Christology and the Christian Life

Abstract

Pulling pre-Vatican II moral theology out of its "crisis" is no easy task: a moral theology rooted in dry manuals, a negative, law-based approach focusing on sin rather than virtue, centered on priests in the confessional could no longer be sustained. How to revive it? Wadell offers suggestions: rooting moral theology in scripture, adopting a positive, virtue-based line; seeing the moral life as an initiation into the life of Christ and as an ongoing conversion process, nurtured and developed in a liturgical setting; and living life in mission for the Kingdom of God. Wadell argues, following Joseph Fuchs, that the moral life is, first and foremost a person, not a law, to follow.