Moral Passion and Christian Ethics (New Studies in Christian Ethics) 9781107176829, 9781316817285

Citation preview

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M O R A L PA S S I O N A N D C H R I S T I A N   E T H I C S

In this book, Robin Gill argues that moral passion and rational ethical deliberation are not enemies; moral passion often lurks behind many apparently rational ethical commitments; and though it is a key component of truly selfless moral action, without rational ethical deliberation it can also be extremely dangerous. Gill maintains that a reanalysis of moral passion is overdue. He inspects the gap between the ‘purely rational’ accounts of ethics provided by some moral philosophers and the normative positions that they espouse and/​or the moral actions that they pursue. He also contends that Christian ethicists have not been adept at identifying their own implicit moral passion or at explaining why it is that doctrinal positions generate passionately held moral conclusions. Using a range of disciplines, including cognitive science and moral psychology, alongside the more usual disciplines of moral philosophy and religious ethics, Gill also makes links with moral passion in other world faith traditions. Robin Gill is Emeritus Professor of Applied Theology at the Univer­sity of Kent. He is the editor of the journal Theology and of the New Studies in Christian Ethics monograph series. He has authored and edited more than forty books, including Health Care and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Theology in a Social Context: Sociological Theology, Vol. 1, Theology Shaped by Society: Sociological Theology, Vol. 2, and Society Shaped by Theology: Sociological Theology, Vol. 3 (2012–​2013), as well as A Textbook of Christian Ethics (4th edition, 2014).

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n ew stu di es i n ch r i sti a n  e thics General Editor robin gill Editorial Board stephen r. l. cl ark, stanley hauerwas, robin w. lovin Christian ethics has increasingly assumed a central place within academic theology. At the same time, the growing power and ambiguity of modern science and the rising dissatisfaction within the social sciences about claims to value neutrality have prompted renewed interest in ethics within the secular academic world. There is, therefore, a need for studies in Christian ethics which, as well as being concerned with the relevance of Christian ethics to the present-​ day secular debate, are well informed about parallel discussions in recent philosophy, science, or social science. New Studies in Christian Ethics aims to provide books that do this at the highest intellectual level and demonstrate that Christian ethics can make a distinctive contribution to this debate –​either in moral substance or in terms of underlying moral justifications Titles published in the series 1. Rights and Christian Ethics, Kieran Cronin 2. Biblical Interpretation and Christian Ethics, Ian McDonald 3. Power and Christian Ethics, James Mackey 4. Plurality and Christian Ethics, Ian S. Markham 5. Moral Action and Christian Ethics, Jean Porter 6. Responsibility and Christian Ethics, William Schweiker 7. Justice and Christian Ethics, E. Clinton Gardner 8. Feminism and Christian Ethics, Susan Parsons 9. Sex, Gender and Christian Ethics, Lisa Sowle Cahill 10. The Environment and Christian Ethics, Michael Northcott 11. Concepts of Person and Christian Ethics, Stanley Rudman 12. Priorities and Christian Ethics, Garth Hallett 13. Community, Liberalism and Christian Ethics, David Fergusson (continued after the index)

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M O R A L PA S S I O N A N D CHRISTIAN ETHICS RO B I N   G I L L University of Kent

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One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/​9781107176829 10.1017/​9781316817285 © Robin Gill 2017 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2017 Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-​1-​107-​17682-​9 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-​party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Acknowledgements page ix Introduction

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Moral Passion in New Studies in Christian Ethics

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Is Moral Passion Germane Just to Theologians?

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Christian Public Ethics

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Faith as an Option

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Moral Outrage

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Collective Moral Passion within Faith Traditions

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Moral Passion as Enemy-​Love

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A Final Word

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Select Bibliography in Christian Ethics Index

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Acknowledgements

I had thought that, on retiring from teaching and taking on instead the role of editing a journal, I would not submit myself again to the rigours of writing another monograph for Cambridge University Press. However, moral passion got the better of me. More specifically, as editor of Theology I  found that I  was bombarded with new books and, for once, had the time to read them all. They raised important new questions across many, sometimes novel, disciplines that were simply impossible to resist. I  am most grateful for that stimulus, for being able to test out some of my ideas on the readers of Theology (in particular, parts of Chapters 2–​4) and especially to Philip Law at Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge with his immense knowledge of theologians across the world. Another vital stimulus has been fellow academics and members of numerous academic conferences  –​too many to recall  –​for challenging and refining some of my ideas. Robin Lovin, Stephen Clark, David Martin and Christopher Hallpike read a previous draft of this book and suggested crucial improvements. Jonathan Montgomery, John Court and Richard Norman also refined particular parts with their very considerable and diverse areas of expertise, and Susan Wessel generously allowed me to see an advance copy of her fine study, Passion and Compassion in Early Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Beatrice Rehl, Laura Morris and the other excellent staff at Cambridge University Press, going right back to 1989, have once again given me splendid support. And I am particularly grateful to Jeremy Carrette, my colleague at the University of Kent, for his careful advice on how Christian theologians might engage (as I believe we must today) in nuanced inter-​religious theological dialogue. Finally, my love and gratitude to my family: to Jenny for enduring my theological ramblings over half a century, and to Martin for lobbing penetrating questions about my various theological projects. Academics do tend to be obsessives. We especially need our families to keep at least the odd toe on the ground. ix

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Subcommittees of the British Medical Association’s Medical Ethics Committee sometimes meet in a windowless, heavily panelled, subterranean room in the Association’s London headquarters. Surrounding our careful, eminently rational –​and of course confidential –​ethical debates are the names on each panel of doctors who have been awarded the Association’s Gold Medal since the nineteenth century. Many of the doctors honoured have served faithfully on such subcommittees in the past. Some have clearly done much more. The discoverer of penicillin is there, as are several recipients of the highest British civil award, the Order of Merit (limited to twenty-​four living recipients and in the direct gift of the monarch). A number have been awarded a Nobel Prize for Medicine or are members of the House of Lords. However, it is the names of two army doctors that have long fascinated me, neither of them, as far as I know, assiduous participants at the Association, Nobel Prize winners, or members of the Order of Merit or of the House of Lords: Captain Arthur Martin-​Leake and Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse. They are the only two doctors cited for the period of the First World War and after each of their names ‘VC and bar’ is added. Only one other person, the New Zealand Second World War soldier Captain Charles Hazlitt Upham, has ever been awarded the Victoria Cross (given for extraordinary bravery within war) twice. Remarkably, two of the three survived into old age. Arthur Martin-​Leake was awarded his first Victoria Cross in the Boer War for his medical action on 8 February 1902 at Vlakfontein, as recorded briefly in The London Gazette (13 May 1902): [He] went up to a wounded man, and attended to him under a heavy fire from about 40 Boers at 100 yards range. He then went to the assistance of a wounded Officer, and, whilst trying to place him in a comfortable position, was shot three times, but would not give in till he rolled over thoroughly exhausted. All the eight men at this point were wounded, and while they were lying on the Veldt, Surgeon-​Captain Martin-​Leake refused water till every one else had been served. 1

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His second Victoria Cross was awarded early in the First World War. Again briefly (too briefly for some contemporary critics horrified that the Victoria Cross could be awarded to the same person twice), The London Gazette (16 February 1916) recorded: For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty throughout the campaign, especially during the period 29th October to 8th November, 1914, near Zonnebeke, in rescuing, whilst exposed to constant fire, a large number of the wounded who were lying close to the enemy’s trenches.

Noel Chavasse was awarded both of his Victoria Crosses for his medical services during the First World War. The London Gazette (16 October 1916) noted more fully: During an attack he tended the wounded in the open all day, under heavy fire, frequently in view of the enemy. During the ensuing night he searched for wounded on the ground in front of the enemy’s lines for four hours. Next day he took one stretcher-​bearer to the advanced trenches, and under heavy shell fire carried an urgent case for 500 yards into safety, being wounded in the side by a shell splinter during the journey. The same night he took up a party of twenty volunteers, rescued three wounded men from a shell hole twenty-​five yards from the enemy’s trench, buried the bodies of two officers, and collected many identity discs, although fired on by bombs and machine guns. Altogether he saved the lives of some twenty badly wounded men, besides the ordinary cases which passed through his hands. His courage and self-​sacrifice, were beyond praise.

The London Gazette (14 September 1917) also recorded at some length (perhaps to counter some of the earlier critics) the actions that led to a second award and his death in August 1917: Early in the action he was severely wounded in the head while carrying a wounded man to his dressing station. He refused to leave his post and for two days not only continued to attend the cases brought to his first aid post, but repeatedly and under heavy fire went out to the firing line with stretcher parties to search for the wounded and dressed those lying out. During these searches he found a number of badly wounded men in the open and assisted to carry them in over heavy and difficult ground. He was practically without food during this period, worn with fatigue and faint from his wounds. By his extraordinary energy and inspiring example he was instrumental in succouring many men who must otherwise have succumbed under the bad weather conditions. On the morning of August 2nd he was again wounded seriously by a shell and died in hospital on August 4th.

Of course, these are stylised war reports designed to encourage bravery in others. In addition, in a class-​conscious era, these reports may well have played down the moral actions of these two officers’ subordinates who also risked their lives to rescue the wounded. Both of these features continued

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in the two citations recorded in The London Gazette (14 October 1941 and 26 September 1945) for Charles Upham’s astonishing military courage –​ mostly for ‘single-​ handedly’ destroying enemy positions but on one occasion, in the first citation, for his action ‘when his Company withdrew from Maleme he helped to carry a wounded man out under fire, and together with another officer rallied more men together to carry other wounded men out.’ Yet, even when considerable allowance is made for these factors, remarkable evidence remains of extraordinarily selfless altruistic action on the part of both doctors (and on this one occasion, at least, of the third recipient). In the terms of the time their ‘courage and self-​sacrifice, were beyond praise.’ There is also quite a sharp contrast between their actions (and those of their subordinates) and our cautious deliberations as members of a medical ethics subcommittee today. How do we depict this contrast? Is it a contrast between the passionate and the calculating, between the emotional and the rational, or just between moral action and ethical deliberation? This book struggles with these questions and I am not going to offer a facile resolution, especially at this early stage. However, what I hope to persuade readers is that moral passion and rational ethical deliberation are not enemies. More than that, I  hope to persuade readers that moral passion often lurks behind, and is implicit within, many apparently rational ethical commitments and, conversely, that, while moral passion is a key component of truly selfless moral action, without rational ethical deliberation it can also be extremely dangerous. There is a balance here between moral passion and rational ethical deliberation [I use the terms ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ interchangeably, deriving separately as they do from Latin and Greek] that was known to some of the ancient Greek philosophers, to Augustine and some contemporaries and to some medieval theologians, especially Aquinas, but that has been widely overlooked today. A  generation ago Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (1981) was a key factor in successfully challenging many of us to take the ancient language of virtue seriously. The time is ripe, I believe, to do the same with rationally constrained moral passion. A book on Moral Passion and Christian Ethics is surely long overdue. Chapter  3 returns to Arthur Martin-​Leake and Noel Chavasse. When I first thought of using them as examples of extraordinary altruism I knew nothing about their private ideological or religious commitments. Only subsequently did I  discover biographies and letters that offer important clues about these. That will be for later. It is sufficient at this stage to note simply their extraordinary actions. One might readily guess that they were

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both motivated by a strong sense of duty. That may have motivated Upham as well, but evidence that he resolutely refused in later life to buy anything made in Germany might suggest that enemy-​hatred was also a factor shaping his military actions. It will be seen that Chavasse did in fact use the word ‘duty’ in his final letter to his fiancée just before he died. Yet ‘duty’ as defined in medical ethics today does not remotely depict their actions and perhaps Chavasse was simply being modest when he used it himself. Doctors today do have a duty to inform patients fully of treatment options, to respect their capacitous refusals, to be trained properly and keep their knowledge up-​to-​date, not to be negligent, to respect patient confidentiality and so forth. What they do not have is a duty repeatedly to put their own lives at great risk for the sake of their patients. Even in a context such as the recent Ebola outbreak those brave health care workers who went to affected countries were strongly warned to put their own protection first before making any contact with infected patients. Repeatedly venturing out under heavy enemy fire, and despite being wounded in the process, to rescue others who had been wounded, goes well beyond concepts of medical duty either today or even those of a century ago. Nor does the concept of moral obligation match the actions of Martin-​ Leake and Chavasse. Even then, no one obliged either of them to act in this way. On the contrary, they received their Victoria Crosses precisely because they acted well beyond the obligation required of doctors by society at the time (acting ‘beyond praise’), let  alone that required of doctors today. Moral passion, I believe, captures their actions rather better. The word compassion (in Latin) is clearly related to moral passion –​terms explored together most recently by Susan Wessel in her important book Passion and Compassion in Early Christianity (2016)  –​with both suggesting a strong emotionally felt response to victimhood. We feel passionately about things and people we care deeply about, especially if they are at risk. Many, thankfully, believe that we have a duty to bring up our children responsibly (as much as any of us can). However, once they have grown up we might then reasonably conclude that our duty is finished. Yet many of us find that we still care passionately if our children then succumb to drug addiction, make a mess of their sexual lives, or get sacked for incompetence at work. Being a good parent for us is not just about duty. It involves much more than that  –​not least com-​passion in its literal (Latin) sense of suffering alongside our children. Wessel shows at length that moral passion and compassion caused a degree of tension within early Christianity, despite their presence in the

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gospels. Partly this was because of the lingering suspicion of passion expressed by some of the Greek and Roman philosophers and partly it was because it sat uncomfortably with the ascetic calm sought by early monastics: Among such early Christians as Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa there was … a tension between feeling emotions deeply and the Stoic ideal of emotional tranquility. They shared a certain anxiety about our emotional fluctuation and its role in the Christian life. The reasons for the tension lay only partly in the intellectual difficulty involved in combining Judeo-​Christian commitments with pagan philosophy. Equanimity held the promise of composure, and even stamina, in the midst of suffering. It spoke to the virtue of steadfastness and to the practicalities at stake in ministering to the afflicted. Emotional engagement lay at the opposite end of the spectrum. Its logical consequence was compassion fatigue, a reality that none of the early Christians dismissed lightly. Even Gregory the Great, who was more sanguine than most about the advantages of a lively emotional life, acknowledged the danger when he said that grief should be measured. Augustine had similarly understood that the ideological commitment to equanimity might stop the wise man from intervening in the face of suffering. Not until the end of his life did he quiet his ambivalence toward affective engagement with suffering. (Wessel 2016, 203–​204)

This slow coming-​to-​terms with passion can be seen clearly in The City of God that Augustine wrote towards the end of his life: The Stoics, to be sure, are in the habit of extending their condemnation to compassion; but how much more honourable would it have been in the Stoic of our anecdote to have been ‘disturbed’ by compassion so as rescue someone, rather than by the fear of being shipwrecked … What is compassion but a kind of fellow-​feeling in our hearts for another’s misery, which compels us to come to his help by every means in our power? Now this emotion is the servant of reason, when compassion is shown without detriment to justice, when it is a matter of giving to the needy or of pardoning the repentant. (City of God 9.5, Bettenson 1947 translation)

When considering passionless meta-​ethical accounts a sense that ethics or morality ‘involves much more than that’ will be one of the unspoken refrains throughout this book. It reflects my frustration with both secular and religious accounts that pay no attention either to moral passion or, negatively, to moral outrage. Six decades ago the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe was so frustrated with the thin accounts of ethics of her contemporaries (when compared with Aristotle) that she suggested, doubtless using deliberate irony, that: ‘the concepts of obligation and duty –​moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say  –​of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of “ought,” ought to be jettisoned … because

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they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survive, and are harmful without it’ (Anscombe 1958, 1). I  wouldn’t go that far, yet listening to more recent supposedly self-​contained rational explanations of morality, I  am often puzzled that anyone should find them remotely persuasive for truly selfless moral action. They seem especially inadequate to account for the actions of Martin-​Leake and Chavasse. In seeking to restore ‘moral passion’ to join the now firmly reinstalled ‘virtue’ (thanks largely to MacIntyre and, before him, Anscombe) in modern ethical discourse the Dominican Servais Pinckaers’s small book Passions and the Virtue (2015) is particularly important. It was completed two months before his death in April 2008 and was first published in French and has only now become available in English. As befits a Dominican, he regarded Aquinas’s understanding of moral passion as ‘a model for us’, in contrast to what he saw as the passionless accounts of the Stoics, Descartes and modern psychology  –​as did the Jesuit theologian Simon Harak in his earlier Virtuous Passions (1993) and Robert Miner, who had read Pinckaers’s book in French, in his detailed study Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologicae 1a2ae 22–​48 (2009): In De Veritate, [Aquinas] makes a connection between the passions and the affective faculties, especially the senses. In the Summa theologicae, the study of passions becomes a veritable treatise comprising twenty-​seven questions. After analysing the passions in general, he looks at the concupiscible passions:  love, concupiscence or desire, delight or pleasure, sadness, and pain. Then he examines the irascible passions:  hope, fear, boldness, and anger … It is worth noting that Saint Thomas places this treatise in first position of the factors that contribute to moral action, even before the question of habitus, the virtues, the gifts, the beatitudes, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which will later be found in the treatises on the virtues in particular. (Pinckaers 2015, 2–​3)

As much as I admire Aquinas, I do not claim to be a Thomist, so it is not incumbent on me to follow his subdivisions of concupiscible and irascible passions (or even to adopt the term ‘concupiscible’). I do, however, find it helpful to make a distinction between positive and negative passions –​as does Oliver O’Donovan (2014) to be explored later –​and to see both as crucial to moral action, alongside inculcated moral virtues and prudential rationality. This does seem to be the position taken by both Samuel M.  Powell, located in the Wesleyan-​holiness tradition, and Jean Porter, located in the Thomist-​Catholic tradition. Powell argues that the ‘impassioned life’, as he terms it, involves an abiding tension between ‘emotion’ and ‘rationality’ (Powell 2016). Porter argues in her contribution to New

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Studies in Christian Ethics, namely Moral Action and Christian Ethics (1995) to which the next chapter returns, that The virtues of the appetites are not just desires to do good deeds, which are independently prescribed by prudence. Rather, they find expression in the individual’s desires for the good, both in general terms, and in terms of her admiration and desire for the fitting, the noble, the decent, the praiseworthy, as these ideals have been inculcated in her by her upbringing. These desires, in turn, set the orientation of the whole person, her mind as well as her passions and her will. (Porter 1995, 153–​154)

Pinckaers paid much more attention to the passions than Porter, seeing them as not just involved in moral action but actually as precipitating moral action. He also followed Aquinas in seeing the passions as differently appropriate to three stages of the moral life. The proper concern of beginners (childhood), he argued, is to learn to resist those passions, such as concupiscence, that are contrary to charity. The proper concern of those making moral progress (youth) is to see passions such as the passion of love as servants of virtue. And he expressed the proper concern of those approaching moral ‘perfection’ (maturity) as:  ‘Taken up by the love of God and transformed by the virtues, the passions then become like friends’ (Pinckaers 2015, 4–​5). In this final stage, charity has become, through grace, a ‘spiritual instinct’. For Pinckaers the saint and the martyr, especially, exemplified this final stage: ‘the martyr represents a particularly concrete, clear, and evocative form of the complete [self-​]offering to Christ that is the basis of every authentically Christian spirituality’ (Pinckaers 2016, 34). In successive chapters Pinckaers clustered the passions, sometimes in opposite pairs, such as ‘love and hate’, and sometimes in continuities, such as ‘delectation, pleasure, and joy’. However, it is his chapter on ‘anger and virtue’ that I will find particularly relevant to my concerns in Chapter 5. At the outset Pinckaers recognised the obvious problem with anger for ethicists: There is something about anger that can make one angry. Indeed, many ethicists, both in philosophy and in theology, consider anger to be a fault, an illness of the soul, and therefore deny its capacity to contribute to virtuous living. Anger is one of the principle passions and shares their condition and is thereby considered to be contrary to reason. Is the ideal to live without anger, as without passion?

And he immediately added: But what would virtue become if it were robbed of both energy and fire? (Pinckaers 2015, 74)

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He then proceeded to look at Aristotle’s disciples, who saw a positive moral role for anger; Seneca who did not; and Aquinas who again did, placing anger in the context of virtues controlled by rationality. It is worth quoting Aquinas directly here: As the Stoics held that every passion of the soul is evil, they consequently held that every passion of the soul lessens the goodness of an act; since the admixture of evil either destroys good altogether, or it makes it to be less good. And this is true indeed, if by passions we understand none but the inordinate movements of the sensitive appetite, then it belongs to the perfection of man’s good that his passions be moderated by reason. For since man’s good is founded on reason at its root, that good will be all the more perfect, according as it extends to more things pertaining to man. Wherefore no one questions the fact that it belongs to the perfection of moral good, that the action of the outward members be controlled by the law of reason. Hence, since the sensitive appetite can obey reason … it belongs to the perfection of moral or human good, that the passions themselves also should be controlled by reason. Accordingly just as it is better that man should both will good and do it in his external act; so also does it belong to the perfection of moral good, that man should be moved unto good, not only in respect of his will, but also of his sensitive appetite; according to Psalm 83.3: ‘My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God’: where by ‘heart’ we are to understand the intellectual appetite, and by ‘flesh’ the sensitive appetite. (Summa Theologicae I-​II, q.24, a.3, Dominican 1920 translation)

The literary critic Terry Eagleton is not a paid-​up Thomist any more than I am. However, he too finds Aquinas an important corrective to long​standing philosophical aversions to ‘faith’ and ‘passion’. In his deeply challenging book Culture and the Death of God (2015) he writes about ‘the spiritual vacuity of late capitalism’ and sees a clue in Aquinas: What rationalism from d’Alembert to Dawkins is loath to acknowledge is that human rationality is a corporeal one. We think as we do roughly because of the kind of bodies we have, as Thomas Aquinas noted. Reason is authentically rational only when it is rooted in what lies beyond itself. It must find its home in what is other than reason, which is not to say that it is inimical to it. Any form of reason that grasps itself purely in terms of ideas, and then fumbles for some less cerebral way in which to connect with the sensory world, is debilitated from the outset. (Eagleton 2015a, 203 and see also Eagleton 2015b, 300)

It will be seen later that Sarah Coakley’s The New Asceticism (2015) makes a very similar point to Eagleton here. Both might also agree with the Thomist Patrick Clark at this point when he argues that Aquinas, like Aristotle, assigns the passions their own proper role in the full perfection of the human person. These passions are subordinated to reason, but

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they nevertheless emerge from inclinations that are prior to reason and as such direct themselves to goods upon which the operation of reason depends. (Clark 2015, 103)

Martha Nussbaum’s celebrated study Hiding from Humanity:  Disgust, Shame and the Law (2004) also makes considerable reference to Aristotle –​ albeit none at all to Aquinas (see Miner 2009, 4–​5 and 97). She too sees the moral, and especially legal, importance of, as well as danger of, emotions such as anger, indignation, fear, grief and compassion –​but, emphatically, not of shame or disgust: I have frequently suggested that anger and indignation will be … core sentiments because they react to harm or damage. A  salient fact about the human being, from the point of view of liberalism, is its vulnerability to significant damage at the hands of others. Once again: not all instances of anger are reliable, based on correct views about what constitutes a significant damage, or whether such a damage has occurred. But it is a sentiment of the right sort on which to rely, once one evaluates critically all the concrete judgments contained within it. A liberal society, focused on the dignity, the self-​development, and the freedom of action of the individual needs to inhibit harm; to the extent that anger tracks harm, it will be a reliable guide to lawmaking. (Nussbaum 2004, 345)

Similarly, ‘compassion involves the thought that another person has suffered a significant hardship or loss, and it plays a prominent role in prompting helping behaviour that addresses these losses … Yet compassion, like anger, can go wrong’ (Nussbaum 2004, 346). In both instances, strong passions are important moral and legal stimulants to action that need to be evaluated critically and carefully. In contrast, she can see only a very limited private role for disgust and shame, regarding their social role in, say, punitive systems as ‘deeply problematic’. Eagleton is less impressed with basing such claims on ‘a liberal society’ than Nussbaum and adds, instead, a decidedly theological turn –​asserting that postmodern thought is atheistic because it is suspicious of faith whether it is religious or not: ‘It makes the mistake of supposing that all passionate conviction is incipiently dogmatic. Begin with a robust belief in goblins and you end up with the Gulag’ (Eagleton 2015a, 192). He finds evidence for such a position in Nietzsche and –​using irony himself –​in late capitalism: Conviction suggests a consistency of self which does not sit easily with the volatile, adaptive subject of advanced capitalism. Besides, too much doctrine is bad for consumption … Given its pragmatic, utilitarian bent, capitalism, especially in its postindustrial incarnation, is an intrinsically faithless social order. Too much belief is neither necessary nor desirable for its operations. Beliefs are potentially

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contentious affairs, which is good neither for business nor for political stability. They are also commercially superfluous. (Eagleton 2015a, 194–​195)

As a result, he believes that postmodern society has a ‘spiritual vacuity’ that gives rise, paradoxically, to both secularism and to religious fundamentalism. He agrees with John Milbank that ‘agnosticism designed to ward off fanaticism appears now to foment it both directly and indirectly’ (Eagleton 2015a, 198). You do not need to be a proponent of either Eagleton’s version of (increasingly theological) Marxism or Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy to see the difficulty involved in the marginalisation of faith and moral passion today. Samuel Fleischacker, for example, is an observant Jewish philosopher who is a proponent of neither Marxism nor Radical Orthodoxy. Using a version of Kant’s moral argument for theism he maintains that ‘We turn to religion because we seek a vision of the highest good that we can love’ (Fleischacker 2015, 91). He argues that assuming there is a God is no more arbitrary than assuming that there is no God. Like Kant, he does not believe that logical ‘proofs’ for the existence of God work, but in practice belief in God and divine revelation does make a difference, especially when we take a stance on what makes life worth living. He contends that We inevitably take such a stance in the way we organize our lives, whatever we may think we are doing. Even the person who says “nothing really matters; one can do whatever one likes with one’s life,” thereby takes up a view of ultimate worth … we use metaphysical claims of one sort or another to underwrite beliefs that life is made worthwhile by eros, art, politics, and the like.’ (Fleischacker 2015, 86)

Even if we conclude that it is science that makes life worth living we make, so Fleischacker argues, a metaphysical (and not a scientific) claim … that is a faith claim. In the pages that follow I note quite a number of implicit faith claims made by secularists who explicitly eschew them. For once, here, John Milbank and I are at one. I also note the tentative faith claims made recently by Roger Scruton –​which Terry Eagleton characteristically ridicules but which, in part at least, I rather admire. Moral passion has not received the sort of attention in recent years, even within Christian ethics, that it deserves. Moral passion might be thought to be an essential feature of genuinely moral behaviour. After all, if some people lack moral passion, it might seem obvious that they will be less inclined than others to believe that some actions are deeply wrong and therefore should be opposed actively by them, especially if such opposition involves a serious cost to themselves. It might also seem obvious

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that heroic moral action is likely to arise from strong and intense moral passion. Those who experience no moral passion seem unlikely candidates for heroic moral action. For them prudence seems more likely and heroic moral action is not really an obvious characteristic of the prudent. Thomas Aquinas would have thought all of this to be obvious. Pinckaers is correct to note that the passions occupy a considerable chunk of Summa Theologicae. Aquinas, at least, saw them as essential to moral action. The passions, variously understood, provide the fire that coaxes people into moral action, as well as seducing them into immoral action. Passions for him need rational control (as they did for Augustine), as well as divine grace and revelation, but guided properly they lead people along the path towards moral perfection. Aquinas insists that we can know the good with our rational faculties through natural law –​unless we are waylaid by sin or bad custom –​but to act morally we need help from human passions and from divine grace and revelation. Yet surely Terry Eagleton’s observation is also correct that in the Western world we live in a culture that for the most part knows little about divine grace or revelation and has become, in the years since the European Enlightenment, suspicious of moral passion. Since 9/​ 11 we have also become deeply wary of religiously inspired moral passion, fearing that it stokes fundamentalist violence. Any account of moral passion in Christian ethics needs to tread very carefully indeed. This has become treacherous territory. Treacherous or not moral passion is still, I believe, overdue for a recall. Even when it is overlooked or denied, it does seem to remain implicit within many religious and purely secular accounts of ethics. The chapters that follow need to inspect carefully the surprisingly large gap between the ‘purely rational’ accounts of ethics provided by some moral philosophers and the normative positions that they espouse and/​or the moral actions that they pursue. Nor have Christian ethicists in recent years been particularly adept at identifying their own implicit moral passion or at explaining why it is that doctrinal positions generate passionately held moral conclusions. The first chapter starts with Christian ethicists, reviewing and critically assessing the thirty-​four previous contributions to the Cambridge series, now nearing its conclusion, New Studies in Christian Ethics (including two of my own). It is not difficult, and not at all surprising, to discover that there is considerable moral passion implicit within most of them. In some of the contributions it is a passionate moral concern about the environment, social injustice, truth telling, human rights, human priorities,

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evil, economic justice, biology, sexuality, addiction or media violence. In others it is a more general, but equally passionate, moral concern about responsibility, moral action, globalisation, forgiveness, self-​love, religious observance, feminism, plurality or power. Some authors make more strident claims than others, but even the less strident still evince moral passion. Yet what has been absent from the series so far is a sustained account of moral passion. The second chapter explores the possibility that perhaps moral passion is germane to Christian ethicists but not to other theologians or to largely secular moral philosophers. A  rather different group of Christian theologians is examined, namely those contributing to the journal Theology since 1920. This journal is particularly apposite because it has long acted as an interface between academic theologians and those engaged in lay or ordained pastoral ministry. So it represents a much wider authorship than New Studies in Christian Ethics. It soon becomes clear that the levels of moral passion evident in moral and social contributions to this journal are very similar to those found in contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics. Next, contributions on moral philosophers are examined from a very prestigious series of public lectures in philosophy since the mid-​ 1990s. More surprisingly, perhaps, similar levels of implicit moral passion are evident among them as well, albeit without any discussion about why or how this is so. The task of trying to set out a more satisfactory basis for examining moral passion starts in Chapters 3 and 4. These chapters use a wide variety of novel disciplines for me as a theologian –​such as cognitive science, moral psychology, sociobiology, Axial Age scholarship and, occasionally, neuroscience –​alongside the more usual moral philosophy, religious ethics, theology and biblical studies, sociology of religion, social anthropology, and science and religion. Anything less than this would seem inadequate if moral passion is to be explored thoroughly. Obviously I cannot claim to be an expert in all of these disciplines, but I have tried to listen carefully to those who are. The third chapter begins with three recent theoretical works in Christian ethics  –​Mark C.  Murphy’s God and Moral Law:  On the Theistic Explanation of Morality (2011), C. Stephen Evans’ God and Moral Obligation (2013) and John E.  Hare’s God’s Command (2015)  –​ that together offer a fresh approach to the discipline beyond some of the fault lines between natural law and divine command methods. This chapter tests them in relation to two discussions that are directly relevant to an exploration of moral passion. The first of these involves claims about

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altruism within sociobiology and subsequent debate among Christian ethicists about these claims. And the second involves the claims of Peter Singer, Stephen Pinker and Michael Ruse. Here it is argued that there is a ‘moral gap’ evident in all three of these secular writers. The chapter ends with a provisional meta-​ethical map that guides the rest of the book. The fourth chapter is largely occupied with the fascinating (and for me new) claims of the sociologist Hans Joas about faith as an ‘option’ and about the so-​called Axial Age. The notion of faith as an option presumes, owing much to Charles Taylor, that the secular option in modern Western society is here to stay and that it is unwise for theologians and the religiously committed to hope otherwise. So claims to the effect that ‘without religion there can be no morality’ are clearly not true empirically and are probably unwise ontologically. This resonates with the careful and cautious work of the theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, especially in his later writings that were deeply sensitive to social context. Exclusive claims about religiously inspired moral passion are also probably unwise. In this context, fresh perspectives about the Axial Age are pertinent. Proponents argue that there are a number of stages through which culture has emerged:  prelinguistic but episodic; prelinguistic but mimetic; linguistic and mythic; and theoretic. It is the fourth stage, the theoretic, that is depicted as the Axial Age by Hans Joas, the late Robert Bellah and others, and refers to the middle centuries of the first millennium BCE, when there was a great flourishing of important and abiding philosophical works, including the Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophy, Chinese thought and Indian Hindu and Buddhist texts. I argue that, although it is natural for theologians, philosophers and others to focus on this fourth stage, moral passion may belong properly to the mimetic stage –​a stage (like all of the other stages) that still shapes human thinking and behaviour. Moral passion did not need to wait for the Axial Age flourishing any more than did love, compassion or a sense of beauty, music and art–​key elements of culture that still make human living worthwhile. The discovery of ancient human and (very recently) Neanderthal linear art and ritualistic stone circles and early-​hominin funereal practices suggests that this may indeed be so. The final three chapters explore three different forms of moral passion: the first, a negative form of moral passion, is moral anger or outrage; the second and more positive form, is collective effervescence; and the third, a very positive and radical form of moral passion, is enemy-​love. If the first is an important indicator of an experience of moral objectivity, the second is a feature of heightened communal worship in many faith

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traditions and the third appears germane especially to Christian ethics, exemplified by Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels and glimpsed just occasionally within a few of his followers. Chapter  5 is concerned with moral anger and, especially but dangerously, with moral outrage. This chapter looks at moral passion not just in the Bible but also in the Bhagavad Gita, and then at the way that the latter very differently influenced both Robert Oppenheimer, the so-​called father of the atomic bomb, and Mohandas Gandhi. The power and danger of moral passion is evident here. This chapter then examines the connection between moral outrage and moral objectivity –​especially outrage at such horrors as the Nazi Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the slave trade, aboriginal decimation in Australian and the Soviet gulags. It is argued that faith traditions, whether theistic or not, are especially adept at making this connection, believing as they do that moral order finally constitutes the world at large. There is an important difference here between Gordon Graham (who frames such a claim in theistic terms) and Peter Byrne (who is more open to non-​theistic faith traditions as well). A section follows on the vexing issue of religiously inspired violence, balanced by a final section examining non-​violent anger and moral outrage within the Synoptic Gospels. Chapter  6 explores collective moral passion within a number of faith traditions. The work of the pioneer sociologist of religion Emile Durkheim, especially his elusive concept of collective effervescence, is used as a guide in this area of positive moral passion. A distinction is made, following the Durkheim expert the late W. S. F. Pickering, between creative and re-​creative collective effervescence, with the latter being seen as more relevant to the ongoing and delineated moral passion that sustains moral communities. However, using an agnostic sociologist as a guide to collective moral passion has an obvious risk of social relativism for a Christian ethicist. Yet this chapter argues that the religiously active may view the ‘impressions of joy, of interior peace, of serenity, of enthusiasm’ that Durkheim detected within religious gatherings as ‘discoveries’ rather than as just social constructs. While social scientists working as social scientists might well resist the term ‘discoveries’ in this context, there is no reason why everyone else should do so. Rather the opposite, there is good reason to believe that the invented religions of Auguste Comte two centuries ago or of the science fiction writer Ron Hubbard in the late twentieth century are not remotely persuasive to most people. Roger Scruton (up to a point) and John Cottingham and Tom McLeish (much more) are used as guides here. This chapter then explores at some length moral communities,

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moral families and an awareness of social responsibility within a number of sacred writings  –​the Bible (Jewish and Christian), the Qurʾan, the Bhagavad Gita, the Buddhist Nikayas, and, very briefly, Confucian writings –​ as well as some oral traditions. The chapter concludes that it does seem that a variety of faith traditions do generate particularly strong and binding social and familial passions, albeit with many variations synchronically and diachronically about the exact object of these moral passions. These traditions invest time and energy to do so effectively. Those Christian ethicists who limit such moral passion to theistic faith traditions do seem to be mistaken, as do those secular thinkers who pay little or no attention to processes of moral formation. The final chapter focuses specifically on Christian ethics. Beyond a sense of moral outrage and communal moral passion shared with many other faith traditions, this chapter explores, through an examination of the Synoptic Gospels, what might be identified as distinctive to Christian ethics and different from a purely secular understanding of ethics. It starts with the principle of universalisability deployed by quite a few moral philosophers as a purely rational basis for ethics. Gordon Graham, Darlene Fozard Weaver and Colin Grant have all argued effectively in New Studies in Christian Ethics that this secular claim is suspect. Building on their critique, this chapter proceeds to explore three approaches to ethics evident within the Synoptic Gospels: the first involving the so-​called golden rule; the second the two commands to love God and neighbour; and the third the command to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. The first of these has been used to foster ecumenical action on global issues across faith traditions, arguing that a version of the golden rule is typically found in each of them. Although some caution is expressed about this claim, it nonetheless suggests that the golden rule is not actually distinctive to Christian ethics. The second, the command to love God and neighbour, seems to be a more likely candidate for distinctiveness, bringing together as it does the well-​established Jewish Shema with the obscure Leviticus 19.18. Unfortunately, major biblical scholars have shown that this claim for distinctiveness is also not secure  –​and point out that even Luke does not ascribe this bringing together to Jesus. Both the golden rule and the two love commands remain important for Christian ethics, but they cannot be claimed confidently to be germane only to Christian ethics. In contrast, it does appear that the command to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you has a better claim to be germane. In addition to being innovative, it is based on a particularly radical, deep

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and positive form of moral passion, summarised in the command to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Such moral perfection is present in Jesus, so Christians believe, but only very partially and occasionally in those who follow Jesus. Three sets of examples of people who have exhibited some degree of the command –​to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you  –​bring this chapter and this book to an end: Pope John Paul II and Ann Odre, Gordon Wilson following Betty Williams and Mairéad Corrigan and President Nelson Mandela. These rare and partial examples of heroic moral behaviour in the context of deep personal suffering offer glimpses of genuine, profound and redemptive moral passion.

Works Cited Anscombe, Elizabeth. 1958. ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’. Philosophy 33:124.1–​15. Bettenson, Henry (trans.). 1947. Republished in David Knowles (ed.). 1972. Augustine: City of God. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Clark, Patrick M. 2015. Perfection in Death:  The Christological Dimension of Courage in Aquinas. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Coakley, Sarah. 2015. The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God. London: Bloomsbury. Eagleton, Terry. 2015a. Culture and the Death of God. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.   2015b. ‘Is Marxism a Theodicy?’ In Eric Bugyis and David Newheiser (eds.), Desire, Faith and the Darkness of God:  Essays in Honor of Denys Turner, 299–​308. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Evans, C. Stephen. 2013. God and Moral Obligation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fleischacker, Samuel. 2015. The Good and the Good Book: Revelation as a Guide to Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harak, G. Simon. 1993. Virtuous Passions: The Formation of Christian Character. New York: Paulist Press. Hare, John E. 2015. God’s Command. Oxford: Oxford University Press MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue:  A  Study of Moral Theory. London: Duckworth. 2nd ed. 1985. Miner, Robert. 2009. Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologicae 1a2ae 22–​48). New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, Mark C. 2011. God and Moral Law:  On the Theistic Explanation of Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2004. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. O’Donovan, Oliver. 2014. Finding and Seeking: Ethics as Theology, Vol. 2. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

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Pinckaers, Servais OP. 2015. Passions and the Virtue. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.  2016. The Spirituality of Martyrdom… to the Limits of Love. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Porter, Jean. 1995. Moral Action and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Powell, Samuel M. 2016. The Impassioned Life: Reason and Emotion in the Christian Tradition. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Wessel, Susan. 2016. Passion and Compassion in Early Christianity. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ch apter 1

Moral Passion in New Studies in Christian Ethics

New Studies in Christian Ethics began in 1989 with discussions between the gifted Cambridge University Press editor Alex Wright (now at I. B. Tauris) and myself. Whereas in the past Christian ethics or moral theology was often regarded as a theological addendum  –​an option that theological students might take once they had done the serious business of biblical and doctrinal studies  –​it had now joined the mainstream of theological studies. As a result of an increasing emphasis on praxis, social context and the social and moral implications of systematic theology, Christian ethics had assumed a more central place within academic theology. At the same time, there had been a renewed interest in ethics within the secular academic world, not least because of the increasing power and ambiguity of modern science (especially within physics and genetics) and the growing dissatisfaction within the social sciences about claims to value-​neutrality. At the series’ inception, the seminal work of Alasdair MacIntyre (1981, revised 1985), the claims of postmodernism and fears about relativism and moral fragmentation acted as crucial stimulants. Without pretending that the modern secular world finds Christian ethics uniquely convincing, Alex Wright and I  concluded that there was a need for a series of substantial monographs in the discipline that responded intelligently to these changes and that were well informed about parallel discussions in recent philosophy, science or social science. Rather than being concerned primarily with the history of Christian ethics, the series was deliberately focused on the relevance of Christian ethics to the present-​day secular debate. It was planned as an intellectually ambitious and demanding series with two key aims: 1. To promote monographs in Christian ethics that engaged centrally with the present secular moral debate at the highest possible intellectual level 18

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2. To encourage contributors to demonstrate that Christian ethics can make a distinctive contribution to this debate –​either in moral substance or in terms of underlying moral justifications The publication in 1992 of Kieran Cronin’s book Rights and Christian Ethics marked the public beginning of New Studies in Christian Ethics. Now, after the publication of thirty-​four monographs in the series as it nears completion over the next two years, is a good time to take stock. Despite some pressure to include multiauthor collections in the series, only monographs have been accepted. And every author has been given a clear steer at the outset about the two key aims of the series and about the requirement to have a generic title of X and Christian Ethics. This was designed to be a collaborative series, with individual authors encouraged to interact with each other across denominations and different disciplines. Has this happened? Kieran Cronin’s book did indeed set the appropriate tone at the outset. I  had co-​supervised his doctorate at Edinburgh in the late 1980s together with the medico-​legal academic Alexander McCall Smith (now more widely known for his detective and comic novels). Cronin was already committed to working across theological, philosophical and legal boundaries and, as an Irish Franciscan, was inclusive in his theological and social commitments. Although I had not realised this at the time, the subject of human rights was to become increasingly important within the British Isles and more widely in Europe over the next two decades. As a result, the British Medical Association’s extensive and influential Medical Ethics Today, for example, needed to be entirely rewritten in 2004 to take account of the British Human Rights Act (1998). Cronin had correctly anticipated this trend: Christian theology can be accused of ignoring to a great extent the analysis of the language of rights at the metaethical level. I can find only handful of Christian ethicists writing in the English language or translated into English who treat of the metaethical issues surrounding the concept and language of rights. It is odd that Christianity has moved from a situation of hostility to this form of language, to one of almost naïve and unquestioning acceptance. (Cronin 1992, xviii–​xix)

There are three distinct phases in Cronin’s book, which successfully shaped subsequent books in the series. The first phase involves learning from a secular discipline (in this instance philosophy and political theory) and challenging other Christian ethicists to do likewise. The second phase involves challenging a purely secular understanding of the issue at hand (in this instance human rights) and deepening it with an understanding that is not entirely

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secular. The third phase involves identifying a distinctively theological justification for moral choices and acts. In the context of a discussion of moral passion, it is this third phase that is the most relevant here. The first phase was the easiest for Cronin. Given the relative absence of meta-​ethical explorations of human rights by other Christian ethicists at the time, his discussion of the works of Wesley Hohfeld, Carl Wellman, Joel Feinberg, H.  J. McCloskey and others was comparatively novel for a theologian. These secular academics added important distinctions to the normative but relatively unreflective use of human rights-​language at the time, say, by the World Council of Churches or even by his fellow Catholics following Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris. So, although Cronin does not make this fully explicit, the clear connection between rights/​entitlements and correlative duties, which had become a strong part of papal teaching, is somewhat modified by him using the philosophical observation that in some contexts there can be no correlative duties (for instance, from babies and the permanently comatose). Apart from clarifying distinctions within human rights–​ language, Cronin also has a chapter defending human rights against philosophical and theological sceptics. He concludes that I believe that the language of human rights has a valuable role to play in moral language, and I have shown that reductionism with regard to rights-​language is unhelpful. If the language of rights is used carefully, it is highly respectable from the moral point of view. (Cronin 1992, 80)

In the process he makes a number of concessions, including a distinction between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ senses of human rights and insisting that a concept of ‘equality of intrinsic worth’ is also needed within human rights – language. Against the sceptics he argues that human rights – language strengthens a sense of duty both within individuals and within nations. All of this clearly fits the key aim of New Studies in Christian Ethics ‘to promote monographs in Christian ethics which engaged centrally with the present secular moral debate at the highest possible intellectual level.’ Cronin starts the task of the second phase, challenging a purely secu­ lar understanding of the issue at hand and deepening it with an understanding that is not entirely secular, in earnest in the sixth chapter. Here he argues that theological imagination can deepen and enrich rights-​ language, especially by reflecting theologically on the concepts of freedom, power and covenant. On freedom (and similarly on power) he argues: [H]‌aving rights and claiming them is not sufficient to show that a person is free in the moral sense. Certainly, having rights is a sign of freedom as a legal and

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moral status, but even in order to exercise them there must be a developed sense of autonomy in the etymological sense of being self-​regulating, in charge of one’s own inner life, having a consistent set of values which guide decisions and behaviour. Rights without self-​control are sterile. In the Christian tradition the same point holds: self-​control, inner discipline –​even amounting to a relatively strict asceticism –​is fundamental for freedom. However, unlike the secular tradition which makes inner freedom a matter of human will-​power, helped by our internalisation of social norms and encouraged by fear of human sanctions, the religious believer holds that this inner freedom derives from God’s grace and the guidance of divine laws … The fundamental notion of freedom for the Christian stresses the initiative of God. From the human point of view the gift must be used appropriately. The believer must live out the implications of a radical freedom, a freedom which is supremely demanding, even ‘threatening’. (Cronin 1992, 158–​159)

On covenant, Cronin follows closely Joseph Allen’s influential study Love and Conflict: A Covenantal Model of Christian Ethics (1984). He endorses Allen’s thesis that covenant, a central theme of the Bible, is more to do with love than justice and thus reflects ‘the basic moral standard for Christian ethics, on a par with the principle of utility or the categorical imperative in secular ethics’ (Cronin 1992, 223). However, what he adds to Allen is a connection between covenant and human rights, with covenant presupposing human rights and then adding depth beyond them. He builds on those philosophers who see human rights as providing a metaphorical safety net –​a safety net that has use only when things go wrong. On this understanding, human rights ensure just the basic goods for human survival and flourishing: These goods include life itself, health, intimacy, freedom of conscience, education, the opportunity to work; the list could go on and on. But the possession of these basic goods on their own does not exhaust what we might call the moral quality of human existence. Their possession is the basis for the making of more personal choices regarding the ways in which we will participate in such general goods … These basic goods provide us with the opportunities to go further in developing particular projects which will include special covenants and special moral rights. (Cronin 1992, 214–​215)

In his eighth and final chapter, Cronin addresses the third phase, identifying at least the framework for a distinctively theological justification for moral choices and acts. Here he argues that ‘the notion that humanity’s dignity comes from being created in the image of God … gives a specifically religious justifying reason for acting morally’ (Cronin 1992, 233). He follows Vincent MacNamara’s distinction between motivation and justifying reason: In ordinary language in use each day, most people do not distinguish carefully between reasons and motives, and this is understandable since motives are always

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reasons in one sense of that term. By this I  mean that a motive is at least an explanatory concept, explaining why a person acted in a certain way. However, in ethical deliberation one concentrates more on the justification of action than on its explanation. After all, an action can be explained by bad motives just as easily as by good ones. And in relation to justification, it is MacNamara’s view that the language of ‘reasons’ is more appropriate than the language of ‘motives’. (Cronin 1992, 238)

Cronin does not of course dismiss motivation, but he does want to set it into a more deliberative context, hence his emphasis on justifying reasons for acting morally. The latter can, he claims, be religious or non-​religious and Christians characteristically use a mixture of the two when deliberating about a moral issue. He takes the example of forgiveness to illustrate this. One may be convinced that non-​forgiveness can be rejected for a variety of secular reasons: it damages the one holding a long-​term grudge; it is often disproportionate; it sets a bad example to others. But Christians are likely to add other specifically religious justifying reasons: I am under an obligation to obey the command of Jesus to forgive others out of love (Luke7.41f, 17.3–​4). Partly the reason for this is the fact that the Heavenly Father allows his rain to fall on just and unjust alike (Matthew 5.44f ); in other words, God is patient with all humans until their dying moment when they make their final option for or against him (2 Peter 3.8–​9, 15). Part of the reason for forgiving others is that God has forgiven me in a most dramatic way and expects me to imitate him spontaneously (Matthew 18.23f ). (Cronin 1992, 240)

Not only are these specifically religious justifying reasons different from purely secular ones, but for the Christian they also ‘offer a deeper, an ultimate grasp of the actions intended … because of the basic Christian insight that moral behaviour is a vital part of the most important relationship a human being has, the relationship with God’ (Cronin 1992, 241). For Cronin it is God-​centred justifying reasons that most clearly and powerfully differentiate Christian ethics from secular forms of ethics. He does not explicitly discuss moral passion, but it is clearly implicit in his claim, noted a moment ago, that a God-​centred understanding of freedom requires that ‘the believer must live out the implications of a radical freedom, a freedom which is supremely demanding, even threatening.’ God-​centred justifying reasons give religious believers an especially strong sense of moral obligation. However, applying God-​ centred justifying reasons specifically to human rights (as Cronin does in the final pages of the last chapter) presents him with an obvious problem that he never quite resolves, namely that ‘human rights in practice does not require a theological justification,

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but essentially secular-​humanistic reasons which are open to all men and women who have reached the age of moral discernment’ (Cronin 1992, 250). Indeed, if one could show that human rights claims depend ultimately on religious justifying reason (or, more narrowly, on Christian justifying reason), then their political significance would be seriously limited. In political terms, their value is supposed to reside in their universalisability for the religious and non-​religious alike. In contrast, many sceptics of human rights–​language argue that supposed rights are actually too variable to be universal. Chapter 7 returns to the issue of universalisability. Be that as it may, Cronin, displaying his Franciscan commitment, argues (quite briefly) that viewing humans as made in God’s image gives Christians a particularly strong justifying reason for upholding human rights: The violation of rights is … an offence against the creation-​covenant and a betrayal of our own natural dignity. It involves the living out of a double lie, that we are equal to God and superior to those fellow humans who are weak and easily bullied. Respect for rights, on the other hand, is an aspect of freedom’s positive potential, because it stands for the truth of the implications of being made in the image of God … Because we are tempted to forget the equal status of those around us, the claiming of rights is necessary as a salutary reminder of the dignified treatment due to all. (Cronin 1992, 259)

As I am not writing a book about human rights, I must leave Cronin for a while. This brief examination of his book has been sufficient to distinguish among the three phases of interaction between Christian ethics and another academic discipline. They provide a framework for examining other contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics.

Christian Ethics Learning from Secul ar Disciplines There is of course nothing new about theologians learning and borrowing from secular disciplines. Thomas Aquinas was especially indebted to Aristotle, mediated through Islamic sources, and Augustine before him frequently borrowed from classical authors. New Testament writers, quoting extensively from the Koine Greek of the Septuagint, inevitably mixed Greek and Hebraic concepts to depict Jesus Christ and Christian living. Implicit (and sometimes explicit) interdisciplinary borrowings have been a feature of recorded Christianity from the outset. New Studies in Christian Ethics has made a virtue of such learning and borrowing. Many contributors, themselves trained in philosophy as well

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as theology, have borrowed extensively from philosophy, and four of them  –​Garth Hallett in Priorities and Christian Ethics (1998), Stephen Clark in Biology and Christian Ethics (2000), Gordon Graham in Evil and Christian Ethics (2001) and Christopher Tollefsen in Lying and Christian Ethics (2014) –​wrote as professors of philosophy. By the time that he published Alcohol, Addiction and Christian Ethics (2006), Christopher Cook was working in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, but while he was completing the thesis that lay behind this book he was employed as a clinical psychiatrist and professor of addiction studies at the University of Kent. Similarly, Celia Deane-​Drummond held a lectureship in plant physiology at Durham before turning to theology and writing Genetics and Christian Ethics (2006). With a doctorate in economics from Yale, Albino Barrera was exceptionally well qualified to write his two contributions, Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics (2005) and Market Complicity and Christian Ethics (2011). And Jolyon Mitchell was a BBC World Service producer and journalist before he became an academic theologian and wrote Media Violence and Christian Ethics (2007). Most theologians would probably accept that, when making ethical judgments about, say, gene therapy or germ-​line interventions, knowledge about what is or is not possible scientifically is essential. Or to put this negatively, ethicists who speculate about genetic futures without understanding genetic science can be safely ignored. The sort of scientific and experimental knowledge that Celia Deane-​ Drummond has acquired is thus considered essential to her task as a Christian ethicist. Even a Christian ethicist as eminent as Paul Ramsey failed in this regard in some of his speculations in Fabricated Man: The Ethics of Genetic Control (1970). Again, it was an obvious asset that Christopher Cook had worked with one of the pioneers of the concept of alcohol dependence syndrome, even becoming a co-​author of the fourth edition of Griffith Edwards’s standard The Treatment of Drinking Problems (2003). Why then are theologians so prone to speculating about economic issues when they do not remotely have the economic training of Albino Barrera? Or why do they make moral claims about the effects of the media when they lack the knowledge and experience of Jolyon Mitchell? Or, to make the criticism even more personal, why do they make claims about social context, social determinants and social significance when they have never studied key sociological texts or done sociological research themselves? Another crucial feature of New Studies in Christian Ethics is that, before contracts are given to potential contributors, their proposals are

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peer reviewed not just by a fellow theologian but also by a sympathetic philosopher, physical scientist or social scientist. The latter needs to be convinced as much as the former if publication is to go ahead. A good example of the high level of interdisciplinary commitment required by New Studies in Christian Ethics is provided by Anthony Bash’s Forgiveness and Christian Ethics (2007). Bash originally trained in law and practised as a solicitor before completing the Durham University doctorate that lay behind his book. It may not be too surprising, then, that he moves comfortably among law, philosophy and psychology in his account of forgiveness. He argues that the virtue of forgiveness is much more complicated than is often realised, either in society at large or specifically in churches. Pointing especially to philosophical and psychological accounts of forgiveness, he argues that, in comparison, many theological accounts are inadequate: The most significant contribution to the recent understanding of forgiveness has come, not from Christian theologians, but from philosophers and psychologists who have generally sought to work from a non-​religious standpoint. The result is that the Christian voice in the development of understanding about forgiveness is now largely mute and not regarded as significant in academic discourse … Psychologists have alerted a widespread audience to the fact that sometimes people will need psychological therapy if they are to be in a position to choose whether to forgive. It is simplistic to say that victims should forgive because to forgive is a moral good:  the psychological trauma of having been wronged may disable a victim from being able to forgive … Philosophers have [also] helped to uncover the complexity of forgiveness. As a result of their work in the last half century in particular, we cannot now say that we should always forgive. There are times when it is wrong to forgive and there are times when one cannot forgive. (Bash 2007, 174–​175)

So Bash sides with those psychologists who argue that forgiveness properly understood is a complex process. He also sides with those philosophers who maintain that there are occasions when unconditional forgiveness is actually wrong, for example, when the victim is dead or where forgiveness conflicts with justice. At this point, he clearly differs from Cronin’s absolutist and cerebral theological position on forgiveness. He also dissents from the saintly Desmond Tutu’s unconditional forgiveness while chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa instigated by President Nelson Mandela (to whom Chapter  7 returns), arguing that ‘forgiveness was an incidental consequence of some work of the Commission and its place the subject of considerable debate and even disagreement during the course of the hearings of the Commission’ (Bash 2007, 175). Bash concludes passionately that,

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theologically, forgiveness is properly seen as a gift rather than as a moral duty. We do have a duty, but it is better seen as a duty to strive to forgive –​ believing, on theological grounds, that it is finally God who forgives unconditionally. Again, it is not necessary for present purposes to resolve this disagreement about forgiveness. All that need be noted is that Bash borrows unashamedly from secular disciplines in order to nuance Christian ethics and that his evident, but implicit, moral passion is tempered by an awareness of moral complexity: I have … argued that it is probably mistaken to speak of forgiveness as something that is clear-​cut or even the end point of a process. It is possible to forgive one day and not the next. It is better to regard forgiveness as something that develops and admit that there are ebbs and flows in one’s capacity to forgive … In addition, much of the discussion about forgiveness is simplistic, not doing justice to the complexity of the issues  –​philosophical, moral, relational and spiritual  –​with which forgiveness intersects. Forgiveness is a complex, multi-​layered process, a medley of discrete, heterogeneous phenomena that apply (in varying degrees) situationally. (Bash 2007, 166–​167)

Using secular disciplines to reveal unexpected theological complexity is also a feature of one of the most widely read books in New Studies in Christian Ethics, Susan Frank Parsons’s Feminism and Christian Ethics (1996). Much of the book is concerned with outlining three different feminist paradigms, showing both how they work and how they do not. Each of the paradigms has been championed variously by both secular feminists and Christian feminists and traces of each can be found within the work of particular authors. Yet they are distinct and not always mutually compatible. The first is the liberal paradigm with roots in the Enlightenment. Many of the early feminists based their arguments for equality of rights and respect on its principles. As with other forms of liberalism, it focuses on rational individualism and personal autonomy and struggles with social justice and communitarianism. The second is the social constructionist paradigm and has roots in Marxism. The focus here is on eliminating patriarchal social structures and creating a new social order. In turn, it struggles with personal autonomy. The third is the naturalist paradigm with a focus on innate biological differences between men and women, especially differences resulting from child bearing. Aspects of philosophy, social science and biology are used to depict these three paradigms. Many Christian ethicists have found these three paradigms useful when identifying some of the ongoing tensions within feminist positions. As a means of clarifying differences, this book has long proved its worth.

