Abstract
Oliver O’Donovan is by any measure one of the most important Christian ethicists of the past fifty years, and Entering into Rest concludes his much-anticipated trilogy on theological ethics. Coming at the same time as Sarah Coakley’s four-volume systematic theology, the two series give the impression of ‘the owl of Minerva spreading its wings at dusk’ at the culmination of a theological era. O’Donovan has in the past decades focused on political theology, with his The Desire of the Nations (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and The Ways of Judgment (Eerdmans, 2005) both being field-defining works. In this trilogy he returns full circle to questions of foundational ethics which animated his earlier career, particularly in his Resurrection and Moral Order (InterVarsity Press, 1986). The results are notably brilliant: a sophisticated account of theological ethics rooted in Scripture whose meditative qualities and applicability make it that rare thing, a contemporary work of practical wisdom.
While Resurrection and Moral Order stressed the objective foundations of the created moral order, the trilogy stresses the practical reasoning of moral agents. The first volume, Self, World, and Time (Eerdmans, 2013), offered an ‘induction’ into the study of ethics as theological. The second, Finding and Seeking (Eerdmans, 2014), examined what it means to be a moral agent who deliberates and decides. The final volume, Entering into Rest, turns from moral thinking to the moral ‘object’: ‘the forward horizon with which moral thinking engages’ (p. vii), and ultimately to the divine love in which the agent finds rest. There is thus a fitting suite of movement in the trilogy, a pilgrim’s progress of exitus and reditus.
In this volume, O’Donovan describes the two aspects of the moral ‘object’ as roughly corresponding to Cicero’s distinction between de officiis (‘on duties’) and de finibus (‘on the ends of action’). The first, broadly ‘deontic’ aspect is specified in Pauline fashion by the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love. The second, broadly ‘teleological’ aspect climaxes in the ‘sovereignty of love’ and its eschatological end. To distinguish love from mere desire or admiration, O’Donovan terms it ‘devotion’. In an intriguing shift of emphasis, ‘devotion’ takes over the central role in this book which ‘judgment’ had in his earlier works, particularly those of political theology. But the shift is one of emphasis rather than opposition. We are still advised to ‘accept the flame of love within ourselves in the form of obedient action’ (p. 229, emphasis mine). The overall impression nevertheless is that Barth has decreased, and Augustine increased, in O’Donovan’s project. Yet he is clearly not a camp follower of any one theologian or school of thought. ‘No quarter has been given in these volumes to a methodological monism that champions virtue ethics, command ethics, imitation ethics, or even an ethic of love, against all rivals’ (p. viii). What unifies the work methodologically is the Pauline triad of ‘faith, hope and love’, a point to which I will return.
Reflecting on ‘the greatest of these is charity’, the first chapter argues that love is ‘sovereign’ in that it commands moral reason and constitutes a ‘perfecting bond’ which ‘rests finally in its object and is wholly fulfilled in it’ (p. 14). This does not mean that we can simply solve all problems with a naïve love monism, moral theology’s equivalent of ‘the great Serbonian bog … where armies whole have sunk’ (to borrow Milton’s phrase). Love may be sovereign, but since moral reason involves deciding what to do, love must anticipate the future to coordinate our moral reasoning. This sets the stage for the subsequent chapters, where O’Donovan examines the way we view our actions as accomplished in the world (chapter 2), as involving other people (chapter 3), and as part of the narrative of the self (chapter 4). The first corresponds to ‘the ends of action’ understood as states of affairs we seek to bring about and which are susceptible to moral judgment, both introspective and divine. There can be no individualism about this since the ‘end of action depends on the idea of an approving community for its justification’ and on an actual community ‘for its complete vindication’ (p. 46). This leads to the topic of ‘communication’ (chapter 3) construed as goods shared and the good of their being shared in community (p. 47). Rich with political implications, this chapter limits and frames them in characteristic O’Donovan fashion with an eye to Revelation 21: ‘the act of God restoring moral reason is brought to completion … in the disclosure of a community, a city “descending from heaven from God”’ (p. 46). Of course, the individual is not submerged, and O’Donovan returns to the individual in ‘sanctification’ (chapter 4). This involves both transformation of the self as enabled by God and the rest found in thanksgiving. The following chapters shore up these insights and extend his reflections on communication and sanctification to the realms of work (chapter 5), friendship (chapter 6), and meaning (chapter 7).
The book concludes with a chapter on ‘the endurance of love’ amid aging, suffering and death. It includes a wholly admirable reflection on the difficulties of the old handing over the world to the young, and how this changing of the generational guard ought best to be done. This question has particular importance in a period when, as Edward St. Aubyn quips, care homes and such can scarcely ‘keep up with the modern demand for a place in which to neglect the mad, the old and the dying’. O’Donovan suggests that ‘the old have neither to conform to the young, nor to resent them and stand at a distance’ (p. 222). They should instead ‘be themselves before the eyes of the young … standing where they have stood on important matters, cheerfully adapting themselves … in unimportant ones’ (p. 223). This strikes the right note, respecting the agency of the young while not violating that of the old in a generational repeat of Zeus overthrowing Cronus. O’Donovan adds that without trying to exercise mind control over the young, the old should transmit the life-giving traditions and convictions they themselves received from an earlier generation, since ‘the seed that flowers most prolifically today was sown generations back’ (p. 223). Above all, O’Donovan suggests that the old may model how ‘time may be endured with love’ (p. 222). This discussion is all the more poignant coming from an emeritus professor who will be handing on the task of theology to a younger generation. Because O’Donovan takes embodiment seriously, his vision of community takes time seriously, meaning that the relationship between generations must be thoughtfully addressed. It is astonishing how often social ethics manages not to do this, but it is part of O’Donovan’s brilliance to take up something widely ignored and make it an indispensable feature of our moral consciousness.
