Christian Ethics: An Introduction

Christian Ethics: An Introduction. Edited by Bernard Hoose. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998. xiii + 337 pp. $ 29.95 (paper).

This collection of essays successfully fulfills its stated purpose of communicating some of the shifts of emphasis in the academic study of ethics in the last generation. Catholic discussions since 1960 have had farther to go in coming to a more fruitful use of scripture, and in coming to grips with the challenges to church authority and natural law, while many Protestants have had to modify a traditional reliance on Scripture with an admission of philosophical reason. However, this collection is largely Roman Catholic in tone; of the nineteen contributors, only four are not Catholics, and they contribute mainly to the second half of essays on applied ethics. The geographical balance is better: the contributors are split fairly between Britain, the rest of Europe, and the United States.

Thus the first ten chapters dealing with the foundation of Christian ethics mainly reflect the discussions prevailing in Catholic moral theology, including Scripture, the human person, conscience, authority and absolute norms, and feminist ethics. With contributions from figures such as Richard Gula and Charles Curran, the side of the balance is clearly weighed in favor of the revisionist or liberal approach. The influential and controversial conservative approach of John Finnis and Germain Grisez is rarely alluded to, except in the chapter on lying contributed by the editor himself. The discussions, however, are valuable for Protestants and others who will be instructed on the notion of the fundamental option, and the relation between authority and conscience.

Some readers will be put off by the radical approach taken by Tom Deidun (lecturer on New Testament at Heythrop College) in the first essay on the Bible and Christian ethics. He has little use for any normative reading of scripture, and recommends instead "a relaxed and imaginative approach" (p. 39). The skeptical Protestant reader would conclude from this first essay that Catholic moral theology since Vatican II has not yet learned how to appropriate very much from Scripture. This is balanced somewhat by the fine essay by Vincent MacNamara on the distinctiveness of Christian ethics.

Many readers will be more interested in the applied section where by and large they will be served with effective summaries of contemporary approaches to contemporary issues such as divorce and marriage (Kevin Kelly), euthanasia (Gula), reproductive techniques (Joyce Poole), peace and war (Richard Jones), and property (Timothy Gorringe). Especially valuable as concise summaries are the essays of Karen Lebacqz on justice and Bernard Hoose on punishment.

The most controversial essay is likely to be Gareth Moore's on sex and sexuality. On the grounds that sexuality is much more complex than we previously recognized, Moore virtually dismisses any appeal to Scripture or the natural law tradition.

The book concludes with an interesting chapter by Auerliano Pacciolla on hypnosis and anesthesia, a topic not often encountered in a general collection; but it raises the question whether such topics as environmental ethics and business ethics might also have been valuable to include.

The collection succeeds in providing a useful set of summaries to many of the main topics in contemporary Christian, and especially Catholic, ethics. Some Protestant readers will be surprised at the freedoms that are taken (if not exactly allowed by the Roman magisterium) by many moral theologians, but this in itself is useful to recognize.

DANIEL WESTBERG

Charlottesville, Virginia

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 2000
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