Christian ethics
"[1]: 83, 96 Wilkins says that in this view, the primary moral laws are universally known, are discernible through reason, are innate in all people (and, therefore, binding on all), and their practice contributes to individual and community well-being.
Its starting point is social justice and Jesus' "kingdom ideals", rather than individual morality; it recognizes the group dimension of sin, and tends to be critical of (and challenge) the other Christian ethical theories.
[11]: 9, 11 [2]: 7–10 Philip Wogaman writes that Christian ethics has also had a "sometimes intimate, sometimes uneasy" relationship with Greek and Roman philosophy, taking some aspects of its principles from Plato, Aristotle and other Hellenic philosophers.
[15]: xii [16]: 3 In the centuries following the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, monks on missionary journeys spread practices of penance and repentance using books known as penitentials.
According to Matthews and Dewitt, "The moral, doctrinal and disciplinary results of the Council of Trent laid the foundations for Roman Catholic policies and thought right up to the present.
The mystical type (i.e., some monastic orders, some parts of the charismatic movement and evangelicalism) advocates an ethic that is purely an inward experience of personal piety and spirituality and often includes asceticism.
[27]: 208 In this view, God "gives the universe its basic order", and its "formal statistical patterns", generally referred to as natural laws, but also allows them to develop organically with minimum interference.
[35] Rabbinic scholar Michael Fishbane goes on to add that human knowledge of God is understood through language, and "It is arguably one of Judaism's greatest contributions to the history of religions to assert that the divine Reality is communicated to mankind through words.
[38]: 87 Gustafson adds that such piety must be open to a wide variety of human experiences, including "data and theories about the powers that order life..."[38]: 87 He says this Christian knowing engages the affections, and takes the form of a sense of gratitude.
[26]: 124 Christian ethics asserts the ontological nature of moral norms from God, but it is also accountable to standards of rationality and coherence; it must make its way through both what is ideal and what is possible.
[48] Christian ethicists such as David Ray Griffin have also produced process theodicies which assert God's power and ability to influence events are, of necessity, limited by human creatures with wills of their own.
[49]: 143 [50] Nicola Hoggard Creegan says natural evil exists in the form of animal suffering, and she offers a theodicy in response that is based on the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24–29).
[51]: 83 Christian ethicists such as Christopher Southgate have also produced evolutionary theodicies which use evolution to show that the suffering of biological creatures, and belief in a loving and almighty God, are logically compatible.
[53]: 33 The approach of Christian ethics to pain and evil is summarized by Sarah Pinnock who asserts that: "Direct contact with God does not answer Job's questions, but it makes meaning, and the acceptance of suffering, possible.
This allows for the criminal justice system to be retributive, to discriminate based on social standing, and fails to recognize a concept of universal human rights and responsibilities.
[85]: 10 G. C. Hanks argues against the death penalty by saying it "is not effective in fighting crime, costs more than life sentences, reinforces poverty and racism, and causes innocent persons to be executed".
[87] The Catholic Church has historically taught that capital punishment is permissible, but during the twentieth century, popes began to argue that it could not be justified under present-day circumstances as there were other ways to protect society from offenders.
[103]: 30 In the nineteenth century, rights for women brought a wide variety of responses from Christian ethics with the Bible featuring prominently on both sides ranging from traditional to feminist.
"[105] According to professor of Religion Barbara J. MacHaffie, the early church fathers treated married life with some sensitivity, as a relationship of love and trust and mutual service, contrasting it with non-Christian marriage as one where passions rule a "domineering husband and a lusty wife".
[109]: xxv Though Augustine confesses in later works (Retractationes) that these issues were complicated and that he felt he had failed to address them completely, adultery was the standard necessary for legal divorce until the modern day.
[113]: 75, xi Cahill concludes that, in contemporary Western culture, "Personal autonomy and mutual consent are almost the only criteria now commonly accepted in governing our sexual behavior.
Some modern day evangelicals desire a more positive understanding of celibacy that is more like Paul's: focused on devotion to God rather than a future marriage or a lifelong vow to the Church.
[127] By the time of Charlemagne (742–814), while Muslims were coming onto the scene "as major players in a large-scale slave trade" of Africans, Alice Rio, lecturer in medieval European history, says that slavery had become almost non-existent in the West.
[133]: 9, 11 David VanDrunen, professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics, opines that with the tremendous benefits of medical advances, have come the "eerie forebodings of a future that is less humane, not more".
[133]: 12 In what Rae and Cox describe as "a best selling exposé", Jeff Lyon in Playing God in the Nursery charged physicians with "prematurely withdrawing life-sustaining technology from seriously ill newborns".
[132]: 118–120 In some Third World countries where "women have far fewer rights and female children are viewed as liabilities with bleak futures", genetic testing is widely used for sex selection, and some couples have terminated otherwise healthy pregnancies because the child was not the desired gender.
[136][137]: 4–7 Ethicist Christopher C. H. Cook asserts that the primary question for Christian ethics revolves around the fact that alcohol misuse is a "contemporary social problem of enormous economic significance, which exacts a high toll in human suffering".
"[139]: 352 VanDrunen explains that modern technology has treatments that enable a persistent vegetative state (PVS) which has led to questions of euthanasia and the controversial distinction between killing and letting die.
[133]: 232 The twenty-first century has seen an increased concern over human impacts on the environment, including global warming, pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, species extinction, overpopulation, and overconsumption.
[58]: 319 Northcott adds that the Christian ethic, with its concepts of redemption of all physical reality and its manifestation of responsible stewardship in community and relation to others, is "a vital corrective to modern individualism which devalues both human and non-human distinctiveness".
