Revising Basic Christian Ethics: Rethinking Paul Ramsey’s Early Contributions to Moral Theology

Abstract

Despite petitions from friends and critics through much of his career, Paul Ramsey adamantly refused to revise his first book, Basic Christian Ethics. Yet, several pieces of Ramsey's private correspondence indicate specific changes to Basic Christian Ethics that he felt were necessary. These include a desire to distance his use of agape from associations with Anders Nygren's Agape and Eros, an added emphasis on the importance of the doctrine of creation for his understanding of agape, covenant, and natural law, and a shift from eschatology to Christology as the foundational doctrine for political ethics. Drawing upon personal letters and other disparate comments throughout Ramsey's published work, this paper explores the impact such proposed revisions might have on contemporary interest (or lack thereof) in Basic Christian Ethics. In so doing it also highlights Ramsey's ability to rethink central theological concepts in his work and draw his readers' attention to fundamental questions in the field of moral theology.

From Dialectics to Theo-Logic: The Ethics of War from Paul Ramsey to Oliver O’Donovan

“…25 Understandably Ramsey never wanted to significantly revise BCE. 26 But how to 'fulfil' this agapeic scepticism, risking the 'embarrassment of involvement' remained an open question. 27 It collapses right into (pragmatically) doing what one was supposed to do in any case.…”