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Christian Theistic Ethics

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Christian Theistic Ethics Christian Theistic Ethics Volume 3 of the series In Defense of Biblical Christianity Presbyterian And Reformed Publishing Co. Phillipsburg, New Jersey 1980 Copyright 1970 By den Dulk Christian Foundation Contents Preface Part One—Christian Ethical Principles 1. The Material of Christian Ethics 2. The Scope of Christian Ethics Henry Churchill King Charles Augustus Briggs James Stalker Christian Ethics Old Testament and New Testament Ethics Biblical Ethics Revealed Ethics and Natural Ethics 3. The Epistemological Presuppositions of Christian Ethics Christian Consciousness Evil The Regenerated Consciousness Difficulties The Position of Roman Catholicism 4. The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Christian Ethics The God-Concept of Christian Ethics The Man-Concept of Christian Ethics The Non-Christian Conception of the Relation of God and Man 5. The Summum Bonum Ideally Considered: The Individual The Individual Self Realization Righteousness Freedom 6. The Summum Bonum Ideally Considered: Society Altruism Prosperity Happiness As An End Utility As An End The Good Will As An End 7. The Non-Christian Summum Bonum Taking Existence for Granted Results in General of This Difference in Attitude Tender Minded and Tough Minded Ethics Optimists and Pessimists A Broken Personality Nationalism in Ethics Individualism Egoism and Altruism Aristotle’s Mean The Idealist Theory of Self Realization Ethics a Struggle of a Temporal-Eternal Being 8. The Biblical Summum Bonum in General The Absolute Ideal Maintained The Summum Bonum as a Gift The Task of Destroying the Works of the Evil One C. S. Lewis on the Imprecatory Psalms An Ethics of Hope 9. The Old Testament Summum Bonum The Child The Sick Child The Theocracy The Absolute Ideal of the Theocracy Severities in Connection with the Absolute Will The Concessions Grace in the Old Testament Gradual Destruction of Evil Old Testament Hope 10. The New Testament Summum Bonum The New Testament Absolute Ideal The Example of Christ The New Testament Summum Bonum as a Gift of Grace The New Testament Destruction of Evil The New Testament Summum Bonum and the Future 11. The Standard of Man in Paradise The Moral Consciousness of Man External and Internal Standards Externality and Rationality The Categorical Imperative Authority Moral Sanctions 12. The Redemptive Standard: Old Testament; New Testament The Denial of Redemptive Mediacy Mediacy and Interpretation The Principle of Redemptive Mediacy in Scriptures The New Testament Standard 13. Faith as the Motivating Power in Christian Ethics Part Two—Non-Christian Ethical Principles 14. Greek Ethical Theory: Socrates The Anthropological Period The Ultimacy of the Moral Consciousness Back to Windelband W. T. Stace on Socrates 15. Werner Jaeger’s Concept of Greek Culture Arete Homer Hesiod The City-State Elegiac and Iambic Hedonist Poetry The Culture of Athens Early Philosophy The Soul and Its Depth Inwardness The Mind of Athens—The Drama of Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides The Comic Poet Socrates 16. Greek Ethical Theory: Plato The Soul 17. Modern Ethical Theory: Socrates to Kant Richard Kroner on the Greek Spirit Socrates 18. Modern Ethical Theory: Kant The Ethics of Kant Description of Kant’s Ethical Principles Man’s Moral Self The Formulation of the Moral Law The Metaphysics of Morals The Critique of Practical Reason The Idea of Freedom Moral Feeling The Summum Bonum Religion and Morality Sin and the Radical Evil The Struggle Between Good and Evil in Man Caird’s Evaluation Evaluation of Kant’s Ethical Principles The Ethical Self The Self-sufficiency of the Ethical Self The Moral Law God and the Summum Bonum Preface When Socrates met Euthyphro he wanted to know what holiness is in itself, regardless of what God may say about it. To find what is right and true, the soul must have conversation with itself. By looking within, you will know what is good. Richard Kroner speaks of the ethical principle of Socrates as that of a “new inwardness.” In modern times Immanuel Kant developed this principle of the inward self- sufficiency of man’s moral consciousness with great ingenuity. Kant, as well as Socrates, is indifferent to what God may say about the nature of the good. But the seeming indifference of both Socrates and Kant to what God may say is, as a matter of fact, hostility to what God says and has said. Kant manifests this hostility in striking fashion when he “demythologizes” the content of the Christian Scriptures and reinterprets them so as to make them mean what the independent moral consciousness has already said. This syllabus claims with the historic Reformed creeds that the good is good because God in Christ through