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Hi, I want somebody to write me a paper for my religion class.
The paper itself should be five to six pages (5-6 pp.) double-spaced. For your font, use Times New Riman
12pt., with the 1”margins”.
Don’t write a paper that’s merely a summary of the readings thus far. Write with prosaic and not poetic
language. Don’t consult or use any secondary sources.
Here’s the essay prompt. Ethicists seek to address issues of moral and political concern. But on what
terms? Religious ethicists address issues of moral and political concern drawing resources from one or
another religious tradition. For religious ethicists, religion affects not only what we call a moral or
political problem but also how we ought to address it. Both Miler and Hauerwas have views about
religious ethic. Compare and contrast their respective views. Which thinker’s view about religious
ethics is more plausible? Why? How might the thinker you find less plausible respond?
There are four articles
Double space MLA style and don’t forget the citation if you quote or something. Do not use other
sources.
Please I want it to be well organized and try not to use high level word (high
school level is okay).
Thanks
The Peaceable Kingdom:
A PRIMER IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS
Stanley Hauerwas
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame
Copyright © 1983 by
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
All Rights Reserved
http://www.undpress.nd.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
Reprinted in 1984, 1986, 1991, 1994, 1998, 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hauerwas, Stanley, 1940The peaceable kingdom.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Christian ethics. I. Title
BJ1251.H327
1983
241
83-14711
ISBN 0-268-01553-8 (cl.)
ISBN 0-268-01554-6 (pbk.)
co This
book is printed on acid-free paper.
To the people
of the Broadway Methodist Church
for striving to be faithful
to the kingdom
xxvt
Introduction
3. MY ECCLESIAL STANCE
At the risk of testing my reader's patience beyond limit, there
is one last issue that I feel I must say a word about-namely, do I
write as a Catholic or as a Protestant? The answer is that I simply do
not know. I do not believe that theology when rightly done is either
Catholic or Protestant. The object of the theologian's inquiry is quite
simply God-not Catholicism or Protestantism. The proper object of
the qualifier "catholic" is the church, not theology or theologians. No
theologian should desire anything less than that his or her theology
reflect the catholic character of the church. Thus I hope my theology
is catholic inasmuch as it is true to those Protestants and Roman
Catholics who constitute the church catholic.
Of course the fact I am biographically a Protestant is not irrelevant to the way I work. I have no desire to rid myself of my particular
background as an evangelical Methodist. Rather it is my conviction
that Methodism, like other Christian traditions, with its limits and
possibilities, helps awaken all of us to being members of Christ's
whole church. Thus, even ifl am critical of my tradition, I am rightly
so only so long as that criticism serves to direct Protestants and Catholics alike to the one Lord who reigns over all people.
Christian Ethics in a
Fragmented and Violent World
1.
1. ETHICS AND THE DEMAND FOR ABSOLUTES
All ethical reflection occurs relative to a particular time and
place. Not only do ethical problems change from one time to the
next, but the very nature and structure of ethics is determined by the
particularities of a community's history and convictions. From this
perspective the notion of "ethics" is misleading, since it seems to suggest that "ethics" is an identifiable discipline that is constant across
history. In fact, much of the burden of this book will be to suggest
that ethics always requires an adjective or qualifier-such as, Jewish,
Christian, Hindu, existentialist, pragmatic, utilitarian, humanist,
medieval, modern-in order to denote the social and historical character of ethics as a discipline. 1 This is not to suggest that ethics does
not address an identifiable set of relatively constant questions-the
nature of the good or right, freedom and the nature of human behavior, the place and status of rules and virtues- but any response to
these questions necessarily draws on the particular convictions of historic communities to whom such questions may have significantly
different meanings.
That ethics is an activity relative to particular times, places, and
communities may seem obvious, but it is also easily forgotten and its
significance ignored. We each feel a powerful desire to claim that the
ethic that guides us is free from historical relativity and/or arbitrariness. After all, morality often deals with matters that entail
sacrifices by ourselves and others, and we think such sacrifices can
only be justified on the basis of unchanging principles.
Thus it is often thought that one of the primary tasks of ethics
is to show how morality is grounded in unchangeable principles and
convictions. Many assume, moreover, that the best way to ensure the
unchangeableness of our principles is to claim that they are sanctioned by God. We can be sure of our principles if they can be shown
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Christian Ethics in a Fragmented World
to rely upon God's will. Because of this, some have claimed that if
God does not exist everything is morally permissible. Though such
a claim belies the complexity of the relation of religious convictions
to morality, many believers and unbelievers alike seem to think that
if God does not in some manner underwrite the absoluteness of our
moral system we will not be able to say what is wrong with murder,
or lying, or stealing, etc.
As a Christian ethicist I am often asked "Aren't there any absolutes anymore?" The questioners tend to assume that if the answer
is "no," then ethics has simply ceased to exist. They assume this even
though it is by no means clear to what their term "absolute" applies
- to values, or rules, or convictions-or even if such absolutes have
anything to do with Christian beliefs and practices.
To persons who hold this view, my claim that ethics always requires a qualifier seems an abdication of responsibility. They see the
task of the ethicist in our time as that of reasserting the continued
viability of those absolute norms that are not dependent upon a particular people's history, in order to sustain the moral character of our
way of life. I maintain that such a view of ethics is radically misconceived, and particularly so for ethics done in a Christian context.
