Christian views on morality

“Morality depends on freedom”
Explain the main moral principles of one religion you have studied, and assess how far within that religion it can be said morality depends on freedom. (30)

Can someone guide me through this question please? Perhaps some supporting christian views on morality? like exodus 20 but also outside the bible.

I find the assess part quite tricky.

(AQA RS RS09)

Reply 1

jmj

Hi, I'm a Christian myself... I would talk about the 10 Commandments, Matthew 5-7 is really good, it's like a sum up of Jesus' ethics and also Paul wrote some ethical letters e.g. to the Corinthians as the Corinthians were divided and were basically behaving immorally.

You could also talk about the Ressurection I think, in the way that you don't have to be as strict on the rules as it's more what you believe because Jesus died to save our sins so if we go wrong it's not the end of the world. Here's a quote- Jesus said 'I have not come to abolish the law but fulfill it' that's Matthew 5:17-18.

For the asses part, I think it would sorta be like the 10 Commandments and Biblical ethics vs. What Jesus said in the New Testament and dying on the Cross- if He died to save our sins do we still need to be really moral? I think that's the personal moral I would go for.

Hope this helps, good luck

Reply 2

emit.

Thanks for your reply jmj :smile:

Is christianity generally for or against the idea of free will? Genesis obviously displays that God gave us free will, but I have been reading that certain denominations say that free will is illusory and believe in predestination along with God's omniscience and so on.

What are the views for and against free will in Christianity? I'm very confused, there seems to be a lot of contradiction.

Reply 3

dreamqueen

Christian philosophers such as Aquinas and John Hick would maintain that free will is crucial for morality, God has given us free will otherwise we couldn't be held responsible for our actions, nor could we have a genuine relationship with God. However Calvinism asserted that we are pre-destined, that God has already decided who will be saved and who won't. Nevertheless this is not a mainstream view, most Christians maintain the idea of free will, it's crucial to issues such as the problem of evil, although obviously there are questions about how we could be free when an omniscient God knows everything we will do, which I guess you would assess if you were writing an essay on this

Reply 4

lilac spooge

in questions about morality and freedom always put in vardy!

'Without freedom there can be no morality'

Reply 5

jmj

Hmm, that's a difficult question whether Christianity is for against the idea of free will. I think it's for it, myself, because people have the choice to believe in God or reject Him, but then it's like, if you don't believe Him you go to Hell, so it seems like you've got no choice.

There's a good analogy of the king and the peasant girl- a king falls in love with a peasant girl. Now if the king just wanted her to be with him, she wouldn't have any other choice, but the king wants her to love him freely, so he disguises himself as a peasant and woos her so she falls in love with him not because he is King, but because she loves him freely of her own choice.

The point is I think that God gave us free will to love him all on our own, which is why he put the Tree of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. If we didn't have Free Will, I think we'd be in Eden and just loving him and believing in him because we wouldn't know any different, so in a sense we'd almost be like robots, but because God loves us, he gave us Free Will to love us on our own. (I think Peter Vardy wrote this analogy, btw, but I may be wrong)

I'm not entirely sure how much this makes sense or answers your question, hope it does :wink: