Religious Ethics

Christian Ethics

• For most Christians, the main ethical principles of Christianity depend on a combination of the Bible, reason and tradition.
• For more conservative Christians, as the Bible is regarded as a witness to God's revelation, it therefore has the greatest authority.
• The old testament establishes the notion that ethics are social and based on a covenant with God - The Ten Commandments are a summary of these two ideas.
• In the New Testament, Jesus' Sermon On The Mount is often considered a focal point of his moral teaching; here Jesus teaches that being good is not only about keeping the Law but the inner law of love , righteousness, peace, faith.
• For other Christians, notably Roman Catholics, revelation is not confined to the Bible but accessible through the natural world, reason and conscience.
• Natural laws are developed by Aquinas and affirmed by the Church. There is much debate about whether natural law is autonomous and based on human reason alone, then it is not distinctively religious.
• For liberal or radical Christians, such as Joseph Fletcher, there is only one command and that is to love, but in all other respects ethics are essentially autonomous and teleological.
• His situational approach considered that every situation is judged relatively to the principle of love (agape). The three other 'working principles' that guide moral decision making are pragmatism, positivism and personalism.
• Divine Command Theory - The question of how far Christian ethics may be seen as absolutist or relativist is illustrated by the problem of divine command. The dilemma was clearly set out by Plato in the Euthyphro dilemma.
• Ia an act good because God commands it? or Does command acts because they are good?