Philosophy-Discussion Forum 2
CHAPTER 6
Toward a Christian Ethic
Consequences play an important part in moral decisions, and not least for the Christian. The problems with basing an ethic on consequences alone must not blind us to this fact. Christians should be concerned with doing good to others and should doubtless make decisions that contribute to God’s purposes in this world. Indeed, some Christians have adopted a kind of utilitarian ethic: in the eighteenth century, for instance, William Paley declared that virtue is “doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness.” [1] And, it has been argued, since God is benevolent we, too, should be benevolent and aim to maximize the good for others. Mill himself likened the utility principle to Jesus’ golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do to you. [2] What about this?
Doing Good Deeds
Is doing good deeds all that counts in a Christian ethic? Is love or benevolence the only moral attribute of God? Is it enough for any ethic? Recall the problem of defining the good. What good or goods should we maximize? What is our highest end? From a biblical standpoint it is not human happiness or well-being, not the richest possible package of experiences, for persons are more than bundles of experiences and their value therefore is more. Yet even our value as persons is not ultimate but is derived from God, who created us in his own image. Our highest end, as Jesus said, is to love the Lord our God with all our being, and for his sake to love others as ourselves. It is to seek first hiskingdom.
In the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, our highest end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever (not to enjoy ourselves as much as we can). A Christian ethic must put this first, and human happiness comes later because both the worth and the possibility of human well-being derive from God. Love for oneself and others is not enough; love for God takes priority, and other loves must flow from it.
Moreover, if love is regarded as a consequentialist principle, then it needs to ground the principle of distributive justice on more than simple utility. Indeed, “do unto others as you would have them do to you” sounds equitable and just as well as loving. God is not only loving; he is also just. These two attributes stand out through the entire biblical record, and neither is reducible to the other. I therefore find attempts at a Christian utilitarianism ill begotten; we need an independent principle of justice to ensure an equitable distribution of good, in addition to the principle of love or benevolence that maximizes good consequences.
Structuring an Ethic
To put this in context, however, we must first relate what I call “principles” to other ingredients in an ethical theory. Let us distinguish the four ingredients: (1) cases, (2) area rules, (3) principles and (4) bases.
The moral problems we face almost daily have to do with (1) particular cases: Is five dollars a fair price to charge? Was Mary’s abortion morally justified? Should the doctor lie to Grandma about her condition? Would you lie to the Gestapo to save your Jewish neighbor? In addressing such cases, we usually draw on (2) moral rules that apply to various areas of life: in the cases cited they would be rules about business transactions, about the value of fetal life and about telling the truth. These rules depend on (3) underlying principles, and they apply those principles to various areas of activity. Finally, the principles themselves are logically justified by reference to (4) theological or philosophical bases, or presuppositions.
This pattern is discernible in almost any ethic, and we could readily trace it in the biblical materials on morality. Consider, for example, the well-known Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17, which include moral rules for major areas of human responsibility: the sanctity of human life and of the marriage relationship, respect for others’ property and for the truth. A fascinating array of case applications appears in subsequent chapters in Exodus, cases that can be classified under the various rules in the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments). The basis for these rules is quite explicit: they are commands of God. And the principles on which they rest, while implicit in the Exodus account, became explicit elsewhere. The moral law offers an even standard for the kind of just and equitable society preached later by the Old Testament prophets, and the underlying heart of the law is love (Mt 22:34-40; Rom 13:8-10). A similar pattern is evident in other biblical materials, in the Wisdom literature, the Prophets and the New Testament, all of which reiterate the bearing of God’s law and its underlying principles on human life.
Moral Principles
Moral principles, the most inclusive and ultimate ethical concepts, apply not just to particular kinds of activities but universally—to every kind of involvement, whatever it may be. They are therefore exceptionless principles which can never give way to something more inclusive and which must never give way to expediency. “What does the Lord require . . . but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic 6:8). We are never exempted from acting with justice and love. [3]
In this context, consider these two principles. Both are concerned for persons, justice for their equitable treatment and love for their good (their highest good, that is, not necessarily their enjoyment or success in life). “The Lord works . . . justice for all who are oppressed” (Ps 103:6), and so ought we. Just laws and just government, a just economy with fair prices and fair wages, an equitable relationship between a faithful husband and a faithful wife, a peaceful and equitable relationship also between the nations of the world: these should be our concern as they are God’s (Is 9:2-7; 11:1-5). Justice is the distributive principle that treats all persons equitably.
Love in the biblical sense (agapē) is not what the Greeks called eros, desiring something for oneself, but is rather a self-giving, sacrificial attitude. Nor is it like the kind of friendship that, according to Aristotle, must always be reciprocated if it is to survive. Nor is it a warm and generous feeling for others. It is rather an overall moral principle, all-inclusive and exceptionless, that should govern all our actions, a selfless devotion to God that issues in sacrificial service to others.
Justice and love do not conflict but contribute each to the other. As love is obligated in justice to distribute its benefits equitably, rather than playing favorites or practicing discrimination and unfairness, so justice is motivated by love to keep its relentless quest tirelessly alive. Justice stresses the right outward ordering of life, while love is more an inner, personalized concern.Love without justice would be amorphous and lack direction. Justice without love would be uncaring and detached. But together they comprise the principles of God’s kingdom, summed up in the Hebrew term shalom. It means peace, but peace of a certain kind: a just peace (each man sitting under his own fig tree, says Micah), a liberating peace (the children dancing in the streets, says Zechariah), a peace in which all enjoy the bounty of God and honor him thereby. Our highest end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Consequently, these principles of God’s kingdom are the principles of a Christian ethic, to guide our judgments and our conduct.
