christian ethics: a short companion

Jesus’s final command to his disciples at the Last Supper is a calling to an ethic of love. In Christian Ethics: A Short Companion, renowned ethicist Gilbert Meilaender makes the case that all Christian ethics are an outworking of this command to love one another.

Meilaender accordingly lays out a vision for the spirit and structure of the Christian life, while drawing directly upon theologians from the early church to the Reformation to today. He begins by examining the concept of sin and its profound impact on human life before moving to grace as an agent of pardon and power. He then lays out a framework for a Christian life characterized by a spirit of love, bound by wise limits and fostered through the community of the church.

Within this volume, Meilaender also includes excerpts from and commentary on:

• Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian (1520)
• ​Josef Pieper, About Love (1974)
• H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (1951)

Christian Ethics: A Short Companion is a concise and illuminating exploration of the foundational aspects of Christian ethics. Readers will be empowered to live out their faith with wisdom, grace, and moral clarity--but most of all, with love.

The Essentials in Christian Ethics series is designed to illuminate the richness and centrality of ethics to all of Christian life. The series consists of short, introductory volumes written by renowned scholars in the fields of ethics, theology, and philosophy. Each volume explores a crucial element of Christian ethical reflection, approaching the subject from within the broader Protestant moral tradition.

Gilbert Meilaender (PhD, Princeton University) is senior research professor at Valparaiso University and the Paul Ramsey Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture.