Christian ethics

“ Put these different elements of the Christian ethical dynamic together. They aggregate the final moral power. Christianity completes the ethical view, flooding all the principles of right and duty with impressive light. It throws broad and strong illumination over all the moral relations of men, extending the view into the future life, and giving certifying precepts for guidance and support. It gives the inspiring assurance of the triumph of righteousness in the kingdom which God's love is establishing for it. ”

“ If he could have foreseen the method of those who are striving in our day to bring men to the blessedness which Christianity holds out by dwelling exclusively on Christian ethics, he might have sympathised with their ethical intensity ”

“ A third postulate, which is a corollary of the Christian view of God and of sin, is the Responsibility of Man. Christian Ethics treats every man as accountable for his thoughts and actions, and therefore, as capable of choosing the good as revealed in Christ. While not denying the sovereignty of God, nor minimising the mystery of evil, Christianity firmly maintains the doctrine of human freedom. ”

“ The inclusion of these elements and truths turns pagan or natural ethics into Christian.
Whatever interpretation may be given by different Christians to the redemption thus disclosed, the ethical teaching of the Sacred Scriptures, by universal consent, surpasses, in clearness, elevation and completeness, every other ethical view or system in the world. The loftiest philosophical thought has reached no higher summit—and has climbed to its best only in the light which Christianity has supplied. No system of morals is now worthy of the name that fails to avail itself of its ethical teaching. ”

“ But there is a secondary and auxiliary source for formulation of Christian ethics—in the Christian moral consciousness. In this, Christianity exhibits its moral principles and meaning as they enter into the inner experience of men, where they may be studied and estimated. Christianity is a "life," a "new life," in whose moral consciousness its principles and forces are acting formatively for character. Not only of "the life" that in Christ was "the light of men,"66 but of all the pure life that is from him, is it true: "the life is the light of men." ”

“ If the Christian is a man to whom no incident of experience is secular and no duty insignificant, because all things belong to God and all life is dominated by the spirit of Christ, then Christian Ethics must be the application of Christianity to conduct; and its theme must be the systematic study of the ideals and forces which are alone adequate to shape character and fit man for the highest conceivable destiny—fellowship with, and likeness to, the Divine Being in whose image he has been made. ”

“ The subject which we now approach is, taken as a whole, peculiar to Christian Ethics. For it will be admitted that Christianity alone offers a solution of the practical problem, how is the ideal of virtue to be translated into life and practice? 'It is the essential weakness,' says a living writer, 'of all mere systems of morality, and of most, if not all, other religions, that they confine themselves to pointing out what the facts of life ought to be, and make no provision whatever for dealing with facts as they are.... ”

“ We are on safer ground, and for Christian Ethics, at least, more in consonance with ultimate Christian values, when we describe the primary realities of human nature in terms of the revelation of life as given by the Person and teaching of Jesus Christ. The three great verities upon which He constantly insisted were, man's value for himself, his value for his fellow-men, and his value for God. These correspond generally to the three great ethical ideas of life—Personality, Freedom, and Divine Kinship. ”

“ All duty is owed finally to God, because He210 is the one absolute righteous Being to whom the whole universe owes its very existence and all its blessings. Thus Christian ethics sets forth fully what rational thought has often caught a glimpse of and hinted at, but wanted vision to see clearly, viz.: that the goal of the ethical aim is to be "like God." Its aim, as is that of religion itself, is to bring our moral life into living fellowship with Him and His blessedness. This marked feature of Christian teaching presents the ethical view in its highest elevation, purification and power. ”

“ Christian ethics doubtless makes an appeal of its own, but apart from the support of Christology its supremacy is by no means assured. If we go back to the moral teaching or to the example of Jesus alone, there will be no [Pg 52] teaching with authority, no divine Teacher who is the Truth, and no regenerative power of the Spirit behind the teaching. The power of Christ's example lies in the union of humility and authority. "Take Christ's difference from us out of Christianity and His identity with us loses all its glorious power." ”

“ But while in many of the teachings of the leaders of moral thought in the later Roman Empire, as shown by the above quotations, we find a near approach to Christian ethics, or a perfect accordance therewith, still it is a fact that must not be overlooked or minimized that in other of their teachings in which they represented more truly the popular conceptions of right and wrong, they as conspicuously diverged from the Christian ideal. ”

“ But the chief defect of the ideal, the lamentable historical consequences of which we shall witness later, is, as we have already pointed out, in its making the acceptance of all the articles of a given creed an indispensable virtue. In assigning orthodox belief this place in the ideal of moral goodness, theological ethics has marred Christian morality by fostering the faults of intolerance and intellectual insincerity. ”

“ Christian Ethics, on the other hand, is concerned primarily with the question, By what power can a man achieve the right and do the good? It is not enough to postulate the inherent capacity of man. Experience of human nature shows that there are hostile elements which too often frustrate his natural development. Hence the practical problem which Christian Ethics has to face is, How can the spiritual ideal be made a reality? ”

“ Experience alone can be judge; the experience of the beneficence of the Christian ideal. The Way of Life that Christ taught verifies itself when tried; that it is the supreme ideal for man is proved by the transfiguration of life it effects. Christ and the Bible deserve our allegiance because they are worthy of it; from them we can learn the secrets of man's true welfare. Morality is, indeed, older than religion. ”

