RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Ethics
dation of the monastic life, was rejected. Since, moreover, the ethical significance of secular toil and of the natural relations of human society was now recognized, their subjection to the visible Church became a thing of the past. None of the Reformers, however, developed these views into a comprehensive system, although Luther often used them in their basal generality and with strong stress on their religious aspect. His Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (1520) contains important fundamentals of ethics, while in the discussion of the decalogue in his Catechism he makes naive statements on individual ethical matters.
A stronger and more specific interest in ethics was shown by Melanchthon, not only in his great work on dogmatics, the Loci, but also in his university lectures on Proverbs and in brief individual treatises on ethical subjects. Nevertheless, he gave a systematic presentation only of philosophical ethics, discussing natural law as given by God. His Epitome philosophies moralis (Strasburg, 1538) and Ethicce doctrines elementa (1550) long formed the basis of instruction in ethics in the Lutheran Church. Melanchthon's school produced the first treatise on Christian ethics in Thomas Venatorius' De virtute Christiana libri tres (1529), which emphasized the moral power of justification by faith. To the same school belong the Regulce vita of David Chytra?us (1555) and the Ethicce doctrines libri qualtuor of P. von Eitzen (1572), both, strictly speaking, only exegeses of the decalogue. The transfer from Lutheran to Reformed ethics was made by the Enchiridion theologicum of the Dane Niels Hemmingsen (Leipsic, 1568), who was inclined toward Calvinism.
With this school of Melanchthon Reformed theology shared a deep etliical interest, although it was sharply opposed to that school in
4. Early regard to the problem of the freedom
Reformed of the human will because of its doc- Ethics, trine of predestination. This community of interest was shown even by Zwingli, who developed his etliical views, especially in his Commentarius de vera et falsa religione (Zurich, 1525). Much distinguishes him from Calvin in the sphere of ethics, such as his concept of the Church as a community at once religious and civil, his national patriotism, and his joyously human type of piety. Nevertheless, Calvin practically coincides with Zwingli in his general views of ethics. Calvin's ethics is chiefly to be found in the third book of his Institutio religionis Christiana (Basel, 1536), where he regards the Christian life as divine service, or, more specifically, as a sacrifice in the Christian denial of self, dividing the demonstration of the latter, on the basis of Titus ii. 12, into three parts. This basal concept gives his ethics a certain ascetic appearance, while the concept of love is thrust into the background. The first fairly complete system of Christian ethics that came from the Reformed Church was the Ethica Christiana of Lambert Daneau (Geneva, 1577). In his Systema ethicce (in Opera, Geneva, 1614) another Reformed theologian, Bartholomseus Keckermann, sought to give simply a philosophical ethics. On the other hand, Amandus Polanus, in
his Syntagma theologies (Geneva, 1610), divided systematic theology into dogmatics proper and ethics; and Keckermann was more explicitly assailed by the Medulla theologica (Amsterdam, 1623) of the Puritan William Ames, who declared that there could be no ethics except what was strictly theological. A mediating tendency was shown by M. Amyraut, of the Academy of Saumur, in his Morale chrestienne (6 vols., Saumur, 1652- 1660); but the majority of Reformed ethicists followed Ames in their monotonous exegesis of the decalogue, from which was developed even here a casuistic system (cf. J. H. Alsted's Theologia casuum, Hanau, 1621).
In post-Reformation theology orthodoxy soon
became supreme, laying stress on correct dogmatic
opinion rather than on a living faith
5. Later of moral efficacy. Ethics accordingly Protestant declined sharply and was scarcely
Ethics. cultivated, except in the barren form of ascetical theology. An independent scientific system of ethics in the Lutheran Church was first revived by the Helmstadt theologian Georg Calixtus, who, in his Epitome theologies moralis (1634), described the Christian life as the preservation of salvation which had been won, thus bringing upon himself the charge of orthodoxy that he had, in Roman Catholic fashion, asserted that good works were necessary to salvation. Calixtus was followed by Durr, Theodor Maier, Rixner, and Johann Andreas Schmidt, while J. W Baier's Compendium theologia moralis (Jena, 1698) was conducted more in the traditional channels of orthodoxy. The ethics of the eighteenth century was dominated in great part by the rationalism of the Enlightenment (q.v.); although Pietism early gave a fresh impulse to ethics in its practical aspect by laying stress upon the moral fruitfulness of Christian belief. The influence of this tendency on orthodox theology is seen in J. F. Buddeus' Institutiones theologies moralis (1711). Pietism, however, gave but a scanty scientific contribution to ethics; and the offshoots of the Pietistic movement led to unnatural distortions of the Christian life and to an intensification of the claim of nature to the sphere of ethics. The attempt was accordingly made to formulate a purely human ethics from the philosophical side, positing as the supreme moral requirement the furtherance of the welfare of society (Hugo Grotius, Pufendorf), or of perfection (Christian Wolf). Gradually these tendencies found their way into theology. In his Theologische Moral (1738) Siegmund Baumgarten still retained a supernatural point of view, but gave it a philosophical basis; while in his comprehensive Sittenlehre der heiligen Schrift (5 vols., Helmstadt, 1735-53) J. L. von Mosheim earnestly sought to prove that Biblical and Christian ethics correspond to reason and nature. This interest in the reasonableness of ethics soon became dominant in theology; while, despite the endeavors of Biblically minded theologians, such as C. A. Crusius (M oraltheologie, Leipsic, 1772) and J. F. Reuss (Elementa theologies moralis, Tubingen, 1767), an ethical eudemonism spread through German theology under the in-
Ethics