The Ten Commandments & Christian ethics
Dr. Julia Annas, retired Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, will lead a six-part interactive series on the Ten Commandments and Christian ethics.
It will convene at 10:00am Thursdays, starting October 1 and ending November 5. Register here
Her series follows Fr Peter Helman’s discussion of icons in worship. His last segment is Thursday, September 24.
What should be the role of the Ten Commandments in Christian living? How can they form the basis for a way of life? It is helpful to look at Jewish ethics at the time of Jesus, since Christians took the Commandments over from Judaism. Early Christianity, however, went on to develop in the very different society of the Roman Empire, and Christians since then have lived in a variety of societies and cultures. How can the Commandments figure in a way of life that is specifically Christian?
Here is more about the study:
The Commandments: some attempts to see them as the basis of law, and ways of seeing them as the basis of a way of life. (In the older Eucharistic services, we are to commit ourselves to obeying them before we take Communion.)
The role of the Commandments in Jewish ethics at the time of Jesus. This is often misunderstood as mere rigid rule-following. In fact what matter are the virtues that come from a distinctive way of life structured by rules, not just the rules themselves.
Early Christianity took over the Jewish scriptures and the Commandments, but not the distinctive practices of Judaism (keeping kosher, etc). What made you specifically Christian in the Roman Empire? What difference was made to your day to day life? Why did Jews and Christians have distinctive views on homosexuality and abortion?
Christians nowadays live in a variety of societies, and function in different cultures. What unifies us as Christians apart from our worship and prayer life? Is there such a thing as a modern Christian ethics? Christians have distinctive values, but how should we live out those values?
When we try to foreground Christian values in our lives, does this imply that we should foreground the Ten Commandments, or a rule-based way of life and ethics? What is it to live by rules? How can following rules make us good people?
What is an alternative to rule-based ethics? The main option is virtue ethics. How does this relate to the Commandments, and to rules generally? A good model here is the Jewish ethics of Jesus' time, where rules for living are grounded in the virtues and characters of the people who live by them.