Christian Moral Principles

Heteronomous Christian Ethics

Moral authority comes from the combination of Church, Bible and reason. This is typically a Catholic view

Theonomous Christian Ethics

Moral authority comes from God, which we access through God’s revelation in the Bible. This often involves suggesting the Church has less authority than the Bible. This is typically a protestant view.

Autonomous Christian Ethics

Individual people have to figure out for themselves what is right or wrong. E.g. situation ethics.

Apostolic Succession

• Apostolic Succession: Basis of Catholic Church authority; Jesus gave apostles authority, with Peter appointed to lead.

• Teachings Before the Bible: Apostles taught Jesus' words, life, and Holy Spirit guidance.

• Continuous Authority: Apostles appointed bishops as successors; Catholic Church maintains this unbroken line of teaching authority, creating 'sacred tradition' to interpret scripture.

• Sacred Tradition and Scripture: Both are from God and equally important; Scripture is the written word of God, and Tradition transmits God’s word through apostles and successors.

• Magisterium: Church's teaching authority claims exclusive right to interpret God’s word, guided by the Holy Spirit.

• Dei Verbum (Second Vatican Council): Scripture is divinely inspired; Tradition preserves and explains God’s word. Tradition, Scripture, and Church authority are interconnected and essential for salvation.

Catholic view of the Bible

• Biblical Authority: The Bible is written by humans but inspired by God via the Holy Spirit, making it "without error" and containing "the truth which God wanted put into sacred writings."

• Role of Human Authors: God chose men who used their abilities to write exactly what He intended, acting as true authors under divine inspiration.

• Sacred Scripture: Described as "the word of God," written under the inspiration of the divine spirit.

• Sacred Tradition: Transmits the word of God entrusted to the apostles by Christ and the Holy Spirit, passed on to their successors to preserve and explain it faithfully.

Catholic corruption

• Corruption in the Catholic Church:

  • Allegations include paedophile scandals and alliances with fascism.

  • Protestants argue the Church lacks divine guidance.

• Sale of Indulgences:

  • Church accepted money for sin forgiveness and reduced purgatory time.

  • Martin Luther criticized this in his 95 Theses.

• Luther's Critiques:

  • Pardons damage the pope's reputation.

  • Questioned morality of buying souls out of purgatory.

  • Criticized using believers' money for St. Peter’s Basilica.

Arguments around Catholic corruption

• Catholic Defense:

  • Church can sin due to human nature; Christ still established it as a moral authority.

• Protestant Rebuttal:

  • Extent of corruption forfeits the Church's authority.

  • Crimes exceed normal human flaws, challenging Jesus' expectations.

• Authority Debate:

  • Argument on whether Jesus intended Church to have authority equal to the Bible.

Issues around the role of ethics

• Catholic Church's View:

  • Follows Natural theology and Natural Law ethics.

  • Aquinas’ natural law theory: Humans use God-given reason to discern God's ethical precepts.

  • Part of the ‘reason’ element of heteronomy.

• Protestant Rejection:

  • Figures like Luther, Calvin, and Barth reject natural theology and natural law.

  • Claim that human reason was corrupted by the fall.

  • Argue that reason cannot be a reliable source for Christian moral principles.

Aquinas’ Natural Theology

• Human Reason and God:

  • Aquinas believed human reason could never fully understand God.

  • Reason can support faith in God through natural theology.

• Knowledge Through Reason:

  • God’s Existence: Teleological (design) and cosmological arguments.

  • God’s Moral Law: Human reason can know the synderesis rule and primary precepts.

  • God’s Nature: By analogy, using analogies of attribution and proportion.

• Limits of Reason:

  • Reason cannot provide absolute proof of God’s existence.

  • Faith and revelation are necessary.

  • Rejected the deductive ontological argument.

  • Accepted teleological and cosmological arguments as inductive evidence, not conclusive proofs.

Barth on Aquinas

• Barth's Critique of Aquinas:

  • Natural law theory is a false natural theology with overreliance on human reason.

  • If humans could know God or God’s morality through their own efforts, revelation would be unnecessary.

