Moral Theology Essay

The author’s main argument is the failure of moral theology to focus on the everyday ethical issues confronting Christians, while his main aim is the usefulness of social anthropology to moral theology. The author wants a strong (er) relationship or connection between moral theology, i.e. ethics, and anthropology.
The writer is literally ‘upset’ with the fact that moral theology talk about hard cases and neglect the mundane things Christians do daily. In other words, moral theology is uninterested in the social milieu that dictates the ethical actions of Christians. The failure of moral theology to talk about everyday ethics has an unwholesome effect in the formation of Christian ethics; dogmatic instead of curative. The author, therefore,

Focusing only on the hard cases makes moral theology to become an abstract phenomenon detached from the social experience of individuals living under different social context. From the author’s perspective, morality should be “an everyday practice… the practice of appraising ourselves and others against notions of the good, or the right, or the fitting” (p. 7). For moral theology to shape everyday ethics, it needs to engage with the human element—understand what it means to be human, it can only do so in the realm of social anthropology. Moral theology failure to engage in the mundane is what turned it into a confession of sins profession. With confession, Christian ethics essentially became more about punishment, depending on the severity of the sin committed, than on

How can one talk about Christian ethics without at least quoting some scriptural passages from the Bible to explain what some New Testament writers, such as Paul, wrote about the law, sin, death, and grace. If the author is talking about morality from a Christian perspective, he cannot do otherwise; since the Bible is the foundation upon which Christians understanding of morality rest. Personally, I would have used Romans 8:2 “For the law of the Spirit leading to life delivered me in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” The law says “thou shall not” and Christians know that no one can be “justified by the works of the law…” (Galatians 2:16) and so because we are saved by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ, instead of moral theology being preoccupied with the “thou shall not” as a standard for Christian ethics, it should also talk about “thou mayest” that speak of our freedom in