Natural Morality or Splendid Vice? The Case of Paul Ramsey

In Basic Christian Ethics, first published in 1950, Paul Ramsey began a decades-long attempt to relate Christian love to natural morality. As his work focused increasingly on particular moral problems, critics suggested that he had altered the position staked out in his first book and should consider writing a new or revised version of it. This article traces Ramsey’s continuing examination of the relation between justice and love, and it suggests that the long introduction to Jonathan Edwards’ Ethical Writings, over which Ramsey labored in the last years of his life, was much more than just an introduction to those writings. It was one last reworking of the foundational themes first taken up in Basic Christian Ethics.