Key Moral Principles

Stories from the bible on Jesus' morality

Parable of the sheep and the goats - perform loving and sacrificial acts and you will be rewarded.

The Good Samartian - Love thy neighbor.

Luke: 'Love your enemies... do unto others as you would have done unto yourself'.

Situation ethic is based strongly on the principle of agape. It teaches an action is right if it is the most loving, just as in Jesus' teachings.

Jesus' forgiving nature: Jesus forgave the woman who was to be stoned for adultary by saying the man without sin must throw the first stone. This was to teach people to forgive otheres for their sins, especially if they are repentent.

The Holy Spirit and love

Baptism - Jesus was baptised in the name of the holy spirit and so were all subsequent baptisms done in his name - as baptism is a form of cleansing sin it is a loving act

There is a continued inspiration of the Holy Spirit in revelation

Creation was a loving act (relate to next card) and the bible suggests the Holy Spirit was present at creation - the Spirit hovered over the waters

Pentacost - the Holy Spirit came down to the apostles and it opened their eyes, empowering them to perform loving and forgiving acts and baptism being the gift of the holy spirit 

St Paul: 'the fruit of the holy spirit is love'

Iranaeus - God created a world with suffering so that as humans we could develop into his likeness - a loving act and so that we can achieve a loving relationship with God.

Genesis - God saw what he created and each day saw 'it was good'.

Swinburne - aesthetic argument - God made the world for our pleasure - a loving act. Anthropic principle - that God created the conditions for humans to evolve - a loving act.

Theistic evolution - God created a world to evolve, so that we would become better - relates trongly to Iranaeun theodicy. 

Yound earth creationists - Believe that God created the world 6-12 thousand years ago. So that God created the world 'very good' and that death did not exist before the fall