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Christian Ethics
Christian Ethics
Michael Wooten
THEO 404 01
Prof. Whalen
25 April 2018
Christian Ethics
For comparing the differences between the ethics of Christian, other religious institutions,
and secular thought, lets view human reproduction. For Christianity, abortion is quite simple as
stated by Catholicism, “The Roman Catholic Church says that deliberately causing an abortion is
a grave moral wrong”, but can also be more nuanced as, “The Church of England is keen to
ensure that as many abortions as possible are carried out as early as possible. However, in the
rare exceptions that a termination has to be carried out beyond 24 weeks, it should only take
place where there is a serious foetal [sic] disability and survival will be for a very short period of
ethically acceptable, and Buddhism mirrors this disagreement as traditional Buddhists would
agree with Roman Catholic thinking and modern Buddhists with The Church of England. What
both religions compared here can agree on is that reproduction should not be tampered with as it
is a holy act, excluding the conditional exceptions of the more progressive beliefs. Secular
thought considers the specific morals of individuals and can be summarized in this way by
Maurizio Mori, “Promoting the old idea that reproduction is to be left to divine providence or to
God itself is to cultivate a sort of irresponsibility, that of allowing people not to assume their own
burden for their children. Leaving choice to natural process is a means of detracting from
responsibility” (51). It is the responsibility of people to decide what is right and wrong based on
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their own unique understanding. Simply leaving the fate of a life in the hands of religious
tradition would be unacceptable to someone of the secular perspective. To put it simply, the
religious ideas are grounded in a higher authority towards which, “Ancient moralists asked
questions about the good life, human excellence, and fulfilment. Modern moral philosophers, on
the other hand, ask what is a person’s moral duty or obligation” (Loobuyck 193).
Ethics are externally provided codes of conduct, while morals are an individual set of
beliefs, best described by Henri Blocher, “Ethical is roughly equivalent to teleological, focussing
[sic] on ends or goals, on the Good we are to pursue, and moral to deontological, focussing [sic]
on duty, norms and obligation” (116). Christianity has various ethics that may not be accepted by
believers themselves, as evidenced by the many denominations resulting from favoring certain
beliefs over others. Perhaps the most obvious example is the command to love your enemies as
you love yourself. Everyone proclaims this to be an acceptable teaching that all should follow,
yet most do not. When you are cut off in traffic or insulted by another, does one not feel
contempt towards the people responsible. And are there simply not times that regardless of how
nice a person may act, you find yourself annoyed? Of course, this can be taken as simply having
a corrupt human nature. Another reason would be that people have their own morals they use to
decide what is right and wrong. Jeffrey Morgan writes that religious ethics are secondary and
the, “conscience becomes the means for an individual to be her own final court of appeal, to
know for herself what is right and, in turn, to be her own self-disclosing judge” (540).
Christianity provides rigid ethical law, and people’s morality provides loopholes and justification
The Bible should be fully used as a resource for Christian ethics as its goal is to present
the, “picture of reason and will as the single response of the moral agent to the redeemed moral
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order…” (Morgan 543). The laws laid out by God Himself are made with the intent of giving
people a way of staying holy and correcting each other when they go against biblical ethics. Any
ideas of man are inevitably corrupted by the sin nature that works against salvation and keeps
humanity from salvation. What can be trusted as a source of laws above reproach. The Bible
provides a context, “in which a person is able to evaluate her actions in light of a moral order that
bears witness to God’s gracious actions in history” (543). This means that for humanity to follow
the Bible is to live by a code of conduct in keeping with the laws of God, the supreme being and
ultimate authority. With God being everything good in the world and perfection itself, it makes
no sense to limit the ethical power of the Bible unless one does not wish to do what is right.
Christian philosophers, “that the human being is a reasoning-willing being whose reason and will
are to act as a single, unified response to the moral order God has restored in Christ” (543).
Morality has changed over time as people’s understandings of natural law changes. With
innovation changing lifestyles and experiences among other cultures helping to inform our
understanding, new perspectives are taken on once familiar subjects through a new lens. Morgan
compares this specifically with the changing Christian morality on page 554, “Whereas in the
accountable to God and a moral order within which a person is a moral agent, here in the
scholastic era the identification of conscience and moral reason suggests a shift in the locus of
unquestionable ethics become applicable only in certain settings that does not hold over
everybody. How can Christians claim Buddhists are wrong for not believing in a god in a time
where this is seen as prejudiced and oppressive? This also applies to the various denominations
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within Christianity that originally splintered from Catholicism. Society changed its methods of
living and the Catholic beliefs became too ritualistic for the taste of people who thought God
would want a freer style of worship. This is not too say one form of worship is better than the
other for being the first, but merely to demonstrate that time provides new experiences that alter
conscience:
about her attentiveness of faith. She is questioned about her responsiveness to the
redeemed moral order within which she lives. The authority exists outside of her in the
moral order that has been brought under Christ’s lordship and her conscience serves to
question her response to that order; significantly, the conscience itself does not bear any
Viewing morality as a way to test oneself against God’s will is surely ideal for those looking to
live a holy and Christ-like life. Society itself could also better itself by testing morality against
ethical foundations. Close scrutiny of actions against their consequences is the way to best
understand. Lori Keleher provides a suggestion to reason from, “Suppose we take as our final
goal to develop a more human life for each person and a more human society for all. If this is our
goal, then it is not good to promote access to markets if doing so will mean exploiting workers
and violating human rights, because exploitation will not make us more human as individuals or
as a society…” (25). Overall ideas for unchangeable ethical values must be determined to for
Works Cited
Keleher, Lori. “Toward an Integral Human Development Ethics.” Veritas, no. 37, 2017, pp. 19–
34., doi:10.4067/s0718-92732017000200019
Loobuyck, Patrick. “The Moral Requirement In Theistic And Secular Ethics.” The Heythrop
Morgan, Jeffrey. “A Loss of Judgment: The Dismissal of the Judicial Conscience in Recent
Christian Ethics.” Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 45, no. 3, 2017, pp. 539–561.,
doi:10.1111/jore.12189
Mori, Maurizio. “A Secular Perspective on 21st Century Ethics in Human Reproduction: Why
Religious Views and Attitudes Are Becoming Obsolete and Possibly Dangerous.”
6483(10)60330-6