|IIIM Magazine Online, Volume 1, Number 18, June 28 to July 4,
1999| In the last two lectures I have discussed the nature and
the media of the Word of God, using the triperspectival
categories of my book to unpack some of the distinctions which
Scripture makes at least implicitly. In this lecture, I turn to
the human use of the Word of God, specifically in making ethical
decisions. Rather than discussing specific ethical problems, I
will be presenting a “metaethic,” or a general method for
approaching ethical problems. This method does not provide a
simple, automatic solution for all our ethical dilemmas; indeed,
part of its value is that it shows us why ethical problems are
often so difficult. Still, it does provide us with some
Christian guidelines that we need to follow if we are to make
any progress at all in finding solutions. I have presented the
most basic features of this metaethic in my recently published
Medical Ethics: Principles, Persons and Problems.1 I have also
alluded to it in my Doctrine of t