Christian moral principles. (old).

Define morals.

-A set of principles linked to doing right actions.

Different Christian Approaches to moral principles.

-In the Roman Catholic tradition the authority of the words of Jesus passed down through the church holds high authority.

-For Protestants, the Bible is the highest authority.

-For Christians, what is right + wrong is based on love.

What are the 3 Christian ethics approaches?

-Theonomous Christian ethics.

-Heteronomous Christian ethics.

-Autonomous Christian ethics.

Theonomous Christian ethics.

-These place place God at the centre:

-God’s commandments are what is required for living morally.

-Humans are so sinful because of the Fall that they cannot make right decisions for themselves & so they must use the direct words of God, found in the Bible.

Heteronomous Christian ethics.

-The Bible remains important, but, perhaps because it was written so long ago, morality requires additional support to be understood.

-Support can come from the Church, reason, or both.

Autonomous Christian ethics.

-The authority is placed onto the individual.

-The idea behind it is that Christian ethics are ethical decisions that happen to be made by Christians, e.g love as the guiding force.

The Bible as the only source of ethics.

-A theonomous approach to Christian ethics sees the Bible as containing all a person needs to live a good life.

-Behind this is the idea that the Bible is a set of truth statements that reveal God’s message to the world - it’s propositional revelation.

-If the Bible is, indeed, a set of statements that God has made then it’s logical that these statements should be followed directly.

Define propositional revelation.

-The idea that God reveals himself in truth statements.

-The Bible is a series of truth statements.

Biblical evidence for the Bible being the word of God.

-’’All scripture is God-breathed’’. 2Timothy 3:16.

Different approach to the Bible.

-Some Christians see the Bible as not dictated by God but inspired & still accurate.

-This approach is borne out by the nature of the Bible: it’s full of several different types of text, including stories of people, which need to be understood as holding a message for life today.

-For this approach to work, it’s important that Christians embrace the whole text of the Bible, rather than choosing some ‘favourite’ passages.

Analysing theonomous ethics.

-Some suggest the Bible contains contradictions, such as a change in approach to revenge + violence between Old + New Testaments.

-However, theonomous Christian ethics might argue that the Bible looks at situations from different angles in diff places & that much of the Old Testament was replaced by the New Testament.

-This still leaves the approach open to criticism, however, because it seems that interpretation is required, which could point to the need for the use of reason or church guidance.

-Another criticism is that the Bible contains many different styles of writing & some of these styles are written in a specific context by a person.

-This would suggest that the Bible cannot have been written by one author (God).

-However, this point could be criticised itself because it seems to limit God to being like a human, able only to write in one way.

-A strength of using the Bible as the only source of morality is that it provides clear guidelines that cannot be questioned.

-However, some would observe that some modern situations aren’t covered by the Bible & any attempt to apply Biblical content to these situations would be using our reason, which isn’t true theonomous ethics.

Bible, church + reason.

-The Bible hasn’t always existed in its current form.

-During the 2nd century, Christian leaders gathered together to choose which books at the time had sufficient authority to make up the New Testament.

-The key criterion was that of apostolicity: the idea that it must have a direct link to an apostle.

-The books were arranged in the order we now see them, discarding other Gospels and other letters.

-For some, this was simply the Church identifying which books were God-breathed, but for others it is a clear example of the Church using its authority to select the authentic tradition of Scripture: more than just the Bible is needed to determine what is right and wrong.

Church authority approach by some Protestants.

-Over 2000 years, the Church has interpreted the Bible and this interpretation should guide people in their moral lives.

-Churches are often governed by councils or synods that guide people in how to live.

-The Church is the bridge between the first century and today and its journey is as important as the journey of the first Christians.

-Preaching is a valid method of interpretation for Christians.

-Prayer and worship are ways in which Christians use Scripture and therefore learn from it.

-The Bible was written after Christianity had existed for some time and so what was written down was written for the specific context of the authors of the different books.

Church authority approach by Roman Catholics.

-The authority of the Church was given by Jesus to Peter and the apostles and itself already existed when the New Testament was put together.

