Introduction

This chapter shows that the divide can be crossed more fruitfully than is often appreciated and that theistic ethics has much to learn from its secular counterpart, without abandoning its theistic foundation. That foundation commits theistic ethics to certain core beliefs about the authority for moral action. That authority is different, in certain crucial respects, from the authorities to which non-theistic ethics tends to look. There is a place in Christian ethics both to stand against the secular world and a place from which to embrace that world, albeit critically and on the basis of particular and distinct theistic ontological claims. Most secular moral philosophers tend to pigeon-hole Christian into a box reserved for outmoded, ahistorical, absolutist, inflexible moral theories that are grounded in an unintelligible or at least unpersuasive belief in a transcendent reality. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.