Recent times have seen a shift in many circles back toward a more virtue based approach to ethics. Alistair MacIntyre, in a landmark book called After Virtue, argued that the Western world has lost its ethical way. [1] “We have—very largely, if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.” [2] For MacIntyre, modern morality is a collection of incoherent, fragmented survivals from the virtue oriented tradition of Aristotle. [3] Whether you agree with MacIntyre or not, he highlights a key question: Are good and evil real? Are virtues something real and “intrinsic” to life, built-in to reality, if you would? Or are they simply a matter of human feeling or cultural perception?
Earlier in the chapter, we mentioned David Hume’s sense that an uncrossable gulf existed between “facts” and “values.” How do we get from “you killed someone” to “you should not have killed someone.” MacIntyre points out that a lot of ethical theory in the early twentieth century amounted to “You shouldn’t kill people because we don’t feel good about such things,” a theory of ethics called “emotivism.”
Immanuel Kant had tried to address Hume’s fact-value problem by suggesting that morality was one of the innate, “built-in” categories of our minds. He thought it was a matter of logical reasoning. All we need to do is think through what course of action would make sense at any time and place, and we have the Golden Rule. However, Kant’s ethic has been far from convincing to very many people.
We might also mention another question philosophers have tossed around since the ancient Greeks. Plato put it this way, “Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy? Or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?” [4] You could also put the dilemma in this way, “Is good good because God says so, or does God say it’s good because it’s good.” It is a “which came first” question. Has God created good, as it were, by his command, to where he could make murder the right thing to do if he wanted or perhaps he could create an alternative universe where murder was good? Or is good a standard that God himself must follow, to where if God were to have someone like Abraham to murder his son Isaac, he would be guilty of a crime?
The one approach is called “divine command theory” (DCT). It sees good as a question of what God commands. There is no intrinsic good or evil to the creation. Rather, good is whatever God wants it to be. Most Christian thinkers have opted for something closer to the second option, perhaps suggesting that God’s “nature” is good, and therefore that he has built within himself an absolute definition of good.
Those who take different positions on the question of "intrinsic morality" can make their "base camp" in differing Scriptures. Those who favor DCT point out that God often seems to command things in the Old Testament that would be immoral if any of us did them. The instance of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is usually mentioned (Genesis 22). And, for that matter, there is the instance of God commanding the Israelites to slaughter everyone down to the children and animals of the Canaanites (e.g., Josh. 6:17-21).
On the other hand, James 1:13 says that God cannot be tempted with evil. Hebrews 6:18 says that it is impossible for God to lie. And we have various indications in Scripture that the understanding of divine agency gained in precision as we move from the older parts of the Old Testament to the later ones and then into the New Testament. For example, the earlier 2 Samuel 24:1 says that God did something that the later 1 Chronicles 21:1 says Satan did!
Then again, the apostle Paul makes the morality of eating meat that might have been offered to an idol a matter of personal conscience (Rom. 14:5-8). Food for him is neither clean nor unclean (a development in understanding from Leviticus) but its status depends on whether the person eating thinks it is clean or unclean. One might use this line of thought to argue for a form of DCT in which what is good and evil is a question of how God thinks about it.
However, most Christian thinkers see a much more substantial connection between the nature of God and what is good or evil in this world. Historic Christianity has emphasized that "goodness" is one of God's attributes and thus that goodness is thus something intrinsic to his creation, even if it is currently marred by sin. This connection would thus give a fixed point by which to judge what is good and evil in the world.
_____
[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 1985).
[2]After Virtue, 2.
[3] After Virtue, 257.
[4] Euthyphro, 10a.
Showing posts with label virtue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label virtue. Show all posts
Friday, July 01, 2011
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Christian Virtue
Juggling my writing commitments poorly...
