The field of Christian ethics has been the location of a debate over the past decades between roughly delineated parties representing an allegiance to the use of formal prescriptive principles on the one hand, and those representing the cause of the more existential response to a particular situation on the other hand. The debate has taken place in Europe and the United States, it has taken place in Catholicism and in Protestantism. In European Protestant literature Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics, particularly Volume II/2, Bonhoeffer's Ethics, and Niels Søe's Kristelig Etik, have represented what has been called a “contextual” approach. More traditional Lutheran theologians who stress the importance of ethics under the law have a larger place for traditional ethical principles. Werner Elert and Walter Künneth would be representative of this group. In Catholic literature there was a movement in the early years after World War II that came to be called “situational morality.” A critic has typified it in the following terms, “The ultimate differences between this new morality and traditional morality come down then to this: In an objective system of ethics the moral judgment is submitted to an extrinsic norm, an ontological norm founded on the principles of being. In situational ethics the moral judgment is measured only by the subjective, immanent light of the individual in question.” In contrast to the situational emphasis is the whole tradition of natural law ethics and moral theology as this developed in Roman Catholicism. It should be noted that some of the recent Catholic ethics continues to be influenced by a situational approach, though not in the extreme way of earlier materials.

The work of the School of Edessa was put under strictures of ever increasing severity, and led finally to its liquidation under Zeno in 489. The torch of higher learning was then transplanted to Nisibis, a center that had been the pride of Byzantium before it was annexed by the Persians in 361. In Narsai's person and those of his co-workers, the tradition returned to Nisibis from which stimuli once had gone out giving birth to the School of Edessa. The question of time of the founding of the School of Nisibis which has been the subject of disagreement, can now due to an important document be dated with greater precision namely — soon after the year 471. Narsai became the first director. Soon after its appearance upon the scene, the school was accorded an extraordinary élan. It took over the leadership among other radii of intellectual and spiritual life, the best that Christianity under the Sassanides had produced. The life that emanated from it constitutes the most beautiful page in the history of Christianity in this part of the world. Its statutes also occupy a place of honor in the tradition regarding the legislative sources.

Although ʼašrê occurs rather frequently in the Old Testament and shows a fairly consistent formal pattern, the literature on this subject is small and offers no comprehensive analysis. The pertinent statements — usually brief discussions within the context of a wider or different subject — hinge upon three basic insights: 1. that the ʼašrê-formula is a statement made to or about someone which somehow magnifies or extols that person's condition as a desirable one; 2. that ʼašrê is found in a fair number of passages that belong to the Wisdom movement; 3. that there exists some kind of relationship between ʼašrê and forms of blessing. To these undoubtedly correct though seldom precisely formulated observations is added a persistent conviction that ʼašrê stands in an antipodal relationship to hôi/ʼôi, analogous to that of blessing and curse. After a brief survey of lexicographical data and formal characteristics we shall examine the usage of ʼašrê with the aim of defining its relationship to hôi and to the brk-word-group and, finally, draw certain conclusions regarding its meaning.