April 5, 2013
We are continuing our discussion on normative ethics this week with an analysis of scriptures from the Bible, each on relating to a particular area (virtue, duty-based and consequentialist theories). I am going to discuss Exodus 20:1-17, better known as the Ten Commandments.
Most of us, no matter what our upbringing are familiar with the Ten Commandments: ‘You shall have no other gods before me,” “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy,” ‘Honor they father and they mother,” “You shall not steal,” as well as the six others. We learned about them in Sunday school, they were usually somewhere in the school building and even in judicial offices. They are what are considered to be a universal law, a set of rules that are the fundamental basis of most people’s ethical choices.
God gave these commandments to Moses to pass down to the Hebrew people. They were the rules set forward by Him as to how they should live together as a people. When Moses presented these Laws the people did not question the Laws, they obeyed Them. They felt it was their duty to obey these commandments that had been sent down from a higher authority, their Creator.
This is a perfect example of duty-based ethics in the Bible. Remember, “Duty theories base morality on specific, foundational principles of obligation.”(Fieser) In the case of this scripture in the Bible the foundational principles of obligation were the Ten Commandments. By using duty-based ethics to make moral decisions the Hebrew people would ask themselves, “what if everyone decided that it was okay to steal or murder?” What kind of place would this be to live? By choosing to uphold these Laws and err on the side of morality they built an ethical foundation that would be passed along for centuries to come.
Fieser, James. "Ethics." 2003. <http://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/>.
The New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha Walter J. Harrelson, general editor. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003. Print
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