Having formed our definition of Christian ethics, we now need to determine its subject matter more precisely, and its relationship to other sciences and techniques that also deal with human action.

At this point we can formulate two questions. First, how does Christian ethics differ from the behavioral sciences, arts and techniques, in their approach to human action? And following from this, how can all these disciplines collaborate? As we search for the answers to these questions, the human aspect of Christian ethics will begin to emerge.

Ethicists agree that their study is concerned with human action, carried out deliberately...

We come now to the question of Christian ethics: that it is, and what it is. In this chapter we shall discuss the problem and examine one response characteristic of our times.

We shall put the question about Christian ethics to some of the great theologians who have born witness to it from the beginning. From the New Testament I have chosen St. Paul; we will trace in his letters the main lines of Christian ethics. Next we will explore the Sermon on the Mount with St. Augustine, who considered it the epitome of Christian moral teaching. Doing this will...

In studying the nature and special characteristics of Christian ethics, it seems that the obvious thing to do is to consult the primary documents of revelation. We shall begin, therefore, with St. Paul, who provides us with a well-rounded teaching on moral theory. How does he formulate the question of the specific characteristics of Christian ethics, and how does he address it?

Surprisingly, the majority of modern ethicists who deal with this question rarely go back to Scripture. The entire discussion seems to unfold in a theological ambience with specialized vocabulary and categories. The need to refer to the New...

The Sermon on the Mount is a Gospel text of prime importance for Christian ethics. This seems to have been St. Matthew’s intention in writing his Gospel. In this first of the five great discourses that form the body of his work, the Evangelist clearly wished to gather together the teachings on the sort of justice that Jesus proposed to his listeners, “higher than that of the Pharisees.” These were to distinguish the conduct and moral standards of his followers. In this section we have a summary of Gospel morality as it came from the lips of the Lord himself....

Is St. Thomas’s moral teaching Christian? The question might seem odd, offensive even, in its reference to one of the highest theological authorities in the Church. Nevertheless, it is not new. It was expressed in the thirteenth century by the Franciscans in their criticism of the theology of the Dominican Master. They considered his teachings “innovations,” and a number of his theses were condemned in Paris. The question was put forward once again in the attacks of Luther and Protestantism against scholasticism. In our own time the same question surfaces in accusations brought against expositions of Catholic moral teaching inspired...

Our knowledge of the history of moral theology is sketchy. In recent centuries, historians of Christianity have focused their research chiefly upon Scripture and the development of dogma. Their interest in moral theology has been slight; only incidentally have they touched upon it at all. Separated from dogmatics in the modern era, moral theology plays an insignificant role in theological and historical research. At the present moment, when ethical problems are vociferously claiming the attention of a self-alienated world, and when the very existence of Christian morality is at stake, the time has come to fill in the lacuna. Moral...

In the West the patristic period ran roughly to the middle of the twelfth century, or to the rise of scholasticism, which introduced a new method in theological study.

Authors tend to consider this period as the infancy of moral theology, for it had not yet been established as a distinct science at the heart of theology, nor had it received a systematic form and organization, as would be the case from the thirteenth century onward. We may wonder, however, if this way of seeing things does justice to the moral teaching of the Church Fathers, or if it is...

In the middle of the twelfth century, under the influence of Abelard’s dialectic and the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a profound transformation occurred in theological work, methods, and writings. During the new period thus inaugurated, moral theology received increasingly precise treatment, until with St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae it attained its full development as one of the principal branches of theological science.

The decisive and most characteristic element of this period was the adoption and general use of the scholastic method. This meant a veritable revolution in intellectual research, in theology as in other sciences. We can define the scholastic method...

Moral theology undoubtedly reached its high point with the Second Part of St. Thomas’s Summa. This crowning achievement should not make us forget, however, the importance and richness of the Franciscan school—exemplified by Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus—which was the self-styled guardian of the Augustinian tradition. The Dominican school took shape and grew in self-awareness for two reasons. First it had to respond to the attacks launched against St. Thomas’s theology by the Franciscans, who considered him innovative. Next it had to reply to the condemnation of certain Thomist theses by Stephen Tempier, bishop of...

We might mark the beginning of the modern period of moral theology with Ockham in the fourteenth century. Nominalism, as we have seen, made a profound break with the previous tradition of moral theory and laid the foundations for the concepts and systems of subsequent centuries, focusing moral theory upon the idea and sense of obligation. But we need first to distinguish a period of preparation—the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—before considering the elaboration of the moral system which became classic in the manuals of the seventeenth century.

In broad outline, this period was characterized by several upheavals and...

The comparison between the Catholic and Protestant conceptions of moral theory is important from various viewpoints. Issuing from the same Christian trunk, Catholics and Protestants were divided like two opposite branches of a tree in the great crisis of the sixteenth century, and were mutually conditioned. We cannot fully understand Catholic moral theory as it took shape from this time onward without taking into account the anti-Protestant reaction, which influenced the post-Tridentine Church. Several characteristic features can be explained by this opposition. Furthermore, both Catholics and Protestants are influenced by the intellectual climate in which they came into conflict: a...

The history of moral theology over the last two centuries has been shaped by three trends: the ongoing expansion of post-Tridentine ethics in the manuals, the Thomistic renewal, and finally an effort to revitalize moral theology by a return to the Bible and by an exploitation of Gospel themes.

The history of the presentation of Catholic moral teaching in manuals designed for seminary courses merits a detailed study, for these books have built up an authentic tradition, more varied and vital than we might suppose. It would be well to approach it from the viewpoint of the organization and structure...

In the construction or restoration of a building the foundations need to be examined first, so as to guarantee stability and determine on an architectural plan and dimensions. One of the first foundations of moral theory is the concept of freedom, together with some idea of human nature and human powers. St. Thomas’s moral theory elaborated in the Summa is based on his study of the human person (la, qq 75–76), who possesses cognitive (q 79) and appetitive powers (qq 80–83). These powers focus on the exercise of free will. It is in our free will that St....

We are so accustomed to thinking of freedom as the power to choose between contraries that we can hardly imagine any other concept of it. We need, therefore, to embark on a real rediscovery of freedom if we wish to shake off the notion of freedom of indifference.

In this research we shall begin with the concrete experience of certain external activities in which our freedom is at work and can be observed. These examples will help us to discern how our freedom operates in more the interior actions of the moral order. As we combine various characteristic features of...

Having described freedom for excellence, we have only to consider freedom in St. Thomas’s texts so as to verify their agreement with this concept.¹ We shall not present a complete study of freedom in St. Thomas, but will attempt a broad outline, with the clarifications needed to distinguish his concept of freedom from freedom of indifference.

In this debate we need to keep in mind the fact that St. Thomas could not confront the theory of freedom of indifference directly, in the form it took after his time. Yet his writings are sufficiently explicit to give us a clear picture...

The place and function attributed to natural inclinations mark a decisive split between the two concepts of freedom we have been studying, as well as between the types of morality they produce. In contrast to freedom of indifference, freedom for excellence has its source and foundation in the chief natural human inclinations. These therefore call for our more detailed study. They form the basis of natural law and the source of energy that broadens and develops in the virtues.

It is difficult to speak of natural inclinations today because of the subtle modifications of ideas and associations that have been...