But before suggesting why that is the case, we must try to understand
the reasons behind the hunger for absolutes in our time.
2. LIVING AMID FRAGMENTS: THE INSUFFICIENCY OF ETHICS
One of the ironies of the current situation is that the attempt to
deny that ethics responds to the peculiarity of our current social and
historic situation only makes us more subject to that situation. We
are told we live in a morally bankrupt age. People think what was at
one time unthinkable; indeed they do what was once unthinkable.
We experience our world as so morally chaotic that we now feel our
only alternative is for each person "to choose," if not create, the
standards by which they will live.
As pervasive as this feeling is, it is unclear exactly why we feel
we are morally at sea. No time or society has ever been free of moral
ambiguity. Why should we feel that some decisive change has occurred in our own time? Indeed, are we sure our values have changed,
or is it their institutional settings? For example, we may still value the
family, but may now have quite a different understanding of what
we mean by "the family." Simply quoting divorce statistics does not
suffice to show that we are morally confused about, or no longer
Living Amid Fragments
3
value, the family. Such statistics may be an indication that people
have found the traditional commitments of marriage merely overzealous. Perhaps the moral force of marriage can be sustained in
other settings; for example, maybe there is no inherent incompatibility between marriage and sex with more than one person.
I suspect that the experience of the world as morally adrift has
a more profound source than the mere observation that people are
permitted to do what was once unthinkable. Our disquiet about morality more likely arises from within us. Even though we feel strongly
about abortion, divorce, dishonesty, and so on, we are not sure why
we feel as we do. And the less sure we are of the reasons for our
beliefs, the more dogmatically we hold to them as our only still point
in a morally chaotic world. Ironically, our dogmatism only masks our
more profound doubt, for although we hold certain moral convictions adamantly, we secretly suspect that we believe what we do
because we have been conditioned. We hold certain beliefs as if they
are unconditioned, yet are impressed with the knowledge that all
beliefs are the result of environment, and thus at least potentially arbitrary. That very acknowledgment seems then to reduce all moral
disagreements to subjective opinions about which there can be no
argument.
This lurking suspicion that we really have no firm grounds for
our beliefs makes us all the more unwilling to expose what we think
to critical scrutiny. We thus take refuge among others who think as
we do, hoping sheer numbers will protect us from the knowledge of
our uncertainty. Or sometimes we suppose that if we think deeply
and critically about our moral convictions, we will be able to supply
adequate justification for what we believe. In both cases we assume
that "ethics" must be able to provide the means for preventing our
world from falling into a deeper moral chaos.
Underlying such a view or morality is the presupposition that we
are required by our modern predicament to make up our "own
minds" about what is good and bad. Indeed, those who do so with
determination are seen as morally exemplary because they act autonomously rather than uncritically accept convention. But the very notion we are "choosing" or "making up" our morality contains the
seeds of its own destruction, for moral authenticity seems to require
that morality be not a matter of one's own shaping, but something
that shapes one. We do not create moral values, principles, virtues;
rather they constitute a life for us to appropriate. The very idea that
we choose what is valuable undermines our confidence in its worth.
In many ways the current popularity that "ethics" enjoys is odd,
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Ethics in a Fragmented World
most people most of the time would prefer not to have to think
about what is the right or wrong thing to do. They simply want to
get on with the living of their lives: to fall in love, raise families, have
satisfying professions, support decent and worthwhile institutions.
Certainly there is something correct in our feeling that we are required to think too much about "ethics" today. 2 However, it is not
that we are required to think- every society regardless of its "ethics"
develops some forms of critical reflection about how best to act.
Rather it is what we are required to think about. Contemporary ethics
concentrates on moral quandaries: Should we lie to protect a friend?
Is withholding the complete truth a form of lying? Must we tell a dying person he or she is dying? And so on. It thus appears that "ethics"
is primarily concerned with ambiguous situations and hard decisions. 3
Such a concentration on "quandaries" obscures the fact that they
make sense only in the light of convictions that tell us who we are.
Our most important moral convictions are like the air we breathe: we
never notice them because our life depends on them. For example,
our concern with lying derives from the conviction that we should be
truthful. Behind our current feeling of chaos lies the fact that very
"air we breathe" is being questioned. I suspect that it is not that we
have no moral guides, but that we have too many. As Alasdair
Macintyre has suggested, our problem is that we live amid fragments
of past moralities each, with good reasons, competing for our loyalty.
