ABSTRACT
One of the unfortunate realities of modern theology, and slightly less so with postmodern theology, has been the separation of Christian theology from Christian ethics. Too often Christian ideas on the incarnation and the Trinity have had little bearing on Christian ethics with the result that ethics often assumes an autonomy as a separate and distinct discipline from Christian theology.1 In fact Karl Barth went so far as to suggest that there is no such thing as ethics as severed from theology. He says, “When we speak of ethics, the term cannot include anything more than this confirmation of the truth of the grace of God as it is addressed to man. If dogmatics, if the doctrine of God, is ethics, this means necessarily and decisively that it is the attestation of that divine ethics, the attestation of the good of the command issued to Jesus Christ and fulfilled by Him. There can be no question of any other good in addition to this.”2 For Barth the attempt “to do ethics,” apart from theology shaping and informing it, was a species of hubris. Although Barth’s rhetoric often verges on the hyperbolic I must agree that a distinctively Christian ethic cannot proceed as if Christian commitment and doctrine are irrelevant.