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However, beyond clarification a problem remains that Parsons struggled to resolve: Having examined in some depth the three major frameworks of moral understanding which have been found throughout the history of modern feminism, the complex relationship between feminism and Christian ethics can perhaps be appreciated more fully. Feminists themselves have used different sets of assumptions in order to investigate the lives and positions of women in all kinds of societies … Sometimes the work that has been done within one framework sits comfortably with that of another, and much collaborative work can be done to develop clearer understanding of the social and moral issues of women’s lives. Perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of this comes from those feminists who identify with the social constructionist task of investigating the impact of structures upon the shaping of human consciousness, but who at the same time believe with liberals that there is an authentic nature within us, shared in common with men, which can only be fulfilled through a just social order. In other cases, the work of feminists is contradictory … the obvious example is of those feminists who work within the naturalist paradigm, believing there to be a distinctive nature of women which feminist ethical thinking can enunciate, which exactly runs counter to the postmodern feminist claim that there is no such thing as a given nature. (Parsons 1996, 175)

The problem with this paragraph is that the ‘complex relationship’ at the beginning and the ‘contradictory’ work at the end are much more obvious than the apparently shared task of social constructionists and liberals in the middle. Like Bash, Parsons is rather better at revealing moral complexity than providing clear moral guidelines. Yet it should become apparent from later chapters that such revealing is still important, especially in a context of moral passion.

Christian Ethics Deepening Secul ar Concepts It has been seen that Cronin sought to deepen and enrich human rights–​ language by reflecting theologically on the concepts of freedom, power and covenant. I avoided setting out the way that he did this with ‘power’ because this task was done more fully two years later by James Mackey in Power and Christian Ethics (1994). Mackey used a variety of philosophers, historians and philosophers (especially A.  P. D’Entrèves and Alasdair MacIntyre) to argue that power can be located on a spectrum between force at one end and moral authority at the other. Although many instances of actual power contain elements of both force and moral authority, force on its own tends to eliminate the possibility of genuinely moral behaviour. At most, he believes, force should be used to protect the

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perimeters of the area within which moral agents are to act. Once individuals are coerced (by states or by churches) they are no longer free to act as moral agents. Yet ironically, both states and churches have long histories of attempting to coerce individuals. In my first contribution to New Studies in Christian Ethics I  used Mackey’s account of power at some length to analyse moral conflict within churches (Gill 1999, 237–​257), so there is no need for me to repeat that theme here. What can be noted here is that Mackey offers a theological account of power as moral authority that is deeply at odds with the power as force habitually deployed by states and churches when in power: Jesus, on the night that he was betrayed, took bread and blessed God for it and broke it, knowing the symbol that bread is, the symbol of life itself. Those who test the world like this and register its reality as grace, existence and life poured out freely over and over, are enlightened and empowered to pour out their own lives in turn, even if on extreme occasions that may mean to them the final pouring out that is death. Jesus lived for others to the point of dying for others, and he drew others into the drama of sensing life as grace poured out. His life, and even more his death, was for others the incarnation of the word and power of grace, and the channel of that word and power into their own lives. (Mackey 1994, 179)

Given Mackey’s low estimate of the actual behaviour of churches (including his own Catholic Church) and the laconic style of much of his writing, the theological passion evident in this paragraph is remarkable. In Jesus and then in the Eucharist he identifies a deeply challenging understanding of power that is quite different from power seen as force. Two other contributors, Garth Hallett and Christopher Tollefsen, also Catholics, offered similar sharp, even idealistic, challenges that go against the grain of conventional expectations. Hallett starts his study with the moral dilemma about priorities set out in A. C. Ewing’s Ethics: ‘It is clear that the money spent by a man in order to provide his son with a university education could save the lives of many people who were perishing of hunger in a famine, yet most people would rather blame than praise a man who would deprive his son of a university education on this account’ (Ewing 1953, 37–​38). Hallett examines a number of philosophical ways of resolving this moral dilemma, including those of utilitarians such as Peter Singer, and finds them all to be less than satisfactory. Instead, he finds the following in the New Testament: Matthew 25.31–​46 is suggestive, but it permits no inference regarding Ewing’s case. The Father’s surrender of the Son is suggestive (as are Jesus’ analogous choices and Luke 14.12–​14), but it too permits no inference. The New Testament’s overall stress on aid to the needy rather than the near is suggestive, but it likewise

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permits no inference. Yet this, at least, can be noted in conclusion, that whereas the New Testament’s multiple intimations, even when combined, do not certainly favour the neediest over the nearest, for instance in Ewing’s case, they certainly do not support Ewing’s contrary verdict. They certainly do not favour the nearest over the neediest. (Hallett 1998, 54)

In contrast, in his subsequent survey of Patristic and Thomist writings, Hallett finds this position reversed. The nearest are generally favoured over the neediest. He maintains that this later tradition is mistaken and argues, instead, for a position more akin to the New Testament:  ‘to the extent that he can, the father should give preference to the starving’ (Hallett 1998, 112). He admits that this conclusion does not resolve all problems of spending priorities, yet it ‘points the way’ about how we should help ‘millions of present-​day refugees’ living in desperate conditions (Hallett 1998, 136). A somewhat dry ‘casuistic’ discussion of a philosopher’s dilemma by the Jesuit Hallett leads to a conclusion fired by moral passion. The philosopher Christopher Tollefsen also takes an absolutist moral position, in his case on the wrongness of lying. On this he sides with both Augustine and Aquinas. He also sides firmly with the moral absolutism, the attack on proportionalism and consequentialism and the defence of natural law in Pope John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor. While writing as a committed Catholic layperson, he nevertheless includes sensitive accounts of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr’s non-​absolutist accounts of lying  –​from which he finally dissents  –​in addition to the well-​known absolutist position of Kant. He is dissatisfied with attempts either to define lying in a way that permits one to assert contrary to one’s belief or to allow altruistic circumstances where lying is sanctioned or even encouraged. He is well aware, though, that many find it difficult not to condone altruist lying and to his credit he faces at length one of the most obvious examples of this –​namely, non-​Jews in Nazi Germany sheltering persecuted Jews. What is termed ‘Nazis at the door’ provides an acute test for his absolutist position. Was it really wrong for these non-​Jews to deny that they were sheltering Jews? He offers a number of ingenious strategies that do not resort to lying, but do involve, say, challenging the Nazis about their right to have such information and insisting on their need to repent –​as if that would not have instantly alerted the Nazis. But be that as it may, he too concludes with obvious moral passion: [T]‌he course that I  advocate and argue for in this book could not be adopted without cost. It is true that we make use of lies in our daily life, not only for malicious ends, which I  have not thought needed much comment, but also for good ends of a variety of sorts. In some, though I think not all, such cases,

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non-​participation in lies would have as its consequence the loss of the possible good, or the bringing about of an otherwise avoidable error. But willingness to sacrifice some goods is inextricable from a moral ethos that holds that some things are never to be done. We are not, as moral agents, responsible for bringing about every possible good or staving off every possible evil. But we are responsible for our deeds, our choices, and I have argued that the choice to lie is one that no agent should ever make for any reason. (Tollefsen 2014, 196)

If Mackey, Hallett and Tollefsen share a common pattern –​nuanced consideration of complexity concluding with moral passion –​they may not actually share each other’s substantive conclusions. Mackey’s ideal location of power as self-​giving moral authority might seem to lead most naturally to thoroughgoing pacifism. Hallett’s prioritising of the neediest over the nearest might seem to lead most naturally to parental child neglect. And Tollefsen’s rebuttal even of altruistic lying might seem to lead most naturally to the risk of endangering others while protecting self-​purity. Their substantive conclusions are both challenging and morally risky. Less risky, but still highly thoughtful, are the claims for Christian distinctiveness in Jean Porter’s Moral Action and Christian Ethics (1995), William Schweiker’s Responsibility and Christian Ethics (1995), David Fergusson’s Community, Liberalism and Christian Ethics (1998) and Robert Gascoigne’s The Public Forum and Christian Ethics (2001). Each of these contributors (the first and fourth Catholic, the second United Methodist Church and the third Church of Scotland) believes that Christian ethics can make an important contribution to society at large by deepening purely secular concepts. All might share Gascoigne’s summary of Christian identity that concludes his book: Christian identity … grounded in the concrete, historical reality of God’s love in Christ, and expressed in engagement with the world motivated by faith that the Spirit calls all humanity to participate in the communion of divine love. (Gascoigne 2001, 235)

Porter outlines her project at the outset: My own approach in this book has been to start on the philosophical side, with the work of those men and women known as the moral anti-​theorists. As will become obvious, I am in sympathy with their approach, and agree entirely with their rejection of the modern theoretical approach to morality, as exemplified by the work of Immanuel Kant. Yet this conclusion still leaves the question, “how do we arrive at moral judgements?” which, as it turns out, is equivalent to asking for an account of moral rationality. It is here that the resources of Christian ethics can offer an alternative and more satisfactory account of moral reasoning that functions analogically rather than apodictically, and of ideals of

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virtues that are integrally connected to moral rules without being reducible to them. (Porter 1995, 5)

As already noted in the Introduction, she turns to Aquinas’s account of moral virtues, arguing that they are still relevant even to those who do not share his theological commitments. The most recent contribution to New Studies in Christian Ethics, David Elliot’s Hope and Christian Ethics (2017), also has a similar commitment to a present-​day use of Aquinas, in his case to enrich or redirect secular understandings of hope. For Porter the moral life is shaped by a subtle interplay between a healthy self-​regard [spelt out in detail later in Darlene Fozard Weaver’s Self Love and Christian Ethics (2002)] grounded in restraint and forthrightness, kindliness and decency built out of caring, and fairness and responsibility forming a basis for justice [also the subject of E. Clinton Gardner’s Justice and Christian Ethics (1995)]. These virtues are interdependent and, in contrast to Kant’s single-​ minded call to duty, together shape virtuous lives. Published in the same year, William Schweiker’s study of responsibility also makes some use of Aquinas, but only as one of a number of Christian theologians. His concerns are shaped more by changing social and political contexts than those of Porter. In particular, he is concerned about the awkward combination in the world today of increasing moral pluralism and technological power. He argues that there is a need for an ethical approach based on responsibility (both individual and corporate) at a time when people are becoming more confused about the bases of morality and just when technological power is becoming increasingly powerful. More recently, Schweiker (2004) has engaged with the literature on globalisation, but at this early stage he was very conscious that physics, genetics and biology were presenting very serious moral choices to people who were less than clear about how to make such choices: The irony of the technological age is that with the increase of human power the goodness of existence is affirmed in human action while the policies which direct such action demean and destroy the possibility of continued existence on this planet. The challenge of our age is to put technological resources to work in respecting and enhancing the integrity of life. (Schweiker 1995, 211)

It is at this point that Schweiker argues, like Gardner, that biblical concepts of justice and responsibility act as an important corrective. And, like Mackey, he relocates power: Ultimate power, God, is known in terms of its relation to finite existence as the source and goal of life itself. Theological ethics severs the equation of power and value and insists that power serve a value beyond itself, the good of existence.

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This is the revolutionary nature of Christian faith, for it recasts the scale of values which determines how we see, know and experience the world and human existence. A Christian account of the moral life does not mutilate human goods, as the critics hold. Rather, it curtails the valorization of power and thereby protects the values which permeate finite life. (Schweiker 1995, 226)

In my two previous contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics I  also adopted a virtue ethics approach as a bridge between secular and Christian ethics within the public forum (see also Gill 2013). However, in his preface to my Health Care and Christian Ethics (2006) Robin Lovin identified a significant issue with my use of healing stories in the Synoptic Gospels –​itself influenced by the second book in New Studies in Christian Ethics, namely the late J.  I. H.  McDonald’s Biblical Interpretation and Christian Ethics (1993): [Gill] takes up the challenge of identifying values that are specifically grounded in Christian moral traditions about health and care, beginning with an extensive study of healing in the Synoptic Gospels. With a particularity that might have been disqualifying in the earliest search for general principles, he identifies four core values –​compassion, care, faith and humility –​that emerge from the Synoptic tradition and provide the basis for a critical Christian stance towards health and health care practices today. (Gill 2006, x)

Fergusson’s study of communitarianism and liberalism in Christian ethics helps greatly to modify this particularity. He argues at length that it is not necessary to adopt either communitarianism (as MacIntyre and then Stanley Hauerwas have done) or liberalism (as Jeffrey Stout has done) wholeheartedly. There are strengths and weaknesses in both and each has a place within Christian ethics in the public forum. Reflecting his own position within a national/​established church, he argues: [T]‌here are secular ideals which cannot be gainsaid. Although the commitment to freedom, human dignity, universal justice, and universal benevolence may often be observed in the breach, these cannot be dismissed. They have contributed to the spread of democracy and to greater equality between sexes, races, and social classes. They have helped to bring about the abolition of slavery, universal adult suffrage, comprehensive education, and systems of social security. (Fergusson 1998, 155)

Like Cronin, but unlike MacIntyre, Fergusson defends human rights-​ language while acknowledging its limitations. At the same time, like MacIntyre, he defends communitarianism: It might be [claimed] that the purpose of God’s grace on the ministry and parables of Jesus is to include the marginalised individual within a community.

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Similarly, there is to be a place accorded to the stranger in the house of Israel. In this respect, these biblical themes cannot be construed as support for a political theory which establishes the rights of the individual as logically prior to the existence and well-​being of a community. It is precisely against such false prioritising that communitarians inveigh. The individual must finally be understood in terms of his or her having an appointed place in the kingdom of God. (Fergusson 1998, 157)

While writing from a Catholic and non-​established church position, the Australian Gascoigne still has many points in common with Fergusson. Both are highly critical of the ‘ecclesial ethics’ of Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank (like Mackey, they both consider actual churches to be too fallible to be reliable exemplars of Christian virtues). Both believe that Christians should participate in the public forum of pluralist societies. And both are suspicious of the radical individualism of some forms of liberalism: Perhaps the most important insight that Christian faith can contribute to the contemporary search for community is a truly interpersonal understanding of the self, an understanding that recognizes both the values of individual subjectivity and the way in which this subjectivity depends on committed relationships to others for its full realization. Such an understanding of the self would recognize the value of individual freedom which is enshrined in modernity, but at the same time attempt to show that this freedom is enhanced and fulfilled by understanding the human person in the context of communal, interpersonal relationships, rather than as a ‘punctual self ’, an individual agent characterized by needs and desires. (Gascoigne 2001, 231)

For Gascoigne, and for Stanley Rudman in Concepts of Persons and Christian Ethics (1997) before him and Adrian Thatcher in Living Together and Christian Ethics (2002) after him, it is self-​in-​community, and especially self-​in-​communion with the Triune God, that properly represents a Christian understanding of personhood –​an understanding that is very different from secular radical individualism. In responding to some of the stronger claims of socio-​biologists three of the contributors to New Studies in Christian Ethics have been quite sharply divided. It is seen in Chapter 3 that some sociobiologists maintain that altruism and ethical behaviour can be fully explained simply as by-​products of human evolution. While all three contributors might object to the word ‘fully’ in the previous sentence, Stephen Clark’s Biology and Christian Ethics (2000) and Colin Grant’s Altruism and Christian Ethics (2001) argue in different ways that such an explanation is deeply misguided. Stephen Pope’s Human Evolution and Christian Ethics

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(2007), in contrast, argues that natural law theory can cope perfectly well with a degree of sociobiological explanation even in areas of ethics. It is worth noting for the moment why Pope believes Grant in particular to be wrong: [Grant] condemns sociobiology for catering to human selfishness, narrow-​ mindedness, and tribalism … The gospel demands not only ethical impartiality, Grant argues, but even a radical other-​regard that de-​centers the self and its parochial attachments. The model of pure self-​sacrifice is Jesus, who taught unconditional love, exemplified uninhibited compassion, and died on the Cross out of love … neighbor-​love is unilateral, truly universal and not just apparently altruistic:  it renounces self-​gratifying ties of friendship, family, and community and embraces radical self-​sacrifice as a way of life. E.O. Wilson believes that compassion actually ‘conforms to the best interests of self, family, and allies of the moment’; for Grant, Christian love does the reverse. (Pope 2007, 229–​230)

Pope believes that Grant misunderstands both Christian love and natural law. Like Weaver, he argues that Christian love does properly include both self-​love and mutual love, even friendship, and does not simply consist of unilateral love. In addition, Pope sees some symmetry between sociobiological observations and natural law: Christian ethics must address the claim that persisting moral principles should contribute to, or at least not undermine, the genetic fitness of the group that professes them. This claim is prescriptive, and based on a common-​sense ethic that regards morality as intended to allow human beings to live happy and decent lives, an important part of which involves rearing children in a healthy and safe environment that allows them to grow into competent adulthood. The evolutionist position also relies on a descriptive view of human beings as marked by limitations of moral energy and other resources and moved by bonds and affections that are highly particular. (Pope 2007, 233)

Again, this raises important issues for moral passion that are addressed in Chapter 5. If some degree of moral passion is crucial for effective moral action in demanding and dangerous situations, to what extent is such passion a by-​product of human evolution? The differences here between Pope, Grant and Clark need further exploration later. However, before leaving Pope it is interesting to note that some of the theologians who are currently engaging with cognitive scientists take a similar line. Justin Barrett and Matthew Jarvinen, both at Fuller Theological Seminary, have, for example, argued as follows (albeit coming dangerously near to a ‘God of the gaps’ argument): Suppose human’s natural disposition toward religion were incidental as a part of our evolution, that it might not have evolved because it did not confer any special

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selective advantage as byproduct accounts suggest. From a naturalist perspective, it was highly improbable that humans evolved with such a byproduct. What accounts for this improbable state of affairs? Certainly not ordinary selection pressure. This is a byproduct after all. Given God, such an improbable state of affairs is more probable than given no-​God. Hence this improbable state of affairs (the religious byproduct) amounts to evidence for God. (Barrett and Jarvinen 2015, 176)

Chapter 5 also returns to one of the most disturbing and quirky contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics, Gordon Graham’s Evil and Christian Ethics (2001). It is the examples of evil depicted in this book that are particularly disturbing. Graham focuses on a number of the most sadistic, gruesome and even cannibalistic serial murderers, such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen, encouraging readers to see their evil actions as deeply seductive. He also reminds readers of some the twentieth century’s most appalling genocides, repeatedly arguing that many of the secular accounts of such evil are woefully inadequate. The quirkiness of the book relates to his belief that ‘satanic powers’ (not understood simply as metaphors) offer a much more adequate account of evil: Is there, then, a spirit of evil at work in the world?… I have argued … that when we consider carefully the phenomena of the multiple murderer, or the evils of Stalinism, Nazism and the Hutu onslaught in Rwanda, explanations in terms of individual psychologies or sociological conditions can be seen to fail dramatically. By contrast, the substantial interpretation of ideas such as the seductive power of evil that are customarily thought to be mere figures of speech, does offer us a good deal (but not everything) in the way of understanding these distressing phenomena. It is further worth observing … this sort of explanation is not altogether absent from the modern world. Though daemonology is highly unfashionable, people still turn to prayer and the invocation of divine assistance. (Graham 2001, 192–​193)

He then turns to Stephen Clark’s From Athens to Jerusalem (1984) for support, although significantly he bypasses those more sceptical theologians for whom demonology has little or no leverage in theodicy (since even demons are classically deemed to be created by God). However, there may still be something of considerable interest for moral passion in Graham’s focus on evil, especially when trying to establish moral objectivity. If many find difficulty in agreeing about natural goods, they might find it easier to agree on things that are truly evil. They might also agree that moral relativism is thoroughly inadequate in the context of a multiple murderer, or the evils of Stalinism, Nazism

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and the Hutu onslaught in Rwanda. Graham makes an important point here, although it is less about theodicy than about moral objectivity as depicted in natural law theories. This too is given careful attention in Chapter 5.

Distinctively Theological Justifications for Moral Choices and Acts For a Christian ethicist this is the most challenging and perhaps the most interesting of the three phases established by Cronin’s initial contribution to New Studies in Christian Ethics. For a secularist, however, it may be the least convincing, mainly because for all of the contributors to the series this phase depends on a belief in God. Because contributors have been encouraged to be normative and not simply descriptive, it is hardly surprising that those sitting loose to Christian commitment have been reluctant to contribute. This high level of commitment may also be correlated with the moral passion that has already been noted. I suspect that for all of the contributors, including those writing as professional philosophers, the arduous task of writing and rewriting a Cambridge University Press monograph for the series has been more an act of personal commitment than of academic or professional development. Four contributors have made a particularly significant impact:  Lisa Sowle Cahill in her two books Sex, Gender and Christian Ethics (1996) and Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics (2013); Michael Northcott in The Environment and Christian Ethics (1996); David Hollenbach in The Common Good and Christian Ethics (2002); and Albino Barrera in his two books Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics (2005) and Market Complicity and Christian Ethics (2011). Northcott is the only Anglican here; the others are all Catholic, with Hollenbach being a Jesuit and Barrera a Dominican. Cahill and Hollenbach are also colleagues at Boston College. Cahill’s first contribution to the series has been widely read by students of Christian ethics. With great honesty she faces squarely the dilemmas that churches in Western society face on issues of sex and gender. As a Catholic she is well aware that her own church has frequently been criticised both for its record of sexual abuse and repression and for the gender inequalities in its leadership. As a Christian feminist she admits that much of this criticism is justified. However, she is also critical of secular liberals who see personal autonomy and consent as the only ethical criteria relevant to sexual ethics. She researched this book as part of The Family, Religion and Culture Project at Chicago University directed by the late Don Browning. In the foundation

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book for the series, From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate (Browning et al., 1997) the authors argued that, in a context of high levels of divorce and single-​parenthood that seriously disadvantage children, the fundamental family issue of our time is how to defend, retain (if necessary with the help of law) and honour intact families –​that is, families in which children are brought up by both of their living, biological parents. As theological liberals, however, they insisted that this should be achieved without discriminating against non-​traditional families and without retaining the inequalities of power, status and privilege ensconced in unreformed versions of marriage and family. Clearly, difficult balances were involved in this agenda –​difficulties that Cahill acknowledged, but did not resolve, and that still remain problematic for churches: Procreation is an important meaning of human sexuality, as Catholic representatives rightly perceive, and its value should be institutionalized in family forms which are stable and beneficent toward children. Abortion as a ‘means of birth control’ is a threat to social support of pregnancy, birth, and childbearing in the family. And when promoted individualistically as a ‘woman’s right,’ it also detracts from public awareness of the much broader and deeper economic and political supports needed to ensure equality and full moral agency for women. However, Catholicism has not gone nearly as far in implementing responsibility for women cross-​culturally as it has in establishing itself as a foe of what to many Western or educated women has become the banner of their liberation from patriarchal gender stereotypes and dependence on men for economic survival. (Cahill 1996, 214)

There is an obvious gap between the final sentence in this paragraph and the other three and little that has happened since the mid-​1990s has managed to reduce it. Intact families throughout the Western world have continued to decline, and public respect for churches on issues of sexuality has also continued to decline. Cahill herself soon came to regard ‘the never-​ ending advocacy of many churches, religious groups, and theologians for “pro-​life” causes’ as misguided: ‘The prevailing discourse has managed virtually to equate “religious bioethics” with such advocacy, constructing it as a public danger, even while insisting on its marginality … religion is framed as entirely preoccupied with “status of life” issues’ (Cahill 2003, 370–​371). Perhaps for this reason her second contribution to New Studies in Christian Ethics, seventeen years after her first and after her prolonged campaigning on issues such as AIDS, was concerned with global justice: Global realities of human inequality, poverty, violence, and ecological destruction call for a twenty-​first-​century Christian response that can link the power of the gospel to cross-​cultural and interreligious cooperation for change. The aims of this book are to give biblical and theological reasons for Christian commitment to justice, to show why just action is necessarily a criterion of authentic Christian

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theology, and to give grounds for Christian hope that change in violent structures is really possible. The premise of this work is that religious experience of God carries a moral way of life as its equally original counterpart. This is because inclusive community with other human beings is a constitutive dimension of community with God. ‘Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, and soul; and your neighbor as yourself ’ (Mark 12.28–​34). Love God and neighbor –​not God, then neighbor. To experience salvation is to have one’s life completely reoriented in relation to God and simultaneously, integrally, in relation to other human beings. Authentic religious experience –​salvation –​is inherently transformative and political. Reconciled human relations are lenses through which we glimpse the goodness and power of God. (Cahill 2013, 1)

The moral passion here is manifest. She starts with the global disasters of ‘human inequality, poverty, violence, and ecological destruction’. She uses the words ‘power’, ‘authentic’, and ‘salvation’ twice each. And she premises the whole on the two dominical commands to love (to which Chapter 7 returns). This is not dispassionate, academic prose. Because these are global disasters she insists that a Christian response must be, not just cross-​cultural, but also interreligious. Many of those theologians who have been involved, for example, in responding to HIV and AIDS, will know that if human behaviour is to be modified effectively in order to halt contagion, then people need to be convinced across cultural and religious divides. Similarly, if the ‘contagion’ of religiously inspired violence or world poverty is to be halted, people need to be convinced across these divides. And it is only action across these divides that is likely to reverse human ecological destruction correlated with life-​ threatening climate change. Schweiker’s concerns about globalisation have led him (and me) in a similar theological direction (Schweiker 2004, 2005, and forthcoming). Cahill offers her ‘reasons for Christian commitment to justice’ in two stages (to which Chapter 3 returns). The first is based on a modified version of natural law and the second on a critical appropriation of the Bible and Christian tradition. The second occupies much more space in Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics than the first, perhaps because she needs to show that, as a Catholic feminist and theological realist, she does take the Bible (along with Christian tradition) seriously. The Bible is taken seriously by her (as can be seen in the previous quotation), but not as a sufficient resource for Christian ethics. For her, some notion of natural law is also needed, not just because she is a theologian who is a Catholic, but also because natural law allows her to reach across interreligious divides: I have argued that certain goods for humans can be universally known, most obviously those based on the physical conditions of human survival and our

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natural sociality and need for cooperative relationships. Moreover, basic human equality yields an obligation to ensure that all have access to the minimum conditions of human sustenance. This implies, at the very least, that our common human environment be protected as a prerequisite of human flourishing. The process of naming ecological goods and responding to ecological dangers should be inclusive of all those affected. A natural law approach to the characteristics and goods of ‘nature’ can be extended analogously from human to nonhuman beings. We can know some universal ecological goods, such as interdependence, balance of ecosystems, openness to the new, clean water and air, and species survival. As public goods or global common goods, these are at one level human goods. But they are also goods for nature itself (Cahill 2013, 281)

This links interestingly to Michael Northcott’s seminal contribution to the series The Environment and Christian Ethics (1996), not least because Cahill explicitly references his book at this stage in her argument about non-​human goods. If Cronin anticipated growing public concern about human rights, Northcott similarly anticipated growing concern about environmentalism, advancing a variety of biblical and natural law reasons for supporting this global cause. For the last two decades, Northcott’s book for New Studies in Christian Ethics has been essential reading for anyone interested in environmentalism within Christian ethics. He provided an accessible account of some of the main factors contributing to the current environmental crisis  –​ including human-​induced climate change [which took central place in his subsequent books (Northcott 2007, 2013)], pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, species extinction, overpopulation and overconsumption –​together with a wide-​ranging commentary on various historical and recent theological responses. He also addressed those environmentalists who distrusted such responses having ‘accepted Lynn White’s argument that biblical teaching about creation, by distancing God from nature, despiritualises nature and makes it available for technological and industrial transformation’ (Northcott 1996, 83). All of this has been well received. However, in addition to this analysis and critique, there is a much bolder, even strident, theological claim. Northcott argues with evident moral passion that environmentalism actually needs a doctrine of creation: [T]‌he recovery of an ecological ethic in the modern world requires the recovery of a doctrine of creation, and the worship of a creator who is also redeemer of the creation. It will also involve the reaffirmation of the relationality of God as creator to all that is created, to the materiality and embodiedness of all life, and of all humanselves-​in-​relation, and not simply to the life of certain elected souls … The

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non-​human world … does not simply consist of matter and sub-​human life forms which either have been constructed by chance, or by a divine being who brings them into being and then places them entirely at the service of humans. Creation is rather the gifted and blessed state of embodied being for which God intends goodness and blessing from the beginning of the cosmos, an intention which is reaffirmed in the coming of Christ and the gift of the Spirit. The divine origin and purposiveness of embodied, created order is affirmed by the incarnation. (Northcott 1996, 222)

Two years earlier Ian Markham’s Plurality and Christian Ethics (1994) advanced a similarly passionate claim about theological distinctiveness. He suggested that Americans, being more religious than their European counterparts, have coped rather better than others with the plurality of cultures and religions that characterise modern societies. This difference, he argued, has theological significance: For the naturalist the universe is an inanimate entity that through remarkable chance has generated mind and consciousness. The main theistic claim is the opposite: at the heart of the universe is goodness and love enabling all to be. This is what we mean by God. We find ourselves in awe and reverence placing ultimate value on this being at the heart of the universe … Worship is the realization of the location of ultimate value. Such a disposition forces one to monotheism. Further reflection on God establishes the crucial nature of interpersonal relations both with each other and between God and us. The claim that the universe is ultimately personal points to the moral dimension. These moral truths are grounded in the character of God. (Markham 1994, 166–​167)

This, in turn, led him to a much bolder and morally passionate claim that ‘the most appropriate foundation for tolerance is not an irrational secularism, but a rational theism’ and that ‘culture needs religion, because only religion has the resources for a rich, rational, and moral discourse in the public square’ (Markham 1994, 168). It is the word ‘irrational’ in this bolder claim that requires some exegesis. The weaker interpretation is that rational theism is more appropriate than those forms of secularism that are irrational. But that is not much of a claim. Rationalists are obviously likely to prefer anything that is rational to things that are not. The stronger interpretation is that secularism itself is irrational, so rational theism will always be more appropriate than secularism. Most of the other contributors to New Studies in Christian Ethics refrain from making such strong claims for theistic or specifically Christian distinctiveness. Indeed, Peter Sedgwick in The Market Economy and Christian Ethics (1999) criticises Northcott for making strong claims against Western capitalism and liberal theology. He depicts Northcott’s

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vision of the modern state as ‘bleak’ and maintains that it does not ‘demonstrate how the dis-​ease in the liberal state would be reversed by the re-​ adoption of a vision of a sacred order’ (Sedgwick 1999, 267). Douglas Hicks is a younger theologian who in Inequality and Christian Ethics (2000) also avoids such strong claims for Christian distinctiveness. Far from being distinctive, he argues at length that theologians discussing inequality have been largely ignorant of the extensive secular literature on the subject. His own preference is for the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, an economist renowned for his ethical sensitivities but emphatically not for much theological sympathy. Hicks even persuaded Sen to write this commendation for the book’s back cover:  ‘The result is an impressive study which will attract the attention of economists in addition to that of theologians interested in social problems’ –​a remarkable achievement. Hicks, however, is aware that some theologians would be critical: It should not be surprising that many of the insights of the approach [here] are not wholly distinct from those that have been offered from ‘non-​theological’ perspectives. This fact should not be embarrassing to or problematic for Christian social ethics –​the goal is not to be distinctive as much as to be faithful and truthful. (Hicks 2000, 200)

Despite this reticence (ending with some passion) he immediately outlines three types of contribution that Christian ethics can make to public moral debate: [I]‌t provides a moral vision and justification for how inequality matters and why public response is needed; it gives credence to that moral vision by the moral example of Christian persons and communities engaged in actions of preferential solidarity; and it provides a moral call to action for others (from within and beyond Christian communities) to respond in personal and institutional ways to pressing inequalities. (Hicks 2000, 200)

The term ‘moral passion’ could be substituted for Hicks’s ‘moral call to action’ here. Another younger theologian who makes a similarly nuanced claim for the distinctiveness of Christian ethics is David Elliot in his Hope and Christian Ethics (2017). He argues as follows: Suppose I  am correct that some forms of virtue ethics and eudaimonism leave room for hope or even see hope as beneficial or desirable. I still have to show how this helps my overall case. It certainly does not demonstrate that ethics is crippled without hope, or by showing that in all respects ethics needs hope. Since I take hope to be a theological virtue, this would be tantamount to denying naturalistic virtue and happiness, both of which I affirm with Aquinas. Nor do I claim that

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my account of hope and the eudaimonia gap amounts to an argument justifying theism or whatever religious premises would be needed to warrant a proportionate object of hope in the next life. What I  do claim is that my philosophical interlocutors for very good reasons show a structural openness to the conclusion that theological hope, if it were available, would resolve gaps they acknowledge in the kind of eudaimonia they think available. The corollary is that if theological hope were a live option it would greatly benefit human agency by enriching our happiness. A growing body of evidence in empirical psychology suggests the same. (Elliot 2017)

The veteran theologian David Hollenbach offers further nuance in The Common Good and Christian Ethics (2002). He simultaneously argues both that the concept of the common good has a long and useful history in Catholic social ethics and earlier in Aristotle, and that in modern pluralist societies it can generate fears, so it needs to be handled carefully. There are, he believes, global issues that seem to merit a continuing use of the concept –​especially enduring poverty and inequality and, interlinked with them, environmental degradation  –​but he is well aware that religious wars in the past and religious conflict and pluralism in the present mean that there is no prospect of modern societies returning to medieval Christendom’s enforcement of the common good. If the concept is to be of any use today Christians, non-​Christians and secularists need to act cooperatively. A strong form of Christian distinctiveness in this area would be counter-​productive: The proposal that Christianity can make genuine contributions to the common good of a free society makes significant demands on both Christians and non-​ Christians. It cannot be otherwise, for placing conditions only on Christians or only on non-​Christians will not lead to a community of mutual freedom and solidarity. The possibility of achieving such a community is a high-​stakes affair in the public life of both nation-​states and the world as a whole. Past and present religious conflicts provide ample evidence of just how high. Exploring the public role of Christianity from both secular and theological perspectives, therefore, is essential in revitalizing the pursuit of the common good. (Hollenbach 2002, 113)

Does such a commitment to cooperation reduce the moral passion so evident in contributors such as Northcott and Markham with their strong concepts of theological distinctiveness? Hollenbach, I believe, would deny this. The causes that he espouses –​poverty, inequality, environment and, more recently, refugee and migrant rights (Hollenbach 2008, 2010) –​ are serious and pressing. He champions the concept of the common good precisely because it pushes for global justice. And he has been active and influential among the American Catholic bishops, persuading them in the late 1980s to deploy the concept in the interests of economic justice. At

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one point he asks quizzically: ‘Is it implausible that, in an era marked by unprecedented influence by NGOs, we might learn something from the largest NGO on the globe today that has also been the principal bearer of the common good, namely the Catholic church?’ (Hollenbach 2002, 242). And he concludes his book with considerable moral passion: The idea of the common good is an idea whose time has once again come. This book has tried to show that we need both a renewed understanding of the common good and a revitalized social commitment to it … Inner-​city poverty highlights the negative consequences of sharp economic and class barriers between urban and suburban communities … The choice today is not between freedom and community, but between a society based on reciprocal respect and solidarity and a society that leaves many people behind. This choice will have a powerful effect on the well-​being of us all. (Hollenbach 2002, 244–​245)

The same question could be directed at Albino Barrera’s two books, Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics (2005) and Market Complicity and Christian Ethics (2011), with a similar answer given. It has already been noted that he is exceptionally well qualified to address both economic and theological ethics, demonstrating admirable expertise in both. He too refrains from strong versions of Christian distinctiveness, carefully explaining complex economic issues at a level unusual for theologians. He brings to Catholic social ethics the sort of economic competence that Ronald Preston (trained at the London School of Economics under R. H. Tawney) brought to Anglican social ethics a generation earlier, as explained in Chapter  2. In both instances, serious economic training brought with it a tendency to avoid strident theological denunciations, say, of Western capitalism, world debt or market forces. As in almost any area (including both economics and theology) the greater the knowledge of complexity the greater is the tendency to reach nuanced conclusions. Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics is a top-​down book, looking at the way that markets can create economic hardships for some individuals and communities (so-​called pecuniary externalities), whereas Market Complicity and Christian Ethics is more a bottom-​up book examining the various ways that we are all complicit in the harmful effects of our market choices (including, but certainly not exhausted by, pecuniary externalities). Together the two books offer an unparalleled account of current market economics from a perspective within Christian ethics to which all those engaging in this area responsibly now need to respond. They may particularly appeal to those of us who have concluded (however reluctantly) that command economies simply do not work over time even when they are upheld by force (as in Stalinist Russia). For those who

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believe that there is a viable alternative to a market economy (in one form or another) Barrera will, of course, be considerably less convincing. In Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics Barrera reaches the following nuanced conclusion mixed with moral passion to help the vulnerable: My own position in this book is that economic exchange is not inherently coercive, but can be under certain circumstances. In particular, we enter the realm of economic duress once economic agents are forced to give up vital claims in order to protect or satisfy their other nontrivial interests that are at even greater risk. People ought not to be compelled to trade off constitutive elements of their dignity and personhood. Market exchange turns out to be a case of economic compulsion rather than a welfare improvement when it inflicts detrimental unintended consequences, such as when: (1) Parents are compelled to make their children forgo their education and go to work in order to supplement meager family incomes. (2) People are driven into prostitution as a ready source of livelihood. (3)  The elderly are forced to choose between going without food or medicine given the unrestrained price increases in medical care and drugs. (4)  Families go without health insurance because of unaffordable premiums and inadequate incomes … Pecuniary externalities are at their very core about expanding opportunities for some economic agents at the expense of the contracting others’. Attending to economic compulsion is about ensuring fairness in the market-​ driven redistributions of such freedom of action. (Barrera 2005, 224–​225)

In Market Complicity and Christian Ethics his conclusions are even more nuanced in a context in which people cannot be sure that they are not complicit in wrongdoing when they make purchases: Whether we like it or not, we affect the lives of many others in positive and negative ways through the incidental by-​products of our actions. This is especially true in economic life where even our most laudable activities inflict unintended harms on others. These spillover effects are unavoidable given the circular flow of economic life. We are inextricably bound to one another in an interlocking chain of causes and effects. (Barrera 2011, 282)

Nevertheless, even in this situation, Christian ethics does offer some opportunities for better moral behaviour: [D]‌ifficulties posed by economic complicity underscore the distinct advantage of Christian ethics compared with law, economic policy, or secular philosophy. Because of its insistence on treating others as family, Christian social ethics can move people to take responsibility for rectifying distant or accumulative harms even if it is unclear as to who is bound by that duty. Unlike justice, which requires precision, charity can afford to be less precise because it is about self-​giving and is unmeasured by its nature. Love of God and love of neighbor are Christians’ ‘universal solvents’ in dealing with the many grey areas of social problems, including blameworthy material cooperation in economic wrongdoing or in collective harms … For men and women

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re-​created in the new-​found liberty of Christ, these obligations are not impositions or burdens but are welcome gifts and signs of love. (Barrera 2011, 285)

What is remarkable about this paragraph is that has been hard won at the conclusion to two very substantial contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics. The restraint, detail and sheer expertise of these monographs gives this near the end of the series especial significance. It finally seems that Christian ethics does have something distinctive to offer in this area and perhaps in others areas as well. A  passionate moral commitment to charity, love or compassion [as Oliver Davies (2001) would prefer to call it], compassionate respect [as Margaret Farley (2002) would prefer] or compassionate care [as I would prefer (Gill 2006)] is seen as key to Christian distinctiveness. And compassionate care is surely crucial for moral passion within Christian ethics.

Implications for Moral Passion At the beginning of this chapter I  asked whether contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics really had met its two main aims: 1. To promote monographs in Christian ethics that engaged centrally with the present secular moral debate at the highest possible intellectual level 2. To encourage contributors to demonstrate that Christian ethics can make a distinctive contribution to this debate –​either in moral substance, or in terms of underlying moral justifications Of course this is finally for others to judge, but it will be evident by now that I at least have been much impressed by both the quality of many of the contributions and by their ability to relate to and sometimes challenge secular disciplines. For the present purposes they also frequently display (but seldom discuss) moral passion. That might simply be because the series appeals to the morally passionate and not because Christian ethics itself is especially passionate. This point is tested more thoroughly in Chapter 2 comparing two quite different sources –​contributions on public ethics to the journal Theology over almost a century and to the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lectures given since the mid-​1990s. How do they compare on moral passion? Staying for the moment with New Studies in Christian Ethics, what has been learned so far that is relevant to a study of moral passion and Christian ethics?

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Kieran Cronin’s study of rights contained many admirable features that helped to shape subsequent contributions, especially its interdisciplinarity, its careful use of philosophy and legal-​political theory and its focus on God in theological justifying reason. But it also raised two issues that are especially important for a study of moral passion. It made a sharp distinction between motivation and justifying reason, assigning the first to moral psychology (to which Chapter 4 returns) and the second to Christian ethics. I am, though, not wholly convinced either by this sharp distinction or by this assignment, especially when considering moral passion. Second, it was noted that, in the area of human rights, a strong version of theological justifying reason can be less than helpful because it may undermine the universalisability of those rights. There may be a warning here to Christian ethicists writing on other social issues, such as Michael Northcott on the environment or economy, or in more individualistic areas where religious/​ moral passion currently raises acute anxieties within the public forum. Anthony Bash on forgiveness and Susan Parsons on feminism both skilfully used a range of secular disciplines to reveal often unrecognised complexities within Christian ethics. Any Christian ethicist writing in either of these areas does need to take them fully into account. But neither of them reaches a resolution. Bash describes a complex process of forgiveness but avoids a final definition of forgiveness and appears to disallow forms of public forgiveness that others find impressive  –​for example, the forgiveness expressed by bereaved family members soon after the Charleston church shooting on the 17th of June 2015. Moral passion might have a different take on such enemy-​love, as explained in Chapter 7. And Parsons attempts to reconcile radically different types of Christian feminism but without too much success. A  study of different types of moral passion might have a similar fate. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 try to avoid such an elision. James Mackey on power, Garth Hallett on priorities and Christopher Tollefsen on lying all offered nuanced considerations of complexity concluding with radical moral passion. But this radical passion resulted in conclusions that appeared counter-​ intuitive and politically undoable. Imagine trying to govern a country on the basis that nobody is ever to lie for benevolent reasons, on the basis that the distant needy are always to be prioritised over family, or that power as force is always to be disallowed. Mackey, Hallett and Tollefsen might otherwise dissent from the non-​ realist conclusions of Stanley Hauerwas, but in one or other of these specific areas they appear remarkably similar. And in this respect they differ from Jean Porter on moral action, William Schweiker on responsibility, David Fergusson on community and liberalism or Robert Gascoigne on

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the public forum. So is the less risky approach of these four contributors preferable to that of the other three? Perhaps a clearer distinction about context needs to be made (as explained in Chapter 3). When preaching to a congregation of the faithful it may feel appropriate to adopt a council of perfection, extolling virtues that none but Jesus can finally attain (a position that Chapter  7 finally reaches). When making a contribution to public ethics this may be less appropriate or even plainly unhelpful. In the latter context, radical perfectionism may simply be dismissed by others as unrealistic and unworldly. Building bridges and forming ethical alliances across ideological and religious divides may be more appropriate within the public form, as William Schweiker, Lisa Cahill and especially Robin Lovin (1995, 2008) have long argued [Chapter 6 indeed attempts to build bridges across different faith traditions]. Moral passion can be susceptible both to perfectionist and to realistic expression depending on context. The contributions of Lisa Cahill on global justice, David Hollenbach on the common good and Albino Barrera on market economy offer impressive examples of non-​strident claims about natural law combined with passionate borrowings from the Bible and Christian tradition. They argue that, handled carefully and critically, each of these resources has an important contribution to make to Christian ethics in the modern world [a position that is reached in Chapter 3]. It has already been hinted that Stephen Pope on human evolution and Gordon Graham on evil might also help to defend a critical appropriation of natural law in order to understand moral passion better. Ian McDonald on biblical interpretation, as well [so Chapter 4 argues] as the extraordinary Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx (2014), implicitly assist my own critical borrowings from the Bible and Christian tradition relating to moral passion. My first contribution to New Studies in Christian Ethics was Churchgoing and Christian Ethics (1999). Using an overabundance of statistics it sought to assess how far regular churchgoers across denominations differ in their moral attitudes and stated moral behaviour from irregular churchgoers and non-​churchgoers. Statistically significant differences were indeed detected, especially in the area of altruism, albeit not absolute differences. It then argued that these relative but significant differences should and can inform a realist account of Christian virtue ethics. My second contribution, Health Care and Christian Ethics (2006), sought to apply these conclusions, combined (as already mentioned) with virtues gleaned critically from healing stories in the Synoptic Gospels, to the specific area of health care ethics that has involved me professionally since the mid-​1990s. This

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third contribution, Moral Passion and Christian Ethics, goes behind both of these studies and attempts to explore what it is that drives Christians in our discussion and fallible practice of Christian ethics.

Works Cited Allen, Joseph. 1984. Love and Conflict:  A  Covenantal Model of Christian Ethics. Nashville, TX: Abingdon Press. Barrera, Albino. 2005. Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2011. Market Complicity and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barrett, Justin L. and Jarvinen, Matthew J. 2015. ‘Cognitive Evolution, Human Uniqueness, and the Imago Dei’. In Malcolm Jeeves (ed.), The Emergence of Personhood:  A  Quantum Leap?, 163–​183. Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans. Bash, Anthony. 2007. Forgiveness and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. British Medical Association. 2004. Medical Ethics Today, 2nd ed. London: BMJ Books. Browning, Don, Miller-​McLemore, Bonnie, Couture, Pamela, Lyon, Bernie and Franklin, Robert. 1997. From Culture Wars to Common Ground. Louisville, KY: Westminster/​John Knox. Cahill, Lisa Sowle. 1996. Sex, Gender and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   2003. ‘Bioethics, Theology, and Social Change’. Journal of Religious Ethics 31:3, 363–​398.  2013. Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, Stephen R. L. 1984. From Athens to Jerusalem. Oxford: Clarendon Press.  2000. Biology and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cook, Christopher C. H. 2006. Alcohol, Addiction and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cronin, Kieran. 1992. Rights and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Davies, Oliver. 2001. A Theology of Compassion. London: SCM Press. Deane-​ Drummond, Celia. 2006. Genetics and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edwards, G., Marshall, E. J. and Cook, C. C. H. 2003. The Treatment of Drinking Problems: A Guide for the Helping Professions, 4th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elliot, David, 2017. Hope and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ewing, A. C. 1953. Ethics. London: English Universities Press.

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Farley, Margaret A. 2002. Compassionate Respect: A Feminist Approach to Medical Ethics and Other Questions. New York/​Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Fergusson, David. 1998. Community, Liberalism and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gardner, E. Clinton. 1995. Justice and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gascoigne, Robert. 2001. The Public Forum and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gill, Robin. 1999. Churchgoing and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.  2006. Health Care and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.  2013. Society Shaped by Theology: Sociological Theology, Vol. 3. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Graham, Gordon. 2001. Evil and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press. Grant, Colin. 2001. Altruism and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press. Hallett, Garth L. 1998. Priorities and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hicks, Douglas A. 2000. Inequality and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hollenbach, David. 2002. The Common Good and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   (ed.). 2008. Refugee Rights. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.  2010. Driven From Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Lovin, Robin W. 1995. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2008. Christian Realism and the New Realities. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue:  A  Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. 1985. London: Duckworth. Mackey, James P. 1994. Power and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press. Markham, Ian S. 1994. Plurality and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. McDonald, J. Ian H. 1993. Biblical Interpretation and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, Jolyon. 2007. Media Violence and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Northcott, Michael S. 1996. The Environment and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2007. A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming. London: DLT.

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 2013. A Political Theology of Climate Change. Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans. Parsons, Susan Frank. 1996. Feminism and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pope, Stephen J. 2007. Human Evolution and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porter, Jean. 1995. Moral Action and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ramsey, Paul. 1970. Fabricated Man: The Ethics of Genetic Control. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rudman, Stanley. 1997. Concepts of Persons and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schillebeeckx, Edward. 2014. The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx. 11 vols. London: Bloomsbury. Schweiker, William. 1995. Responsibility and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2004. Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics:  In the Time of Many Worlds. New York and London: Blackwell.   (ed.). 2005. The Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics. New York and Oxford: Blackwell.   (ed.). forthcoming. The Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics. 3 vols. New York and Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell. Sedgwick, Peter H. 1999. The Market Economy and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thatcher, Adrian. 2002. Living Together and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tollefsen, Christopher O. 2014. Lying and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weaver, Darlene Fozard. 2002. Self Love and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ch apter 2

Is Moral Passion Germane Just to Theologians?

In Chapter 1 I admitted that New Studies in Christian Ethics might appeal particularly to morally passionate contributors. So it may or may not be that the wider discipline of public ethics is especially passionate. To give more balance this chapter compares two different sources –​contributions on public ethics to the journal Theology over almost a century and to the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lectures given over the last two decades. How do they compare on moral passion? Theology offers an especially rich source both because of its longevity (it was first published in 1920) and because of its links to churches (especially the Anglican Church). Unlike New Studies in Christian Ethics, it has never had a single focus on academic ethics. It has always aimed to appeal to a wider audience, albeit featuring theologians who could defend themselves academically. The Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lectures began much more recently in 1998, but they also are the products of academics speaking to a wider audience. The editor and host of all but one of eighteen lectures given at University College London, Ted Honderich, depicts them as “about as good an introduction to and exemplification of the subject in these times as you are likely to lay hands on” (Honderich 2015, 3). However, to make the playing field more even I have largely excluded myself from this overview of Theology. I first contributed to the journal in July 1968 (on Christology, not ethics) when I was still a postgraduate and have been its editor since 2014. It will surprise no one that very early in my editorship (September 2014) I organised and contributed to a special issue on public ethics. Obviously, I cannot use my own moral bias as evidence of a similar bias in other contributors!

Ethical Contributions to

T H E O LO G Y

In the first issue of Theology (July 1920), T. W. Pym (1885–​1945), the author eight years later of Spiritual Direction, wrote a review of the recent report 51

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of a committee appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Church and Social Work., wherein he commended the public role of the Church of England at the time: This Report is a natural corollary to the Report of the Archbishops’ Fifth Committee of Inquiry, “Christianity and Industrial Problems.” The terms of reference were “to consider and report upon the ways in which clergy, Church-​ workers, and Church-​people generally can best co-​operate with the State in all matters concerning the social life of the community.” The Report deals first with actual opportunities of social service, and is then divided into a consideration of (1) the clergy, (2) the laity, and (3) the parish in regard to it. There is a note on rural problems, and four Appendices which form perhaps the most valuable part of the Report as a whole. The book is a practical guide to those who, having read the Report on “Christianity and Industrial Problems,” wish to take definite action. We welcome the frank recognition throughout that the Church must care for the whole man  –​body, mind and spirit  –​and that the line drawn in the past between secular and religious service has often been fictitious. There is nothing in the Report that is better than the frank statement that the Church of England cannot rightly confine its social activities to the more or less limited circle of those who are attached to it; that this may very easily become, not co-​operation with the State, but self-​centred competition against it. “The Church must co-​ operate, not compete, with the State, and it must accept the responsibility for the fullest social welfare not merely of the select few but of the whole community” (Pym 1920, 57).

The repeated use of ‘must’ in the second paragraph of the review suggests considerable moral passion about social welfare in the community at large. Six months later Kenneth Kirk (1886–​1954) wrote a substantial article in two parts (January and February 1921) on ‘Moral Theology: Some Lessons of the Past’. Not only was this article substantial at the time, but it also remained the most important article on moral theology or Christian ethics until Ronald Preston’s articles in the 1960s. Kirk had served as an army chaplain during the First World War, before returning to Oxford as a tutor at Keble College. In 1920 he published his pioneering Some Principles of Moral Theology. He then became a Reader in Moral Theology and subsequently Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, before being appointed Bishop of Oxford in 1937. He was one of the very few holders of this Oxford chair to contribute significantly to Theology on the topic of Christian ethics until the present holder, Nigel Biggar.

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In less ecumenical days Kirk wrote at length in Theology about the ‘depressing deterioration of [Roman Catholic] moral theology’ –​viewing it as overly legalistic and authoritarian (especially within the confessional). He clearly felt passionately about that: [M]‌odern manuals compare very badly with the Summa Theologica. In the latter St. Thomas assigns at most eight questiones to the decalogue, and is concerned rather with its duration and authority than with its contents; whilst he gives no less than 170 to the discussion of virtues and sins based upon the cardinal and theological virtues. On the other hand, in one of the most modern Roman Catholic manuals, the Summarium of Fr. Arregui, the cardinal and theological virtues are dismissed in 30 pages, whilst 145 are given to the Ten Commandments; and in this Arregui is no more than following the examples of Liguori and Gury. St. Alphonso gives 37 pages to the theological virtues, 800 to the decalogue; Gury 27 to the theological virtues, 97 to the decalogue (Kirk 1921, 58–​59).

In the December issue of 1930 the theologian Lionel Thornton (1884–​ 1961) of the Community of the Resurrection wrote a significant article on ‘Christianity and Morality:  Some Reflections on the Present Situation’. The central point that he made has surprising resonance with many of the contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics, namely that purely secular accounts of ethics and attempts to derive ethics solely from science are, from a Christian perspective, inadequate: From the religious point of view the most far-​reaching characteristics of the new morality are not to be found primarily in its divergences from the traditional Christian code, startling as these may be. For what is here called the new morality includes great varieties of opinion upon particular points of morals, some of them extremely radical, others relatively conservative. The essence of the new attitude appears to be comprised under three principles: (i) The foundations of morality are to be sought in the facts of human nature; (ii) the facts are to be discovered by the empirical methods of science, and the moral order based upon the facts is to be built up through the assistance of scientific information and equipment; (iii) the goal of this moral order is human happiness conceived without reference to religious sanctions or to a supernatural end. These three points, taken together, give us the essentials of the new programme of morality. All else must be regarded as incidental detail or consequence; and it should be clear that it is only in the last of these three principles that an inevitable conflict with Christian conceptions there arises. For Christian faith, however, the third point overshadows the whole position. For us the facts of human nature include the facts of religion, without which any account of human life must be incomplete. So, too, a scientific interpretation of the facts should include an adequate explanation of the facts of religious experience and of those high transformations

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of character and conduct which have been interwoven with that experience in Christian history (Thornton 1930, 313).