In order to understand the implications of this he asks us to:
Living Amid Fragments
tor
Imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects
of a catastrophe. A series of environmental disasters are blamed
by the general public on the scientists. Widespread riots occur,
laboratories are burnt down, physicists are lynched, books and
instruments are destroyed. Finally a Know-Nothing political
movement takes power and successfully abolishes science teaching in schools and universities, imprisoning and executing the
remaining scientists. Later still there is a reaction against this
destructive movement and enlightened people seek to revive
science, although they have largely forgotten what it was. But
all that they possess are fragments: a knowledge of experiments
detached from any knowledge of the theoretical context which
gave them significance; parts of theories unrelated either to the
other bits and pieces of theory which they possess or to experiment; instruments whose use has been forgotten; half-chapters
from books, single pages from articles, not always fully legible
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because torn and charred. None the less all these fragments are
reembodied in a set of practices which go under the revived
names of physics, chemistry and biology. Adults argue with
each other about the respective merits of relativity theory, evolutionary theory and phlogiston theory, although they possess
only a very partial knowledge of each. Children learn by heart
the surviving portions of the periodic table and recite as incantations some of the theorems of Euclid. Nobody, or almost nobody, realises that what they are doing is not natural science in
any proper sense at all. For everything that they do and say conforms to certain canons of consistency and coherence and those
contexts which would be needed to make sense of what they are
doing have been lost, perhaps irretrievably.
In such a culture men would use expressions such as
'neutrino', 'mass', 'specific gravity', 'atomic weight' in systematic
and often interrelated ways which would resemble in lesser or
greater degrees the ways in which such expressions had been
used in earlier times before scientific knowledge had been so
largely lost. But many of the beliefs presupposed by the use of
these expressions would have been lost and there would appear
to be an element of arbitrariness and even of choice in their application which would appear very surprising to us. What would
appear to be rival and competing premises for which no further
argument could be given would abound. 4
Macintyre contends that in respect to its moral language the actual world we inhabit is very similar to the gravely disordered state
of natual science in his imaginary world. "What we possess ... are
the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those
contexts from which their significance derived. We possesss indeed
simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have-very largely, if not entirely-lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality." 5 Macintyre points
out that the limit of this analogy between our world and his imaginary one is that we have no record of a similar catastrophe that has left
our moral world so fragmented. All we have are its effects.
If Macintyre is correct we live in a precarious situation. Life in
a world of moral fragments is always on the edge of violence, since
there are no means to ensure that moral argument in itself can resolve
our moral conflicts. No wonder we hunger for absolutes in such a
world, for we rightly desire peace in ourselves and in our relations
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w11h one another. Granted the world has always been violent, but
when our own civilization seems to lack the means to secure peace
within itself we seem hopelessly lost.
Moreover the fragmentation of our world is not only "out there,"
but it is in our own souls. Amid fragments it is extremely hard to
maintain our moral identity. We feel pulled in different directions
by our various roles and convictions, unsure whether there is or can
be any coherence to our lives. We become divided selves, more easily
tempted to violence since, being unsure of ourselves, we are easily
threatened by any challenge that might rob us of what little sense of
self we have achieved.
Lacking any habits or institutions sufficient to sustain an ethos
of honor, we become cynical. By suspecting all, by assuming that behind every cause lies self-interest and behind every act of charity a
psychological payoff, we hope to protect ourselves from being misused or lost. Yet cynicism inevitably proves too corrosive. Its acid
finally poisons the self, leaving no basis for self-respect because it
renders all activities unworthy of our moral commitment.
In such a world the emphasis of Christian ethics on the
significance of the qualifier "Christian" appears to many to capitulate
to the chaos. We need instead, they say, to reformulate a universal
morality that is able to bring order to our fragmentary world, securing peace between and in ourselves. Yet such universality will not
come if Christians fail to take seriously their particularistic convictions. We Christians who, as I hope to show, are inextricably committed to a peaceable world, believe that peace is possible only as we
learn to acknowledge and serve the Lord of this world, who has willed
to be known through a very definite and concrete history. Therefore,
Christian ethics holds to the importance of its qualifier, because the
peace Christians embody, and which they offer to the world, is based
on a kingdom that has become present in the life of Jesus of
Nazareth.
But faithfulness to such particularities strikes most as far too
unreliable, and they continue the quest for a universal ethic that can
insure certainty, if not peacefulness. I wish to claim, however, that
such a quest only makes us more susceptible to violence. I must now
try to show why such is the case.
2.1
Freedom as Fate
Our sense that we live in a morally chaotic, fragmented world
accounts for two of the dominant characteristics of recent ethical
Living Amid Fragments
7
theory: (1) the stress on freedom, autonomy, and choice as the
essence of the moral life; and (2) the attempt to secure a foundation
for the moral life unfettered by the contingencies of our histories and
communities. As we will see, these are closely related insofar as it is
assumed that freedom depends on finding the means to disentangle
ourselves from our own engagements.
Caught between the competing interests, we increasingly feel
compelled to create or choose our morality. This is variously reflected
by moral theories such as emotivism, existentialism, and situationalism, which maintain that moral knowledge is not so much
discovered as "created" through personal choice. Therefore the necessary basis of authentic morality is seen as the freedom to choose and
willingness to take responsibility for choices.
Such a strong assertion of freedom seems a bit odd when we
remember that one of our other dominant assumptions is that we are
largely determined by our environment and biology. Indeed, one of
the hallmarks of modernity is that we feel ourselves at once both
determined and free. Peter Berger suggests an explanation for this
glaring incompatibility in his Heretical Imperative. 6
According to Berger, premodern people lived for the most part
in a given world. They had little choice about where to live, what
vocation to enter, or whom to marry. As a result, they were not
hounded by our modern ambivalence. While premodern people may
have struggled with the meaning of life, they did not need to question, as we seem required to do, whether their life was sufficiently
coherent to legitimately ask its meaning.
