This book addresses such key ethical issues as euthanasia, the environment, biotechnology, abortion, the family, sexual ethics, and the distribution of health care resources. Michael Banner argues that the task of Christian ethics is to understand the world and humankind in the light of the credal affirmations of the Christian faith, and to explicate this understanding in its significance for human action through a critical engagement with the concerns, claims and problems of other ethics. He illustrates both the distinctiveness of Christian convictions in relation to the above issues and also the critical dialogue with practices based on other convictions which this sense of distinctiveness motivates but does not prevent. The book's importance lies in its attempt to show the crucial difference which Christian belief makes to an understanding of these issues, whilst at the same time demonstrating some of the weaknesses and confusions of certain popular approaches to them.

‘Michael Banner is an event waiting to happen. He is clearly one of the brightest and most interesting young people doing ethics on the scene today. He is a first-rate theologian who promises to be a new and long-standing voice not only in England but in America. This is a good book and one that I believe will be widely read.’

Stanley Hauerwas - Duke University

‘Michael Banner has a distinctive voice. It is articulate, reasoned and often polemical. It is resolutely theological, and draws increasingly on classic theologians of the past as well as on major figures from the last two centuries. It addresses some of the most pressing contemporary ethical concerns.’

Oliver O’Donovan - University of Oxford

‘His book oozes with confidence and assuredness.’

Source: The Times Literary Supplement