Terminology Tuesday: Ethics

Ethics: The area of philosophical and theological inquiry into what constitutes right and wrong, that is, morality, as well as what is the good and the good life. Ethics seeks to provide insight, principles or even a system of guidance in the quest of the good life or in acting rightly in either general or specific situations of life. Broadly speaking, ethical systems are either deontological (seeking to guide behavior through establishment or discovery of what is intrinsically right and wrong) or teleological (seeking to guide behavior through an understanding of the outcomes or ends that ethical decisions and behavior bring about.1

1. Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki & Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), p. 47.