-Tradition comes from the spoken tradition given to the apostles and handed down over time. It therefore has the same criterion of apostolicity.

-Authentic interpretation of the Bible is one of the jobs of the Church, under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

-"To the Church belongs the right always and everywhere to announce moral principles. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2032).

-With this authority comes the assertion that there are moral absolutes: some things are simply wrong or right.

-Humans are weak and sinful and therefore cannot rely on themselves to make moral decisions properly - the Bible and Church are required.

What are the issues with Church authority?

-Is it reasonable to suggest that humans cannot effectively live their lives without an authority? Would God have created humans that way

-The relationship between people and the authority of the Church has created problems in Christianity's past and partly led to the Reformation.

-It is unclear how the Church is able to transmit God's authority on a day-to-day basis - does God reveal himself specifically to Church leaders? Corruption within Churches also suggests that Church leaders are as human as others.

-How do we determine when to take the Bible at face value and when to interpret it through the Church?

-Which situations make a new interpretation of the Bible authentic? Who decides?

-If the journey of Christian tradition is valid, can there be absolute right actions and wrong actions? Does this matter?

Using reason.

-For Roman Catholics, reason can be used to identify what God has revealed. The most important area in ethics is in understanding Natural Law.

-God has a core understanding for the universe (the Eternal Law) and has revealed some laws through the Bible (the Divine Law). The next tier of law is Natural Law, which are the five primary precepts on which humans try to do good and avoid evil. Finally, secondary rules are made that are human laws that fulfil the primary precepts.

-These human laws are verified by the Church, but can be worked out through reason.

-Catholics also give authority to the conscience to help make moral decisions. Thomas Aquinas aid that the conscience was reason being used to work out what is right to do (and therefore identifying the secondary rules of Natural Law). In the nineteenth century,

-John Henry Newman said that conscience has more authority even than the Pope (i.e. the Church) because having a conscience predates the Church's existence.

-Many Protestants would agree with some of these principles: reason is, at the very least, required to help distinguish between correct and incorrect interpretations of the Bible.

-Reason is required to understand the Bible in an ever-changing world, but it is also important to understand reason as trying to establish what would be in the Bible if it were being written in today's context. To be sure, the world today is significantly different from that of the New Testament.

-These Protestants believe that the Bible can speak into current situations if appropriately analysed.

-It is important to understand what the context of the Bible writers was and many Protestant communities emphasise the importance of studying the Bible through Bible study groups, as well as engaging in private reflection and listening to preaching.

-Ultimately, for Protestants, reason still points back to the Bible, which holds ultimate authority.

Define conscience.

-The inner sense of right and wrong in a person, sometimes described as an internal voice.

Analysing heteronomous ethics.

-Heteronomous approaches to ethics might suggest that the Bible is a form of non-propositional revelation. Any heteronomous approach begs three fundamental questions:

-1) What sources are the correct sources of authority? Which Church or which Church leader?

-2) Where there is disagreement (especially when the reasoning of two individuals differs), who or what has the ultimate authority? Catholics would say the Church; Protestants would say the Bible - both of which have their own problems.

-3) Has the ability of God to reveal himself and to be recognised by faith been undermined?

Define non-propostional revelvation.

-The idea that God does not reveal himself through truth statements, so the revelation might need interpretation.

Define agape.

-The unconditional love God has for humans that humans need to try to reflect.

Love as the only ethical principle.

-In Mark 12:30-31, Jesus summarises all the law as being about love. This is clearly a theme throughout the Gospels and so a starting point for many Christian approaches to ethics. The Greek word for love in this context is agape, which is used of the unconditional love that God has for humans and which humans need to try to have for God and the world.

-The Bible further clarifies the idea of agape as being:

-Sacrificial love for others, in the same way that Jesus sacrificed his life.

-Making yourself a servant • directed towards everyone, including enemies and outcasts.

-Eternal.

-Paul Tillich saw love as a central precept, underpinned by justice and growing out of the wisdom of the past. The laws of the Bible are wisdom from which we learn, but central to our ethical decision making needs to be an ultimate fairness for all, which is characterised by love. Tillich rejected non-autonomous approaches to ethics.

