Christian moral principles summary notes

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Heteronomy

Christian moral principles come from the combination of bible, church and reason (Catholic view)
Apostolic succession
Jesus gave authority to Peter and his disciples – to spread the faith ‘go and make disciples of all nations’.
When he said this, the Bible didn’t exist yet – so clearly his disciples had to create their own teachings and the catechism of the catholic church says ‘what they had learned’ from Jesus.
When they died, the disciples passed on their role to new people – creating a succession which has led to the current Catholic church.
The Catholic Church, as outlined by Pope Paul VI during the second vatican council, thus feels entitled to create ‘sacred tradition’ – its own teachings, which they view as equally authoritative to the Bible.
The line of Peter refers to the unbroken line of Popes from Peter to the current one. Jesus gave a special mission to his disciple Peter – telling him in particular to watch over his people – and Jesus said of Peter ‘on this rock I will build my church’
Church equal to the Bible as a source of christian moral principles, because both come from God.
Reason refers to the use of natural law ethics (reason is how we know the primary precepts and figure out how to apply them). The Catholic Church uses natural law ethics.
Since Jesus is God – God therefore divinely ordained the catholic church – it is equal to the Bible.

Counter

The Catholic Church’s corrupt sale of indulgences. There have been many crimes perpetrated by the Church such as the paedophile priest scandals and allegiance with fascism, especially Hitler. Protestants suggest that the Church is therefore corrupt. They arguably don’t act like they are guided by the Holy Spirit.
The sale of indulgences was the policy of the Catholic Church to accept money from people in return for forgiveness of sins. Purgatory was an important part of this – if you gave the Church money, the priests would pray for your recently dead relative, claiming to get them out of purgatory faster. Martin Luther claimed Purgatory was ‘fabricated by goblins’ and wrote a 95 thesis critique of the practice of the sale of indulgences.
Ultimately, the invention of purgatory for use in the sale of indulgences looks like the Church is abusing its power to invent false doctrines purely for the sake of making money. It is morally corrupt.
It’s bad enough that the church is corrupt – the deeper issue is that it’s abusing its authority regarding creating teachings – to serve this corruption.
So, the church is not a valid source of moral principles.
Luther concluded Christians should only follow the Bible.

The Catholic Church, especially Pope John Paul II, has apologised for its past mistakes.
The issue is, Jesus would have surely known that the Church he gave authority to would be populated by corruptible humans who would make mistakes.
Jesus still gave his disciples that authority nonetheless.
Luther’s arguments at best suggest the Church needs reform, not a permanent loss of its authority as an equal source of moral principles to the Bible.
No human like Luther has the right to undo what Jesus has created. Jesus created the Church and gave it authority, who is Luther to say the Church doesn’t deserve it anymore?

Theonomy

Christian moral principles come directly and only from God – e.g. sola scriptura (protestant view)
This is the view that the Bible is superior in authority to the Church.
The church can make teachings, but those teachings must be subject to correction by the Bible – this is the crucial difference to catholicism.
Luther said ‘a simple laymen armed with scripture is greater than the mightiest Pope without it’
The Bible alone is the ultimate source of authority. Better to have the Bible than the greatest Pope.
Calvin agreed with Luther – arguing that it is an ‘error’ to think that the Church should have authority over the bible. He argues the ‘eternal’ truth of God cannot depend upon the decision of men.
Luther’s view was that humans didn’t need the Church to mediate between them and Christ. Everyone can read the Bible, we can’t give authority to the Church to interpret it for us.
He also said that everyone is a priest in protestantism – ‘the priesthood of all believers’ – because he rejected the idea that we need the Church to provide priests who alone can do services like the Eucharist etc.
We don’t need the Church – we only need the Bible. Protestants have Churches, but they only preach the Bible.
The priesthood of all believers is the doctrine developed by Luther that all people have the status of priest. The aim of this is to counteract the Catholic view, that priests have a special spiritual status which sets them apart from laypeople and gives them an important role in their salvation, acting as a mediator between the people and God. This again lessens the role, value and authority of the Church.
1 Timothy 2:5 says that Jesus is the only mediator between God and humanity.
The Bible is thought to derive its authority from its discernible excellence as a text and the religious experience of the holy spirits’ engagement with the human soul through it. Jesus said “the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” John 14:26-27.
The Bible says that ‘Ru-ach’ – God’s breath, was breathed into the authors of the bible – directly inspiring them.

