ABSTRACT
Long before Christian ethics became an academic and ecclesiastical discipline there were writings that prescribed or commended particular moral actions for Christians; the sorts of outlooks, dispositions and ends they ought to have; the justifying reasons for them; and the powers that made proper forms of life and action possible, or restrained them. The Bible does not provide the Church with an abstract coherent theory of Christian ethics, and thus within it are the seeds of various ideas that developed in the tradition in relation to different cultural contexts, to practical social and moral issues that emerged, and to varying theological emphases that were articulated.