Christian Virtue
Of the three main types of ethical theory--duty based, consequence based, and virtue based--we will not be surprised to find that the New Testament is primarily virtue oriented. We are not surprised because, as we have seen, ancient ethics in general was primarily virtue based. It is not that we do not find ethical duties in the New Testament--"Stay away from sexual immorality" (1 Thess. 4:3, CEB), for example. It is not that we do not find interest in consequences--"Strive for the things that bring peace and the things that build each other up" (Rom. 14:19 CEB). It is only that the primary ethical interest is in virtues like faith, hope, and love (e.g., 1 Cor. 13:13).
Accordingly, New Testament ethics tends to focus more on a person's character and motives than on his or her specific actions or the consequences of those actions. To be sure, we find enough commands and prohibitions in the Bible that various currents within Christian tradition have focused from time to time more on duties than character. For example, many Christian circles in the United States today focus heavily on exceptionless ethical absolutes and despise any thought of ethical relativisms. By emphasizing such things, such currents tend more toward a duty-based approach to ethics than a virtue based one.
One interesting twist on a duty oriented Christian framework are those traditions that process the death of Jesus in primarily legal terms. In one scenario, God's justice is understood in such duty-oriented terms that he could not possibly forgive any debt or wrong against him unless someone from the guilty party pays him in full. Accordingly, Jesus must become human because a human must pay God back, and Jesus must suffer the full punishment of every single sin for which he atones.
This line of thinking takes one picture of God in the Bible--that of Judge--and fills in the philosophical picture of atonement (the means by which humanity is reconciled to God) with God as a duty-oriented ethicist. Of course, such systems then flip the basis of God's judgment. Because Jesus has paid the debt in full, believers are no longer judged at all on the basis of their actions. God's legal judgment is based solely on his consideration of Jesus. The basis of God's ethical assessment is still duty based. It is just that Jesus is the one God legally assesses.
A more virtue based approach might focus on God's character as one of love, graciousness, and faithfulness. [1] It might invoke the Parable of the Prodigal Son as a better illustration of the character of God (Luke 15). In this story, a father forgives his son of his recklessness and the insult of the son asking for his inheritance before his father had even died. There is no legal exchange, no act of atonement. The father simply forgives because of his love for the son.
Indeed, although there is clearly duty language within the New Testament, the primary orientation of Jesus and Paul seems around a person's heart and intentions. In Mark 7:18-23, Jesus says, "'Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?' (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, 'It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.'" (NRSV).
This is a vice list, the opposite of a virtue list. Jesus is basically saying that either virtue or vice flows out of a person's character. To be clean or unclean is not so much a matter of external actions but a matter of what is inside a person.
Similarly, Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit being "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things (Gal. 5:22-23, NRSV). This is a virtue list, and Paul says it flows naturally from God's Spirit being inside us. When Paul comes close to defining sin, he says that "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23, NRSV). His sense of what sin is for a believer is thus not primarily a matter of violating a law but of a life that does not reflect the right character.
The New Testament does encapsulate the entirety of human duty into two commands, as we said earlier in the chapter: Love God and love neighbor. These two duties indicate the appropriate motivations of a Christian's character. The heart of a Christian should be one that it oriented around helping and not hurting all others in every way. In terms of God, the heart of a Christian should be one that does everything "for the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31).
Here many will try to sneak back in a more duty-oriented framework. Loving God, some might say, involves keeping this list of laws for their own sake. Perhaps so, but some strong cautions are in order. First, loving God never contradicts loving our neighbor or enemy. It is not--"I must love my neighbor unless he is a homosexual, for love of God requires me to hate homosexuals." The love of God does not work this way but reinforces the love of my neighbor and enemy. It hopes for the redemption of my enemy even if my enemy is seeking to harm me.
However, love of God does contradict an inordinate focus on myself. It requires me to shift from myself being the focus of all my actions to God and his desire for the greater good. I cannot excuse selfishness or actions done in private simply because they do not harm my neighbor or enemy. A heart oriented toward God is a heart that is not oriented toward myself.