  • God deemed revelation necessary, evidenced by sending Jesus.

• Limitations of Human Reason:

  • "The finite has no capacity for the infinite"; human minds cannot grasp God’s infinite being.

  • Human discoveries through reason are not divine and could lead to idolatry.

  • Idolatry can result in the worship of nations and movements like the Nazis.

  • After the fall, human reason is insufficient to reach God or determine morality.

• Barth's Conclusion:

  • Only faith in God’s revelation in the Bible is valid.

• Defense of Aquinas:

  • Aquinas does not claim finite minds can understand God’s nature or goodness (eternal law).

  • Reason can understand natural law within human nature and identify a necessary being or uncaused cause.

  • Reason supports faith and does not render revealed theology unnecessary.

Tillich on Aquinas

• Tillich's Defense of Aquinas:

  • Barth was too negative in denying reason's ability to discover natural law.

  • Denial of natural moral law involves self-deception.

• Tillich's Argument:

  • Awareness of human estrangement from nature presupposes a conscience.

  • A weak or misled conscience is still a conscience, indicating a fallen state.

  • Denying natural law is contradictory because it acknowledges the gap between our current and potential states.

  • Even a weakened conscience provides some direction toward righteousness.

• Counterpoints:

  • A weak and misled conscience does not discover God’s morality.

  • Believing humans can know God’s will reflects the arrogance that led to the fall of Adam and Eve.

  • This arrogance also fueled the Nazi belief in their superiority.

  • The arrogance of natural theology indicates a lack of humility necessary for faith.

Theonomy

Moral authority comes from God, usually sourced from his revelation in the Bible. Both religion and ethics have a shared source; God. This often involves suggesting the Church has no authority since God’s commands can be found in the Bible.

Sola Sciptura

bible alone is source of Christian moral principles, not the Church.
typically a protestant view-Luther thought Catholic Church was corrupt
role of the Church for protestant reformers-preach Bible. Church may interpret Bible, but they should be considered subject to correction by Bible.
“A simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it”. – Luther.
1 Timothy 2:5-Jesus is only mediator between God and humanity.
Bible derives its authority from its excellence as a text and religious experience of holy spirits’ engagement with human soul
Jesus-“the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” John 14:26-27
Bible says that ‘Ru-ach’ – God’s breath, breathed into authors of the bible – directly inspiring them.

priesthood of all believers

doctrine developed by Luther
all people have status of priest
aim-counteract Catholic view, that priests have a special spiritual status which sets them apart from laypeople and gives them an important role in their salvation, acting as a mediator between people and God-lessens role, value and authority of Church.

Sola Scriptura not in the Bible

Quotes from Bible suggest it should be a source of Christian moral principles, but they do not claim it is only source nor speak against other sources
Self-contradictory to believe that all religious knowledge should come from sola scriptura when sola scriptura itself cannot be derived from scripture.

The books in the New Testament (biblical canon) were not decided on until the 4^th century

Decided by Catholic clergy-Bible should not be only source since it grew out of church and therefore if it is authoritative, Church is also
Seems strange for protestants to trust those Catholics in their choice of what to include in the Bible.
CA: Protestants respond that holy spirit influenced creation and choosing of Bible, ensuring its validity.
Jesus said “the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” John 14:26-27.
CA: But they only know Jesus said that because catholic Church decided to put it in Bible!
Furthermore, Catholics argue that holy spirit guides their magisterium

Autonomy

Individual people have to figure out for themselves what is right or wrong.
Fletcher rejects heteronomy as a form of legalism which don’t take situations into account
Fletcher proposes an Autonomous form of Christian ethics focused on Agape. importance of Agape in Christianity is drawn from Jesus saying that ‘greatest commandment’ is to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’.

Barclay on Autonomy

William Barclay thought situation ethics had some validity but didn’t agree with it fully.
situation ethics gives moral agents a dangerous amount of freedom
For freedom to be good, love has to be perfect.
If there is no or not enough love then ‘freedom can become selfishness and even cruelty’
If everyone was a saint, then situation ethics would be perfect
John A T Robinson-‘only ethic for man come of age’ – but Barclay argues mankind has not yet come of age and ‘still needs the crutch and protection of law’.

