In Ernst Troeltsch’s view, Christian ethics, more than any other religious ethics,
achieves a synthesis between religious group and moral ideas. The main difficulty
of this synthesis is attempting to harmonize the relationship between unworldly
goods and values and worldly goods and values. The history of Christian ethics,
especially in its dimension of social ethics, it may, therefore, as the history of forms
in which it is represented the “including opposition” of the religious purpose with
the worldly purposes. In this essay, we’re trying to retrace, even if in broad terms,
this history whose reconstruction Troeltsch constantly devotes his attention as the
necessary way to determine the content and tasks of Christian social ethics
appropriate to the needs of complex modern society.