Moral Rules
What moral principles require in specified areas of life or kinds of activities is indicated by moral rules. “You shall not murder” (Ex 20:13) calls for the regard for human life expected in a just and equitably ordered society motivated by a love that is not self-serving. But since this is very general and needs more detailed application, the Mosaic law goes on to treat accidental manslaughter, killing in self-defense and capital punishment as exceptional cases which must nonetheless be safeguarded against unjust abuses.
While similar structures are discernible in almost any ethical theory, some ethicists reject a “rule-ethic” and, because they move directly from moral principles to the cases in which we act, adopt an “act-ethic” instead. Rules for them are, at best, rules of thumb, behavior patterns based on past experiences; and we are not at all obligated to follow them. The act-utilitarian, for instance, is prepared to treat each particular killing or each sexual liaison separately, in terms of its utility. This puts considerable strain on our ability to predict and calculate consequences, and it leans strongly toward ethical relativism. Situation ethics is an act-theory in that it treats each situation on its own merits and shuns moral rules as a form of legalism. [4]
An act-ethic presupposes that no universal and lasting structures to human life exist, that there are no distinguishable areas of unchanging responsibility, no “action spheres” we all have in common. But Christian belief in a divinely ordered creation argues otherwise, and theologians speak variously of creation orders, law spheres and creation mandates. The point is that humans are generically alike and share a common world, that we have common needs and common activities—physical, economic, familial and so forth. Situations do not differ so widely as the situationist supposes, nor do acts differ so greatly as the act-ethicist assumes. Moral rules for common areas are therefore not only possible but also extremely valuable in guiding life wisely and well. A Christian ethic especially, with the biblical view of creation in mind and the divine law as its paradigm, will be a rule-ethic.
Nor is this the legalism that situationists fear. Legalism binds the conscience to humanly constructed rules for every possible situation, imposing a rule for every case. It hides the weightier matters of the law, the underlying principles of love and justice, beneath a load of particular behavioral requirements. It elevates its rules to the level of exceptionless principles. But not so a Christian rule-ethic.
Cases
Ethical theories generally have ways of handling exceptional cases that do not fit neatly under the rules. I am not speaking of particulars where no existing moral rules directly apply—as was initially the case, for example, regarding recombinant DNA research. There we back up to more general rules regarding respect for human life and for our genetic heritage and the environment. I am speaking rather of moral dilemmas, where every available al ternative seems to violate some moral rule. As a doctor, would you deceive a patient about her probably fatal disease in order to stir the hope she needs to fight it? Would you lie to save a Jewish neighbor from the Gestapo? As a police officer, could you use lethal force to save innocent victims from mob violence? Would you steal the gun from someone threatening suicide? How can we deprive a person of his God-given liberty, in punishment for a crime? And what about a defensive war to resist unjust and unprovoked aggression that threatens the life of a civilian population? To fight is to take human life. Not to fight is to let human life be unjustly taken. In either case, evil is done, some of which we could help prevent. What can we do in such moral dilemmas? Are there not here some unavoidable exceptions to moral rules?
The consequentialist will be content to weigh the respective outcomes of alternative actions so as to maximize the good and minimize the evil results. But we have seen that this is not enough, for considerations other than consequences are involved in moral decisions. The alternative is to rank moral rules according to their centrality to one’s underlying principles. Thus the sanctity of innocent human life ranks higher than telling the truth to murderous Gestapo agents, in terms of both a societal justice and sacrificial love. When innocent victims are being unjustly arrested and killed, the unjust killer has no right to expect the truth. And love, in the interest of justice, protects the victims.
Another proposal often accompanies this ranking of moral rules: formulate rules to govern exceptions to rules. To prevent easy rationalizations of immoral acts in regard to civil disobedience, for instance, Martin Luther King Jr. was careful to set forth moral limitations: there must be an overwhelmingly just cause in the form of unjustly discriminatory legislation, and those who disobey must be willing to suffer arrest and go to trial in order that the unjust law may be challenged in court. Civil disobedience is selective and limited because it still submits to the authority of law per se. In regard to war, the “just war” theory sets forth conditions under which it would be morally just (and loving, in Christian versions of the theory) to go to war, and it establishes limitations that must then be placed on the conduct and continuation of a conflict. [5] We are never exempted, even in such exceptional cases, from justice and love. We shall pursue this later in regard to some other moral issues.
This sketch of the fourfold structure of an ethic provides a helpful tool both for analyzing ethical positions and for approaching moral decisions. Because bases and principles are plainly more fundamental and strategic than the resultant rules and case decisions, we have examined the egoist and utilitarian principles as well as their bases in psychological egoism and empiricism, respectively. This structure also gives us a handle on our thinking about Christian ethics, where we can see the relation of overall principles to moral rules. Insofar as Christian and non-Christian ethics differ, they are more likely to differ on principles than in regard to area rules or cases. There they can quite often—not always, of course—make common cause, as they do about nuclear arms reduction or chemical waste disposal. Sometimes they may even agree about justice and love, provided we don’t probe too much the theological side of those concepts. But the most insuperable disagreement will be at the most fundamental level—bases.
To round out our thinking about a Christian ethic, two more questions must be faced. In chapter seven we address the question of moral knowledge: how we may know what principles and rules are right, and how we may make properly informed moral decisions. Then in chapter eight we turn to the basis on which all else rests, the basis of moral obligation itself.