Abstract
This fine collection of essays on the significance of the Protestant Reformation for how Christians do ethics emanates from a conference held at Kings College in the University of Aberdeen in 2014. The main title is, however, misleading since the meaning of freedom is not much discussed in the book, and this is a lost opportunity. The assertion of individual freedom against either collective or creaturely constraint is the dominant moral claim to authority of the neoliberal ideology which is so dramatically corroding the moral and public life of Britain and North America, whence most of those who write here hail. But the contemporary misuse of the Protestant Reformation’s revolutionary freeing of Christians from ritual or societal obligation to perform works of love does not play a role in this volume, although two of the contributors— Hans Ulrich and Rachel Muers—make it clear that Christian freedom is precisely not freedom from the demands of the Other but freedom to live by a good conscience.
Perhaps it is because the essays cover such an intriguing range of topics in ethical theory and Protestant history—including eudaimonism, Messianic time, Anabaptism, conscience, and the lost cult of the saints, as well as the fate of Protestant ethics—that the editors thought it would be easier to have a title that refers beyond the book, to one of the most famous essays of the Reformation, than try to claim a connective theme for the essays within it. But the moral theme that is most often discussed in these essays is not freedom but love, and the theologians most often cited are Karl Barth and Martin Luther. For Barth, as Gerald McKenny explains, love for others (agape) and love that draws others to the self (eros) only turn out right if they are set in the covenantal context of love from and for God. For Luther, as Brian Brock argues, love was not the dominant note of his ethics but rather faith, or trust, of the kind that in the New Testament is exemplified in the Virgin Mary when she declared to the Angel Gabriel ‘let it be’ on receiving the news she will give birth to the Son of God. Faith in God, faith that God has already effected the moral transformation of the individual in Christ, was foundational to the Reformed exaltation of the faithful heart and mind of the individual over external works of devotion or charity performed in or beyond the Church. It was also central to the Reformer’s claim to political freedom from unaccountable power.
This is a very well-presented volume of ten fiercely intelligent engagements on the current state of the discipline of Protestant Christian ethics, and particularly in Barthian mode. To those in the guild it will be essential reading. To those beyond it, it provides a window into the state of the art in the guild, if rather fewer bridges into contemporary ethical life than the reader might desire.