Overview
Depending on who you ask, you’ll get wildly different answers to the question, “what is the good life?” Is it about wealth or fame, or about following rules, or making many friends, or something else? As Christians, we want to do our best to understand what scripture says about all of this, and develop a framework for thinking and living well in God’s world. As we do this, we engage in what is called “practical theology”. This builds on the foundation that we’ve laid in the previous two modules—biblical and systematic theology—by helping us translate what the Bible teaches into guidance for knowing and serving God better.
Now, practical theology covers a vast array of subjects, but in this module we’re focusing in on the topic of ethics. This is the natural place to start with practical theology, because it forces us to unpack the structure and key components of the good life, so that we can be more deliberate about pursuing it. And since practical theology builds upon systematic theology, we’ll be following the pattern we introduced in Know Thy Maker, of drawing on both scripture and philosophy.
One of the biggest challenges to studying Christian ethics today, is that we tend to have a very modern Western idea of what ethics is about, which differs in important ways from what the biblical authors thought. Thus, in this module we’ve been deliberate about clarifying and re-orientating ourselves, so that we can better hear what scripture has to say about the good life, and better leverage the tools that philosophy provides for pursuing it.
As we see in the first three lessons, the good life is primarily about living in accordance with wisdom and developing a certain kind of character. We look at how this impacts how we read the Bible, how we think about our daily decisions, and how we interact with our friends. In the last two lessons, we discuss how we approach ethical questions, and then apply this to the particular question of how we care for the poor.
Because we think wisdom is central to the good life, we’ve put together a collection of Wisdom Book Overviews to help you read through and think about what Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and James have to say about the good life.
Lessons
Wisdom and Moral Order
Practical theology is about living in light of what we learn about God and his world through biblical and systematic theology. The first place in scripture we think to do, when it comes to finding ethical guidance, are the laws or commands. But the way we think about law is shaped by a worldview that the biblical authors didn’t share—for them, law was for learning wisdom. Thus, in order to fully leverage scripture for ethical guidance we need to know how to approach wisdom, both in the Old and the New Testaments.
Character as Virtue
Just as we did with systematic theology in our previous module, we turn to philosophy to see if it can supplement the picture of the good life laid out in scripture. Using Aristotle as an example, we see that philosophical ethics can help us flesh out some of the details of character. The concept of virtue can deepen our understanding of what it means to have good character, how we can develop it, and how we can measure improvement. Finally, we look at how the good life relates to happiness, and how biblical ethics develops Aristotle’s conception of happiness by taking into account life with God.
Friendship
These days, friendship may not be the first thing we think of when considering topics in ethics. But once we appreciate the centrality of wisdom, character, and virtue (as we saw in the first two talks), then friendship becomes a crucially important issue to think through. Combining biblical and philosophical ethics, we look at what it means to be a friend and what’s required to be a good friend. Then, we turn our attention to three questions: do Christians make better friends, is there a limit to the number of friends we should have, and when should friends part ways?
Making Moral Decisions
Having spent the first three lessons on topics such as wisdom, character, and virtue, we turn to what some might consider a more “typical” ethical topic: how to determine whether something is right or wrong, so that we can take an ethically-informed stance on it. Using abortion as a worked example, we look at what the Bible has to say, what philosophy has to say, and how we should combine these two into a coherent view on the issue.
Treatment of the Poor
We turn our attention to the question of how Christians should think about caring for the poor. Examining what scripture has to say, we consider three reasons for thinking that caring for the poor should be an essential component of the Christian life. We then consider how social concerns like this relate to the Christian duty for evangelism, and discover that once we have the right understanding of the gospel we are not forced into a false dichotomy that forces us to choose between caring for the poor and proclaiming the gospel. Then, we close by thinking a bit about what caring for the poor looks like today.