Modern people, Berger contends, find themselves confronted
not only by many possible courses of action, but also by many possible ways of thinking about the world. As a result all life has become
consumer oriented. We choose not only between toothpastes, but
between the very "plausibility" structures that give our lives coherence and meaning. Our need to choose even those basic beliefs about
why things are as they are and not otherwise, suggests an arbitrariness
about them which undermines truthfulness. Finally, the only thing
we feel we can be sure of in such a world is the absolute necessity of
our own autonomy. In fact, our deepest conviction, our surest "plausibility structure," is that if our lives are to have meaning we must
create it.
We have thus been condemned to freedom, or as Berger prefers,
the "heretical imperative." "For premodern man, heresy is a possibility-usually a rather remote one; for modern man, heresy typically
becomes a necessity. Or again modernity creates a new situation in
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Christian Ethics in a Fragmented World
which picking and choosing becomes an imperative." 7 Thus our
ethical theorizing has led to the notion that freedom is not only a
necessity but a moral ideal. Freedom itself is at once the necessary and
sufficient condition of being moral.
But is this situation so unique? Haven't almost all moral theories
held in different ways that people could only be responsible for what
they have the power to do? Has not freedom always been thought
crucial to moral behavior? Yet for philosophers such as Aristotle,
freedom was not an end in itself; we became free only as we acquired
the moral capability to guide our lives. To lack such capability was
to be subject to the undisciplined desires and choices of the immature. Thus freedom did not reside in making choices but in being
the kind of person for whom certain options simply were not open.
For example, the courageous could not know the fears of the coward
though they were required to know the fears appropriate to being
courageous. Only the virtuous person could be free, insofar as freedom was not so much a status as a skill.
In contrast to our sense of "freedom of choice" the virtuous person was not confronted by "situations" about which he or she was to
make a decision, rather the person determined the situation by insisting on understanding it not as a "situation" but as an event in a
purposive narrative. Character determines circumstance, even when
the circumstance may be forced upon us, by our very ability to interpret our actions in a story that accounts for moral activity.
In contrast, the modern conception has made freedom the content of the moral life itself. It matters not what we desire, but that
we desire. Our task is to become free, not through the acquisition of
virtue, but by preventing ourselves from being determined, so that
we can always keep our "options open." We have thus become the
bureaucrats of our own history, seeking never to be held responsible
for any decisions, even for those we ourselves have made.
This attempt to avoid our history, however, results in the lack
of the self-sufficiency to claim our lives as our own. For as we look
back on our lives, many of the decisions we thought we were making
freely, seem now to have been more determined than we had realized. We say: "If I only knew then what I know now." Using this as
a means to claim nonresponsibility for our past, we imagine that next
time we will really act "freely." As a result we tend to think the moral
life and ethical reflection are concerned with prospective decisions
and the securing of the conditions necessary to insure that those
"decisions" will be free. We ignore the fact that the more important
moral stance is retrospective, because it is in rememhcrin1: and
Living Amid Fragments
9
accepting that we learn to claim our lives as our own -including
those decisions that in retrospect were less than free. Ironically, my
freedom turns out to depend on my ability to make my own that
which I did not do with "free choice" but which I cannot do without.
For what we are, our sense of ourselves, rests as much on what we
have suffered as what we have done.
The modern assumption that freedom is the necessary and sufficient condition of morality is not easily changed, for it also determines how we govern our social relations. Our society seems generally
to think that to be moral, to act in a responsible way, is to pursue
our desires fairly-that is, in a manner that does not impinge on
anyone else's freedom. We assume we can do as we want so long as
we do not harm or limit anyone else's choices. A good society is one
that provides the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest number
of people. Although such an ethic appears to be highly committed
to the common good, in fact its supporting theory is individualistic,
since the good turns out to be the sum of our individual desires.
Even more troubling than this individualism is the price we pay
in holding this view of ourselves and others; the price is nothing less
than a systematic form of self-deception. Insofar as we are people who
care about anything at all, we necessarily impinge on the "freedom"
of others. But we act as if we do not, thus hiding from ourselves and
others the truth that we are necessarily tied together in a manner that
mutally limits our lives. We have taught ourselves to describe our
moral convictions as our "personal desires," implying thereby that
they need not significantly affect others. In fact, however, there is no
morality that does not require others to suffer for our commitments.
But there is nothing wrong with asking others to share and sacrifice
for what we believe to be worthy. A more appropriate concern is
whether what we commit ourselves to is worthy or not.
As a result of our self-deception our relations have become
unrelentingly manipulative. 8 We see ourselves and others as but
pawns engaged in elaborate games of power and self-interest. I do
not mean to suggest that there has ever been a time or social order
from which manipulation was absent. What is new about our present
situation is that our best moral wisdom can conceive of no alternative.
We seem able only to suggest ways to make the game more nearly
fair. We are unable to provide an account of a morality worthy of requiring ourselves and others to suffer and thus releasing us from the
prison of our own interests.
