Foundations to Eastern Christian Ethics

This course explores the essential elements of an Eastern Christian approach to ethics, in terms of its sources, methods and applications. While countenancing an array of specific moral issues-including sexual ethics, embryonic and stem cell research, human cloning, euthanasia, capital punishment, the morality of war, environmental ethics, and social ethics-the course Is focused on meta-ethical reflection, i.e., a consideration of the "first principles  of theological ethics within an Eastern Christian context. Thus systematically attention is given to the specifically ethical significance of such data as Scripture, patristic texts, liturgy, hagiography, canon law and contemporary church teaching. Throughout the course, we will probe the nature of the dialectic between (meta)ethical theory and Individual/communal practice.