Nine years after Thornton’s article appeared Britain was at war again. Unsurprisingly, war and peace became important topics in Theology. Two articles stand out above others, both showing very considerable moral passion. Karl Barth (1886–​1968) was already famous in theological circles. In 1935 he was forced by Hitler to resign from his chair at Basel and returned to his native Switzerland. In March 1940 Theology included a translation of a letter he wrote to a French pastor. It was theologically strident and deeply passionate, as can be seen from the following extract: The Church of Jesus Christ cannot and will not wage war. She can and will simply pray, believe, hope, love, and proclaim and hearken to the Gospel. She knows that The Event by which we poor men are succoured in an effectual, eternal and godly way has come, comes, and will come to pass, not, according to Zech. iv, 6, by force of arms or by power or by any kind of human effort and achievement, but only by the Spirit of God. The Church therefore will not see in the cause of England and France the “causa Dei,” and she will not preach a crusade against Hitler. He who died upon the Cross died for Hitler too, and, even more, for all those bewildered men who voluntarily or involuntarily serve under his banner. But precisely because the Church knows about justification which we men cannot attain by any means for ourselves, she cannot remain indifferent. She cannot remain “neutral” in things great or small where justice is at stake, where the attempt is being made to establish a poor feeble human justice against over-​whelming, flagrant injustice. Where this is at stake, there the Church cannot withhold her witness. It is the command of God that justice be done on earth: it is precisely for this purpose that God has instituted the State and given to it the sword; and, despite all the shortcomings of which it may otherwise be guilty, the State which endeavours to defend the right proves itself precisely by these endeavours to be a Just State, and may claim the obedience of everyone. It would be regrettable if the Christian Churches, which in previous wars have so often and so thoughtlessly spoken the language of nationalism and of militarism, should just in this war equally thoughtlessly decide to adopt the silence of neutrality and pacifism. The Churches ought today to pray in all penitence and sobriety for a just peace, and in the same penitence and sobriety to bear witness to all the world that it is necessary and worth while to fight and to suffer for this just peace. They certainly ought not to persuade the democratic states that they are, so to say, the Lord’s own warriors. But they ought to say to them that we are privileged to be human and that we must defend ourselves with the power of desperation against the in-​breaking of open inhumanity. The Churches owe the duty of witnessing to the Christians in Germany as well as to the whole German nation: Your cause is not just! You are mistaken! Have no more to do with this Hitler! Hands off this war! It is his war alone! Change your course while there is yet time! (Barth 1940, 212–​213)

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In February of the following year William Temple (1881–​1944), writing as Archbishop of York but soon to become Archbishop of Canterbury, published another deeply passionate article on the book of Revelation in Theology. He entitled it ‘The Sealed Book’. In it he showed how the central message of Revelation could be applied to the war-​time context, as can be seen in this extract: There is no promise in this book or anywhere else in Scripture that a day will come when on this earth the victory of love is complete, nor even that hereafter all men will open their hearts to the love of God and let it direct their purposes. If we hope for that it is because we shrink from the thought that God may fail in His purpose for any human soul. But if the outcome is and must remain uncertain so far as our knowledge goes, the issue at stake is clear. Two powers are at grips in human history: love and pride. For each several soul, for every nation, for mankind itself, welfare consists in the supremacy of love, and progress is advance towards that goal. Set in the midst of history as the focus and source of the power that can carry us forward is the Cross; every true sacrifice endured and offered in service of a good cause is part of the moving power of progress, and those who endure and offer it have found the secret of life and the joy of heaven. The meaning of history is the triumph of the Lamb that was slain. “Behold, the Lamb of God which beareth away the sin of the world.” (Temple 1941, 71)

Ethical issues continued to be addressed in the 1950s but there is nothing quite as substantial and powerful as these two war-​time contributions. However, some of the ethical topics that were to dominate the 1960s and subsequent decades were beginning to emerge as topics for discussion in Theology. Canon Alec Vidler (1899–​1991), an editor of Theology, reflected early and largely positively on the emerging welfare-​state (December 1952). D. I. Luard, a vicar in Leeds, briefly discussed suicide, which was illegal at the time in Britain, and voluntary euthanasia, which in 2016 is still illegal in Britain (April 1953). [Two decades later Peter Baelz (1923–​2000), soon to become a holder of the Regius Chair at Oxford, made a lengthier albeit non-​committal contribution on both of these issues (May 1972)]. Hugh Warner, education secretary of the Church of England’s Moral Welfare Council, discussed the ethics of various forms of contraception, which had been increasingly supported since the shift at the 1930 Lambeth Conference of Bishops away from outright condemnation (January 1954). R.  P. Casey, Dean of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, wrote a review article of D.  S. Bailey’s influential book Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition that also pioneered something other than outright condemnation (December 1955). And the Episcopalian theologian Norman Pittenger (1905–​1997) wrote about theological understandings of

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sexuality, albeit without mentioning homosexuality or, at this stage when it was still illegal, that he was gay himself (July 1958). Then in April 1960 something new and sharply different emerged. Ronald Preston (1913–​ 2001) wrote his first article for Theology, ‘The Christian Left Still Lost’. It opens with obvious moral passion: One of the sad features of recent years has been the apparent eclipse of the various Christian Left groups in this country. They have an honourable history, going back in various ways at least to F. D. Maurice and the Christian Socialist experiment he inspired. They have never been very numerous, but at different times have had an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. Indeed, before the war, in the mounting crisis of the thirties, anyone at all concerned with Christianity and the social order could hardly fail to come across them. But for some years now all this has changed. A Christian interested in these concerns to-​day is hard put to it to know which (if any) of the various Socialist Christian groups still exist. However some do exist, and members of certain of them have been meeting in a public house in Bloomsbury, and have published their conclusions in a pamphlet called after their meeting place, Papers from The Lamb. It carries twenty-​three signatures, including those of John Collins, Tom Driberg, John Groser, George MacLeod, Donald Soper and Mervyn Stockwood. In the light of the election result [when the Tory Harold Macmillan won a second term as Prime Minister] it is all the more interesting to see what they have to say. The election found the Labour Party not having had time properly to digest a considerable amount of re-​thinking, and the process is obviously going to continue. What have these Christian Socialists to contribute? The question is important, for we need a vigorous, radical alternative to Toryism in this country, and one that does not depend on economic crises to come to power. There were alarming signs at the election that a country which has never had it so good [Macmillan’s election slogan] may be too disposed to sit at ease in Zion. It is also important that vigorous Christian thought should contribute to such a radical movement. (Preston 1960, 478)

This article was followed less than a year later by a very substantial article by Preston on ‘Christian Ethics and Moral Theology: 1939–​60’ (January and February 1961). It begins as follows: Both Christian Ethics and Moral Theology are cinderellas among theological studies in Britain. The only theological discipline more neglected is the Psychology of Religion. It is in keeping with this neglect that Christian Ethics has recently been cast out of the General Ordination Examination of the Church of England. One theologian, on hearing of this decision by the Central Advisory Council for the Training of the Ministry (as it was called until recently), remarked that a Council which thought it more important in the training of the ministry to preserve a third Old Testament paper rather than one on Christian Ethics needed its head examining. (Preston 1961, 3)

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A new and significant voice had arrived within Christian ethics in Britain. It was a voice that was highly committed to ecumenism and to public ethics, and shaped, as mentioned in Chapter 1, by his undergraduate studies in economics at the London School of Economics under the Christian prophet Richard Tawney. A true professional had at last emerged within Christian public ethics and he chose Theology to stage this revolution. Inevitably, after more than half a century Preston’s account of the contemporary literature on Christian ethics is of limited interest today. But at the time it was crucial both for developing the discipline in Britain and for encouraging universities and theological colleges to appoint Christian ethicists to their staff. Of much greater interest is his article published in three parts (April-​June) in 1966 in Theology. It gives a remarkable first-​ hand account of Tawney and, through its criticisms, a clear indication of Preston’s own moral position. Towards the end of this article, Preston summarises a strong version of Tawney’s passionate critique of capitalism: Tawney takes up … the moral basis of the condemnation of capitalism and advocacy of socialism against the background of the Christian social tradition. Concern for the person and for the individual conscience is repeatedly stressed as the basis of his democratic socialism. “Capitalism corrupts human relations by permitting the use of man by man for pecuniary gain.” The motives of capitalism are entirely wrong and anti-​Christian; they appeal to human greed and self-​ interest and hence involve human beings in wrong relations with one another. Capitalism should be condemned outright by the Church. (Preston 1966, 262–​263)

Preston himself was uncomfortable with this strong version: Tawney’s case is that it appeals to greed and self-​interest and that is why it is unchristian. Certainly an appeal to greed is unchristian, but is an appeal to self-​ interest? Allied to this question is another one: whether there is something inherently unchristian in the profit motive. From such a basic teaching of Jesus as “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ” we learn that Christian agape is on the one hand meant to operate in the run of everyday life and not to be regarded as so sublime as to be irrelevant to it, and on the other hand that it is sufficiently sublime as never to be fulfilled in it. Self-​interest has to be allowed for. Indeed it must be harnessed … Self-​interest involves the family and this sets a certain limit to self-​sacrifice. Even the Christian needs the prod that comes from having to work to support himself and his family. (Preston 1966, 264–​265)

He continues and adds: To return to Tawney’s moral structures on capitalism, it appears that it is not so simply anti-​Christian as he maintains, nor is socialism so simply an expression of

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the Christian faith. He makes too direct a connexion between that faith and the empirical structures of life. Certainly there are broad considerations derived from the Christian faith which call into question details of the empirical scene and put the onus on their defender (we have seen this to be so in the case of private property), but there are no Christian principles of which a particular economic system can be said to be a simple expression. The element of utopianism in Tawney’s thought can cause confusion. Politics should normally be about penultimate, not ultimate, issues (Preston 1966.267).

And then Preston gives his own passionate theological resolution: Those who do not accept or understand the Christian faith and have been misled by the utopian element in Tawney’s thought (without noting his incidental qualifications), often make the mistake of stressing only the dignity of man; they underplay his sinfulness. They allow for his grandeur but not his misery. This is a grievous source either of disillusionment or of fanaticism. It also has the effect of presenting people of conservative disposition with an entirely unnecessary weapon. They are able to scoff at radicals and socialists as impractical idealists who do not understand the realities of human nature. In fact, human sinfulness should be just as much an element in the radical tradition as human dignity, for at least it leads to the conclusion that no man and no group is good enough to exercise power over others unchecked. The recovery of a greater eschatological note in theology (I refer once more to our present understanding of the Kingdom of God and the relation of Jesus’ person and teaching to it), has destroyed the utopian element in the socialist case. This was a powerful note of the Christian socialist movement. (Preston 1966, 268)

It is worth noting the date of this article. A  new editor, Gordon Dunstan (1918–​2004), had taken the reins at Theology in the previous year. Christian public ethics flourished particularly well under his ten-​year editorship. When he died, The Telegraph noted the following among his many achievements: He was president of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology and vice-​ president of the London Medical Group and of the Institute of Medical Ethics. During the 1960s he was a member of a Department of Health Advisory Group on Transplant Policy, and from 1989 to 1993 he served on a Department of Health committee on the Ethics of Gene Therapy. From 1990 onwards he was a member of the Unrelated Live Transplant Regulatory Authority and from 1989 to 1993 he served on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. (The Telegraph 19/​01/​2004)

If Kenneth Kirk was deeply critical of Roman Catholic moralists in 1921, by contrast Gordon Dunstan in 1968 turned to the distinguished Roman Catholic theologian Professor Enda McDonagh of Maynooth to give a detailed, scholarly and historical account of considerations of the highly charged issue of abortion across different denominations following

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the Abortion Act 1967. McDonagh’s article was also published in three parts (September–​November) in Theology. It does not actually reach a clear conclusion, but perhaps that is not surprising given sharp sensitivities within his own church. It does, however, set out strongly held theological and ethical differences between denominations that still divide Christians today. Towards the end of this largely analytic article, McDonagh also becomes distinctly more passionate: The moral activity of the Christian is not the realization of some abstract value, still less obedience to some abstract rule. It is a personal response to other persons, to whom he is bound by ties deeper than any human blood. It is in the love and service of persons that his moral life is realized. But the persons may not be confined to his own immediate friends or acquaintances. His neighbour is all mankind, and not as a series of isolated individuals, but as existing in a community which knows no division between Jew or Gentile, bond or free. It is to the personal service of others that the Christian sees his call. And this service takes the two related forms of direct service to the individual and service to the community within which the individual must exist, develop and make his own response. (McDonagh 1968, 505)

He also sees a sharp difference between Christian ethics and secular individualism: In presenting the necessary prohibitions which respect for life as an expression of love of neighbour implies, a sense of proportion is very necessary both in regard to the extent of the evil and the circumstances of those responsible. So war which must be presumed to be wrong until the contrary is clear; certain methods in war like indiscriminate bombing or use of napalm; capital punishment; the defence of certain class and property interests which are destroying other people no less surely if more slowly than the gas-​chamber; all merit clear condemnation as more extensive in their destruction of life and often without the extenuating circumstances that sometimes drive hapless mothers to abortion. It is a measure of the narrow individualism of our ethical thinking that such individual failures are more clearly and consistently attacked than social ones. (McDonagh 1968, 506)

The British Abortion Act of 1967 was swiftly interpreted as allowing any abortion within the first trimester and some abortions almost up to gestation. This was not the position taken in the Church of England’s 1965 report Abortion: An Ethical Discussion chaired by Bishop Ian Ramsey and with Dunstan acting as secretary. Nevertheless, this report did propose legal reform based on ‘grave risk of the patient’s death or serious injury to her health or physical or mental well-​being’, taking into account ‘the patient’s total environment, actual or reasonably foreseeable’ (Church of

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England 1965, 67). This was highly significant in the political context of the time. Writing later, Dunstan regretted the liberal interpretation of the Abortion Act that led to so many abortions (Dunstan 1974, 87), but neither he nor the House of Bishops (including Rowan Williams when archbishop  –​the most pro-​life of recent primates) ever campaigned actively for its repeal. A very similar pattern emerged on the equally highly charged issue of divorce at the time. The Divorce Reform Act 1969 was preceded by lengthy discussions within the Church of England and by the report Putting Asunder (Church of England 1966), again with important inputs from Ian Ramsey and Gordon Dunstan. A  special issue of Theology on Marriage and Divorce in May 1975 considered some of the passionately held theological and ethical issues involved. Now in his final year as editor Dunstan published significant articles by J.  R. Lucas, John MacQuarrie and Helen Oppenheimer, together (more quirkily) with an earlier sermon of his own. Some theologians and senior clergy were more supportive of the Divorce Reform Act than others, but many regretted that it had gone too far. Yet, once again, a process of legal reform that had been encouraged significantly by a Church of England report did not lead to a bishops’ campaign for repeal despite subsequent regrets about its outcomes. In his editorial Dunstan made clear some of the moral passion behind the articles: The three articles on the vinculum or bond of marriage printed first in this number were prepared by their authors for the guidance of the Anglican/​ Roman Catholic Commission on the Theology of Marriage and the Problem of Mixed Marriages. They are published now as an aid to the discussion of marriage, divorce and re-​marriage which continues more widely in the Church. Although we should not, probably, have used the same words had we been writing now, we would still maintain the same doctrine and the text has been left unaltered. We would add, for the avoidance of all doubt, that we regard our own signature to the Report, Putting Asunder (SPCK, 1966), and to the statement on pp. xi to xiii of the later Report, Marriage, Divorce and the Church (SPCK, 1971), as in no way inconsistent with the doctrine of marriage set out in The Marriage Covenant. The Church, we believe, has a double duty; first to teach unequivocally and to embody in its liturgy the first principles of marriage as ordained by God and re-​stated by Jesus Christ; and, at the same time, to devise second order rules for the guidance of the Christian community (and to help in framing laws for the government of civil society) in cases where life is clearly not lived in accordance with those principles and, humanly speaking, cannot or and the second-​order rule. The absoluteness inherent in the first must not be attributed to the second; and the contingency imposed by circumstance on the second must not be allowed to dilute the first”.’ It is possible that Lady Oppenheimer’s critique of the

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positions taken by Mr Lucas and Professor Macquarrie, if it does not stand upon a similar footing, would point to a similar conclusion. (Dunstan 1975, 225)

The influence of the Church of England on both abortion and divorce reform has sometimes been used to exemplify ‘misguided’ theological/​ ecclesiastical intervention (although it should be noted that a very similar intervention in the 1960s against capital punishment was seldom criticised outside tabloid newspapers). For some critics it would have been better if this Church had opposed such reforms altogether, effectively leaving abortion as illegal and divorce as very difficult and expensive to attain. It is not clear that Archbishop Michael Ramsey (1904–​1988), under whose primacy this all occurred, would have agreed. For him compassionate care may have required otherwise even if it risked losing some effective political control. A world without deaths from illegal abortions and the poor imprisoned within destructive marriages was finally deemed preferable to one with them. Considerable moral passion underpinned this controversial (at the time) conclusion. Moving to recent times, it is more difficult for me to be impartial, as I  was often a part of the ethical debates  –​none more so than the passionate debates about homosexuality that ignited the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Bishops and received worldwide attention. I  had drafted the preparatory, eirenic report on sexuality ahead of the conference and had published an article effectively (but of course not explicitly) setting out its main points in Theology in July 1996 based on my consultations in Australia. Three years ahead of me, a fresh theologian, Michael Banner, had published a passionate theological attack on the Church of England Bishops’ influential report “Issues in Sexuality” in Theology in July 1993, contrasting it unfavourably with a conservative report two years earlier, Human Sexuality, produced by the Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States: In effect, Issues in Human Sexuality is a report of a Working Party and the joins, so to say, are bound to show from time to time. The very same comment could be made about the other reports mentioned here, though not of the statement from the Roman Catholic Bishops, which has a greater fluency and coherence than is found in the others. This is, of course, easily explained, for the Roman Catholic Church has a rather distinctive notion of what it is to establish the ‘mind of the Church’, and one more likely, perhaps, to guarantee consistency and clarity if not necessarily truth. This is not the place to adjudicate between the competing notions, but this much should be said: that Working Parties can too easily confuse the task of establishing the mind of the Church with that of reporting what is in the minds of church people. And then there is an inclination to say Yes and No on a particular issue, not because this is what Scripture, reason and tradition

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demand, but because this is what the spirit of the age demands. But where this occurs, the Church is no longer in search of sexual ethics, but has given up the search in a faithless despair at possessing here or elsewhere what is its promised inheritance –​the mind of Christ. (Banner 1993, 288)

In 1995, having been appointed in the previous year to the moral theology chair at Kings College London that Dunstan once occupied, Banner was a key co-​author of the ‘St Andrew’s Day Statement’ that was quoted in the final 1998 Lambeth Conference report on homosexuality and widely cited at the time by those critical of the position taken in my initial draft. All of this may give the impression that Theology has been concerned mainly with personal ethical issues and sexuality. However, four other current theologians writing in Theology have contributed substantially on broader social issues. The first is Nigel Biggar, who has recently contributed significantly to Theology on both gay marriage (at sharp variance from Banner’s stance) and the relationship of the church to the state (Biggar 2014a, 2014b). In addition, in November 1988 he published a careful but critical review article of the Church of England’s Board of Social Responsibility’s report Changing Britain (1987). His critique was as passionate as that of Banner: Changing Britain does not think that the world needs to hear news. Although it is right to describe the Christian tradition of natural law as ascribing to the human mind, apart from the grace of special revelation, a capacity for the knowledge of basic moral norms in principle, it proceeds as if humanity has such a capacity in fact. With the sinful disorientation of human loves and the consequent distortion of people’s moral understanding, it reckons not at all. Ordinary Britons, regardless of their religious or philosophical persuasion, the study claims, generally agree on basic moral principles such as fairness, justice, concern for others and, above all, the value of the individual person; that is, they share ‘a common frame of moral reference’. Changing Britain regards this moral consensus as adequate in substance, and as requiring only a clearer articulation and a stronger basis. To this it is the Church’s task to add only its support (Biggar 1988.296).

The second is Michael Northcott. His article from July 2004 is a characteristically passionate piece on ‘the economy of the gift’, displaying many of the features noted in Chapter 1. It concludes with passion: Christian resistance to the economistic and industrial destruction of nature, and the subversion of an ethic of the common good by a privatized ethic of individual competition and collective scarcity, is not so much about protest as it is about living and organizing the Christian community differently. Christian worshipping communities, when they are faithful to the alternative social as described in the New Testament, represent a polity which prizes gift above contract and an economy of gift above one of scarcity. It is in such churches, and in the Eucharist

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they celebrate, that we may find the ‘ten thousand places’, the real particulars, in which we may say with confidence that the Body of Christ truly has played and plays. Of course the Creator Spirit is also in the kingfisher and in the pile of leaves. But apart from the Body of Christ neither metaphysics nor poetics, not even ecotheology, can properly substantiate this claim. (Northcott 2004, 248)

The third is Tim Gorringe, whose article was published in Theology in July 2008. It is the most unusual of all of the contributions, as its title indicates: ‘Reflections on The Good Pub Guide’. He is, though, passionate about the theological implications of areas such as architecture and town planning, including pubs: There are, however, two related difficulties with thinking of pubs as potentially sacred space, and they are these. First, the numbers dining out day by day and week by week are obviously a sign of rising disposable income … I take it that Christians have no problems with pleasure in itself: Jesus was famously accused by his enemies of being ‘a glutton and a wine drinker’, and I am sure he enjoyed table fellowship. The problem comes where pleasure is had at the expense of others, or where it implies carelessness about the needs of others. Can one eat with a good conscience while a third of the world still goes hungry? I think there are ways to address this problem (giving an equivalent to what you spend on yourself to organizations like the World Development Movement, for example) but I don’t think it is right to be blasé about it. The second question is related … what happens in pubs is mediated through financial exchange, and this means that the poor are excluded. Of course many pubs are working class, and a pint at the local, and the fellowship enjoyed there, has been and remains a traditional form of relaxation for many of the poorer members of our society. Moreover, my (purely impressionistic) observation is that the culture of taking meals out is not a purely middle-​class phenomenon but includes most, if not all, strata in our society. Given limited resources, and the need to make choices, it seems that many people do choose this form of enjoyment, though I will acknowledge the objection that single parents on benefits may well be excluded. These caveats are important because justice is part of the holiness to which ekklesia is called. (Gorringe 2008, 249)

The fourth is David Horrell, whose article ‘The Ecological Challenge to Biblical Studies’ was first published in Theology in May 2009. It nuances the wide-​spread claim that Christian theism has resulted in human damage to the environment and concludes with commitment and passion: [I]‌t is clear that the scale and importance of the ecological challenges that face the whole of humanity demand nothing less than a rethinking of the Christian theological tradition, and that new readings of the Bible will play an important part in resourcing that renewal (Horrell 2009, 169–​170)

In sum, the high levels of moral passion found in New Studies in Christian Ethics do seem also to have characterised articles on public ethics

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in Theology since its inception a century ago. But how does this compare with a collection of significant philosophers speaking publicly?

Ethical Contributions to the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lectures Surprisingly, five of the eighteen Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lectures collected by Ted Honderich are concerned centrally with ethics and/​or religions in the modern world. In his commentary, Honderich notes the religious identity of only two of the lecturers, Anthony Kenny, a former Catholic priest, whose lecture re-​examines arguments for the existence of God, and Alasdair MacIntyre, a Catholic convert whose lecture explores how social structures can threaten moral agency. Elements of moral passion can be found in both of their lectures. With MacIntyre it is especially evident in the denouement of the imagined case study (J) that begins and ends his lecture: J, like everyone else, occupied a number of roles. He was a father, the treasurer of his sports club, and in war-​time he had been a non-​commissioned office. Afterwards he spent his working career in the service of the railways, rising to a position in which he was responsible for scheduling passenger and freight trains, monitoring their drivers’ performance, and coping with breakdowns. Early in that career he had been mildly curious about what ‘his’ trains carried: commuters or vacationers, pig-​iron or cattle. But he was instructed firmly by superiors to take no interest in such questions, but to attend only to what belonged to his role, so as not to be irresponsibly distracted. Hence he acquired the habit of taking no cognizance of what his trains carried, a habit that endured through a later period, when the freight consisted in munitions and the passengers were Jews on their way to extermination camps. When later still J was questioned about this, he said sincerely: ‘I did not know. It was not for someone in my position to know. I did my duty. I did not fail in my responsibilities. You cannot charge me with moral failure’. (MacIntyre 1999 in Honderich 2015, 296)

The denouement here  –​‘Jews on their way to extermination camps’  –​ gains its effect from the deliberately mundane description that precedes it. And MacIntyre uses it to frame a single question: ‘Was J’s defence adequate?’ He spends the rest of the lecture exploring what moral agency is and how it can be compromised by social structures of compartmentalisation. It has sometimes been a fashion for moral philosophers to use trivial case studies to illustrate ethical arguments. MacIntyre clearly wishes to avoid this and chooses instead a very serious case study. Despite J claiming sincerely that he did not know, MacIntyre concludes emphatically that ‘even if J and those like him did not have that

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knowledge, they remained guilty and that their guilt was not merely individual guilt, but … the guilt of a whole social and cultural order’ (MacIntyre 1999 in Honderich 2015, 310). Is this conclusion philosophical, sociological or perhaps even theological? In MacIntyre’s case, it can be difficult to decide. He has sometimes worked as a moral philosopher and sometimes as a sociologist and now (but not always in the past) he also has theological commitments. By substituting ‘sin’ for ‘guilt’ in this sentence it would become more obviously theological. There is, after all, a long theological tradition that sees sin not just as individual sin but also as corporate, even structural, sin. On first reading, Anthony Kenny’s lecture appears to lack any moral passion. A central feature of it is, after all, a defence of agnosticism and opposition to ‘faith’. He positions himself midway between, on the one hand, theists and, on the other, atheists such as Richard Dawkins. For example, in contrast to Dawkins, he maintains that it is not wrong to bring up children in a religious context, arguing that they need narrative and ceremony and are capable when they grow up of ‘removing them from the history section of one’s mind into the poetry section’ (Kenny 2007 in Honderich 2015, 269). For Kenny it is ‘faith’ that is most questionable: Faith, as I understand it, is the acceptance of the testimony of a sacred text or of a religious community. The two, in fact, go together, because if the sacred texts are taken as guides to practical life, their authority is inseparable from the authority of the religious officials whose role is to interpret them … The common characteristic of faith in almost all religious traditions is its irrevocability. A faith which is held tentatively is no true faith. It must be held with the same degree of certainty as knowledge. In some traditions the irrevocability of faith is reinforced by the imposition of the death penalty for apostasy, which is the abandonment of faith. (Kenny 2007 in Honderich 2015, 267–​268)

There is a hint of moral passion in that final sentence. It becomes more than a hint two pages later: It is the degree of commitment involved in faith, rather than its religious object, that is really objectionable; and the history of Nazism, fascism, and communism made this abundantly clear in the last century. Not all fanaticism is religious fanaticism, and I found unconvincing Dawkins’ attempt to show that Hitler was a closet Catholic. (Kenny 2007 in Honderich 2015, 270)

Much depends here on how ‘faith’ is defined [in the New Testament pistis actually has a very wide set of meanings], but for Kenny tentative faith is ‘no true faith’, and true faith ‘in almost all religious traditions’ is ‘irrevocable’, ‘really objectionable’ and ‘fanaticism’ (whether it is religious or not). These are strong and passionate claims.

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Kenny’s overall approach does show similarities with the nuanced consideration of complexity concluding with moral passion detected in a number of Catholic contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics in Chapter 1. It is clear that he sees a dangerous link between some forms of ‘faith’ and ‘fanaticism’, exemplified here in largely secular political movements. Chapter 5 returns to the issue of religiously inspired violence. It is, however, at this point worth noting a problem raised by the more eirenic conclusion to Kenny’s lecture: [I]‌t may be said that one of the great benefits that religion has conferred on the human race is that it has instilled into people’s hearts the idea that the governments they live under are not the supreme arbiters of right and wrong: that there is an authority superior to even the most omnicompetent totalitarian government. A  world in which everyone believed that there was no moral authority superior to their rulers would not necessarily be preferable to a world in which everyone saw rulers as answerable to God. (Kenny 2007 in Honderich 2015, 270)

A version of this argument is sometimes used to justify constitutional monarchy in Britain. So, although the hereditary queen today has little or no political power, she denies all her subjects prime positions within an honours system. Even prime ministers and archbishops of Canterbury must defer to her and doubtless listen to her advice (which, of course, they can take or leave). However, once this argument is deployed in the much more serious context of oppressive totalitarian governments, it takes on a much stronger resonance. For Alexander Solzhenitsyn, imprisoned for years by the Soviet Union, religious faith was a fundamental part of his courageous resistance. Would Kenny’s poetic agnosticism have served the same function? The philosopher John Cottingham takes a very different stance on faith and belief in How to Believe (2015). He envisages ‘a doubtful or tentative believer, who may go to Church out of a mixture of feelings, but with only a faint commitment’: The process of regularly hearing the gospel, and being confronted with its demands, may not produce an instant ‘conversion’, but, partly at a subconscious level, certain changes may occur, and slowly begin to make themselves felt. Some of these may be moral changes –​for example, there may be a vague but increasing feeling of discomfort when not giving to charity … If all goes well, the trajectory of one’s life starts increasingly to move in an upward spiral, which takes one to new insights, new moral sensibilities and new cementing of religious belief. (Cottingham 2015, 62–​63)

In contrast to Kenny, he has moral concerns about impartial agnosticism: But although … austere impartiality may be appropriate in certain circumstances, for example for an official in charge of distributing funds, it can hardly be the

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foundation of all morality. Without the special commitments that require us to allocate very significant portions of our time and resources to those we love and care for, our lives would be immeasurably poorer  –​and not just because they would be psychologically less rich and satisfying, but because they would be morally deficient. Special concern, special affection, special commitment –​these are not some unfortunate interference to the moral life; they are the very lifeblood of morality’. (Cottingham 2015, 97–​98)

Nevertheless, Kenny does add a final more passionate sentence that his audience would surely have seen as a political point aimed at Tony Blair and George Bush (his lecture was given in 2007 when the Iraq war, explicitly condemned in Noam Chomsky’s 2004 lecture, was still being waged): Of course, there can be a world which is worse than either:  a world in which rulers believe they have a special message from God authorizing their policies in peace and war (Kenny 2007 in Honderich 2015, 270).

If MacIntyre and Kenny tend to show their dissenting Catholic roots in their lectures then Mary Warnock may show her more conformist Anglican roots in hers. She was a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Medical Ethics Advisory Group (1993–​2006) throughout its existence. Although she has long argued that religions and public ethics should be kept firmly apart, in her Royal Institute lecture ‘What is Natural: and Should we Care?’ she gives a surprising amount of space to theology, albeit reaching an ambivalent conclusion. For example, she acknowledges that on the BBC in 2000: [T]‌he Prince of Wales … spoke from a broadly theistic position, though he acknowl­ edged that those who did not accept the traditional idea of God could nevertheless share his view. I think that, as a matter of fact, it is at least much easier for lay people to make their point against the biologists if they do believe in God, or are at least prepared to use the concept of God as a kind of metaphor. At any rate, the Prince said ‘it is because of our inability or refusal to accept the existence of a Guiding Hand that nature has come to be regarded as a system that can be engineered for our own convenience, of as a nuisance to be evaded and manipulated, and in which anything can be fixed by technology and human ingenuity’. (Warnock 2002 in Honderich 2015, 196)

It is not entirely clear whether or not Warnock actually approves of the prince’s theistic intervention. In the second half of her lecture she discusses medical interventions in nature solely in terms of a pragmatic balance between harms and benefits. The following quotation suggests that she wishes to retain some of the prince’s concerns (quoting the Book of Common Prayer) but not for making public ethical decisions: In the metaphor of religion ‘It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves.’ The Romantic idea of nature is something that we cannot, and most of us would

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not want to, disburden ourselves of. There is a sense of the word ‘nature’ in which nature is the source of our greatest pleasures and insights and which gives meaning to our lives. Nevertheless I think we should resist the temptation to found a campaign against science on principles of sensibility rather than sense. (Warnock 2002 in Honderich 2015, 199)

For her, moral passion appears to be more private than public. In contrast, in the Royal Institute lectures of two of the most eminent living secular intellectuals, Jürgen Habermas in 2003 and Noam Chomsky in 2004, moral passion is both abundant and public. They also display remarkably nuanced understandings of Christian tradition, as well as what appear to be ‘irrevocable’ moral commitments. But unlike Kenny, within their lectures at least, they do not deny this. In his Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture Habermas, not renowned when younger for his theological sympathies, expounded the theme that in Europe religious tolerance has been the pacemaker for cultural rights. And at the end of his lecture he reminded the audience that even secular cultural groups ‘are equally expected to adapt their internal ethos to the egalitarian standards of the community at large.’ To this he immediately added the interesting warning that ‘Some of them may find this even tougher than do those communities who are able to resort to the highly developed conceptual resources of one or the other of the great world religions’ (Habermas 2003 in Honderich 2015, 323). Early in his lecture Habermas looks at the tolerance paradox that troubled Goethe, namely how we can tolerate the intolerable without excluding them and thereby becoming intolerant ourselves. After the religious wars that disrupted post-​Reformation Europe, finding a morally appropriate way of opposing religious intolerance was and remains an important issue. Habermas is convinced that it can be found: The purported paradox dissolves if we conceive of religious freedom  –​covering both the right to free expression of one’s own religion and corresponding negative freedom to remain undisturbed by the others’ practising their respective religions –​as part of a democratic constitution. Religious tolerance can be practised in a tolerant manner precisely under those conditions which the citizens of a democratic community mutually accord one another … mutual toleration melds with the virtuous self-​obligation to behave tolerantly. (Habermas 2003 in Honderich 2015, 315)

At the heart of this understanding of religious tolerance are a number of (irrevocable) moral commitments –​for instance, to mutuality/​reciprocity, to democratic community and emphatically to universalisability –​which he argues are not shared by fundamentalist terrorists (who are therefore

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not to be tolerated). Habermas also insists that religious tolerance properly understood does not imply agreement on religious beliefs. Quite the opposite and with passion he argues: We can only exercise tolerance towards other people’s beliefs if we reject them for subjectively good reasons. We do not need to be tolerant if we are indifferent to other opinions and attitudes anyway or even appreciate the value of such ‘otherness’. The expectation of tolerance assumes that we accept the persistence of mutually exclusive validity claims at the cognitive level of existentially relevant beliefs … we must be able to socially accept mutual cognitive dissonances that will remain unresolved for the time being. (Habermas 2003 in Honderich 2015, 317)

Noam Chomsky’s (irrevocable) moral commitments are very similar to those of Habermas. In an interview he has conceded both that ‘I try not to have faith … I  try to keep away from irrational belief … and have substantiated belief in things for which I can find evidence’ and that ‘it is true that our moral principles are not firmly grounded in unshakeable evidence and argument’ (Chomsky 2013). Yet his writings and his long and active political engagement suggest otherwise. A  veteran of anti-​ Vietnam war protest and critical of American foreign policy ever since, he has at times even risked losing his position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rather than desist. His level of personal and costly moral commitment has been astonishingly high. Of all the Royal Institute lectures, this is by far and away the most morally passionate and theologically resonant, as can be seen in this angry critique that follows a litany of American foreign policy failures: One moral truism that should be uncontroversial is the principle of universality: we should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others –​in fact, more stringent ones. This should be uncontroversial for everyone, but particularly so for the world’s most important citizens. The leaders of the enlightened states, who declare themselves to be devout Christians, devoted to the Gospels, hence surely familiar with its famous condemnation of the Hypocrite. Their devotion to the commandments of the Lord is not in question. George Bush reportedly claims that ‘God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did,’ and ‘now I am determined to solve the problem of the Middle East,’ also at the command of the Lord of Hosts, the War God, whom we are instructed by the Holy Book to worship above all other Gods … [T]‌he elite press dutifully refers to his ‘messianic mission’ to solve the problem of the Middle East, in the president’s words, the core principle of the ‘vision’ that Bush shares with Osama bin Laden, both plagiarizing ancient epics and children’s fairy tales. (Chomsky 2004 in Honderich 2015, 277)

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Unsurprisingly, Chomsky’s sympathies are more with liberation theologians than with those who supported George Bush. He has even depicted the new atheists Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris as ‘religious fanatics’ especially for their positions on American foreign policy. In contrast, in the lecture he mentions: On the wall of my office in MIT, I  have a painting given to me by a Jesuit priest, depicting the Angel of Death standing over the figure of Salvadoran Archbishop Romero, whose assassination in 1980 opened the grim decade of international state terrorist atrocities, and right before him the six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, whose brains were blown out in 1989, bringing the decade to an end. The Jesuit intellectuals, along with their housekeeper and her daughter, were murdered by an elite battalion armed and trained by the current incumbents in Washington and their mentors … I keep the painting to remind myself daily of the real world. (Chomsky 2004 in Honderich 2015, 282)

And he ends his lecture on an apocalyptic note: The means of destruction that have been developed are by now so awesome, and the risks of deploying and using them so enormous, that a rational Martian observer would not rank the prospects for survival of this curious species very high, as long as contempt for elementary moral truisms remains so deeply entrenched among educated elites. (Chomsky 2004 in Honderich 2015, 292)

In his introduction to Chomsky’s lecture, Ted Honderich is for once remarkably uncritical, simply noting in his conclusion: ‘But you will not need telling that these words of mine on Chomsky are those of an ally, admirer of his work and independence and personal courage, and friend’ (Honderich 2015, 272). It seems churlish to criticise such a passionately prophetic figure. There are, however, some issues not addressed in his lecture. The gap between his moral passion and his concession in interview about the status of moral principles has already been noted, but is not resolved by his reference here simply to ‘elementary moral truisms’. And there is no response to Habermas’s observation the year before about key moral principles (that they both share) not being shared by fundamentalist terrorists. Chomsky agonises in the lecture about defining ‘terrorism’ but in the end focuses on American foreign policy and not on those fundamentalist ‘terrorists’ who evoked that policy. Be that as it may, his level of moral passion is at least equal to even the most passionate contributors to New Studies in Christian Ethics or to Theology.

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Implications for Moral Passion At the end of the last chapter I noted that a strong feature of contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics is that they frequently display (but seldom discuss) moral passion. I  also noted that this might simply be because the series appeals to the morally passionate and not because Christian ethics itself is especially passionate. The examination in the present chapter of contributions on public ethics to the journal Theology over almost a century suggests that (largely un-​discussed) moral passion is just as evident there. In addition, an examination of some of the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lectures given over the last two decades suggests that moral passion (again un-​discussed) is evident there as well. So a book that does discuss moral passion might well be timely. But this, of course, is a discussion of Christian ethics and moral passion. Are there differences detectable in this chapter between Christian ethicists and moral philosophers? Starting with the moral philosophers, three observations might be made at this point. The first is that the each of the five moral philosophers is and has been for many years concerned with very serious ethical issues. Mary Warnock’s work was fundamental to establishing a pioneering regulatory framework for fertility treatment in Britain, a framework that has had a huge impact around the world. Her lecture about ‘naturalness’ is highly pertinent to this work. Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (1981) is regarded, as noted earlier, by many people in both moral philosophy and Christian ethics as a seminal work that has continued to shape their disciplines. His challenge in the lecture here is to re-​think notions of moral responsibility in the context of the Holocaust. And both Jürgen Habermas and Noam Chomsky have made major intellectual challenges in Europe and North America, arguing in their lectures about issues (religious/​secular tolerance and American foreign policy) that are of considerable political concern today. Anthony Kenny is better known as a metaphysician than as a moral philosopher, but his lecture also addresses the fanaticism that inspired the Nazism, fascism and enforced communism that blighted the twentieth century. The second observation is that moral passion does seem to be present in all five lectures. This is most obviously the case with Chomsky. His moral passion is at least as strong as that of the most passionate of the Christian ethicists. Yet a gap was noted between this passion and his view about the (weak) status of moral principles. Mary Warnock’s passion is also evident, but it seems that it is a purely private one that (unlike that

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of Chomsky and Habermas) should not be allowed to intrude into public ethics. Outside the lecture, she has on occasion used the concept of compassion when discussing issues in medical ethics just as Christian ethicists tend to do. But she will surely be aware that some secular utilitarians object to such a concept (or virtue) in this context on the grounds that it has no rational basis. Chapter 3 examines problems in Peter Singer’s preference utilitarianism. The third observation is that both Habermas and Chomsky, presumably following Kant, explicitly appeal to the moral principle of universalisability. Indeed it is difficult to see how the forcefulness of their moral conclusions could work without this principle. But just how secure is this moral principle in secular moral philosophy? And just how much does it depend (even in Kant) on various forms of the golden rule that are embedded within many different religious traditions? Chapter 7 returns to this issue, asking whether it really can bear the weight of the moral passion so evident in Habermas and, especially, in Chomsky. Turning now to the contributions to Theology, how do they match up to the three phases identified in Chapter 1? The first phase involves learning from a secular discipline and challenging other Christian ethicists to do likewise. The second phase involves challenging a purely secular understanding of the issue at hand and deepening it with an understanding that is not entirely secular. The third phase involves identifying a distinctively theological justification for moral choices and acts. In 1930 Lionel Thornton identified features of secular moral philosophy, at the time dissenting from only one of them. So he agreed with both the idea that ‘the foundations of morality are to be sought in the facts of human nature’ and that ‘the facts are to be discovered by the empirical methods of science.’ But what he did not agree with was the idea that ‘the goal of this moral order is human happiness conceived without reference to religious sanctions or to a supernatural end.’ This matches the three phases at least in outline. It was, however, Ronald Preston in the 1960s who matched the three phases in detail, especially in his analysis and critique of R. H. Tawney. He used his professional training in both theology and economics in a way that was new to Theology, showing that a Christian ethicist could learn from and challenge a discipline from the social sciences. Despite his devotion to the profoundly Christian Tawney he also showed how his ideas could be deepened and extended theologically. As Reinhold Niebuhr had done a generation before in the United States, Preston argued that a frank recognition of human sinfulness was needed to

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correct political utopianism (to which he felt even Tawney was prone). One of the consequences of such a recognition was the realisation that ‘no man and no group is good enough to exercise power over others unchecked.’ A recognition of human sinfulness also found powerful expression in the war-​time contributions to Theology of Karl Barth and William Temple and, later, of Enda McDonagh on the vexing issue of abortion. All wrote with obvious moral passion about human sinfulness, believing that it not just violated a principle such as universalisability but that it was also an affront to God. Theological tensions still remain between the various contributors. Gordon Dunstan clearly recognised this when he edited the special issue of Theology on divorce in 1975. It is also apparent in Nigel Biggar and Michael Banner’s later critiques of what they saw as weak theological leadership. As was noted in Chapter 1, some Christian ethicists offer sharper theological justifications for moral choices and acts than others. There is much here that needs to be explored later.

Works Cited Banner, Michael. 1993. ‘Five Churches in Search of Sexual Ethics’. Theology, July: 276–​289. Barth, Karl. 1940. ‘The Church and the War’. Theology, March: 203–​209. Biggar, Nigel. 1988. ‘Review Article:  Any News of the Social Good?’. Theology, November: 493–​498.   2014a. ‘Men and Women in Marriage: Does It Add Up?’ Theology, March: 94–​99.   2014b. ‘Why Christianity Benefits Secular Public Discourse, and Why, Therefore, Anglican Bishops Should Sit in a Reformed House of Lords. Theology, September: 324–​333. Chomsky, Noam. 2004. ‘Simple Truths, Hard Problems:  Some Thoughts on Terror, Justice, and Self-​Defence’. In Ted Honderich (ed.), 2015. Philosophers of Our Time, 273–​292. Oxford: Oxford University Press.   2013. YouTube interview: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=N7Q4F5yf2D8 (Accessed 1 July 15). Church of England (Church Assembly Board of Social Responsibility). 1965. Abortion: An Ethical Discussion. London: Church Information Office. Church of England (Group Appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury). 1966. Putting Asunder: A Divorce Law for Contemporary Society. London: SPCK. Cottingham, John. 2015. How to Believe. London: Bloomsbury. Dunstan, Gordon, R. 1974. The Artifice of Ethics. London: SCM Press.   1975. ‘Editorial’ and Four Articles (J. R. Lucas, John MacQuarrie, Helen Oppenheimer and G. R. Dunstan) on ‘Marriage and Divorce’. Theology, May: 225–​252.

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Gill, Robin. 1968. ‘The Suspect Approach to Christology’. Theology, July: 310–​317.   1996. ‘The Changing Family and the Churches’. Theology, May: 211–​217. Gorringe, Tim. 2008. ‘Reflections on The Good Pub Guide’. Theology, July: 243–​250. Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. ‘Religious Tolerance  –​The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights’. In Ted Honderich (ed.), 2015. Philosophers of Our Time, 313–​324. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Honderich, Ted (ed.). 2015. Philosophers of Our Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horrell, David G. 2009. ‘The Ecological Challenge to Biblical Studies’. Theology, May: 163–​171. Kenny, Anthony. 2007. ‘Knowledge, Belief, and Faith’. In Ted Honderich (ed.), 2015. Philosophers of Our Time, 257–​270. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kirk, Kenneth E. 1921. ‘Moral Theology:  Some Lessons of the Past’. Theology, January and February: 3–​13 and 58–​67. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue:  A  Study in Moral Theory. London: Duckworth. 2nd ed. 1985.   1999. ‘Social Structures and Their Threats to Moral Agency’. In Ted Honderich (ed.), 2015. Philosophers of Our Time, 295–​310. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. McDonagh, Enda. 1968. ‘Ethical Problems of Abortion’. Theology, September: 393–​400; October: 443–​456; and November: 501–​507. Northcott, Michael. 2004. ‘The Parable of the Talents and the Economy of the Gift’. Theology, July: 241–​249. Preston, Ronald. 1960. ‘The Christian Left Still Lost’. Theology, April: 133–​136.   1961. ‘Christian Ethics and Moral Theology: 1939–​60’. Theology, January and February: 3–​7 and 46–​57.   1966. ‘R. H.  Tawney as a Christian Moralist’. Theology, April:  157–​164; May: 208–​215; June: 262–​269. Pym, T. W. 1920. ‘Book Review:  The Church and the Social Services’. Theology, July: 57–​58. Temple, William. 1941. ‘The Sealed Book’. Theology, February: 65–​71. Thornton, Lionel S. 1930. ‘Christianity and Morality: Some Reflections upon the Present Situation’. Theology, December: 312–​322. Warnock, Mary. 2002. ‘What Is Natural? And Should We Care?’ In Ted Honderich (ed.), 2015. Philosophers of Our Time, 195–​208. Oxford:  Oxford Univer­sity Press.

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Ch apter 3

Christian Public Ethics

In Health Care and Christian Ethics (2006) I  sought to address an issue that had troubled me for quite some time. What was I as a theologian supposed to contribute to public committees concerned with bioethics? More specifically, what was I, often as the only theologian on such committees, supposed to contribute that was different from, but still intelligible to, philosophers, social scientists, lawyers and, of course, doctors and medical scientists? In framing the question in this way I  was inevitably addressing different audiences:  fellow theologians, academics and practitioners (some secular, some religious) engaged in public ethics and perhaps even academics concerned to evaluate competing truth claims in meta-​ethics. But at the time I did not always distinguish between these three audiences as clearly as I should have done. Nor did many of the contributors to New Studies in Christian Ethics. Most of us missed the startling contribution to Christian ethics of David Horrell that came out just before my own book. Only the subtitle of his Solidarity and Difference:  A  Contemporary Reading of Paul’s Ethics (2005 and revised 2016) might have alerted us to its significance for Christian ethics. His early work was known to those of us interested in sociological approaches to New Testament studies (Horrell 1999), which he has expanded more recently (Horrell 2009). This doubtless made him well placed to make distinctions between different audiences in present-​ day ethical debates and to argue that the sharp differences of approach of the theologian Stanley Hauerwas and the philosopher Jürgen Habermas (his two prime examples) resulted from Hauerwas being concerned primarily with Christian difference/​distinctiveness and Habermas with solidarity in a pluralist society. Horrell argues at length that these positions are in tension but not always contradictory and that both can be found in St Paul’s letters. He recognises that the difference perspective is dominant in Paul, but he also sees important evidence of a solidarity perspective: 75

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First, we have seen the prominence of theme, variously expressed, of acting with consideration for the reaction of outsiders, or (more positively) of seeking to do good to all people … [with] injunctions to act with consideration towards ‘all people’ throughout Paul’s letters  –​1 Thessalonians (3.12; 5.15), Galatians (6.10), 1 Corinthians (10.32 [cf. 1.22]). Romans (12.17–​18) and Philippians (4.5) –​indicates that this moral responsibility is, in Paul’s view, incumbent on all Christians, whatever their specific situation and whether or not they appear to be suffering from the abuse of outsiders … Secondly, it is apparent that the appeal to do good to all means specifically acting in a way which all will acknowledge and recognise as good … Thirdly, beyond the sense that the knowledge of right and wrong is shared in common, Paul also indicates that non-​Christians can and do act in accordance with these insights [e.g. Romans 13.1–​4]. (Horrell 2016, 294–​295)

What is significant for present purposes is his clear recognition of discrete audiences. The implication of his position is that had Hauerwas addressed Habermas’s concerns adequately –​namely, how Christians and other people of faith might contribute directly to the moral shaping of a pluralist society –​he might have found more common ground with philosophers such as Habermas than he has typically shown in his writings: Hauerwas’s overriding concern is to spell out for the Church what the Christian tradition should mean in practice, calling in effect for Christians to be shaped by their own story and not that of liberal democracy and thus to be faithful witnesses. In doing so, he does not take his task to be one of reflecting on what kind of moral framework might be necessary for various groups and traditions (including those that Christians represent) to negotiate their claims and counterclaims in the public sphere … Habermas’s key concern, on the other hand, is precisely to theorise the kind of morality necessary for the regulation of the public space in which conflict of interest and conviction, often arising from commitments to different ways of life, must be resolved. He recognises that specific traditions and forms of life are crucial for people’s identity and ethical convictions, but equally insists that tradition-​specific justifications cannot suffice to validate a norm in the public sphere of modern, plural, secular societies. (Horrell 2016, 86–​7)

In seeking my own solution to Habermas’s concerns I started with my fellow theologians (the first of my three audiences) by making a distinction –​ actually it was an ‘ideal type’–​between theological purists and theological realists (Gill 2006, 41f ). I  argued that theological purity is an approach that seeks to derive doctrine and moral precepts exclusively from sacred texts and then to regard them as being in radical conflict with the secular world. In contrast, theological realism sees continuities between theological and secular thought and is sceptical about the capacity of sacred texts to deliver unambiguous doctrine, let  alone self-​ sufficient moral precepts in the modern world. The first of these positions (typified by

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Hauerwas) tends to see a sharp contrast between the faithful and the secular world. It presupposes that the world at large is fundamentally secular, and that Christians (and similarly Jewish or Muslim purists) should look exclusively to their sacred texts (whether scriptural or patristic) to shape their beliefs and actions. The second, in contrast, does not make such a clear distinction between the faithful and the ‘secular’ world; tends to see the latter as more pluralist than secularist; and tends to regard sacred texts, interpreted critically, as key but not sufficient resources for belief and action today. Although I personally inclined towards theological realism I could see obvious strengths and weaknesses in both positions. Theological purists have a tendency to claim too much and to fuel so-​called ‘culture wars’. It is after all unlikely that sacred texts will be able to deliver convincing verdicts on the perplexing array of moral dilemmas posed by late modernity, especially those dilemmas created by advances in recent genetic science or medicine. That is perhaps why theological purists often appear so anachronistic and divisive to the second audience, namely the public forum of a late-​modern, pluralistic society. In contrast, theological realists may appeal more to this second audience, but have a tendency towards redundancy. I admitted in Health Care and Christian Ethics that by conceding too much to secular argument within this audience theological realists run the risk of losing their Christian identity altogether. I then quoted Robin Lovin, our most significant living defender of theological realism, warning that there is a real danger that it ‘is reduced to saying what everyone already believes’ and, as a result, its inadequacy ‘becomes more apparent over time, as beliefs change and what inspires one generation loses credibility with the next’ (Lovin 2003, 499). If theological purity is prone to hyperbole, public irrelevance and divisive other-​worldliness, theological realism is prone to evaporation and over-​accommodating this-​worldliness. Lovin’s fine study of Reinhold Niebuhr had already identified three distinct features of Christian realism in Niebuhr’s writing: political realism, moral realism and theological realism (Lovin 1995). In his more recent writings, however, Lovin has distanced himself somewhat from Niebuhr, arguing that theological realists today need to take account of both growing religious pluralism in the West and of different varieties of theological realism across different denominations. He also thinks that Christian realists have become more internally divided: For most of the twentieth century, [Christian realists] were at least united by common enemies, antirealist movements of nationalism, revolution, or totalitarianism

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that sought to resolve the tensions of modern life by bringing private choices under public control and obliterating the distinctions between the various spheres that make up modern society. In recent years, the family has become more fractious, and the more susceptible to persuasion by those who insist that some members of the family do not really belong to it at all. Old aunts whisper in the corners that Niebuhrian realists are really secular liberals, or that a theology of the spheres and orders is nothing but theocracy under another name. (Lovin 2008, 82)

Karen Guth has recently begun to develop another line that goes beyond Lovin at this point, arguing that Niebuhr’s realism needs to be supplemented with Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder’s ‘witness theology’ –​using the term that Hauerwas now tends to use (Hauerwas 2001, 39–​49) –​ and with Kathryn Tanner’s feminist theology: Reading Niebuhr alongside Kathryn Tanner brings into relief prominent themes shared between Niebuhr’s discussion of the church and her description of Christianity as productive of self-​critical cultures, suggesting the possibility of developing from within Niebuhr’s thought a conception of the churches as self-​critical and creative cultures that witness both to the power of sin and the possibilities of grace. When witness theologians dismiss Niebuhr from the ecclesiological discussion, they neglect these important contributions. (Guth 2015, 192)

The position that I finally adopted in Health Care and Christian Ethics leant heavily towards theological realism but also sought to learn from the scriptural approach of theological purity, looking at length, as noted in the first chapter, at Synoptic healing stories to identify the virtues that appeared to be most characteristic of Jesus’ ministry  –​namely compassion, care, faith and humility. I argued [though I dislike the practice, for once I will quote myself ] that Theological considerations can bring critical depth and parameters, as well as moral motivation, to Health Care Ethics and even to genetic issues. However moral discernment in the complex and fast changing world of genetic science (and, indeed, innovations in health care more widely) is possible only if theologians are prepared to listen carefully to their colleagues in science and moral philosophy. On complex ethical issues arising from genetic and medical science neither theology nor church bodies have privileged access to moral discernment (Gill 2006, 57).

Using these four virtues of compassion, care, faith and humility (within the second audience)  –​albeit without making explicit their Scriptural underpinning –​I have been happy to make alliances with other faith traditions (including non-​theistic religious and humanist traditions) that deploy some or all of these virtues. Some theological purists in the first audience may regard this move as faithless. In contrast, I regard it as being

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true to the Synoptic Jesus who lavished especial, but characteristically unexplained, praise upon individuals outside his own faith tradition  –​ such as the ‘Gentile of Syrophoenician origin’ or ‘Canaanite’ who begged Jesus to help her daughter in Mark 7.29 and Matthew 15.28, and the Roman centurion who appealed to Jesus on behalf of his slave servant in Matthew 8.10 and Luke 7.9. Even more dangerously, he singled out an individual regarded as ‘heretical’ by his fellow Jews –​the Samaritan who ‘prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him’ for being made ‘clean’ from leprosy in Luke 17.16. It is noted in Chapter 7 that in the gospel of Luke Jesus even used a fictitious Samaritan to illustrate his most radical, passionate and innovative moral teaching, enemy-​love. In the context of, say, the global disaster of AIDS I have followed David Hollenbach in arguing that it is imperative that we make such alliances for the common good, despite deriving these virtues from radically different meta-​ethical frameworks. Even simply among Christians I have been only too conscious that meta-​ethical frameworks differ radically. However, I  was prepared to be as elusive as my mentors Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor about the meta-​ethical status of virtues  –​in particular about how far either of them is finally committed to natural law theory. Of all of the books in New Studies in Christian Ethics, reviewed in the first chapter, my approach in Health Care and Christian Ethics was closest perhaps to Lisa Sowle Cahill’s second contribution, Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics (2013). As noted earlier Cahill’s ‘reasons for Christian commitment to justice’ were offered in two (not necessarily sequential) stages: one based upon a modified version of natural law and the other upon a critical appropriation of the Bible and Christian tradition. For both of us the Bible is taken seriously, but not as a sufficient resource for Christian ethics. And both of us are keen to reach across interreligious and secular-​ religious divides, especially when addressing global ethical issues. Her book also expresses well the sort of not wholly resolved meta-​ethical tensions that I had long felt. So, having been preoccupied in the first two-​thirds of her book with biblical and theological evidence, Cahill then insists: The practice of love and the theology of Christian practice must be structured by justice. This is an essential point in Christian ethics. But it would be too narrow to see the ideal of Christian love and the ethical norm of justice as related in only one direction: from love to justice … Christian concepts of grace, salvation, and virtue are already embedded in the new personal and social, which is to say moral and political, relationships of God’s reign. And those relationships are never just ‘Christian’ or among Christians, but are always ‘human’, joining

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people who participate in many types or layers of community at once, especially in our pluralistic and global age. (Cahill 2013, 248)

This leads her to a discussion and endorsement of natural law –​albeit a critical, adaptive and responsive understanding of natural law: The epistemology of natural law must be developed in terms of inductive consensus building that identifies patterns of continuity within change; that incorporates new insights, especially the fact of human equality; and that recognizes that bias and vested interests will work against recognition of equality and must be countered. Knowledge of the natural law is always perspectival and partial, even when it is also true and accurate. Knowledge is never detached from the particular contexts, identities, and interests of knowing subjects … Knowledge of human needs, goods, and obligations approaches universality only to the extent that the reasoning process behind it is extensive, inclusive, and critical. (Cahill 2013, 265)

Perhaps this is as far as a predominantly realist theologian engaged in public ethics can go. However, other books published at about the same time as Cahill’s have persuaded me not to stop here.

