Moral Theology: Dodo or Phoenix?
II
The Focus of Christian Ethics: Three Views
A.
I am by profession a moral theologian, and giving these addresses stem from the fact that moral issues rather than theological ones present the divisive possibilities before which we now stand. These issues are as highly contentious as they are for a very good reason. They mark the points at which more traditional accounts of Christian belief and practice confront a moral point of view that in certain fundamental ways runs in a contrary direction. Christians are caught between beliefs and moral practices that have marked Christian identity for centuries and new dilemmas posed by the growing importance within our society of individual moral agents, their autonomy, and, most of all, their personal satisfaction. Thus, for example, a once common view held by Christians that divorce either is absolutely prohibited or allowed only for of a limited range of “offenses” has been replaced by a view that allows for divorce because of a failure on the part of the individuals involved to achieve the degree of happiness for which they contracted.
This conflict between traditional Christian belief and practice and one that is not in all ways compatible stands behind most, if not all the moral battles we face both within our commonwealth and within the churches with which we “affiliate.” It is my belief that we cannot possibly hope to engage an issue of such depth and complexity unless we are willing to assume nothing and start over again. To make a beginning requires, however, that we locate our point of origin. That is what I hope to do in this address: locate our point of origin. I propose to do so by asking a question that is easier to pose than it is to answer. The question is this. As we think about moral issues, what is the focus of our attention? What is the central point from which our thoughts and opinions radiate? Or, to use an economic metaphor, “in respect of moral issues, what is our bottom line?”
I will make bold to say that there are only three possibilities. Our focus is either the sanctification (we would say spiritual growth) of the individual believer, or the promotion of a just and rewarding social order, or the health of the common life of the church. Of course, all great accounts of Christian Ethics give attention to each of these areas of concern. Nevertheless, in each and every account, one particular focus controls what is to be seen in the other (less central) areas.
To help us identify our own starting point, I have chosen three accounts of the Christian life the focus of each of which is different but perfectly clear. The first is John Cassian, the founder of Western Monasticism. For John Cassian, the focus of Christian Ethics is, in a virtually univocal sense, the sanctification of the individual. The second figure is Walter Rauschenbusch, the great and early champion of the social gospel in America. The focus Rauschenbush gives to Christian Ethics is clearly the creation of a just and rewarding social life. The third figure is John Howard Yoder, author of the groundbreaking study, The Politics of Jesus. For Yoder, the focus of Christian Ethics is properly the common life of the church. For Yoder, the focus of monastic ethics on personal sanctification and that of advocates of the social gospel on social betterment represent fundamental distortions of the Christian faith.
As I sketch all too briefly these three accounts of Christian Ethics, ask yourself if your focus is similar or dissimilar. By asking this question, each can identify his or her starting point and so make possible at least a critical look at where one stands. As to method, in the case of each figure, in an effort to identify the particular focus of each, I will ask three questions. What is thegoal of Christian Ethics, what is the basis of Christian Ethics, and what is the character of Christian ethics. Having asked and answered these three questions, the particular focus of each figure I have chosen will stand our plainly.
B.
I begin with John Cassian. His account of the Christian life will have particular resonance with those whose focus turns out to be what we now call “spiritual direction.” As if by instinct, his works have been rediscovered by “spiritual directors” who cull through them looking for usable nuggets of spiritual wisdom. (If, however, they were to look at his work whole, they might find that his account of the Christian life clashes in a fundamental way with the search for the sort of personal satisfaction that drives their clients to seek their aid.)
In search of the focus of this account of Christian living, let us ask first how John Cassian construes the goal of the Christian life. In his two works, The Institutes and The Conferences,he shows himself a man of his times and sets out a goal for life that accords with the most enlightened views of the era. Like most of the early fathers of the church, Cassian was a neo-Platonist. Accordingly, he maps a spiritual path that leads from the illusions of a changeable, shadow world to a world of permanence, truth and light. Further, as did all the serious thinkers of his time, he thought of his work as philosophia: that is, a program of thought and action the purpose of which is to help people escape what Pierre Hadot has nicely termed “a state of unhappy disquiet” and achieve a state of eudaimonia (well being or happiness).
