Christian ethics is not what one does after one gets clear on everything else. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, 55.
Hugh Mackay's Right and wrong: How to decide for yourself is an example of popular secular ethics.1 Mackay extols an individualistic ethic of choice.
The new freedom to choose has produced a reluctance to judge.
This is part of a general cultural shift away from prescription and conformity towards the idea that we are all free to choose how we shall live, and that in a diverse and pluralistic society,judgementsupon each other's choices are uncalled for. This is a highly desirable state of affairs from almost every point of view: most religious and moral systems carry warnings against the dangerous and destructive (including self- destructive) effects of being judgemental in our attitudes towards others.2
Here the autonomous self is encouraged to make choices and it is assured of the religious moral high ground against anyone daring to question those choices. Any critic is conveniently assigned, by implication, to a minority religious or moral system and can therefore be safely ignored. By stark contrast, the Judaeo-Christian view of loving one's neighbour demands mutual correction and so seriously limits diversity.3 “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbour, or you will incur guilt yourself … but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord”(Lev 19:17-18). Here love includes mutual correction as a part of the theocentric triadic structure of being God’s holy people. The second part in the summary of the Law (Mt 22:36-40, Mk 12:28-31, Luke 10:25-28) would therefore carry this understanding forward into the Church. The communal principles for church discipline presented in Matthew 18:15-20 do not call into question the personal and, if necessary, communal assessment of wrongdoing. Mackay's encouragement to claim autonomy
1
Hugh Mackay, Right and wrong: how to decide for yourself (Sydney: Hodder Headline, 2004).
2 Mackay, Right and wrong, 5. My italics.
3 Rowan Willaims, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 239. The notion of the authentic
self “brackets the issue of how we think through our human situation as embodying a common task, in which the sacredness of the authentic self’s account of its own interests is not the beginning and the end of moral discourse.” [My italics.] Mackay exemplifies this bracketting in the above quote.
and diversity and to be “free to choose how we shall live” therefore runs counter to a Christian ethic.
To reiterate an earlier point, the word “judgment” is ambiguous. If the word means “pronouncing sentence”, the Christian faith warns against one person high- handedly pronouncing sentence on another person.4 To that extent Mackay has a point. Within the Christian context, communal judgements (even as sentences) are provisional, because they are corrective rather than punitive in essence. It is Jesus Christ who pronounces the final verdict and sentence on the living and the dead.5 If the word means “assessment” and implies “need for correction”, then Mackay misrepresents the Christian faith. The parameters of a Christian discerning and corrective ethic are fundamentally different from a popular non-judgmental ethic. A brief review of these parameters may be helpful here.
Chapter one presented the theocentric triadic structure in which the individual is called by God to live in a community established by God that is embedded in God’s creation. This structure includes the moral sphere where law is embedded in grace. The pericope about the woman caught in adultery was adduced to critique participation in the purpose of God under the Mosaic covenant. Proper participation requires from the people a delight in the covenant God made with Israel. Without such delight the law will not be understood as an expression of God’s grace to the people of Israel. The theocentric triadic structure carries similar implications for the Church, called to be a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and the bride of Christ, under the new covenant in Christ.
In Chapter two the nature of joy was surveyed. Joy is not abstracted from life; it is more spontaneous. Psychologically, joy arises on the boundary of ecstasy and self-
4
See Mt 7:1-23 (especially verses 3-5), and footnote 23 in Chapter 2.
control. Joy is “a celebration, a visitation.” When our intuition about life concurs with the way we live, we experience joy. In the Christian context, joy arises out of the experience of God's grace, to be set apart by God, to be his holy people. Such human joy does not only derive from one's contemplation of God and his grace (and law), but also from one's awareness of God's joyful contemplation of faithful human actors in their humanity – simul iustus et peccator.
Chapter three considered New Testament passages which explore a Christian’s relationship with God. Joyful participation with God in his purposes for humanity begins with election on God’s side, and on our side with an acknowledgement of our failure, the acceptance of forgiveness and divine empowerment; it is not derived from self-congratulatory effort. Joy arises from the congruence of a person’s participation in agreement with God’s assessment of that person as the Parable of the Talents indicates. Joy also arises from this participation being a foretaste of life in the promised new heaven and earth.
Chapter four made the case for authentic joy in the freedom of obedience. Authentic joy requires a true construal of the world where revelation precedes reason. The behaviour of Gaita's nun points to the difference between a construal anchored in faith conviction and a construal based on abstracted principles such as the psychiatrists held to. The triune God commands humans to engage in metanoia and to cease living in ignorance,6 thus making it possible for them to enter into the joy of the Master, as people who do what is good right and to be done, individually and in community, in the context of the new covenant.
In this last chapter I seek to sketch how aspects of deontology, consequentialism and character-based ethics may be integrated into a Christian ethics of joyful
participation in God’s purposes, namely, living actively in the world in worship, witness and service.
This integration is centred on a Christian adaptation of the Aristotelian concept of ergon, the proper functioning of our humanity in congruence with Christian virtue and obedience. Therefore the discussion will not centre on deep moral dilemmas in isolation but on growing into a Christian maturity that navigates through crises with some sense of stability and joy.