Christian moral principles Flashcards
Theonomous Ethics
Theonomous Christian ethics place God at the centre: God’s commandments are what is required for living morally.
Dei Verbum states that the Bible is indeed written by humans but inspired by God via the Holy spirit such that it is “without error” and contains “that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings”.
B Hays
Hermeneutic (study of the principles of interpreting the Bible) Factors.
Richard B. Hays uses the following five factors when deciding how Christians might use the Bible to make moral decisions.
1 Accuracy – Different gospels relate slightly different versions. How is accurate is the account? Can you take it out of context?
2 Range – of issues may be limited by cultural context. Is there a whole text being used or just a small part of one?
3 Frequency – of use of sections. Does a particular section of passages tend to be used rather than the Bible as whole?
4 Management – of different texts. How are different texts managed? Is there a later version of them?
5 Focal Images – metaphors can be interpreted in different ways (what kind of Jesus?)
◦Hays also proposed questions of interpretation
1 Is there a focus on symbolism? (Have they focused on the symbolic world of the Bible? E.G The fallen world?)
2 Is there a focus on rules? (The direct commandments?)
3 Is there a focus on principles? (the focus on love?)
4 Is there a focus on paradigms? (patterns)
Non-Propositional Revelation
Non-Propositional Knowledge: Refers to other other kinds of knowledge, knowing how to do something and gain skills through the procedures of experience.
-This is the faith of a personal encounter, gaining knowledge of God through experience, by experiencing a sense of God’s presence and guidance.
-Some may experience God through nature, or by nature, or by meeting the risen Christ in human experience
-God reveals himself and this person has faith in that self-revelation
Propositional Revelation
A Propositional approach: Accepts the truth that the words of the Bible are messages from God. God is revealed directly to the reader through the words on the page.
This approach leads some Christians to view the Commandments and Beatitudes as fixed moral principles to be transmitted
Propositional faith and revelation- faith as acceptance of truths revealed by God, as propositions to be accepted. God speaks to people in words, passing information to his listeners. This information is about how God will save them from sin and information about the events in the life of Jesus. It is not accessible through reason.
Luther
A simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it”. – Luther.
–The priesthood of all believers is the doctrine developed by Luther that all people have the status of priest. The aim of this is to counteract the 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 the people and God. This again lessens the role, value and authority of the Church.
1 Timothy For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,
- The Bible says that ‘Ru-ach’ – God’s breath, was breathed into the authors of the bible – directly inspiring them.
Barth
Scripture has a high value but literalism could be dangerous as it gives the Bible a divine status that can only rightly be given to God. This is Bibliolatry- false worship of the Bible.
Words of the Bible are a Witness to God’s Word revealed through different writers of the Bible over time. It is not the ‘Word’ itself.
Bible must be read critically as a source of inspiration. It is not truth itself, despite being a source of moral truth.
Human reason must be taken into account.
Mouw
“just because there is one biblical commandment, a law of love, does not rule out the possibility of other biblical commandments on other matters”
*We find commands throughout the Bible even in the books of poetry and history
*We can take our morality from the Bible, their entire life can be framed from the Bible
Spohn
– Need to study scripture with reference to the Church communities and traditions in which it operates.
*Must make our decisions together in some sort of councils (lots of Protestants do this already)
*Needs to be a community decision
*Too many contradictions in scripture to rely on it solely and so we need to as a community work out what to follow
Spohn gives three interconnecting pillars:
1. New Testament story of Jesus;
2. Ethics of virtue and character;
3. Practices of Christian Spirituality
Richard Hooker (1554-1600); Hugo Grotius (1583-1645)
Take the same view on the Bible as Catholics but without the Magisterium.
*Bible evolved over time, developing out of the needs of communities and therefore reason and conscience should guide its use in ethics.
Hauwerus
Christian Worshipping Community –Christian ethics can only be done here..
*Jesus adapted Old Testament teaching in his Sermon on the Mount and we continue to adapt tradition today.
*Jesus’ Sermon was aimed at Christian community, not leaders. It includes examples of Christian values that must be developed in communities, in response to God, siding with the marginalised.
*By living and practising Christian Social Virtues (Loyalty, trust, faithfulness, forgiveness, reconciliation), Christian communities should question society’s values
Barth - Against NL
dangerous overreliance on human reason.
-Barth argued that if humans were able to know God or God’s morality through their own efforts, then revelation would be unnecessary. Yet, God clearly thought revelation necessary as he sent Jesus.
“the finite has no capacity for the infinite”; our finite minds cannot grasp God’s infinite being. Whatever humans discover through reason is therefore not divine so to think it is must then amount to idolatry – the worship of earthly things.
Tillich
Even a weak or misled conscience is still a conscience, namely, the silent voice of man’s own essential nature, judging his actual being” – Tillich.
- To deny that our conscience can discover the natural law is to claim that there is a gap between what we currently are and what we could be.
- Yet, to have an awareness of that gap is to have a conscience that is aware of its fallen state. So it is contradictory to deny the natural law
Neihbur
Orthodox Christians: tended to become one of two contrasting types of religion, one that denies the relevance of love in ordinary moral matters, and another which tries to reduce moral behaviour to conformity of tradition and the common sense of generations
- Looks to Prophetic Tradition in Christianity: insists on the relevance of the ideal of love to the moral experience of mankind on every conceivable level. The ultimate law of life is love, and this is the basis of all moral standards
Bultman
The challenge of Christian moral behaviour is to move beyond laws and judgements to love
- Jesus’ only ethic is to love thy neighbour
*“The statement ‘God is Love’ does not express an idea, a notion of the imagination, but rather it has a wholly concrete content: God forgives sin”
Tillich
Three ethical norms should work together for Christians
-Justice, love wisdom
*The most important of these is love and not following the fixed rules
*Love is a person centred approach and allows us to feel compassion for others in every situation
*Each situation has its own ‘voice’ and we will answer it by using love
*We need to take a situation centred approach of love
Fletcher
Situation Ethics
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; is the principle of Christian selfless love. The importance of Agape in Christianity for Fletcher is drawn from Jesus saying that the ‘greatest commandment’ is to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’.
Counter; barclay and robison
Bonhoffer
Influences how humanity has ‘come of age’, however. This means that humanity has become more mature
-in medival times needed stirct moral laws
- However, now people are more civilised, to the point that granting them more autonomy will increase love without risking the stability of society.
Heteronomous ethics
Prima Scriptura – the Bible is the main source of authority, but is understood through and with Church teaching and reason
Autonomous ethics
looking to autonomy and reason to decide action , often specific to situation
Mark 12:28-31- ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’[c] There is no commandment greater than these.”