Our stress on freedom and its ethical expression renders us incapable of accounting for certain activities which seem central to the
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Christian Ethics in a Fragmented World
human project. Consider something as simple as the decision to have
children. In an ethics of freedom how can we justify such a decision
when it clearly involves an imposition of our will and desires on that
new life. No amount of good care and/ or love could be sufficient to
redress the imbalance of freedom in this situation. We have forced
this being into existence to satisfy our desires! In the ethos of freedom
the relationship between parents and children cannot help but induce resentment and the resulting bargaining games. We resent the
time our children require of us and they resent the burden of guilt
they feel for what appears to be our begrudging care for them. We
are thus caught in a web of manipulation from which we seem unable
to escape.
2.2
Fragile Foundations
Equally pervasive as the stress on freedom in modern ethical
theory has been the concern to find a foundation for ethics. Indeed
the attempt to provide a foundation for ethics is interrelated with the
attempt to establish freedom as a prerequisite characteristic of human
agents. As Macintyre suggests, modern philosophers, both analytic
and existentialist, have taken the essence of moral agency to be the
capacity of the self to evade identification with any particular contingent state of affairs.
To be a moral agent is, on this view, precisely to be able to stand
back from any and every situation in which one is involved,
from any and every characteristic that one may possess, and to
pass judgment on it from a purely universal and abstract point
of view that is totally detached from all social particularity.
Anyone and everyone can thus be a moral agent, since it is in
the self and not in social roles or practices that moral agency has
to be located. 9
Thus it has become the task of ethical theory to find a foundation free
of historical contingencies that can guarantee the availability of such
freedom for the agent.
The grand example of this project is, of course, the work of Immanuel Kant, who sought to ground morality in the very necessity of
freedom. It was Kant's great enterprise to free morality from the arbitrary and the contingent, in order to secure at least minimal agreement between people of differing beliefs and societies. Moreover
Kant tried valiantly to free the realm of morality from the determinism he thought characteristic of the natural world. I k ~ought to
Living Amid Fragments
11
guarantee the "autonomy" of morality by grounding morality neither
in religious or metaphysical beliefs, nor in any empirical account of
humanity, but in rationality qua rationality.
Kant contended that the distinctive moral characteristic of the
rational creature was the capacity to live by no other law than that
of its own making. Thus for Kant the autonomy of reason and the
autonomy of morality rested on the same basis. This law, which Kant
thought to be inherent in rationality, he called the categorical imperative, which requires we do our duty for no other reason than it
is our duty. His first formulation of the categorical imperative was
"Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time
will that it should become a universal law." 10 While this principle,
and its relation to Kant's other formulations of the law, has been
variously interpreted and restated, it is generally accepted as the basic
statement for justifying moral judgments, whether it is called the
"principle of generalization" or, more existentially, "the moral point
of view." The force of the principle stays the same: It renders the contingent history of the agent irrelevant in moral judgment and evaluation; it demands that the justlfication for our decisions be given from
the perspective of anyone.
It is not my interest here to evaluate Kant's project or his later
interpreters, but to observe how the general project of finding a foundation for morality has gone hand in hand with an aversion to the
particular and the contingent. Why has ethics the sudden need for
a "foundation" and in particular a foundation that is characterized by
universality and necessity, when it seems that such a demand distorts
the very nature of moral judgment? As Aristotle reminds us, ethics
by its nature deals with matters which can be other-that is, particular matters. 11 Confronted by the fragmented character of our world,
philosophers have undoubtedly tried to secure a high ground that can
provide for security, certainty, and peace. It is a worthy effort, but
one doomed to fail, for such ground lacks the ability to train our
desires and direct our attention; to make us into moral people.
Despite enthusiasm of many religious thinkers for this search for
a foundation for morality, such a foundation ironically cannot but
make religious convictions morally secondary. 12 Here we stumble on
a problem at least as old as Plato's Euthyphro, namely how do religion
and morality relate? Is something right because God commands it,
or because it is right? If the latter, then why do we need God to command it? I cannot here give adequate attention to this issue but only
note that the discussion of it typically turns on a far too limited
understanding of morality. As I will discuss later, those traditions
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Christian Ethics in a Fragmented World
that have emphasized natural law as one response to the problem
have tended to relegate "religious" aspects of the moral life to a
"higher" morality or to the motivational component of morality. As
a result, not only has the moral force of Christian convictions been
lost, but the very nature of moral experience has been distorted.
More significantly, when the particularity of Christian convictions is made secondary to an alleged more fundamental "morality,"
we lose the means to be a peaceable people. For the attempt to secure
peace through founding morality on rationality itself, or some other
"inherent" human characteristic, ironically underwrites coercion. If
others refuse to accept my account of "rationality," it seems within
my bounds to force them to be true to their "true" selves.
As Christians, we must maintain day in and day out that peace
is not someting to be achieved by our power. Rather peace is a gift
of God that comes only by our being a community formed around
a crucified savior- a savior who teaches us how to be peaceful in a
world in rebellion against its true Lord. God's peaceful kingdom, we
learn, comes not by positing a common human morality, but by our
faithfulness as a peaceful community that fears not our differences.
