Customer Reviews

Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In his book "Christian Ethics: An historical introduction", Wogaman journeys through Christian history, tracing the major developments of Christian-ethical throught. The journey starts with the ethics of Socrates, exploring ancient ethical dilemmas, proving that these issues are just as relevant as modern issues such as abortion, AIDS and models of mission.

This is a definite book to buy if you are a Theological student and will prove to be helpful in any subject within Theology.

This is a required reading text for a Christian Ethics course that I am taking. As Christian Ethics does take into account Church History and Theology, this text does a great job of providing a quick train ride through Church History and sprinkles in within that vacuum theologians and the development of thought that has resulted in Christianity today. The final chapter provides forward thinking ideas for Christian Ethics.

Christian Ethics, A Historical Introduction by J. Philip Wogaman, long-time expert in Christian (primarily Protestant) Christian Ethics, represents one of several different methods for presenting Christian moral thinking. Here, Dr. Wogaman presents a high level summary of Christian moral positions from the influences of the pre-Christian Greek philosophers to the beginning of the 21st century.

For those of you who studied "Ethics" in college, there is an ambiguity in the way that word is used. In the secular Academy, "ethics" is "moral philosophy" and is thereby different from "morality". In most Christian thinking, that difference disappears, and the place of "moral philosophy" is taken by the discipline of theology. Dr. Wogaman's book is a general overview of both the interaction of theology with morality as it affected social action.

It was not surprising to find 10 pages dedicated to St. Augustine, or 14 pages dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas or 17 pages devoted to Luther and Calvin. What impressed me about the book is that it devoted three pages to Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758) and his principle work on theological morality, "The Nature of True Virtue". Wogaman gives a nice, 2 page summary of Edwards's argument, but this item is an example of some of the weaknesses of this level of coverage. First, Wogaman makes no mention of how intimately Edwards's moral theology is connected to his sophisticated notion of the Trinity. In this, Edwards's Trinitarian theology and moral thinking is very similar to that of Peter Abelard (1079 - 1142), who also wrote extensively on Christian ethics. It is unfortunate Dr. Wogaman could not find more space for that, and for the affinities between Abelard and Edwards. A second weakness in such an overview book is the absence of a good, up to date bibliography in general, and possibly less than the best references for his quotes. For example, the first edition of this book came out in 1993, and yet his quotes of Edwards are not from the authoritative Volume 8 of the Yale edition of Edwards's complete works (volume 8 published in 1989). Another symptom of the relatively high level of Wogaman's survey is that there is no mention of Edwards's dialogue with the primary ethicists of his day, John Locke and Francis Hutcheson or how his views contrast with contemporary, John Wesley, although books have been written about these connections. There is no bibliography in which such books can appear.
Back on the positive side, Wogaman has about a page and a half on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but with no mention of his highly influential book "The Cost of Discipleship". But it does, briefly, illuminate the foolishness, in Bonhoeffer's view, of preaching grace, or even worse, the endurance of suffering, to the poor, when you can do something about their suffering.
Another positive aspect of the book is the critical approach taken by the author of "situation ethics". He gives good space to a critic of Situation Ethics, Paul Ramsey. "Situation Ethics" has always seemed to me to be a result more of theological fatigue than of good theology and careful reflection. It's nice to boil all Christian morality down to a Beatles song, but that simply won't work (...in most situations.) Having studied moral philosophy on and off for about 40 years, I wish someone would come out with the starting point that "moral thinking is messy" and that attempts to reduce it to one or two principles will almost invariably leave loose ends.
The irony is that "situation ethics" does capture one (but just one) traditional point of view, of the intuitionists, who claimed that there is a moral sense which detects basic moral facts in a situation. The problem is that deeper thinkers on Christian moral theology, such as Jonathan Edwards, have pointed out that such a "moral sense" is flawed, unless it operates on a very special basis, the love of the Whole, in itself.
Given the connection between theology, moral thinking, and atonement, I am surprised that in the original edition of the book, "atonement" does not even appear in the index. It does have a 1 page reference in the new, 2011 edition, but with no discussion, for example of the theological issues which have been raised about it by feminist theologians.
To end on a very positive note, the book's coverage of 20th and 21st century issues is strong, including such things as the writings of the Niebuhrs, John Howard Yoder, the second Vatican council and following encyclicals from Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, and the contextual (liberation) theologians for Latino, Black, Asian, and Female interests. The existence of very real tensions between traditional Christian Ethics and the "contexts" is covered in depth and with great insight.

The book also has a reasoned approach to the moral relation between church and state. In some ways, this is easy, since virtually every book of the NT which addressed the question was favorably disposed to live in a symbiotic relation with the state (the Roman empire), especially since at that time, Christianity was a very small fish in a very big pond. Martin Luther and John Calvin made the path easy by allocating a separate and important role for state law and power. Oddly enough, those issues are more alive in the U.S. than they are in countries where there are national churches, such as England, Germany, Eastern Orthodox countries such as Greece, and the Islamic states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In the U.S. there is no state religion, on principle. Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and so on have as much a say in the moral thinking of the country as Catholics or Baptists or Methodists or Presbyterians.

This is a good book. It's latest edition is better; however, it is not a perfect guide to further research on the history of Christian Moral thinking.

This book will be used for the seminary class when my goal is to be a Reverend. The book was received before the reading due date.