Ethics and Theology in Times of Change

Abstract

It is often said that our world is in crisis in a period of profound, radical and universal changes. We may also add the post modern message telling us: that we are living in a post religious era where it is not possible anymore to take a religious belief as the foundation of ethics; that this is a crisis of principles knowing that nature has probed itself much more diverse than we have thought before and that it doesn´t offer anymore ethical norms. It is also said that society is more and more pluralistic on ethical and religious levels. There is no choice but to build a lay ethics open to every person, ideology or religion. It is only then that the dimension of the crisis will appear stunning. Therefore, the focus of this article will be on how the ethical reflection has been looking for its identity and about the relevance of the Christian message in the changing circumstances of our time. In this context and starting from a theological and historical description the author pretends to discover how the ethical theological formulations are changing, not in an arbitrary way but looking permanently identity and relevance. It follows that the Christian ethics, before being formulated as “ethics”, is a living moral experience. Ethics lived by Christians is, therefore, the kind of ethics that develops itself in a decisive and unfailing context internalized by faith.