Roadmap Structure of Thought Christian Ethics

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December 23, 2017
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There are many Christianities, and here are four versions of Christian ethics representing different ideas of the role of reason, revelation and experience. The Divine Command theorist argues that God reveals Himself in language mediated by human beings but in some sense ‘inspired’ (2 Timothy 3:16) – the Chicago statement of 1966 gives us a detailed statement of divine command approach, with the twin concepts of infallibility and inerrancy. Natural Law theory derives from the Greeks, was synthesised by Aquinas with Biblical Christianity, and is interpreted today by Roman Catholic encyclicals like Humanae Vitae (1968). Situation Ethics was formally presented as a system of ethics by Jospeh Fletcher (1966) – where the supreme value of agape love creates ‘principled relativism‘ but had been argued earlier by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as part of the resistance to Nazism (link with Christian Thought – Moral Principles and action). Liberation ethics emerged in Latin America as part of the social justice concerns of revolution – but has been picked up by feminists such as Rosemary Ruether (see Christian Thought – Gender and Theology section).

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