-Adapting Tillich's thinking, Joseph Fletcher used this principle of love to determine his theory of situation ethics. In situation ethics, love is the central principle that prevents the Christian from falling into over-reliance on laws or a life without rules. It tells Christians to follow the rules unless it is more loving to do otherwise - to transform a situation into one of love. Fletcher argued that his theory was person-centred, just like Jesus was.

-The argument goes that Jesus' Sermon on the Mount was not a replacement for the Ten Commandments, or the whole Jewish Law but a set of illustrations of how to put love into practice. J.A.T. Robinson described love as having a 'built-in moral compass' which can direct people to the most important need when required - we should trust love.

Love is enough to live a good life.

-Love gives us all we need to have the confidence to follow our instincts.

-Love is the only force that can fully recognise the ever-changing moral situations we find ourselves in.

-Love is a fundamental and extreme human emotion and so God could well have expected that to drive us.

-Love can empower the Christian to be able to put people first in challenging times, especially when mainstream society needs to be challenged.

-Jesus kept returning to the theme of love and so situation ethics seems to reflect his approach.

-Jesus' authority cannot be denied for Christians.

Love is not enough to live a good life.

-It is over-simplistic to suggest that Jesus' teachings were only about love.

-In the same situation, different people might interpret love in different ways.

-Love requires at least reason alongside it to understand how to live life. It is too complicated to be the solution on its own.

-Love can become an excuse for people simply doing whatever they want.

-Agape love is not achievable for most humans. It is unlikely that God would expect the unachievable from his people.

Are Christian ethics distinctive?

-Christianity is underpinned by belief in the incarnation and resurrection, which means that it is coming from a distinctive starting point from other religions: God reached down to humans, rather than humans needing to reach up towards God. The emphasis on Jesus Christ also leads to the idea for some Christians that personal faith and grace are the primary ways to get to heaven. If this is true, then Christian morals might come less from a central teaching authority than in other communities.

-Christians who take a theonomous approach to ethics will have plenty in common with deontological forms of ethics, although the emphasis on the Bible will be different. There will also be overlap with Judaism and Islam.

-Heteronomous approaches, in allowing reason to play a role, have more in common with many of the ethical theories you have studied, although some forms of utilitarianism might overlap more with autonomous approaches, as would situation ethics. Eastern religions have a range of approaches to ethics, which tend to use a combination of sources of authority to help an individual make decisions.

-For those Christians who take the Bible literally, their ethical approach might be very different. Using love as a guiding principle also seems distinctive, but it could be argued that love is the same idea as the way that many people approach ethics.

-Christianity calls people to be counter-cultural (to challenge society when it loses its way) and to be prophets in the world, such as in the command to love enemies; perhaps on this level Christians can be identified the most as distinctive.

Personal or communal?

-The Christian community is both a living community of Christians now and a communal group that stretches back over about 2000 years. The Bible is the story of those early communities, Jewish and Christian; perhaps Christian ethics is about a community expressing moral actions, more than an individual doing them. The idea of Christians building the Kingdom of God is one of building a community, but equally, a community is made up of individuals. In the thinking of Natural Law, ethics is personal but has the ultimate intention of the overall good of society, which reinforces this point from a Catholic perspective.

Personal.

-The Bible and Church teachings give individuals a way to live life according to their own needs.

-Jesus spoke to individual circumstances - for example, the woman with the flow of blood.

-Some Christians apply reason on an individual level to circumstances.

-The community focus is about worship and prayer, rather than ethics.

-Situation ethics places the emphasis on the individual's ethical decision-making.

Communal.

-The Bible needs to be read as the expression of how a community lives its life.

-Jesus spoke to groups more than to individuals, such as in the Sermon on the Mount.

-For some Christians, the Bible should be shared and studied in group situations.

-Communities work by rules being used and the rules found in the Bible are for the community.

-Any interpretation of the Bible is done so in a community context - interpretations have changed over time with different communities.