An Interpretation of Christian Ethics

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In this book Dr. Niebuhr seeks to interpret the problems of Christian ethics in the light of historic conceptions and the modern situation. Accepting the "law of love" as the basic criterion of Christian ethics, he draws a distinction between the absolute expression of this law given in the Christian gospel and the ideal of justice which must be regarded as one approximation of the law of love in a world in which life is set against life and perfect law always remains an impossible possibility.Against both secularists and against the pessimism of orthodox Christianity he emphasizes the ideal of love as an actual possibility. Against secular and Christian liberalism he emphasizes the impossibility of the perfect love ideal for finite and sinful man. According to his thesis the love ideal of pure Christianity is neither an irrelevant or harmful moral extravagance nor yet a practical guide in the immediate problems of politics and economics.Dr. Niebuhr thus seeks to set all moral and social problems under the tension of a religious ideal, avoiding the moral complacency and the social utopianism of secular idealism and the sentimentality of liberal, as well as the enervating pessimism of orthodox, Christianity.