| The influence of Karl Rahner's transcendental anthropology has been indispensable to contemporary theology. Especially in his theology of grace as it relates to theological anthropology, Rahner illustrates God's communication of love that is intrinsic to human beings and their experience of God in the world (particularly as love). However, it is perhaps more important that theologians be able to make Rahner's theology more applicable to our Christian ethos, especially in our daily living. Thus, by connecting theological anthropology to theological ethics, it seems that retrieving Thomas Aquinas's virtue ethics is especially helpful in formulating a model for Christian ethics. More than this, contemporary Christology, with its improved understandings of the humanity of Jesus, allows Christian ethicists to base this model of ethics, not on some abstract natural law, but instead on the perfect human paradigm---Jesus. Accordingly, this project culminates with the ethics and virtues of Jesus, which argues that Jesus (who is fully human), and not just natural law, is the foundation for Christian ethics. |