Three Books The books that influenced me to delve further are Mark C.  Murphy’s God and Moral Law:  On the Theistic Explanation of Morality (2011) and C. Stephen Evans’s God and Moral Obligation (2013). John E. Hare’s fine study God’s Command (2015) builds upon both of them and adds additional persuasion. Stephen Evans, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University, is well known for his work on Kierkegaard and divine command ethics. He is admirably fair to others even when he disagrees with them. In this new book he seeks to argue that divine command ethics need not be seen as a mutually exclusive rival to either natural law or virtue ethics. Instead he champions an approach to Christian ethics that is both enhanced by and, in turn, enhances both divine command and natural law explanations. Read alongside Mark Murphy’s God and Moral Law, to which he responds at length, I believe that a combination of Evans and Murphy –​the first from an Evangelical background and the second from a Catholic background  –​offers a real breakthrough in Christian meta-​ ethics, built upon by Hare. Separately and together they offer different ways that Christian ethics might still be able to make a serious contribution in the public forum, my second audience, and Evans in particular has also some effective points to make to my third audience.

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Both divine command ethics and natural law ethics have, for different reasons, struggled to be taken seriously in pluralistic societies. If the whole of ethics is finally based only on God’s commands (Christian, Jewish or Muslim), then it is likely to appeal most to those who are already religiously committed. Some forms of traditionalist Jewish ethics based on the Torah have claimed that the whole of Jewish ethics is based on divine law. However, even within the Torah itself virtues seem to abound alongside divine laws, together with examples of good and bad moral behaviour. To take a single instance, the opening verses of Deuteronomy do appear as straightforward divine commands:  ‘Moses spoke to the Israelites just as the Lord had commanded him to speak to them’ (1.3). However, it very quickly appears that leaders are also expected to make their own moral judgments: ‘I took the leaders of your tribe, wise and reputable individuals, and installed them as leaders over you … I  charged your judges at that time:  “Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien”  ’ (1.15–​16). If Islam is also introduced into this discussion, the dilemma becomes even greater, as John Hare argues: The justification of moral obligation by God’s command is more intimate than has yet been explained. God’s command after all produces not only moral obligation, but obligations of other kinds; in Judaism, for example, ceremonial and dietary obligations; in Christianity, obligations about baptism and Eucharist; in Islam, obligations about pilgrimage and daily prayer. (Hare 2015, 25)

It might also be noted that in the much contested, and for me deeply theological rather than scientific, first chapter of Genesis, there is a repeated phrase: ‘and God saw that it was good.’ The Hebrew word for ‘good’ (tov) here apparently means ‘good’ (or even ‘beautiful’) but not ‘perfect’ (a crucial point in theodicy), but also note that here ‘God saw’ not ‘God commanded’ (crucial to the Euthyphro dilemma). In addition, the transition from the Hebrew Bible to the Greek Septuagint that started three centuries before Jesus shows clear evidence not just of translation but of hermeneutics as well, for example, by toning down the implicit polytheism in the Hebrew version of Psalms 97.7 and 138.1. Since much of the New Testament is dependent on the Septuagint, this has important implications also for Christian ethics, as is noted at times in the Synoptic Gospel exegesis and interpretation within chapters five and seven. Within Christian ethics, it is even more difficult to sustain an exclusively divine command understanding of ethics. Clearly, there are a couple of

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commands in Leviticus against homosexuality, but in the New Testament it is only Paul and not Jesus who repeats them. And even Paul does not recommend stoning to death as the required punishment for homosexual activity –​any more than do present-​day Christian traditionalists in North or Central Africa. It is not just pro-​gay theologians such as I who engage in scriptural hermeneutics. The Hebrew Bible was already engaged in internal scriptural hermeneutics (for example, on the propriety of sacrifices) long before Christians continued this process within the New Testament (as competing statements in the latter on divorce show) and then beyond the New Testament with serious thinkers such as Augustine. It is quite possible that any intelligent moral appropriation of ancient texts (even from secular sources such as Aristotle) in the modern world (and even texts from, say, Kant, Marx or Nietzsche) requires the use of hermeneutics and thus selectivity or, as I would prefer to call it, discernment. Natural law ethics, in contrast, does allow that religious and non-​ religious people alike have access through reason or intuition to moral laws. But critics have long noted that natural law theorists by no means all agree with each other, that social perceptions of morality vary considerably across societies, and that even the great Aquinas concluded that men were naturally superior in intellect to women, and women to slaves, and that animals, having little or no intellect, exist simply to serve humans. Many non-​theistic ethicists (non-​theistic evolutionary ethicists apart) are also sceptical about deriving normative judgements from nature in any form. An attempt to read ethical principles straightforwardly off observations of ‘nature’ (as in natural law ethics) or off the blind forces of evolution (as in evolutionary ethics) faces very obvious problems and ambiguities. Some, especially in earlier generations, have argued that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’, but others point out that it is to be found within nature among a number of species. Again, a desire to survive and flourish for self, kith and kin can be seen as a by-​product of evolution, but (in various species including some humans and our nearest living relatives, after bonobos, chimpanzees) so can an urge for dominant males to rape females and kill their offspring from another male (facilely excused as genes just being ‘selfish’). This is not to claim that either nature or evolution is wholly irrelevant to ethical decision making. But it is to claim that neither can be ‘the whole story.’ Indeed, in his latest book, The Ethics of Everyday Life (2014), Michael Banner suggests a much more subtle way of using natural observations in ethics by resorting to the work of social anthropologists rather than sociobiologists. In a subsequent article, he argues that

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two social anthropologists –​Joel Robbins and Juliet du Boulay, studying isolated Christian communities in Papua New Guinea and rural Greece respectively  –​offer important clues about the moral relevance of saints even in an apparently secular world (Banner 2016). The Ethics of Everyday Life represents an important departure for Banner. Fifteen years earlier he rejected his youthful theological realist engagement with religion and science and championed instead a theological purist ‘dogmatic Christian ethics’, quoting Karl Barth extensively when discussing –​stridently and in detail –​the moral problems of euthanasia, abortion, health care rationing, the environment, biotechnology and sexuality (Banner 1999 and criticized in Gill 2006, 50f ). But his focus now is on what he terms the ethics of ‘everyday life’ rather than on specific moral problems. Barth is mentioned in passing only twice and his new dialogue partner is social anthropology. He argues throughout that the detailed ethnographic studies of social anthropologists –​with their concepts such as ‘kinship’ –​have more to inform theologians than do either moral philosophers or bioethicists. For example, he argues that it is social anthropologists who can best untangle the complex kinship relationships that result from in vitro fertilization and surrogacy (and even from heart transplant patients who befriend their donor’s family) or who can identify changing forms of private mourning ritual within apparently secularised societies. The picture of ‘everyday ethics’ that emerges from this, he argues, is very different from, and richer than, that envisaged by bioethicists. Perhaps it is not too surprising that a theologian finds affinity with social anthropologists. The latter have never lost sight of the complex role that religious rituals, artefacts, buildings and stories still have in many societies and cultures around the world. And some of the leading social anthropologists  –​such as Evans-​Pritchard and Mary Douglas  –​were themselves deeply religious. It is interesting that even some psychotherapists are now showing a new interest both in social anthropology and in the significance of ritual in human well-​being (Goodwyn 2016). Intriguingly, Mark Murphy argues in his short but complex book that, despite previously defending a predominantly natural law approach to ethics, there is a viable third approach that can go beyond the weaknesses of natural law and divine command. He develops this from recent theological discussions about God’s relationship to the physical world, especially those that argue that (beyond classical deism and theism) human beings can, in some sense, be co-​creators with God. He terms this third approach ‘moral concurrentism’. Physical concurrentism assumes that ‘God and creature are complementary causes … God contributes general,

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undifferentiated power, while the creaturely agent contributes the specific way that this power will affect other objects; together, these constitute the causing of [a]‌unified effect … [a] joint action’ (Murphy 2011, 145). Moral concurrentism, similarly, assumes that ‘moral necessitation, and thus moral law, is immediately explained both by God and by creaturely natures … they somehow jointly morally necessitate’ (Murphy 2011, 148). This concept of ‘moral concurrentism’ is, I believe, his most useful contribution to Christian meta-​ethics. So far so good. It is not the place here to pursue the particular path that Mark Murphy outlines suggesting how this co-​relationship between God and human beings might work, not least because he elaborates this path within a detailed point-​by-​point discussion of Robert Adams’s work. In any case, Murphy admits that other ways are possible, although he does not elaborate them. The general point that he makes is interesting, namely, that there may be a path somewhere between the modified natural law approach of Christian ethicists such as Lisa Cahill and Stephen Pope and the more inclusive forms of divine command ethics such as those of the late Allen Verhey. There is some affinity here with those theologians who have attempted to use various forms of philosophical compatibilism to ‘explain’ how human free will and an omniscient/​omnipotent God can be held together. My hunch is that such tactics do not actually ‘explain’, but they do serve to reduce theological dissonance. That in itself is worthwhile. However, Mark Murphy’s argument is more adventurous than this. He seeks no less than to give an account of moral norms from God’s perspective. He wishes to establish an explanation of morality derived directly from a belief in an absolutely perfect being. Many other Christian ethicists, he argues, typically look for gaps in secular ethics that might be better explained by theistic arguments (my third audience). In contrast, he attempts to focus only on God and to see how morality appears from God’s perspective (addressing my second audience). Apologetics, he insists, is not his task. He simply assumes the existence of an absolutely perfect being and wishes to establish the ethical implications of such a being. This is a bold philosophical move, but one that is less than persuasive. It quickly moves him into claims about what an absolutely perfect being can or cannot be or do. There is little acknowledgement here of the analogical nature of theistic language and, thus, of the limits of human concepts applied to God. Keith Ward criticises such theologians more polemically for ‘a sort of arrogance that presumes to say exactly what God is in the divine being itself, as opposed to saying how God truly appears to finite human minds’ (Ward 2015, x).

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Stephen Evans is also not entirely convinced by Murphy’s solution, although he welcomes his present inclusive approach. Instead, starting from divine commands, Evans argues that they are more relevant to moral obligation than to the specific contents of morality –​a point that actually has obvious affinities with Murphy’s concept of ‘moral concurrentism’. For Evans, moral obligations seen properly are objective, provide compelling reasons for moral action and moral duty and help us to understand the universality of morality. There are affinities here with the moral stance taken by Kieran Cronin noted in Chapter 1. Chapters 5 to 7 argue that both moral outrage (negatively) and a strong sense of moral obligation (positively) are indeed important forms of moral passion. Given this, Evans argues that divine commands are not capricious but already presuppose a concept of the ‘good’. To understand the latter, natural law theory is particularly helpful.

Altruism and Sociobiology Altruism is a helpful example here, returning to the differences noted in Chapter  1 among Stephen Clark, Colin Grant and Stephen Pope in their contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics. A thin expression of altruism and cooperation may well be ‘natural’ for otherwise self-​ centred human beings, as sociobiologists generally claim. Yet, to become intentional, let  alone morally obligatory, for individuals, divine command  –​especially the dominical commands about neighbour-​love and enemy-​love –​gives an authoritative spur (for my first audience) beyond a thin expression. Likewise, altruistic virtues nourished within faith communities help to shape the characters of those who feel altruism to be ‘natural’ but know it to be obligatory from (following Evans) their divinely inspired, albeit fallible, consciences. As Clark points out, much depends here on how one defines ‘altruism’. If it is defined simply as ‘cooperation’ then it does not take too much effort for sociobiologists to establish that cooperation is as important for their survival to human beings as it is for lionesses or orca whales. But, as Clark notes, the way that sociobiologists tend to use terms such as ‘altruism’ or ‘selfish genes’ is deeply confusing: The notion of ‘the selfish gene’, as a way of expounding neo-​Darwinian theory, at first sight seems an obvious and clumsy metaphor. ‘Being selfish’ is being inclined to give one’s own wishes greater weight than can be justified. Genes presumably have no wishes, and whether they would give them more weight than they should, who knows? ‘Altruistic behaviour’, on the other hand, is willingly doing

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good to others, at some personal cost. Who knows what costs there are for genes, or what ‘doing good’ to them requires? (Clark 2000, 129)

In addition, Clark argues that such sociobiological terms, once incorporated into natural law, are far too limited for Christian ethics: The altruism we can expect to feel is, centrally, ‘kin-​altruism’ (with, perhaps, some stray affection for those who look or smell like kin but are not) and ‘reciprocal altruism’ (offered in expectation of a quick return). Any demand to care for an unprofitable stranger, or to love your enemy, is to be regarded as an offence to natural law; either we cannot ‘really’ acknowledge such a duty (and our professions to the contrary must have some natural goal), or it must be an evolutionary ‘mistake’, soon to be overtaken by more carefully discriminating lines. (Clark 2000, 244)

In their recent collection Evolution, Games and God (2013), Martin Novak and Sarah Coakley make real progress on this point, deploying a sharp distinction between ‘cooperation’ and ‘altruism’. For them, ‘cooperation is a form of working together in which one individual pays a cost (in terms of fitness, whether genetic or cultural) and another gains a benefit as a result’ whereas ‘altruism is a form of (costly) cooperation in which an individual is motivated by good will or love for another (or others)’ (Novak and Coakley 2013, 4–​5). Relying on this distinction, they argue that Unfortunately, it has become almost standard in evolutionary biology to apply the terms ‘altruism’ or ‘evolutionary altruism,’ to family resemblance behaviors or outcomes of a ‘sacrificial’ sort in the entire spectrum of evolutionary development, and thus to blur the crucial distinction between a form of ‘cooperation’ which just happens, and ‘altruism’ proper, which is motivated by specific goals or affective commitments. (Novak and Coakley 2013, 4)

And Novak gives the following examples of cooperation on ‘many levels of biological organization’: Genes cooperate in genomes. Chromosomes cooperate in eukaryotic cells. Cells cooperate in multicellular organisms. There are many examples of cooperation among animals. Humans are the champions of cooperation: from hunter gatherer societies to nation states, cooperation is the decisive organizing principle of human society. No other life form on Earth is involved in the same complex games of cooperation and defection. (Novak and Coakley 2013, 99)

Colin Grant has an even sharper take on the difference between sociobiological and Christian understandings of ‘altruism’, while Stephen Pope tends to see them as different points along a shared continuum. While these disagreements are genuine and probably unresolvable, all three

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contributors to New Studies in Christian Ethics might still agree that a full account of Christian altruism is not to be discovered within the findings of sociobiology. So even Pope, the most enthusiastic evolutionist of the three contributors, still writes: Christian ethics can learn from the evolutionary views of altruism … when they are purged of their reductionist presuppositions. They shed light on the evolutionary background of human altruism but they cannot ‘explain’ human action because it is more than an organic event. Nor does evolution provide an ethical reason for acting altruistically in the full sense of the term. In Christian terms, we act for others because this is what Jesus displayed in his life and what he taught his disciples to do. (Pope 2007, 249)

All three Christian ethicists, despite their differences, might also agree with Roger Scruton when he argues that sociobiological ‘explanations’ of human altruism only work if they employ ‘a minimalist concept of altruism’, equating, say, the behaviour of an ant instinctively marching into the flames that threaten its anthill with that of an officer who intentionally ‘lays down his life for his friends’ (Scruton 2012, 26 and 2014, 55–​57). Scruton’s argument (which he repeats word-​ for-​ word in the two books just cited) might even have been improved had he applied it to the two doctors, mentioned in the Introduction, who were both awarded two Victoria Crosses, Arthur Martin-​Leake and Noel Chavasse. As seen already, their awards were given not for bravery in combat (as it was for the third recipient of two Victoria Crosses), but solely for bravery while repeatedly rescuing the wounded while under fire. It would be difficult to find two more radical examples of intentional and repeated altruism. As it happens, both men were from churchgoing families. Arthur Martin-​Leake survived the First World War but lived the rest of his life away from public attention. His biographer, Ann Clayton, portrays him as an intensely private man who said little about these actions in later life. She does note, however, that as a child his ‘family were certainly regular churchgoers’ at their local church, St John’s High Cross, but adds that ‘there is no evidence of any real religious fervour, although Mrs Martin-​ Leake was always described as a “very Christian lady” ’ (Clayton 1994, 9). Fervour or no fervour, my own empirical research has long suggested that regular churchgoing (even if not continued into adulthood) has a significant effect in shaping an individual’s beliefs and values (Gill 1999). Noel Chavasse’s religious convictions are much clearer. He was brought up in an intensely evangelical family. According to his clerical biographer, Selwyn Gummer, his father (Principal of Wycliffe Hall and then Bishop of Liverpool) and mother were pious (with daily family prayers) but

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somewhat distant as parents. He was very close to his identical twin brother (who eventually became Bishop of Rochester) and had two other brothers. All four of the brothers served in the First World War but only one (who, like Noel, was killed in the war) was a combatant. His twin was a chaplain and he and the other brother were medics; all three of them were awarded a Military Cross in addition to his own Victoria Crosses. A  strong sense of duty and religious conviction ran through the whole family. While he was a medical student he taught in a Sunday school and ‘found time in the midst of his studies to start a Bible Class in the industrial school which he conducted up to the outbreak of war; he held twice a week a Boy’s Union for prayer and Bible reading’ (Gummer 1963, 47). In later life his fiancée (and cousin) … remembered him as a profoundly devout person. His faith was the first thing in his life; once he had talked to her of taking orders and of becoming a medical missionary when the horror of war was passed. She for her part welcomed this prospect. His interest in the youth work he had undertaken in Liverpool before the war was so great that he could never have been satisfied with ministering only to the physical needs of men and women. He would have to have become in some way a physician of the soul. (Gummer 1963, 61)

Even allowing for the obvious bias here of his biographer, Noel Chavasse does seem to have shared his family’s evangelical convictions. In his final note to his fiancée after his fatal wound, he wrote simply:  ‘Duty called and duty must be obeyed’ (Gummer 1963, 63). In a poignant letter of August 12th, Noel’s father wrote to the surviving twin that his heart was nearly broken, but that Noel had not lived in vain. He had been reading Job 13.15 and discussed how death was not to be understood as a punishment from God. He did not think that Noel’s death should cause them to question their faith –​although manifestly it did. Two days later he wrote to his son making the point that, although Noel was dead, he should still think of himself as having a twin brother (Chavasse 1917). Gummer records that right up to his death in 1962 from lung cancer his twin continued to feel the pain of Noel’s death and, every year until her death, his fiancée, now married, visited his grave just outside Ypres. Those closest to him shared the pride and the pain of his exceptional altruism. This is a very far away from the ‘altruism’ of games theory. In summary, Evans argues: A divine command theory is far from constituting a complete theory. It rests on a framework of normative truths, including an account of the good, such as the natural law theory provides, and it needs an account of the virtues as well. These

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kinds of ethical theories not only answer different questions than does a divine command theory. They also provide a context which transforms our understanding of moral obligations themselves. (Evans 2013, 87)

This is a very challenging, well-​ argued and interesting book. Read together with Murphy’s, and then Hare’s book (which also includes lengthy analyses of divine command ethics in both medieval Islam and modern Judaism), it opens up fresh paths for ecumenical dialogue and wider engagement in public ethics (my second audience) and perhaps for public debate about meta-​ ethics (my third audience). Even if determined secularists remain unconvinced, they might at least be encouraged by it to pay more attention to moral obligation –​or, as I prefer to term it, moral passion.

A Moral Gap in Secul ar Ethics A good, but not entirely fruitful, example of such dialogue is provided in John Perry’s innovative collection God, the Good, and Utilitarianism: Perspectives on Peter Singer (2014). The Australian philosopher Peter Singer, now at Harvard, is well known for his passionate, even puritanical, commitments to environmentalism, animal welfare and global poverty. But among Christian ethicists he is also renowned for his hard-​edged utilitarianism, his antipathy to religions and especially to Christian ethics, and for his defence of euthanasia not just for consenting adults but also for severely disabled infants (comparing them unfavourably to great apes). Yet here was a group of British and American theologians engaged in dialogue seeking to find common ground with him. The American Catholic theologian Charles Camosy was instrumental in starting this dialogue. He contributes a chapter based on his important monograph Peter Singer and Christian Ethics:  Beyond Polarization (2012). John Perry, then working for the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics and Public Life, Oxford, organized the conference that resulted in God, the Good, and Utilitarianism. He contributes an introduction and chapter outlining the history of utilitarianism –​arguing that it has Christian roots and ongoing affinities with versions of Christian ethics based upon ‘well-​being’ or eudaimonia. Perry maintains that  –​shorn of its single-​mindedness, quasi-​mathematical certainty and proposals such as infanticide  –​what is left of Singer’s utilitarianism is compatible with Christian ethics. Lisa Sowle Cahill argues that Catholic social ethics and utilitarianism ‘alike require expanded notions and practices of moral discourse’ to address global problems effectively (Cahill in Perry 2014, 123). Recalling

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the battles between double-​effect and proportionalist styles of Catholic ethical reasoning, she finally judges both to be too individualistic to address global issues. And John Hare, whose father, R. M. Hare, supervised Peter Singer’s doctorate, brings unique insights into his critique. He concludes that Singer’s atheism presents him with a ‘moral gap’: My suggestion is that by thinking of ourselves as following a God who sustains the moral order of the world, we gain resources for actually living in a way that fits that order. By taking theism out of the picture, we lose those resources, and the attempt to live that way becomes unstable in a way it was not before. (Hare in Perry 2014, 103)

Sadly, despite its brilliance, this is a one-​sided dialogue. Singer makes few concessions in his contribution, repeating some of his most naïve criticisms of Christianity, and even when he detects points of contact –​ on, say, addressing global poverty –​he disparages Christians for not living up to their own teaching. For a long time he was a moral relativist (despite his strong, indeed passionate, moral criticisms of others). He is now more tempted by secular forms of moral objectivism –​especially the ‘rational intuition’ of ‘irreducibly normative truths’ akin to mathematical or logical truths of Derek Parfit’s On What Matters (2011) –​ and is moving away from making personal preferences his ethical basis, but he still makes no concessions whatsoever to metaphysics. At best, other contributors report that, in conversation, Singer agrees that his ethical task would be easier if he were a theist. But this may be little more, say, than my admitting that Jehovah’s Witnesses have a very strong and morally forceful eschatology while not remotely accepting their eschatology as true. In his monograph, Charles Camosy makes two particularly sharp observations about Singer. The first pinpoints the specific weaknesses of his preference utilitarianism, which he does here in summary form: Let’s quickly review those contexts in which preference utilitarianism alone fails to give satisfactory answers, the first three of which Singer himself admits are problematic: (1) Deciding whether or not to bring a new being into the world to replace another (2) Deciding if the world is better off with people or without (3) Discovering our moral duties to distant future people (4) Resolving a conflict between satisfying current preferences and future preferences (5) Deciding which kinds of future preferences to permit or create in someone

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(6) Finding a basis for ordering preferences such that one preference trumps another preference (Camosy 2012, 225)

His other sharp observation is that, ironically, there are ‘faith-​ based claims’ at the heart of Singer’s utilitarianism [although I doubt very much whether Singer himself would recognise them as ‘faith based’]: Today’s post-​modern world has revealed an important fact:  we cannot find the objective meaning and ethical principles Singer wishes to enjoin upon us without standing on the firm foundation of some faith-​based first principles that come from a narrative or tradition. And the first principles he has in mind (like ‘we should do the greatest good for the greatest number’ or ‘one person counts as one and none more’) are, in fact, faith-​based claims for which there cannot be arguments. They simply ‘claim’ or ‘grab’ one as being true via some authority. (Camosy 2012, 247)

Perhaps the final words in that paragraph should (especially following Parfit) have been ‘authority or intuition’ rather than just ‘authority’. However, Camozy’s overall point is well made. There does seem to be a considerable gap between Singer’s deep (and, for me, highly commendable) moral passion about such issues as global poverty or the proper treatment of animals and his calculated espousal of ‘personal preferences’, or perhaps even ‘rational intuition’, as his ethical basis. David Fergusson notices a similar gap when he writes about the ‘new atheists’: The case of Richard Dawkins is interesting here. While dismissing the significance of religion for ethics, he is also adamant that the forces of natural selection cannot provide an adequate basis for human morality. Here he bristles with the same defiant moral passion that marked Bertrand Russell’s atheism. Yet, this moral concern actually subverts or at least transcends Darwinian explanation. What it suggests is that while evolutionary forces may have generated powers of empathy and moral reasoning in human societies, these then have a capacity for more independent reflection and assessment that is not bound up with evolutionary drives. (Fergusson 2009, 107–​108)

In Health Care and Christian Ethics I used John Hare’s notion of the ‘moral gap’ (Hare 1996) to depict the bioethicist Jonathan Glover, who perhaps unwittingly provided another striking example in his monumental book Humanity. I  noted there that Glover describes in great detail some of the major ‘atrocities’ of the twentieth century, acknowledging that ironically at ‘the start of the century there was an optimism, coming from the Enlightenment, that the spread of a humane and scientific outlook would lead to the fading away, not only of war, but also of other

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forms of cruelty and barbarism’ (Glover 1999, 6). He also acknowledges that ‘the evils of religious intolerance, religious persecution and religious wars are well known, but it is striking how many protests against and acts of resistance to atrocity have also come from principled religious commitment … The decline of this moral commitment would be a huge loss’ (Glover 1999, 405). Yet I noted at the time that his own secular grounds for moral obligation are surprisingly thin –​not unlike the morally passionate, but morally ungrounded, Noam Chomsky noted already in Chapter two: As authority-​based morality retreats, it can be replaced by a morality which is deliberately created. The best hope is to work with the grain of human nature, making use of the resources of moral identity and the human responses. (Glover 1999, 409)

In his influential book The Better Angels of Our Nature, the Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker makes only very limited use of Glover’s book and clearly does not share either his despondency about the effectiveness of ‘the spread of a humane and scientific outlook’ following the Enlightenment, or his wistful admiration of principled religious commitment. On the contrary, Pinker uses a mass of longitudinal data to argue that homicide rates have radically declined over the last five hundred years [once compared as a percentage of contemporary populations], as have barbarous forms of punishment and torture. Furthermore, he argues that ‘the most destructive eruptions of the past half millennium were fueled … by ideologies, such as religion, revolution, nationalism, fascism, and communism’ (Pinker 2011, 815). Using a mixture of prudential arguments drawn from sociobiology, games theory and the golden rule (all interpreted by him as avoiding ideology) he concludes that: Defenders of religion have long claimed that in the absence of divine edicts, morality can never be grounded outside ourselves. People can only pursue selfish interests, perhaps tweaked by taste or fashion, and are sentenced to lives of relativism and nihilism. We can now appreciate why this line of argument is mistaken. Discovering earthly ways in which human beings can flourish, including stratagems to overcome the tragedy of the inherent appeal of aggression, should be purpose enough for anyone. It is a goal that is nobler than joining a celestial choir, melting into a cosmic spirit, or being reincarnated into a higher life-​form, because the goal can be justified to any fellow thinker rather than being inculcated to arbitrary factions by charisma, tradition, or force. And the data we have seen in this book show that it is a goal on which progress can be made –​progress that is halting and incomplete, but unmistakable nonetheless. (Pinker 2011, 840)

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The moral passion (and caricature) here is obvious –​and indeed in the rest of this long book  –​but is never quite explained or even acknowledged. Somehow he seems to derive normative judgments from statistical and prudential considerations. There are also manifest problems about deciding, say, on the comparative moral weight that the Holocaust should be given compared with the Inquisition. Terry Eagleton comments dryly that ‘it is hard to imagine more heartwarming news’ on Pinker’s verdict that the 55 million deaths resulting from the Second World War only just reach the top ten global incidences of homicide (Eagleton 2015c, 22). But suppose that every other ‘fellow thinker’ agrees with his mass of comparative statistics and with his mixture of prudential arguments (which is unlikely given tensions in and between them), why should all share his moral passion, his normative judgements and his strong sense of moral obligation? And from whence does he derive the golden rule? (Chapter 7 returns to this point.) In common with Stephen Evans I would argue that ‘some framework of normative truth’  –​shaped, but not wholly constructed by, particular social contexts and determinants –​is essential for an adequate account of moral obligation and, with it, moral passion. For me, working explicitly as a theist, it is a concept of grace that most adequately depicts endemic human weakness/​sinfulness, grounding moral behaviour finally in divine rather than human assistance. For Hindus or Buddhists it might instead be a sense of sacred order. But what will it finally be for secularists? The secular philosopher Michael Ruse recognizes the problem here but forgets it as soon as he reaches his conclusion. So he recognizes that sociobiological arguments for moral objectivity do not finally work. He believes that sociobiology can show us that altruism (understood crudely as just ‘helping each other’) is a major factor in animal, including human, behaviour. Yet he points out: But think about it. If we saw at once that ethics has only the function of keeping us social, then the temptation to cheat would be overwhelming. You scratch my back, but while I pretend to scratch yours, I am in fact enriching myself at your expense. Before very long, everything would collapse in selfish chaos. (Ruse 2015, 167–​168)

However, having made this obvious point, he then immediately concludes that it is not ‘moral objectivity’ but ‘the appearance of moral objectivity’ that is in the end socially effective: Suppose, however, that part of the experience of morality was that it is binding, that it is objective. Then the temptation to cheat is reduced or eliminated, and

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morality keeps functioning. Within the morality system, we can make judgments about right and wrong, just as much as in the soccer system, we can judge a goal scored or a kick offside. It is just that the objectivity of morality, on this reading, is an illusion put in place by our genes to keep us social –​as much an illusion as the perfection of the boy or girl with whom we have just fallen in love. It may all seem rather cynical on the part of nature, but whoever said that nature had to be upright and fair! This is the world of nonbelief, and such are the consequences. (Ruse 2015, 168)

The problem with this ‘solution’ is that as soon as we have become clever enough to notice that moral objectivity is an illusion (or, alternatively, as soon as we have read this paragraph from Ruse’s book) we need no longer feel bound by it. We too can join the selfish cheat. So why does Ruse imagine that this ‘solution’ avoids a ‘collapse in selfish chaos’? The problem here is akin to that of followers of Voltaire and Comte, noted earlier, who believed that religious belonging or belief is good for social order even though they themselves regarded it as an illusion (just as some sociobiologists do today). Doubtless tooth fairies are an illusion, but they are effective in deflecting pain only while small children still believe them to be real. Once they are perceived to be an illusion, they lose their effectiveness. Ruse would have done well to have obtained an advance copy of Terry Eagleton’s Culture and the Death of God (2015) with, to quote it again, its withering depiction of ‘a trust in the enabling fiction or redemptive lie that can be found everywhere from Nietzsche and Ibsen to Conrad, Vaihinger, and J. M. Synge (Eagleton 2015a, 205). With considerable passion and admirable wit Eagleton scorns Alain de Botton’s well-​meaning Religion for Atheists as follows: There are, de Botton argues, ‘aspects of religious life that could fruitfully be applied to the problems of secular society’ … One and a half centuries in the wake of Matthew Arnold, de Botton is still wistfully hoping that culture may wrest the baton from religion … De Botton is a latter-​day Arnold, as his high Victorian language makes plain. Religion ‘teaches us to be polite, to honour one another, to be faithful and sober’, as well as instructing us in ‘the charms of community’. Intellectually speaking, religion is nonsense; but this is hardly to the point as long as it makes for some much needed civility, aesthetic charm, social order and moral edification. A committed atheist like himself, de Botton argues, can therefore still find religion ‘sporadically interesting, useful and consoling’, which makes it sound rather like rustling up a soufflé when you are feeling low. Since Christianity requires that one lays down one’s life if need be for a stranger, de Botton must have a strange idea of consolation. His notion of faith is not quite that of a prophet who was tortured and executed by the imperial

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powers for speaking for justice, and whose followers must be prepared to meet the same fate. (Eagleton 2015a, 205)

Returning to Ruse, even the example of love that he gives is hardly convincing to those who have experienced mature love. A  feature of some sexual relationships at the outset may well be a conviction about the ‘perfection of the boy or girl with whom we have just fallen in love’. Yet if the relationship is wholly dependent on this conviction, it might be unlikely to last very long. Only inveterate narcissists-​by-​proxy are likely to maintain such a conviction. For most of us, I  suspect, abiding human love is not about human physical or emotional perfection  –​it has more to do with continuing affection, mutual care and reciprocal reconciliation despite all too human imperfections (our own as much as those of the one we love). As a credible alternative to theistic accounts of ethics, Ruse is inviting us to believe that ‘nature’ is tempting us foolish humans to believe in belief about moral objectivity when the ‘reality’ (so he believes) is that the belief itself is spurious. I  suppose that is possible, but it does not seem especially persuasive. And it is clearly not a knock-​out refutation of theistic, let alone Christian ethics as Terry Eagleton or Stephen Evans depicts it. It also fails Eagleton’s acid critique of ‘old-​fashioned, backward-​looking, nineteenth-​century liberal rationalists, like Richard Dawkins, for whom we are getting nicer and nicer, give or take the odd imperial war or spot of genocide, and only barbarous mythologies like religion prevent us from sailing triumphantly ahead into a kind of North Oxford utopia’ (Eagleton 2015b, 303). What all of these examples suggest is that the foundations of some secular forms of ethics are surprisingly vulnerable. This is so despite the stridency of Peter Singer for most of his career and of a number of secular ethicists influenced by sociobiology today. The theologian William Greenway, in his recent book A Reasonable Belief (2015), cites as his favourite example the Cambridge historian Quentin Skinner ‘writing in a scholarly journal and with merely a gesture to some of the West’s foremost intellectuals, [Skinner in 1991] felt free to assert flatly that faith in God is “obviously self-​deceiving and erroneous … it must be grossly irrational to believe otherwise … anyone who continues to assert it must be suffering from some serious form of psychological blockage or self-​deceit” ’ (Greenway 2015, ix). Perhaps Singer, Skinner and others should have paid more attention to the theological critics of similar stridencies made by John Rawls

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a generation ago in his early writings and by A.  J. Ayer a generation before him. Eric Mascall was a notable critic of Ayer’s logical positivism (which relegated morality to preference or taste), pointing out that its so-​called ‘verification principle’ (which allowed only empirical or tautological claims as meaningful) could not actually verify itself (since the principle clearly was not tautological and could not be verified empirically). Again Rawls’s famous ‘veil of ignorance’ underpinning his concept of justice soon crumbled on close inspection, especially by theologians, nurtured by a stronger sense of human sinfulness. For them it was not clear that determined egoists would be convinced that their present ignorance about their future needs would incline them to be caring for the present needy. Much more desirable for such egoists would be to ignore the needy now and then to manipulate others to care for them if and when they needed this care in the future. It remains to be seen whether or not Derek Parfit’s neo-​Kantian claim for ‘rational intuition’, unattached to either naturalism or metaphysics, will have a similar fate. I  suspect that Hare’s judgement on Singer, and the first three weaknesses in Camosy’s summary critique of Singer, may apply to Parfit as well.

A Provisional Map Using elements from Murphy, Evans and Hare, a provisional meta-​ethical map for Christian ethics in the public domain of bioethics might look like the following. It would start for me (within the first audience) from the four virtues gleaned from the Synoptic healing stories, namely compassion, care, faith and humility. It would quickly note (moving to the second audience), however, that there is a natural law basis – reinforced by the slow process of evolution –​for at least elements of the first three of these virtues. It is natural for humans to feel compassion for, care for and trust members of their own family and companions. Indeed, parents who do not care for their own children are properly regarded as ‘unnatural.’ Mammals  –​or at least female mammals  –​naturally succour and care for their young, and many also show respect for patriarchs and matriarchs. However, using Murphy’s concept of ‘moral concurrentism’, nature is not simply to be adopted as it is. It does seem to be ‘natural’ for some dominant males to kill offspring that are not their own. Human stepfathers are also more inclined than biological fathers to abuse or even kill their adopted children. As a result of deeply embedded virtues (with religious roots) we now

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regard such human behaviour as deeply ‘unnatural’. Following Evans and Hare, we have imbibed divine commands to love and do good beyond our families and companions and, in turn, these commands have shaped our moral intuitions and consciences. Almost any list of international ‘rights’ contains an interesting mixture of things that we can know from natural law and things that have also been shaped by religious virtues. As a result, people of faith can properly make common cause with secular people who are committed to these rights or virtues. For people of faith (moving now to the third audience) their faith gives them an added sense of moral passion, especially when it is reinforced by communities of faith and a sense of grace or moral order, but it does not give them a monopoly of moral sensitivity or wisdom. And, if they think that it does give them such a monopoly, then they have surely forgotten the fourth Synoptic virtue, namely humility.

Works Cited Banner, Michael. 1999. Christian Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2014. The Ethics of Everyday Life: Moral Theology, Social Anthropology, and the Imagination of the Human. Oxford: Oxford University Press.   2016. ‘On What We Lost When (or if ) We Lost the Saints’. In Brian Brock and Michael Mawson (eds.), The Freedom of a Christian Ethicist: The Future of a Reformation Legacy, 175–​192. London: Bloomsbury. Cahill, Lisa Sowle. 2013. Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.   2014. ‘Moral Reason, Community Belonging, and Global Justice’. In John Perry (ed.), 2014. God, the Good and Utilitarianism:  Perspectives on Peter Singer, 104–​124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Camosy, Charles C. 2012. Peter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond Polarization. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Chavasse, Francis J. ‘Letter to Christopher Chavasse’. Available at:  www.spc .ox.ac.uk/​ a bout/​ c ollege-​ h istory/​ f rancis-​ c havasse-​ c hristopher-​ c havasse​1904–​1919 (Accessed 12 October 2015). Clark, Stephen R. L. 2000. Biology and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clayton, Ann. 1994. Arthur Martin-​Leake Double VC. Barnsley:  Leo Cooper Publishing. Eagleton, Terry. 2015a. Culture and the Death of God. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.   2015b. ‘Is Marxism a Theodicy?’ In Eric Bugyis and David Newheiser (eds.), Desire, Faith and the Darkness of God: Essays in Honor of Denys Turner, 299–​308. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

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 2015c. Hope Without Optimism. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Evans, C. Stephen. 2013. God and Moral Obligation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fergusson, David. 2009. Faith and Its Critics:  A  Conversation. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Gill, Robin. 1999. Churchgoing and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.  2006. Health Care and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Glover, Jonathan. 1999. Humanity:  A  Moral History of the Twentieth Century. London: Jonathan Cape. Goodwyn, Erik. 2016. Healing Symbols in Psychotherapy:  A  Ritual Approach. London and New York: Routledge. Greenway, William. 2015. A Reasonable Belief:  Why God and Faith Make Sense. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Gummer, Selwyn. 1963. The Chavasse Twins. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Guth, Karen V. 2015. Christian Ethics at the Boundary: Feminism and Theologies of Public Life. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Hare, John E. 1997. The Moral Gap. Oxford: Oxford University Press.   2014. ‘Morality, Happiness, and Peter Singer’. In John Perry (ed.), 2014. God, the Good and Utilitarianism: Perspectives on Peter Singer, 93–​103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2015. God’s Command. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hauerwas, Stanley. 2001. With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos and London: SCM Press. Horrell, David G. 1999. Social-​Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.  2009. After the First Urban Christians:  The Social-​Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-​Five Years Later. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.   2016 (2005). Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul’s Ethics, 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Lovin, Robin. 1995. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.   2003. ‘Reinhold Niebuhr in Contemporary Scholarship’. Journal of Religious Ethics, 31:3, 489–​505.  2008. Christian Realism and the New Realities. Cambridge and New  York: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, Mark C. 2011. God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Novak, Martin A. and Coakley, Sarah (eds.). 2013. Evolution, Games and God. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Perry, John (ed.). 2014. God, the Good and Utilitarianism:  Perspectives on Peter Singer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinker, Stephen. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature, New York and London: Viking and Penguin. Pope, Stephen J. 2007. Human Evolution and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ruse, Michael. 2015. Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press. Scruton, Roger. 2012. The Face of God. London: Continuum.  2014. The Soul of the World. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Ward, Keith. 2015. Christ and the Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ch apter 4

Faith as an Option

In the mid-​1960s it was widely accepted within intellectual circles that religious faith is strictly meaningless within, and fast disappearing from, the modern world. Some believed that it is because religious beliefs are empirically meaningless that religions in any form are fast disappearing. Others believed that it is modernity that renders religious faith both meaningless and redundant. Linguistic philosophy, and especially the verification principle as just seen in Chapter 3, was advanced to show it to be meaningless and the theory of secularisation within sociology to claim it was disappearing. As a young lecturer, I frequently came across distinguished academics who were privately religious but reluctant to defend their faith in the public forum, believing that if they tried to do so they would be defeated. Secularism was evidently triumphing and theology, if it survived at all in universities, was being pushed to the margins. Since that time, sociologists of religion have vigorously debated the merits and demerits of the secularisation theory and the pendulum has swung drastically. Owing especially to David Martin in the United Kingdom and Andrew Greeley in the United States, a once-​dominant theory now has only minority support among sociologists of religion (even though it is still often taken for granted by other intellectuals). In the mid-​1960s and stretching back to the late nineteenth century it was widely assumed that modernity would sweep away (or, at the very minimum, privatise) religious institutions and their associated beliefs and practices. Today it is only sociologists such as Steve Bruce in the United Kingdom, Ronald Inglehart in the United States, and Detlef Pollack in Germany who take this position. Some, notably Peter Berger, started as a secularisation proponent and changed sides. The social historian Callum Brown, perhaps uniquely, has managed to do the exact opposite. Since I have written extensively about this debate elsewhere (Gill 2012a, 165f ) there is no need to repeat it here. However, the implications of this debate for the churches and indeed for theology have been huge. 100

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The German sociologist Hans Joas does think that the broad parameters of the debate are now settled. He maintains, as do others such as Grace Davie (Davie 2013, 2015), that although there is abundant (albeit patchy) evidence of Christian (but not Muslim) secularisation in modern Europe, Canada and Australasia, Christianity remains surprising vibrant in the United States and positively flourishing in South America, Africa, South Korea and the Philippines (see also Johnson et al. 2016). Yet there is nothing especially novel about these observations. What is novel is suggested by the title and subtitle of Joas’s recent book (first published two years earlier in German as Glaube als Option), Faith as an Option: Possible Futures for Christianity (2014). The concept of faith as ‘an option’ suggests a distinctive stance (building upon a suggestion in Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age) and ‘possible futures’ hints at fresh predictions –​including social trends in global Christianity and more individualistic mutations in Europe. Given that an easy global account of religions as fast disappearing has itself become problematic, where does this leave the person of faith in the West today? Some might simply respond:  ‘vindicated’. Put crudely, that has been the response of some theologians to post-​modernity. Confident secular modernity was long deemed to be a serious threat to theology, so its demise into fragmented post-​modernity could only be a matter for theological rejoicing. Without a dominant atheistic narrative, theology is free once more to proclaim its own narrative. At a high intellectual level, Radical Orthodoxy has championed this position, as have a number of mission activists at the parish level. However, that is not at all the position that Hans Joas takes. Here he follows Charles Taylor (Taylor 2007, 561–​562) again in arguing that the secular intellectual option, developed so strongly in the eighteenth century, is still viable today and is not likely to disappear –​even though it is a position that is itself imbued with faith-​type virtues and narratives. Secularism does not need to be adopted in the strident and frequently crude form of the so-​called new-​atheists or even, one might add, in the more sophisticated but blunt form of A. J. Ayer’s ‘verification principle’. Indeed, Lois Lee’s careful study of secularism and non-​religion in Britain suggests that ‘it’ is a very varied phenomenon (Lee 2015). Nor, Joas insists, can the secular option be dismissed cogently by people of faith claiming, for example, that ‘without God there can be no morality.’ Instead Joas proposes that religious people (across faiths and denominations) and non-​ religious people –​committed neither to the stridency of the new-​atheists nor to the sectarianism of religious moral exclusivity  –​should dialogue

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together on a mutual understanding that their respective positions are both ‘options’ albeit different ones. Joas summarises his argument as follows: The rise of this secular option [especially in the 18th century] entails a fundamental shift in the preconditions for faith … Of course, the rise of the secular option should not be understood as the cause of secularization; but it does establish it as a possibility. In the first instance, then, the optionality of faith arises from the fact that it has in principle become possible not to believe, and subsequently from the condition of religious pluralism as well … the unavoidable decision to embrace either faith or nonfaith or to take up one of the various religious options is not a choice as understood by economists. (Joas 2014, xii)

Focusing on the faith option for the moment, what does the term ‘option’ here entail? Joas clearly distinguishes it from the term ‘choice’ used by those economists who have championed rational choice theory. He has long argued that most people do not ‘choose’ a particular faith, say, for its health benefits (which can be considerable), its ability to enable social cohesion or its power to generate moral values. He rejects such ‘benefits’ as extraneous to religious faith as such. He might have added that adopting a religious faith on such grounds is, in economic and social terms, excessively burdensome. So if I were tempted to convert, say, to the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith solely because, in addition to its fervent eschatology mentioned in Chapter  3, it generates a dedicated and tightly formed moral community (as millennial movements characteristically do), I might think twice, on purely economic grounds, about the cost in terms of both time and money, as well as the social isolation and public ridicule that a commitment to this particular faith would also involve. Pausing for a moment of introspection, it seems to me that faith is more likely to be generated by largely non-​cognitive attractions to sacred spaces, buildings or rituals, or to holy lives, rather than by cognitive arguments justifying faith. Active non-​faith, in contrast, is more likely to be generated by aversion to such ‘attractions’. Mild scepticism  –​whether non-​active religious or secular  –​might be distinguished from both of these options by its focus on cognitive arguments that are typically, and unsurprisingly, found to be inconclusive. They are inconclusive because they typically founder on the initial arbitrary decision about whether the starting point of such arguments should be a presumption of faith or non-​ faith. So atheists, claiming that it is for theists to prove their case, typically conclude that classic arguments for the existence of God never amount to proof [Aquinas’s proofs were never actually intended to be proofs against that presumption]. In contrast, people of faith, claiming that it is for

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atheists to prove their case, have tended recently to maintain that the latter cannot disprove the existence of God irrefutably [how do you ‘prove’ a non-​existence?] and that, while no single argument is ‘proof ’ of God’s existence [how could it be if God is transcendent?], some or all of the main arguments for the existence of God are cumulatively persuasive. To return to his Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture, Anthony Kenny concluded similarly that ‘Often, both theist and atheist philosophers, instead of offering arguments, adopt a strategy that might be called grabbing the default position –​that is, a tactic of throwing the burden of proof on the opponents’ (Kenny 2007 in Honderich 2015, 265). Instead he suggests that ‘agnosticism’ should be the default position –​a position that rejects a claim to certain knowledge or irrevocable faith either way but still allows him to say in the same lecture both ‘I am not myself a believer’ and ‘I think belief in God can be reasonable’ (Kenny 2007 in Honderich 2015, 259 and 269). Michael Ruse, as noted in Chapter 3, adopts a similar position by preferring the term ‘non-​belief ’ to ‘atheism’ even when writing a book entitled Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know (Ruse 2015). John Schellenberg, in his most recent version of his ‘hiddenness argument’ for atheism, takes a very different position. He summarises the hiddenness argument at the outset (although elsewhere his claims are more strident): Its basic thought is that the existence of God invites our belief less strongly than it would in a world created by God. In many places and times, and for many people, God’s existence has been rather less than a clear fact, and according to the hiddenness argument, this is a reason to suppose that it is not a fact at all. (Schellenberg 2015, vii)

Interestingly, the Psalms and Job often reflected on God’s hiddenness but without reaching such an atheistic conclusion. At the heart of his hiddenness argument as it stands now there is a moral claim against God’s existence: ‘a loving God’s openness to meaningful, conscious relationship with us means that such a God will ensure that we are always in a position to participate in it –​unless of course we’ve disqualified ourselves through self-​deceptive resistance to God’ (Schellenberg 2015, 60). But, he argues, through no fault of our own we are not all in such a position, so there cannot be such a God –​hence his ‘atheism’. My difficulty with Schellenberg’s book is that, in its various depictions of what God (if there were to be a god) could or should wish to do, it becomes a curious mirror image of Mark Murphy’s book noted in Chapter  3. Both tend to bypass analogical language and adopt instead anthropomorphic language when depicting God.

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In the conclusion to a recent study of the philosophical and theological implications of the cognitive science of religion, Roger Trigg has introduced a new twist to the default position dilemma. Others –​such as Aku Visala (2011) and James A. Van Slyke (2011) –​have criticised some of the cruder claims made at times by writers such as Pascal Boyer, E. O. Wilson and Daniel Dennett that cognitive science somehow ‘explains religion away’ (as I have done too in Gill 2012b, 196f ). However, Trigg develops a more positive argument, using a combination of anthropological observations about the ubiquity of religions in some form or another even within previously isolated human societies, together with cognitive science observations of the religious responses of very small children, to suggest that ‘We are not natural atheists … Our uninformed reactions to the world are much less skeptical and are inclined to entertain minds apart from bodies, post-​mortem survival, [and] disembodied agency’ (Trigg 2014, 218). It is possible that the recent discovery of fossil skeletons of the extinct hominin Homo naledi adds credibility to part of this conclusion since, despite having small brains, this species did seem to have had ritual funerary ‘catching’ practices. Manifestly, all of these contexts involve the study of people who have no access to modern philosophical discussions about the existence or non-​existence of God or of post-​mortem survival. In that sense theirs are ‘uninformed reactions’ and largely non-​cognitive in philosophical terms. Perhaps there is a clue here. As an actively religious person I  have always found my own life-​long religiosity (or indeed other people’s life-​long irreligiosity) to be cognitively puzzling. The language of precognitive attraction or aversion seems to me to be more compelling. Nor am I particularly convinced by the cognitive accounts of converts (to or from faith). As Charles Taylor again observes (Taylor 2007, 563f), even the new-​atheists tend to offer conversion narratives about sudden cognitive (atheistic) illumination, when the reality is that conversion is typically extended over time and multifactorial or even that many conversion narratives are just grossly exaggerated. So in Christianity the formative conversion narratives of St Paul, Augustine and Luther tend to be presented as moments of sudden cognitive illumination, yet behind each are hints of long-​held attractions and aversions –​as well as (with St Paul and Augustine) strong aversions that turned into strong attractions and (with Luther and, albeit in a radically different direction, some of the new-​ atheists) strong attractions that turned into strong aversions. I have framed this suggestion in terms of precognitive ‘attraction’ and ‘aversion’. Sarah Coakley in her most recent writings usually prefers the term ‘desires’ that are to be pursued and refined through contemplation

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or resisted altogether. For both of us, however (following Augustine and Aquinas), attraction/​desire is both fundamental and in need of rational control. The Greek word epithumia in the New Testament may cover both of our terms. In 1Thessalonians 4.5 it is qualified by an adjective and translated in the New Revised Standard Version as ‘lustful passions’ that need to be controlled, but earlier in the same letter it is translated positively as ‘eagerness’ (2.17 as well as Luke 22.15). In God, Sexuality and the Self (2013) Coakley shows at length that there is a ‘messy entanglement’ of sexual desire and the desire for God running through Patristic perceptions of God, through Christian iconography and into the passionate forms of both sectarian and church-​like charismatic worship today. In prayer and contemplation, especially, she finds a place to engage theologically with this ‘messy entanglement’: .

Contemplation involves a great risk: it implies a loss of repressive control, but at the same time it engenders a reordering of the passions such that ‘control’ finds new and significant coinage as right direction and purification of the passionate nature. To this extent Augustine’s perennial concern with ‘control’ is indeed justifiable. For ethically, some such notion of ‘self-​control’ is vital … Contemplation makes great ethical demands –​to lose one’s life in order to gain it, to turn the other cheek, to love one’s enemies. It is not a form of disengagement, but of passionate reordered engagement (Coakley 2013, 342–​343)

In The New Asceticism (2015) she continues this discussion, recognising frankly that in the modern world there is much evidence of ‘the manipulation of desires’: Such manipulations are diffuse, permeating socially constructed longings of which we are barely conscious but which disturbingly exercise our wills and imaginations. These include the desire to dominate, to subjugate, to consume and own, and to control –​sexually, racially and in other ways. We need only to consider the pervasive effects in Western society of advertisement, on the one hand, and pornography, on the other, to know that this must be so. Yet desire also animates good instincts and longings –​to love and justice, empathy and altruism, a concern for the common good. (Coakley 2015, 9)

So for her too desire, despite its many manipulations, is crucial for animating morality. It is also fundamental to theism: With a profound allure that is hard completely to suppress or deny even within a ‘secular’ society, desire is no less that which continuously animates us to God, as Gregory of Nyssa also taught: it allures us, liberates us, gives us the energy and ecstasy of participation in the divine life, makes us humans ‘fully alive’ for whom nothing in the created world –​as also in the divine compassion –​can be ‘alienated’ from the same God of love. (Coakley 2015, 10).

