Opening the text

History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of moralsMyers, P. V. N. (Philip Van Ness)

Philosophy

History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

Name: History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals
Author: Myers, P. V. N. (Philip Van Ness)

Myers, P. V. N. (Philip Van Ness)

Ethics -- History

In direct opposition to this view of man’s nature and deepest
preferences as being essentially good, we find elaborated in early
Christian theology the dogma that the first man, though created
upright, fell through disobedience and transmitted to all his
descendants a nature wholly evil and a total incapacity for doing good
or even desiring the good. And not only was man thus attainted by the
primal disobedience, but all nature became accursed.

This dogma of the fall of man is one of the most influential
conceptions in the moral domain ever entertained by the human mind.
It was the germ from which was developed the larger part of Christian
theological ethics.[628] For out of the dogma of ancestral sin and
total depravity sprang naturally and logically the doctrines of the
atonement, imputed righteousness, and salvation through faith. The
moral history of the Christian centuries we shall find to be largely
the history of the influence of this doctrine upon men’s conceptions
of their religious obligations and duties. As with the passage of
time and the incoming of evolutionary science the belief in this
teaching decays, we shall find men’s idea of what constitutes duty in
the religious sphere undergoing a great change, and shall see acts,
observances, and states of mind once regarded as supremely virtuous and
indispensable to salvation now looked upon as morally indifferent or
even positively wrong.


[Sidenote: The doctrine of the
sacredness of the Sabbath]

Christianity inherited from Judaism the belief in the sacred character
of the Sabbath day. This belief created one of the most important of
the religious duties of the Christian. It determined how one seventh
of all his time should be spent. The history of the observance of
this Sabbath as holy time, and the changed moral value attached to
such observance as times and beliefs have changed, forms a chapter
of the greatest suggestiveness to the student of the evolution of
morals, since this chapter epitomizes and repeats the entire history of
ceremonial or ritual morality.


[Sidenote: The personality of the
Prophet of Nazareth[629]]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of moralsMyers, P. V. N. (Philip Van Ness)

Philosophy

History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

Myers, P. V. N. (Philip Van Ness)

Ethics -- History

In direct opposition to this view of man’s nature and deepest
preferences as being essentially good, we find elaborated in early
Christian theology the dogma that the first man, though created
upright, fell through disobedience and transmitted to all his
descendants a nature wholly evil and a total incapacity for doing good
or even desiring the good. And not only was man thus attainted by the
primal disobedience, but all nature became accursed.

This dogma of the fall of man is one of the most influential
conceptions in the moral domain ever entertained by the human mind.
It was the germ from which was developed the larger part of Christian
theological ethics.[628] For out of the dogma of ancestral sin and
total depravity sprang naturally and logically the doctrines of the
atonement, imputed righteousness, and salvation through faith. The
moral history of the Christian centuries we shall find to be largely
the history of the influence of this doctrine upon men’s conceptions
of their religious obligations and duties. As with the passage of
time and the incoming of evolutionary science the belief in this
teaching decays, we shall find men’s idea of what constitutes duty in
the religious sphere undergoing a great change, and shall see acts,
observances, and states of mind once regarded as supremely virtuous and
indispensable to salvation now looked upon as morally indifferent or
even positively wrong.


[Sidenote: The doctrine of the
sacredness of the Sabbath]

Christianity inherited from Judaism the belief in the sacred character
of the Sabbath day. This belief created one of the most important of
the religious duties of the Christian. It determined how one seventh
of all his time should be spent. The history of the observance of
this Sabbath as holy time, and the changed moral value attached to
such observance as times and beliefs have changed, forms a chapter
of the greatest suggestiveness to the student of the evolution of
morals, since this chapter epitomizes and repeats the entire history of
ceremonial or ritual morality.


[Sidenote: The personality of the
Prophet of Nazareth[629]]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

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