The Ethics of Jesus

Have you ever heard expressions like "turn the other cheek," "salt of the earth," or "go the extra mile?" Has your moral outlook been shaped by important figures like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Dietrich Bonhoeffer? If so, then this class will give you a deeper understanding of what inspired them--Jesus' moral teaching as expressed in the sermon on the mount.

Jesus is one of the most influential thinkers in the world, and perhaps the most influential thinker in the west. His moral teaching is one of the most important reasons why, and the sermon on the mount (recorded in Matthew chapters 5-7) contains his most direct and sustained moral teaching. What did Jesus believe about right and wrong, how did he motivate his hearers to pursue the good, and how did his Jewish background inform his point of view? What did he teach about greed, generosity, self interest, lust, divorce, revenge, and violence? What did he believe about judgment day and how did he use it to motivate his listeners? What did he think about religious hypocrisy? Where did God fit into his ethical framework? Can we follow his ethical system if we don't believe in God? In this class, we will answer these questions and more as we dig into the sermon on the mount.

We will define what ethics is, examine how this sermon has been interpreted by various theological schools, and work through each section in detail to understand Jesus' ethical worldview and his key foundational ideas (about life, death, final judgment, and God) which helped to create it.