Ethics and Spirituality

The reintegration of spirituality with ethics is a fairly recent phenomenon. In 1954 Bernard Häring’s The Law of Christ defined moral life as the imitation of Christ and thereby signaled a shift from “rules” to a more holistic model of Christian discipleship. Vatican II, where Häring served as a peritus, invited Catholics to reimagine morality in terms of a scripturally informed, spiritual and practical engagement with the modern world, guided by the promptings of a well-formed conscience. Spirituality emerged as a distinct academic discipline in the later twentieth century. In its Christian form, study of spirituality may be in dialogue with traditional theological disciplines like scripture and systematic theology, but it also forges connections with psychology, sociology, aesthetics, literature, and other areas of academic interest. As spirituality asserts its broad humanistic interdisciplinarity, and moral theology emerges from its fixation on sin to address broader questions of human formation and Christian discipleship, the need for the two disciplines to be in dialogue is clear. This volume comprises three sections, each of which can be seen as a stage in the dialogue of ethics and spirituality. As usual, the editors allow prominent voices from both ends of the spectrum (and in between) to be heard, thereby providing readers with a balanced collection of writings from the most significant figures in this field. Part 1, “Reconnecting Ethics and Spirituality,” traces the question of the respective natures of ethics and spirituality as disciplines, their historical divergence, and the need, challenges, possible modalities for their rejoining. Part 2, “Reimagining the Tradition,” shows how a more integrated ethics and spirituality reshape traditional concepts of these two disciplines. Part 3, “Refocusing Ethical Topics” examines ways in which particular ethical issues and categories are renewed by integrating spirituality. †