r not to market the Pinto are made not by nameless and faceless companies, but by individuals within those companies who have a set of ethics on which their decisions are based. By understanding the factors that influence those decisions, managers and employees can understand the ethical environment in which their company operates, and how they can influence the ethical direction of that company, or find another company whose ethics are more in line with their own.
Gustafson finds that theological ethics is no different from systematic theology (1). In approaching ethics from a theological perspective, Gustafson does not suggest that he views the world from the perspective of God, but rather that his interpretation of the ideas that he describes use as a critical reference point a Supreme Being, and his discussions and arguments are derived from that central and critical point (3).
Gustafson also finds that religion has a utilitarian value to individuals and to cultures; that when religions lose followers, equivalent functional units develop to meet the needs of the followers formerly met by the formal religion (16). Religions, according to Gustafson, provide myths for giving human experience meaning within the broad constructs of human life. Religion provides cultural rites and ceremonies which enable humans to cope with the threats to the society and to celebrate the benefits that come from everyday human experience, such as having a child.
Various writers, including Jonathan Edwards, Augustine and Calvin, have suggested that the power of a single deity was intended for the benefit of human beings. From this standpoint, religion holds and teaches that adherents to religion receive benefit from that belief that others are denied (17). The salvation of the individual is the long-range objective of most religions, when some works are cited, while maximizing the best interests of a specific group is the goal of religion whe...