Comprehensive Exams: Theological and Philosophical Ethics

III. Theological and Philosophical Ethics

(Indented items recommended)

A. Classical

• Plato. The Republic, The Symposium.
• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics,Politics.
  • Cicero. De Re Publica (On the Commonwealth); De Officiis.

B. Patristic and Medieval

• • The Didache
  • Letter to Diognetus
  • Clement of Alexandria, The Pedagogue
  • Ambrose, The Duties of the Clergy
• Augustine. The Confessions; On the Morals of the Catholic Church; On the Good of Marriage; Political Writings, ed. Ernest L. Fortin and Douglass Kries (Hackett, 1994).
  • Augustine. Against Lying; The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love;
  • On the Spirit and the Letter
  • Medieval Handbooks of Penance , ed. and trans. John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer
  • The Rule of St. Benedict.
  • Gregory the Great. Rules of Pastoral Care
  • Bernard of Clairvaux. On the Love of God; On the Song of Songs
  • Peter Abelard. Ethics
• Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae, Prima secundae: 1-6, 8, 12-13 (human acts), 26-28 (love), 54-55 (virtue), 61-62 (cardinal and theological virtues), 82 (original sin), 85 (the effects of sin), 90-97 (law), 106-108 (old and new law), 109-114 (grace); Secunda secundae: 1-4 (faith), 23-27 (charity), 40 (war), 57-58 (right and justice), 64 (murder), 153-154 (lust). On Kingship.
  • Marsilius of Padua. Defender of Peace, Book I, chs. 1-13; Book II, ch 12

C. Reformation

• Martin Luther. The Freedom of a Christian; Secular Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed; An Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nationality as to the Amelioration of the State of Christendom, in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings;, pp. 42-85, 363-402, 403-85; Exposition of the Ten Commandments, in Waldo Beach and H. R. Niebuhr, Christian Ethics: Sources of Living Tradition, 2nd ed., 1973, pp. 244-61.
  • Martin Luther. Sermon on the Mount, in Luther's Works 21:83-129; The Larger
  • Catechism
  • Erasmus, Enchiridion
• Schleitheim Confession, in John H. Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches, pp. 282-292
  • Menno Simons. The Cross of the Saints.
• John Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, chs. i-ix (sin, its effects, grace, laws, including exposition of the Ten Commandments), xvii (Christ's merit); Book III, chs. ii. 1-8 and 29-37 (faith), vi-viii, ix (the Christian life), xi (justification by faith), xiv, 10-12 (righteousness), xix (Christian freedom); Book IV, xx (civil government)
• Jonathan Edwards. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God;" selections from A Treatise Concerning Religious Affestions; selections fromThe Nature of True Virtue; Apostrophe to Sarah Pierpont;; Pesonal Narrative , all in AJonathan Edwards Reader, ed. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema(Yale University Pres, 1995).
  • Jonathan Edwards. A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, in A Jonathan
  • Edwards Reader , ed. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema (Yale University Pres, 1995).
  • John Knox. A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants.
  • A. S. P. Woodhouse, ed. Puritanism and Liberty (2d ed.; University of Chicago Press, 1950): selections from John Saltmarsh, Smoke in the Temple; William Ames, Conscience; Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex; Roger Williams, The Bloody Tenent of Persecution; Richard Mather, An Apology for Church Covenant; John Lilburne, The Free-man's Freedom Vindicated; excerpts from The True Leveller's Standard Advanced.

