Traditional Christian Ethics

Book excerpt: Traditional Christian Ethics features two exhaustive alphabetical lists of affirmative commandments and prohibitions from the earliest Christian ethics, as found in writers before the mass apostasy of 249-251 AD. The affirmatives, or positives, list consists of what Christians are/were commanded or encouraged to do. The other list is of negatives or prohibitions, i.e. what Christians are/were discouraged from doing, similarly arranged. The source material for the work encompasses far more than the ten-volume Ante-Nicene Fathers edited by Roberts and Donaldson. It also draws from all writings of the period: Christian, Jewish, and pagan, available in English or French translation, plus a few Latin translations. Some translations have been published only in scholarly journals, and some only in the twenty-first century. Volumes Two and Three form a single exhaustive alphabetical list of affirmative commandments or precepts, including mental attitudes, i.e. what Christian ethics commanded or encouraged according to writers on Christian ethics before 250 AD. Using earlier drafts of this set of books, Dr. Brattston's articles and booklets synthesizing early and contemporary Christianity have been published by a wide variety of denominations and ministries in every major English-speaking country. He hopes readers will use them as a starting-point for writing articles, papers, and sermons of their own.