This book addresses such key ethical issues as euthanasia, the environment, biotechnology, abortion, the family, sexual ethics, and the distribution of health care resources. Michael Banner argues that the task of Christian ethics is to understand the world and humankind in the light of the credal affirmations of the Christian faith, and to explicate this understanding in its significance for human action through a critical engagement with the concerns, claims and problems of other ethics. He illustrates both the distinctiveness of Christian convictions in relation to the above issues and also the critical dialogue with practices based on other convictions which this sense of distinctiveness motivates but does not prevent. The book s importance lies in its attempt to show the crucial difference which Christian belief makes to an understanding of these issues, whilst at the same time demonstrating some of the weaknesses and confusions of certain popular approaches to them.

Contenu
Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Turning the world upside down - and some other tasks for dogmatic Christian ethics; 2. Christian anthropology at the beginning and end of life; 3. The practice of abortion: a critique; 4. Economic devices and ethical pitfalls: quality of life, the distribution of resources and the needs of the elderly; 5. Why and how (not) to value the environment; 6. On not begging the questions about biotechnology; 7. 'Who are my mother and my brothers?': Marx, Bonhoeffer and Benedict and the redemption of the family; 8. Five churches in search of sexual ethics; 9. Prolegomena to a dogmatic sexual ethic; Bibliography; Index.