Christian Ethics contains numerous aspects within the ethical teaching of the religion; traditionally, the religion taught that something can be determined as ethical or unethical depending on whether God commands it as right or wrong, or a more calculative method of summing up the positives and negatives of a moral choice, and Christian ethics also contains an appeal to the Natural Law Theory. Christianity has a very diverse nature, therefore within the religion there are a range of approaches to ethics, taking into account the values of virtue, love and conscience within its approach to morality. However, central to all of these approaches is the figure of Christ: God with us.
Christian Ethics has many sources of authority, these include: Priests and other teachers, the Bible, reason, love, tradition, the Kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit. Many Christians believe that the most important of these sources is the revealed word of God within the scripture of the Bible, because it has most historical value and is the source used by the greatest amount of people as it is followed by so many. People also believe that it is the most logical way to bring about God’s will. However, it is important that the scripture is used in conjunction to reason, and the readers look for the message behind the scripture and apply it to their everyday life. Many believe that that is what it means to be an Ethical Christian.
However, there are different opinions as to how to interoperate the Bible amongst Christians. Christians within the Protestant tradition place much greater emphasis on the literal interpretation of the scripture than those in the Catholic tradition. The traditional Catholic position is that moral authority has four forms: reason, scripture, tradition and magisterium, it recognises scripture as the central role as a source of moral authority but it is not a complete source of guidance without proper