Abstract
This issue of Studies in Christian Ethics is devoted to exploring contemporary directions and developments in Reformed theological ethics. It looks to consider something of the current state of moral theology being undertaken in Reformed circles, broadly understood. Our authors reflect critically upon its particular preoccupations and perplexities, and to examine how it stands in relation to the vistas and directions that debates in theological and philosophical ethics more widely are opening up.
The present moment is crossed by contrary currents. On one hand, the Reformed legacy continues to be subject to critical questioning, particularly concerning its—possibly ineluctable—entanglement with the origins and developments of modernity; some prominent efforts to surmount distinctively modern problems threaten to require breaking with the Reformed tradition in whole or in part. On the other hand, there is also renewed interest in a recovery and reconsideration of historic Reformed sources and distinguishing features in moral theology, as well as new and lively engagements with the notable ethical aspects of the work of many individual Reformed theologians. Such general trends are, of course, themselves crossed by numerous other substantive doctrinal developments and moral debates which put the ongoing ethical significance of the Reformed theological legacy at issue in unanticipated ways even as they illumine new possibilities for recovery, continued reform and perhaps even revolution.
These dynamics are evident in two overarching perspectives that run across these essays. First, our contributors variously explore the continued viability and significance of distinctive Reformed theological emphases and themes—for example, the third use of the law, the importance of sanctification, the covenant motif, the prophetical vocation of the church, and the sovereignty of God. Taken together, the essays suggest that such traditional doctrinal resources—and no doubt there are other such motifs—can and should continue to inform contemporary approaches to fundamental questions in the field of Christian ethics. The way in which they might do so is not a matter of simple retrieval or repristination of course. For pressing questions about the range and substance of the Reformed tradition in theology, as well as the extent to which its legacies must be the object of continuing critical reconsideration and reform, are integral to any such effort. The conviction that the Reformed theological tradition is living and self-critical is well displayed here.
The second perspective concerns the public and ecumenical horizons of the work of Reformed theological ethics. The specificity of its theological character is no obstacle to wide-ranging interest in, and engagement with, matters of general humane ethical importance. Indeed, as these essays make plain in their different ways, key features of the Reformed sensibility demand just such engagement, and insist therefore that any assessment of the state of Reformed theological ethics must also consider the kind of distinctive contributions currently to be made to ongoing debates concerning virtue ethics, natural law, the meaning of human freedom, as well as political ethics keyed to the res publica. Readers will thus find herein much constructive engagement with some of the most vexing questions, as well as notable methodological trends, in Christian theological ethics today. The collective endeavour of our authors involves, then, a salutary movement between an intensive interest in scrutinising the moral theological resources of the intellectual traditions of Reformed Christianity, and an extensive interest in imagining their creative deployment and consequences for ethical inquiry more generally.
I am very grateful to the editor of Studies in Christian Ethics, Susan Frank Parsons, for the kind invitation to put together this special issue and for all her many labours in seeing it to print. I hope that it advances the journal’s primary mandate and ambition ‘to strengthen debate and to foster research in the field of Christian ethics and moral theology’.
Editorial Note
Many thanks are due to Phil Ziegler who planned and edited this special issue. His care in extending invitations to an internationally diverse group of theologians and his thoughtfulness in ensuring a range of topics that would reflect their unique contributions to debates in Reformed theological ethics will be evident to readers and is much appreciated. The enthusiastic response of these authors and the seriousness of their engagement with contemporary questions are a welcome sign of the generosity of discussions in this field. Their papers invite scholarly response and deeper consideration. We look forward therefore to the fruits of this endeavour.