Christian Moral Principle Flashcards
What are Morals?
A set of principles linked to doing right actions.
What are Christian Moral Principles based on?
They are based on the teachings of the Bible, especially Jesus’ moral teachings, in combination with the traditional teaching of the a church, using reason and conscience and trying to apply principles of agapeic love.
What is Theonomous Christian ethics?
These 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 and so they must use the direct words of God, found in the Bibles
What is heteronomous Christian ethics?
There is a variety of sources of authority for morals. The Bible remains important, but, perhaps because it was written so long ago, morality requires additional support to be understood. This support can come from the PAPAL ENCYCLICALS, NATURAL LAW + REASON, THE MAGISTERIUM
What is Autonomous Christian Ethics?
Love is the guiding force that we should follow to make moral decisions, this is what Jesus taught so it is what we should follow
What is a Bible reference that can support the theonomous approach?
Timothy 3:16 claims that ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching’
Strengths of the theonomous approach
-The bible is absolute and unchanging
-If the bible was the only source, there would be no confliction between sources
-Provides examples through parables
Criticisms of the theonomous approach
-May lead to Bibliolatry - worshipping the Bible rather than God, the Bible only points people towards salvation but does not actually save anyone - Barth
-The Bible contains many CONTRADICTIONS, some may say this is just providing multiple views on a situation, others may say this makes the Bible untrustworthy - law of non-contradiction makes Bible unable to be inerrant
-Modern problems have no solutions through the Bible as it OUTDATED
-Relies heavily on human INTERPRETATION of the source, leading to errors and confusion]
Criticisms of Heteronomous approach
-Some sources may CONTRADICT
-Conscience may misguide
-Humans are flawed and corrupt - Augustine
Strengths of the heteronomous approach
-Conscious predates the church so should be an important source of morality - J. Newman
-Letters from the pope (papal encyclical) are infallible- incapable of being wrong so should be followed
-Not outdated so provides solutions for modern problems
What are Hans Kung ‘Global Ethics’?
Nothing found in Christian ethics would not be found in any person of good will, minimal consensus concerning binding values, irrevocable standards and fundamental moral attitudes
What was Tillichs idea?
Fixed rules are too concerned with small things that don’t matter rather than the bigger picture
Apageic love as taught by Jesus will always lead to the right decision, we must be guided by moral laws and obey them, but ultimately do the most loving thing
What did Hauerwaus believe about Christian ethics?
Christian ethics can only be practiced in a community - Sermon on the Mount took old laws and applied them to a community, not an individual
Christians must live and practise Christian social virtues
Strengths of autonomous ethics
-JESUS CHALLENGED rule-based ethics to focus on love (Kung)
-Christians can fulfil their duty without being tied to CORRUPT organisations
-Tillich’s definition of love also focuses on compassion, justice and forgiveness, all of which society needs more of in order to FLOURISH
-Can also be SECULAR
Weakness of autonomous ethics
-Reducing Jesus’ teachings down to just love is too simplistic
-Too subjective/ relative
-Allows rules to be broken selfishly, then claimed to be in the name of love
-When reduced down to love, Christianity becomes non- distinctive and identical to other religions
