Scott Rae

Scott Rae's primary interests are medical ethics and business ethics, dealing with the application of Christian ethics to medicine and the marketplace. He has authored 10 books in ethics including The Ethics of Commercial Surrogate MotherhoodMoral Choices: An Introduction to EthicsBrave New Families: Biblical Ethics and Reproductive TechnologiesBeyond Integrity: A Judeo-Christian Approach to Business Ethics; and Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics. His work has appeared in The Linacre QuarterlyReligion and LibertyJournal of Markets and MoralitySouthern California Journal of Law and Women's StudiesNational Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, and Ethics and Medicine. He is a consultant for ethics for four Southern California hospitals. He is a fellow of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and a fellow of the Wilberforce Forum.

Affiliation Faculty
Position Senior Advisor to the President for University Mission
Position Dean of the Faculty, Talbot School of Theology
Position Professor of Philosophy and Christian Ethics

Author's books

Beyond Integrity: A Judeo-Christian Approach to Business Ethics

From embezzlement and fraud to sexual harassment and discrimination, ethical dilemmas abound in the corporate world. How should a believer deal with difficult issues? Updated to reflect the most recent information and research, this classic text offers competing perspectives on each issue, real-life case studies, and biblically-based guidance to help you make Christ-centered choices.

Bioethics: A Christian Approach in a Pluralistic Age (Critical Issues in Bioethics)

We live in an age when scientific knowledge has provided human beings with an unprecedented ability to manipulate life and death. Changes in science and culture have fueled the controversies surrounding abortion, physician assisted suicide, genetic engineering, the patient doctor relationship, cloning and the allocation of health care resources, to name a few. The purpose of this series is to bring thoughtful and biblically informed Christian voices in bioethics into dialogue with other voices that are influential today.

Doing the Right Thing: Making Moral Choices in a World Full of Options

Looking specifically at the areas of medicine, the marketplace, public life, education, and the family, Rae shows how foundational ethical principles can guide you in making moral day-to-day decisions. Informed by Scripture and calling for a renewed understanding of the importance of the Christian faith in moral training, Doing the Right Thing issues a call for cultivated virtue that can bring about both better lives and a better society.

Introducing Christian Ethics

Arising out of the bestselling college and seminary ethics textbook, Moral Choices, and filtering nearly two decades of teaching and study into a more concise guidebook to making informed and intelligent ethical decisions, Introducing Christian Ethics by Scott B. Rae explores ethical questions relating to some of the most prominent issues facing our postmodern society today, such as abortion, bioethics, sexual ethics, capital punishment, workplace ethics, and more.

Mission-Driven Colleges: Keeping First Things First in Christian Higher Education

In Mission-Driven Colleges: Keeping First Things First in Christian Higher Education, Scott Rae and Rick Langer argue that a successful Christian university goes beyond simply incorporating religious studies. They propose that the entire institution, from its leadership to its curriculum, must be designed to nurture a distinctive Christian worldview. Through four foundational questions, Rae and Langer demonstrate how to build the structural framework that empowers a Christian university to thrive. They guide educators and administrators in strategizing, planning, and implementing practices that ensure both a deep Christian identity and academic rigor. Mission-Driven Colleges is a vital resource for anyone committed to the success of Christian universities, offering a clear path to realizing their full educational mission.

Release date: February 1, 2025

Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics

With its unique union of theory and application and its well-organized, easy-to-use design, Moral Choices has earned its place as the standard text for college ethics courses. This fourth edition offers extensive updates, revisions, and three brand new chapters all designed to help students develop a sound and current basis for making ethical decisions in today’s complex postmodern culture.

Outside the Womb: Moral Guidance for Assisted Reproduction – eBook

The use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) is on the rise in our culture as an alternative for couples facing infertility issues and single women desiring to have children. Is it right – morally, ethically, biblically – to engage this new technology? Are there some aspects of ART that are more acceptable than others?  Outside the Womb: The Ethics of Reproductive Technologies addresses the whole issue of “making life”, providing valuable information, both theologically and scientifically, for Christian couples to reflect upon as they consider the various fertility treatments.

Taking Persons Seriously: Where Philosophy and Bioethics Intersect

This volume attempts to show why ontology matters for a proper grasp of issues in bioethics. Contemporary discussions on bioethics often focus on seeking solutions for a wide range of issues that revolve around persons. The issues in question are multi-layered, involving such diverse aspects as the metaphysical/ontological, personal, medical, moral, legal, cultural, social, political, religious, and environmental. In navigating through such a complex web of issues, it has been said that the central problems philosophers and bioethicists face are ethical in nature. In this regard, biomedical sciences and technological breakthroughs take a leading role in terms of shaping the sorts of questions that give rise to ethical problems. For example, is it ethical to keep terminally ill patients alive on dialysis machines or artificial ventilators? Is it ethical to take someone’s vital organs upon death and transplant them into another person’s body without any prior consent from the deceased person? This book approaches such complex bioethical questions by engaging in ground-level debates about the ontology of persons. This is a nonnegotiable first step in taking steps forward in seeking a plausible solution(s) for the complex ethical problems in bioethics.

The Apologetics Study Bible

The Apologetics Study Bible helps today’s Christians better understand, defend, and proclaim their beliefs in this age of increasing moral and spiritual relativism. More than one-hundred key questions and articles placed throughout the volume about faith and science prompt a rewarding study experience at every reading. Highlights of this thinking person’s edition of God’s Word include the full text of the popular HCSB translation, an introduction to each Bible book focusing on its inherent elements of apologetics, and profiles of historic Christian apologists from Justin Martyr to C.S. Lewis.

The Virtues of Capitalism: A Moral Case for Free Markets – eBook

In this timely and balanced book, Austin Hill and Scott Rae agree with capitalism’s critics that the economy is essentially a moral issue, but they argue that free markets are by-and-large the solution to financial disasters rather than the cause. Though they recognize that there are legitimate criticisms of the market system — and real limits to what it can and should accomplish — the authors further conclude that capitalism both depends upon and sustains classic Judeo-Christian virtues better than any of its rival systems.