[Music] in this course we will refer regularly to a framework for ethics developed by professor sam wells while he was teaching christian ethics at duke divinity school the basis for this framework is a single question for whom are we speaking when we speak about ethics there are at least three ways of answering such a question universal ethics claims to speak for everyone subversive ethics claims to speak on behalf of those who are vulnerable oppressed or marginalized and ecclesial ethics claims to speak for the christian church the community gathered around the worship of father son and
holy spirit and formed by the christian narrative in this set of videos we're going to zoom in on the first approach universal ethics universal ethics assumes that what is right for one person is right in principle for all other people people are fundamentally the same and live within the same moral world we might say we all have to evaluate our actions in that world in terms of relationships or outcomes or duties whatever means of moral evaluation we adopt we assume that it provides a stable and coherent way of talking with other people about right and
wrong or good and bad this is good because we need a common language for such things in order to get along with one another especially in a pluralistic world like our own where we cannot assume that others share our worldview or our values it's unsurprising therefore that in the modern world universal ethics has become the most common way of talking about ethics in the public sphere where laws are proposed deliberated about and ultimately created and enforced universal ethics can focus on right actions right outcomes or write relationships ethics concerned with right actions is known as
deontological ethics a fancy ethics term deriving from the greek word for duty or rule to get at the meaning of deontological ethics i want you to consider a question in ethics do the ends justify the means in other words could a good enough outcome justify any act however evil and debased it is if you answer no then you have at some level a deontological approach to ethics deontological ethics says that the rightness or wrongness of an action does not depend on the consequences that follow from that act a good outcome cannot justify an intrinsically bad
means of getting there according to this pauline principle one should never do evil so that good may come but what makes a good action a good action how do we know what duty or obligation we're under and what is the source of moral duties in this video and the next we'll consider three main answers to this question god nature and conscience in one sense god could be indirectly the source of the moral law for all three of these approaches as god is the ultimate source of both nature and conscience but we could also understand god
to be the direct source of moral obligations according to divine command theories of ethics actions are required good permissible bad or evil simply because god has said that they are perhaps the most famous example is the ten commandments or the decalogue while these commandments were given to a specific people the israelites at a specific time and place mount sinai as they entered the promised land the rules are understood to be an expression of a moral law that applies to all people when someone is asked why it's wrong to steal they might say because god forbade
it in the ten commandments this would be a divine command approach to ethics in the new testament the great commandment love the lord your god with all your heart soul mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself might function in a similar way as far back as socrates philosophers have noticed potential problems with divine command approaches to ethics plato recorded a dialogue between socrates and his friend euthyphro in which socrates asks do the gods will what is good because it is good or is what we consider good only good because the gods will it
this puzzle now known as the euthyphro dilemma seems to present us with two less than ideal options either goodness is independent of god in which case god is responsible to a higher law but then where did that law come from or morality is an arbitrary function of god's will but in that case couldn't god change his mind or might god have declared something else to be good is goodness really simply a matter of divine power so that divine might makes right the christian response to this apparent dilemma is to suggest a third option and objective
standard exists this avoids the first horn of the dilemma but the standard is not external to god but internal to god avoiding the second horn god is good and god does not change his commands are not whims but are rooted in his character which is perfect another question raised by divine command theory is this how do we know god's commands the ten commandments are for everyone but there's an obvious issue that arises in that they're revealed by god through what theologians have called special revelation god appeared to moses and gave moses a list to bring
to the people is the moral law true for everyone if it's only revealed to some well that doesn't seem fair how can someone be expected to follow a rule without being told what the rule is now i mentioned at the beginning of this video that nature and conscience can be seen as sources of the moral law and that this might be compatible with god also being the source of the moral law in the letter to romans paul suggests that all people have a law written on their hearts which perhaps suggests that something like the ten
commandments is knowable by everyone apart from special revelation even if not everyone acknowledges this truth in the next video we'll turn to another explanation for how we can be expected to know right from wrong apart from explicit divine revelation the way of natural law