Evaluation

Sola scriptura is not in the Bible – The Bible says it is authoritative, but it doesn’t claim to be the only source of authority.
In fact, there seems to be a lot of biblical evidence supporting the apostolic succession! Suggesting actually the Church also has authority.
It’s illogical to claim that only the Bible is your source of teachings if the Bible itself doesn’t say that.
Furthermore – the bible as we know it didn’t exist until the 4th century. There were loads of books floating around people thought might be divine – but it wasn’t until the 4th century that the Catholic church decided which books were cannon.
So again, it’s illogical to claim to follow the bible but not the catholic church, since the catholic church decided what books were to be in the Bible….

Autonomy

Autonomy – the (usually liberal) view that Christians can figure out right/wrong themselves through their conscience – e.g. situation ethics.
Christian moral principles have to be figured out by individual Christians in a moral situation (Fletcher’s situation ethics)
Fletcher thought the main theme of the bible was love – Christian ethics reduces completely to doing whatever has the most loving outcome.
This means it is up to individual Christians to decide what is morally right in their situation (autonomy).
Every situation will be different. There are no intrinsically right or wrong actions, it depends on whether in a situation an action maximises agape or not.
Fletcher’s rejection of legalism & antinomianism

Traditional Christians – like those who adhere to sola scriptura – would argue that Fletcher’s theory is not genuine Christian ethics, because fletcher has ignored most of the commands in the Bible, focusing only on Agape.
The Bible is full of other commands – e.g. God says ‘thou shalt not kill’, so Euthanasia would be wrong – God also said thou shalt not commit adultery.
Yet, Fletcher says killing or adultery are both fine in situations where they have a loving outcome.
So, Fletcher fails because he claims to be Christian yet does not follow the Bible.
Furthermore: Mouw’s critique. Mouw pointed out that Jesus made other commands. It makes no sense for Jesus to have only wanted us to follow the command of agape – then why would Jesus make other commands.
Pope Pius XII criticised situation ethics on similar grounds. Christ himself frequently spoke of the importance of following all the commandments. (Matthew 19:17 & John 14:15). Fletcher is therefore unwittingly attacking Christ.

Fletcher’s defence: liberal view of the Bible

Fletcher doesn’t think we can follow the Bible literally, but if we interpret it then we can’t tell whose interpretation is right.
He concludes that the only valid approach to the Bible is to follow its general themes.
The most consistent theme of the Bible is love – agape.
So, Fletcher thinks he is following the Bible actually.
Furthermore, Jesus did say that loving your neighbour as yourself was the ‘ greatest commandment’ – the fact that it’s the ‘greatest’ supports Fletcher’s approach of thinking it takes precedence over all others.

However, Fletcher’s point about the difficulty of interpreting the Bible fails against the catholic approach.
In Heteronomy, the role of the Church is to collectively interpret the bible for Christians. So there isn’t a crisis of interpreting the Bible – that is done collectively by the community of the Church leaders, guided by the holy spirit.
So, Fletcher’s analysis of the bible as justifying autonomy through following agape fails.

