TITLE:
“CHRISTISM”—A New Theory for Christian Ethics against Legalism, Antinomianism, and Situationism
AUTHORS:
Francisco Sabotsy
KEYWORDS:
Ethics, Christism, Legalism, Antinomianism, Situationism, Truth
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.11 No.8,
August
13,
2024
ABSTRACT: This paper explores a new theory for Christian ethics: Christism. Contemporary Christian churches are grappling with ethical dilemmas, appearing either as extremists in upholding biblical law to govern believers’ lives or in their rejection of biblical law for believers. In contemporary context, therefore, Christianity seems to struggle with ethical challenges. There are many ethical issues for which various Christian churches adopt different approaches, some adopt a legalistic approach and are rigid in conserving the laws in the Bible to conduct the believer’s life, whereas others overemphasize the Christian freedom and imbibe the antinomian approach to argue that believers are no longer under the bondage of any laws. As briefly introduced in the previous paper, Christism stands in between legalism and antinomianism, but it is also in contrast to situationism. It is both anti-legalist and anti-antinomian; however, it is not identical to situationism. Unlike situationism which is ethics of agapeic love, Christism is ethics of truth, that is, ethics under the law of truth. This kind of new theory for Christian ethics is the innovation of this scholarly paper.