the Scriptures, says it is good. Without the presupposition of the self-sufficient moral consciousness of the triune God revealed in Scripture, man’s moral consciousness would operate in a vacuum. To bring out this point Part 1 deals with Christian Ethical Principles. It seeks to show that it is the triune God of Scripture who sets before man his moral goal, who in his revelation gives him his moral standard, and by the gift of faith enables him to work toward his proper goal by way of following the instruction of his revelation. To bring out this same point by way of contrast, Part 2 traces the development of apostate man’s principle of “inwardness” or moral self-sufficiency in order to show that it has led and cannot but lead to moral chaos. The argument of the two parts constitutes what amounts to a plea to men who, today more obviously than before, spurn the revelation of God in the Christ of Scripture, and trust in the autonomy of the moral consciousness of man to see that in this case as well as in the whole field of knowledge, God has made foolish the wisdom of man, and has been pleased to save them that believe. Part One: Christian Ethical Principles Chapter 1: The Material Of Christian Ethics According to general agreement, ethics deals with that aspect of human personality which we designate as the will. This distinguishes ethics from those sciences whose primary concern it is to deal with knowledge or with appreciation. Those sciences which deal chiefly with knowledge are based upon that aspect of man’s personality which we call the intellect, while those sciences whose chief purpose it is to deal with appreciation are based upon that aspect of man’s personality which we speak of as emotion or feeling. We do not mean that there is or can be a rigid division between these various kinds of sciences. Ethics cannot be rigidly separated from the other sciences. We should rather say that ethics deals primarily with the will of man, and only secondarily with his intellect and his emotions. What then are the questions that can and must be asked with respect to the will of man? We answer that they are the same questions that can and must be asked, mutatis mutandis, with respect to the intellect and the emotions of man—in short, they are the essentially human questions with a particular accent or emphasis. These essentially human questions we may conveniently divide into three. In the first place we inquire into the nature of man. What is man? That is the most basic question we can ask about him. In asking this question we look into the foundation of all that we are going to say further. In asking what man is, we ask what his intellect is, what his will is, and what his emotions are. This question, when applied to the will, has always been taken up in some form or other in all treatises on ethics. It may be that the question, as such, is not even asked. If so, this only indicates that the writer has taken for granted instead of argued some answer to this question. All that anyone can say about the duties or the goal of human endeavor presupposes some theory of the nature of man. It remains, then, a most fundamental question in ethics to ask first of all about the nature of the human will. In ethical writing this point is usually discussed under the heading of motive. What is the motive that controls the acts of man? What is the most impelling power that makes a man commit this murder? Was this motive by which he was impelled good or bad? Is this man a man of virtue or is he not a man of virtue? Was virtue born into this man or was it acquired by him? Is virtue a habit or an acquisition or perhaps both? If it is inborn, is it then virtuous? If it is exclusively an acquisition how could it get under way? What is this mysterious thing called character? All such questions and many more are taken up in some form under this first main question as to the nature of the human will. The second question that must be asked with respect to the will of man is that of criterion or standard. The asking of this question is involved in the asking of the first question. Ethics seeks to discover whether the will of man is good or bad. But we cannot answer or even ask this question intelligently unless there is a standard by which a man can be judged and in comparison with which he can be said to be either good or bad. The question of criterion or standard is usually discussed in ethical writing under the head of law, or duty. What should man do? What is he morally obliged to do? What should he omit doing? Was that deed which I have done wrong, or was it right? Are there some things that are good, some that are bad, and also some that are indifferent, or are all deeds either good or bad? Such questions as these deal with the quality of one’s deeds.
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