Fletcher and Robinson response on Autonomy

Fletcher and Robinson (influenced by Bonhoeffer)
humanity has ‘come of age’
In medieval and ancient time, when humanity had not come of age, people were less educated and less self-controlling-needed fixed ridged clear rules to follow, because they could not be trusted to understand and act on complexities in how a rule could justifiably be bent or broken if situation called for it
However, now people are more civilised, to the point that granting them more autonomy will increase love without risking stability of society.

Barclay’s response to Fletcher and Robinson on Autonomy

Barclay-although people might appear improved, if granted the freedom (and power) to do what they want, they won’t choose loving thing they will choose selfish or even cruel thing (power corrupts)
echoes debate about extent to which human nature is corrupt, e.g. original sin.
Stanford prison experiment and lord of the flies. It is a well-known feature of human psychology that power is corrupting. freedom to decide what is good or bad without external supervision of legalistic laws grants humans more power and corrupts them.

Fletcher vs sola scriptura

Fletcher faces criticism from traditional Christian ethics that his theory cannot be considered properly Christian, since it seems to only follow command to love, ignoring most of the teachings in Bible
E.g. Protestants, following Luther, believe that in ethical judgement we should only follow Bible’s teachings (‘sola scriptura’)
Fletcher-traditional views of Biblical inspiration face a dilemma of 2 approaches
1-view Bible as needing interpretation-issue of impossibility of deciding whose interpretation is correct. Fletcher illustrates this with competing opinions Sermon on the mount.
2- take Bible literally because “headache” of interpreting what bible less than pain of living as literalist-example of ‘do not resist one who is evil’
Fletcher concludes that Bible should not be thought of as a legalistic ‘rules book’ and that ethical teachings like even those of the sermon on the mount at most offer us ‘some paradigms or suggestions’. This makes Fletcher’s approach to the Bible an example of the liberal view of inspiration; that the Bible is not the perfect word of God. So, although the Bible states that many things (e.g. killing, homosexuality and adultery) are wrong, Fletcher doesn’t think a Christian should view those as unbreakable rules. Whatever maximises agape is allowed, no matter the action.

J. S. Mill on the Catholic Church, sola scriptura, the distinctness of Christian morality and Agape

argued that neither Jesus nor Apostles intended New Testament to be a complete system of morals-always refers to pre-existing morality of Old Testament and is often about correction or superseding of that morality
points out that St Paul thought Christian morals should accommodate Greek and Roman morals-suggests ‘sola scriptura’ protestant idea is against ideals of Christ and Paul.
argues that New Testament morals expressed in general terms which are often impossible to be interpreted literally and lack precision of legislation, making them more like poetry-requires interpretation. Old Testament has a precise elaborate system
argues that what is called Christian morality in 19^th century was built up by Catholic Church during 1st 5 centuries, and although protestants reversed Catholic influence , Mill points out that was only really by cutting off Catholic additions made during middle ages, not those made by early Church.
Mill makes arguments against validity of Christian morality to show that it requires improving influence of other ethical systems.
argues that Christian morality is mainly a reaction to paganism-about ‘abstinence from evil, rather than energetic pursuit of good’ as can be seen by how often ‘thou shalt not’ predominates unduly over ‘thou shalt’.
Mill claims Christianity holds out hope of heaven and threat of hell as appropriate motives for a virtuous life, giving to human morality an ‘essentially selfish’ character and is a less successful morality than ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle or Romans like Marcus Aurelius who teach importance of being virtuous.
claims Christian morality is a doctrine of ‘passive obedience’ -makes people submissive to authority, making them more likely to endure mistreatment. If people learn to be virtuous, it is in spite of their education in Christianity.
these faults not essential to Christian ethics and are fault of Church.
Christian ethics aren’t distinctive, but should exist in relation to other ethical systems just as it used to with Jewish, Greek and Roman ethics, before more modern version of Christianity started to proclaim it was only source of ethics. Then these faults would be fixed.