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So where does this leave the person of faith in the West today? I would tentatively suggest that it leaves her in good company. She is surrounded by people of faith and non-​faith –​or, as I would put it, people of religious and secular faiths  –​who have opted for, remained in, or defaulted to, positions that are finally explicable only in the most personal and non-​ cognitive terms. This does not, of course, mean that rational cognition has no place or that values cannot be agreed across different religious and secular faiths. On the contrary, surely Anthony Kenny is wise to insist that rational cognition is an essential guardian against totalitarian claims made by proponents of any particular faith option. But it does mean that rational cognition is unlikely to be able to generate the moral passion and commitment typical of faith options. Indeed, as argued in Chapter  3, those traditions in moral philosophy, such as act-​utilitarianism, that explicitly try to avoid the obvious faith element of, say, Marxism or even principled Kantianism, tend to struggle to generate moral passion and commitment. The philosopher Lorraine Besser-​Jones in her recent book, Eudaimonic Ethics: The Philosophy and Psychology of Living Well (2014), offers an instructive example of an account of virtue ethics that lacks moral passion. Unlike many other philosophers or theologians, she pays particular attention to the developing work of moral psychology [see also Tiberius (2015) and Forgas et  al. (2016)]. More than that, throughout her book she systematically lets empirical data from moral psychology control her philosophical thesis on eudaimonic ethics. She also distances herself from much of the philosophical literature on virtue ethics and wholly ignores any version of theological virtue ethics. Her topics range from sociability, autonomy and character to virtuous fulfilment and agency. The guiding principle is that a naturalistic account of innate psychological needs can supply the main framework of a virtue ethic that aims to promote functional eudaimonia, or well-​being. Using psychological self-​determination theory, derived from observing how children interact, she argues that We seek out behaviors that allow us to feel competent; we gravitate toward engaging in meaningful interactions with others that allow us to feel connected to them; we make efforts to engage in those actions that are of our own choosing and that with which we identify (Besser-​Jones 2014, 17–​18)

She admits that this is a pragmatic approach to ethics and does not cover the full range of our moral obligations to others. Disarmingly, she concludes that ‘Gone are discrete character traits, such as justice and compassion’ (Besser-​Jones 2014, 2). In short, almost everything that engages me in the chapters to follow is gone from her account of well-​being. Her account also has nothing much

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in common with Neil Messer’s Flourishing: Health, Disease, and Bioethics in Theological Perspective (2013). My point here is not to dismiss moral psychology, but rather to suggest that the empirical observations made by moral psychologists on their own are unlikely to supply a sufficient basis for an adequate theological, or even purely philosophical, account of ethics. In addition, their observations about, say, the origins of religiously based morality often contain more than a bit of secularist faith. Just to give a single recent example, the social psychologist Tom Pyszczynski claims, ‘Probably because of the human tendency to anthropomorphize and imagine that gods thought like they did, people imputed their own preferences and moral intuitions to the gods they were creating. Thus they invented deities that granted immortality only to those who pleased them by believing in them, following their commands, and offering gifts and sacrifices to stay in their good graces’ (Pyszczynski 2016, 57) [italics added]. Similarly Messer spends some time in his book arguing that the highly influential attempt of Christopher Boorse to define ‘health’ and ‘disease’ in terms of statistical normality is not without merit but that on its own it is just too narrow. More than that, he agrees with Boorse’s critics who have argued that his supposedly value-​free statistical method is at odds with the evaluative language that he uses:  ‘Boorse does not succeed in expelling value from the concept of health’ (Messer 2013, 9). The word ‘normality’ offers a clue that this is so with Boorse, as may the word ‘functional’ with Besser-​Jones. Who is finally to judge what is ‘normal’ or ‘functional’ in an ethical (as distinct from statistical) sense? Is blindness, for example, ‘normal’ for those few born blind or is paedophilia ‘functional’ for those few men who feel this to be their innate need? Robert Roberts offers a more congenial (for Christian ethics) account of both moral psychology and neural science that does not succumb to the ‘nothing-​buttery’ (to use Mary Midgely’s delightful term) of too many secularist writers in these disciplines. He sometimes uses the term ‘passions’ especially to denote concerns that ‘can give a person’s life a center, can integrate and focus the personality and give a person “character” ’ (Roberts 2007, 17). But more often he uses the term ‘emotions’ –​as does the theologian Samuel M. Powell (2016) even though, strangely, he makes no use of Roberts’s more philosophically nuanced work. When discussing moral philosophy rather than Christian ethics Roberts sees emotions as crucial but ambivalent: [E]‌motions play a variety of roles in the moral life, for better or for worse. They can serve both to enhance and to block or degrade our moral knowledge. They can play a crucial role in the motivation of our actions, giving us reasons both

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morally good and morally bad for action. They can play a constitutive role in our interpersonal relationships, both in good ones like friendship and in bad ones like enmity. They can make for human happiness and fulfilment, or for misery and dysfunction … [and] the variously structured virtues get their structures in large part from the involvement of emotions in them (Roberts 2013, 26)

For Roberts emotions are ‘concern-​based construals … they are states in which the subject grasps, with a kind of perceptual immediacy, a significance of his or her situation … they are motivational’ (Roberts 2007, 11). This is the case whether or not emotions are specifically religious in character. Powell, too, argues that ‘for embodied beings, there is no morality without emotion and without the emotional brain and its evolution … [Biology] establishes the possibility of moral emotions by creating the neural mechanisms that allow for emotion and morality’ (Powell 2016, 294). There is nothing in Roberts or Powell here that is incompatible with the speculations, say, of the celebrated neuroscientist Antonio Damasio about the chemical, physical and evolutionary aspects of emotions  –​ranging from the spontaneous reactions to stimulus of single-​cell organisms to the ‘turning point’ of ‘conscience, religion, social and political organizations, the arts, the sciences, and technology’ of human beings (Damasio 1999, 4): I suggest that the highly constrained ebb and flow of internal organism states, which is innately controlled by the brain and continuously signaled in the brain, constitutes the backdrop for the mind, and, more specifically, the foundation for the elusive entity we designate as self. I also suggest that those internal states –​ which occur naturally along a range whose poles are pain and pleasure, and are caused by either internal or external objects and events –​become unwitting nonverbal signifiers of the goodness or badness of situations relative to the organism’s inherent set of values. I suspect that in earlier stages of evolution these states –​ including all those we classify as emotions –​were entirely unknown to the organisms producing them. The states were regulatory and that was enough; they produced some advantageous actions, internally or externally, or they assisted indirectly the production of such actions by making them more propitious. But the organisms carrying out these complicated operations knew nothing of the existence of those operations and actions since they did not even know, in the proper sense of the word, of their own existence as individuals. True enough, organisms had a body and a brain, and brains had some representation of the body. Life was there, and the representation of life was there, too, but the potential and rightful owner of each individual life had no knowledge that life existed because nature had not invented an owner yet. There was being but not knowing. Consciousness had not begun. (Damasio 1999, 30)

Yet Roberts goes much further than such an account of human emotions (and that of William James a century before) by emphasising that deep emotions are concern-​based construals shaped by values:  ‘I don’t think

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the bodily sensations are pleasant or unpleasant enough to explain the intense affect of emotions like joy over the healthy birth of one’s baby or the intense negative affect of grief over a child’s death’ (Roberts 2013, 48). Nor does he think that Damasio’s account matches Christian or ‘spiritual’ emotions that have the following features (well beyond ‘regulatory states’ that produced some evolutionary ‘advantageous actions’): Christian emotions will be [concern-​based construals] based on a Christian passion  –​hungering and thirsting for righteousness, the yearning for eternal happiness, the longing for fellowship with God, the desire for his kingdom … As Christian construals, spiritual emotions are a subject’s perceptions of the situation of his or her life in terms of the Christian teachings about what the world is like, who we are, and what God has done for us. Christian character, as the set of dispositions to experience the Christian emotions, is not just proper passion, but also the well-​engrained habit of seeing the world in Christian terms. (Roberts 2007, 31)

Roberts is well aware that emotions can be seen solely in physical terms deploying the methods of neural science. But he argues against such nothing-​buttery using music as an example: Physically speaking, music is nothing but temporally extended and divided sequenced mixtures of air vibrations of various frequencies and amplitudes or, alternatively, mixtures of atmospheric compression wave trains of varying wavelengths and amplitude. (Roberts 2003, 52–​53)

Yet to see nothing-​but this in music would manifestly miss what for most of us is actually significant about music. Similarly, he speculates that neural science might be used to account for the apostles ‘rejoicing’ (Act 5.41) after they had been flogged and then released: It is plausible to assume that, if the apostles had been hooked up to some brain-​ scanning device at the time that they experienced this holy joy, the device would have registered neurological processes characteristic of joy. And it is also plausible that, if the apostles had turned their attention to these bodily states at that moment, they would have noticed some perturbation in their midsections, an excitement in their limbs or something of the sort. But it is implausible to think that when Luke saw fit to mention the apostles’ emotion in this passage of the Book of Acts, he was interested primarily in these bodily experiences. Instead, he was interested in how the apostles were seeing the world, how they understood their situation, and how they were motivated. (Roberts 2007, 13)

Roberts makes the point that ‘modern science thinking illuminates the physical substructure of the emotions, often in novel and compelling ways … but … does little, if anything, to clarify how, when, why, and by whom humans become angry, jealous, sad, or embarrassed’ (Roberts 2003, 52).

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This is a point that is well made. In a similar vein the philosopher Andreas Kemmerling has great fun showing just how dumb is the Nobel laureate Francis Crick’s claim that ‘You’re nothing but a bunch of neurons’ (Kemmerling 2014, 15), as does the comparative religionist G. Scott Davis, who depicts himself as a ‘godless pagan’ (Davis 2012, 13)  when reacting to Edward Slingerland’s cognitive-​science-​based ‘conclusion we are “little robots” all the way down’ (Davis 2012, 11). There is an astonishing amount of nothing-​buttery still out there. Nothing-​buttery exponents seem to have made an elementary confusion between methodology and ontology. It is one thing for a neurologist, say, to focus (methodologically) on a human being as ‘a bunch of neurons’ –​such a focus is, after all, the neurologist’s job. But it is astonishingly crass for that neurologist then to conclude (ontologically) that a human being is ‘nothing but a bunch of neurons’ … or for a chemist to conclude that a human being is ‘nothing but a bunch of chemicals’ … or for a physicist to conclude that a human being is ‘nothing but a bunch of atoms’ … or for a psychiatrist to conclude that a human being is ‘nothing but a bunch of neuroses’ … or perhaps even for a cook to conclude that a human being is ‘nothing but a bunch of food’. In addition, nothing-​buttery exponents seem to have ignored the distinction made by Geertz, and before him Ryle, between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ descriptions. Erik Goodwyn has recently depicted this vividly as follows: [A]‌mechanical-​causal explanation of a human eye-​blink would describe the muscle contraction and neurobiological mechanism of this behaviour. But there is far more to it when contextualized in human interaction: a blink can be a non-​ verbal sign of solidarity among two people. It can also be parodied as a type of social communication. It can also be feigned solidarity between two people and a kind of deception. All these nuances require a ‘thick description’ of the context, the history, and the particular circumstance of the interacting parties in order to obtain a full interpretation of the phenomenon in question. (Goodwyn 2016, 9)

T H E C O L L E C T E D W O R K S O F E D WA R D S C H I L L E B E E C K X

In discussions about public ethics today it is often claimed that religious faith-​based ethics is inappropriate within the public forum of pluralistic, modern societies. Religious faith-​based ethics should be excluded, so it is argued, precisely [and ironically] because it is exclusive, and therefore unrepresentative of such societies. Only secular forms of ethics should be allowed in such a forum [much of the secular criticism levelled at an article by Nigel Biggar for the Journal of Medical Ethics, which I quote at the

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end of this chapter, has been along this line]. A modified version of this claim follows one interpretation of the later writings of John Rawls, maintaining that religious perspectives can be included in the public forum but only if they are framed in purely secular (and thus universal) terms. But this widely voiced claim ignores the obvious pluralism and contentions within moral philosophy itself. Manifestly act-​utilitarians, for example, speak for themselves and not for all other moral philosophers, let alone for humanity more widely, when they interpret or resolve moral issues wholly in utilitarian terms. Exclusivism, as Joas insists, can be both secular and religious, as can universalism. In the context of modern Catholic thought, Joas’s position here has been hard won. The English translation of Faith as an Option appeared in the same year as the English translation of The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx (2014). This magnificent collection in eleven volumes shows admirably the kind of hard-​won changes that lie behind Joas’s arguments. It is worth pausing a moment to offer a brief account of this collection of a remarkable and passionate Catholic theologian. In the second half of his long life, Edward Schillebeeckx (1914–​2009) established a new and deeply challenging theological agenda. The collection can be grouped into three clusters: Volumes 1–​5 establish the theological context in which Schillebeeckx wrote; Volumes 6–​8 contain his Jesus project; and Volumes 9–​11 set out his proposals for ministry and church in the modern world. The first cluster shows the dramatic shift that Schillebeeckx made responding to the theological ferment of the 1960s within Western theology. As everyone knows, this was a time of post-​war urban renewal, Cold War politics, sexual liberalisation and (arguably) secularisation. Within the churches it was the time of Pope John XXIII, Vatican II, Honest to God and ecumenical enthusiasm. In 1959 the forty-​ five year-​ old Dominican theologian published the largely conventional Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God in Dutch (Volume 1). There are many signs in this book of an orderly and enquiring mind, but it is still a conventional and eirenic work of Catholic theology with abundant references to Augustine and Aquinas, biblical references with little mention of critical commentaries, fleeting and largely negative or defensive references to ‘Protestant’ theologians and little or no mention of the social sciences (except a few generalised allusions to anthropology). Nine years later, with the publication in English of God the Future of Man (Volume 3) all of this had changed radically. Here was a Catholic theologian engaging with the writings of Rudolf Bultmann and Paul

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Tillich, taking hermeneutics very seriously, reading sociology, addressing the crucial issue of secularisation, energised by Vatican II and questioning his own church. For the next four decades of his long life he was to remain a radical ecumenical theologian, challenging his church to live up to the spirit of Vatican II, and increasingly risking the wrath of the Vatican’s hierarchy. The second volume Revelation and Theology, first published in Dutch in 1964 and translated into English three years later, contains a mixture of essays, some written in the 1950s and others in the early 1960s. It is, however, the final essay, ‘The Present Trends in Present-​day Theology’ (1961), that most clearly shows the dramatic changes that Schillebeeckx was undergoing. He still used Newman’s concept of ‘the development of dogma’ and made allusions back to the changes that Aquinas made in response to new knowledge, but it is clear that he now envisaged something far more radical. Following his mentor Karl Rahner he saw human existential experience as central to theology, but he added an account of the socio-​historical character of human life, insisting that ‘God accomplishes his revelation in a dialogue with mankind’ (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol. 2, 311–​ 312). He also placed secularisation and ecumenism firmly on the agenda for (Catholic) theology. Here speaks the voice of the theological advisor to the radical Dutch bishops attending Vatican II. At the age of forty-​seven he was becoming internationally recognised as a new voice within theology. This change is reflected more strongly in the third, fourth and fifth volumes. In common with contemporary non-​ Catholic theological books these volumes offer repeated attempts to address what is meant by ‘secularisation’. Remarkably for a theologian at this time he noticed the nuanced literature that was developing among sociologists of religion, echoing Peter Berger’s account of secularisation as a lengthy historical process, but also making a very early reference to David Martin’s dissenting views (which, as mentioned already, Berger eventually followed). In addition, he set out the challenge of hermeneutics: First, how can a Christian who believes in the biblical message of the kingdom of God understand this message in the twentieth century and how can he justify this new, contemporary interpretation of the world as a Christian understanding? Secondly, how can he, within the many different religious and non-​religious interpretations of the world and of human life which surround him, justify his Christian interpretation of reality with regard to modern thought or at least when faced with the legitimate demands of modern thinking? (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol.3, xix)

Without adopting all of Bultmann’s conclusions he had accepted his hermeneutical agenda and also anticipated the debate about post-​modernism/​

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religious pluralism. In short, in a decade Schillebeeckx had changed from being a Dominican theologian addressing his own church as an expert on Aquinas to being an important contributor to international, ecumenical critical theology. He acknowledged as much in the Introduction to this third volume. Its origin lay in a lecture tour of the United States in November and December of 1967 in which he engaged at one point with ‘twenty-​seven theologians of many different confessions’ studying the so-​ called ‘death of God’ theology (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol. 3, xvii). Those of us who had the privilege of seeing him face-​to-​face at such occasions will know just how gracious and receptive he was. This was no continental ‘prince theologian’ but someone eager to engage with and learn from the modern world. In his introduction to the fifth volume, The Understanding of Faith (1972), Ted Mark Schoof notes that a polemical transition point had been reached for Schillebeeckx: His ‘looking back’ essays after the Council [Vatican II finished in  1965] were full of hope, as was his nature, but he was also able to point to the possible complications in the years that were to follow:  the growing inflexibility of the ‘aggiornamento’ brought on partially by the too diplomatic formulations in the Council documents and the possible range of reactions in traditionalist circles. (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol. 5, xv)

Coming now to the second cluster of volumes (6–​8), in 1972 Schillebeeckx began a monumental Jesus project, taking him well into retirement, which was to provoke the hostility of traditionalists still further. Two massive volumes (the sixth and seventh) and a shorter ‘interim report’ (Volume 8) are devoted to this project. It was the sixth volume, Jesus:  An Experiment in Christology (1974), that provoked serious suspicions within the Vatican. Like Hans Küng he took up the challenge of Vatican II seriously to engage with critical biblical exegesis. Küng’s On Being a Christian first appeared in German in exactly the same year and is of similar length. However, the books are very different. Küng’s was wide ranging and popularist in style. Unlike Schillebeeckx, he did not devote the first ninety pages to a discussion of method or offer any of Schillebeeckx’s detailed critical exegesis. Yet both theologians did engage extensively with the fruits of non-​Catholic biblical scholarship with an energy and determination that had been noticeably absent in pre-​Vatican II Catholic theology. As a result, both argued that the various forms of Christology within the Synoptic Gospels fitted uncomfortably with, say, the ‘authoritative’ Christology contained in the Nicene Creed. Schillebeeckx, ever more tactful than Küng, expressed this

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as a gap between the ‘Christology from below’ of the synoptic gospels and the ‘Christology from above’ of John and, later, Nicea: From the Council of Nicea onwards a particular Christological model  –​the Johannine one –​was developed as a strictly circumscribed norm and was actually the only tradition that made history in the Christian churches. Consequently history has never done justice to the possibilities in the synoptic model; its distinctive dynamics was arrested and the model relegated to the ‘forgotten truths’ of Christianity. (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol. 6, 532)

Naturally the Vatican took exception to such a claim, especially as it had been made for more than a century by liberal non-​Catholic theologians. The Vatican was particularly suspicious of his account of the resurrection, which appeared to by-​pass the ‘facticity’ of the ‘empty tomb’. Schillebeeckx explicitly rejected the belief that ‘the resurrection did not happen in the person of Jesus but only, as it were, in the minds of the believing disciples’ (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol. 6, 606). But he did depict both the ‘empty tomb’ and post-​resurrection ‘appearances’ as ‘themselves an interpretation of the resurrection’ while still seeing ‘the Easter experience as a reality, experientially real, and an experience of reality which nonetheless contains an element of articulation’ (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol. 6, 360). Such a formulation raises obvious problems about the relationship between ‘experience’ and ‘belief’ and the following lengthy seventh volume, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World (1977), sought to address these. Schillebeeckx’s focus was now less on the so-​called ‘historical Jesus’ of the Synoptic Gospels and more on the ‘Christology from above’ of the Pauline and Johannine writings and especially on concepts of ‘grace’. He continued this discussion about ‘experience’ in the much shorter eighth volume, Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ (1978). He acknowledged that he had received encouragement and helpful criticism from biblical exegetes, but despaired of some of his theological critics. Of one theologian who argued that he had turned the resurrection simply into a subjective experience of the disciples, he responded bluntly: ‘One rubs one’s eyes when one reads something like that’ (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol. 7, 68). Coming now to the third cluster (Volumes 9–​ 11), it is here that Schillebeeckx is seen at his most embattled and, in my view, most formative. Instead of an intended third substantial volume on the Holy Spirit –​a substantial volume that also eluded Paul Tillich –​he focused instead upon ministry and church in the modern world. In 1980, aged sixty-​six, he published a short book (expanding articles published earlier) in Dutch with the title Ministry: Leadership in the Community of Jesus Christ. It was translated into English by the radical Anglican theologian John Bowden and

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published the following year with a more provocative title by SCM Press, Ministry: A Case for Change. It soon became a key book in ecumenical circles. It was deeply critical of individualistic and sacerdotal understandings of priesthood, tracing their origins to Roman imperial power and authority and contrasting them with the less differentiated and communal models of ministry present within the New Testament. It also concluded that ‘both priestly celibacy and women [excluded from] the ministry seem to me at root to be of a pseudo-​doctrinal kind’ and indeed ‘a hindrance’ to the church (Schillebeeckx 1981, 98). Most offensive of all to the Vatican, he suggested that, in the absence of ordained priests, lay leaders of local church communities should be allowed ‘to preside over a community and thus over its eucharist’ (Schillebeeckx 1981, 139). Sadly the original version of this short book is not included in this collection, but only the revised and expanded one written five years later, The Church with the Human Face (Volume 9). The central critique of sacerdotal priesthood is still present, but the specific proposal for lay presidency had been removed under strong pressure from the Vatican. It is hardly surprising that the now retired Schillebeeckx wrote in the preface to the following volume, Church: The Human Story of God (1989): Delight in belonging to [the Roman Catholic] church, a delight which increased greatly during the Second Vatican Council and the years immediately following, has been sorely tested over the last decade. (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol. 10, xxi)

Schillebeeckx’s passion, learning, commitment, faith and praxis are deeply impressive. He died in 2009 at the age of ninety-​five and some of his later, and previously untranslated, articles are contained in the final volume, Essays:  Ongoing Theological Quests. In one of these he set out diagrammatically the challenge that still faces theology today. This challenge is to see the relationship between at least the following five, while taking full account of the socio-​cultural context of each:  Jesus’ message, the New Testament message, the Patristic religious interpretation, the Medieval religious interpretation and current religious interpretation (Schillebeeckx 2014, Vol. 11, 62). I cannot think of another theologian who did more to take up this formidable challenge than Edward Schillebeeckx.

The Axial Age Returning now to Joas’s Faith as an Option, at several points he alludes to his wider work on religious universalism with the late Robert Bellah, notably in their edited book The Axial Age and Its Consequences (2012) and

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in Bellah’s own book Religion in Human Evolution:  From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (2011). The Axial Age  –​a term devised by the philosopher Karl Jaspers in 1949  –​refers to the middle centuries of the first millennium BCE when, as mentioned in the Introduction, there was an extraordinary flourishing of texts articulating universal human concerns in different parts of the world: the Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophy, Chinese thought and Indian Hindu and Buddhist texts. Joas summarises the achievements of these Axial Age texts, suggested by some (but not all) of the contributors to The Axial Age and Its Consequences, as follows: Self-​sacrifice rather than the heroic use of violence, universalism rather than blood-​brotherhood against enemies, the transcendence of the ‘source of all holiness’ against sacralization of the earthly ruler or earthly political orders –​these are the key Axial Age achievements (Joas 2014, 108)

It is clear that Joas is making a normative and not simply a descriptive claim here, since these characteristics are depicted as ‘achievements’. However, the Axial Age texts do at least encompass both theistic and nontheistic options and still have the power to inspire nontheistic humanists or Buddhists and theists alike. They are texts that together and separately inspire people across different cultures and faith options. In that sense at least, they might be regarded as ‘universal’. For Joas and Bellah (the first is a liberal Catholic and the second was an Episcopalian) they offer humanity a normative perspective that is not tied too closely to the particularities of any single faith tradition  –​a perspective that then shaped later faith traditions such as Christianity and Islam and, more recently, humanism. Whatever the merits of this claim about the Axial Age, there is one framework that shaped Bellah’s thinking and that is especially relevant to my suggestion that faith is more likely to be generated by largely non-​cognitive attractions to sacred spaces, buildings or rituals, or to holy lives, rather than by cognitive arguments justifying faith. This framework is provided by the veteran evolutionary psychologist Merlin Donald, who also contributes to The Axial Age and Its Consequences. He distinguishes between four successive stages, or ‘layers’, in the evolution of primate/​hominid culture, using a cognitive criterion for classification. The first stage is the episodic. Here pre-​hominids do not differ from other primates. These primates have greater self-​awareness and event-​sensitivity than other mammals but their cognition is episodic and reactive. The second stage is mimetic. Here early hominids do differ profoundly from other primates. Although they still lack language, they have developed skills, gestures and forms of non-​verbal communication well beyond those of other primates as well as showing variability of custom and culture. The third stage is mythic. Sapient humans now have

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language and thus the capacity to form oral social records. They have developed narrative thought and share oral collective myths. The fourth stage is theoretic and is represented especially by the Axial Age. Humans now develop extensive verbal and non-​verbal symbolisation, massive external memory storage (e.g., written texts and now virtual texts) and have institutionalised thought and invention. Donald argues that these four stages or ‘layers’ are still present in the modern mind and inform the way that we think and act: The modern mind … is a complex mix of mimetic, mythic, and theoretic elements. Art, ritual, and music reflect the continuation of the mimetic dimension of culture in modern life. The narratives of the great religious books reflect the mythic dimension, as do the many secular myths of modern society. These two great domains –​the mimetic and the mythic –​are mandatory, hard-​wired, and extremely subtle and powerful ways of thinking. They cannot be matched by analytic thought for intuitive speed, complexity, and shrewdness. They will continue to be crucially important in the future, because they reside in innate capacities without which human beings could not function. (Donald in Bellah and Joas 2012, 72)

Perhaps he ought to have added that the episodic layer is also still part of the modern human mind, evident, for example, in our intuitive spatial and eidetic awareness –​albeit an awareness that seems to be more developed in some other primates. The episodic also may still shape our sexual attractions. If this framework is adopted it offers important clues about faith as an option. Perhaps an initial attraction to sacred spaces, buildings or rituals or to holy lives belongs mostly to the mimetic layer. It has often been noted that religious attraction has many affinities with musical attraction. It is mysterious in both forms to the theoretic mind, as is the fact that some people experience the attraction but others do not. Max Weber’s celebrated observation that he was ‘religiously unmusical’ captures this affinity and quirkiness. The mythic level is almost as imponderable to the theoretic mind. Narratology theories are famously contradictory. Trying to capture in analytic terms the mechanisms, meaning and significance of myths, grand narratives and parables always seems finally to fail. After all myths, grand narratives and parables might not actually be needed if they could be captured in analytic terms. Reducing poetry to prose –​or, indeed, music or art to words –​has a similar problem. Academic theologians, like philosophers, are typically drawn to the theoretic layer when discussing religions. Theoretical analysis is, after all, our job. It helps us to write books like the present one. But, if my argument holds any water, theoretical analysis ends in distortion if it concludes that this is the only layer that is needed adequately to

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discuss religious faith. Like many of the most fulfilling features of human life –​love, friendship, aesthetics, morality –​faith attraction may initially be generated by the mimetic layer. We now know that early humans and indeed (from a recent archaeological discovery at Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar) Neanderthals were linear artists. Perhaps Neanderthals also had some form of religious faith, as both the discovery of ritualistic circles about 175,000  years-​old (long before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe) of some 400 deliberately broken stalagmites deep in Bruniquel Cave in Southern France, and evidence of funerary catching (similar to that of Homo naledi) from several sites across Europe, suggest. By placing this mimetic layer in an evolutionary context, as Bellah does following Donald, there is an obvious danger. Older theories of social evolution tended to consider it to be ‘primitive’ and thus ‘inferior’ to the subsequent mythic and theoretic layers. This danger is not entirely absent from the project, as it does, in Donald’s words, tend to regard the Axial Age as ‘the absolute cutting edge of human experience at the time’ (Donald in Bellah and Joas 2012, 74). In addition, as José Casanova points out, if ritual is basically seen as a product of the mimetic layer, then is all ritual in subsequent layers to be seen as ‘religious’ or just some ‘ritual’ and, if the latter, how do we distinguish between the two (Casanova in Bellah and Joas 2012, 200)? There is another problem that ought to be mentioned. In such an evolutionary framework there is inevitably some unverifiable speculation, especially about when and in what form ‘language’ first developed and whether or not it is some form of language [and, if so, what form and why that form?] that marks the tipping point between hominids (a term that includes greater apes) and hominins (a term that does not). There is an obvious circularity here recognised frankly by various interdisciplinary authors in Malcolm Jeeves’s helpful collection The Emergence of Personhood: A Quantum Leap? (2015). In contrast, a framework that is not tied to successive layers of evolution might simply distinguish between specifically hominin activities that do require the use of language (i.e., mythic activities) and those that of necessity do not (i.e., mimetic activities). It remains the case that some usually wordy forms of activity can still function powerfully without language, as can be seen in mime within theatre and ballet, scat within jazz singing, and in both liturgical silence and more noisy, but often wordless, ‘speaking’ in tongues within corporate worship. My suggestion is more modest and less evolutionary than Bellah’s. I am happy to go with Donald’s observation that ‘mimetic culture still forms

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the underpinning of human culture’ and to worry less about when it first emerged. He sees it as closely related to the development of hominid skills (well beyond that of other primates) in a prelinguistic age. Yet, much more importantly, he sees mimetic culture as persisting throughout distinctly hominin existence: It persists in numerous cultural variations in expression, body language, and expressive custom (most of which people are unaware of and cannot describe verbally), as well as in elementary craft and tool use, pantomime, dance, athletic skill, and prosodic vocalization, including group displays … imagination  –​mimetic imagination –​recreates an experience in time. It survives in the performing arts and in the essentially theatrical nature of human relationships and living patterns. Most visibly, it is the basis of role-​playing, fantasy, and self-​identification with various roles. (Donald in Bellah and Joas 2012, 58)

In the Western world today it is obviously possible to live without a religious faith option or without any of the features of mimetic culture. We might, though, conclude that if people really were to have no ‘faith’ whatsoever, whether religious or not, and no other expression of mimetic culture, then their lives would be considerably impoverished. Yet on democratic political grounds it is usually concluded that no one should be coerced into faith, or into the requirements of a particular faith, any more than they should (or seriously can be) coerced into love, friendship, aesthetics, performing arts or even personal morality. But equally, people of faith should not be excluded from the public forum in the modern Western world, especially if they can resonate with, and perhaps enrich, communal and social values shared with other faith options, whether religious or secular. I do believe that there is still a role for theologians in the public forum, especially when related to public ethics, provided that theologians are respectful of the views of others in modern pluralistic societies. My own experience in public bioethics encourages me to believe that once the initial secular hurdles of meaningless and redundancy (effectively rendering such a role anachronistic) have been removed, there is indeed still a public role for theology. It is at this point that I agree with Nigel Biggar, whose courageous article in the Journal of Medical Ethics argued against the tide as follows: In this essay I have argued that medicine should be considered ‘secular’, not in the secularist sense of being religion-​free, but in the Augustinian sense of being a forum for the negotiation of rival metaphysical and ethical views. I have argued that religion deserves a place at the secular table of negotiation, because it is not simply or invariably or uniquely irrational. Nevertheless, in deciding to take a seat at the table, the religious believer commits himself to being persuasive, and

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that involves abandoning any sheer appeals to religious authorities, thinking one’s way sympathetically into the viewpoint of one’s opponent, identifying points of common ground, and then reasoning her –​step by step –​toward one’s own position. So, yes, religion must learn table manners –​it must learn to behave in public. Sometimes, however, religion does not need to be constrained to behave. Sometimes it behaves well naturally, because its own convictions naturally generate the virtues that sustain good behaviour. Sometimes, as John Rawls recognised, religion can be an important matrix and model of generous, liberal conduct. (Biggar 2014, 5)

He might have added Jürgen Habermas to that last sentence –​especially his contention, noted in the second chapter, that in Europe religious tolerance has been the pacemaker for cultural rights (Habermas 2003 in Honderich 2015). Another person arguing against the tide is the anthropologist C.  R. Hallpike in his recent book Do We Need God to Be Good? An Anthropologist Considers the Evidence (2016). Like Joas, he uses evidence about the Axial Age, depicting its ethical fruits as follows: We find everywhere a major extension of the morality of the ‘good’ –​of benevolence, mercy, and compassion –​towards all people, not just to members of one’s own society or even culture. Self-​criticism and humility are essential virtues, as well as self-​control, courage, and especially wisdom; it is these virtues that equip one not only to perform well in one’s community as a human being, but also to attain happiness. The ethics of non-​retaliation are part of this development: not only is revenge often deprecated but we find several traditions advocating the ideal of benevolence even to one’s enemies. There also develops the idea of a common humanity which transcends the boundaries of nation and culture and social distinctions of rank, such as slavery, so that all good men are brothers and the ideal condition of Man would be universal peace. (Hallpike 2016, 88)

He argues at length that this fits ill with the negative depiction of religions made by the new-​atheists. For him religious ethics in the modern world still has an important contribution to make: It is in the higher aspects of ethics, the ideals rather than the basic social duties, that religious ethics makes its distinctive contribution and it has at least the following aspects: it gives us a special place in the universe and is the only basis for the moral unity of the human race; it emphasizes the importance of individual human dignity and includes here physical as well as moral dignity; it maintains the delicate moral balance between the dignity of the individual and the requirements of the social order and God provides an alternative to the worship of either the Self or the State; it is very much an ethic of virtue, rather than of rules and rights in the modern secular fashion; it celebrates humility and rejects pride, egocentrism, and the worship of the Self as utterly opposed to right

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living; it places the spiritual above the material and rejects the worship of material success, physical pleasures, and mere worldly values; it contrasts the fleeting vanities of this world with the eternal values of goodness and truth; and therefore it turns our social priorities of success and power upside down, with a special concern for the poor, weak, and outcast rather than for the rich and important. (Hallpike 2016, 97)

To put it bluntly, only those religious or secular faith groups that are convinced that they can learn nothing of importance from anyone who is not of their group can afford to ignore table manners. In contrast, those of us who do not start from this exclusive conviction and hope instead to learn from others need to be polite and considerate to each other. For me as a Christian that means, among other things, that in public ethics I must never use Jesus as a weapon. Very specifically I have tried over the last two decades of my engagement in bioethics to bring to public discussions, hopefully using my best table manners, values or virtues that I found to be largely absent from the secular bioethics lexicon. As mentioned earlier, they are values or virtues that I personally derive from Jesus’ healing ministry  –​namely, compassionate care, faithfulness and humility –​but they also have resonance within other forms of faith including secular humanism. They do not contradict secular bioethical values such as non-​maleficence, beneficence, autonomy and justice, but they can enrich and deepen them. Perhaps, after all, religious faith is not redundant and meaningless even in a pluralist, modern society.

Works Cited Bellah, Robert N. 2011. Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/​Harvard University Press. Bellah, Robert N. and Joas, Hans. (eds.). 2012 The Axial Age and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/​Harvard University Press. Besser-​Jones, Lorraine. 2014. Eudaimonic Ethics: The Philosophy and Psychology of Living Well. New York and Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge. Biggar, Nigel. 2014.’Why Religion Deserves a Place in Secular Medicine’. Journal of Medical Ethics. Available at jme.bmj.com (Accessed 25 April 2014). Casanova, José. 2012. ‘Religion, the Axial Age, and Secular Modernity in Bellah’s Theory of Religious Evolution’. In Robert N. Bellah and Hans Joas (eds.), 2012. The Axial Age and Its Consequences, 191–​221. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/​Harvard University Press. Coakley, Sarah. 2013. God, Sexuality and the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2015. The New Asceticism:  Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God. London: Bloomsbury.

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Damasio, Antonio. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace. Davie, Grace 2013. The Sociology of Religion, 2nd ed. London: SAGE.  2015. Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox, 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell. Davis, G. Scott. 2012. Believing and Acting: The Pragmatic Turn in Comparative Religion and Ethics. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donald, Merlin. 2012. ‘‘An Evolutionary Approach to Culture: Implications for the Study of the Axial Age’. In Robert N. Bellah and Hans Joas (eds.). The Axial Age and Its Consequences, 47–​76. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/​Harvard University Press. Forgas, Joseph P., Jussim, Lee and van Lange, Paul A. M. (eds.). 2016. The Social Psychology of Morality. London and New York: Routledge. Gill, Robin. 2012a. Theology in a Social Context: Sociological Theology, Vol. 1. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.  2012b. Theology Shaped by Society: Sociological Theology, Vol. 2. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Goodwyn, Erik. 2016. Healing Symbols in Psychotherapy:  A  Ritual Approach. London and New York: Routledge. Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. ‘Religious Tolerance –​The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights’. In Ted Honderich (ed.), 2015. Philosophers of Our Time, 313–​323. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hallpike, C. R. 2016. Do We Need God to Be Good? An Anthropologist Considers the Evidence. Alresford, Hants: Circle Books, John Hunt Publishing. Honderich, Ted (ed.). 2015. Philosophers of Our Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jeeves, Malcolm (ed.). 2015. The Emergence of Personhood:  A  Quantum Leap? Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Joas, Hans. 2014. Faith as an Option: Possible Futures for Christianity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Johnson, Todd M., Zurlo, Gina A., Hickman, Albert W. and Crossing, Peter F. 2016. ‘Christianity 2016: Latin America and Projecting Religions to 2050’. International Bulletin of Mission Research, 40:1, 22–​29. Kemmerling, Andreas. 2014. ‘Why Is Personhood Conceptually Difficult?’ In Michael Wilker (ed.), The Depth of the Human Person: A Multidisciplinary Approach, 15–​44. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Kenny, Anthony. 2007. ‘Knowledge, Belief, and Faith’. In Ted Honderich (ed.), 2015. Philosophers of Our Time, 257–​270. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lee, Lois. 2015. Recognizing the Non-​Religious: Reimagining the Secular, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Messer, Neil. 2013. Flourishing:  Health, Disease, and Bioethics in Theological Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Powell, Samuel M. 2016. The Impassioned Life: Reason and Emotion in the Christian Tradition. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

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Pyszczynski, Tom. 2016. ‘God Save Us:  A  Terror Management Perspective on Morality’. In Joseph P. Forgas, Lee Jussim and Paul A. M. van Lange (eds.), The Social Psychology of Morality, 21–​39. London and New York: Routledge. Roberts, Robert C. 2003. Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2007. Spiritual Emotion: A Psychology of Christian Virtues. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.  2013. Emotions in the Moral Life. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press. Ruse, Michael. 2015. Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press. Schellenberg, John L. 2015. The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schillebeeckx, Edward. 1981. Ministry: A Case for Change. London: SCM Press.  2014. The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx. 11 vols. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Slyke, James A.  Van. 2011. The Cognitive Science of Religion. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/​Harvard Univer­ sity Press. Tiberius, Valerie. 2015. Moral Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction. New York and Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge. Trigg, Roger and Barrett, Justin L. (eds.) 2014. The Roots of Religion: Exploring the Cognitive Science of Religion. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Visala, Aku. 2011. Naturalism, Theism and the Cognitive Study of Religion: Religion Explained? Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.

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Ch apter 5

Moral Outrage

It is time now to examine moral passion in greater depth. This chapter explores forms of moral passion that are expressed as anger or even outrage. This is dangerous territory, especially at a time of widespread public anxiety about violent forms of Islamic fundamentalism. However, I argue that moral passion as outrage is one of our strongest indications of moral objectivity and a crucial feature of moral passion. In Chapter 6 I explore moral passion, more positively, as collective effervescence, although fundamentalist forms of effervescence may also cause anxiety here. I  argue that moral passion can be shared and shaped by moral and especially religious communities, by shared rituals, by parables and by examples of holy lives. Such sharing and shaping might suggest that moral passion is just manufactured and is therefore not an indication of moral objectivity after all. While being fully aware of socialisation within religious groups, I nevertheless argue that once religious and moral socialisation is seen as leading to ‘discovery’ (a common claim within religious traditions and more widely within the arts and, of course, fundamental to science) objectivity is restored. The final and most theological chapter explores positive moral passion in the teaching of Jesus within the Synoptic Gospels –​especially in the form of the golden rule; the two dominical commands to love God and neighbour; and the radical, innovative and deeply passionate injunction to ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ This passionate enemy-​love has very important implications for a world that is sadly beset with violence. Returning to Servais Pinckaers’s book Passions and the Virtue (2015), it was seen in the Introduction that he championed Aquinas’s understanding of passions, seeing them as not just involved in moral action but as actually precipitating moral action. He also followed Aquinas in seeing the passions as differently appropriate to three stages of the moral life: beginners need to learn to resist those passions, such as concupiscence, that are contrary to charity; those making moral progress need to see the passion 124

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of love as a servant of virtue; and those approaching moral ‘perfection’ need to be transformed: ‘Taken up by the love of God and transformed by the virtues, the passions then become like friends’ (Pinckaers 2015, 4–​5). Pinckaers is particularly interesting on what he termed ‘spiritual anger’. Specifically, he examined those parts of the Old and New Testaments where God is portrayed as being angry and reached the following conclusion: In reading these [biblical] texts, we have the feeling that they are discussing real anger, in the proper sense of the term, and even exemplary anger. Unquestionably, anger does not proceed from God, or from Christ, from hurt feelings, but from a love of justice and piety offended by contrary sins. We are dealing with a spiritual anger, a spontaneous reaction of an upright heart and the spirit of a just person to injustice and falsehood in all of its forms. We are thus led to admit of an anger tied to virtue as a manifestation of a spiritual sensibility that is proper to God. This kind of spiritual sensibility can also spread to us … We can thus say that all virtue has its anger. The just cannot tolerate injustice, nor the chaste impurity, nor the honest lies, nor the courageous cowardice … It pushes us to condemn vices and sins, without at the same time judging persons, but seeks rather to better them. (Pinckaers 2015, 86–​87)

Oliver O’Donovan is another theologian who has written perceptively about the positive and negative side of ‘anger as a passion’ –​albeit from a more evangelical and less thoroughgoing perspective than Pinckaers. In the second volume of his Ethics as Theology O’Donovan writes: The passions … involve an energy which supports action –​ill-​considered action sometimes, perhaps, but not necessarily so, and, if not ill-​considered, the more effective for being energetic. In general, the passions pass from us when they have done their work for us, and when they have passed they usually leave us free of their influence. Anger for a short time  –​until sunset, as the apostle briskly suggests (Eph. 4.26)  –​may help us over the shock of injury. It can open the way within our thoughts for an active pursuit of just reckoning and just reaction, which will draw us away from a one-​sided grief of an injured plaintiff to a fuller understanding of the wrong that was done, and may lead us in the end to the most positive action imaginable in the face of wrong, which is clear-​headed, unsentimental forgiveness. (O’Donovan 2014, 66)

Pinckaers’s notion of enduring (rather than passing) spiritual or virtuous anger arising from ‘a love of justice and piety offended by contrary sins’ –​does seem to capture the moral absolutism of three of the Catholic contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics noted in the first ­chapter –​ James Mackey’s Power and Christian Ethics, Garth Hallett’s Priorities and Christian Ethics and Christopher Tollefsen’s Lying and Christian Ethics. I  have already argued that they share a common pattern:  a nuanced

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consideration of moral complexity albeit with passionate, challenging and risky conclusions. Mackey’s idealised location of power as self-​giving moral authority seemed to risk a commitment to thoroughgoing pacifism (a commitment that I am not sure he actually shared). Hallett’s prioritising of the neediest over the nearest seemed to risk the neglect by parents of their own children. And Tollefsen’s rebuttal of even altruistic lying seemed to risk endangering the vulnerable. Virtuous anger may well lie behind each. Here again Pinckaers followed Aristotle’s disciples, seeing a positive moral role for anger, as well as Aquinas, who placed anger in the context of virtues controlled by rationality. He might have extended his survey beyond the Mediterranean at this point and noticed a similar oscillation in classical Indian thought as well as in its modern interpreters.

Passionate Anger in the

B H A G AVA D   G I T A

The Bhagavad Gita provides a striking example of oscillation between passion and non-​passion. Sometimes it shows an emphatic disdain for passion, as the following passage indicates: Again I shall teach you the supreme knowledge –​the best of knowledges –​knowing which, all sages have gone from here to the supreme attainment. Relying upon this knowledge, they have reached my level of existence, and even at the beginning of a cycle of creation they are not reborn, nor do they cease to be at its dissolution … Purity, passion, and darkness, the constituents arising out of material nature, bind the imperishable embodied self to the body … Of these, purity, being free from taint, is illuminating and healthy; it binds through attachment to the pleasant and through attachment to knowledge … Know that passion is characterized by desire, arising out of craving and attachment; it binds the embodied self through an attachment to action. But know that darkness is born from ignorance, perplexing all embodied selves; it binds through negligence, indolence, and sleep … Purity causes attachment to the pleasant, passion to action … but darkness, by obscuring knowledge, causes attachment to negligence. Having overcome passion and darkness, purity prevails … as does passion, having overcome purity and darkness, and darkness, having overcome purity and passion. When the light that is knowledge is produced in all the apertures in his body, then one knows that purity has prevailed. (Johnson 1994, 14.1–​2 and 5–​11)

The ‘best of knowledges’ is not easily attained given the way that purity, passion and darkness compete within embodied human beings. Passion involves desire, craving and attachment, all of which lead away from purity. And darkness involves ignorance, negligence and indolence. Only when passion and darkness are overcome can purity prevail.

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Yet as the Gita unfolds, passion is a dominant feature of its narrative. It is a self-​contained text included for at least 2,200 years within the Mahabharata, the Sanskrit epic that tells about the war to gain control over Northern India between two branches of the same family. The Gita starts with Prince Arjuna feeling deeply torn between a strong desire not to kill members of his own family, but who are on the opposing side, and a strong sense of duty to act as a warrior for his own side. His charioteer, Krishna (who is soon revealed to be the Lord Krishna) eventually offers him a way of reducing this tension. He is to act as a warrior but he is to act without attachment to the results of that action: he is to kill in war but he is not to be attached to that killing, despite the fact that he is killing members of his own family. Once the Gita concludes, the story continues in the Mahabharata and total war commences. After considerable slaughter Arjuna’s side triumphs. Yet Krishna is killed in a later hunting accident and then Arjuna dies on a journey searching for heaven in the Himalayas. The sense of moral tension in Arjuna is strikingly presented in the very first chapter of the Gita. Here he says to Krishna: I have no desire for victory, Krishna, or kingship or pleasures. What should we do with kingship? What are pleasures to us? What is life? The men for whose sake we desire kingship, enjoyment, and pleasures are precisely those drawn up for this battle, having abandoned their lives and riches. Teachers, fathers, sons, as well as grandfathers, brothers-​in-​law and kinsmen  –​ I  have no desire to kill them … though they are killers themselves … Having killed these murderers, evil would attach itself to us … How can we be so ignorant as not to recoil from this wrong? The evil incurred by destroying one’s own family is plain to see …With the destruction of family the eternal family laws are lost; when the law is destroyed, lawlessness overpowers the entire family. (Johnson 1994, 1.32–​35a, 36b, 39–​40)

Arjuna then declares that he would rather be killed in battle ‘unresisting and unarmed’ than kill members of his own family. He sinks down into his chariot ‘letting slip his bow and arrow, his mind distracted with grief.’ Krishna is angry in his rebuke: Arjuna, where do you get this weakness from at a moment of crisis? A  noble should not experience this. It does not lead to heaven, it leads to disgrace. No impotence, it does not become you. Abandon this base, inner weakness. Get up, Incinerator of the Foe. (Johnson 1994, 2.2–​3)!

And then Krishna adds less severely: It is just these bodies of the indestructible, immeasurable, and eternal embodied self that are characterized as coming to an end  –​therefore fight [Arjuna]!

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Anyone who believes this is a killer, and anyone who thinks this killed, they do not understand: it does not kill, it is not killed … [Arjuna], this embodied self in the body of everyone is eternally unkillable. Therefore you must not grieve for any beings at all. Recognizing your inherent duty, you must not shrink from it. For there is nothing better for a warrior than a duty-​bound war (Johnson 1994, 2.18–​19 and 30–​31)

So this is one possible answer to Arjuna’s dilemma. He need not worry finally about doing his duty and killing members of his family, because he is killing only their bodies, not their ‘selves’. However, the response that killing is not really killing is not the only answer given by Krishna. Learning to abandon ‘attachment’ is a response that may resonate more positively in the modern world: You will either be killed and attain heaven, or conquer and enjoy the earth. So rise [Arjuna] determined to fight. Making yourself indifferent to pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, commit yourself to battle. And in that way you shall not transgress … Out of anger confusion arises, through confusion memory wanders, from loss of memory the intelligence is destroyed; from the destruction of intelligence a man is lost. But engaging the objects of sense with his senses separated from desire and loathing, and subject to the will of the self, a man who is self-​controlled attains calmness. (Johnson 1994, 2.37–​38 and 63–​64)

Duty to fight for justice but without the distortions of passion is very close to the virtues expected of professional soldiers today. They are expected to treat their opponents as fellow human beings (albeit on opposing sides). They are emphatically not expected to abuse them, let alone torture them, when captured and they are expected to respond to them discriminately in battle and not deliberately to target civilian populations. Using first-​ hand testimony from front-​line soldiers in six wars, starting with the First World War, Nigel Biggar argues that military violence is motivated more by love for comrades than by hatred of enemies. Soldiers can and do ‘regard their enemies with respect, solidarity, and even compassion’ (Biggar 2013, 91). Defending the principle of double-​effect he argues that ‘military personnel ought not to intend to wound or kill their enemy –​ insofar as “intend” means “choose and want as a goal” rather than “choose and accept with reluctance” ’(Biggar 2013, 110). All of these modern developments in military ethics can be seen as consonant with Krishna’s advice to Arjuna. But there is also a danger. If compassion, say, is seen as a passion, the result might be intelligent but ruthless professional soldiers devoid of compassion. Much depends here on how ‘the passions’ are defined and

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how the obvious tensions within the Gita are resolved. The scholarship of Gavin Flood and others shows that this has been a long-​standing problem: Let us return to the dilemma posed in the Bhagavad-​gita whether virtue lies in the performance of correct, dharmic action or in the renunciation of action. While the Gita’s response has been to claim that both can be done through inner renunciation, one attempted solution to the problem was expressed early in Indian religious institutions in the idea of defined stages on life’s way, or the asrama system. In the classical formulation, there are four of these: the celibate student stage, the married householder stage, the hermit stage and renunciation … [but] by the end of the fifth century B.C.E. they were not simply sequential stages, but distinct styles or lifestyle choices. (Flood 2004, 85–​86)

Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (1869–​1948) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–​1967) were both devoted to the Gita, but they drew very different ethical conclusions from it when faced with the traumatic events of the twentieth century. Oppenheimer, sometimes dubbed the Father of the Atom Bomb, was born into a family of first-​and second-​generation Europeans Jews who had settled in New  York. His parents did not attend synagogue there and sent their children to a school run by the secular humanist Ethical Culture Society. Oppenheimer was a highly intelligent and introspective child, given to periods of depression, but with a facility in several different subjects. In his first year at Harvard he took courses variously in philosophy, French literature, English, introductory calculus, and history, but with chemistry as his major. In the following year he switched decisively to physics. Yet his introspective interest in literature continued. In his late twenties he discovered the Gita and even learned Sanskrit so that he could translate it for himself. At this stage in his life he seems to have been particularly attracted by the concepts of duty and destiny in the Gita, coupled with its praise of intelligence and suspicion of passion. Two decades later he was in charge of the team at Los Alamos that tested the world’s first atomic bomb and then made the two bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The concepts that he now drew from the Gita were more fearsome. In an NBC television documentary produced in 1965, two years before his death, he recalled the moment when he witnessed the awesome mushroom cloud from the test bomb: We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade [Arjuna] that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-​armed form and says, ‘Now I am

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become death, the destroyer of the worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. (Bird and Sherwin 2005, 309)

In the two decades following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Robert Oppenheimer often presented a mixture of moral ambiguity and pragmatism, not unlike Arjuna in the Gita. Could the first bomb not have been dropped on one of Japan’s uninhabited islands or in a remote rural area rather than on the city of Hiroshima? Was it really necessary to have bombed Nagasaki as well? Were the leaders in Japan actually near surrender (following the suicide of Hitler) even before either bomb was dropped? Oppenheimer said that he had blood on his hands when he met President Truman (much to the latter’s annoyance). At other times he defended Truman’s pragmatic decision to drop both bombs on the Japanese cities to achieve a decisive surrender and thus to avoid the risks invading Japan from the sea would entail. Mohandas Gandhi was also much influenced by the Gita. For many in the West it was Gandhi who popularised the Gita. It helped Westerners at the time that he was happy to read this Hindu text alongside the New Testament and the writings of the radical pacifist novelist and Christian mystic Leo Tolstoy. Unlike Oppenheimer, however, Gandhi focused especially on the verses in the Gita that extol the virtue of non-​violence, as in the following example of Krishna’s commands to Arjuna: Lack of pride, lack of deceit, non-​violence, endurance, sincerity, serving one’s teacher, purity, stability, self-​control, Dispassion with regard to the objects of the senses, freedom from egoism, perceiving the deficiencies of birth, death, old age, disease, and pain, Non-​attachment, distancing oneself from sons, wife, the home, etc., and constant even-​mindedness in the face of pleasing and unpleasing events, Unswerving devotion to me … (Johnson 1994, 13.7–​10a)

In the record of his 1926 meditations upon the Gita Gandhi gave a spiritual interpretation of the verse (11.32) that still haunted Oppenheimer four decades later. For Gandhi Vishnu was not foreseeing the physical destruction of the world but rather the destruction of demons: ‘And why should they not bow to you? You are the destroyer of demons.’ The demons are our enemies, external and internal. What even if the river should swallow us and destroy us? How much more fearful is the flood inside us? Who will destroy the demons inside? (Gandhi 1926, 225)

Gandhi went from India in 1893 to work in a law firm in Durban, South Africa. He was shocked by the unequal way that Indian immigrants were treated there and spent the next twenty years developing a non-​violent

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way to campaign against this treatment. In line with these verses from the Gita, his personal life-​style became increasingly ascetic and non-​attached. Returning to India, he then spent the next three decades campaigning through non-​violent protest and civil disobedience against the unequal treatment of Indians under British rule. In both countries he strongly resisted using violence and was imprisoned many times. Yet in both contexts he discovered that non-​violent action was sufficient to force South African or British governments to change. In 1945, the British government started negotiating the withdrawal of British rule in India. These negotiations concluded with the Mountbatten Plan in 1947, just months before Gandhi’s assassination by a Hindu extremist. The lives and attitudes to war of Gandhi and Oppenheimer were different in almost every respect despite both being deeply influenced by the Gita. One was a Hindu activist committed to radical non-​violence; the other was a secular Jewish intellectual committed to producing the most deadly weapon in the world. Both men also radically changed the world. Gandhi had a continuing influence long after his death on leaders of civil disobedience against colonialism and racism, such as Martin Luther King. Oppenheimer’s legacy continues in the building of nuclear weapons by an increasing number of countries around the world. Ethicists still debate whether these weapons have made the world more dangerous or whether, instead, they have prevented a third world war. My own youthful book, The Cross Against the Bomb, was a passionate, even angry, response to proponents of the latter position (Gill 1984).

