“Murder, He Wrote: Introducing Christian Ethics through One Question in the Summa”

The topic of murder fascinates and haunts undergraduates just as it does our culture. But even as murder violently closes doors on a human life, as a topic of discussion it can also open minds, provoking, extending, and refining students' questions about the moral life, theologically and religiously understood. The aim of this essay is to explain how the brief treatment of murder found in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica offers an extraordinary introduction to the entire field of Christian ethics. "Of Murder" (Aquinas 1920, II-II 64) may be suited to courses in theological, religious, or comparative ethics as well.