The Common Good and Christian Ethics (New Studies in Christian Ethics)

Rating:
Summary: A Very Illuminating Study
Review: This title explores the concept of the "common good" is Christian ethical discourse. I found the study intriguing because this is an issue which touches on all human relations and cooperation. In Islamic legal discourse the common good is called "masalaha" and historically there have been few legal approaches so debated and discussed as maslaha. Here we get the Christian perspective as the author examines the plausibility of the common good in a culturally and religiously diverse society. While I agree with the author that a "popular" understanding of the common good is one of our greatest intellectual challenges, and is urgently necessary, I found the study to be limited when it touched upon the common good's groundedness in Christian polity. Chapter 5 touches on these issues, but I would have liked to see more depth, however, he makes up for that in a way by treating us to a well worded closing chapter about a construction of the global common good, one in which I hope to see a more conscious attention paid to the diminishing of global resources and the rape of the planet by economic strong men. I wanted to give this title five stars because there are not a lot of studies treating this very important issue.