“ Any view that severs morality from God and is bounded by this world and temporal good, must fail to realize the moral life of man. But the Christian view allows no such separation. It unites the two as two sides of the same life of duty, out of one conscience, with vision of both God and men, and one heart true to the indivisible spirit of right. As religious duties are all moral, as obligations to God, and all moral duties are religious, as due to Him, the Christian consciousness of God must re-inforce and vivify with new efficiency the whole twofold moral endeavor. ”

“ The scriptures, however, do not offer a systematic presentation of the life of Christ, or a formal directory of moral conduct. The data are supplied, but these data require to be interpreted and unified so as to form a system of Ethics. The authority to which Christian Ethics appeals is not an external oracle which imposes its dictates in a mechanical way. It is an authority embodied in intelligible forms, and appealing to the rational faculties of man. Christian Ethics, though deduced from scripture, is not a cut and dry code of rules prescribed by God which man must blindly obey. ”

“ Without a divine quickening and spiritual enabling, men can never be brought to true and full obedience and transformed into moral harmony and likeness with God. And the proclamation, looking to this part of the redemptive process, is: "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Thus it becomes a unique distinction of the Christian ethical view, that it proposes to bring men to spiritual217 and moral endeavor and victory from the starting-point of a conviction and recognition of their own thorough incompetence for the moral task. ”

“ The moral discernment is to be filled and animated by the religious spirit, so that the moral training may be carried on and completed together with the development and consummation of the Christian life. Thus the form of the appeal is: "Be ye holy, for I am holy." "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." In a high and peculiar emphasis all duty is required to be done as unto God. ”

“ Genuine virtue has its root in genuine religion. The modern school of ethics, which professes to teach morality as something apart from spiritual Christianity, is a return to the exploded theories of pagan moralists, an attempt to dress up pre-Christian philosophy in a nineteenth-century garb. The morality that is lovely and of good report is Christian morality—the practical, liveable ethics of the New Testament. ”

“ This is, in fact, an assumption which the moral members of society have, in general, made. They boast of the morals of their religion, comparing it, in this respect, with other religions; and thus they subject it to the test of morality. Moreover, when we examine the Christian gospel, we find that it in general assumes the moral laws as already existent and only urges obedience to them. The good is, as we have seen, that which conduces to the general welfare. The earliest religions had no connection with rules of morality ”

“ The Christian doctrine of man’s divine sonship and of his eternal destiny gave infinite worth to every human life, and, investing man as man with an inviolable sanctity, worked effectively in widening the range of the moral sympathies and in bringing within the scope of the moral law all classes and conditions of men. ”

“ But, taking Ethics in its general sense, as the discussion of the ideals, virtues, duties of man, the relation of man to God and to his fellow-men, it will at once be seen that a very large portion of Christ's teaching is distinctly ethical. ”

“ Confessing unwillingness to receive the Christian system as a whole, perhaps openly expressing doubts of the miraculous, for example, many in our day have still so much sympathy with the ethics and culture of Christianity that they would willingly associate themselves with the Church, and render it all the service in their power. Their tastes have led them to subjects of study and modes of self-development not in the proper sense religious. ”

“ In the third volume we have first of all a treatise of Ethics, which is interesting and contains much that is of importance for our own days. The duty of regulating our conduct according to the law of reason and of God, by the commands of the church, of our civil rulers, of society, is well set forth, and the superiority of Christian morality to all others is proved. ”

“ Again, in Exod. xxiii., 3.
"Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his own cause." These are specimens of Bible morality! He alone is the blasphemer who attributes such vicious and malevolent orders to the supreme power.
The Christian, in their presumptuous and unwarrantable assertions, assume that the science of ethics is comparatively of modern date, and that the personage called Jesus Christ was the first who taught that pure morality and virtue constituted the summum bonum of human happiness; and that all morality owes its existence to their gospels ”

“ Just as the theological dogma of the ethical value of religious opinions has made correct belief theoretically the saving virtue in Church ethics, so has the personality of Jesus, his teachings and his self-sacrificing life as mirrored in the gospel records, made love and service of others, in multitudes of souls, practically the supreme and controlling motive of life. ”

“ But Christianity contributes immensely to the ethical view. It is, indeed, a great misconception to think that supernatural revelation has been given simply to teach morality, or to look on Christianity as merely a code of ethics. ”

“ Religion, if we follow the intention of human thought and human language in the use of the word, is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; the passage from morality to religion is made when to morality is applied emotion. And the true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion. And this new elevation and inspiration of morality is well marked by the word 'righteousness'. Conduct is the word of common life, morality is the word of philosophical disquisition, righteousness is the word of religion. ”

“ Just as theology has in the study of Divine truth concentrated her gaze on the Person of Jesus Christ as a revelation of God; so ethics, in the effort to formulate the law of moral perfection, must study the same Divine Person as a type of character. ”

“ In this mode of forming the theory God is apt to be left remote, virtue is abstractly conceived and remains a reality too much by itself and separated from any enforcing or helping authority. It becomes too abstract and simply humanistic. But our view of moral good must be lifted into closer and more living connection with God. And so, Christianity, to209 transfuse the ethical sense with religious light and motives, teaches us to look upon right and duty from the standpoint of God. ”