D. Modern

• • Niccolo Machivelli. The Prince.
  • Bartolome de las Casas. The Only Way
  • Francisco de Vitoria. De Indis et De Jure Belli Relectiones, ed. with intro.
  • Ernest Nyes; trans. by John Pawley Bate in Classics of International Law
  • Francisco Suarez..A Treatise on Laws and God the Lawgiver, selections in Selections from Three Works 0f Francisco Suarez, vol II, ed. Gwladys L. Williams, et al. in Classics of International Law
• Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan, chs. XI-XXXV
  • Benedict Spinoza. Ethics, Parts 4 and 5
• John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government ; Letter Concerning Toleration
  • David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, section I; Part II, sections I and II
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The First and Second Discourses
  • Joseph Butler. Fifteen Sermons
• Immanuel Kant. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
  • G.W.F. Hegel. Reason in History
  • Søren Kierkegaard. Purity of the Heart, chs. 12-15; Fear and Trembling; Works of Love
• John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism
• Friedrich Nietzsche. Genealogy of Morals
• E. Contemporary (Twentieth Century)
• Walter Rauschenbusch. A Theology for the Social Gospel
  • Henry Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology, vol 1.
  • Gerard Gilleman. The Primacy of Charity in Moral Theology
• Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics, II/2, pp. 509-51 ("Ethics as a Task of the doctrine of God"); III/4, 3-31 ("The Problem of Special Ethics"); III/4, pp. 397-470 ("The Protection of Life").
  • John A. Ryan. Economic Justice: Readings from Distributive Justice and A Living Wage , ed. Harlan Beckley (Westminster John Knox Press, 1996)
• Jacques Maritain. Man and the State
  • Jacques Maritain. Integral Humanism
• H. Richard Niebuhr. Christ and Culture; The Responsible Self
• Reinhold Niebuhr. The Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vols.
  • Reinhold Niebuhr. Love and Justice
• John Courtney Murray. We Hold These Truths
  • Paul Ramsey. Basic Christian Ethics; The Patient as Person
• Vatican Council II. Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes, Dignitatis Humanae
• Papal encyclicals: Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, Pacem in Terris, Populorum Progressio, Humanae Vitae, Centesimus Annus(Recommended: Laborum Exercens, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis).
  • Richard B. Miller, ed. War in the Twentieth Century: Sources in Theological Ethics
  • Bernard Häring. The Law of Christ, vol 1; and "Dynamism and Continuity in a Personalistic Approach to the Natural Law," in Norm and Context in Christian Ethics, ed. Gene Outka and Paul Ramsey
• Karl Rahner. "The Theological Concept of Concupiscentia," in Theological Investigations, vol. 1, pp. 347-382; "On the Question of a Formal Existential Ethics," TI, vol. 2, pp. 217-34; "The Commandment to Love in Relation to the Other Commandments," TI vol. 5, pp. 439-59; "Theology of Freedom," TI, vol. 6, pp. 178-96; "Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbor and the Love of God," TI, vol. 6, pp. 231-49; "Person," in Sacramentum Mundi.
  • Peter Knauer. "The Hermeneutic Function of the Principle of Double Effect," in Charles Curran and Richard McCormick,Readings in Moral Theology, No. 1, pp. 1-40.
• Josef Fuchs. Human Values and Christian Morality, ("Moral Theology According to Vatican II," pp. 1-55; "Basic Freedom and Morality," 92-111; "Moral theology and Dogmatic Theology," 148-77; Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality ("Is There a Distinctively Christian Ethic?" pp. 53-68; "Is there a Normative Non-Christian Morality?" 69-83; "Autonomous Morality and Morality of Faith," 83-111; "The Absoluteness of Behavioral Norms," 115-152).
• Germain Grisez. The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, pp. 115-40 (basic goods), 173-204 (natural law and principles), 205-228 (modes of responsibility), 459-76 (fulfillment in Jesus), 505-28 (Christian vocation)
• James Gustafson. "Context Versus Principles: A Misplaced Debate in Christian Ethics," in Christian Ethics and the Community, pp. 101-126; "The Place of Scripture in Christian Ethics," in Theology and Christian Ethics, pp. 121-146; Can Ethics Be Christian? ; Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, 2 vols.
  • Richard McCormick. "Notes on Moral Theology 1983," in Theological Studies 45 (1984), 80-138; A Critical Calling
  • John Howard Yoder. The Politics of Jesus
• Stanley Hauerwas,.A Community of Character ("Jesus: The Story of the Kingdom, pp. 36-52; "The Moral authority of Scripture," 53-71; "The Virtues and Our Communities," 111-128; "Character, Narrative and Growth," 129-152).
• Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation.
• Rosemary Ruether. Sexism and God Talk or Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her.
  • Valerie Saiving Goldstein. "The Human Situation: A Feminine View,"Journal of Religion 40 (l960)100-112. Reprinted in C. Christ and J. Plaskow, eds., Womanspirit Rising.
  • Elizabeth Johnson. She Who Is.
• John Rawls. A Theory of Justice
• Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
  • Michael Walzer. Spheres of Justice.
  • Michel Foucault. "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, 76-100.
  • Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self.