ABSTRACT
Paul Ramsey's basic theological position was set out in Basic Christian Ethics. The commitment of the physician to care for the patient preceding all other moral and social considerations provided Ramsey with a practice he sorely needed to sustain Christian ethics as a discipline in service to the world. Indeed, Ramsey's attempt to discipline some of the utilitarian presumptions of Reinhold Niebuhr's realism can be read in deep continuity with Niebuhr's fascination with the world of international politics. Moreover, medical ethics exemplifies for Ramsey the moral commitments that lie at the heart of Western civilization and that animate, or at least should animate, our politics and economics. J. Gustafson continues by observing that much of the writing in the field of medical ethics is now done by people who desire to be known as "religious ethicists", if only to show they are distinguishable from philosophers.