John Cassian describes the goal of his philosophia under two headings. Like Arius the stoic (not the heretic), Cassian designates the end of a faithful life with two terms--“scopos” and “telos.” The “scopos” of the Christian life is the thing one aims at or the target. For Christians the “scopos” of a philosophical life is purity of heart or perfection. Cassian begins with Christ’s admonition in the Sermon on the Mount. “Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” In this state of perfection, from a negative perspective, one is free from distorting thoughts and passions that take the mind and heart from God. From a positive perspective, perfection or purity of heart involves the uninterrupted contemplation of God. In this state one comes to know the “telos” of the Christian life—eternal life, the Kingdom of God, or a state of complete happiness.
The radical nature of Cassian’s program becomes apparent when one notes the stringency of its demands. Anything that takes one’s attention from the contemplation of God is to be understood as “fornication.” Thus, even good works, moral obligations, and experiences of extreme adversity are not to divert the mind’s attention and love from its “scopos.” For example, Cassian insists (in a way that might well turn the stomachs of advocates of the social gospel) that good works are matters only of penultimate value because they have temporary rather than eternal significance. So he writes:
The things that you refer to as works of piety and mercy are necessary in this age, as long as inequity continues to dominate…But this will cease in the world to come, where equity will rule and when there will no longer exist the inequity that made these things obligatory. Then everyone will pass over from this multiform or practical activity to the contemplation of divine things in perpetual purity of heart. Those whose concern is to press on to knowledge and to the purification of their minds have chosen, even while living in the present world, to give themselves to this objective with all their power and strength.
Serious seekers for the Kingdom of God “give themselves to this objective with all their power and strength.” The search for purity of heart is of such great importance that it justifies breaking the strongest of moral obligations, even promises. Thus Cassian justifies his failure to keep a promise to return from Egypt to the monks in Bethlehem. In the Seventeenth Conference with Abba Joseph, Cassian asserts that one is justified in breaking a promise if it serves the greater good of purity of heart.
The absolute priority of the scopos and telos of Christian ethics is plain also in Cassian’s discussion of the way in which extreme misfortune should be viewed. When asked how Christians should view the slaughter of a number of monks in Palestine by Saracen bands, Abba Theodore answers that one cannot suffer evil unless one has already brought it upon oneself because of some moral flaw. Thus he concludes, “Wealth, power, honor, bodily strength, health, beauty, life itself and death, poverty, bodily sickness, insults, and other things similar to these can have good or bad consequences according to the character and desire of the user.”
Once again, despite its deep roots in Christian piety, this conclusion is unlikely to prove convincing to an advocate of liberation theology. It is the very stringency (if not to some repugnance) of Cassian’s account of the goal of the Christian life that leads one to ask what is the basis of such an extraordinary demand. His answer is simple and direct. Christians are called upon to imitate the teaching and example of Christ who himself was perfect. Christ’s perfection is, however, viewed through a rather narrow lens; namely, his sacrificial death. For the faithful monk, this means the sacrifice of everything in pursuit of purity of heart. Renunciation thus becomes the hallmark of a faithful Christian life.
So Cassian writes:
Now something must be said about the renunciations which the tradition of the fathers and the authority of Holy Scripture show to be three and which each one of us ought to pursue with all our zeal. The fist is that by which in bodily fashion we despise all wealth and resources of the world. The second is that by which we reject the earstwhile behavior, vices, and affections of soul and body. The third is that by which we call our mind away from everything that is present and visible and contemplate only what is to come and desire those things that are invisible.