[1] Recovering the Scandal of the Cross
Christian Virtue
Of the three main types of ethical theory--duty based, consequence based, and virtue based--we will not be surprised to find that the New Testament is primarily virtue oriented. We are not surprised because, as we have seen, ancient ethics in general was primarily virtue based. It is not that we do not find ethical duties in the New Testament--"Stay away from sexual immorality" (1 Thess. 4:3, CEB), for example. It is not that we do not find interest in consequences--"Strive for the things that bring peace and the things that build each other up" (Rom. 14:19 CEB). It is only that the primary ethical interest is in virtues like faith, hope, and love (e.g., 1 Cor. 13:13).
Accordingly, New Testament ethics tends to focus more on a person's character and motives than on his or her specific actions or the consequences of those actions. To be sure, we find enough commands and prohibitions in the Bible that various currents within Christian tradition have focused from time to time more on duties than character. For example, many Christian circles in the United States today focus heavily on exceptionless ethical absolutes and despise any thought of ethical relativisms. By emphasizing such things, such currents tend more toward a duty-based approach to ethics than a virtue based one.
One interesting twist on a duty oriented Christian framework are those traditions that process the death of Jesus in primarily legal terms. In one scenario, God's justice is understood in such duty-oriented terms that he could not possibly forgive any debt or wrong against him unless someone from the guilty party pays him in full. Accordingly, Jesus must become human because a human must pay God back, and Jesus must suffer the full punishment of every single sin for which he atones.
This line of thinking takes one picture of God in the Bible--that of Judge--and fills in the philosophical picture of atonement (the means by which humanity is reconciled to God) with God as a duty-oriented ethicist. Of course, such systems then flip the basis of God's judgment. Because Jesus has paid the debt in full, believers are no longer judged at all on the basis of their actions. God's legal judgment is based solely on his consideration of Jesus. The basis of God's ethical assessment is still duty based. It is just that Jesus is the one God legally assesses.
A more virtue based approach might focus on God's character as one of love, graciousness, and faithfulness. [1] It might invoke the Parable of the Prodigal Son as a better illustration of the character of God (Luke 15). In this story, a father forgives his son of his recklessness and the insult of the son asking for his inheritance before his father had even died. There is no legal exchange, no act of atonement. The father simply forgives because of his love for the son.
Indeed, although there is clearly duty language within the New Testament, the primary orientation of Jesus and Paul seems around a person's heart and intentions. In Mark 7:18-23, Jesus says, "'Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?' (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, 'It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.'" (NRSV).
This is a vice list, the opposite of a virtue list. Jesus is basically saying that either virtue or vice flows out of a person's character. To be clean or unclean is not so much a matter of external actions but a matter of what is inside a person.
Similarly, Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit being "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things (Gal. 5:22-23, NRSV). This is a virtue list, and Paul says it flows naturally from God's Spirit being inside us. When Paul comes close to defining sin, he says that "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23, NRSV). His sense of what sin is for a believer is thus not primarily a matter of violating a law but of a life that does not reflect the right character.
The New Testament does encapsulate the entirety of human duty into two commands, as we said earlier in the chapter: Love God and love neighbor. These two duties indicate the appropriate motivations of a Christian's character. The heart of a Christian should be one that it oriented around helping and not hurting all others in every way. In terms of God, the heart of a Christian should be one that does everything "for the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31).
Here many will try to sneak back in a more duty-oriented framework. Loving God, some might say, involves keeping this list of laws for their own sake. Perhaps so, but some strong cautions are in order. First, loving God never contradicts loving our neighbor or enemy. It is not--"I must love my neighbor unless he is a homosexual, for love of God requires me to hate homosexuals." The love of God does not work this way but reinforces the love of my neighbor and enemy. It hopes for the redemption of my enemy even if my enemy is seeking to harm me.
However, love of God does contradict an inordinate focus on myself. It requires me to shift from myself being the focus of all my actions to God and his desire for the greater good. I cannot excuse selfishness or actions done in private simply because they do not harm my neighbor or enemy. A heart oriented toward God is a heart that is not oriented toward myself.
[1] Recovering the Scandal of the Cross
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