3. THE PRIVITIZATION OF RELIGION
Many of the same processes that have shaped our modern understanding of morality have had an equally strong and corrosive effect
on our religious convictions and institutions. If religion is no longer
considered a matter of truth, it cannot and should not command our
attention as something worthy in and of itself. Rather religion's
significance is reduced, at best, to the functional. Thus religious belief may be a source of strength in a personal crisis and/ or an aid in
interpersonal relations. Accordingly, the church has become but one
among many voluntary associations of like-minded people from similar economic strata.
The functional character of contemporary religious convictions is
perhaps nowhere better revealed than in the upsurge of religious conservatism. While appearing to be a resurgence of "traditional" religious conviction, some of these movements in fact give evidence of
the loss of religious substance in our culture and in ourselves. Christianity is defended not so much because it is true, but because it reinforces the "American way of life." Such movements are thus unable
to contemplate that there might be irresolvable 1ensions bet ween
being Christian and being "a good Amcric;111."
The Privitization of Religion
13
At a more sophisticated level, many still seek to use our religious
heritage in support of the development and sustenance of democratic
government and society. Thus it is said that democracy requires a civil
religion-that is, a sense of transcendence that can act as a critical
principle against the pretensions of state power as well as a resource
to support the development of more nearly just institutions. Such a
"civil religion," however, cannot be made up of any particularistic
religious beliefs, since that would offend the necessity of religious
tolerance. As a result all our more particularistic beliefs must be
socially defined as "private" and thus admitting of no social role. This
situation creates a special irony, since the culture and political order
that the "civil religion" is asked to underwrite requires a disavowal of
the public rple of religious conviction - thus supporting the assumption that our religious opinions are just that, opinions. 13
There is no more powerful indication of religion's superfluity in
our culture than Christianity's acceptance of itself as one "religion"
among others. It reveals an assumption of the priority of so-called
"faith" over particular convictions of the Christian faith, e. g., the
nature of God, the significance ofJesus, the eschatological fate of the
world. 14 As a result, Christianity, both in practice and in its sophisticated theological expression, is reduced to an interpretation of humanity's need for meaning or some other provocative anthropological
claim. I do not mean to deny that every theology involves anthropological claims, yet theology today has become particularly adept at
beginning and ending there. More than before we substantiate Feuerbach's claim that religion is but the projection of mankind's hopes
written large.
Those concerned with the ethical significance of Christian convictions are particularly prone to this kind of anthropologizing of
Christian theology. Acting on a suspicion that what is left of Christianity is its ethical component, they abstract the ethical from the
religious in an effort to make Christianity relevant. Though such a
strategy often appears theologically and ethically radical, it usually
results in a restatement of the prevailing humanism in the name of
religion.
Behind this form of modern religious apologetics lies the
assumption that religion can have no hold on us unless it functions
to underwrite our desires and ensure our ultimate happiness. There
is, of course, a proper sense in which this is true, since the conviction
that the kingdom wrought in Christ is meant to fulfill our deepest
and strongest desires is at the heart of Christianity. Insofar as we are
God's creatures his redemption is certainly the fulfillment of the
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Christian Ethics in a Fragmented W odd
natural. But unfortunately we quickly trivialize this insight by seeking fulfillment without recognizing that in order to know and worship God rightly we must have our desires transformed. They must
be transformed-we must be trained to desire rightly- because, bent
by sin, we have little sense of what it is that we should rightly want.
A no less serious result of this kind of reductionistic theology is
the loss of a clear claim to the truth of Christian convictions. For there
is no stronger indication of the modern religious situation than that
we no longer know how or what it would mean to claim religious convictions as true. The only choice is between "fideism" - that is, that
religious convictions must be held as faith since they are not capable
of evidential challenge-or capitulation. 15 We cannot take the time
to discover all the reasons for this; however, one central reason is surely the fact that we accord to science the primary status for determining the nature of truth. Subjected to science's verification criteria,
religion appears to be merely opinion. While science cannot establish
the truth of certan hypotheses, it at least has tests for falsity. But we
are by no means sure how we can scientifically test the conviction that
God has called a people into the world to testify to the power of the
kingdom.
Some make a virtue of this difference by suggesting that religion
is different than science and technology and thus does not affect our
understanding of the scientific aspect of our world. But according to
this account, science still needs religion to show it which human
values to serve. The trouble with this strategy is that it makes the
truth value of religion merely functional.
Another challenge to questions of religious truth comes from
within religion itself. We have become increasingly aware of the
historically contingent starting point of the Christian faith. Neither
do we know the full historical "truth" about Jesus, nor does there
seem any way historically to get to that truth. Thus Gotthold Lessing's question continues to haunt us as we wonder how it is possible
to stake our life on a historically contingent starting point. 16 We feel
we should risk our lives and the lives of others only on that which is
absolutely certain. Historical "truth" simply seems too fragile to build
our life upon.
And so the circle continues. The less sure we are of the truth of
our religious convictions, the more we consider them immune from
public scrutiny. But in the process we lose what seems essential to
their being true, namely that we be willing to commend them to
others. For the necessity of witness is not accidental to Christian convictions; it is at the heart of the Christian life. Those rnnvirt ions c111
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The Truthfulness of Christian Convictions
15
not be learned except as they are attested to and exemplified by
others. The essential Christian witness is neither to personal experience, nor to what Christianity means to "me," but to the truth
that this world is the creation of a good God who is known through
the people of Israel and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
Without such a witness we only abandon the world to the
violence derived from the lies that devour our lives. There is,
therefore, an inherent relation between truthfulness and peacefulness
because peace comes only as we are transformed by a truth that gives
us the confidence to rely on nothing else than its witness. A "truth"
that must use violence to secure its existence cannot be truth. Rather
the truth that moves the sun and the stars is that which is so sure in
its power that it refuses to compel compliance or agreement by force.