Cassian’s extreme advocacy of renunciation calls for an aside. In basing this call to renunciation in the pattern of Christ’s life, he locates himself once again firmly in the tradition ofphilosophia to which he was heir. To enter the way that leads from unhappy disquiet to happiness, one must have a life to imitate. In all the schools, the life of the teacher was as important, if not more important, than the written or verbal tradition associated with the master. For John Cassian, the imitation of Christ is uniquely summed up in renunciation of this world for another.
Renunciation also drives Cassian’s description of the marks or “character” of life in Christ. The character of such a life is forged in a contest analogous to the Olympic Games. One must train to reach perfection. Training occurs in the process of renunciation. The fist thing to be renounced is gluttony, and from this sacrifice flow others, all of which have to do with the conquest of desire. In this struggle one learns humility, obedience to the counsel of a master, patience, and most of all “discretion” or the ability to determine the difference between virtue and vice, good and evil. With discretion comes the birth of love for God and so contact with the true source of happiness.
So what is the focus of this account of Christian living? By now, despite my overly brief account, it should be clear. The focus of this account of Christian ethics is the spiritual and moral perfection of the individual believer. Its goal is purity of heart and the uninterrupted contemplation and love of God. Its basis lies in the imitation of Christ’s life of perfect renunciation. It’scharacter centers in renunciation of all that stands between the soul and the unimpeded vision of God. One can see, I think, why Cassian holds attraction for contemporary folk whose moral focus is determined by concentration on spiritual development and spiritual direction. With him moral and spiritual life are both over riding and radically interior; and this interior emphasis is driven by a state all too common among us moderns—unhappy disquiet.
C.
Walter Rauschenbusch provides an utterly contrary figuration of Christian living. His account of Christian Ethics focuses relentlessly on changing the external circumstances in which people live their lives. Given the fact that he lived between the first two really modern wars (the Civil War and the First World War), and given that he lived through the grossly exploitive period of the robber barons, and given the fact that he was the intellectual child of Kant, Ritschel, Schliermacher, and Harnack, his emphasis is not at all surprising.
To display his focus more clearly, however, let us ask once again what, according to Walter Rauschenbusch, is the goal of Christian Ethics? As was the case with John Cassian, the goal of Christian living for Rauschenbusch is the Kingdom of God. His account of the Kingdom is, however, as earthly as John Cassian’s is heavenly. Thus in A Theology for the Social Gospel he wrote “The Christian church in the past has taught us to do our work with our eyes fixed on another world and a life to come. But the business before us is concerned with refashioning this present world, making this earth clean and sweet and habitable.” Or again he wrote”
The speculative problem of Christological dogma was how the divine and human natures united in the one person of Christ; the problem of the social gospel is how the divine life of Christ can get control of human society. The social gospel is concerned about a progressive social incarnation of God.
And so he goes on to insist that, from the very beginning, “the essential purpose of Christianity was to transform human society into the kingdom of God by regenerating all human relations and reconstituting them in accordance with the will of God.”
Rauschenbusch was by training a church historian. Consequently, it is not surprising that he substantiates his rather radical revision of Christian thought by means of historical studies. If, he says, one looks at the Prophets of Israel, one finds that they viewed the Kingdom of God not as a transcendental state, but as a historical condition that is both national and collective. Israel will be established among the nations as a righteous and just kingdom in which God is worshipped faithfully and the poor, the widows, and the orphans are treated justly. Jesus’ preaching of the Kingdom stands in the tradition of the prophets. Nevertheless, the approaching Kingdom he proclaimed was neither nationalistically based nor was it to be brought about by violence. Rauschenbusch argued (in accord with the latest German scholarship) that the Kingdom would be one of universal love and justice brought about by organic growth rather than violent intervention.
For the Kingdom to come, however, what he called the kingdom of evil must be overcome. This kingdom is the reverse of the Kingdom of God. It stems from all the forms of human vulnerability that lead people to act in selfish ways; but individual evil becomes embedded in social structures that exert a terrible and corrupting influence over the lives of each individual member of society. These structures now are being changed, he argued, both by Jesus’ example of love and service, and by the power of his personality to change people’s lives. Thus, growth toward the Kingdom can be seen in all areas of life—both domestic and social. Nevertheless, the economic order remains largely unaffected by this growth in love and justice. The economic order is, therefore, the next to come under Jesus’ spell, and it is to this order that the church (through which Jesus’ teaching and the power of his personality flow through history) is now to direct its attention. The goal of Christian ethics is, we might say, “the Christianization” of Society in all its aspects.
