ABSTRACT
Morality, in the sense of rules appropriate to personal behaviour, was always present in Christianity. Indeed, as Weber suggests, its initial stress on inward conformity to the Law made Christianity, far more than had been the case with Ancient Judaism, an ethical religion. Yet, for all that, in both primitive Christianity and for the age of Belief morality was an adjunct to, rather than the core of, religious life. Value in these societies lay, by definition, outside of and beyond the self. Happiness, it is true, was held to be a personal relation to transcendent value, but it was inconceivable that this value could itself reside within, far less be identified with, the person. Morality, therefore, remained less important than either Faith or Belief. The fundamental character of religious life, and the specific uniqueness of Christianity, lay first of all in its groundless Faith and subsequently in the objectivity of its Belief. And in neither instance was the transcendent relationship sought in terms of the personal appropriation of its inner meaning as an end.
