This course examines and compares central moral and philosophical approaches to ethics within five major religious traditions. It explores moral reasoning and ethics in five traditions, with special focus on religious narratives. The course investigates central theological teachings, norms, virtues, modes of ethical reasoning, and concepts of the self within the traditions. Issues of war and peace as well as religious leader behaviors provides a lens through which to analyze each tradition. The courses addresess specific issues of moral problems across the traditions.
This course benefits students by helping them develop a general understanding of major ethical theories and the relationship between religion and ethics, while equipping them with an understanding of the central norms, virtues, modes of ethical reasoning, and concepts of the self within the major religious traditions, especially within the Christian tradition. It helps the student examine the traditions’ approach to war and peace and learn to be effective in one’s missional context.
Understanding the reasons for going to war and the reasons for forging peace in global context are deeply rooted in one’s knowledge of religious ethics within the traditions. This course is important for the Christian to reason and grasp one’s own ethics and laws that govern what is right or wrong with human nature, relationships, and condition and how one will effectively live out faith in a broken world, while forging interreligious relations for redemption in one’s missional context.
The Scripture narrates the history of the fall of humanity and the effects of sin that resulted in human conflicts and problems. It also narrates God’s provision of reconciliation, salvation, redemption and peace to those who receive and accept His gift of life through Jesus Christ, in whom one finds answers to all human ills and conflicts. Christ's followers are entreated to be ambassadors of peace, mercy, justice and reconciliation.
The Missio Dei flows from the person of God to His creation with the purpose of ushering in fallen humanity through Jesus Christ into His presence. In this missional event, there is implication for Christ followers to actively encounter and engage people of other faiths to share the ethos and essence of God’s love for all people in an effort to address basic human conflicts and problems, especially interacting with interreligious ethics to forge peace and justice.
Encounters and collaborations with people of other faiths with divergent religious ethics that emerge in students’ missional context provides essential elements to be analyzed and used as a filter to understand how comparative ethics and interreligious relations function as a platform to address basic human conflicts, peace and justice.
This course is especially intercultural with a strong leaning toward crossing cultures as it defines and develops one’s truth claims while building a bridge and missionally crossing over to encounter and engage people of other faiths to address basic human conflicts, while forging interreligious relations.
The scope of this course is for the student to reflect on their own position on ethics as it relates to human condition, behavior, problems, cultural distinctives, preferences, injustice, war and peace as well as the ethical claims and practices of other faiths in order to develop critical analytical skills for use in finding solutions in their particular missional context.
The course uses the student's experience and unique needs as the entry point of study to build on his or her understanding through immersive reflection and assignments in order to cultivate analytical skills and to increase competent appropriation.