Rather it relies on the slow, hard, and seemingly unrewarding work
of witness, a witness which it trusts to prevail even in a fragmented
and violent world.
4. THE TRUTHFULNESS OF CHRISTIAN CONVICTIONS
I
The modern moral and religious situation I have reviewed makes
the task of Christian ethics precarious at best. The temptations and
pitfalls are innumerable. At a time when we are no longer sure our
religious beliefs are true, perhaps the most destructive of these temptations is to salvage some significance for religion by claiming it can
hold back the moral anarchy that threatens us. Calling on religion to
supply those absolute values we think necessary to support the leaking breakwater of our civilization, we train "religious ethicists" 10
teach courses in business ethics, medical ethics, and value
clarification.
But this strategy avoids the most essential question. We should
not want to know if religious convictions are functional; we should
want to know if they are true. Furthermore such an approach scc111s
to imply that Christian ethics can create a morality when one is miss
ing. Yet this is futile insofar as ethics depends upon vital com
munities sufficient to produce well-lived lives. If such lives do not ex
ist, then no amount of reflection can do anything to make our ethics
fecund.
We cannot assume that ethical reflection will free us from 1h('
ambiguity of living among the fragments. In fact, honest and careful
('I hical reflection will most likely expose more subtle difficult i('s f(,,
16
Christian Ethics in a Fragmented World
the moral actor in a fragmented world. The task of Christian ethics
is not to relieve us of the ambiguity but to help us understand rightly
what it means to live in the world we do- that is, to live truthfully
in a world without certainty.
Finally, the absolutist strategy misconstrues the meaning and
the task of Christian ethics. The task of Christian ethics is to help us
see how our convictions are in themselves a morality. We do not first
believe certain things about God, Jesus, and the church, and subsequently derive ethical implications from these beliefs. Rather our
convictions embody our morality; our beliefs are our actions. We
Christians ought not to search for the "behavioral implications" of
our beliefs. Our moral life is not comprised of beliefs plus decisions;
our moral life is the process in which our convictions form our character to be truthful.
To do justice to the way Christian convictions work, we must
first develop the conceptual tools to inquire into how those convictions shape the moral life. I hope to do just this in my next chapter,
with attention to narrative, vision, and character. I realize that before
I try to say what specific convictions Christian ethics entail, I must
first give an account of the aspects of our moral experience with which
those convictions converge. This is not to say that Christian convictions ever stand apart from the moral life-we have already seen that
there is no abstract account of ethics- but in our attempt to unfold
the relationship we must move from one to the other. In any case,
what must not be abandoned is the inherently practical nature of
Christian convictions. Learning how Christian convictions are a
morality is crucial for understanding what it means to claim those
convictions are true. Too often religious belief is presented as a
primitive mythical worldview, or metaphysics, that cannot be considered true in any verifiable sense. It is assumed that religious
language describes the world only indirectly, metaphorically, or
poetically.
In this book I contend that Christian convictions do not poetically soothe the anxieties of the contemporary self. Rather, they transform the self to true faith by creating a community that lives faithful
to the one true God of the universe. When self and nature are thus
put in right relation we perceive the truth of our existence. But because truth is unattainable without a corresponding transformation of
self, "ethics," as the investigation of that transformation, does not
follow after a prior systematic presentation of the Christian faith, but
is at the beginning of Christian theological reflection.
2. A Qualified Ethic: The Narrative
Character of Christian Ethics
1. THE ABSTRAC1NESS OF AN UNQUALIFIED ETHIC
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The first chapter suggested that there is no such thing as universal "ethics" but that every ethic requires a qualifier. Such a suggestion is deeply at odds with the main direction of modern ethical
theory, which seeks a foundation for morality that will free moral
judgments from their dependence on historically contingent communities. I have already identified problems in this project; here I
will explore them further, focusing primarily on that project's neglect
of essential aspects of our moral experience such as narrative and virtue. More importantly, I will begin to show why Christian ethics must
insist on the significance of the qualifier "Christian." In contrast to
the universalizing tendency, I will argue that Christian ethics reflects
a particular people's history, the appropriation of which requires the
recognition that we are sinners.
Modern ethical theory has underwritten, often in quite different
ways, what Bernard Williams has characterized as the "midair"
stance. 1 Desiring to avoid any arbitrary normative recommendation,
ethicists have sought to formulate a "metaethics" -that is, a formal
account of the nature and basis of moral concepts-which in itself entails no single proscriptive alternative. Such a framework is meant to
undergird the nonarbitrary aspects of our actual moralities. Though
sometimes criticized as vacuous, metaethical reflection has hoped to
defeat any vicious subjectivism or relativism by showing that there ex
ists a high ground which insures moral objectivity and which thus
guarantees the constant capacity to "step back" from particular
judgments and regard them from anyone's point of view.
