This is my collection of Christian ethics books:
These are challenging times for Christians who want to live out the full Gospel, especially for those who seek to understand how their faith intersects with the public realm.
On the one hand, Christians must understand and distinguish themselves from other religious traditions who ground their moral lives only on the will of God.
On the other hand, while Christians must ground their ethics in rationality, they must also build them on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. That is, they must do so if they wish to develop a Christian ethic. But this means building an ethical system on a set of rules that is incomplete, in one very important sense. Scripture is "incomplete" in that it does not contain within it prescriptions for every moral situation the Church faces (which isn't that surprising, but an important point nonetheless). Determining how revelation guides ethics here and now is the task of Christian ethics.
But there are further challenges for modern Christians. The relationship between Church and state is clearly a confusing one. Yet politics -- as Aristotle rightly pointed out -- is the culmination of ethics. A Christian ethic must provide guidance on how to behave politically as well as personally.
For Christians building a persuasive, comprehensive, thoroughly Christian ethical life is no easy task. The ethicist must take two different poles into account -- the creation of the world and the resurrection of Jesus.
That's what Oliver O'Donovan's Resurrection and Moral Order does.
Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics is the beautiful attempt to chart a middle way between the natural law theorists like John Finnis, who focus on creation, and Stan Hauerwas' eschatological reality as the basis of Christian living ("Kingdom ethics"). O'Donovan has been the most important work in my own thinking about what it means for Christians to live moral lives in the world as Christians. From the place of Jesus' resurrection, O'Donovan argues, Christians look backward at creation and forward to the Kingdom. Neither of those poles makes sense without the resurrection. Christian moral living is made possible by the resurrection. Christian ethics is resurrection ethics and its content is grounded solely in the evangelical story of Jesus.
O'Donovans work moves along this pattern, transitioning from the objective moral reality (Section One), to the subjective reality of our life within that universe (Section Two), to the way these two interact to form our moral deliberation (Section Three). My margins of my copy are replete with "Yes!" and "Yup!" and "Of course!". At so many points I found myself nodding in agreement with O'Donovan's account.
So this is a book that I think every pastor and theologian needs to read often and well. It's an amazing little book that, sadly in my experience, isn't read that closely.
These are challenging times for Christians who want to live out the full Gospel, especially for those who seek to understand how their faith intersects with the public realm.
On the one hand, Christians must understand and distinguish themselves from other religious traditions who ground their moral lives only on the will of God.
On the other hand, while Christians must ground their ethics in rationality, they must also build them on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. That is, they must do so if they wish to develop a Christian ethic. But this means building an ethical system on a set of rules that is incomplete, in one very important sense. Scripture is "incomplete" in that it does not contain within it prescriptions for every moral situation the Church faces (which isn't that surprising, but an important point nonetheless). Determining how revelation guides ethics here and now is the task of Christian ethics.
But there are further challenges for modern Christians. The relationship between Church and state is clearly a confusing one. Yet politics -- as Aristotle rightly pointed out -- is the culmination of ethics. A Christian ethic must provide guidance on how to behave politically as well as personally.
For Christians building a persuasive, comprehensive, thoroughly Christian ethical life is no easy task. The ethicist must take two different poles into account -- the creation of the world and the resurrection of Jesus.
That's what Oliver O'Donovan's Resurrection and Moral Order does.
Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics is the beautiful attempt to chart a middle way between the natural law theorists like John Finnis, who focus on creation, and Stan Hauerwas' eschatological reality as the basis of Christian living ("Kingdom ethics"). O'Donovan has been the most important work in my own thinking about what it means for Christians to live moral lives in the world as Christians. From the place of Jesus' resurrection, O'Donovan argues, Christians look backward at creation and forward to the Kingdom. Neither of those poles makes sense without the resurrection. Christian moral living is made possible by the resurrection. Christian ethics is resurrection ethics and its content is grounded solely in the evangelical story of Jesus.
O'Donovans work moves along this pattern, transitioning from the objective moral reality (Section One), to the subjective reality of our life within that universe (Section Two), to the way these two interact to form our moral deliberation (Section Three). My margins of my copy are replete with "Yes!" and "Yup!" and "Of course!". At so many points I found myself nodding in agreement with O'Donovan's account.
So this is a book that I think every pastor and theologian needs to read often and well. It's an amazing little book that, sadly in my experience, isn't read that closely.