By now, the basis of this goal is clear. As in the case of John Cassian, Christian Ethics are based in the imitation of Christ—this time both in Christ’s teaching and the power of his personality. For Rauschenbusch, Jesus’ personality was of particular importance. He believed that new life for society, in his words, “would nucleate around personal centers.” He argued that great movements arise from the hearts of a few, and that prophetic minds, again in his words, “condense the longings of the mass of men in concrete experience and thought.” Christ is best understood, therefore, not in metaphysical terms of God/manhood, but as a “fully developed personality” that set loose the forces that would, over the ages, bring to fruition these deep longings. Through Jesus’ “God consciousness” (and so the power of his personality) he would bring about “a new type of humanity,” “the primal cell of a new social organism” that carries “new social standards.” Jesus’ personality thus become something like a positive genetic mutation passed down through his brothers and sisters in the church, and from them to the world as a whole.
Given the centrality of Jesus’ personality in Rauschenbusch’s theology and ethics, it is not surprising that he begins his discussion of the character of Christian Ethics with a description of the personality that mirrors that of Christ (as he understood it). Such a personality manifests love expressed as devotion to the common good, forgiveness, humility, service, justice, good faith, kindness, and devotion to the poor. These are the marks of a faithful disciple that, as he says, “create a ganglion chain of redeemed personalities in a commonwealth.” He goes on to say”
The greatest contribution which any man can make to the social movement is the contribution of a regenerated personality, of a will which sets justice above policy and profit, and of an intellect emancipated from falsehood. Such a man will in some measure incarnate the principles of a higher social order in his attitude to all questions and in all his relations to men, and will be a well-spring of regenerating influence.
However, Rauschenbusch, despite this encomium to the power of personality, is aware that social forces can blunt, if not crush its effects. It is this observation that leads him to broaden his presentation of that central Christian mark of character—love. Rauschenbusch argues that Christ modeled and taught what he calls a “socialized love.” A socialized love does not stop with care for a brother or sister in need. It extends itself to seek changes in the system that brought about that need. So he describes the love of Christ in action in this way:
We can never do without the plain affection of man to man. But what we most need today is not the love that will break its back drawing water for a growing factory town from a well that was meant to supply a village, but love so large and intelligent that it will persuade an ignorant people to build a system of waterworks up in the hills, and that will get after the thoughtless farmers who contaminate the brooks with typhoid bacilli, and after the lumber concern that is denuding the watershed of its forests. We want a new avatar of love.
At this point in his argument, Rauschenbusch moves from describing the character of an individual believer to that of a Christian society. Such a society will incarnate socialized love in the great ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. These social characteristics will best be expressed in democratic socialism. And so, describing the character for which he struggles, the he writes:
Our chief interest in any millennium is the desire for a social order in which the worth and freedom of every last human being will be honored and protected; in which the brotherhood of man will be expressed in the common possession of the economic resources of society; and in which the spiritual good of humanity will be set high above the private profit interest of all materialistic groups. We hope for such an order for humanity as we hope for heaven for ourselves.
One can only say in response that neither Gustavo Gutierrez nor Ralph Nader could say it better. So what is there to complain about? Much in every way says the next figure at which we take a passing glance—John Howard Yoder, whose ecclesially focused ethics is put forward as a direct criticism of the various forms of the social gospel that flow into the river once navigated by Walter Rauschenbusch.. In Yoder’s mind, to focus first either on individual sanctification or social redemption is to betray the center of Christian moral concern; namely, the common witness of the church to Christ’s reconciling action on the cross.
