Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics

Although the Gospels are full of pithy moral aphorisms, Christian tradition is divided over the nature of Jesus' ethical teachings. On the one hand, traditional Christian teaching holds that Jesus taught an ethic based on the coming of a new realm of God, so that living a good life now guaranteed entrance into this new realm. On the other hand, some argue that Jesus was simply a great moral teacher whose ethical teachings exhort Christians to live a virtuous life in the here and now. Taking a different approach, Spohn (What Are They Saying about Scripture and Ethics) shows that Christian spiritual formation is an integral part of Christian moral formation. In section one of the book, Spohn introduces various approaches to reading and understanding the Gospels. He also argues that Jesus is the ""concrete universal of Christian ethics, the paradigm that normatively guides Christian living."" He moves in the book's second section to a closer examination of the relationship between the story of Jesus and Christian ethics. Spohn claims that ""spiritual practices help sharpen"" powers of moral perception, thus enabling us to see others in the world around us as ""neighbors"" and to see each neighbor as ""the one for whom Christ died."" He also asserts that Jesus' parables teach new ways of directing our moral dispositions to form our character. Although filled with dry, academic prose (""...this type of normativity tends to crop up when the practices are isolated from an expansive tradition and the light of critical reflection""), Spohn's explorations offer clear moments of insight into the nature of spiritual integrity. (Jan.)