An intelligent person's guide to Christian ethics

175 Pages·2004·6.23 MB·English

by  Alban McCoy

An Intelligent Person's
Guide to Christian Ethics
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An Intelligent Person's
Guide to Christian
Ethics
Alban McCoy OFM Conv
continuum
L O N D O N • N E W Y O R K
Continuum
The Tower Building 15 East 26th Street
11 York Road New York
London SEl 7NX NY 10010
www.continuumbooks.com
© Alban McCoy 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any
information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.
First published 2004
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
ISBN 0-8264-7359-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wilts
For my brothers and sister
in memory of our beloved parents
Requiescant in Pace
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Contents
INTRODUCTION 1
PART I THE MEANING OF 'MORAL
The subject mater of morality 1
Amoralism 26
Morality presupposes freedom, but are we free? 34
Determinism versus Indeterminism
Fredom 45
Ethical subjectivism and the claims of conscience 54
Cultural Relativism 69
PART II ABSOLUTISM, CONSEQUENTIALISM OR VIRTUE?
Kant 81
Utilitarianism: Bentham and Mil 96
Aristotle and the life of virtue 107
PART III ETHICS IN A CHRISTIAN CONTEXT
The structure of moral judgments 117
Christian Morality 136
A Classical Christian moral account: 146
St Thomas Aquinas
CONCLUSION 15
INDEX 159
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Introduction
This small book concerns morality. It is written in the
conviction that morality is the concern of every human
being and not the preserve of experts. Universal as this
concern is, however, confusion about the very meaning of
morality, even more than disagreement about any particular
moral question, has never been more evident. Hopelessly
log-jammed conversations and debates take place over moral
issues precisely because there seem to be as many views of
what morality as such is about, as there are participants in
such discussions.
One matter over which there does appear to be a
consensus is the collapse of what might be called the Judaeo-
Christian framework that has sustained our moral identity
and shaped our ethical deliberations for the last 2000 years
in the West. This view is shared by Jew, Christian and
atheist alike. So the Chief Rabbi, in his recent book, The
Politics of Hope:
This tradition has been comprehensively displaced. In its
stead has come a variety of substitutes: ethics of work and
success, cults of physical fitness, consumerism and salvation-
by-shopping, therapies, New Age mysticism, alternative
lifestyles, sub and counter-cultures, resurgent ethnicities of
various kinds, and Internet-surfing as a mode of global
1
identity.
Morality is everyone's concern precisely because it is
concerned both with knowing what it is to be a flourishing
human being, and with actually becoming a flourishing