The book ends by discussing how eschatology alone fully discloses love even though in a way that is fraught with tension, since while the world is ‘the chrysalis of our know-ledge and love’ it must ultimately ‘fall away’ (p. 226). Moreover, the world both ‘attests God and keeps God at bay. Our love for him in this world is mediated … But he will not finally be kept at bay, but will be received as the totally absorbing presence he will offer’ (p. 226). This final resting in God requires both an ecstatic reaching forth and a painful letting go. O’Donovan borrows T.S. Eliot’s line ‘flames of incandescent terror’ to illustrate that the process confronts us with a choice: ‘one way or the other we are to be burned, either by hope or by despair’. Yet we are not without grounds for choosing well since ‘That fire, we are told, is love’ (p. 228). Fittingly for the conclusion to his trilogy, the section draws on related meditations in Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’, and structurally resembles its ‘end of all our exploring’ sensibilities. By way of afterthought, O’Donovan issues a gentle challenge to the field of Christian ethics: namely, his hope that ‘the time will come when moral theologians will dare to make Jesus their point of reference’ (p. viii; see also p. 196). It may surprise many outside the field to learn that this is not what we were already doing.
In terms of the book’s overall approach, O’Donovan rejects ‘methodological monisms’ such as virtue ethics and command ethics. At the same time, his work does have methodological underpinnings which provide grounds for consistency. Conspicuous among these is his habit of thinking hard about ethical questions in constant and immediate dialogue with Scripture, something he probably does better than any other theologian now living. Yet a persistent question mark hangs over his method. One of the selling points of ‘methodological monisms’ is that they can clarify your starting point and pre-mises given the kind of project you are understood to be engaged in. But in a moment of reflection, O’Donovan says that he could have begun the trilogy ‘from other starting points’ than the Pauline triad. His two examples are the Sermon on the Mount and ‘the teaching of Jesus’ (p. viii). Yet such changes would not have been merely cosmetic; they would have resulted in a completely different trilogy. O’Donovan indicates no rationale for which approach to prefer among equally plausible alternatives. This leaves it unclear how necessary any given approach is to the kind of work he is doing. This is not a crippling problem, but it does create the impression that his work is at root ‘occasional’, perhaps even mostly idiosyncratic. That impression is reinforced by the astonishingly loose structure of the book, whose lack of mapping, transitions and summaries leaves the reader with almost no idea of what will be coming next. Reading the book is rather like hearing someone talk out loud, brilliantly, while straining to see where it is all going, or quite how it all hangs together. The labyrinthine meanderings cause some vertigo, but the insights are so rich you dare not walk away.
Though it is a work of theological ethics, Entering into Rest does not fit the usual categories ranging from social ethics to bioethics. We might say that it is a work of wisdom literature, if not quite in the biblical studies sense of that phrase, and O’Donovan is perhaps unique in being able still to produce these. There are even proverbial sayings —to pick two almost at random: ‘Meaning, like manna, cannot be stored from one day to the next’ (p. 197), and ‘Moral reflections, like mountains, cast their shadows over many territories’ (p. 104). Many of these stick in the mind, and contrary to some who have complained that O’Donovan’s style is overly dense and marred by sphinxlike obscurity, the book’s prose is graceful and pastoral as well as erudite. Who else could write that ‘“Moralism” is the mistake of safeguarding a pattern of life while losing sight of the proclamation that gives it joyful resonance’ (p. 196)?
The son of an eminent short story writer, O’Donovan’s sources are eclectic and his work deeply cultured. This book teems with quotations from wisdom literature, the Psalms, St. Paul, the Gospels, Revelation, St. Augustine, and countless theologians and philosophers. But it draws equally and with great effect on figures such as George Herbert, Donne, Milton, the Wesleys, Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis, and T.S. Eliot. The overall vision that emerges is a scriptural representation of reality coloured by the cadences and history of a richly ornamented Anglican world, calling to mind ‘the meadows, the lanes, the guildhalls, the carved choirs’.
Far from an intellectually relaxed swan-song, Entering into Rest represents O’Donovan at his most brilliant, captivating, and applicable. This is the sort of book one re-reads once a year, if at all possible. With its concluding discussion of old age, death, and eternity, there is a wintry grandeur to this final volume in the trilogy which recalls Prospero drowning his book. One certainly hopes that O’Donovan will continue to write, and this work shows that he remains at his enviable best; but if Entering into Rest does culminate his distinguished career, then it does so with a towering climax.