There are no distinct and definable moral absolutes apart
from God in Jesus Christ, and deriving the expression of
His absolute character.
Down through the centuries that followed, the Christian
religion was characterized by ecclesiastical control over
morality. As we noted in the beginning, that is how
Christian religion, along with all religion, has come to be
defined.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century simply re-
formed the moralism, along with some theological
formulations. The moralizing rigidity of John Calvin, the
Swiss reformer, is an example of the failure of the
reformers to grasp the dynamic restoration of God's grace
in the living Lord Jesus.
So what has happened down through the centuries as
the institutional church related to the world? How did
Christian religion attempt to foist its social moralism upon
society around it? Jacques Ellul notes how the church
engaged in the
"perversion of making the gospel into law in order to respond to
the challenge of successive outbursts of immorality and ethical
disorder. Naturally Christians and the church could not fail to react
to violence and sexuality and corruption. The mistake was to deal
with these on the moral and legal plane instead of following the
example of Paul, who always works through the moral question to