Following a lead from his teacher Karl Barth, Yoder presents evangelical witness as the primary goal of Christian Ethics. It would not be inaccurate to say that for Yoder ethics is witness to the reconciling power of Christ’s sacrifice (and this is important) by means of the exemplary common life of the church. In one of his first published works, The Christian Witness to the State, Yoder put the point in this way:
Jesus made it clear that the nationalized hope of Israel had been a misunderstanding, and that God’s true purpose was the creation of a new (universal) society…This new body, the church…has a task in history. History is the framework in which the church evangelizes, so that the true meaning of history is the fact that God has chosen to use it for such a ‘scaffolding’ service.
The witness the common life of the church is to the victory of Christ through the cross over the forces that divide people and preserve these divisions by violence. Thus, the witness Christians are to make through their common life is to peace. Nonresistance is the chief form Christian witness takes. Through nonresistance, Christ’s death on the cross is imitated. Such a faithful imitation bears witness to God’s victory over evil both on the cross and (finally) upon the return of Christ. Thus, at one point Yoder writes, “Nonresistance is right, in the deepest sense, not because it works, but because it anticipates the triumph of the Lamb that was slain.” At another he states, “The Christian responsibility for defeating evil, is to resist the temptation to meet it on its own terms. To crush the evil adversary is to be vanquished by him because it means accepting his standards.”
The evangelical goal of Christian Ethics means that a Christian ethic is for Christians. It is not one that seeks to find confirmation, or even make common cause, by coherence with other forms of moral reflection and action. It is an ethic for a new people who bear witness through a new form of social life to a new reality within history; namely; the victory of God in the cross of Christ.
Yoder believed firmly that the Constantinian settlement whereby, in exchange for the provision of religious justification and a common morality for society as a whole, the church is given by state authority a privileged place within society is fast disappearing. It is not the calling of the church to provide a general social foundation. The church is called to witness to a new reality in history. However, this goal established, Yoder is willing to entertain a secondary goal for Christian Ethics. Though it is not an ethic that is generally negotiable (say because of a natural moral law), it is, however, one that has had (and one may hope continues to have) positive effects upon society as a whole. So he claims, in a manner oddly reminiscent of Rauschenbusch, that the alternative ethic of the church has had over time a positive effect on society as a whole. This positive effect he understands primarily as the promotion, by means of counter example, of brotherhood, honesty, justice, and a more abundant life.
Contrary to persistent criticism to the contrary, Yoder is not a sectarian Mennonite. He has a place within his ethic both for Christians to play an active role in general social life, and he believes it both possible and good for the witness of the church to have beneficial social effects. Nonetheless, the central place nonresistance plays in his account of Christian living cries out for adequate justification. What is the base of his quite stringent communal ethic?
Yoder’s study, The Politics of Jesus, was intended to root a communal ethic firmly the life and teaching of Jesus. In this sense, Yoder is no different than either Cassian or Rauschenbusch. His account of the historical Jesus is, however, markedly different from either of his predecessors. His central claim is that Jesus’ ministry was one of radical political action, but action of a very different sort than the world is used to. To establish the normative force of Jesus’ life and teaching, Yoder must first show the inadequacy of most of the strategies for dealing with them with which we are familiar. Thus, he argues that it is an error to escape the radical demands of discipleship by holding either that Jesus’ ethic was an interim ethic, that is was a rural ethic not applicable to different social circumstances, that (unlike us) Jesus disciples lived in a world over which they had no control, that Jesus’ message was spiritual and not political, that Jesus’ radical monotheism creates a discontinuity between God and the world that makes relative all human values, that Jesus gives his life for the salvation of the world, and that this atoning action ought not to be used as a basis for ethics, that the Biblical texts do not give a clear enough picture of Jesus’ teaching from which to draw normative conclusions, that the Biblical texts are too inconsistent to form a basis for a social ethic, or that Jesus teaching must be understood by means of some “hermeneutical grid” that unlocks its true meaning.
