An Interpretation of Christian Ethics

by Reinhold Niebuhr

Overview

Reinhold Niebuhr's An Interpretation of Christian Ethics is both an introduction to the discipline and a presentation of the author’s distinctive approach. That approach focuses on a realistic (rather than moralistic) understanding of the challenges facing human individuals and institutions, and a call for justice—imperfect though it might be—as what love looks like in a fallen world. The book’s most distinctive aspect is the author’s insistence that perfect love and justice are unattainable in this world, yet they remain our most important goals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780664266325
Publisher:	Westminster John Knox Press
Publication date:	11/09/2021
Series:	Reinhold Niebuhr Library
Pages:	306
Sales rank:	1,096,072
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Reinhold Niebuhr was a theologian, Christian ethicist, and public intellectual who taught for more than thirty years at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Table of Contents

General Editors' Introduction vii

Introduction Edmund N. Santurri ix

Preface to the 1956 Edition xxxi

I An Independent Christian Ethic 1

II The Ethic of Jesus 35

III The Christian Conception of Sin 63

IV The Relevance of an Impossible Ethical Ideal 101

V The Law of Love in Politics and Economics (Criticism of Christian Orthodoxy) 137

VI The Law of Love in Politics and Economics (Criticism of Christian Liberalism) 167

VII Love as a Possibility for the Individual 199

VIII Love as Forgiveness 221

Index 239