384 - Doctors, Lawyers, Ministers: Christian Ethics in Professional Practice

Doctors, Lawyers, Ministers:
Christian Ethics in Professional Practice
By Dennis M. Campbell
Nashville, Abingdon, 1982. 173 pp. $7.95.

This book is prolegomena. That is what it has to contribute, and that is its weakness. It brings us to the threshold of ethical thinking and gives us some glimpses of what is involved if we go further. Dennis M. Campbell is director of continuing education at the Divinity School of Duke University, and his intention is to deal with the question of professional ethics from a theological viewpoint.

He begins with a helpful section on the history and nature of the concept of profession in the Western world. A brief treatment of the eight characteristics of a profession provides some excellent definition. One wonders if the book would not have been stronger if the author had proceeded to a systematic discussion of these eight characteristics, their implications, and their abuse. Instead, he develops what he calls a "Christian model of professional responsibility" which turns out to be that a Christian should bring to bear on ethical questions: Bible, church tradition, personal experience, and reason. The model is then applied to two contemporary problems-abortion and severely handicapped children. In the treatment of abortion, the four components of the model are treated in sequence. For the second "application," the model is completely ignored.

The major weakness of this work is the claim that ethical analysis "is a skill which can be taught" but moral response is a very complex thing which we are never certain we produce (pp. 61-62). As Campbell writes, "A danger in the teaching of ethics … is that it becomes all form and no content." My view exactly.

Conrad Harry Massa
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, N.J.