Stanley Hauerwas argues that Christian ethics has lost its theological voice because it has accommodated itself to the secular assumptions of modern philosophical ethics. What has led to this fateful accommodation, he argues, is that theology has sought to translate its insights into a nontheological idiom in order to remain publicly intelligible and relevant. My thesis is that Hauerwas rightly recognizes that a fateful accommodation has occurred but wrongly identifies what it is. The real accommodation is found not in theology's attempt to be publicly intelligible and credible but in its widespread acceptance of the modern denial of metaphysics.

On the assumption that Christian theism grounds all valid moral prescriptions in a divine purpose, Christian ethics is fundamentally challenged by the widespread consensus in contemporary democratic theory that justice should be separated from any comprehensive good. This essay responds to that challenge through a criticism of separationist theories of justice and a summary argument for democratic principles that depend on the divine good. Democratic justice is compound in character or includes a difference between formative principles, by which a political discourse about the good is constituted, and substantive principles, which should be convincing within the democratic discussion and debate. I argue programmatically that a theory of justice as general emancipation is compound and specifies Christian ethics to politics.