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The present contribution finds its starting point in a lecture that H. U. von Balthasar gave to the American bishops in 1980 on the question of moral standards and the specificity of Christian morality. The Swiss theologian took a position in the debate between autonomous morality and the ethics of faith in order to defend the specificity of the latter. Drawing a contrast with an anthropocentric non-biblical ethic, Balthasar highlighted the change brought about by (theocentric) Old Testament morality and the Christian ethic centred on Christ and the mystery of the Trinity, concluding with the “analogical character” of ethics. This contribution recalls the context of the emergence of this debate at the beginning of the 1970s and highlights some of its main features, concluding by proposing some ways of thinking about the role of moral theology today.