However, this supposed objectivity is actually the distorted image of subjectivism. It schools us to assume we can, and perhaps
always should, respond to any purported immoral action with "Who
am I to say that is wrong?" As Bernard Williams points out, both the
17
18
The Abstractness of an Unqualified Ethic
A Qualified Ethic
subjectivist and nonsubjectivist have no adequate justification for a
response insofar as it is itself a moral thought. In mid air "it tries to
stand outside all moral positions (including the thinker's own) and
yet still be a moral thought. But this midair place, by subjectivism
itself, is not a place in which anyone can have a moral thought"
because it forces us to assume a stance external to our commitments
and cares, which are the lifeblood of any morality. 2
Such an account of objectivity has the peculiar effect of alienating the moral agent from his or her projects. It requires one always
to look upon one's own projects as if they were anyone's. But by constantly "stepping back" from our projects and evaluating them from
an "objective" point of view, we rob the moral life of those characteristics from which it derives its rationale - namely, the close identification of what we ought to do with what we want to be as a concrete
moral agent. But we do not, nor should we, live as if we are eternally
critics toward ourselves and others. Rather we must and should form
our lives by our desires, wants, and cares.
Williams does not think those who wish to assume a "midair"
stance are properly able to argue the question "Why should I be
moral?" Ethics does not begin (nor is it required to begin) with an
attempt to answer that question. A disciplined set of analytic skills,
ethics begins with the recognition that we are already in the moral
adventure. We are able to proceed, not because we share a common
rationality, but because we find ourselves to be people who care
about something. 3 That we care is enough to ensure intelligible conversation with anyone who thinks he or she can opt out of moral
involvement.
From such a perspective the consistent amoralist does not make
a rational mistake but a human mistake. As Williams points out,
however, it is very difficult for the amoralist to be consistent.
If he [the amoralist] objects (as he no doubt will) to other people treating him as he treats them, this will be perfectly consistent so long as his objecting consists just in such things as his
not liking it and fighting back. What he cannot consistently do
is resent it or disapprove of it, for these are attitudes within the
moral system. . . .
This illustrates, as do many of his activities, the obvious fact
that this man is a parasite on the moral system, and he and his
satisfactions could not exist as they do unless others operated differently. For, in general, there can be no society without some
moral rules, and he needs society; also he takes more particular
19
advantage of moral institutions like promising and of moral
dispositions of people around him. 4
Williams's argument, while powerful, weakens with his reference to "the moral system." There is not one "moral system," but
many moral systems. Moreover it is not obvious that such systems are
primarily constituted by "moral rules." Indeed, with his reference to
rules, Williams gives weight to the assumption that the primary focus
of moral reflection should be on principles, rules, and/ or promises.
Emphasis on principle and rule is part of the metaethical scheme insofar as it is hoped that such rules will provide an objective, rational
foundation for morality.
1.1
Rules and Ob/£gations
Of course it can be pointed out that there is nothing odd about
the emphasis on the centrality of rules for morality. Most moralities
are characterized by a stress on the importance of rules, even though
they may disagree about content or the scale of priority. For example,
consider the process of moral education which begins by schooling
the young in rules so that they may later learn to nuance and qualify
them.
It is certainly not my intention to deny the significance of rules.
Yet I wish to distinguish between the general existence of rules in a
society and the marked emphasis upon them in modern morality and
theory. Not all societies emphasize rules to the extent ours does.
Aristotle seldom mentions them; and although lawlike pronouncements have a prominent place in the Scriptures, they are certainly never treated as an end in themselves or as capable of independent justification. In order to properly understand the significance of
rules for our conduct, I must provide a brief analysis of the many
kinds and functions of rules.
Our relatively recent fascination with rules draws on the promise
they seem to hold for the impersonal justification of our moral
behavior. Rules give the appearance of ensuring the objectivity we
otherwise find lacking in our individual decisions and judgments.
Accordingly, moral reasoning attempts to justify any particular judgment by appeal to a more universal rule or principle to which any rational creature must adhere. Thus morality is thought to acquire the
unbiased quality associated, mistakenly perhaps, with legal process
and therefore to secure the objectivity necessary for moral agreement.
Such a picture of the moral life fails to do justice to the variety
20
A Qualified Ethic
of rules and their function in our actual morality. While rules are
present in many activities, their features in one area may be lacking
in another. Thus rules play a different role in games than in scientific
investigation and different yet in etiquette, law, and religion. Moreover the force of some rules is quite different from others. Some rules
restrict, others regulate, and still others grant permission. We view
them differently if enacted by a legislative body or by custom (which
changes); still others seem to be so inherent in everyday practices we
never think of them as rules. Further, their scope differs. Some, we
believe, apply to all (these are not necessarily the most general), while
others apply only to those performing certain functions. 5
Plato and Aristotle considered rules to be secondary to the virtues, which served to direct us to their true end, the human good.
In our own day, however, questions concerning our ultimate end
("1clos"), or wha1 characierizes "the good life" have been dismissed
h('( ;111sc 1hey ;11c 1w1 su bjcn to rational argument. 6 Rules in our soci('f y, 1h!'I cl( >n·, a re 1101 dnivcd from some fundamental conception of
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