Fundamental Issues in Christian Ethics
Fundamental issues raised in defining Christian ethics, delineating its sources and methods, developing normative theories, and analyzing processes of moral decision-making.
Outcomes: A deep level of understanding and of critical thinking with respect to the subject matter of the course.
History Xtn Ethical Thought
Fundamental issues raised in defining Christian ethics, delineating its sources and methods, developing normative theories, and analyzing processes of moral decision-making.
Outcomes: A deep level of understanding and of critical thinking with respect to the subject matter of the course.
Restricted to Graduate School students.
In this course, we will study key thinkers in the history of Christian ethical thought¿both Christian ethicists and philosophers who have shaped and informed Christian ethics. Through lecture, close reading of texts, and discussion, we will seek to understand the central theological and ethical concepts that structure each figure¿s thought. We will explore varying conceptions of love, virtue, moral agency, obligation, theological anthropology, law, sin, redemption, and the relationship between the church and the world. We will note how thinkers apply these conceptions to perennial ethical subjects such as sexual expression, marriage and family, just war, criminal justice, economic justice, social (in)equality, and community well-being.
Course requirements will include short weekly papers to prepare for class discussion; an in-class essay midterm, and a final essay exam. The midterm and final exams will be designed to mirror, as far as possible, the format of the PhD written comprehensive exams for ISET students, and the questions will reflect the sort of thematic and comparative content that students can expect to encounter when they take their comprehensive exams.
Course texts will include most of the following (certain selections still to be determined):
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Books I-II, V-VI
Augustine, On the Morals of the Catholic Church; City of God Books XIV and XIX
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, selections
Martin Luther, Freedom of a Christian; On Temporal Authority
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, selections
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
Karl Marx, The German Ideology, Part One
Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, Book II
H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self
Katie Cannon, Katie¿s Canon
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