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Christian Ethics and
the Ethics of Virtue
Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[CJontemporary ethical discussion takes place in a situation in
which ethics is fragmented between a concern for individual autonomy in
moral decision-making and a concern for some sort of justification for a uni
versal moral consensus. The history of this fragmentation has been chroni
cled by Alasdair MacIntyre in
After Virtue.1
MacIntyre argues that our cur
rent ethical situation is in fact a chaos of incommensurable fragments of past
ethical systems. The fragmentation began with the rejection of the classical-
medieval view of ethics as teleological; that is, as oriented to the production
of a certain end, which is understood as the good for humanity. In classical
ethics the aim is not so much a procedure for decision-making, but, rather,
a procedure for producing a certain kind of person. Classically, that kind of
person was described as “the good m an .” It was a consensus concerning “the
good” for humanity that made possible a unified ethic in classical and medi
eval culture. In such a situation there was really no need to justify morality.
Morality, in the form of virtue, was clearly seen to have its justification in its
orientation to that which was the end of humanity, the good.
When the classical tradition encountered Christianity in the Middle Ages
teleological ethics was able to survive, as the good for humanity was con
strued to be supernatural and the means for achieving that good, the virtues,
were enlarged and redefined. To the classical list of virtues were added faith,
hope, and love. In both the classical and medieval tradition ethics proceeded
as the science of the practice of becoming a certain sort of person, a person
with a good character. Character was understood in terms of the possession
or lack of virtues.
1. Alasdair MacIntyre,
After Virtue
(Notre Dame: University of Noire 1)amc Tress, 1()<S1).
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