Autonomous Ethics in 20th Century Moral Theology
My presentation will focus on autonomous ethics in 20th century moral theology. My discussion mainly centres on the moral theology of the Roman Catholic church. The main source for my discussion is the book written in 1985 by j. Vincent McNamara entitled Faith and Ethics; recent Roman Catholicism. He examines in the book the search for the identity of Christian ethics from approximately 1940 until 1980.
Before I examine the autonomous movement we need to look at the history that led to its development in moral theology in the late nineteen sixties. It is important to keep in mind through my discussion that there are three essential questions that characterise most of the debates found in the development of moral theology. There are:
The source of morality-is it biblical revelation or is it in the general human community?
Norm/standard of moral living-found in Christ or man of philosophy?
The source of moral obligation-will of God or human reason?
These issues are almost always central to most of the disagreements. I will be referring back to them later.
The first trend that McNamara examines is the movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century called neo-scholasticism. As the name suggests it took its inspiration from the scholastic movement of the middle-ages , a movement that concentrated a lot on systems and language, for example Aquinas, Anselm and Duns Scotus. The neo-scholastics set out to give a systematic account of Christian morality.
As I mentioned the neo-scholastic movement was based on the movement in the middle ages. Many of their ideas were influenced by Thomas Aquinas so it is natural to infer that their argumentation would be similar. Although McNamara feels that many of their ideas do not do justice to Aquinas’ thinking, so it is important to stress here that the ideas of the neo-scholastics were not exactly the same as those of Aquinas.
For the neo-scholastics the moral good can be identified if it leads us
Before I examine the autonomous movement we need to look at the history that led to its development in moral theology in the late nineteen sixties. It is important to keep in mind through my discussion that there are three essential questions that characterise most of the debates found in the development of moral theology. There are:
The source of morality-is it biblical revelation or is it in the general human community?
Norm/standard of moral living-found in Christ or man of philosophy?
The source of moral obligation-will of God or human reason?
These issues are almost always central to most of the disagreements. I will be referring back to them later.
The first trend that McNamara examines is the movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century called neo-scholasticism. As the name suggests it took its inspiration from the scholastic movement of the middle-ages , a movement that concentrated a lot on systems and language, for example Aquinas, Anselm and Duns Scotus. The neo-scholastics set out to give a systematic account of Christian morality.
As I mentioned the neo-scholastic movement was based on the movement in the middle ages. Many of their ideas were influenced by Thomas Aquinas so it is natural to infer that their argumentation would be similar. Although McNamara feels that many of their ideas do not do justice to Aquinas’ thinking, so it is important to stress here that the ideas of the neo-scholastics were not exactly the same as those of Aquinas.
For the neo-scholastics the moral good can be identified if it leads us