"Obviously a personal acknowledgement of Jesus as Lord affects at least the consciousness of the individual and his thematic reflection on his consciousness, but the Christian and the explicitly non-Christian can and do arrive at the same ethical conclusions and can and do share the same ethical attitudes, dispositions and goals. Thus, explicit Christians do not have a monopoly on such proximate ethical attitudes, goals and dispositions as self-sacrificing love, freedom hope, concern for the neighbor in need or even the realization that one finds his life only in losing it. The explicitly Christian consciousness does affect the judgment of the Christian and the way in which he makes his ethical judgments but non-Christians can and do arrive at the same ethical conclusions and also embrace and treasure even the loftiest of approximate motives, virtues, and goals which Christians in the past have wrongly claimed only for themselves. This is the precise sense in which I deny the existence of a distinctively Christian ethic; namely, no-Christians can and do arrive at the same ethical conclusions and prize the same proximate dispositions, goals and attitudes as Christians."