Moral Outrage and Moral Objectivit y Moral outrage or indignation is especially interesting for a religious ethicist. It is easy to overlook its importance in the modern world. We are only too aware that some people seem to become outraged at the length of other people’s hair (as did Paul in 1 Corinthians 11.14), at senior citizens who drive too slowly on motorways, at youths casually tossing litter onto pavements, or at pet dogs depositing other things on pavements. Those who send hasty e-​mails expressing moral indignation about a colleague’s thoughtless conduct may well regret this the next day. Moral outrage is depicted in some cartoons as a string of blanked out expletives coming from the mouth of someone with bulging eyes and a monocle dropping to the ground. Moral outrage expressed by faith traditions seems to be especially suspect in the modern world. Religiously inspired moralists were instrumental

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in bringing about prohibition in the United States and film censorship in the United Kingdom. Today it is Islamist moralists who are trying to establish Sharia law, the suppression of women and the legal enforcement of personal morality. Religious extremists in the past and the present have been driven by moral outrage to coerce, threaten, torture and even kill those who do not share their convictions. In modern terms, moral outrage or indignation is often seen as the enemy of tolerance. Oliver O’Donovan, again, writes perceptively about the double-​sidedness of moral indignation: Indignation differs from anger, as offence to the truth differs from offence to person or property, and that is why indignation may sometimes rightly claim the higher moral ground, for it may, indeed, find itself championing truth. Precisely because it has this important role, indignation cannot simply be avoided. The Psalter, as we know, is full of it, because the truth of God’s good government is its main concern. Yet indignation may be inflamed into contempt of the world. The opposition between a private world of self-​understanding and a universal world of public meaning can grow so sharp that destruction appears to be the only resolution that can vindicate the one against the other. The young jihadis who destroy themselves to show despite to a world that confronts them in arrogant indifference to the meaning they know how to live within, act out of love, to be sure. But it is a love that cannot receive and evaluate communications of good from the universal world of daily experience. (O’Donovan 2014, 97–​98)

Paradoxically, even in the modern world, we do still have a sense of moral outrage. In fact, most of us probably feel a sense of moral outrage at actions depicted in my previous two paragraphs. Strangely, we might even feel deep indignation at the lack of tolerance in the world. Most of us will feel justifiably outraged by such horrors as the Nazi Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the slave trade, aboriginal decimation in Australia and the Soviet gulags. We may also feel moral outrage at cruelty to animals, the destruction of rain forests and carbon emissions from the thoughtless use of fossil fuels. From a perspective within religious ethics, this is entirely understandable. Moral outrage or indignation appears to assume a sense of moral objectivity that is present in different faith traditions but sometimes absent in secular accounts of ethics. The philosopher and champion of Holocaust studies John Roth adopts Michael Berenbaum’s term ‘a negative absolute’ to depict the Holocaust in his withering book The Failures of Ethics (2015): A widely shared conviction persists that the Holocaust was wrong or nothing could be. An onslaught not only against Jewish life, but also against goodness itself, the Holocaust should not have happened, and nothing akin to it should

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ever happen again … Even if people remain sceptical that rational agreement can be obtained about what is right, just, and good, the Holocaust seems to re-​ establish conviction against moral relativism by underscoring that the devastation wreaked by men and women in Nazi killing fields in Ukraine and Belarus as well as in the Nazi gas chambers on Polish soil at Auschwitz and Treblinka was wrong, unjust, and evil –​period. More than that, the scale of the wrongdoing, the magnitude of the injustice, and devastation of the Holocaust’s evil are so radical that humankind can ill afford not to have its ethical sensitivities informed and oriented by them. (Roth 2015, 20–​21)

The phrase ‘should not have happened, and nothing akin to it should ever happen again’ captures well the form of moral indignation that can properly be depicted as a ‘negative absolute’. It might usefully be distinguished from human ‘disgust’ (even though the photographs of the innocent victims of the Holocaust are deeply disgusting to most of us). Susan Wessel in her study Passion and Compassion in Early Christianity (2016) makes a sharp contrast between the ‘disgust’ that typified the way that many pagans viewed leprosy with the teaching and action of Jerome and Gregory of Nyssa. She writes of the latter: The visual evidence of the lepers’ suffering had more often than not triggered feelings of disgust among witnesses. The Greek words Gregory used to convey these emotions were ‘bdelyktos’, which means ‘disgusting’ and ‘abominable’, and ‘mysattomai’, which means ‘to feel disgust’ and ‘to loathe’. Both words expressed the feeling of revulsion toward something so unpleasant that it threatened the boundaries between the self and the other. The boundaries I  am referring to might be either physical, having to do with infection and contamination, or psychological, having to do with our false perception of our self as impenetrable … People complained that it was difficult to conquer the ‘habit (‘hexis’)’ of feeling repelled by such misshapen bodies. Once again Gregory chose his words carefully. The Greek word ‘hexis’ means a ‘habit’ or ‘state of mind’ acquired by practice over time. In using this word, he meant that his listeners’ feelings of disgust had grown habitually in the course of their social interactions and should not be accepted as an inevitable response to human suffering. He implied that such feelings could be overcome with the proper training. (Wessel 2016, 52–​53)

The difference between religious and secular forms of moral indignation (as distinct from ‘disgust’) can be exaggerated. The philosopher Jonathan Glover (as noted in the third chapter) and the theologian Marilyn McCord Adams have both written extensively and passionately about horrors and atrocities in the modern world. Here, for example, is how Adams writes: Paradigm horrors include the rape of a woman and axing off of her arms, psychological torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality,

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schizophrenia, or severe clinical depression, cannibalizing one’s own offspring, child abuse of the sort described by Ivan Karamazov, parental incest, participation in the Nazi death camps, the explosion of nuclear bombs over populated areas … The heart of the horrendous, what makes horrors so pernicious, is their life-​ruining potential … destroying the possibility of positive personal meaning. (Adams 2006, 33–​34)

Human horrors and atrocities are recognised frankly and passionately by both writers. Yet Marilyn McCord Adams’ response is to spend the rest of her book looking at theological ideas to account for the apparent mismatch between such horrors and God’s intention, whereas Jonathan Glover, as seen earlier, is finally more wistful, defending ‘a morality which is deliberately created’. In the first chapter I promised to return to Gordon Graham’s Evil and Christian Ethics. He is equally passionate about horrors and atrocities in the modern world, including, as noted earlier, gruesome serial murderers, such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen, arguing that many of the secular accounts of such evil are woefully inadequate. He has many important points to make about the relationship between absolute evil and theism –​ ‘satanic powers’ apart, since for a theist if they exist they are manifestly created by God. His starting point is that slavery is a form of evil that most people today might agree is absolute: Whatever conceptual difficulties the idea of ‘morality’ may encounter, it is a fact that the modern world universally believes there to be some ways of treating human beings that are indeed absolutely forbidden. One of the most obvious is slavery. Torture might be thought to be another, and the knowing punishment of the innocent a third, but there are hardened political ‘realists’ who will allow that under certain circumstances both of these may not only be permissible but right. By contrast, even occasional slavery will not find any defenders, in the main because enslavement is so clearly and unmistakably contrary to the ideal of respect for persons. (Graham 2001, 89)

He is aware, of course, that slavery was defended in the past and still exists in the present (shamefully even in Britain), but he points out that tellingly today it is not called slavery by its perpetrators. Anti-​slavery is now morally uncontroversial: slavery no longer has moral advocates as it undoubtedly did in the eighteenth century (including some religious leaders). On this basis he then argues, using Kant’s notion of practical reason, as follows: There is at least one absolute evil. Therefore we must make our conception of practical reason accord with its possibility. To do this we must presuppose that the conditions of its possibility prevail, and that to abhor this evil is better

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for us as agents and for the world in general than to accommodate it. We can only reasonably suppose this, however, if we hold that there exists some sort of Providence which makes the maintenance of these conditions its purpose. To believe coherently in the existence of absolute evil therefore requires us to believe in a providential God … Faced with the reality of absolute evil, the pull of egoistic motivation and the (seeming) conflict between morality and prudence … we know that we cannot ourselves secure this … we must presuppose that there is an agent both omnipotent and morally motivated who can and will. (Graham 2001, 96–​97)

He identifies this as a Kantian ‘transcendental argument’, recognising that it does not prove its conclusion but, rather, establishes reason for presupposing the truth of its conclusion. In the same manner, he maintains, Kant argued for the reasonableness of human freedom, and thus free will, despite the obvious logical difficulties in ever proving the existence of either. It is worth noting in passing that the present-​day philosopher Alfred Mele, who has done more than most to defend free will, argues only ‘that the claim that free will exists is more credible than the claim that it doesn’t’ and, negatively, that there is no ‘strong scientific evidence for the nonexistence of free will’ (Mele 2014, 91). [By substituting the word ‘God’ for ‘free will’ in the previous sentence Graham’s conclusion here perhaps becomes clearer.] However, Graham does not display any knowledge here of Peter Byrne’s book The Moral Interpretation of Religion (1998). Byrne is much more hesitant about going this far, arguing that the presence of evil in the world produces a paradox for religious morality: Just as the problem of evil can be cited as a reason for not inferring a personal God from the character of morality, so it can be cited as a reason for making that inference. Evil is one of the gravest objections to theism, but evil is frequently cited in moral arguments for God’s existence. It is thus cited when the arguments turn around the fact that the world we live in is by appearance one embodying a purely natural and therefore amoral order, whereas moral values and/​or moral conduct would make no sense unless the true order of reality is a moral order. (Byrne 1998, 15)

Unlike Graham, Byrne is agnostic about a personal God but he does appear to be committed to a religiously based belief that ‘the true order of reality is a moral order.’ This belief appears to be at the heart of his ‘moral interpretation of religion’ and of his distinction between secular and religious moralists: Reflections on the alleged need for moral activity to be supported by belief in moral order to reality undoubtedly present difficulties to a wholly naturalistic

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ethics … but these difficulties do not constitute an apologetic proof that in order to work at all morality requires theism. (Byrne 1998, 47)

Byrne distinguishes his own position from the non-​theistic positions either of the late D. Z. Phillips or of Stewart Sutherland –​the latter championed recently by Steven Shakespeare (2015, 204–​206) –​arguing that although both see the first part of his paradox (the theistic problem of evil) they disregard the second (the so-​called ‘secular problem of evil’, the problem of how secularists can make morality intelligible in an amoral world that contains serious and uncontrollable evil). For Byrne the presence of evil in the world requires something more than a purely humanistic account of heroic virtue (even if it is shaped by biblical narratives and images as it is in the writings of both Phillips and Sutherland) in an otherwise amoral order. For him religions offer the possibility that ‘the true order of reality is a moral order.’ There is an important difference here between Graham and Byrne, both working as philosophers of religion. Both believe that there is a crucial relationship between religious faith and moral objectivity. Yet for Graham it is theism and theistic grace that are critical for this relationship, whereas for Byrne neither theism nor grace is essential. Both follow Kant quite closely, but Byrne makes more of Kant’s scepticism of theistic grace and atonement. Although my own inclination as a theologian is to follow Graham and, indeed, John Hare at this point (as I explain in the following chapters), I do believe that Byrne has a serious point that is all too often overlooked by theologians too eager to show that theistic grace is essential to morality. In addition, I  agree with Hans Joas’s critique, noted in Chapter 4, of people of faith who proclaim that ‘without God there can be no morality’ in a religiously pluralistic society. Byrne might have defended his position more fully had he referred to the moral approach of some forms of non-​theistic Buddhism (Graham does mention Buddhism, but only briefly and dismissively). For example, I have argued elsewhere (Gill 2013, 210f ) that it is a mistake to identify non-​theistic forms of Buddhism with much Western atheism and especially with Nietzsche’s atheistic superman. In the Nikayas:  Sayings of the Buddha it is clear that the Buddhist monk is not pursuing some will-​to-​ power exalting in self, but a morally demanding ‘letting go’ and ‘giving up’ with the positive aim of going beyond the self and the cycle of rebirth in order to attain enlightenment: A monk refrains from killing living creatures. He discards sticks and swords, and is gentle and full of compassion, remaining sympathetic and well disposed

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towards all creatures and beings. This is one aspect of his moral behaviour. Letting go of what has not been given to him, he refrains from taking what is not given. Accepting and wanting only what is given, he lives honestly, without stealing. This is a further aspect of his moral behaviour. Giving up the non-​celibate life, he follows a life of celibacy. He lives detached, refraining from the vulgar practice of copulation. This is a further aspect of his moral behaviour. (Gethin 2008, 19–​20)

This does seem to be a very clear (non-​theistic) expression of the conviction that ‘the true order of reality is a moral order.’

Moralit y and Religiously Inspired Violence But perhaps this paints too eirenic a picture of the function of religious faith in relationship to morality, especially after 9/​ 11. Moral outrage against religiously inspired violence (especially Islamist inspired violence) has been a noticeable and measurable feature of news reporting ever since 9/​11 (Gill 2012a, 187f ). The veteran scholar of religious studies John Bowker argues in his latest book Why Religions Matter (2015) that religions, even in the modern world, are important and contribute significantly to human good, yet paradoxically they are also deeply involved in conflict around the globe. He writes with passion about both the importance and the danger of religions. His thesis is: We need to understand religions better, not just because they can be terrifyingly evil and destructive in what they do but also because they are the context in which the finest and ultimately most important possibilities in life are opened up before us –​certainly the most far-​reaching achievements of mind and spirit, but also of God and Enlightenment as well. And that is what I have called the paradox of religions: religions are such bad news only because they are such good news. Religions are the vehicle delivering into human life and history the greatest possible treasure, truth and delight, and for that reason people (or at least some people) would rather die than lose or betray them. If necessary, and particularly if a religion demands it, people will not simply be defensive; they will take the fight to those whom they perceive to be the enemy. (Bowker 2015, 42)

Bowker makes constant references back to his previous studies and those familiar with them (see Lemcio et  al. 2015) can expect no surprises. He has a functional understanding of religions –​for him they are means of understanding death and generating meaning, deploying myth, ritual and imagination. He has an immense knowledge of world religions and is ever sensitive to both their external and internal differences and variations.

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A particularly thoughtful chapter looks at the tension between dogma and doubt in a variety of religions as well as (ironically) in science. He is deeply unimpressed by both scientism and religious fundamentalism and it is obvious that he is thoroughly irritated by Richard Dawkins and the new-​atheists. Arguably he constructs too much of this book in response to the latter. Yet he accepts part of their challenge when agreeing that ‘religious warriors’ (as he calls them) with access to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons do present a real threat today –​a threat that Western politicians, ill-​educated in religious studies, are not well equipped to understand. He lists the following as places where in recent years ‘religions are deeply involved in many of the long-​running and apparently insoluble conflicts around the world’: Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo and the Balkans, Chechnya and Dagestan, Palestine/​Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Xizang/​ Tibet, Xinjiang/​ Uighur, the Punjab, Sri Lanka, Myanmar/​ Burma, Nigeria, Sudan and Darfur, Somalia and Eritrea (Bowker 2015, 9) –​an extensive list indeed. The relationship between religions (especially in fundamentalist forms) and violence has been a major concern of mine for some time and I am not going to repeat what I have written before (Gill 2012a, 117f ). There I  particularly admired the nuanced work on religions and violence by Mark Juergensmeyer, in his ground-​breaking book Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (2000) followed now by the co-​ edited The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence (2013), as well as The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence edited by Andrew Murphy (2011). Anyone who has read carefully through these three impressive works should be dissuaded from making easy generalisations about the connection(s) between religions and violence. It is noticeable that one recent book, which does attempt to make such a generalisation, qualifies it, tellingly, by including dissenting voices in its appendix. Steve Clarke, Russell Powell and Julian Savulescu’s collection Religion, Intolerance and Conflict: A Scientific and Conceptual Investigation (2013) contains papers by evolutionary anthropologists, experimental psychologists and analytical philosophers, reaching the broad conclusion that While there may be circumstances under which religion promotes intolerance and discord within social groups, it generally promotes social cohesion within particular groups; and while there may be circumstances under which religion promotes tolerance and harmony between social groups, it generally promotes intolerance and hostility between differing social groups. (Clarke, Powell & Savulescu 2013, v)

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Several of the contributors write explicitly as secular atheists, but some (notably Roger Trigg) do not and in the appendix John Perry and Nigel Biggar are invited to respond, distancing themselves, wisely, from such generalisations about this supposedly single phenomenon called ‘religion’. Most of the growing number of books in this area that I have encountered recently are less bleak than Bowker’s about the extent of specifically religious violence. For example, two monographs published by I. B. Tauris within months of each other avoid his wider claims –​James Noyes, The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-​Breaking in Christianity and Islam (2013) and Stacey Gutkowski, Secular War: Myths of Religion, Politics and Violence (2014). Noyes sees significant links between the religiously motivated iconoclasm of the Protestant Reformation and, say, the deliberate bombing of cathedrals in the World War II and the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/​11. Gutkowski explores the ambiguous British responses to events such as 9/​11 by a political elite who were simultaneously liberal secularists and cultural Christians and largely indifferent to religions. Another two books published recently by Oxford University Press also provide a more nuanced historical approach to religiously inspired violence  –​Paul M.  Cobb, The Race for Paradise:  An Islamic History of the Crusades (2014) and Dominic Fanes and Alex Houen’s collection Martyrdom and Terrorism:  Pre-​Modern to Contemporary Perspectives (2014). The Crusades have become a favourite hunting ground for ‘demonstrating’ that at heart Christianity, along with Islam, is a violent religion. Cobb’s book offers a scholarly antidote focusing specifically on early Islamic responses to Western (‘Frankish’) Crusades. The author, Professor of Islamic History at the University of Pennsylvania, explores a multitude of contemporary Arabic texts to illustrate the complex mixture of political, imperial and ideological factors that lay behind the five main crusades spread over two centuries and starting in 1095 (albeit with imperial roots across the Mediterranean long before that). Despite some appalling acts of medieval barbarity (on both sides), many Muslims and Christians did in reality live peacefully alongside each other throughout this period in many parts of the Mediterranean world. Fanes and Houen’s book looks at the disturbing but complex modern connection between martyrdom and terrorism. Many of the contributors note similarities between early Christian and Islamic concepts of a martyr (marturos in Greek and shahid in Arabic) as being a ‘witness’ for faith, including but not defined by giving your life for your faith. It is argued that the term ‘terrorism’ was coined much later in the context of the (largely

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secular) French Revolution and it is only in the modern period that some Muslims have effectively linked the two concepts by sanctioning the killing of others by suicide-​bombing (itself developed initially by the secular Tamil Tigers) as a form of ‘martyrdom’  –​despite the condemnation of suicide in the Qurʾan [in contrast, suicide is not always condemned in non-​Abrahamic faiths as James Lewis and Carole Cusack’s Sacred Suicide (2014) clearly shows]. In the first two parts of this interesting collection contributors trace the roots of this change in premodern times and then in the French Revolution. In the final section contributors look in detail at Northern Ireland, at the videos and statements of suicide-​bombers and at films depicting martyrdom and terrorism. Once again very mixed motives –​only some of which are specifically religious –​emerge. Such specific studies soon uncover the difficulties facing generalised conclusions about either the connection or the extent of religious violence. When, for instance, does politically inspired violence become religiously inspired violence, or vice versa? Reading another I. B. Tauris publication, Julián Casanova’s A Short History of the Spanish Civil War (2012), for example, it is clear that the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Spain sided heavily with Franco against the Republicans (and paid severely with many hundreds of priests and religious murdered, the corpses of religious exhumed and mocked and reliquaries desecrated). But in what sense did this make this a religious civil war? Bruce Lincoln famously argued that the exhumations and desecrations of July 1936 (which he illustrated in their crudity) ‘were not an assault on religion per se, but rather on one specific religious institution: an institution closely aligned with, and subservient to, the traditionally dominant segment of society’ (Lincoln 1989/​2014, 126). Arguably, Franco (who had no compunction about killing Basque priests) would, with Nazi and Fascist help, have fought and won this horrific civil war with or without the legitimacy provided by his church. One study of 1,763 recorded wars through history found only 123 to be ‘religious in nature’ (huffingtonpost 2014). Much depends on definitions. In an as yet unpublished book David Martin makes a very similar point following a discussion of the complicated mixture of religious and political factors in Northern Ireland: One can simply claim that ‘religion causes war’ [as the new-​atheists tend to do] but this is a banal statement strategically isolated from the almost infinitely complicated context of the sources and dynamics of human conflict examined generically from the emergence of the species to the present day. The fundamental point is that once you contextualise you cannot treat the relation of Christianity to violence as a constant. (Martin forthcoming, 185)

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However, if John Bowker, like the new-​atheists whom he also disdains, exaggerates the scale and power of ‘religious warriors’, his paradox remains. Any religiously inspired act of terror sits uncomfortably with the beneficent effects of particular religious groups or institutions. In retirement from his position as Chief Rabbi in Britain Jonathan Sacks is now freer than he was when in office to admit the weaknesses (alongside the strengths) of his co-​religionists. His latest book, Not in God’s Name:  Confronting Religious Violence (2015), confronts this vexing issue. He is not persuaded that violence is endemic within religious traditions and he is also less bleak than Bowker, but he does acknowledge that Islamic, Christian and Jewish fundamentalists have committed egregious acts of violence ‘in God’s name’. This book is a bold attempt to understand why this is so and, more importantly, how it might be overcome. Sacks argues that both religious and secular violence has roots in three aspects of human thinking and behaviour: dualism, scapegoating and sibling rivalry. Dualists divide the world into ‘children of light’ and ‘children of darkness’, ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Secular Stalinists did this as much in the past as do religious Islamists in the present –​dehumanising and then murdering those who differ from themselves. Scapegoating has affected Jews for much of their history. Understandably, Sacks pays particular attention to anti-​Semitism, not, he maintains, because Jews alone have suffered from being treated as scapegoats, but because they illustrate scapegoating so clearly even in the modern world (where anti-​Semites regularly blame all Jews for the failures of Israel). Sibling rivalry has often disfigured relationships between different members of the three Abrahamic faiths. Alongside this new analysis (which, arguably, is again too generalised) is a more familiar theme that has occupied much of Sack’s recent writings –​namely a critique of Western individualism and moral relativism. He argues that the latter render people powerless to respond credibly to fundamentalists. He also points out to Western secularists that their hope that religions will eventually disappear from the modern world is flawed, if only because [conservative] religious minorities in the West are significantly outbreeding them. He has spotted a point long known to demographers, suggesting, for instance, a reason for the number of Mormons increasing and that of Episcopalians declining in the United States. As Stan Albrecht has clearly shown, the overall birth rates of Mormons are very significantly higher than those of both American Catholics and Conservative Protestants. Liberal Protestants and those with ‘no religion’ have the lowest birth rates, in both cases barely half the birth rates of religiously active Mormons (Albrecht 1998).

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Sacks ends with a passionate plea for Jews, Christians and Muslims to move away from dualism, scapegoating and sibling rivalry, and recover a purer form of faith: We need to recover the absolute values that make Abrahamic monotheism the humanising force it has been at its best:  the sanctity of life, the dignity of the individual, the twin imperatives of justice and compassion, the moral responsibility of the rich for the poor, the commands to love the neighbour and stranger, the insistence on peaceful means of conflict resolution and respectful listening to the other side of a case, forgiving the injuries of the past and focusing instead on building a future in which the children of the world, of all colours, faith and races, can live together in grace and peace. These are the ideals on which Jews, Christians and Muslims can converge, widening their embrace to include those of other faiths and none. (Sacks 2015, 263)

Anger in the Synoptic Gospels In debates about religiously inspired violence, Christian ethicists are frequently reminded by polemical secularists not only about the Crusades but also about the Inquisition. In response, it is tempting to remind such secularists of more recent horrors perpetuated by the thoroughly secular Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot (Adolf Hitler might be disowned by either side). Of course, these exchanges are unsatisfactory because there is no form of comparative moral evaluation that both parties could agree on. Even Stephen Pinker’s ‘statistical’ approach falls well short of commanding such agreement, as was noted in Chapter 3. Another well-​ seasoned secular tactic is to go through the various parts of the Bible that seem to sanction religiously inspired violence. A trail through 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles soon supplies abundant examples that only biblical fundamentalists today might seek to justify. But what about the New Testament? Jesus’ so-​called ‘cleansing of the temple’ is usually mentioned at this point. Granted that this cleansing did not actually lead to any human deaths (although it has sometimes been used to justify Christian militarism), it nevertheless did seem to show that Jesus’ passionate moral outrage led him, on at least this occasion, to an act of physical violence. What is more, this apparent act of physical violence is described in all four gospels, providing evidence that it might indeed represent the historical Jesus. So it might be worth starting an enquiry into anger in the Synoptic Gospels with this particular story. Unfortunately, with a single pair of parentheses the late C. F. Evans pointed out the obvious difficulty about

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using the cleansing for such polemical purposes: ‘Jesus, after a preliminary inspection, returns to the temple, and there in symbolic gesture (symbolic because it cannot have effected any permanent results) overthrows and expels the necessary apparatus of sacrifice, and forbids the carrying of sacrificial implements’ (Evans 1990, 686). Those with a sharp eye for Synoptic differences will spot that Evans is discussing Mark’s account of the cleansing (Mark 11.15–​18), as two separate visits to the temple after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the strange detail that ‘he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple’ are omitted by both Matthew and Luke [providing evidence, incidentally, of the priority of Mark]. The only detail about physical ‘violence’ that Luke keeps is that Jesus ‘began to drive out those who were selling things there’ (Luke 19.45). In contrast, John’s depiction increases the violence beyond even Mark, with Jesus ‘making a whip of cords’ and ‘pouring out the coins of money-​changers’ (John 2.15). But the whip, it appears, was used to drive out sheep and cattle, rather than people, from the temple. All of these differences are interesting, but they hardly amount to anything more than symbolic action because manifestly they ‘cannot have effected any permanent results.’ To construe them as acts of physical violence against people resulting from passionate moral outrage may be as mistaken as treating the abiding insult of shoe-​throwing in some Mediterranean countries as an act of physical violence. In both cases it is more reasonable to depict them as purely symbolic acts of (doubtless strongly felt and much resented) protest. Two Greek verbs used variously in the Synoptic Gospels to depict anger and negative moral passion make a more appropriate starting point. Aganakteö appears seven times in the Synoptic Gospels and is translated consistently in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) as someone being ‘angry’ or ‘indignant’. Embrimaomai (whose root meaning is ‘snorting like a horse’) appears only three times in them, but it is also used with emphasis in John’s unique Lazarus story (John 11.33 and 38). In contrast to aganakteö, the NRSV uses a different term to translate embrimaomai on each of its appearances: in John it refers to Jesus being highly ‘disturbed’ (by the death of Lazarus); in Matthew 9.36 it refers to the crowds being ‘harassed;’ in Mark 1.43 it refers to the healed leper being warned ‘sternly’ to tell no one; and in Mark 14.5 it is translated as ‘scolded’. The first occasion that aganakteö is used in Mark is the most significant for this enquiry, as it is the only use of this word to depict Jesus himself as being angry with other people (Mark 10.14). Every other use of aganakteö in the Synoptic Gospels refers to the anger or indignation of

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people other than Jesus. In Mark 10.41 (and the parallel Matthew 20.24) it is ten of the disciples who are angry with James and John. In Mark 14.4 (and the parallel Matthew 26.8) it is used for the anger others have at the woman ‘wasting’ precious ointment to anoint Jesus (in addition to the use of embrimaomai in the next verse). In Matthew 20.24 it is used for the anger of the chief priests and scribes at Jesus. And in Luke 13.14 it is used for the leader of the synagogue ‘indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath’. How does this single instance of Jesus being angry, in the sense of aganakteö, accord with Pinckaers’s claim that ‘unquestionably, anger does not proceed from God, or from Christ, from hurt feelings, but from a love of justice and piety offended by contrary sins’ (Pinckaers 2015, 86–​87)? Well actually it does so remarkably well. The story is as follows: People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly [epetimësan] to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant [ëganaktësen] and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child [paidion] will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them (Mark 10.13–​16).

In the parallel accounts of the story (Matthew 19.13–​15 and Luke 18.15–​17) the verb for the disciples (‘spoke sternly’) is retained but the verb for Jesus (‘was indignant’) is omitted altogether. In them Jesus simply speaks. Perhaps Matthew and Luke saw a problem in ascribing anger, in the sense of aganakteö, directly to Jesus, reserving it instead for the inappropriate anger of others. Yet in this context aganakteö does fit Pinckaers’s depiction of what he terms ‘spiritual’ or virtuous anger, namely that it does not derive from ‘hurt feelings, but from a love of justice and piety offended by contrary sins.’ The disciples (understandable) attempt to control the little children ran quite contrary to Jesus’ passionate understanding of the kingdom of God. As so often in the Synoptic Gospels, the kingdom of God (a term seldom used in the rest of the New Testament) runs contrary to conventional wisdom. A very similar pattern can be seen with the stronger noun orgë in the Synoptic Gospels. It is usually translated as ‘wrath’ and occasionally as ‘anger’ in the NRSV and in many instances it is used to depict eschatological wrath (e.g., Matthew 3.7 and parallel Luke 3.7; Luke 21.23; Romans 2.5 and 1 Thessalonians 1.10). But in Mark 3.5 it is applied directly to Jesus in a story brimming with anger on both sides:

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Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come forward.’ Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger (orgës); he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. (Mark 3.1–​6)

Here too it can be argued that Pinckaers’s concept of spiritual or virtuous anger fits. On this basis, Jesus responded compassionately to a vulnerable person but was surrounded by people looking to accuse him of Sabbath breaking. They are silent when challenged and he responds with anger, even wrath. Once again parallel accounts of the story (Matthew 12.10–​14 and Luke 6.7–​11) omit this mention of Jesus’ anger (and the silence that precipitated it). This is strong meat that Mark is serving  –​perhaps too strong for Matthew and Luke. But Mark could have used an even stronger noun thumos –​usually translated in the NRSV as ‘fury’ or ‘rage’ –​but only Luke does so and never about Jesus but only to depict people ‘filled with rage’ at Jesus (Luke 4.28 and see also Acts 19.28). Paul, in contrast, does ascribe thumos directly to God (Romans 2.8). There is just one other use of aganakteö in the New Testament, where it appears not as a verb but as a noun, and this is in 2 Corinthians 7.11, where Paul responds to the grief that his previous letter had clearly caused: For even if I  made you sorry with my letter, I  do not regret it (though I  did regret it, for I see that I grieved you with that letter, though only briefly). Now I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance; for you felt a godly grief, so that you were not harmed in any way by us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation [aganaktësin], what alarm, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves guiltless in the matter. (2 Corinthians 7.8–​11)

Here aganaktësin is evidently seen as something beneficial and as associated with repentance. Or to paraphrase Pinckaers, aganaktësin in this context derives from ‘a love of piety offended by their previous sins.’ In Romans, again, Paul repeatedly ascribes orgë to God (e.g., Romans 1.18, 5.9, 9.22 and 12.9). In the Pauline school an acceptance of divine orgë and a condemnation of human orgë are sometimes set side by side (e.g., Colossians 3.6 with 3.8 and Ephesians 4.3 with 5.6).

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Virtuous moral anger in the Synoptic Gospels contrasts particularly with the anger of the chief priests and scribes and even of that of the leader of the synagogue, which are based on ‘hurt feelings’ and worse. The anger of the chief priests and scribes is portrayed as based on murderous feelings and that of the leader of the synagogue on hypocrisy. The anger of the disciples and bystanders might be located most appropriately in an ongoing narrative about the serious misconceptions of those closest to Jesus. All of these instances serve to highlight the difference between their perverse, or simply misplaced, anger and Jesus’s virtuous anger. Religious leaders, in contrast to Jesus (or potential leaders in the instance of the disciples), are typically singled out for their perversity, and some for their hypocrisy. The charge of being hypocrites (hypokritai) is made seventeen or eighteen times (dependent on a variant reading) in the Synoptic Gospels and nowhere else in the New Testament. Hypocrisy (hypokrisis) is mentioned three times in the Synoptic Gospels and three times in the Epistles. Neither term occurs in John. Taken together this is overwhelmingly a Synoptic Gospel concept found almost exclusively on Jesus’ lips with only one exception (and even there, in Mark 12.15, it is on Jesus’ mind) and directed passionately and dangerously at religious people and, especially, at the religious leaders of his day. The barbed observation of Noam Chomsky, noted in Chapter  2, captures this passion and danger accurately: ‘The leaders of the enlightened states, who declare themselves to be devout Christians, devoted to the Gospels, hence surely familiar with its famous condemnation of the Hypocrite’ (Chomsky 2004 in Honderich 2015, 277). Allowing for parallel accounts within the Synoptic Gospels there are nine separate occasions when Jesus denounces religious hypocrisy and hypocrites. On one occasion, the Pharisees alone are singled out for their hypocrisy (Luke 12.1). On two occasions, the Scribes and Pharisees are denounced as hypocrites:  in Matthew 23, where this occurs seven or eight times (dependent on the variant reading) and Mark 7.6, parallel with Matthew 15.7. On two further occasions (Matthew 12. 15 and 22.18) the Pharisees are coupled instead with the Herodians. And on another two occasions members of the synagogue are accused of hypocrisy –​the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 and perhaps 7 and Luke 13.15. There are only two additional occasions that are too unspecific to tell exactly who is being denounced as hypocrites (Matthew 24.51 and Luke 12.56). As it happens, these last two opaque texts make it especially difficult to give a single definition that fits every use of hypokritai and hypokrisis

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in the Synoptic Gospels. Fortunately, the late James Barr’s seminal 1990 essay, ‘The Hebrew/​Aramaic Background of “Hypocrisy” in the Gospels’, offers a nuanced path through some of the most significant difficulties of definition here. Barr’s essay sought to correct, or at least qualify, the contention that hypokritai in the New Testament and equivalent words in the Hebrew Bible should be seen as quite different from its hypokritai in classical Greek. In the latter it was associated with actors putting on masks in a theatre and pretending to be someone else. It should instead, many have argued, be seen more generally as a term to depict the ‘godless’ or ‘wicked’ rather than as a specific term for pretence, simulation or deceit. Barr noted that this widely held position is based on several factors, including that, unlike Greek culture, the theatre was not a central part of Jewish culture and that in the Synoptic Gospels hypokrisis in one Gospel could be replaced with a word meaning ‘wickedness’ or ‘faithlessness’ in another Gospel (as Mathew 22.18 does when he otherwise follows Mark 12.15). Using his considerable semantic and linguistic skills, Barr argued that evidence from Qumran shows that ‘the sense of pretended and self-​ assumed virtue, simulation and deceit, “hypocrisy” in the traditional sense, clearly was present in Palestinian Jewish life in the centuries immediately before Christ’ (Barr in Barton 2013, 293), quite regardless of whether or not its Greek association with the theatre was still remembered. Nor was he impressed with the argument based on the Synoptic Gospels replacing hypokrisis with another term: ‘There is no reason … from the fact that a hypocrisy term may be replaced in another account by a different term for a fault or vice, to suppose that the texts, even when taken together, lump hypocrisy together with these other faults as just more or less the same thing’ (Barr in Barton 2013, 291): I have suggested that hypokritës of the Gospels was not really ‘derived’ out of the Greek sense of an ‘actor’, a sense that had little or no foothold in Jewish culture. But on the other hand, it turned out coincidentally that a hypocrite was very like an actor. He was one who played a role, acted a part, a role that the prevailing religion required people, or some people, to play. (Barr in Barton 2013, 294)

In addition, Barr pointed out that beyond the Synoptic Gospels the charge of hypocrisy was soon applied to Christians and not just to Jews: The Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels addressed the dominant religious leadership of his own time and situation: the question of Christian hypocrisy is one that he could hardly have been expected to take up. Christian hypocrisy, however, has not been absent from the scene of history. Peter, himself and his associates were

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according to St Paul implicated in hypokrisis (Gal. 2.13). 1 Tim. 4.2 and 1 Pet. 2.1 both warn against hypokriseis that could arise within the Christian community … Christianity, then, had to be on the watch for hypocrisy within its own constituency. (Barr in Barton 2013, 296)

The conclusions that Barr reached are important. He admitted, though, that they do not cover every instance of the terms hypokrisis or hypokritai in the Synoptic Gospels. I still find Matthew 24.51 and, especially, Luke 12.56 puzzling. C.  F. Evans observed tersely of the latter that ‘culpable inconsistency seems intended rather than hypocrisy’ (Evans 1990, 543). However, most of the instances of the Synoptic Jesus’ fiery condemnations of hypocrisy do seem to involve pretended virtue, dissimulation and deceit, in line with the warning: ‘Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them’ (Matthew 6.1). Ostentatious piety is probably not piety at all, any more than proud and ostentatious humility is really humility. Religious leaders arguably have long been prone to both –​hence the charge of hypocrisy.

Jesus and Moral Outrage Taken as whole, this evidence from the gospels indicates that Jesus was indeed passionate and expressed a strong sense of moral outrage. The repeated charges of hypocrisy overwhelmingly express moral outrage especially at some of those people purporting to be people of faith. Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels clearly finds obnoxious their pretended piety and their public deceit and trickery. Even the disciples’ behavior in attempting to keep small children away from him evokes anger because he views this as so contrary to the kingdom of God. At several points in the Synoptic Gospels, and especially in the poignant story of Lazarus in John, Jesus expresses deep passion. And the cleansing of the temple in all four gospels –​ seen as a symbolic but extremely risky act of protest  –​reinforces this picture of moral outrage. Jesus risks the murderous anger of the chief priests, as well surely as the anger of Roman soldiers intent on maintaining law and order, by undertaking such an act of protest. The risky public defiance of Martin Luther King in the segregationist southern US states and of Desmond Tutu in apartheid South Africa were deeply inspired by this symbolic public protest of Jesus as portrayed in all of the gospels. But this is not the moral outrage of a religious fundamentalist in the world today bent upon murder. Nor is it the moral outrage of the Crusaders and the perpetrators of the Inquisition of times long past,

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encouraging people of faith to torture or kill others deemed not to be people of faith. There is nothing in the gospels that remotely justifies such objective moral evil. Throughout the New Testament Jesus is represented as one who gave his life for others, not as one who encouraged anyone to take the life of others. At most, Christian engagement in war should always be reluctant, mournful and deeply penitential. To quote Nigel Biggar again: ‘war is horrendous and … working to prevent its outbreak –​ even if in the end that should prove justified –​is our first and most urgent duty … no war waged by [sinful] human beings will ever be simply just, but that is not to say that no war can ever be justified’ (Biggar 2013, 1–​3). Moral outrage really does seem to be important for Christian ethics. It springs from a sense of moral order. It bolsters a belief in moral objectivity. It accords with a careful depiction of Jesus in the gospels. And it inspires risky Christian pubic protest today. Yet it is only the first step in understanding moral passion in Christian ethics.

Works Cited Adams, Marilyn McCord. 2006. Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Albrecht, Stan L. 1998. ‘The Consequential Dimension of Mormon Religiosity’. In Latter-​Day Saint Social Life:  Social Research on the LDS Church and Its Members, 253–​292. Provo, UT:  Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University. Available at: https://​rsc.byu.edu/​archived/​latter-​day-​saint-​social-​ life-​social-​research-​lds-​church-​and-​its-​members/​8-​consequential (Accessed 5 September 2015). Barr, James. 2013 (1990). ‘The Hebrew/​Aramaic Background of “Hypocrisy” in the Gospels’. In John Barton (ed.), 2013. Bible and Interpretation: The Collected Essays of James Barr, Vol. II:  Biblical Studies, 281–​297. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Biggar, Nigel. 2013. In Defence of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press Bird, Kai and Sherwin, Martin J. 2008. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. London: Atlantic Books. Bowker, John. 2015. Why Religions Matter. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Byrne, Peter. 1998. The Moral Interpretation of Religion. Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press. Casanova, Julián. 2012. A Short History of the Spanish Civil War. London:  I. B. Tauris. Chomsky, Noam. 2004. ‘Simple Truths, Hard Problems:  Some Thoughts on Terror, Justice, and Self-​Defence’. In Ted Honderich (ed.), 2015. Philosophers of Our Time, 273–​292. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Clarke, Steve, Powell, Russell and Savulescu, Julian (eds.) 2013. Religion, Intolerance and Conflict:  A  Scientific and Conceptual Investigation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cobb, Paul M. 2014. The Race for Paradise:  An Islamic History of the Crusades, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, C. F. 1990. Saint Luke. London and Philadelphia: SCM Press & Trinity Press International. Fanes, Dominic and Houen, Alex (eds.) 2014. Martyrdom and Terrorism:  Pre-​ Modern to Contemporary Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flood, Gavin. 2004. The Ascetic Self:  Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gandhi, M. K. 1926. M. K. Gandhi Interprets The Bhagvadgita. Delhi: Orient. Gethin, Rupert (trans.) 2008. Nikayas:  Sayings of the Buddha. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Gill, Robin. 1984. The Cross Against the Bomb. London: Epworth Press.  2012. Theology in a Social Context: Sociological Theology, Vol. 1. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.  2013. Society Shaped by Theology: Sociological Theology, Vol. 3. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Graham, Gordon. 2001. Evil and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press. Gutkowski, Stacey. 2014. Secular War:  Myths of Religion, Politics and Violence. London: I. B. Tauris. Hallett, Garth L. 1998. Priorities and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/​2014/​11/​14/​religions-​war-​cause-​responsible-​evidence_​ n_​6156878.html (Accessed 4 September 2015). Johnson, W. J. (trans.) 1994. The Bhagavad Gita. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2000. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Juergensmeyer, Mark, Kitts, Margo and Jerryson, Michael (eds.) 2006. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lemcio, Eugene E. (ed.) 2015. A Man of Many Parts:  Essays in Honour of John Bowker on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday. Cambridge: James Clarke. Lewis, James R. and Cusack, Caroline M. (eds.) 2014. Sacred Suicide. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Lincoln, Bruce. 2014. Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification, 2nd ed. (1st ed. 1989). Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Mackey, James P. 1994. Power and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge Univer­sity Press. Martin, David A. 2017. Recuperations, Recapitulations and Rebuttals (forthcoming and quoted with the permission of the author). Mele, Alfred R. 2014. Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Murphy, Andrew R. (ed.). 2011. The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell. Noyes, James. 2013. The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-​Breaking in Christianity and Islam. London: I. B. Tauris. O’Donovan, Oliver. 2014. Finding and Seeking: Ethics as Theology, Vol. 2. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Pinckaers, Servais, OP, 2015. Passions and the Virtue. Washington, DC:  The Catholic University of America Press. Porter, Jean. 1995. Moral Action and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roth, John K. 2015. The Failures of Ethics:  Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities. Oxford: Oxford University Press Sacks, Jonathan. 2015. Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence, London: Hodder & Stoughton. Shakespeare, Steven. 2015. Kierkegaard and the Refusal of Transcendence. Basing­ stoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan. Tollefsen, Christopher O. 2014. Lying and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wessel, Susan. 2016. Passion and Compassion in Early Christianity. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ch apter 6

Collective Moral Passion within Faith Traditions

Chapter 5 looked at a largely negative and individualistic form of moral passion –​albeit a form that is particularly important for moral objectivity and for discussing the form of anger or indignation that Jesus displayed in the Synoptic Gospels. It is time now to shift the discussion in a more positive and communal direction. What can be said about collective passion within both religious, and specifically Christian, ethics? The pioneer sociologist of religion Emile Durkheim argued that it is its communal feature that distinguishes religion from magic. Religion, according to Durkheim, is always communal whereas magic is not. Magic involves supernatural beliefs but, so he maintained, it is practised by individuals and not by communities. Not everyone has been convinced by this distinction and, as already noticed and with good reason, scholars such as John Bowker now talk about ‘religions’ (or faith traditions) rather than ‘religion’. They also point out that individual religious mystics, as well as New Age followers, can be quite isolated from any communities and that magical practices within, say, Vodou in Haiti do seem to be communal. However, it is not necessary to accept Durkheim’s distinction at face value. It is sufficient only to take seriously the idea that for many faith traditions community is vital. Durkheim knew as much from his own Jewish family in late-​nineteenth and early twentieth-​century France –​a time and place when anti-​Semitism was rife and Jewish communities could be quite isolated. His father and grandfather were both rabbis and may have hoped that he would become one as well. However, as a teenager he rebelled and saw himself as a secular Jew for the rest of his life. Yet his interest in religions continued strongly in his sociological work. In 1897 he published his seminal work, Suicide:  A  Study in Sociology. In this he argued that suicide, seemingly the act of individuals whose minds were disturbed, actually has important social characteristics as well. For example, suicides can become more common when there is a major 152

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social or economic disaster, such as the collapse of the stock market or a widespread famine. There is also a type of ‘altruistic’ suicide (as he termed it) that is required by local custom and pressure, such as the suicide of widows in some rural parts of India. The suicide bombers of the Japanese pilots in World War II and of the more recent Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS (preceded by the more secular Tamil Tigers) all fit this type of suicide. However, Durkheim gave greatest attention to those many suicides that are not so readily explained in social terms. What he sought to discover is whether or not there are social groups in which individuals are less or more likely to commit suicide. After examining extensive police records of suicides in several different European countries, Durkheim eventually came to the conclusion that differences in religious belonging were particularly important. It seemed that Protestants were twice as likely to commit suicide as Catholics or Jews. Now a difference purely between Protestants and Catholics might result simply from differences of belief, with Catholics believing that suicide is a mortal sin that results in punishment in hell and many Protestants not. However, the inclusion of Jews in his evidence –​with a comparatively low expectation of an afterlife –​encouraged Durkheim to think that differences of belief were not directly responsible for the differences in suicide rates. Instead he argued that Catholics and Jews have a much stronger sense of moral community than Protestants and that it is this that inhibits many potential suicides among their members. There has been much dispute about the statistics that Durkheim used to establish this theory. Police records of suicides might vary from one country to the next (with Catholics being more cautious about concluding that a particular death really is a suicide). The sociologists Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge claimed that, in any case, Durkheim massaged the statistics and that the differences between the three religious groups when recalculated were actually not that pronounced (Stark and Bainbridge 1997). Many have also pointed out that ‘Protestants’ are a very varied group that can include radical sects with a very strong sense of moral community and liberal denominations that do not. Even Durkheim noted that suicide rates in England (with a relatively small population of Catholics and Jews) were low. More reliable might be the claim that the religiously active (whatever their faith community) are less likely overall to commit suicide than those who are not religiously active. Here Durkheim’s links between the communal and social aspects of faith traditions are instructive:

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The beneficent influence of religion is therefore not due to the special nature of religious conceptions. If religion protects man against the desire for self-​ destruction, it is not that it preaches respect for his own person to him with arguments [as such]; but because it is a society. What constitutes this society is the existence of a certain number of beliefs and practices common to all the faithful, traditional and thus obligatory. The more numerous and strong these collective states of mind are, the stronger the integration of the religious community, and also the greater its preservative value. The details of the dogmas and rites are secondary. The essential thing is that they be capable of supporting a sufficiently intensive collective life. (Durkheim 1897/​1952, 170)

His own experience of living in a Jewish community doubtless helped to shape this paragraph. For Durkheim here there are several crucial features that form a moral community. Such a community has beliefs/​dogmas and practices/​rites that are • Common to all the faithful • Traditional • Obligatory • Numerous and strong • Capable of supporting a sufficiently intensive collective life He developed these ideas further in his major book, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, first published in 1915 two years before his death. There he used the term ‘collective effervescence’ to depict the experience involved in an intensive collective life. Despite his own loss of faith, but with the First World War erupting, he concluded this seminal work wistfully: The old gods are growing old or already dead, and others are not yet born … But this state of incertitude and confused agitation cannot last for ever. A  day will come when our societies will know again those hours of creative effervescence [d’effervescence créatrice], in the course of which new ideas arise and new formulae are found which serve for a while as a guide to humanity. (Durkheim 1915/​1976, 427–​428)

There is an obvious tension between this quotation and the previous one. How can these ‘new ideas’ and ‘new formulae’ be squared with the previous quotation’s claim about ‘beliefs and practices common to all the faithful, traditional and thus obligatory’? For the earlier Durkheim beliefs and practices are seen as obligatory within religious groups precisely because they are traditional and held by all, whereas new beliefs and practices are clearly not traditional and might not be held by all. The clue to resolving this dilemma may reside within the term ‘creative effervescence’ in the second quotation. The veteran Durkheim scholar W. S. F. Pickering made a distinction for Durkheim that he did not make explicitly himself:

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Durkheim’s reflection on collective effervescence led him to view it in two apparently distinct ways. (a) As an assembly of participants where the level of feeling is of a most intense kind, where the final outcome may under certain circumstances be uncertain and where it is possible that new ideas emerge. This could be called the creative function of an effervescent assembly. (b) As an assembly of participants where the level of excitement is intense, but where those gathered together feel a bond of community and unity … and where as a result the members feel at the end morally strengthened. As such this might be termed the re-​creative function. (Pickering 1984, 385)

Whether or not this distinction fully represents Durkheim’s intentions is a matter for debate among Durkheim scholars. But it does help to understand the following depiction of collective effervescence by Durkheim: There are occasions when this strengthening and vivifying action of society is especially apparent. In the midst of an assembly animated by a common passion [une passion commune], we become susceptible of acts and sentiments of which we are incapable when reduced to our own forces; and when the assembly is dissolved and when, finding ourselves alone again, we fall back to our ordinary level, we are then able to measure the height to which we have raised ourselves. History abounds in examples of this sort. It is enough to think of the night of the Fourth of August 1789, when an assembly was suddenly led to an act of sacrifice and abnegation which each of its members had refused the day before, and at which they were all surprised the day after. This is why all parties, political, economic or confessional, are careful to have periodical reunions when their members may revivify their common faith [revivifier leur foi commune] by manifesting it in common. (Durkheim 1915/​1976, 209–​210)

If the Fourth of August represents a moment of ‘creative effervescence’ (especially for a French author), the subsequent reunions recalling it are, in terms of Pickering’s distinction, ‘re-​creative effervescence’ strengthening une passion commune and, with it, une foi commune. This distinction, whether it is Durkheim’s or the Durkheimian Pickering’s, is very helpful for depicting the moral function of faith communities. Creative effervescence may be more significant for the generation of new religious movements, whereas re-​creative effervescence may be more relevant to embedding moral passion and, with it, a strong sense of moral obligation within existing religious communities. And it is the latter that is especially important for an exploration of moral passion. Pickering insisted that Durkheim’s concept of ‘collective effervescence’ should not be reduced to the aggregate terms of psychology. For Durkheim this was not simply a matter of large numbers of individuals

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becoming emotionally excited. For him it was social in character and deeply powerful. Even the individual orator who speaks at an effervescent assembly is transformed by it: It is by this trait that we are able to recognize what has often been called the demon of oratorical inspiration. Now this exceptional increase of force is something very real; it comes to him from the very group which he addresses. The sentiments provoked by his words come back to him, but enlarged and amplified, and to this degree they strengthen his own sentiment. The passionate energies he arouses re-​echo within him and quicken his vital tone. It is no longer a simple individual who speaks; it is a group incarnate and personified [c’est un groupe incarné et pesonnifié]. (Durkheim 1915/​1976, 210)

The elusive nature of the phenomenon that Durkheim depicted here, using the theologically resonant word incarné, is reminiscent of the equally elusive concept of extraordinary leadership in organisations that Max Weber depicted using the word charisma, which, tellingly despite his religious agnosticism, he consciously borrowed from the Greek New Testament (and has now, ironically, continued in secular discourse about leadership in politics and business). Durkheim (like Weber) was under no illusion that this phenomenon always led to moral goodness. Citing the examples of both the Crusades and the French Revolution, he noted that:  ‘Under the influence of the general exaltation, we see the most mediocre and inoffensive bourgeois become either a hero or a butcher’ (Durkheim 1915/​1976, 2011). And, paradoxically, in the first years of the French Revolution, ‘under the influence of the general enthusiasm, things purely läical by nature were transformed by public opinion into sacred things: these were the Fatherland, Liberty, Reason [c’est la Patrie, la Liberté, la Raison]’ (Durkheim 1915/​1976, 214). The original French here, using three feminine nouns, sounds more ironic and less consonant with later Nazi patriarchy than the English translation. But had Durkheim lived longer he might have reached a similar conclusion about Germany under Hitler and the avowedly secular Soviet Union under Stalin.

Constructed or Discovered? Durkheim went to considerable lengths to insist that he was not a reductionist [in the pejorative sense that this term has today within the humanities of oversimplifying, as in ‘nothing-​buttery’, but not in the very different sense within the physical sciences of reducing something to its basics]. He was profoundly unimpressed by those of his contemporaries

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who argued that religions were simply a product of some primitive error (say, confusing dreams with reality) and argued from the outset of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life that ‘there are no religions which are false’ (Durkheim 1915/​1976, 3). By this, as a non-​believer himself, he obviously did not mean that the cognitive claims of any particular religion were true. Rather he was maintaining that all religions that survive must have a continuing social function; otherwise they would not survive. For him the ‘only question is to learn from what part of nature these realities come and what has been able to make men represent them under this singular form which is peculiar to religious thought’ (Durkheim 1915/​1976, 70). More specifically: It is readily seen how [a]‌group of regularly repeated acts which form the cult get their importance. In fact, whoever has really practised a religion knows very well that it is the cult which gives rise to … impressions of joy, of interior peace, of serenity, of enthusiasm which are, for the believer, an experimental proof of his beliefs. The cult is not simply a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly translated; it is a collection of the means by which this is created and recreated periodically. Whether it consists in material acts or mental operations, it is always this which is efficacious. Our entire study rests upon this postulate that the unanimous sentiment of the believers of all times cannot be purely illusory [ne peut pas être purement illusoire]. (Durkheim 1915/​1976, 417)

Although this is a viable stance for a social scientist, when working specifically as a social scientist, to take, it seems much less likely to be seen by those who have ‘really practised a religion’ to be an accurate depiction of their own experiences. For many of the latter even the word purement may have little appeal because it still allows the possibility that their experiences are ‘largely’ illusory. In contrast, the religiously active may view their/​our ‘impressions of joy, of interior peace, of serenity, of enthusiasm’ as ‘discoveries’ rather than as simply social constructs. For example, committed but inflexible churchgoers may well resist the introduction of a new hymn book, liturgy or translation of the Bible into their worship –​ readily identifying it as an all-​too-​human construct –​but they would be unlikely to identify the whole of worship as purely a social construct. Most churchgoers are likely to believe that they are actually worshipping God by and through their/​our preferred, but still human, hymn book, liturgy or translation of the Bible. Religious forms that are seen to be wholly manufactured, human constructs  –​such as those, mentioned in the Introduction, of Auguste Comte two centuries ago or of the science fiction writer Ron Hubbard in the late twentieth century –​are, in turn, likely to attract remarkably few believers.

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Roger Scruton, while sitting loose to formal religious commitment, uses architecture, art and music in his exploration of ‘sacred space’ in The Soul of the World (2014). For him the creative arts are capable of evoking a sense of the sacred, of discovery, of deep profundity and even of moral passion: The C-​sharp Minor Quartet is one of the most moving pieces that Beethoven wrote, a profound and authoritative work that speaks, as Beethoven said of his Missa Solemnis, “from the heart.” There is in [its] opening phrase, a defiant seriousness, an invitation to dialogue and sympathy, which is the real theme in all that follows … To describe this music as “profound” and “authoritative” is no flight of fancy. For such words capture the way in which we respond to it. The C-​sharp Minor Quartet is inviting us to “hear it out,” and to take its life into ourselves … Even a work as abstract and architectural as The Art of the Fugue speaks with authority, telling you that you are not going to be the same person when you have finished with it as you were when you began. (Scruton 2014, 168–​169)

The philosopher John Cottingham, who is explicit about his own Christian commitment, points out that ‘evidently one might accept [Scruton’s] claim about the power of great music to produce the changes he describes without conceding that this is evidence for a transcendent source of change’ (Cottingham 2014, 27). For Scruton this power might, for example, owe more to Wagner’s dramatic musical reworking of Norse mythology than to monotheistic transcendence (Scruton 2016). Cottingham goes further than Scruton at this point: Our vivid awareness of natural beauty, our response to the mysterious power of music and our sense of awe before the authoritative demands of morality  –​all these may be described by the believer as revelations of the sacred, as intimations of the divine reality that is the source of all truth, beauty and goodness. But it is also striking that they do not necessarily present as supernatural or miraculous irruptions in to the natural world; they are in a way perfectly ‘natural’ … these experiences fall, simply and uncomplicatedly, into the category of awareness of God by means of the natural light. They are, if you like, natural intimations of the transcendent, glimpses of the sacred dimension that forms the ever present horizon of our natural human experience. (Cottingham 2014, 30)

The musicologist Markus Rathey provides a striking example of such ‘awareness of God by means of the natural light’ when discussing how Bach took the music of a lullaby that he originally composed for his secular cantata Pleasure and reused it in his magnificent Christmas Oratorio. In both contexts the music (with different words) conveys considerable moral passion, but in its original version Bach used it to depict the seductive tones of vice (which the young Hercules finally resists) whereas in

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the Christmas Oratorio this reused music [known technically as a ‘parody’] becomes the vehicle for a cradle song to the baby Jesus. In this paradoxical way, Rathey argues, ‘it could be sung by vice and virtue alike … the seductive lullaby could indeed be transformed into a song of rest for the newborn Son of God’ (Rathey 2016, 45). In addition, a sense of ‘discovery’ in science and religious faith runs through one of the most remarkable of recent contributions to the already rich literature on science and religion, Tom McLeish’s Faith and Wisdom in Science (2014). He is Professor of Physics at Durham with particular research specialisation in molecular theory of complex fluid flow. But he writes about all sorts of areas in science from astrophysics, through climate science to quantum physics, where increasingly it is recognised that randomness or chaos is present alongside or within natural order. He relates this combination of chaos and order to attitudes to the natural world that are to be found in many parts of the Bible. At some points, God is depicted as creating order from chaos, but at others points God is also depicted as being directly responsible for major acts of chaos (causing floods, earthquakes and so forth). He looks at length at the Book of Job to resolve this dilemma and to produce a theological understanding of chaos (as an opportunity for change) that can mesh with order and then relate strongly to emerging scientific understandings of chaos and order: The message of Job is that chaos is part of the fruitfulness of creation; we cannot hope to control it any more than we can bridle Leviathan, but by understanding we might channel it. Indeed new structures can arise when we do –​the ‘beginning of wisdom’ is not to double-​lock the casket of our ignorance, but to ‘seek the fear of the Lord’, where this is understood to be a participation in a creator’s deep insight into the structure of what he has made … situating our science and technology within a story of participative healing. (McLeish 2014, 256)

Elsewhere I have argued briefly that this emerging understanding has obvious relevance to theodicy  –​the problem of unwarranted suffering, which may in the end be unavoidable in a changing/​evolving world (Gill 2015). In the present context it is clear that McLeish sees his work as a journey of discovery in both science and religious faith. He does not mention Cottingham but, if he had, he too might well have agreed with his depiction of ‘natural intimations of the transcendent, glimpses of the sacred dimension that forms the ever present horizon of our natural human experience.’ In his own words, McLeish summarises his task: We have worked our way through some dense undergrowth along the forest trails of ‘love of wisdom of natural things’. In the journey we have kept close company

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with theological themes, principally from the Bible, some equally thick with thorns and briars. It has proved rather natural to travel with this narrative partnership –​and it has taken us towards a new perspective on science within a long human tradition. Surprisingly, in spite of the jarring edge of the word ‘science’ and ‘theology’ (or ‘faith’ or ‘belief ’), we find that an enquiring engagement with the natural world has a recognisable and central place in Judaeo-​Christian narrative. (McLeish 2014, 213)

‘Discovery’ has been my own experience while reading the Qurʾan, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Nikayas:  Sayings of the Buddha alongside the more conventional texts for a Christian ethicist, namely the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible/​Old Testament. I  cannot remotely claim to be an expert on the first three as I have to rely wholly on translations (it would be difficult to find a Christian ethicist who can read Arabic, Sanskrit and Pali in addition to our usual training in Greek, Hebrew and Latin). And I make no pretence to be a comparative religious ethicist. I am not even persuaded by the supposed ‘neutrality’ of some of those who do claim to be comparative religious ethicists. Nor am I much concerned in this instance with comparing and contrasting the differences between and within faith traditions about specific ethical issues. Instead, my stance here in relation to all of these texts and some oral traditions is that of a Christian ethicist seeking to explore, discover and learn from the different ways that they understand and seek to strengthen moral passion. This is, of course, a dangerous path for a Christian ethicist to take. However, since 9/​11 and 7/​7, I  have been increasingly convinced that it is a path that Christian ethicists have a public duty to explore. And, having reached this conviction, I now derive considerable comfort from the observation that John Hare seems to have reached a similar position. He too expresses considerable unease about the linguistic and textual problems that this entails, but nevertheless (as noted earlier) extends his discussion in God’s Command (2015) to Judaism and Islam as well: Despite reservations, I have undertaken this part of the project because the concept of divine command is central outside the Christian tradition as well as within it, and there is a great deal to be learnt from the comparison. Within medieval Islam, and within contemporary Jewish appropriations of medieval Judaism, there is very much the same range of options in understanding the relation between a sovereign God who gives us commands and our own reason, as we try to determine how to live our lives. This book assumes, without arguing for it, that the three Abrahamic faiths worship the same God, though they say very different things about this God. (Hare 2015, 184–​185)

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Collective Effervescence in Faith Traditions Meeting together on a regular basis for collective worship strongly characterises Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So do festivals in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Daoism, as do feasts in Black Africa, Papua New Guinea and Aboriginal Australia. On these communal occasions, people share common beliefs and practices that bind them together as moral communities. Not all, of course, are effervescent –​although the worship of charismatic Christians, mirroring rave culture but without drugs and alcohol, certainly can be –​but they are typically capable of supporting a sufficiently intensive collective life to form a moral community. Within a number of the Temple Psalms the collective effervescence of worship is particularly evident. The Psalms themselves are very varied in their contents and it is widely accepted by scholars that they were written at different periods and for separate occasions. The sheer exuberance of this Temple Psalm is, however, manifest: Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! (Psalm 150.1–​6)

And the previous Psalm makes it clear that this collective effervescence is closely related to imbuing the faithful with collective virtues –​albeit virtues that now appear highly retributive: Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the faithful. Let Israel be glad in its Maker; let the children of Zion rejoice in their King. Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre. For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with victory.

