Traditional Christian Ethics

Volume One of Traditional Christian Ethics describes the terminology, discusses popular approaches to ethical decision-making today, illustrates that the earliest Christians conducted themselves in accordance with a large number of specific moral rules, states the method of this set of books for reconstructing the content of early Christian ethics/law as attested before the devastating epidemic and mass apostasy of AD 249–251, gives reasons for regarding this as the terminal date, and provides a guide to using the lists. At a number of points, this volume deals with objections to its theses. Volume One also furnishes you with complete information as to where you can find and look up the ancient sources cited in translation. Traditional Christian Ethics will help you solve problems in moral decision-making when Scripture is unclear or silent. You can solve them through its comprehensive itemized concordances of citations to precepts of Christian ethics from all translated ancient texts. Its sources possess unassailable authority that cannot be fabricated, and are persuasive among most Christian denominations. Preachers and professional scholars will find them invaluable as a starting point in preparing their own sermons, books, articles, and essays on specific points of ethics.

WHAT CHRISTIANS OUGHT TO DO Confidence--Clement of Alexandria--Stromata--4.8 Confidence--Hebrews--10.35 Confidence before God--Origen--De Principiis--3.1.21 Confidence: boldness in confidence--Origen--Commentary on Ephesians--3.12 Confidence: exorcise confidently--Two Letters to Virgins--(pseudo-Clement)--1.12 Confidence, godly--1 Clement--2.3 Confidence: husbands are to have confidence in their wives--Clement of Alexandria--Paedagogus--3.11 Confidence: if you think you can stand, take heed lest you fall--1 Corinthians--10.12 Confidence: if you think you can stand, take heed lest you fall--Two Letters to Virgins--(pseudo-Clement)--2.13 Confidence in faith--Origen--Homilies on Judges--9.1 Confidence in God--Clement of Alexandria--Stromata--2.6 Confidence in God--Origen--De Principiis--3.1.21 Confidence in God--Theophilus--To Autolycus--1.8 Confidence in God rather than man--Hippolytus--Commentary on Daniel--3.29 Confidence in Jesus Christ--Origen--Homilies on Isaiah--7.2 Confidence in the Lord--1 Clement--34.5 Confidence in the Lord--Tertullian--Against Marcion--2.19 Confidence in the mind--Origen--Homilies on Judges--9.1 Confidence in the Word--Clement of Alexandria--Protrepticus--12 Confidence of uncreated liberty--Origen--Homilies on Leviticus--16.6.1

A discussion of the general presuppositions and ideas which underlie the Christian ethical teaching, treating of such subjects as conscience, the concepts of sin and virtue, and the relation between morality and religion. The book also attempts to explain the traditional Christian attitudes towards certain particular matters of conduct; for example, marriage and divorce, gambling, and the rights and duties of private property. Written by the then Bishop of Exeter, this book was originally published in 1950.

What Not to Do Abominable embraces1 Clement28.1 AbortionAthenagorasPresbeia35 AbortionBarnabas19.5 AbortionDidache2.2 AbortionDoctrina2.2 AbortionHippolytusPhilosophumena9.7 AbortionLetter to Diognetus5.6 AbortionMinucius FelixOctavius30 AbortionRevelation of Peter26 AbortionSibylline Oracles2.281f AbortionTertullianApologeticum9 AbortionTertullianExhortation to Chastity12 Abortion by drugsClement of AlexandriaPaedagogus2.10 (96) AbortionistDoctrina5.2 Abstinence, excessive, at the beginning stagesOrigenHomilies on Numbers27.9.2

Traditional Christian Ethics features two exhaustive alphabetical lists of affirmative commandments and prohibitions from the earliest Christian ethics, as found in writers before the mass apostasy of 249-251 AD. The affirmatives, or positives, list consists of what Christians are/were commanded or encouraged to do. The other list is of negatives or prohibitions, i.e. what Christians are/were discouraged from doing, similarly arranged. The source material for the work encompasses far more than the ten-volume Ante-Nicene Fathers edited by Roberts and Donaldson. It also draws from all writings of the period: Christian, Jewish, and pagan, available in English or French translation, plus a few Latin translations. Some translations have been published only in scholarly journals, and some only in the twenty-first century. Volumes Two and Three form a single exhaustive alphabetical list of affirmative commandments or precepts, including mental attitudes, i.e. what Christian ethics commanded or encouraged according to writers on Christian ethics before 250 AD. Using earlier drafts of this set of books, Dr. Brattston’s articles and booklets synthesizing early and contemporary Christianity have been published by a wide variety of denominations and ministries in every major English-speaking country. He hopes readers will use them as a starting-point for writing articles, papers, and sermons of their own.

At the heart of Christian ethics is the biblical commandment to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself. But what is the meaning of love? Scholars have wrestled with this question since the recording of the Christian gospels, and in recent decades teachers and students of Christian ethics have engaged in vigorous debates about appropriate interpretations and implications of this critical norm. In Love and Christian Ethics, nearly two dozen leading experts analyze and assess the meaning of love from a wide range of perspectives. Chapters are organized into three areas: influential sources and exponents of Western Christian thought about the ethical significance of love, perennial theoretical questions attending that consideration, and the implications of Christian love for important social realities. Contributors bring a richness of thought and experience to deliver unprecedentedly broad and rigorous analysis of this central tenet of Christian ethics and faith. William Werpehowski provides an afterword on future trajectories for this research. Love and Christian Ethics is sure to become a benchmark resource in the field.

A major review of the traditional teaching of morality in the Catholic Church which challenges the wisdom of inherited views on ethics.