Heteronomy:

Christian moral principles come from the combination of bible, church and reason (Catholic view)
Apostolic succession
Jesus gave authority to Peter and his disciples – to spread the faith ‘go and make disciples of all nations’.
When he said this, the Bible didn’t exist yet – so clearly his disciples had to create their own teachings and the catechism of the catholic church says ‘what they had learned’ from Jesus.
When they died, the disciples passed on their role to new people – creating a succession which has led to the current Catholic church.
The Catholic Church thus feels entitled to create ‘sacred tradition’ – its own teachings, which they view as equally authoritative to the Bible. The line of Peter refers to the unbroken line of Popes from Peter to the current one.
Church equal to the Bible as a source of christian moral principles, because both come from God.
Reason refers to the use of natural law ethics (reason is how we know the primary precepts and figure out how to apply them). The Catholic Church uses natural law ethics.

Evaluation: Luther’s protestant Critique

Luther claimed that the catholic Church was corrupt – inventing false doctrines like purgatory purely for the sake of getting money from christians – sale of indulgences.
Luther said that purgatory was ‘fabricated by goblins’.
Luther concluded that the Church had failed in its duty to spread the message of Jesus.
No human or human organisation can be equal to the bible.
We could add to Luther that the Catholic Church has engaged in many other immoral acts – the crusades, the alliance with Hitler, the paedophile priest scandal.

Optional Counter to Luther:

The Catholic Church has apologised for its mistakes and accepts it is only human and will make mistakes.
The issue is, Jesus would have surely known that the Church he gave authority to would make mistakes, and yet he still gave his disciples that authority.
No human like Luther has the right to undo what Jesus has created.

Theonomy:

Christian moral principles come directly and only from God – sola scriptura (protestant view)
This is the view that the Bible is superior in authority to the Church.
The church can make teachings, but those teachings must be subject to correction by the Bible – this is the crucial difference to catholicism.
Luther said ‘a simple laymen armed with scripture is greater than the mightiest Pope without it’
The Bible alone is the ultimate source of authority. Better to have the Bible than the greatest Pope.
Luther’s view was that humans didn’t need the Church to mediate between them and Christ. Everyone can read the Bible, we can’t give authority to the Church to interpret it for us.
He also said that everyone is a priest in protestantism – ‘the priesthood of all believers’ – because he rejected the idea that we need the Church to provide priests who alone can do services like the Eucharist etc.
We don’t need the Church – we only need the Bible. Protestants have Churches, but they only preach the Bible.

Sola scriptura is not in the bible.
The Bible does say that it is authoritative (It says it is ‘god-breathed’), but it makes no comment about whether it is the sole ultimate authority.
In fact, there seems to be a lot of biblical evidence supporting the apostolic succession! Suggesting actually the Church also has authority.
So it’s not good logic to claim to believe in the bible alone, when the Bible itself doesn’t even say to do that
Furthermore, it was the Catholic Church that decided on which books would be included in the bible, in the 4th century.
So again, it makes no sense to say you don’t trust the Catholic Church and you only trust the Bible – since, in trusting the Bible, you are automatically trusting the Catholic Church that was responsible for deciding on which books were Biblical canon (the set official list).

Autonomy:

Christian moral principles have to be figured out by individual Christians in a moral situation (Fletcher’s situation ethics)
Fletcher thought the main theme of the bible was love – Christian ethics reduces completely to doing whatever has the most loving outcome.
This means it is up to individual Christians to decide what is morally right in their situation (autonomy).
Every situation will be different. There are no intrinsically right or wrong actions, it depends on whether in a situation an action maximises agape or not.
Fletcher’s rejection of legalism & antinomianism

Fletcher ignores most commands in the Bible – it’s not really valid Christian ethics therefore.
E.g. the Bible says thou shalt not kill, but Fletcher thinks it’s fine to kill people if it has a loving outcome.

Fletcher responds:

we have three options with the bible:
Take it literally (which is impossible)
View it as needing interpretation (which leads to everyone having their own interpretation).
Fletcher’s option is that he concludes that we can’t follow the Bible as a perfect set list of ‘legalistic’ commands. The best Christians can do is follow the most important theme of the bible – which is Agape.
He says we have to take bible as containing ‘suggestions’ and ‘paradigms’ (themes).