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Collective Moral Passion within Faith Traditions Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches. Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-​edged swords in their hands, to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with fetters and their nobles with chains of iron. (Psalm 149.1-​8)

Collective worship linked to shared beliefs and virtues also features within the New Testament. The most celebrated instance occurs near the beginning of Acts, depicting the earliest days of Christianity after the death of Jesus: When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? (Acts 2.1–​8)

Immediately following this instance of creative effervescence Peter addresses the crowd, proclaiming, in words drawn from the Septuagint version of the visionary Joel 3, that ‘your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’ (Acts 2.17). In Paul’s letters there are also occasional fragments of what many consider to be early Christian hymns. The most famous of these comes in Philippians and is a good example of re-​creative effervescence. The exact interpretation of this hymn fragment in the second half of the following quotation has proved elusive despite very considerable modern scholarship. It is clear, however, that Paul makes a connection between the moral virtues extolled for believers ‘sharing the Spirit’ [une passion commune] and ‘of the same mind’ [une foi commune] and the life, death and exaltation of Christ: If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do

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nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death –​ even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2.1–​11).

Singing and music, as distinct from intonation, are not typical features of the Qurʾan or of Muslim worship. Instead it is the Qurʾan itself that is the instrument of worship. Abdel Haleem emphasises the importance to Muslims of the very form of the Qurʾan: The Qur’an was the starting point for all the Islamic sciences: Arabic grammar was developed to serve the Qur’an, the study of Arabic phonetics was pursued in order to determine the exact pronunciation of Qur’anic words, the science of Arabic rhetoric was developed in order to describe the features of the inimitable style of the Qur’an, the art of Arabic calligraphy was cultivated through writing down the Qur’an. (Haleem 2005, ix)

In an earlier translation of the Qurʾan, Arthur Arberry felt obliged to depict it as The Koran Interpreted, explaining in his introduction that ‘Since the Koran is to the faithful Muslim the very Word of God, from the earliest times orthodox opinion has rigidly maintained that it is untranslatable, a miracle of speech which it would be blasphemous to attempt to imitate’ (Arberry 1955/​1964, ix). This is a sacred text to be recited, almost intoned, in public and in Arabic:

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Truly this Qur’an has been sent down by the Lord of the Worlds: the trustworthy spirit brought it down to your heart [Prophet], so that you could bring warning in a clear Arabic tongue. (Haleem 2005, 26.192–​195) These are the verses of the Qur’an –​a scripture that makes things clear; a guide and joyful news for the believers who keep up with prayer, pay the prescribed alms, and believe firmly in the life to come. (Haleem 2005, 27.1–​3)

It is the Qurʾan, recited in ‘a clear Arabic tongue’ and in a context of regular prayers, that is both a guide to virtuous behaviour and a source of ‘joyful news’. A very different and more solitary concept of ‘joy’ is present in the Nikayas. In the first of the following two passages there is a natural, everyday, earthy, corporate joy that lay people can derive from work of one sort or another (the full list is longer than appears below). But this is contrasted with the ascetic, solitary, ‘letting go’ joy of monks. It is the latter that is the true goal of the Buddha: There are elephant riders, cavalrymen, charioteers, archers, standard-​bearers … cooks, bath attendants, sweet-​makers … those skilled in accounts and calculation … These people enjoy the evident fruits of their labour here and now: by their work they bring happiness and joy to themselves, they bring happiness and joy to their mothers and fathers, to their wives and children, and to their friends and acquaintances; and they provide ascetics and Brahmans with excellent offerings, for the sake of the world to come, bringing happy results and making for a heavenly rebirth. Is it possible to point out a fruit of the ascetic life that is similarly evident here and now? (Gethin 2008, 10) When the mind [of a monk] is joyful, the body becomes tranquil, and when the body is tranquil one experiences happiness; the mind of someone who is happy becomes concentrated. Completely secluded from sense desires and unwholesome qualities, he lives having attained the joy and happiness that come from seclusion, so that there is no part of his body that is untouched by that joy and happiness. (Gethin 2008, 28)

Even when the monk lives in community with other monks and shares food daily with them, the effervescence here appears to be solitary, silent and inward. Mystics in other faith traditions may, in this respect, be very like the Theravada Buddhist monk. If they are, say, Sufi Muslims or Christian hermits they are unlikely to share a Buddhist’s belief in, and strong desire to avoid, the cycle of rebirth, but they may still experience solitary, silent and inward effervescence in this world. Although such solitary effervescence can be found in a number of faith traditions, it is seldom if ever regarded as the norm for ordinary believers. The sociologist Max Weber coined the term ‘religious virtuosi’ to denote

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such religious specialists. He likened them to virtuosi violinists or singers who have rare and special talents. By definition most violinists, singers or religious believers are not virtuosi. Most Buddhists and Catholics are not monks. The monks can encourage, help and be supported by ordinary believers, but few of these ordinary believers are going to become monks themselves. The ordinary believers need to carry on running the world as elephant riders, cavalrymen … or whatever. The more usual path towards effervescence for the ordinary believer is a collective one. Creative effervescence attracted the young people whom I interviewed in Beijing at the turn of the millennium (Gill 2002, 121–​128), despite their fervently secular upbringing, to become Buddhists or Christians: the collective effervescence at midnight mass at the impressive seventeenth-​ century Southern Cathedral or the collective effervescence at a festival at the central Buddhist temple. For Hindus there is the re-​creative effervescence of bathing in the Ganges and for Muslims the re-​creative effervescence of pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina. Or perhaps it is the collective effervescence triggered by some public tragedy –​the assassination of President John Kennedy or the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/​11. Durkheim might have seen all of these as occasions of collective effervescence mirroring the great feasts of the, normally scattered and nomadic, Aboriginal Arunta in Australia that he never witnessed personally but still found fascinating. Across these different faith traditions there do appear to be some commonalities. There is a common concern to re-​create effervescence through ritual practices embedding virtues and beliefs held in common. And there is a common assumption that important public occasions should be marked and shaped by these ritual practices. Of course, the ritual practices and beliefs vary across and within faith traditions. That is hardly surprising given the huge variety of human languages and conceptual frameworks. But, taken as a whole, religious traditions tend to accept that there is indeed a moral order that is not simply invented by humans and that religious rituals and practices are important means of strengthening human allegiance and a sense of obligation to this order. It is this shared moral conviction that may be most difficult for secularists to replace adequately –​as Raymond Tallis seems to acknowledge in his fascinating dialogue with Rowan Williams (Carroll and Norman 2017, 11). That, at least, is what Durkheim seems to have concluded in his wistful ending to The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Danièle Hervieu-​Léger offers a powerful example of the secular problem here when comparing the very public funerals of President François Mitterrand in Notre Dame in 1996 and of Diana, Princess of Wales, in

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Westminster Abbey in 1997, despite their ambivalent relationship with either church. She points out that although Mitterrand was brought up as a Catholic, as an adult he defined himself as an agnostic, albeit an agnostic still with a spiritual quest. In his will he added the tentative point that at his funeral ‘a mass is possible’. The fact that he had long sustained two separate families became public knowledge, with both families attending the private burial at the village church at Jarnac following the televised funeral service and mass at Notre Dame. She sees several parallels here with Diana’s televised funeral, not least with her own ambivalent marital arrangements and spiritual quest: Both Mitterrand and Diana had a religious funeral in which the uncertainties of their respective spiritual journeys were acknowledged:  in Mitterrand’s case the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Lustiger, gave a prominent place to the President’s writings about death in several of his books: in Diana’s, the introduction of innovative elements within the Anglican liturgy (the rendering of the song Candle in the Wind by Elton John, or the funeral oration delivered by the Princess’ brother) expressed her malaise and her desire for a freely chosen spirituality. (Hervieu-​ Léger 2015, 28)

Hervieu-​Léger’s main observation, however, is about the very different public reactions to these two funerals. In Britain there seemed to be widespread public acceptance of the legitimacy of such a public funeral and of the established Church of England hosting the service. But in France there was fierce controversy about Mitterrand’s Notre Dame funeral service: Different groups of Catholics protested against the indulgence of the Church, traditionalists because the President was a bigamist and not a believer, liberals because the Church was less accommodating towards divorcees who wanted to re-​marry in church. But these were minor criticisms compared to the much more vehement protests of militants of laïcité who questioned why the Republic could not organize a public ceremony free from any borrowings from the Catholic liturgy … Nevertheless, this did not prevent the French from gathering to follow the double ceremony eagerly on their TV sets … The Catholic funeral of François Mitterrand allowed the French, through religious controversy, to indulge their delight in political confrontation on which their collective identity thrives. (Hervieu-​Léger 2015, 29)

A traditional religious rite, albeit with some radical and arguably secular innovations, was used and televised in both contexts to mark the funeral of a public figure at the end of the twentieth century. But the very different public reactions of the British and French (apart from their equally avid television watching) mirrored the mixture of religious longings and scepticism displayed by Durkheim near the beginning of that century. In

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both cases, but especially in Britain, it seemed that a purely secular rite (demanded by some) was insufficient. As humanist funeral rites become more widely accepted in Britain this may change. Yet for the moment such public events are still sustained by a degree of religious effervescence.

Sustaining Moral Families At the heart of Hervieu-​Léger’s analysis is the concept of ‘religious memories’ that are sometimes lost, sometimes retained and at other times changed. People in France and Britain, largely unattached to institutional churches, have, for example, increasing lost memories of the meaning of religious festivals that they still celebrate. Their religious beliefs have become eclectic and subjectivised. Yet they retain ‘the considerable attraction exerted by holy places, pilgrimage routes, monasteries, cathedrals’ (she terms this an ‘aesthetic relationship’), despite the fact that ‘the religious transmission of this heritage is no longer properly maintained’ (Hervieu-​Léger 2015, 19). In historical terms, the religiously curious but unattached young people that I  interviewed in Beijing are an oddity. They have been shaped by a very distinctive social experiment in two significant ways. First, because of China’s former one-​child policy (designed to reduce overpopulation), they have no siblings. Every young person interviewed was an only child. Second, following the Cultural Revolution, they were systematically taught in school that religious belief is a delusional (even damaging) anachronism. The Chinese government’s comparative tolerance of Buddhism and Catholicism that the young people encountered with curiosity was also a recent novelty  –​even a slightly risky one. What would the doting parents and grandparents (evident everywhere in Beijing surrounding a single, pampered child) think of having a practicing Buddhist or Catholic in the family? And what harm might being a Buddhist or a Catholic have for that young person’s future social status or employability? The more usual problem in the past for faith traditions –​not starting from scratch –​was how to pass on their faith intact from one generation to the next. Given a natural tendency of young people eventually to rebel against their parents (how else would they leave the nest?), their moral formation when children needs to be taken seriously. And given that the elderly tend to become increasingly dependent on others, attention also needs to be given to the eventual duties of children to their parents. Both issues are given considerable attention in some of the sacred texts being explored here. At stake is the issue of how to sustain moral families.

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Parents and Children The Gita has the least to say about parents and children. It does, however, start with a very deep concern about family relatives, in this instance poised in battle to kill each other. As Arjuna contemplates the terrible prospect of this battle he calls in anguish on the Lord Krishna: There Arjuna saw, standing their ground, fathers, grandfathers, teachers, maternal uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, friends, Fathers-​in-​law, and companions in both armies. And looking at all these kinsmen so arrayed, Arjuna, the son of Kunti, Was overcome by deep compassion; and in despair he said:  ‘Krishna, when I see these my own people eager to fight, on the brink, ‘My limbs grow heavy, and my mouth is parched, my body trembles and my hair bristles, ‘My bow … falls from my hand, my skin’s on fire, I can no longer stand –​my mind is reeling. ‘I see evil omens, Krishna:  nothing good can come from slaughtering one’s own family in battle –​I foresee it!’ (Johnson 1994, 1.26–​31)

Although much of the Nikayas is concerned with ascetic rather than family life, it does nonetheless address the double issue of parents and children on several occasions. One of these is addressed to monks and argues characteristically that they both cannot and can repay their parents: Monks, there are two people whom one cannot fully repay. Which two? One’s mother and father. Having a life of a hundred years and living a hundred years, one might carry one’s mother on one shoulder and one’s father on the other, anointing, bathing, massaging, and shampooing them, even while they excreted and urinated there, but still one would not have done enough, one would not have repaid them. One might establish one’s mother and father as rulers of supreme authority over this whole earth with its abundance of seven treasures, but still one would not have done enough, one would not have repaid them. Why is this? Mothers and fathers do much for their children, bringing them up, feeding them, guiding them through this world. And yet one who brings about the fullness of faith in parents who have little faith, who directs them towards and establishes them in the fullness of faith; one who brings about the fullness of virtue within parents who have little virtue; one who brings about the fullness of generosity in parents who are stingy, who directs them towards and establishes them in the fullness of generosity; one who brings about the fullness of wisdom in parents who have little wisdom, who directs them towards and establishes them in the fullness of wisdom –​by doing these things he has done enough, he has repaid them, he has done more than enough. (Gethin 2008, 251)

The first paragraph, despite its stylised structure, expresses a level of care for incontinent, elderly parents that sounds remarkably modern. It is

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hardly surprising that some Buddhists today are particularly drawn to work with the needy in hospices and prisons. However, the second paragraph expresses priorities quite different from standard geriatric care today. Less concerned with bodily care and personal empowerment of the elderly, it gives priority to their faith, virtue, generosity and wisdom. It even presumes that these can be taught to the elderly by the young. Or, more accurately, it presumes that monks who have learned to ‘let go’ (to be enlightened) can teach parents who have not. The Torah and the Qurʾan have perhaps the strongest emphasis on family. Within the Torah the very first chapter of Genesis links families with God’s creation:  ‘So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” ’ (1.27–​28a). Families with plenty of children are often seen as a blessing from God, for example, in the Psalms: ‘Happy are those who fear the Lord, who greatly delight in his commandments. Their descendants will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed’ (112.1b–​2); ‘Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them’ (127.3–​5a). Childlessness, in contrast, is something to be pitied: ‘Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless?” ’ (Genesis 15.2). For religious Jews (and many Christians) the Ten Commandments are usually regarded as especially important for moral living. It is evident that the so-​called ‘second table’ relates closely to those living in families. Children are punished for the idolatry of their parents; parents, children and households are all to keep the Sabbath; fathers and mothers must be honoured; neighbours are to be treated properly and their wives and property are not to be coveted. In short, people are to live in moral families. The Qurʾan also links families with God’s creation. There is a difference between the Qurʾan and the Torah in that for the Qurʾan humankind (Adam) is seen as God’s ‘representative’ or ‘helper’ on earth whereas in the Torah humankind is depicted as made in God’s ‘image’ (see Schweiker et al. 2006). Despite this interesting difference –​the Torah’s concept being more static and the Qurʾan’s being more relational –​a strong connection is made in both between God’s creation and human families: So celebrate God’s glory in the evening, in the morning –​praise is due to him in the heavens and the earth –​in the late afternoon, and at midday. He brings the living out of the dead and the dead out of the living. He gives life to the earth after death, and you will be brought out in the same way. One of his signs is that he created you out of dust and  –​lo and behold!  –​you became human

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and scattered far and wide. Another of his signs is that he created spouses from among yourselves for you to live with in tranquillity: he ordained love and kindness between you. (Haleem 2005, 30.17–​21)

Or again: People, be mindful of your Lord, who created you from a single soul, and from it created its mate, and from the pair of them spread countless men and women far and wide; be mindful of God, in whose name you make requests of one another. Beware of severing the ties of kinship:  God is always watching over you. Give orphans their property, do not replace their [good] things with bad, and do not consume their property with your own –​a great sin. (Haleem 2005, 4.1–​2)

A concern about kinship and the proper care of orphans runs through different parts of both the Qurʾan and the Torah. Both assume that families live in proximity and have a duty to care for each other. In her recent book, Hospitality and Islam:  Welcoming in God’s Name (2015), Mona Siddiqui offers a rich account of family hospitality in Islamic and Christian history contrasted sympathetically with secular writings on hospitality. She argues that Islamic (and Christian) understandings of hospitality are deepened and enriched by a belief in God: In the Qur’an … hospitality is first and foremost a duty towards others, and a way of living in which we are constantly reminded of human diversity. There are overlapping discourses on food as a blessing to be shared with others and food as a means of enjoying the company of others. There are multiple commandments to give charity and shelter, to feed others, to look after widows, neighbours, travellers and orphans. We must give and be generous because this is how God is and God’s giving knows no limits. Hospitality is not necessarily premised on pleasure, and yet pleasure enhances the experience of doing hospitality. (Siddiqui 2015, 12–​13)

She is well aware that critics of Islam have argued, at least since medieval times, that Muslims are too preoccupied with physical/​sensuous rewards in the next life in return for good works (including hospitality and charitable giving) done in this life. She maintains, however, that this rests upon a highly superficial view of Islam and of the Qurʾan in particular. The latter, she points out, uses separate Arabic words, with zakat being used to denote charitable giving, or obligatory alms, that are a required duty (one of the five pillars of Islam) and sadaqa for charitable giving that goes beyond duty. And the fundamental premise of all good work is compassion. It is God’s compassion to us that should inspire us to be compassionate to each other: It is to God we turn for all our needs, for God is always the ultimate refuge. If the structural context implicit in the devotional vocabulary of Christianity is different from than that of Islam, the practical obligation to show care and hospitality

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remains the same. I  would contend that offering hospitality [especially to the stranger] as a way of imitating the divine, as well as being obedient to God, is embedded in the rich vocabulary of charity, generosity, mercy and compassion which permeates the entire Qur’an. (Siddiqui 2015, 124–​125)

In her socio-​historical study Charity in Islamic Societies (2008) Amy Singer nuances this claim somewhat, seeing a crucial difference here between the Qurʾan and the hadith: In theory, Allah is the source of all wealth and therefore the true benefactor of any charitable act; at the same time, belief in Allah and adherence to the teachings of the Qur’an are the true motivation for all beneficence. This spiritual calculus … holds giver and recipient as equally valued in any act of charitable giving. However, the hadith … tells a different story. In it, the ideal vision of equal and reciprocal roles for giver and receiver is replaced with a clear preference for the giver. Moreover, despite the stories about pious people who gave away all their wealth, different Muslim texts admonish people not to beggar themselves or their families through their beneficent giving. The obligation to support one’s family is fundamental –​the family is a legitimate target of sadaqa (though not of zakat) –​ and family members should not suffer a decline in their status or standard of living as a result of donations made to others. (Singer 2008, 118–​119)

In some respects, the New Testament is more ambivalent about families. Paul’s preference for celibacy (e.g., 1 Corinthians 7) has been noted by many Christian ethicists, as well as the so-​called ‘household rules’ of Colossians. Yet John’s account of the Passion depicts a close relationship between Jesus and his mother: ‘When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home’ (John 19, 26–​27) In contrast, Luke depicts Jesus saying more harshly to a would-​be follower:  ‘ “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’’’ (Luke 9.59b–​60) and, on another occasion, ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple’ (14.26). The tension here is perhaps caused by the eschatological urgency of the kingdom of God set alongside everyday life, yet it hardly prioritises the family. Ironically, Christianity is often portrayed as being a ‘family religion’. That would be true of many of its later forms, but it does not wholly depict its origins as expressed in the New Testament. Brent Waters, in his book The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought (2007), shows an awareness of just how difficult it is synchronically and diachronically to provide an empirical, let alone a normative,

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definition of ‘family’ that fits the New Testament let  alone subsequent Christian history. He argues finally that … as a witness to God’s providential ordering of creation, the family is a human association comprised of biological and social affinities which provide a place of mutual and timely belonging for its members. The family is characterized by a married couple with children, who are in turn related by blood, marriage, and lineage to an extended range of kin. (Waters 2007, 205)

Yet, paradoxically, he also believes that many Christian accounts of the family fail to do justice to adults who remain single. Protestants have often regarded those who are married as the norm and singles as an exception, whereas Catholics have often treated singles as important only in the context of religious orders. In contrast, Brent Waters argues that singles, alongside those who are married, are essential in the church because they embody ‘a judgement against the limitations of familial affinities, and the incomplete nature of its association as a sovereign sphere … without the witness of singleness the family becomes an end in itself ’ (Waters 2007, 237–​208). In one striking passage he argues: ‘The church … is not God’s family; it is the eschatological community bearing witness to God’s kingdom. The church does not reconstruct familial relationships, but anticipates their transformation’ (Waters 2007, 248). Writing seven years later he slightly modifies this position, seeing family meals, for example, as exemplars at best of shared virtues and eschatology as ‘focal eschatology’ in which ‘the work initiated by God in the Word made flesh is not yet complete’ (Waters 2014, 175). Given some degree of eschatological tension in family relationships, which he recognises so frankly in the Synoptic Gospels and in Paul, it might be supposed that Waters would avoid strong normative conclusions. When compared with Judaism and Islam, it might be argued that earliest Christianity was comparatively weak on the family and that over its worldwide history it has supported a variety of (largely patriarchal) patterns. However, Waters’s Augustinian commitment to an essential connection between procreation and marriage means that he is unsympathetic to cohabitation, let alone to gay marriage. He has lengthy debates on these issues with both James Nelson and Adrian Thatcher. He even claims at one point, rather unfairly, that the latter’s theological defence of betrothal [in New Studies in Christian Ethics] ‘merely overlays a thin veneer of theological rhetoric regarding a revocable intent to marry and remain married upon late liberalism’s eschatology of survival’ (Waters 2007, 278).

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Nevertheless, it is in some of the Synoptic Gospel parables that family and household life are given stronger priority. The so-​called parable of the prodigal son in Luke (15.11–​24) has been particularly influential in shaping moral perceptions among Christians. Confusingly, this is a parable in two halves. The second half dwells on the disgruntled older son who complains to his father about the lavish treatment of his prodigal brother. Viewed from this perspective, the parable can be seen as a story about two brothers, one repentant and the other jealous. However, the first half taken on its own suggests a father ‘filled with compassion’ for his son no matter what he has done –​a picture often understood as a mirror of God’s compassion towards humanity.

Mutual Obligations, Duties and Responsibilities There are obvious differences between these texts concerning what it is that sustains moral families. Some are more practical than others. The particular virtues that they prioritise differ from one text to another, even within the same faith tradition. At times in the past, it was claimed that the Ten Commandments could act as universal norms for any culture or faith tradition. Obviously, this is not the case. A Theravada Buddhist would be unlikely to identify with those commandments concerned with God. A  Muslim could be bemused by a command to do no work on the Sabbath. Even those Protestant Christians who do aim to keep the Sabbath do not usually agree with Jews about which actual day the Sabbath is or what exactly is involved in a ‘wrongful use’ of the name of God (often believing that it is a prohibition of swearing rather than uttering the holy Hebrew word for God). However, there is something that most of these texts have in common. In different ways, most are convinced that moral families involve important, cross-​ generational obligations, duties and responsibilities. Parents and children are considered to be morally related to each other. In the Jewish Ten Commandments, as already noted, children should honour their parents and parents are warned that their idolatry can hurt their children, grandchildren and even great-​grandchildren. In the Nikayas children should be grateful to their parents but they should also help them to become enlightened. In the Gita Arjuna is deeply distressed that fathers and sons, together with all their kinsmen, are just about to attempt to kill each other. In the New Testament parable it is the prodigal son who finally returns to the father and the father who is ‘filled with compassion’. In the

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Qurʾan God ordains ‘love and kindness’ between spouses who, in turn, must treat the next generation fairly. In Confucian ethics, the moral family acts as the very foundation of wider duties and responsibilities to the state. It is in the family that people are to be shaped by the two key virtues of ‘humaneness’ (ren) and behavioural propriety (li). These are sometimes compared in Confucian texts with the two aspects of music: there are the audible sounds of bells and drums (li) and there is the inner experience or emotion (ren) of the hearer. Both are essential in music. The sounds on their own are not music but they are essential for music. For the sounds to be music as such the inner experience or emotion of the hearer is also required. Similarly with the balance of virtues in the family. Behavioural propriety, customs and rituals (li) within the family are essential for Confucian ethics but they are not sufficient. There also needs to be a balancing virtue ren –​variously translated into English as ‘benevolence, love, humaneness, humanity, human-​heartedness, compassion and sympathy’ (Lai 2008, 22). Individuals shaped in families by these two virtues are then to apply them to the wider state: ‘The Confucian ideal society is the ideal family writ large: the sage king is the benevolent father of the nation-​family. The family environment is the first context where one learns to put oneself in the other’s place’ (Lai 2008, 23). Cross-​generational duties and responsibilities can also be found emphatically in some faith traditions that lack sacred texts. The pioneering work in religious studies by John Mbiti in his African Religions and Philosophies (1970) has inspired a new generation of scholars to look for patterns of religious ethics across different Black African oral cultures. Not all of John Mbiti’s generalisations are now accepted. For example, he tended to argue that religious ideas permeated the whole of African thought (much depends, once more, on how ‘religion’ is defined). However, there does seem to be widespread agreement that, compared with many other faith traditions today, African religious ethics has a very strong concept of community and an unusually wide commitment to cross-​generational duties and responsibilities. The Bantu word ubuntu is often used to depict this commitment (Gill 2013, 205–​206). The role of ancestors in much Black African culture is crucial. Cross-​ generational duties do not apply simply to the living; they also apply to the ancestors. Some have argued that there are actually three groups that tend to shape African religious ethics: the dead, the living and the unborn. Bénézet Bujo terms this a three-​dimensional understanding of common life: Participation in this common life is so essential that even the dead depend on it for safeguarding the growth of their being as a person. Becoming a person is

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thus a continuous and perpetual process, which does not end at death. Personal identity in the beyond depends on ties to the earthly community and to the one still to come; it increases to the extent that from the beyond one lives in interaction and in harmony with the members of the three-​dimensional community. If we look at it close up, this conception also explains the veneration for ancestors in Black Africa. Even if they can no longer suffer or die biologically, they continue to have certain human needs, such as hunger, thirst, love, the sense of justice, peace, etc. They can be worry-​free in all this only if the community of the living does not forget them or cause them any harm. In addition, in order to ensure happiness forever, continuity in the descendants has to be secured. For this reason, the not-​yet-​born occupy an important place in the community. The ancestors make it their business to watch over this continuity. (Bujo in Schweiker 2005, 432)

Through stories and rituals handed down orally from one generation to the next moral duties towards ancestors and, in turn, their moral duties to the living have remained an important aspect of African religious ethics.

The Collective Passions and Bonds of Faith Traditions To return to Durkheim, it does seem that a variety of faith traditions do generate particularly strong and binding social and familial passions, albeit with many variations synchronically and diachronically about the exact object of these moral passions. These traditions invest time and energy to do so effectively. In addition to creative and re-​creative collective effervescence, they have stories, myths, exemplary saints, rituals and codes to embed their norms and virtues in the lives of their members. The strong sense of moral community, moral order and moral obligation that Durkheim detected, especially among Jews and Catholics, can be seen in a wide variety of theistic and non-​theistic faith traditions. Chapter  7 focuses specifically on moral passion in a theistic faith tradition, but here it should be emphasised again that a sense of moral community, moral order and moral obligation is not exclusive to theists. It can be found just as readily among Buddhists. A Buddhist ascetic life that seeks enlightenment in losing self, and that has a sense of meaning structuring reality independent of self, does not depend on theistic belief. Yet, seemingly, it can be just as powerful, as the Dalai Lama has often demonstrated. It drives his conviction that ‘our individual well-​being is intimately connected both with that of all others and with the environment within which we live’ (Dalai Lama 1999, 4). This conviction, in turn, is strengthened both by the faith community in which he has lived

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his life and by decades of sustained meditation –​both quite distinct from much modern, secular individualism. In Chapter  1 I  noted a number of strong claims about theism being essential to an adequate understanding of ethics. We are now in a better position to evaluate them. Kieran Cronin, it was noted, raised a dilemma that he never fully resolved. On the one hand he claimed that ‘human rights in practice does not require a theological justification, but essentially secular-​humanistic reasons which are open to all men and women who have reached the age of moral discernment’ (Cronin 1992, 250). On the other hand he did offer a theistic justifying reason for human rights: ‘the notion that humanity’s dignity comes from being created in the image of God … gives a specifically religious justifying reason for acting morally’ (Cronin 1992, 233). More strongly he added that this ‘offer[s]‌a deeper, an ultimate grasp of the actions intended … because of the basic Christian insight that moral behaviour is a vital part of the most important relationship a human being has, the relationship with God’ (Cronin 1992, 241). Now presumably the implication of this strong claim is that only a theist (or, perhaps, only a Christian) can have a deep appreciation of human rights. But that implication would scarcely fit the heroic life of the Dalai Lama or of Mohandas Gandhi. Again, it was seen that Michael Northcott argued that environmentalism actually needs a doctrine of creation:  ‘the recovery of an ecological ethic in the modern world requires the recovery of a doctrine of creation, and the worship of a creator who is also redeemer of the creation … The non-​human world … does not simply consist of matter and sub-​human life forms which either have been constructed by chance, or by a divine being who brings them into being and then places them entirely at the service of humans. Creation is rather the gifted and blessed state of embodied being for which God intends goodness and blessing from the beginning of the cosmos, an intention which is reaffirmed in the coming of Christ and the gift of the Spirit’ (Northcott 1996, 222). Apart from the end of the last sentence, theists, whether Christian or not, could contribute to this ecological recovery, but clearly not non-​theists (despite their abundant presence within environmental movements). Third, it was noted that Ian Markham founded his theistic argument on the claim that ‘at the heart of the universe is goodness and love enabling all to be. This is what we mean by God … These moral truths are grounded in the character of God (Markham 1994, 166–​167). This led him

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to the bold claim that ‘the most appropriate foundation for tolerance is not an irrational secularism, but a rational theism’ and that ‘culture needs religion, because only religion has the resources for a rich, rational, and moral discourse in the public square’ (Markham 1994, 168). But note the switch from ‘theism’ to ‘religion’ here. Had Markham, Northcott and Cronin been more observant they would have noticed that non-​theistic Buddhists, say, could make equally strong claims  –​about rich resources, enlightenment, moral order and moral obligation –​that can contribute at depth to moral passion and evoke effective moral action. On their own premises, it is not obvious why Markham, Northcott and Cronin make their claims for the unique distinctiveness of theistic moral action –​let alone for the unique claims of Christian theistic moral action. My point here is not to commend non-​theistic Buddhism, as such, but to encourage Christians and secularists alike to remember that it does have a distinctive perspective that is morally relevant. Theism and non-​theistic Buddhism have this much in common:  they offer those who persevere in meditation on sacred texts, personal prayer or ritual and communal re-​creative effervescence another world (Enlightenment or God) that is a ‘glimpse of the sacred dimension’ (to use John Cottingham’s phrase) that makes better sense of their moral passions and felt obligations than does one-​mundane-​world secularity or ‘nothing-​buttery’. This observation of commonalities might even encourage Christian-​ and secular-​Humanists to move beyond some of their more fractious divisions. In their recent joint project (in which I took a part) the theologian Anthony Carroll and the philosopher and secular-​ Humanist Richard Norman similarly concluded: Dialogue between believers and atheists [such as that of Raymond Tallis and Rowan Williams mentioned earlier], if it is oriented towards mutual learning, should help both sides to move beyond their ideologies and idolatries. Such dialogue can enable both positions to recognise that other options are possible … It can help to temper tendencies towards fundamentalisms of both religious and secular varieties. It can increase awareness of the complexity and diversity of religious and non-​religious perspectives, and … correct a misleading picture of a simple polar opposition between religion and non-​religion. (Carroll and Norman 2017. 256).

I noted in Chapter 1 that most of the other contributors to New Studies in Christian Ethics refrained from making strong claims for theistic or specifically Christian distinctiveness. Douglas Hicks, in particular, made a virtue of this, arguing that ‘for Christian social ethics –​the goal is not to

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be distinctive as much as to be faithful and truthful’ and to provide moral vision, moral example and a call to moral action (Hicks 2000, 200). John Hare, once again, makes an important and, as it happens, highly personal point about this issue. The title of his paper is ‘Kant on the Rational Instability of Atheism’. He summarises his argument at the outset: Kant’s view, I am going to claim, is that there is incoherence in the attempt to be morally good without being a theist. But if this is right, it is even more important for us than it was for Kant to add that it is possible to be morally good and not a theist, because we are likely to know many more such people, people who are both leading a morally good life and are not theists. (Hare 2005, 202)

It is the second sentence that is of interest here rather than the first. Hare has, after all, long argued the first, namely that if you start from Kant’s premises then rational atheism is unstable. So in his seminal work The Moral Gap (1996) he argued at length that if you accept Kant’s strong sense of moral duty and his awareness of human moral frailty (both inherent within the Lutheran culture in which he lived) then there is a clear ‘gap’ in many forms of purely secular ethics. In God’s Command (2015) he also argues that Kant saw a crucial role here for divine assistance: The key to a solution to the problem of the moral gap is to see that, while ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, ‘ought’ does not imply ‘can by our own devices’. There are things we can do but only with assistance from outside. Kant thus appeals to God’s assistance in accomplishing what he calls ‘a revolution of the will’, by which the ranking of happiness over duty is reversed … This divine assistance is an effect of grace. (Hare 2015, 12–​13)

At the same time, in The Moral Gap Hare admitted that there are two obvious ways of reducing this gap –​reduce (or eliminate) either the sense of moral duty or the awareness of moral frailty. Human beings who have little or no moral frailties (or, at least, live in blissful unawareness of their moral frailties) or little or no moral obligations (as do determined egoists) would have little or no ‘moral gap’. Clearly, then, this part of Hare’s argument is addressed to fellow Kantians (as well as many fellow Christians) but is less likely to persuade secular non-​Kantians. However, the second sentence (in Hare 2005, 202 earlier) is more personal. His first example is the liberal theologian Gordon Kaufman, who argued: Our experience is of a unified and orderly world (Kant). In such a world acts of God (in the traditional sense) are not merely improbable or difficult to believe: they are literally inconceivable. It is not a question of whether talk about such acts is true or false; it is, in the literal sense, meaningless; one cannot make the concept hang together consistently. (Kaufman 1972, 134–​135)

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Hare responds to this emphatically: ‘But this is not Kant’s view. It is the view of those who extend Kant’s restrictions on knowledge to the domain of meaning, as Kant himself did not’ (Hare 2005, 203). This response to Kaufman is emphatic but not personal. What is personal becomes clear half-​way through his paper: Hare really has his own father in mind. He mentions the difficulties that the previous generation of philosophers had when relating religious claims to the logical positivism that was dominant at the time. Instructively he then gives this example: R. M. Hare used to say the Apostle’s Creed every Sunday in church a little ahead of the rest of the congregation, as though to express his distance from them. But his philosophical position … was that we cannot make meaningful assertions about the existence of God, and that faith in God is properly construed as what he called a ‘blik’ (roughly, an attitude toward living in the world) rather than as making an assertion … R. M. Hare [was] willing to use God’s promises to express the attitude towards living in the world that R. M. Hare adopted, while at the same time denying that he could strictly speaking assert that God exists … Kant uses the term ‘religion’ to include someone like R. M. Hare, who refuses to assent to the assertion, ‘God exists,’ even though Kant thinks this person’s belief that God exists is rationally presupposed by this person’s commitment to the moral life. (Hare 2005, 210–​211)

It must be for Kantians to debate whether or not the final sentence here does or does not represent Kant. Yet taken as a whole, John Hare’s stance at this point is, perhaps, more pastoral than analytical, which those who have a much stronger take on theistic distinctiveness may be in danger of ignoring. There is an important sub-​theme in parts of the New Testament that seem to recognise implicit faith within moral action. The eschatological Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25.31–​46) is often mentioned in this context. James (not Luther’s favourite book) is more often overlooked: What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (James 2.14–​17)

Works Cited Arberry, Arthur J. (trans.). 1955. The Koran Interpreted. London: Allen & Unwin (Oxford University Press from 1964). Bujo, Bénézet. 2005. ‘Differentiations in African Ethics’. In William Schweiker (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics. New York and Oxford: Blackwell.

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Carroll, Anthony and Norman, Richard (eds.). 2017. Religion and Atheism: Beyond the Divide. London and New York: Routledge. Cottingham, John. 2014. ‘Knowledge of God: Insider Information or Objective Evidence?’ In Andrew Moore (ed.), God, Mind and Knowledge. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Cronin, Kieran. 1992. Rights and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press. Dalai Lama. 1999. Ethics for the New Millennium. New York: Riverhead Books. Durkheim, Emile. 1897/​1952. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.   1915/​1976. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: Allen & Unwin. Gethin, Rupert (trans.). 2008. Nikayas:  Sayings of the Buddha. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Gill, Robin. 2002. Changing Worlds. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.  2013. Society Shaped by Theology: Sociological Theology, Vol. 3. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.  2015. Why Does God Allow Suffering? London: SPCK. Haleem, M. A. S. Abdel (trans.). 2005. The Qur’an. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hare, John E. 1996. The Moral Gap. Oxford: Oxford University Press.   2005. ‘Kant on the Rational Instability of Atheism’. In Andrew Dole and Andrew Chignell (eds.). God and the Ethics of Belief:  New Essays in Philosophy of Religion, 202–​218. Cambridge and New  York:  Cambridge Univer­sity Press.  2015. God’s Command. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hervieu-​Léger, Danièle. 2015. ‘Religion as a Grammar of Memory: Reflections on a Comparison between Britain and France’. In Abby Day and Mia Lövheim, (eds.). Modernities, Memory and Mutations:  Grace Davie and the Study of Religion, 13–​29. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Hicks, Douglas A. 2000. Inequality and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, W. J. (trans.). 1994. The Bhagavad Gita. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kaufman, Gordon. 1972. God the Problem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lai, Karyn L. 2008. An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Markham, Ian S. 1994. Plurality and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Mbiti, John. 1970. African Religions and Philosophies. London and New  York: SPCK & Doubleday. McLeish, Tom. 2014. Faith and Wisdom in Science. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Northcott, Michael S. 1996. The Environment and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Pickering, W. S.  F. 1984. Durkheim’s Sociology of Religion:  Themes and Theories. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rathey, Markus. 2016. Bach’s Major Vocal Works:  Music, Drama, Liturgy. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Schweiker, William, Johnson, Michael A. and Jung, Kevin (eds.). 2006. Humanity Before God:  Contemporary Faces of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Ethics. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Scruton, Roger. 2014. The Soul of the World. Princeton and Oxford:  Princeton University Press.  2016. The Ring of Truth:  The Wisdom of Wagner’s Ring of Nibelung. London: Allen Lane. Siddiqui, Mona. 2015. Hospitality and Islam:  Welcoming in God’s Name. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Singer, Amy. 2008. Charity in Islamic Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stark, Rodney and Bainbridge, William Sims. 1997. Religion, Deviance and Social Control. New York: Routledge. Waters, Brent. 2007. The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  2014. Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture: From Posthuman Back to Human. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.

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Ch apter 7

Moral Passion as Enemy-​Love

So far I have explored anger/​outrage and collective effervescence as forms of moral passion, negative and positive. I  have argued that neither is exclusive to theistic faiths even if both can be found in abundance within them. But now I do wish to focus on theistic and indeed Christocentric faith, specifically looking at Jesus’ teaching in the Synoptic Gospels, in the form of the golden rule, the love commands and the injunctions about the moral treatment of enemies. I argue that positive moral passion is present in the two dominical commands to love God and neighbour –​commands that go beyond a secular principle of universalisability or the various religious forms of the golden rule. Yet positive moral passion takes its most radical, demanding and innovative form in the command to ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’

The Principle of Universalisabilit y In Chapter 2 it was noted that both Jürgen Habermas and Noam Chomsky appealed to the principle of universalisability. For Habermas the universalisation of mutual religious tolerance acted as the pacemaker of cultural rights in Europe. For Chomsky, ‘One moral truism that should be uncontroversial is the principle of universality: we should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others –​in fact, more stringent ones. This should be uncontroversial for everyone’ (Chomsky 2004 in Honderich 2015, 277). Clearly Chomsky (and perhaps Habermas) is going considerably beyond a strict Kantian understanding of universalisability here. As Gordon Graham, Darlene Fozard Weaver and Colin Grant all point out, in their contributions to New Studies in Christian Ethics, Kant’s categorical imperative was attempting to articulate a principle of fairness, not heroic altruism. The ever-​passionate Chomsky, in contrast, insists that it is a ‘truism’ that we should be ‘more stringent’ with ourselves than with others. However commendable this is within Christian ethics (it is reminiscent of 182

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the position taken by Garth Hallett in Priorities and Christian Ethics), it is not at all clear why this is a ‘rational’ principle that is ‘uncontroversial’. As Grant points out, Kantian altruism is far from a heroic endorsement of self-​sacrifice for others. The impartiality between self and others that it identifies represents essentially a morality of justice. The fundamental decision is not one that enjoins concern for others; it is more a matter of not infringing on others. The restrictions that this morality would impose on inclinations of self-​interest are primarily ones of non-​ interference. (Grant 2001, 116)

Both Graham and Weaver argue (as many others have done) that Kant’s categorical imperative is also too abstract on its own to generate genuine moral action. For Graham, ‘the most Kant succeeds in doing is to provide us with formal principles of practical rationality. But without material principles, we are no further forward’ (Graham 2001, 79). For Weaver, in addition, Kant’s ‘moral project is one of making oneself worthy of happiness. While one can only accomplish this through respect for persons, the fact is that the person’s responsibility is not to promote the good of others but the goodness of one’s will’ (Weaver 2002, 15). Whether or not Chomsky sees himself as a Kantian is unclear. He certainly sees himself as a rationalist and, as noted earlier, he is averse to religious faith (even though he admires some religious activists). In recent years Habermas has become less opposed to faith traditions and, as also noted earlier, actually writes approvingly of ‘the highly developed conceptual resources of one or the other of the great world religions’ (Habermas 2003 in Honderich 2015, 323). For a theologian what becomes evident is that the principle of universalisability, whether in a strictly Kantian form or not, is not a principle held solely and exclusively on rational grounds. It needs quite a large amount of faith to support it as well. In addition, serious commitment to it –​rather than simply academic assent to it –​relies on moral passion.

The Golden Rule Perhaps it is for these reasons that there has been a renewed interest in the so-​called ‘golden rule’ among religious ethicists and the occasional philosopher. Writing twenty years ago Jeff Wattles, in his innovative book, The Golden Rule (1996), lamented: Many scholars today regard the rule as an acceptable principle for popular use but as embarrassing if taken with philosophic seriousness. Most professional ethicists

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rely instead on other principles, since the rule seems vulnerable to counterexamples, such as the current favourite: ‘What if a sadomasochist goes forth to treat others as he wants to be treated?’ (Wattles 1996, 6)

Two decades later Harry Gensler’s Ethics and the Golden Rule (2013) is still bemoaning the fact that ‘courses in moral philosophy or moral theology typically ignore the golden rule or mention it only briefly’ (Gensler 2013, 10). He has been able to find only two philosophy dissertations on the golden rule. Nonetheless, both Wattles and Gensler have themselves done much to renew interest in the rule –​a rule that was popular with at least one philosopher in the previous generation, namely R. M. Hare. The latter may indeed have preferred it to the two dominical commands because in Matthew and Luke’s versions it avoids any explicit mention of God (which, as just seen, gave him problems). Within the discipline of theology it is the work of Hans Küng that has been particularly influential in recent years in popularising the golden rule. In summary form he has set out how the golden rule can be found in all of the following: Confucius: ‘What you yourself do not want, do not do to another person.’ Rabbi Hillel: ‘Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.’ Jesus: ‘Whatever you want people to do to you, do also to them.’ Isl am: ‘None of you is a believer as long as he does not wish his brother what he wishes himself.’ Jainism:  ‘Human beings should be indifferent to worldly things and treat all creatures in the world as they would want to be treated themselves.’ Buddhism: ‘A state which is not pleasant or enjoyable for me will also not be so for him; and how can I impose on another a state which is not pleasant or enjoyable for me?’ Hinduism: ‘One should not behave towards others in a way which is unpleasant for oneself: that is the essence of morality.’ (Küng 1997, 98–​99)

Küng developed this line in his book Global Responsibility (1991) and then in the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1993. He has been particularly keen to make a distinction between ‘real politics’ and ‘ideal politics’, being deeply unimpressed with the real politics of people like Henry Kissinger, Richelieu and Bismarck. In contrast, ethics for Küng are essential for responsible politics  –​the latter is not simply about the self-​interests of states, let alone about some brute will-​to-​power. Here he sees an important role for faith traditions (stripped of any religious imperialism) especially on global issues such as AIDS. Because these issues are global and not simply national, he argues, dialogue across religious and

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secular traditions is essential. He believes that it is possible to build up a global ethic, based on shared rights and responsibilities starting with the golden rule, which complements but does not eliminate the need for the particularities that specific faith traditions offer. Even if Küng is correct about all of this, there may still be variations between and within faith traditions about how central the golden rule really is. Among Christian ethicists there is also a deep division between those ecumenists, such as Küng, who argue that these faith traditions share a common approach, whether they express the golden rule in positive or negative terms (for them this is an insignificant difference), and apologists, such as the Jesuit John Topel, who claim that Jesus’ formulation of the golden rule is unique. I am not sure that either side in this debate is wholly accurate. Topel summarises his argument as follows: 1. The Golden Rule is not a maxim of retribution or even of reciprocity; rather it is a moral maxim of general altruism, expressed by mutuality between a doer and others. 2. Logical analysis reveals the greater extension and benevolence evoked by the positive formulation of the Golden Rule in contrast with the negative formulation of the Silver Rule. 3. When (1)  and (2)  are attended to, it becomes clear that Jesus’ formulation of the Golden Rule has no precedents in the thought world of his time. It is unique. 4. This uniqueness finds its ground in the literary context in which Jesus’ rule is located in the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:27–​36): the command to love one’s enemies (6:27–​30), the rejection of the Greek ethic of reciprocity (6:32–​ 34), and the disciples’ imitatio Dei (6:35c-​36). 5. In this article I assume that this uniqueness finds its theological root

in Jesus’ filial relation to his Father, which he mediates to his disciples, and, through them, to the whole world that is created a thirst for God’s infinite originating and consummating love (Topel 1998, 485).

Topel clearly does think that positive and negative versions of the golden rule are ethically distinct –​reserving the term ‘golden rule’ for a positive version and calling a negative version a ‘silver rule’. This probably overstates his case because much depends on the particular wording of each version, whether positive or negative. Yet it is not difficult to see that there can indeed be a significant difference here, just as there can be between positive and negative versions of human rights. Negative human rights are usually regarded as more restricted and thus more enforceable than positive human rights. Positive human rights,

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conversely, are more aspirational and less enforceable than negative human rights. Anyone who has served for any length on a public ethics committee recently will be aware that this is so. For example, in terms of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, everyone has a right to respect for their private and family life. A negative implication of this is that it would illegal to sterilise capicitous people against their will or to prohibit people from marrying if they are eligible to do so. But many positive implications are more difficult to implement. For example, it probably does not mean that the state must pay for any amount of fertility treatment, however expensive and however experimental. And no state can guarantee that all of its citizens, even the persistently unsociable, will have any family life at all. In terms of actually applying the golden rule, a negative version might result, for example, in my agreeing that other people should not be left in abject poverty (since I would not want this for myself ). A positive version of the golden rule might entail an aspiration that everyone should receive exactly the same amount of money, or even (if Chomsky is to be taken literally) that everyone else should have more money than I. In explaining his distinction between golden and silver versions of the rule Topel makes a helpful comparison using the principles of ‘non-​ maleficence’ and ‘beneficence’ widely deployed in medical ethics. The principle of non-​maleficence is a basic starting point in medical ethics, insisting that doctors should do no harm (unless there is a greater benefit) to the patient. In contrast, the principle of beneficence requires positive, beneficial care and action from doctors well beyond simply doing patients no harm. I think that Topel is basically right about this difference and that biblical commentators, such as C. F. Evans (whom he notes), are mistaken when they elide positive and negative versions of the rule –​in Evans’s case when suggesting of Luke 6.31 that ‘This has many parallels inside and outside Judaism, and in both a positive and negative form, between which there is no essential difference’ (Evans 1990, 335). What of Topel’s claim that ‘Jesus’ formulation of the Golden Rule has no precedents in the thought world of his time. It is unique’? He considers a number of versions of the rule in Confucian and Taoist texts, in Graeco-​ Roman texts and in Jewish literature, concluding that they are basically negative and retributive in nature and that ‘Jesus’ positive formulation of the general moral maxim of altruistic mutuality is then unique in ancient literature. In fact, it is so unique that even the Christian tradition seems not to have been able to maintain it in its purity and almost always cites the Silver Rule’ (Topel 1998, 485).

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Rather surprisingly, Topel makes no mention of W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison’s seminal commentary on Matthew when discussing Matthew 7.12. They took a very different stance: Was Jesus’ formulation of the golden rule in any sense creative? In the judgement of many, while first-​century Palestinian Judaism was acquainted with a negative version which prudently warned not to harm one’s neighbour, Jesus himself advanced a positive version which required an absolute demonstration of love … There is much doubt about this. (Davies and Allison 1988, 687)

They pointed out that Ecclesiasticus 31.15 [not mentioned by Topel] is pre-​the-​Christian-​era and positive and ‘comes very close to Jesus’ golden rule’: namely, ‘Judge your neighbours feelings by your own, and in every matter be thoughtful.’ In addition they argued that in early Christian literature both positive and negative versions of the golden rule were deployed with little discussion of their difference (like Evans they too were sceptical of their difference). As a result they concluded that [T]‌ he claim to find in the synoptic logion profound originality seems ill-​ conceived and probably stems more from Christian apologetic than from objective examination of the texts … Matthew himself might have known perfectly well that the golden rule was unoriginal to Jesus. That our evangelist could still place it where he does at the culmination of 5.17–​7.12 shows us his belief –​not always shared by later Christians –​that the truth of his Lord’s teaching did not necessarily hinge upon its novelty. (Davies and Allison 1988, 688)

It seems wise to avoid strident claims either about the uniqueness of the Synoptic Gospel’s version of the golden rule or, conversely, about the unanimity of different versions of the golden rule across faith traditions. For the purposes of exploring moral passion, neither of these claims is essential. Indeed, if it were the case that Jesus’ teaching in the Synoptic Gospels was wholly original at every point then it is difficult see how the people he addressed would have understood him. And moral discussions across different faith traditions today, as well as with secular philosophers, might become fairly pointless for Christian ethicists. In more modest terms, it can be concluded that across different faith traditions (including Christianity) there does seem to be a recognition that ‘we should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others’ (to use Chomsky’s words) –​a precept that is embedded in a surprisingly large number of ancient texts, including a very positive affirmation in Matthew and Luke (and in Jainism if Küng is correct). It is these religious texts that have carried this precept across thousands of years and not the philosophical principle of universalisability.

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The Two Dominical C ommands A better source for Christian uniqueness might be the two dominical commands, to love God and to love neighbour, reported in all three Synoptic Gospels and that go considerably beyond a purely prudential understanding of the golden rule. Mark, the earliest, has them as follows: One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love (agapëseis) your neighbour (plësion) as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ (Mark 12.28–​31)

Christian apologists often claim that Jesus uniquely brought together the Shema or creed, known to all pious Jews and recited by them morning and evening every day, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God …” (Deuteronomy 6.5) and an obscure text from Leviticus 19.18 (which Mark derives word-​ for-​word from the Greek Septuagint) that restricted neighbour-​love to kin (Leviticus 19.17) and, by extension, to resident aliens on the basis that Israelites had been aliens themselves in the land of Egypt (Leviticus 19.34). Not only did Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels bring these two Old Testament texts together, but he also uniquely expanded neighbour-​love well beyond kin and resident aliens to all people and used a strong verb for ‘love’ for both love of God and love of neighbour (in Greek agapaö rather than phileö). Unfortunately nothing much about these apologetic claims  –​apart from the claim that Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels expanded neighbour-​ love –​stands up to rigorous exegesis. First, unlike Mark, Luke ascribes the combination not to Jesus but to the lawyer (Luke 10.27). C. F. Evans notes bluntly: ‘Luke shows that he thought that [the combination] had been already made by putting it in the mouth of the lawyer, and Jesus approves (the suggestion of T. W. Manson … that the lawyer simply repeats what he had heard from Jesus on a previous occasion is forced)’ (Evans 1990, 465). It is difficult see why Luke would otherwise have made such a crucial change to Mark on this of all texts. Second, W.  D. Davies and D.  C. Allison argue that there are earlier Jewish examples of this combination in the Pseudepigrapha, notably ‘Love (agapësate) the Lord and the neighbour (plësion)’ in the Testament of Issachar 5.2, and in Philo (Decalogue 108–110), who terms those who obey the commands in the first table of the Decalogue ‘godlovers’ (philotheoi)

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and those who obey the commands in the second table ‘peoplelovers’ (philanthröpoi) (Davies and Allison 1997, 237–​238). Third, although most commentators do seem to agree that Leviticus 19.18 did restrict neighbour-​love to kin and resident aliens, it is by no means clear that all subsequent rabbinic interpretation similarly restricted this text. Here Evans notes as follows: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ’; Rabbi Aqiba said ‘This is the greatest general principle in the law’. Ben Azzai said, ‘ “This is the book of the generations of man” (Genesis 5.1) is a greater principle than that’ (i.e. every man must be loved as a fellow creature). Also Hillel’s famous reply to a proselyte who wished to be taught the whole law while standing on one leg, ‘What thou hatest for thyself do not to thy neighbour; this is the whole law, the rest is commentary; go learn.’ (Evans. 1990, 469)

Finally, even the difference between agapaö and phileö is disputed by W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison: Despite the distinctive place given to agapaö and agapë in the New Testament and the new associations they gain there, it would be unwise to place too much weight on the difference between agapaö and phileö. The former can mean familial, reciprocal love (Matthew 5.46; Colossians 3.19), the latter divine, unreciprocated love (John 16.27; Revelation 3.19). (Davies and Allison 1988, 551)

Once again, some caution is needed before making strident claims about Christian distinctiveness in the teaching of Jesus within the Synoptic Gospels. Yet having accepted that, it is important to notice that Leviticus 19.18 is quoted three times in Matthew (5.43, 19.19, and 22.39) and, beyond the Synoptic Gospels, in Romans 13.9, Galatians 5.14, and James 2.8  –​ typically using the same Greek words from the Septuagint. There can be little doubt that, even if it was not unique to Jesus, this was an important and passionate moral feature of early Christianity.

