Abstract
In Health Care and Christian Ethics 1 I sought to address an issue that had troubled me for quite a while. What was I as a theologian supposed to contribute to public committees concerned with bioethics? More specifically, what was I as often 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.
In seeking a solution I started with my fellow theologians (the first of these audiences) by making a distinction – actually it was an ‘ideal type’ – between theological purists and theological realists. 2 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 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 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. By conceding too much to secular argument within this audience theological realists run the risk of losing their Christian identity altogether. As Robin Lovin, our most significant living defender of theological realism, concedes, such theology ‘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’. 3 If theological purity is prone to hyperbole, public irrelevance and divisive other-worldliness, theological realism is prone to evaporation and over-accommodating this-worldliness.
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 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 that [T]heological 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.
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In the context of, say, the global disaster of AIDS I have argued 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. 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), however, while not being wholly convinced by the theological underpinning of the otherwise excellent work of John Hare. Lisa Cahill’s book Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics 5 expresses well the sort of not wholly resolved meta-ethical tensions that I have long felt. Perhaps this is as far as a theologian engaged in public ethics can go.
Two other books have, however, persuaded me not stop here: Mark C. Murphy, God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality, 6 and C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligation. 7
Stephen Evans, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University, is well known for his work on Kierkegaard and divine command ethics. He writes to great effect in pellucid prose and 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, but as an approach to Christian ethics that is both enhanced by and, in turn, enhances both of them. 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 more catholic background – offers a real breakthrough in meta-ethics. 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.
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 upon God’s commands (Christian, Jewish or Muslim), then it is likely to appeal most to those who are already religiously committed. Exponents often claim that divine command ethics offers a distinctively robust and theological account of moral issues. Yet many Christians from Augustine onwards and many modern Jews have been troubled by some of the seemingly immoral, or at the very least capricious, commands given by God in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (and perhaps modern Muslims about some commands in the Qur’an). Natural law ethics, in contrast, does allow that religious and nonreligious 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 are also sceptical about deriving normative judgements from nature in any form.
Intriguingly, Mark Murphy argues in his short but complex book that, despite previously defending a critical use of natural law, 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, 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.’ 8 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.’ 9 This concept of ‘moral concurrentism’ is, I believe, his most useful contribution to public ethics.
So far so good. There is not space here to pursue the particular path that Mark Murphy outlines in 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 promoted by Alan 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 upon 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 I found less than persuasive. It quickly moves him into making claims about what an absolutely perfect being can or cannot be. I found little acknowledgement here of the analogical nature of theistic language and, thus, of the limits of human concepts applied to God.
Stephen Evans is also not entirely convinced by Murphy’s solution, although he welcomes his more inclusive approach (as I do). 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. Given this he 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 might suggest an example here. A degree of altruism and cooperation may well be ‘natural’ for otherwise self-centered human beings – as many sociobiologists and the occasional theologian 10 have argued. Yet, to become intentional, let alone morally obligatory, for individuals, divine command – especially the second Dominical Command – gives an authoritative spur, for my first audience, beyond the thin accounts of altruism typically offered by sociobiologists. 11 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 their divinely inspired (albeit fallible) consciences.
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 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.
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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.
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In Health Care and Christian Ethics I argued 15 that the bioethicist Jonathan Glover, perhaps unwittingly, provides a striking example of the moral gap, in his monumental book Humanity. He describes in great detail some of the major ‘atrocities’ of the twentieth century, noting 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 forms of cruelty and barbarism’. 16 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.’ 17 Yet his own secular grounds for moral obligation are surprisingly thin: ‘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.’ 18
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. Further, he argues that ‘the most destructive eruptions of the past half millennium were fueled … by ideologies, such as religion, revolution, nationalism, fascism, and communism’.
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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.
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In common with Stephen Evans I would argue that ‘some framework of normative truth’ – shaped by, but not wholly constructed by, particular social contexts and determinants – is essential for an adequate account of moral obligation. For me, working explicitly as a theologian, it is a concept of grace that most adequately depicts endemic human weakness/sinfulness, grounding moral behaviour finally in divine rather than human assistance.
Using elements from both Murphy and Evans a broad 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. If we use Murphy’s concept of ‘moral concurrentism’, however, nature is not simply to be adopted as it is. It does seem to be ‘natural’ for some dominant males to kill offspring which are not their own. Human step-fathers are also more inclined than biological fathers to abuse or even kill their adopted children. As a result of deeply embedded virtues (surely with religious roots) we now regard such human behaviour as deeply ‘unnatural’. Following Evans 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 obligation, especially when it is reinforced by communities of faith and a sense of grace, 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.