Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Part I The grounds of Christian ethics
- Part II Approaches to Christian ethics
- Part III Issues in Christian ethics
- 13 Christianity and war
- 14 The arms trade and Christian ethics
- 15 Social justice and welfare
- 16 Ecology and Christian ethics
- 17 Business, economics and Christian ethics
- 18 World family trends
- 19 Sexuality and religious ethics
- 20 Christian ethics, medicine and genetics
- Select bibliography
- Index
15 - Social justice and welfare
from Part III - Issues in Christian ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2012
- Frontmatter
- Part I The grounds of Christian ethics
- Part II Approaches to Christian ethics
- Part III Issues in Christian ethics
- 13 Christianity and war
- 14 The arms trade and Christian ethics
- 15 Social justice and welfare
- 16 Ecology and Christian ethics
- 17 Business, economics and Christian ethics
- 18 World family trends
- 19 Sexuality and religious ethics
- 20 Christian ethics, medicine and genetics
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
VARIETIES OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT ON JUSTICE
The cultures in which Christianity flourished prior to the missionary expansion of recent centuries were deeply influenced by Christian notions, and in their turn shaped and perhaps sometimes distorted the expression of the Christian faith. It should not then be surprising if we discover that distinctively Christian ideas about justice that Christians, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, would wish to support and affirm have been deeply implanted in many modern cultures. The boundary between the religious and the secular in such matters is not always clearcut or easy to discern. Themes like human equality that the American Declaration of Independence thought ‘self-evident’ were not accepted as at all obviously true in a very different cultural environment such as that of traditional India. Indeed, in the course of time ideas and values absorbed from religious sources can become the almost unquestioned assumptions of later generations, commonly believed to be axiomatic, or the conclusion of a purely rational argument.
The complicated interaction between Christian thought on social justice and its intellectual, social, ecclesial and political context continues today. It is at this point that the first, and most obvious, distinction between Protestant and Roman Catholic thought on social justice emerges. In general terms Roman Catholic thought draws on classical Aristotelian philosophy as mediated and moderated by St Thomas Aquinas, whereas Protestants tend to be suspicious of secular reason and seek to ground their thought on justice on revelation contained in scripture.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics , pp. 205 - 218Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011