Love Your Enemies There is, however, one deeply passionate Synoptic text about neighbour-​ love or, more accurately, about enemy-​love, that, for once, makes even Davies and Allison strident: ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour (plësion) and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love (agapate) your enemies (echthrous) and pray for those who persecute you.’ (Matthew 5.43–​44)

Davies and Allison (like Evans) note that ‘hate your enemy’ is not a command found anywhere in the Old Testament, although there are plenty of

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spiteful comments about enemies, especially in the Psalms, and, as mentioned earlier, killings of enemies galore in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. More importantly, in the first sentence here plësion, taken from Leviticus 19.18, does seem to be ‘kin’ in Leviticus and clearly not ‘everybody’. But in the second sentence enemies (echthrous) are pluralised and become people to pray for and to love. The following response (at least as it begins rather than as it ends) is about as strident as Davies and Allison ever get: Despite all the parallels just listed [about the well-​attested use of the verb agapaö in pre-​Christian secular Greek], the succinct, arresting imperative, ‘Love your enemies’, is undoubtedly the invention of Jesus’ own mind, and it stands out as fresh and unforgettable. ‘Love your enemies’ is not advice for the Stoic who must remain even tempered in the face of a fickle world. Nor is it prudent wisdom, to the effect that, just as it takes water, not fire, to put out a fire, so it takes love, not hate, to overcome hate … Jesus’s words … do not simply constitute a call to give up vengeance, for they go far beyond that to require positive action. In short, ‘Love your enemies’ seems to contain what may have been a novel demand: do good to the enemy, despite the circumstances and the results. (Davies and Allison 1988, 552)

Only the words ‘seems’ and ‘may’ in that final sentence check their unexpected stridency. Those two words apart, at last we have reached a positive form of moral passion to match the raw negative form of moral outrage explored in Chapter 5. In both Matthew and Luke they sit side by side. Enemy-​love and the denunciation of hypocrisy in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ sermon and twice in Luke’s much shorter account are just verses apart (Matthew 5.44 for enemy-​love and 6.5 for hypocrisy; Luke 6.27 and 35 for enemy-​ love and 6.42 for hypocrisy). Both Matthew and Luke depict enemy-​love and one of its opposites, hypocrisy, as involving actions as well as words, good or bad. Arguably, Luke is even more emphatic about passionate action based enemy-​love than Matthew: Love your enemies, do good (kalös poieite) to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good (agathopoiete), and lend, expecting nothing in return. (Luke 6.27–​35)

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Like Matthew, Luke has ‘love’ and ‘pray’ for enemies, but he also has ‘do good to’ (or, using the adverb kalös, ‘do well to’), ‘bless’ and ‘lend, expecting nothing in return’ from your enemies. Even the golden rule –​‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’ –​is set in this context of radical, passionate, positive action towards enemies. Significantly, although Luke does indeed ascribe the combination of the Shema with Leviticus 19.18 to the lawyer rather than to Jesus, the parable that Jesus then uses only in Luke, seemingly to illustrate neighbour-​love, can be understood more radically as an illustration of enemy-​love. The parable is, of course, the so-​called Parable of the Good Samaritan, perhaps the best known of all of the gospel parables (thanks, in Britain at least, to The Samaritans anonymous phone-​in charity for the despairing). Much depends on the significance that is given to the three people who reacted so differently to the victim of a violent robbery, namely the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan. Some commentators have argued that it is the ritual difference between the Samaritan and the other two that is important here. The two Jews, unlike the Samaritan, were worried about ritual pollution from a potential corpse. Christopher Evans argues that this interpretation fails because the victim is described at the outset as only ‘half dead’ (hëmithanë: Luke 10.30). Instead he suggests: ‘Samaritan is probably chosen as the traditional enemy, one who as a schismatic is excluded from the covenant fellowship of neighbours (i.e. Israelites), but who, in contrast to the embodiments and representatives of the covenant people, carries out the requirements of the covenant’ (Evans 1990, 469). So this becomes a story about a Samaritan who (in contrast to the, perhaps ‘hypocritical’, priest and Levite) shows sustained acts of compassionate love towards his traditional enemy: But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity [compassion]. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” (Luke 10.33–​35)

On this understanding, although the so-​called dominical commands are not ascribed directly to Jesus in Luke (and even when they are in Mark and Matthew their combination of Old Testament texts may not have been unique to Jesus), Jesus’ parable about enemy-​love interprets them radically and innovatively. At its most passionate ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself ’ becomes, in effect, ‘You shall love your enemy as yourself.’ If the enemy then turns out to be your physical neighbour the parable addresses

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one of the most deadly forms of human-​to-​human violence, namely civil wars. Some of the degradations of the Spanish Civil War have already been outlined in Chapter 5. In addition there were countless civilian deaths in their own countries caused by Mao Zedong, Stalin and Pol Pot. The million or more people hacked to death by their own people in Rwanda are more recent and still vivid in the public conscience. Civil war is a human abomination. The proverbial Good Samaritan acts wholly otherwise. A minimalist interpretation of the golden rule can be rationally justified (sort of ) by prudence. It will always be ‘sort of ’ because determined and manipulative egoists typically want more for themselves than they are prudentially prepared to give to others. The dominical commands do require genuinely altruistic giving to others but much depends upon how the ‘others’ are defined. Enemy-​love requires deeply serious moral passion to act on behalf of those who are determined to persecute you or who are actually engaged in viciously persecuting you. Was it this that Saul (soon to become Paul) spotted so dramatically when he was actively persecuting the early Christians? If so, on perhaps a much longer path to conversion than he admitted, he may well have had a sudden moment of perception in his victims of Jesus betrayed, tried, condemned, taunted and crucified but without personal rancour or resistance. On this conjecture, perhaps a violent religious fanatic suddenly found it difficult to continue persecuting those who responded just with enemy-​love. It has long been argued by some commentators that the ethical injunctions in Matthew’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’ represent an ‘interim ethic’ (a position popularised by Albert Schweitzer) for the early Christians convinced that the apocalypse, the parousia, was imminent. Some ethicists have then concluded from this that –​since the apocalypse did not occur even during the early centuries when the New Testament books were still being written and/​or adopted as being canonical  –​injunctions such as enemy-​love no longer apply today or that they are too hyperbolic to be of any practical moral significance (clearly Matthew 5.29–​30 does contain hyperbole). A very different way of approaching these injunctions is to see them as exemplifying the verse located near the centre of the sermon, namely Matthew 5.48:  ‘Be perfect (teleioi), therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ Davies and Allison see this verse as a point of intersection in the sermon, with the verses before taking up teaching from Deuteronomy and those after taking up teaching from Leviticus. Be that as it may, the crucial word here is teleioi, which, as they demonstrate, can have a variety of meanings: for things that are complete; for human maturity; for initiation

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into mysteries; for perfection in kind; for a perfect athlete; for unblemished and blameless (in the Septuagint); and for moral perfection. Here, though, it explicitly takes its meaning from God’s perfection. Jesus (already identified in Matthew’s previous chapter as ‘Son of God’ by the devil in the wilderness) enjoins his hearers (who know that they are not perfect) to be perfect as God is perfect. Or to express this anachronistically: Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4.14–​16)

Seen in this way, the Sermon on the Mount is not just an interim ethic but also a Christocentric ethic, holding up a God-​like level of moral perfection that is already manifest in Jesus but evident only very remotely and occasionally in his followers. Perhaps this is how the ‘impossible’ demands in the passage immediately preceding those about enemy-​love should be understood: You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I  say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5.38–​42)

This God-​like behaviour is exemplified in Jesus but only glimpsed very remotely and occasionally in us. On this basis, enemy-​love, coming so naturally to Jesus, can be glimpsed on rare occasions in the flickering moral maturity of those embedded in his teaching. The heroic and deeply tested figures of Pope John Paul II and Ann Odre, Gordon Wilson following Betty Williams and Mairéad Corrigan and President Nelson Mandela in modern times, suggest that this is so. Each attracted considerable media attention, not just for their significant roles in shaping history, but also for their extraordinary moral courage and passionate commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation despite their own deep suffering. John Paul’s suffering was caused by a very determined assassination attempt on him that also deflected seriously onto Ann Odre; Gordon Wilson’s by an IRA bomb that buried him and killed his daughter and Mairéad Corrigan’s from her sister’s three children being killed in an incident involving the Provisional IRA; and Nelson Mandela’s by

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twenty-​seven years of imprisonment for actively opposing apartheid. Yet each showed the world that enemy-​love is still possible towards the perpetrators of deliberately inflicted suffering. Before exploring their enemy-​love in a little more detail, a word of warning is necessary. Timothy Jackson has recently completed his trilogy on Christian agapë with his book Political Agape:  Christian Love and Liberal Democracy (2015). Here he gives lengthy case studies of both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, seeing ‘the humanity and tragic wisdom of Lincoln and King as prophetic instruments of God.’ However, he immediately warns: ‘Let it be stated emphatically at the outset: no merely historical figure or merely temporal ideology can or should command a Christian’s unconditional commitment. No human personality, party, cause or institution is salvific’ (Jackson 2015, 5). A similar caveat applies here.

Pope John Paul II and Ann Odre This is an extract from Henry Tanner’s breaking report in the New York Times on 14 May 1981, the day after Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded by an attempted assassin in front of a large audience in St Peter’s Square, Rome: The Pontiff, who was struck by two pistol bullets and wounded in the abdomen, right arm and left hand, underwent 5 hours and 25 minutes of surgery in which parts of his intestine were removed … The attack occurred as the Pope, dressed in white, was shaking hands and lifting small children in his arms while being driven around the square. Suddenly, as he reached a point just outside the Vatican’s bronze gate, there was a burst of gunfire. One hand rising to his face and blood staining his garments, the Pope faltered and fell into the arms of his Polish secretary, the Rev. Stanislaw Dziwisz, and his personal servant, Angelo Gugel, who were in the car with him. The 60-​year-​old Pope, the spiritual leader of nearly 600  million Roman Catholics around the world, was rushed by ambulance to Gemelli Hospital, two miles north of the Vatican, for surgery … The gunman fired four times in the attack, the police reported, and two tourists, an American and a Jamaican, were wounded by two of the bullets. Ann Odre, 60, of Buffalo, was struck in the chest; she underwent surgery for removal of the bullet and was listed in critical condition. Rose Hill, 21, of Jamaica, was slightly wounded in an arm. The gunman, who the police said was armed with a 9-​millimeter Browning automatic, was set upon in the square by bystanders, who knocked the pistol out of his hand. He was then arrested, taken away by police car and later identified as Mehmet Ali Agca, 23. Despite reports that another man had been seen

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fleeing from the square, the police said they were convinced that the gunman had acted alone. The police quoted Mr. Agca as having told them, ‘‘My life is not important.’’ He was said to have arrived in Italy last Saturday, landing at the Milan airport, and to have come to Rome on Monday. The police said that he had in his pocket several notes in handwritten Turkish, one of them saying, ‘‘I am killing the Pope as a protest against the imperialism of the Soviet Union and the United States and against the genocide that is being carried out in El Salvador and Afghanistan.’’ The Turkish news agency Anatolia reported that Mr. Agca had been convicted of murdering Abdi Ipekci, the editor of the Turkish newspaper Milliyet, in February 1979 but escaped from prison later that year. Anatolia said he wrote a letter to the newspaper on Nov. 26, 1979, saying that he had fled from prison with the intention of killing the Pope, who was just then due in Ankara and Istanbul. That threat caused a tightening of security for the Pope’s Turkish visit. (Tanner 1981, 1)

During the operation he received some six pints of blood and had a temporary colostomy. For the rest of his life, a once athletic pope looked increasingly frail. This was clearly a very determined and professional act of attempted assassination using a high-​powered Browning automatic that may well have succeeded had one of the bullets not narrowly missed his central organs. Ann Odre, herself a committed Catholic, lived for another sixteen years slowly recovering from her own very serious wound and met the pope several times forming a mutual bond. She is an important, but often forgotten, part of this story. She continued to support the pope even when his actions for Agca –​a man who had deeply wounded her as well –​ were criticised by other people. There has been ongoing speculations about Agca’s motives (not helped by his own bewilderingly varied accounts) and about whether or not an organisation or state sponsored his actions and, if a state, which one:  Bulgaria, East Germany, Russia or, more fancifully, the United States. These speculations are of no relevance here. What is relevant is the extraordinary (and confidential) visit of the pope as a priest to Agca’s prison cell in 1983, his meeting Agca’s mother in 1987, his pastoral concern for Ann Odre, his asking people to ‘pray for my brother … whom I have sincerely forgiven’ and his subsequent (and eventually successful) efforts to gain Agca an early reprieve. One might expect political leaders who had experienced a serious assassination attempt to show public courage (as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan undoubtedly did) allied to an effort to increase their personal security greatly when appearing in

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public. However, by his confidential visits, prayers and efforts to gain a reprieve, Pope John Paul II demonstrated something very different to the world. This ‘something different’ was, of course, grounded in his theology of forgiveness. This theology is contained in his Message for World Day of Peace on New Year’s Day 2002. Much of this Message was about the increasing threat of global terrorism following 9/​11. His careful analysis there was much as expected and widely welcomed for its appeal to other religious leaders across faith traditions to distance themselves from religiously inspired violence. It was, however, the section on forgiveness that was especially poignant given his own experience two decades earlier: Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil. The measure of such a decision is the love of God who draws us to himself in spite of our sin. It has its perfect exemplar in the forgiveness of Christ, who on the Cross prayed: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) Forgiveness therefore has a divine source and criterion. This does not mean that its significance cannot also be grasped in the light of human reasoning; and this, in the first place, on the basis of what people experience when they do wrong. They experience their human weakness, and they want others to deal leniently with them. Why not therefore do towards others what we want them to do towards us? All human beings cherish the hope of being able to start all over again, and not remain forever shut up in their own mistakes and guilt. They all want to raise their eyes to the future and to discover new possibilities of trust and commitment. Forgiveness, therefore, as a fully human act, is above all a personal initiative. But individuals are essentially social beings, situated within a pattern of relationships through which they express themselves in ways both good and bad. Consequently, society too is absolutely in need of forgiveness. Families, groups, societies, states and the international community itself need forgiveness in order to renew ties that have been sundered, go beyond sterile situations of mutual condemnation and overcome the temptation to discriminate against others without appeal. The ability to forgive lies at the very basis of the idea of a future society marked by justice and solidarity. By contrast, the failure to forgive, especially when it serves to prolong conflict, is extremely costly in terms of human development. Resources are used for weapons rather than for development, peace and justice. What sufferings are inflicted on humanity because of the failure to reconcile! What delays in progress because of the failure to forgive! Peace is essential for development, but true peace is made possible only through forgiveness. (John Paul II 2002)

These paragraphs have clearly been shaped by the long Catholic tradition of natural law (especially the second and fourth paragraphs), blended

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with a more ecumenical use of Scripture (much in evidence nine years earlier in Veritatis Splendor), despite using the verse Luke 23.34 that lacks some very major textual support including, ironically, Codex Vaticanus. His approach to Christian ethics is close to the approach outlined earlier in Chapter 4. The important principle within Catholic ethics of ‘solidarity’ is used explicitly in the third paragraph and perhaps the equally important principle of the ‘common good’ is also implicit here. The final paragraph is more consequential albeit blended with natural law. Taken as a whole it expresses his conviction (clearly illustrated by his own earlier example) that forgiveness is firstly divine, then personal based on the golden rule and then social and political.

Gordon Wilson following Bet t y Williams and Mairéad Corrigan The Troubles in Northern Ireland witnessed several remarkable occasions when people who were personally affected by tragedy responded, not with rancour and hatred, but instead with tireless work for peace and reconciliation. Betty Williams and Mairéad Corrigan received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for doing just that. Three of Mairéad Corrigan’s sister’s children were killed when a car driven by a Provisional IRA fugitive, Danny Lennon, went out of control after Lennon was shot by the police. Betty Williams was a passer-​by when this appalling event occurred in Andersonstown, Belfast. The two women formed a partnership heading several peace marches in Belfast that caught the attention of the wider world, even though these marches did not lead directly to any diminution of the violence. Both women have continued actively in peace movements around the world and Mairéad Corrigan, now MacGuire, has even completed a degree with that remarkable organisation, the Irish School of Ecumenics. Gordon Wilson was never awarded a Nobel Peace Prize but surely he should have been. Not only did he show a remarkable response to personal tragedy but his work for peace and reconciliation, building on the work of Betty Williams, Mairéad Corrigan and others eleven years earlier, may have been instrumental in finally enabling an effective cease-​fire. Williams and Corrigan were raised as Catholics and Wilson was a life-​ long Methodist. He was a draper at Enniskillen, Country Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. On the 8th of November 1987, aged fifty, he and his daughter Marie, a nurse aged twenty, took part in a Remembrance Day service around the local war memorial in Enniskillen. Unbeknown to

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them, the IRA had planted a massive bomb there. When it was detonated Gordon and Marie were both buried in the rubble. They were pulled out from the rubble but Marie died soon afterwards. People around the world were deeply shocked by this act of terror targeting innocent people who were taking part in a religious ceremony. But Enniskillen is now better remembered for the truly astonishing words that Gordon Wilson spoke at the time in an interview with the BBC. This is what he said about his daughter as they lay buried in the rubble: She held my hand tightly, and gripped me as hard as she could. She said, ‘Daddy, I love you very much.’ Those were her exact words to me, and those were the last words I ever heard her say … But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life. She was a great wee lassie. She loved her profession. She was a pet. She’s dead. She’s in heaven and we shall meet again. I will pray for these men tonight and every night.

The Independent’s Irish correspondent David McKittrick put this tragic event and Gordon Wilson’s deeply poignant words into a wider political context when he wrote in this extract from his obituary of Gordon Wilson eighteen years later: After the 1987 Poppy Day explosion in Enniskillen two images flashed around the world. The first was the fact that an IRA bombing had killed 11 Protestant civilians as they gathered on Remembrance Day; the second was Gordon Wilson’s almost superhuman display of Christian charity and forgiveness. Wilson and his daughter Marie, who was a nurse aged 20, were buried in rubble by the explosion. He survived and she did not. His broadcast account of lying in the debris holding her hand was one of the most poignant and affecting moments of the quarter-​century of Irish troubles … The savagery of the IRA bombers, the tragedy and futility of Marie Wilson’s death, and Gordon Wilson’s personal victory over bitterness mean that in Ireland the Enniskillen attack will never be forgotten. In the aftermath he received a tribute from the Queen and was voted Man of the Year by the BBC’s Today programme, ahead of Terry Waite and Mikhail Gorbachev. He said then with characteristic modesty: “I’m not worthy of it. The others are very important people. I’m not in their class. I’m just an ordinary guy”… He attracted Unionist criticism in 1993 when he accepted an Irish government invitation to become a member of the Irish Senate, where he made a number of heartfelt contributions. Some months later more controversy followed when he asked to meet the IRA, in the hope that a personal appeal might reach them following the Warrington bombing in which two young children died. But he reported sadly: “They listened, but they made no change in their position. Perhaps it was naive of me to imagine that because it was me they would. I went in innocence to search for what my heart told me might be a way forward. I got nothing.” By August 1994, however, the IRA campaign had ceased, and two months later Gordon Wilson sat alongside Sinn Fein representatives in the forum for

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peace and reconciliation in Dublin … In fact, Enniskillen can now with hindsight be described as one of the turning-​points of the troubles. The deaths of Marie Wilson and 10 other people had crucial repercussions for republicans, for they put an end to Sinn Fein hopes of expansion, especially into the Irish Republic. An IRA spokesman admitted that the outer reaches of republican support were “just totally devastated.” (McKittrick 1995)

McKittrick naturally focused on the political significance of Gordon Wilson while noting his ‘almost superhuman display of Christian charity and forgiveness,’ his ‘personal victory over bitterness’ and his ‘characteristic modesty’. In his overtly apologetic book Grace Givers:  Amazing Stories of Grace in Action (2006) the evangelical David Jeremiah places Gordon Wilson’s story as the first of the ‘amazing stories’. He writes: In the ensuing months, many people asked Gordon … how he could forgive such a murderous act of hatred. “I was hurt,” Gordon said. “I had just lost my daughter, but I wasn’t angry. Marie’s last words to me –​words of love –​had put me in a plane of love. I received God’s grace, through the strength of His love for me, to forgive”. For years after the tragedy that took his daughter’s life and almost his own, Gordon Wilson worked tirelessly for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland until his own death. Gordon Wilson had experienced God’s grace, His all-​pervading love and forgiveness. (Jeremiah 2006, 1)

Grace and forgiveness were evidently central to Gordon Wilson’s understanding of Christian living. Neither term was used in the initial (but doubtless edited) BBC broadcast report. Yet it did contain the words ‘But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge’ and they imply (at least negative) forgiveness. For a wider public, unused to the theological language of grace and divine forgiveness, they were probably more meaningful. A  mature but unknown Christian had been able (through grace) to communicate a message shaped by radical and passionate enemy-​love. A person of deep and long-​sustained faith was giving a glimpse of the ‘Be perfect’ injunction of Matthew 5.48.

Nelson Mandel a Both Pope John Paul II and Gordon Wilson were deeply committed Christians and assiduous churchgoers. President Nelson Mandela, very possibly the most widely admired political leader of the late twentieth century, may or may not have been either. Although a public figure, he was also, by various accounts, an intensely private person whose ideological convictions about either Marxism or Christianity have remained

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matters of dispute. Even when he denied membership of the Marxist Party of South Africa or claimed membership of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa there have been many commentators who have questioned both the denial and the claim. Given the political danger of claiming to be a Marxist, especially during apartheid and, to a lesser degree, after apartheid, his denial becomes even more confusing, as does his claim to be a Methodist in a context when almost any liberal church in South Africa would have been delighted to claim him as a member. He remains, even after his death, enigmatic on both fronts. In his pioneering article ‘Mandela and the Methodists’ Dion Forster states: It can be concluded that Nelson Mandela was a Methodist –​throughout his life he maintained a strong association with the denomination and acknowledged the role it played in the forming of his values. In his own words: ‘My joy at being in this [1994 Methodist Church Annual] conference is multiplied many-​fold both in the physical and spiritual sense. The environs of Umtata are not only my humble origins. It is here that my spiritual association with this great Church started. And I  cannot over-​emphasise the role that the Methodist Church has played in my life.’ (Forster 2014, 101)

Forster chooses the word ‘membership’ carefully here. Technically he was a member but not necessarily a ‘believer’. As he sifts through the evidence Forster cannot finally decide whether Mandela was a Christian humanist, an African Marxist or a Christian African humanist –​or simply someone who was considerably (albeit eclectically) influenced by African, Marxist and Methodist heritages. Forster sets out the details of his Methodist upbringing; his reception of the sacrament from visiting Methodist ministers when on Robben Island and then from an ecumenical team in Pollsmoor Prison, Cape Town; his continuing friendship with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Methodist bishops and ministers; and his (self-​consciously) Methodist wedding when president. Yet it is clear from Mandela’s 1994 address to the Umtata conference that he regarded Methodist values as very significant. He also delivered this address with (controlled) moral passion –​note the passionate use of guttural Afrikaans to denote the hated apartheid system of black homelands or bantusan: Although the dark night of apartheid sought to obliterate many of these institutions, the impact of their academic and moral teachings could not be trampled on. We who passed through them will not forget the excellent standards of teaching and spiritual values which were imparted to us… The sense of social responsibility that the religious community has always upheld found expression

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in the immense contribution to rid our country of the scourge of racism and apartheid. When pronouncements and actions against the powers-​ that-​ be meant persecution and even death, you dared to stand up to the tyrants … Especially while political leaders were in prison and in exile, bodies like the South African Council of Churches and its member churches resisted racial bigotry and held out a vision of different, transformed South Africa. Methodist leaders were prominent among the prophets who refused to bow to the false god of apartheid. Your ministers also visited us in prison and cared for our families. Some of you were banned. Your Presiding Bishop was himself imprisoned with us for some years on Robben Island. This you did, not as outsiders to the cause of democracy, but as part of society and eminent prophets of the teachings of your faith … the Methodist Church was the only Church to be declared an illegal organisation under apartheid and for ten years you were forbidden to operate naat eTranskei bantusan [here in Transkei’s black homeland]. (Mandela 1994)

Some have noted that in this address the president admired but slightly distanced himself from the Methodist Church  –​your minister visited us, and your Presiding Bishop was imprisoned. This might, of course, be because presidential language dictated this or it might be because he admired the Methodist Church in Southern Africa but did not finally identify with all of its creedal beliefs (just as I admire Chomsky’s moral passion and activism but do not share his aversion to religious faith). Forster, however, misses one crucial piece of information, the book Nelson Mandela: Conversations with Myself. This collection of letters, previously unpublished writings and recorded interviews was compiled by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Dialogue and was first published in 2010 when Mandela was very frail but still alive. His religious beliefs are mentioned only occasionally, but they do offer a different interpretation. A  conversation with fellow former-​prisoner and politician Ahmed Kathrada is particularly illuminating: Kathrada: Did you read Gandhi too? Mandel a: Oh yes. No, that’s true. No, that’s true. Kathrada: So, that’s true? Mandel a: But, Nehru was really my hero. Kathrada: … This is the way it’s worded, page 62 [of Long Walk to Freedom draft]: ‘He felt some pangs at abandoning his Christian beliefs which had fortified his childhood, like St Peter three times denying Christ.’ Now, is it correct wording to say you ‘abandoned your Christian beliefs’? Mandel a: No, never. Kathrada: It would be wrong, isn’t it? Mandel a: … I  say it’s absolutely untrue. I  never abandoned my Christian beliefs. (Mandela 2010, 53)

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In another conversation with Richard Stengel, who collaborated on his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (1995), Nelson Mandela talked about ‘our priests’, not ‘your priests’, when he noted: ‘just as the Afrikaners use the pulpit in order to propagate their views, our priests should do exactly the same’ (Mandela 2010, 64). Yet, in a 1977 letter from prison to his daughter Maki, Mandela advised caution about making personal religious beliefs public: As you know, I  was baptised in the Methodist Church and was educated in Wesleyan schools  –​Clarkbury, Healdtown and at Fort Hare. I  stayed at Wesley House. At Fort Hare I  even became a Sunday School teacher. Even here I attend church services and have enjoyed some of the sermons … I have my own beliefs as to the existence or non-​existence of a Supreme Being and it is possible that one could easily explain why mankind has from time immemorial believed in the existence of a god … I’m making no comment on the matter one way or the other except to say that, from experience, it’s far better darling, to keep religious beliefs to yourself. You may unconsciously offend a lot of people trying to sell them ideas they regard as unscientific and pure fiction. (Mandela 2010, 235)

Whatever conclusion is finally (if ever) reached about Nelson Mandela’s personal religious faith, his life as president illustrated to a remarkable degree the enemy-​love of Matthew 5.44. In conversation with Richard Stengel in the mid-​1990s, Mandela agreed that ‘I am working now with the same people who threw me into jail, persecuted my wife, hounded my children from one school to the other… and I am one of those saying, “Let us forget the past, and think of the present.” ’ (Mandela 2010, 192). A very similar conclusion is reached by Thabo Makgoba, now Archbishop of Cape Town. He recalls that, when working as a young assistant priest at the Anglican Cathedral in Johannesburg in 1993, Oliver Tambo’s funeral presented the cathedral staff with a challenge. Tambo’s wife was a practising Anglican but, as with his close ally Mandela, his own relationship to the church appeared more ambivalent. After discussion it was decided that the funeral would be ‘an unashamedly Christian service’: Mandela and his ‘cabinet in waiting’ filled the front pews, avowed communists among them, to the shock of some church people. Most joined in the Lord’s Prayer, and all shared in silent reflection on the life of this man, who, whatever else, had been instrumental in ensuring the transition to democracy had avoided a bloodbath, even after Chris Hani’s assassination a few weeks earlier, and for this we thanked God. This funeral, in which it was humbling to participate, illustrated for me the typical Anglican way of declaring God’s word to the world –​which is,

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in any case, God’s world –​to step inside sacred space and find itself touched by his redeeming love. (Makgoba 2015, 372)

Given his life-​ long exposure to the Methodist community in South Africa and his many ecumenical friendships (not least with the courageous and saintly Desmond Tutu), it would have been extraordinary if Nelson Mandela had not been influenced by the moral teaching of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. Despite considerable criticism in South Africa before, during and after the setting up of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with Desmond Tutu (noted earlier in Chapter  1), he did make a very serious and sustained attempt to reconcile enemies and to foster peace in what appears to a theologian to be a Christ-​like manner. Unlike Pope John Paul II and Gordon Wilson, who were always explicit about their Christian faith, Nelson Mandela might best be depicted as one of the sheep in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats who ask: “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25.37–​40)

All of these heroic figures had their critics who typically argued that they did not do enough to achieve their aims and objectives (when they themselves did little or nothing) or that they were too idealistic or just too naïve. Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels faced similar critics and sometimes despaired over their lack of faith and could do nothing without their faith (pistis): [Jesus] came to his home town, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, ‘Where did this man get  all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offence at him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’ And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief (apisteia). (Mark 6.1–​6)

Doubtless each of these giants had their flaws  –​as practising (as distinct from simply believing) Christians should be well aware every time we share the Eucharist and make our confession together. Yet each also

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showed a very remarkable and rare glimpse of deep moral passion in the radical and demanding form of enemy-​love.

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Returning once more to Servais Pinckaers’s book Passions and the Virtue, my last three chapters may reflect something of his suggestion that moral passion can be mapped on different moments in the moral life. It will be recalled that he suggested that the proper concern of beginners (childhood) is to learn to resist those passions, such as concupiscence, that are contrary to charity. The proper concern of those making moral progress (youth) is to see passions such as the passion of love as servants of virtue. The proper concern of those approaching moral ‘perfection’ (maturity) is to be ‘taken up by the love of God and transformed by the virtues, the passions then become like friends.’ In this final stage charity has become, through grace, a ‘spiritual instinct’. But I  am less Augustinian than Pinckaers and view childhood rather differently. For me beginners (childhood) typically have a strong, albeit unrefined, sense of moral passion (Chapter  5). That is why young children who murder babies and toddlers are so rare and so difficult for adults to understand. It is also why serial murderers typically tend to find their later murders so much easier to do than their first murder. Forcing Jewish mothers and their children into gas chambers and shovelling them out afterwards probably got easier with time. Even Fred and Rose West took a while to get around to torturing and murdering their own daughter Heather. In terms of a modified understanding of natural law, most human beings from a very early age have a moral revulsion to murder, torture and egregious cruelty and, if they are to become murderers, torturers or sadists, they need to be desensitive themselves, perhaps by torturing birds or small mammals before starting with human beings. In other words, moral outrage has to be overcome. Perhaps that is what Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels signifies when he exclaimed ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it’ (Mark 10.14–​15). 206

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The ambiguity of those in the middle stage (youth) is that they have lost some of that spontaneous moral passion (human life is complicated) but have learned to cooperate with other people and to become members of a moral community (Chapter 6). Moral passion in the form of collective effervescence has given them a stronger sense of moral obligation to the people who surround them. Slowly they have learned to be morally prudent and good neighbours, especially to kith and kin. And that, perhaps, is as far as most of us progress in the moral life. It is important but it is far from perfect. Moral perfection (maturity), or more accurately a glimpse of moral perfection, is for those very few who really can respond on rare occasions to the injunction to love their enemies and pray for those who actually have brutally persecuted them (Chapter 7). Here at last we can conclude with Pinckaers that they really are getting nearer than the rest of us to being, through grace: ‘Taken up by the love of God and transformed by the virtues, the passions then become like friends.’

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 1993. Biblical Interpretation and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.  1995. Christian Values: Theory and Practice in Christian Ethics Today. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.  1998. The Crucible of Christian Morality. London: Routledge. McFadyen, Alistair I. 2000. Bound to Sin:  Abuse, Holocaust and the Christian Doctrine of Sin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McFague, Sallie. 1987. Models of God:  Theology for an Ecological Nuclear Age. Philadelphia: Fortress.  1993. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.  1997. Super, Natural Christians. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.  2001. Life Abundant:  Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril. Minneapolis MN: Fortress.  2008. A New Climate for Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. McLaren, Robert Bruce. 1994. Christian Ethics: Foundations and Practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Mealand, David L. 1980. Poverty and Expectation in the Gospels. London: SPCK. Meeks, Wayne A. 1986. The Moral World of the First Christians. Philadelphia: Westminster.  1993. The Origins of Christian Morality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Meilaender, Gilbert. 1996. Bioethics: A Primer for Christians. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Meilaender, Gilbert (ed.) with Werpehowski, William. 2005. The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics. New  York and Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Messer, Neil (ed.). 2002. Theological Issues in Bioethics. London: DLT.  2011. Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics. London: SCM Press.  2013. Flourishing: Health, Disease, and Bioethics in Theological Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Miller, Daniel K. 2012. Animal Ethics and Theology:  The Lens of the Good Samaritan. New York and London: Routledge. Miller, David W. 2007. God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement. New York: Oxford University Press. Miner, Robert. 2009. Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologicae 1a2ae 22–​48. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, Basil. 1967. Law, Morality and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  1980. Morality: Religious and Secular. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, Jolyon. 2007. Media Violence and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murnion, Philip J. (ed.). 1983. Catholics and Nuclear War: A Commentary on ‘The Challenge of Peace’. New York: Crossroad. Murphy, Mark C. 2007. Natural Law and Practical Rationality. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2011. God and Moral Law:  On the Theistic Explanation of Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Nation, Mark Thiessen with Wells, Samuel (eds.). 2000. Faithfulness and Fortitude: In Conversation with the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Nelson, James B. 1978. Embodiment:  An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg. Neuhaus, Richard J. 1977. Christian Faith:  A  Public Policy. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg.  1992. Doing Well and Doing Good:  The Challenge of Christian Capitalism. New York: Doubleday. Newlands, George. 1985. Making Christian Decisions. Oxford: Mowbrays.  2006. Christ and Human Rights. Aldershot, Hants; Ashgate. Niebuhr, H. Richard. 1951. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper & Row.  1963. The Responsible Self. New York: Harper & Row. Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1932. Moral Man and Immoral Society. New York: Scribner.  1935. An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. New York: Scribner.  1943. The Nature and Destiny of Man. 2 vols. London: Nisbet and New York: Scribner.  1944. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. New York: Scribner.  1949. Faith and History. New York: Scribner.  1953. Christian Realism and Political Problems. New York: Scribner and London: Faber & Faber. Noonan, John T., Jr. 1957. The Scholastic Analysis of Usury. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.   Jr. 1965. Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by Catholic Theologians and Canonists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.   Jr. (ed.). 1970. The Morality of Abortion:  Legal and Historical Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Northcott, Michael S. 1996. The Environment and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2007. A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming. London: DLT.  2010. Cuttlefish, Clones and Cluster Bombs. London: DLT.  2013. A Political Theology of Climate Change. Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans. Novak, Michael. 1982. The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. New York: Touchstone. Nygren, Anders. 1953. Agape and Eros. London: SPCK. O’Donovan, Oliver. 1986. Resurrection and Moral Order. Leicester:  Intervarsity Press and Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.  1989. Peace and Certainty. Oxford: Clarendon.  1996. The Desire of Nations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2002. Common Objects of Love. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.  2003. The Just War Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2005. The Way of Judgment. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.  2009. A Conversation Waiting to Begin. London: SCM Press.  2013. Self, World, and Time:  Ethics as Theology, Vol. 1.  Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

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 2010. Ministers of the Law:  A  Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Powell, Samuel M. 2016. The Impassioned Life: Reason and Emotion in the Christian Tradition. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Preston, Ronald H. (ed.). 1971. Technology and Social Justice. London: SCM Press.  1974. Industrial Conflicts and Their Place in Modern Society. London: SCM Press.  1975. Perspectives on Strikes. London: SCM Press.  1979. Religion and the Persistence of Capitalism. London: SCM Press.  1981. Explorations in Theology. London: SCM Press.  1983. Church and Society in the Late Twentieth Century:  The Economic and Political Task. London: SCM Press.  1987. The Future of Christian Ethics. London: SCM Press. Rae, Scott B. with Cox, Paul M. (eds.). 1999. Bioethics: A Christian Approach in a Pluralistic Age. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Rajkumar, Peniel. 2010. Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation: Problems, Paradigms and Possibilities. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Ramsey, I. T. (ed.). 1966. Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy. London: SCM Press. Ramsey, Paul. 1951. Basic Christian Ethics. New York: Scribner.  1961. War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern War Be Conducted Justly? Durham, NC: Duke University Press.  1962. Nine Modern Moralists. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-​Hall.  1963. The Limits of Nuclear War: Thinking about the Do-​able and the Undo-​able. New York: Council on Religion and International Affairs.  1965. Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd (rev. ed. New York: Scribner).  1967. Who Speaks for the Church? New York: Abingdon.  1968. The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility. New York: Scribner.  1970. Fabricated Man:  The Ethics of Genetic Control. New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press.  1970. The Patient as Person. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.  1975. The Ethics of Fetal Research. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.  1978. Ethics at the Edges of Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rauschenbusch, Walter. 1907. Christianity and the Social Crisis. New  York: Macmillan.  1916. Christianizing the Social Order. New York: Macmillan.  1918. A Theology for the Social Gospel. New York: Macmillan. Reed, Esther D. 2000. The Genesis of Ethics. London: DLT.  2013. Theology for International Law. London: T&T Clark, Bloomsbury. Robinson, N. H. G. 1971. The Groundwork of Christian Ethics. London: Collins. Rogerson, John. 2004. Theory and Practice in Old Testament Ethics. London: T&T Clark.  2007. According to the Scriptures? The Challenge of Using the Bible in Social, Moral and Political Questions. London: Equinox. Rowland, Christopher with Corner, Mark. 1990. Liberating Exegesis: The Challenge of Liberation Theology to Biblical Studies. London: SPCK.

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Rudman, Stanley. 1997. Concepts of Persons and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ruether, Rosemary Radcliffe. 1972. Liberation Theology. New York: Paulist Press.  1974. Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-​Semitism. New  York: Seabury Press.  1994. Gaia and God. New York: HarperCollins.  2002. The Wrath of Jonah. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.  2005. Goddesses and the Divine Feminine. Berkeley:  University of California Press.  2007. America, Amerikkkar:  Elect Nation and Imperial Violence. London: Equinox.  2009. Christianity and Social Systems. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Sagovsky, Nicholas. 2008. Christian Tradition and the Practice of Justice. London: SPCK. Sagovsky, Nicholas (ed.) with McGrail, Peter. 2015. Together for the Common Good: Towards a National Conversation. London: SCM Press. Sanders, Jack T. 1975. Ethics in the New Testament. London: SCM Press. Schillebeeckx, Edward. 1965. Marriage: Human Reality and Saving Mystery. 2 vols. London: Sheed & Ward.  2014. The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx. 11 vols. London: Bloomsbury. Schrage, Wolfgang. 1988. The Ethics of the New Testament. Edinburgh:  T&T Clark. Schüller, Bruno. 1986. Wholly Human:  Essays in the Theory and Language of Morality. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. Schweiker, William. 1995. Responsibility and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  1998. Power, Value, and Conviction:  Theological Ethics in the Postmodern Age. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.  2004. Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics:  In the Time of Many Worlds. New York and Oxford: Blackwell.   (ed.). 2005. The Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics. New  York and Oxford: Blackwell.  2010. Dust That Breathes:  Christian Faith and the New Humanisms. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell.   (ed.) forthcoming. The Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics. 3  vols. New  York & Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell. Schweiker, William (ed.) with Johnson, Michael A., and Jung, Kevin. 2006. Humanity Before God: Contemporary Faces of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Ethics. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Sedgwick, Peter H. 1999. The Market Economy and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, David H. (ed.). 2000. Caring Well: Religion, Narrative, and Health Care Ethics. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Song, Robert. 1997. Christianity and Liberal Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press.  2002. Human Genetics Fabricating the Future. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.

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 2014. Covenant and Calling:  Towards a Theology of Same-​Sex Relationships. London: SCM Press. Spong, John Shelby. 1990. Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Stackhouse, Max L. 1986. Public Theology and Political Economy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.  1997. Covenant and Commitment: Faith, Family and Economic Life. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox. Stackhouse, Max L. (ed.) with McCann, Dennis P. and Roels, Shirley. 1995. On Moral Business: Classical and Contemporary Resources for Ethics and Economic Life. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Stassen, Glen H. (ed.) 1999. Just Peacemaking:  Ten Practices for Abolishing War. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press. Stassen, Glen H. with Gushee, David. 2003. Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Stott, John. 1990. Issues Facing Christians Today:  New Perspectives on Social and Moral Dilemmas. London: Collins/​Marshall Pickering. Tanner, Kathryn. 1992. The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Temple, William. 1934. Nature, God and Man. London: Macmillan.  1941. Citizen and Churchman. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.  1942. Christianity and Social Order. London:  Penguin [reprinted 1976 London:  Shepheard-​ Walwyn and SPCK with introduction by R. H. Preston]. Thatcher, Adrian (ed.). 2001. Celebrating Christian Marriage. London: T&T Clark. Thatcher, Adrian. 2002. Living Together and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2007. Theology and Families. Oxford: Blackwell. Thielicke, Helmut. 1964. The Ethics of Sex. London:  James Clarke and Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.  1979. Theological Ethics. 3 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Thomas, G. F. 1955. Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy. New York: Scribner. Tillich, Paul. 1954. Love, Power and Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.  1963. Morality and Beyond. New York: Harper & Row and London: Fontana. Tollefsen, Christopher O. 2014. Lying and Christian Ethics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. U.S. Bishops/​Catholic Conference. 1983. The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response: Pastoral Letter on War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. Washington, DC: CTS and London: SPCK.  1986. Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S.Economy. U.S. Catholic Conference Washington, DC: CTS.  1988. Building Peace: A Pastoral Reflection on the Response to ‘The Challenge of Peace’. U.S. Catholic Conference Washington, DC: CTS. Verhey, Allen. 2002. Remembering Jesus: Christian Community, Scripture and the Moral Life. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

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 2003. Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Walsh, Michael with Davies, Brian (ed.). 1984. Proclaiming Justice and Peace: Documents from John XXIII to John Paul II. Mystic, CT:  Twenty-​ third Publications. Wannenwetsch, Bernd. 2004. Political Worship:  Ethics for Christian Citizens. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ward, Keith. 1970. Ethics and Christianity. London: Allen & Unwin.  1976. The Divine Image: The Foundations of Christian Morality. London: SPCK.  2000. Religion and Community. Oxford: Clarendon. Waters, Brent. 2007. The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  2014. Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture: From Posthuman Back to Human. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Watson, Francis. 2000. Agape, Eros, Gender: Towards a Pauline Ethic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watts, Fraser (ed.). 2000. Christians and Bioethics. London: SPCK. Weaver, Darlene Fozard. 2002. Self Love and Christian Ethics. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Webb, Stephen H. 2002. God and Dogs: A Christian Theology for Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wells, Samuel (ed.) with Nation, Mark Thiessen. 2000. Faithfulness and Fortitude: In Conversation with the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.   (ed.). 2004. Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics. London: SPCK. Wells, Samuel (ed.) with Hauerwas, Stanley. 2005. The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell. Welty, E. 1960–​1963. A Handbook of Christian Social Ethics. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Nelson. Wessel, Susan. 2016. Passion and Compassion in Early Christianity. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. White, R. E. O. 1981. The Changing Continuity of Christian Ethics. 2 vols. Exeter: Paternoster Press. Winter, Gibson. 1966. Elements for a Social Ethic. New York: Macmillan. Witte, John. 1997. From Sacrament to Covenant: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Legal Tradition. Louisville, KY: Westminster/​John Knox. Wogaman, J. Philip. 1986. Economics and Ethics. London: SCM Press.  1988. Christian Perspectives on Politics. London: SCM Press.  1989. Christian Moral Judgment. Louisville, KY: Westminster/​John Knox Press.  1993. Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction. Louisville, KY: Westminster/​ John Knox and London: SPCK. Woods, G. F. 1966. A Defence of Theological Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Yoder, John Howard. 1972. The Politics of Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans.  1984. The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.  2009. Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution. [ed. Koontz, T. J. and Alexis-​Baker, A.]. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.

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227

Index

abortion, 58 Adams, Marilyn McCord, 133 aganakteö, 143 agape, 57, 188–​189, 194 agnosticism, 66, 103 AIDS, 37–​38, 184 Albrecht, Stan, 141 Allen, Joseph, 21 Allison, D.C., 187–​189 alms, 170 altruism, 85–​88, 105 anger, 7–​9, 125–​126, 146 Anscombe, Elizabeh, 5–​6 anthropology, 82, 104, 120 Aquinas, 3, 6–​9, 11, 23, 29, 31, 41, 82, 102, 105, 111–​113, 124, 126 Arberry, Arthur, 163 Aristotle, 5, 8–​9, 23, 42, 82, 126 atomic bomb, 129 attachment, 126, 128 Augustine, 3, 5, 11, 23, 29, 82, 104–​105, 111 Axial Age, 12–​13, 115–​116, 118, 120 Ayer, A.J., 96, 101 Baelz, Peter, 55 Bailey, D.S., 55 Bainbridge, William Sims, 153 Banner, Michael, 61–​62, 73, 82–​83 Barrera, Albino, 24, 36, 43–​45, 47 Barrett, Justin, 34 Barr, James, 147–​148 Barth, Karl, 54, 73 Bash, Anthony, 25–​27, 46 Bellah, Robert, 115, 118 Berger, Peter, 100 Besser-​Jones, Lorraine, 106 Biggar, Nigel, 52, 62, 73, 110, 119, 128, 139, 149 British Medical Association, 1–​3 Boorse, Christopher, 107

Botton, Alain de, 94 Bowker, John, 137, 139, 141, 152 Brown, Callum, 100 Browning, Don, 36 Bruce, Steve, 100 Buddhism, 136, 164, 169, 175, 177 Bujo Bénézet, 174 Byrne, Peter, 14, 135–​136 Cahill, Lisa Sowle, 36–​39, 47, 79–​80, 84, 89 Camosy, Charles, 89–​91, 96 capital punishment, 61 Casanova, José, 118 Casanova, Julián, 140 chaos, 159 charisma, 156 Chavasse, Noel, 1–​4, 6, 87–​88 Chomsky, Noam, 68–​72, 92, 146, 182–​183, 186–​187, 201 Clark, Stephen, 24, 33–​35, 85–​86 Clarke, Steve, 138 Clark, Patrick, 8 Clayton, Ann, 87 Cleansing of Temple, 142–​143 Coakley, Sarah, 8, 86, 104–​105 Cobb, Paul, 139 cognitive science, 34–​35, 104 common good, 42–​43, 47 communitarianism, 32 compassion, 4–​5, 9, 13, 32, 34, 45, 72, 78, 96, 105–​106, 120, 128, 136, 142, 162, 168, 170–​171, 173–​174, 191 concurrentism, 83 Confucian ethics, 174 contraception, 55 Cook, C.C.H., 24 Corrigan Mairéad, 197 Cottingham, John, 14, 66, 158–​159, 177 covenant, 21

227

228

228

Index

Crick, Francis, 110 Cronin, Kieran, 19–​23, 25, 27, 32, 36, 39, 46, 85, 176–​177 Crusades, The, 139, 142, 148, 156 Cusack, Carole, 140 Dalai Lama, 175 Damasio, Antonio, 108 Davie, Grace, 101 Davies, Oliver, 45 Davies,W.D., 187–​189 Davis, G. Scott, 110 Dawkins, Richard, 65, 91, 138 Deane-​Drummond, Celia, 24 Dennett, Daniel, 104 desires, 104–​105 Diana, Princess, 165 discovery, 159 divine command ethics, 80–​82 divorce, 60 dominical love commands, 188–​189, 192 Donald, Merlin, 116, 119 double-​effect, 128 Dunstan, Gordon, 58, 73 Durkheim, Emile, 152–​157, 175 duty, 128 Eagleton, Terry, 8–​11, 93–​95 ecology, 63 economics, 43–​45, 58, 62 effervescence, 13–​14, 124, 154–​155, 161–​162, 164–​165, 167, 175, 177, 182, 207 Elliot, David, 31, 41 embrimaomai, 143 emotion, 5–​6, 107–​109, 174 enemy-​love, 13, 46, 79, 85, 105, 124, 189–​194, 199, 202, 204 enlightenment, 136 Enniskillen, 199 environment, 39–​40 eudaimonia, 42, 89, 106 euthanasia, 55 Evans, C. Stephen, 12, 80, 85, 88–​89, 93, 95–​97 Evans, C. F., 142, 148, 186, 188–​189, 191 evil, 35–​36, 134–​135 evolution, 82, 91 Ewing, A.C., 28 faith, 65–​66, 69, 78, 101, 106, 168, 183, 203 family, 36–​37, 168–​169, 171–​172, 174 Fanes, Dominic, 139 Farley, Margaret, 45 feminism, 26–​27, 46 Fergusson, David, 30, 32–​33, 46, 91 Fleischacker, Samuel, 10

Flood, Gavin, 129 forgiveness, 25–​26, 46, 195–​197, 199 Forster, Dion, 200 free-​will, 135 Gandhi, 14, 129–​131, 176, 201 Gardner, E. Clinton, 31 Gascoigne, Robert, 30, 33, 46 Gensler, Harry, 184 Gita, 14–​15, 126–​131, 160, 168, 173 globalization, 37–​39, 184 Glover, Jonathan, 91, 134 Goethe, 68 Golden Rule, 183–​187, 191 Good-​Samaritan, 191 Goodwyn, Erik, 110 Gorringe, Tim, 63 grace, 93, 136, 178, 199 Graham, Gordon, 24, 35, 47, 134–​136, 182–​183 Grant, Colin, 33, 85–​86, 182 Greeley, Andrew, 100 Greenway, William, 95 Gregory of Nyssa, 5, 105, 133 guilt, 65 Gummer, Selwyn, 87 Guth, Karen, 78 Gutkowski, Stacey, 139 Habermas, Jürgen, 68–​72, 75–​76, 120, 182–​183 hadith, 171 Haleem, Abdel, 163 Hallett, Garth, 24, 28–​30, 46, 125, 183 Hallpike, C.R., 120 Harak, Simon, 6 Hare, John, 12, 80–​81, 89–​91, 96–​97, 136, 160, 178–​179 Hauerwas, Stanley, 32–​33, 46, 75–​78 health, 107 Hervieu-​Léger Danièle, 165, 167 Hicks, David, 41, 177 hiddenness, 103 Hiroshima, 129 Hollenbach, David, 36, 42–​43, 47, 79 Holocaust, 14, 71, 93, 132–​133 homo naledi, 104 Honderich, Ted, 51, 64, 70 hope, 41–​42 Horrell, David, 63, 75 hospitality, 170 Houen, Alex, 139 humility, 78, 97 hypocrisy, 69, 146–​148 incarné, 156 indignation, 132

229

Index inequality, 41 Inglehart, Ronald, 100 Jackson, Timothy, 194 James, William, 108 Jarvinen, Matthew, 34 Jeeves, Malcolm, 118 Joas, Hans, 13, 101–​102, 111, 115–​120, 136 John Paul II, 194–​197 Juergensmeyer, Mark, 138 Kant, 10, 29–​31, 72, 82, 134–​136, 178–​179, 182–​183 Kathrada, Ahmed, 201 Kemmerling, Andreas, 110 Kenny, Anthony, 64–​68, 71, 103, 106 King, Martin Luther, 131, 148, 194 kinship, 170 Kirk, Kenneth, 52 Küng, Hans, 113, 184–​185, 187 Lee, Lois, 101 Lewis, James, 140 Lincoln, Bruce, 140 love. See dominical love commands Lovin, Robin, 32, 47, 77–​78 lying, 29–​30, 46 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 3, 6, 27, 32, 64, 67, 71, 79 Mackey, James, 27–​28, 30–​31, 33, 46, 125 MacNamara, Vincent, 21 magic, 152 Makgoba, Thabo, 202 Mandela, Nelson, 16, 25, 193, 199–​203 Markham, Ian, 40, 42, 176–​177 Martin, David, 100, 140 Martin-​Leake, Arthur, 1, 3–​4, 6, 87 martyr, 7, 139 Marxism, 199 Mascall, Eric, 96 Mbiti, John, 174 McDonagh, Enda, 58 McDonald, J.I.H., 32 McKittrick, David, 198 McLeish, Tom, 14, 159 Mele, Alfred, 135 Messer, Neil, 107 Milbank, John, 10, 33 Mitchell, Jolyon, 24 Mitterrand, François, 165 moral-​gap, 178 Murphy, Mark, 12, 80, 83–​85, 89, 96, 103 Murphy, Andrew, 138 music, 109, 117, 158

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natural law, 82–​84 Neanderthals, 118 neuro-​science, 108–​110 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 72, 77–​78 Nikayas, 15, 136, 160, 164, 168, 173 nonbelief, 94 non-​violence, 131 Northcott, Michael, 36, 39–​40, 42, 46, 62, 176–​177 nothing-​buttery, 110, 156 Novak, Martin, 86 Noyes, James, 139 Nussbaum, Martha, 9 O’Donovan, Oliver, 125, 132 obligation, 154, 165 Odre, Ann, 194–​195 Oppenheimer, Robert, 14, 129–​131 orge, 144 outrage, 124–​126, 137, 148–​149 Parfit, Derek, 90–​91, 96 Parsons, Susan, 26–​27, 46 Perry, John, 89, 139 Pickering, W.S.F., 154–​155 Pinckaers, Servais, 6–​7, 11, 124–​126, 144–​145, 206–​207 Pinker, Stephen, 13, 92–​93, 142 Pittenger, Norman, 55 plurality, 40–​41 Pollack, Detlef, 100 Pope, Stephen, 33, 47, 84–​85 Porter, Jean, 6–​7, 30–​31, 46 Powell Russell, 138 Powell, Samuel, 6, 107–​108, 138 power, 31–​32, 46 Preston, Ronald, 43, 52, 56–​58, 72 priorities, 28–​29, 46 psychology, 106–​110 Pym, T.W., 51 Pyszczynski, Tom, 107 Qur’an, 15, 140, 160, 163–​164, 169–​171, 174 Ramsey, Michael, 24 Ramsey, Paul, 61 Rathey, Markus, 158 Rawls, John, 95, 120 realism, 76–​79 reductionism, 156 relativism, 90 ren, 174 responsibility, 31–​32 rights, 19–​23, 186 Roberts, Robert, 107–​109

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230 Roth, John, 132 Rudman, Stanley, 33 Ruse, Michael, 13, 93–​95, 103 Sacks, Jonathan, 141 sadaqa, 170–​171 Savulescu, Julian, 138 Schellenberg, John, 103 Schillebeeckx, Edward, 110–​115 Schoof, Mark, 113 Schweiker, William, 30–​32, 38, 46–​47, 169, 175 Scruton, Roger, 10, 14, 87, 158 secularization, 100–​102, 111–​112 Sedgwick, Peter, 40 Seneca, 8 Septuagint, 23, 81, 162, 188–​189, 193 sexuality, 36–​38, 56, 61 Shema, 188 Siddiqui, Mona, 170 Singer Amy, 171 Singer, Peter, 13, 28, 72, 89–​91, 95 Skinner, Quentin, 95 slavery, 134 sociobiology, 33–​35, 85, 87, 93 soldiers, 128 solidarity, 75–​76 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 66 Stark, Rodney, 153 suffering, 159 suicide, 152–​154 suicide-​bombing, 140, 153 Tanner, Kathryn, 78, 194 Tawney, R.H., 57, 72 Taylor, Charles, 79, 101, 104

Index Temple, William, 55, 73 Thatcher, Adrian, 33, 172 Thornton, Lionel, 53, 72 thumos, 145 tolerance, 68–​69 Tollefsen, Christopher, 24, 28–​30, 46, 125 Topel, John, 185–​187 Torah, 81, 169–​170 Trigg, Roger, 104, 139 Tutu, Desmond, 25, 148, 200, 203 ubuntu, 174 universalisability, 15, 23, 46, 68, 72–​73, 182–​183, 187 Upham, Charles, 1, 3–​4 utilitarianism, 89–​90 Victoria Cross, 1, 87 verification principle, 100 Vidler, Alex, 55 violence, religious, 137–​142 war, 149 Ward, Keith, 84 Warnock, Mary, 67, 71 Waters, Brent, 171 Wattles, Jeff, 183 Weaver, Darlene Fozard, 15, 31, 34, 182–​183 Weber, Max, 117, 156, 164 Wessel, Susan, 4, 133 Williams, Betty, 197 Wilson, Gordon, 197–​199 zakat, 170–​171

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titles published in the series (continued from page iii) 14. The Market Economy and Christian Ethics, Peter Sedgwick 15. Churchgoing and Christian Ethics, Robin Gill 16. Inequality and Christian Ethics, Douglas Hicks 17. Biology and Christian Ethics, Stephen Clark 18. Altruism and Christian Ethics, Colin Grant 19. The Public Forum and Christian Ethics, Robert Gascoigne 20. Evil and Christian Ethics, Gordon Graham 21. Living Together and Christian Ethics, Adrian Thatcher 22. The Common Good and Christian Ethics, David Hollenbach 23. Self-Love and Christian Ethics, Darlene Fozard Weaver 24. Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics, Albino Barrera 25. Genetics and Christian Ethics, Celia Deane-Drummond 26. Health Care and Christian Ethics, Robin Gill 27. Alcohol, Addiction and Christian Ethics, Christopher C. H. Cook 28. Human Evolution and Christian Ethics, Stephen J. Pope 29. Media Violence and Christian Ethics, Jolyon Mitchell 30. Forgiveness and Christian Ethics, Anthony Bash 31. Market Complicity and Christian Ethics, Albino Barrera 32. Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics, Lisa Sowle Cahill 33. Lying and Christian Ethics, Christopher O. Tollefsen

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