Priorities and Christian Ethics
Priorities and Christian Ethics
This book provides a full treatment of an issue which is particularly pressing: when the claims of the nearest (e.g. parents, children, spouses, friends) conflict with the claims of the neediest, as they constantly do, where should preference go? Professor Hallett focuses first on a specific, representative case, pitting the lesser need of a son against the greater need of starving strangers. He brings to bear on this single paradigm all the resources of theological and philosophical reflection - scriptures, patristic teaching, the Thomistic tradition, current debates - and from this single example he sheds light on a wide range of comparable cases, both private and public. This distinctive strategy leads to distinctive and challenging results, and at the same time helps to clarify the traditional 'order of charity' and the celebrated 'preferential option for the poor'.
- The fullest treatment, philosophical or theological, of the issue
- Looks at the issue from both the private and the public policy point of view
Product details
November 2008Paperback
9780521090858
220 pages
216 × 140 × 13 mm
0.29kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1. A thorny question
- 2. Finding a focus
- 3. New Testament intimations
- 4. Patristic positions
- 5. The Thomistic tradition
- 6. Contemporary considerations
- 7. Comparable conflicts
- Works cited
- Index.
