Christian ethics is the science of morals conditioned by

Christianity, having its foundation in the revelation of God

through Christ. Moral philosophy and Christian ethics are both
rational. They both appear to the mind or reason of man.
However, there is a great difference: The speculative thinker
finds his facts in the moral world at large, while the Christian
discovers his facts in scripture and more particular the New
Testament.

The Christian religion has two main elements: dogmatic

and ethics or, doctrine and morals. Christian dogmatic or
doctrine supplies the Christian with life principles and
standards. Christian ethics or morals, keeps Christian dogmatic
or doctrine from becoming mere ritualism, legalism, or profitless
speculation.

Although the Bible is more than a list that tells us what we

need and what we cannot do, it still gives us detailed
instructions on how we should live. The Bible contains
everything we need to know about how to implement Christian
life. However, the Bible does not speak of every single situation
we face with our lives. In what way, then, is it sufficient for all
the ethical dilemmas we face? This question is answered by
Christian ethics.

Normative ethics deals with the formulation of ethical

codes of behaviour and moral models of evaluative decision-
making. Normative ethics prescribes moral principles defining
the good, the right, duty, obligation, law, and justice. A
normative approach assumes the universality of its ethical
principles and attempts to justify them on a rational basis.
Christian ethics is a classic example of normative ethics. The
following are normative moral utter-acnes: All promises ought
to be kept. Killing an-other human being is wrong. Capital
punishment is just because it deters crime. A father has a
duty to provide physical support for his children. in all these
examples, the common element is the prescription of a certain
course of action or its evaluation. The most famous example of
normative ethics is found in the Ten Commandments.

The category of descriptive ethics is the easiest to

understand - it simply involves describing how people behave
and/or what sorts of moral standards they claim to follow.
Descriptive ethics incorporates research from the fields of
anthropology, psychology, sociology and history as part of the
process of understanding what people do or have believed
about moral norms.

Christian ethics by its very nature is prescriptive, not

descriptive. Ethics deals with what ought to be, not with what is.
Christians do not find their ethical duties in the standard of
Christians but in the standard for Christians the Bible.

From my point of view, a purely descriptive ethic is no

ethic at all. Describing human behaviour is the task of sociology.
But prescribing human behaviour is the province of morality.
What people actually do is not the basis for what they should
do. If it were, then people should lie, cheat, steal, and murder,
since these things are done all the time.