These strategies are all one’s of avoidance. Each is an attempt to draw a political ethic from a source other than Christ—one that allows for rational calculations about how we can get events to turn our as well as possible. Yoder’s objection to these strategies is incisive and convincing. By a careful exegesis of the Gospel of Luke, Yoder presents a very political Jesus whose life and message have a degree of normative authority that both undermines these prudential strategies and holds for disciples in all times and in all places. Thus, Jesus is both king and servant who, as God’s Son, calls Israel to a new obedience. This obedience requires faithful worship and justice for the poor. It requires as well a social order in which the lowly are raised up and the haughty are brought low. In reaction to opposition, particularly by the leaders of the Jewish nation, Jesus calls twelve disciples as the nucleus of a faithful people. These disciples must share (or imitate) the life of their master, a sharing that involves the same sort of suffering Jesus underwent. Jesus’ great temptation was to meet his opposition with the very methods of violence he was sent to oppose. He meets these temptations and goes to his death, believing in God’s power to vindicate his sacrifice. Both his death and his resurrection manifest God’s power. They introduce a new possibility into history—a possibility to which Jesus’ disciples through the ages bear witness by faithful imitation of his nonresistant suffering, while waiting for God’s final victory at the appearance in glory of the risen Christ.
It is not difficult to anticipate the character of the communal ethic Jesus’ disciples are to follow. The key to all is nonresistance to evil and willingness to suffer. These manifest faith in God’s power to triumph and call people to imitate this new possibility within history. They also find expression in a new form of community—one that is neither collectivist nor individualistic, neither authoritarian nor anarchic. Within this community, common solutions are sought to the moral and religious perplexities people face. These solutions are sought through conversations rooted always in forgiveness rather than violence, and in communal loyalty rather than claims to autonomy. Expositing Mtt. 18, Yoder describes the process in this way:
The deliberative process begins with only the two parties to the conflict being involved. The conflict is broadened only gradually, and only so far as it needed to achieve reconciliation. The tests of the validity of the process are procedural, having to do with hearing of several witnesses, subject to correction and change over time.
He goes on to say that in this process,
“the obedience of the brother or sister is my business. There is not hesitancy in using the word ‘sin’; yet the intention of the procedure is reconciliation, not exclusion or even reprimand. Out of this utterly personal exchange comes the confirmation (or perchance the modification) of the rules of the community, which can therefore be spoken of, with the technical language of the rabbis, as having ‘bound’ or ‘loosed’.
Nonresistance, suffering, and forgiveness, the face presented by the love of Christ within the community, also make possible contributions to communal well being and integrity on the part of individuals with particular gifts. In the midst of communal struggle to find an obedient path, there will be among others “agents of memory,” “agents of direction,” and agents of order and due process. These particular “authorities” aid both individual and community as they seek the path of obedient discipleship. And it is this very process that constitutes a primary witness to the new possibility made present in Christ’s death and resurrection.
Thus, not only in the way it relates to the larger society, but also in the way in which it addresses its internal disputes, Christian ethics provides a primary witness to God’s character and God’s purpose within history. There is much to be said, both positive and negative about Yoder’s presentation of Christian Ethics, but for now it is enough to note that to the degree that he is correct, the present life of our own church manifests a terrible defection. It is difficult to recognize any of the characteristics Yoder notes in the way in which we at present go about addressing our conflicts. If he is right, the way we live together is not only the primary ethical question for Christians, the primary focus of their moral concern; it is also the point at which their fidelity as disciples is measured.
The adequacy of Yoder’s account, however, is not the question now before us. Neither is the adequacy of the accounts given by John Cassian and Walter Rauschenbusch. The issue before us is two fold. Which of these three foci best describes our own particular stance; and more important still, which of the three is closer to the biblical witness and so of greater normative authority for Christian conscience? This second question is the next to be addressed. It is my belief that only if we find the Godly answer to this question will Christian Ethics rise Phoenix like from the ashes of our once powerful Christian Civilization.
