical revelation is the primary way that Christian ethics can be distinguished from alternative ethical perspectives, both religious and secular; thus one important question for a Christian ethicist is how morality (the practice) or ethics (ideas about the practice) depends on religion (convictions and commitments) or theology (critical discussion about those convictions and commitments).
Few people, whether religious or not, would deny an historical dependency; the great ethical teachers tended to be prophets or founders of religion, and for most of human history the influential ethical authorities tended to be religious authorities. Of course, atheists could cheerfully admit this historical point and then claim that, in western culture at least, the 18th century Enlightenment changed that dependency, encouraging ethicists to avoid religious or theological assumptions and, as Immanuel Kant famously put it in his essay “What is Enlightenment?” to dare to think for themselves.
Christian ethicists can affirm the need to think for one’s self but claim that such thinking reveals that ethics depends on theology in ways other than merely historical. One venerable view is the meta-ethical theory that ethics requires a theological foundation in order to avoid nihilism (no real values) or subjectivism (values are relative to each person). This claim has been developed in at least two different ways, the first being what is called “The divine command theory of ethics.” One version of this theory is to claim that only God’s will makes things right or wrong; it is sometimes stated as “X is good (or obligatory)” just means “God approves of (or demands) X.” Divine command theorists admit that, of course, atheists and others can use moral ideas without realizing their foundation; people can use a building, for example, without giving a thought to its foundation. Only when they start questioning will they see a need for a foundation.
Continued below.
What is Christian Ethics? | A Guide to Ethics
