Should Vegans Drive Cars?

It's the question that never needed to be asked, and Rupert Read of Talking Philosophy has answered it. In reviewing Craig Taylor's Moralism: A Study of a Vice, Read explores a number of philosophical and ethical quandaries that inspire critical reflection, in addition to a desire to find Taylor's book. In line with Read's assessment of Taylor, my own assessment of Read is that he is largely but not universally correct. Take for instance the titular question, posed by Read in response to Taylor:

On p. 147, Taylor criticises an SUV-driver with a “No blood for oil” bumper-sticker. An easy criticism to make, but perhaps too easy. There seems a tacit danger at this of Taylor descending into moralism here towards individuals. For: It is a perfectly legitimate move for an individual to make under many circumstances to say that they would do something as part of a collective that they are not obliged to try to do merely as an individual. To think otherwise is to think in a way that is naïve or insufficiently politically smart. . . . An example is that it may well be legitimate to continue to fly and to enjoy the subsidies that are given to flying, while campaigning against those subsidies. To insist that this is hypocrisy and that one should instead have to go by train even when the train is far more expensive (and thus drains away funds that could otherwise be used for campaigning with) is moralistic and anti-political. (A more extreme example is roads, which were often made with some ingredients taken from non-human animals. Does this mean that vegans should refuse to use roads? An absurd conclusion.)

Like so many authors and thinkers, Read is kind enough here to answer his own question, thus saving the readers from the onerous task of formulating the answers for ourselves. Nevertheless, I wonder what precisely is absurd about the conclusion that someone who is principally opposed to the commodification of sentient life, someone who not only does not eat meat or animal product but who does not wear wool or decorate with ivory or use cosmetics tested on kittens should also not drive on roads made out of animals. The implication of Read's logic, both with the example of veganism and the choice between planes and trains is that inconvenience (on an existential level) and utilitarianism (on an ethical level) collaborate to justify various incompatible moral choices. Because we cannot conceive of the absurdity of some people refusing to use roads, we assume that there ethics must be sufficiently sophisticated to handle the dissonance created by the common sin of killing animals for food and clothes and killing animals for transportation infrastructure. That hardly seems a necessary conclusion. Rather, the burden is on vegan to demonstrate such a sophisticated ethos to justify the apparent hypocrisy. The nasty thing about ethics is that they demand difficult action, if they are worth their philosophical weight in gold. When life and ethics collide, the responsible solution is to either change your life to suit your ethics or to change your ethics to suit your life. The latter is the more common course, naturally, but Read seems to prefer a third path wherein people continue to live in the self-delusion that they are consistent moral actors while behaving in morally inconsistent ways.

Vegans Organize Protest on top of Dead Animals [photo by hughesdk]

 

The distinction between individual and collective action seems equally problematic in that it assumes different standards of conduct for individuals and societies. Societies, unfortunately, have no real existence, not in the way that individuals do. (I realize that this is a ideological judgment on my part, but I trust it is one that will be widely shared.) A society is an abstraction, something constructed which has neither real existence nor uniform existence in the diverse minds in which it is conceived. As something which exists more in the realm of language than actuality, it cannot be held to ethical standards and therefore cannot be a separate ethical realm of action. If it is wrong for me to kill Bob, it is wrong for Rick and I to get together and kill Bob. It is wrong for Rick and I to round up a posse to kill Bob, and it is wrong for Rick and I to vote Barry in to office to kill Bob with a remote control stealth bomber being operated by some marine on an Xbox. My actions do not suddenly become more or less moral based on the number of people complicit in them. It is, of course, possible to construct certain teleological systems of ethics that oppose certain behaviors on a national scale by virtue merely of the scope of those actions, but those strike me as rather blatantly self-serving. Nations cannot do anything any more than societies can. Only people, those free rational agents Read is critical of (perhaps not unreasonably), do things. Whether they do them alone or in concert seems less significant than what they are doing. And if what they are doing is personally contributing to the demand for oil which has prompted the nation to collectively decide to invade oil rich companies, then in some infinitesimal but real way, they condemn themselves with their own critique.

A Pairing of Quotes

This is arguably one of the most thoroughly neglected texts on Christian ethics and perhaps my favorite passage from the Pauline epistles:

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

This, on the other hand, is a rightly obscure line from Gregory the Theologian's Epistle 49 but one which made me think he had perhaps not forgotten the letter to the Thessalonians:

My greatest business always is to keep free from business.

The Ethics of Sport Hunting

Deer season is upon us, and to commemorate it, a Michigan news outlet has posed the question to a variety of clerics: in what context is hunting morally permissible? Four panelists offer responses.

The Jewish respondent concludes from a review of Genesis and the Law that the killing of animals required extraordinary justification but that God Himself has given such a justification. The only question that remains is how to treat those animals who will be killed. "It is acceptable to kill animals, but it is not acceptable to be callous toward animal life." The response is a laudable beginning, but it leaves so much of the heart of the question unexplored. What constitutes callousness? Killing for the sake of killing? Or is it only killing in an "inhumane" way? The rabbi gives no satisfactory answers.

The Muslim respondent provides a richer, fuller picture of his religion's ethical stance on hunting and on the slaughter of animals more generally. The result, somewhat unexpectedly, is a decidedly palatable set of rules governing both the ethical treatment of animals intended for slaughter and a strict utilitarian boundary for when such slaughter is appropriate. "Killing is not for sport but only for sustenance." Yet, even while his regulations for slaughter are better explained and (for my part) better received, his justification for killing to begin with leaves much to be desired. He states, rather matter-of-factly, that animals are going to die anyway, so it makes no difference whether they die of old age or by human hands. Curiously, the same premise could be applied to humanity, but even with Islam's decidedly different stance on justifiable violence relative to Christianity, sure no Muslim would want to argue that humans are going to die anyway so it doesn't matter whether we let them die of old age or kill them for utilitarian purposes. At least I hope not.

Next, a reverend gives the traditional and decidedly unsophisticated view of Christians throughout history. God said we could kill animals. Society says we can kill animals. What's the problem. I mean, in some cases, not killing animals is like disobeying Jesus. That's no good. Alright...it's a paraphrase and a parody, but it nevertheless represents the essential message. There is no consideration of the importance of the creation account or the Law in determining the ethical stance of Christians toward animals. Not even a mention of the eschatological place of the natural world in the Christian scheme. A personal inclination matched with a proof text remains the surest Christian hermeneutic.

The same, unfortunately, proved true for the equally unsatisfying response from the Christian vegetarian. He makes the highly dubious claim that God allows animals to be killed only because it is a necessity and that, since it is no longer a necessity, there is no justification for continuing to kill them even for food. Of course, he offers no support for the argument that the permission to use animals for food and clothing is need based nor does he demonstrate that something has fundamentally changed to remove that need. (Incidentally, he also makes the easily falsifiable claim that eating meat is more efficient.) Most importantly of all, however, he seems to be woefully ignorant of the historical fact that meat has only recently begun to play a significant role in the human diet. Precisely because it is such a painstaking and inefficient means of ingesting calories, meat has been a luxury in most cultures throughout human history. Slaughtering an animal and eating it was a significant event reserved for feasts and sacred occasions, a fact typified in the rituals of both Judaism and Islam. The notion that you can eat meat at every meal is a relatively modern, primarily American innovation.

Disappointingly, with the exception of the Muslim, none of the respondents deal directly with the question of the ethics of sport hunting. More disappointing still is the facile responses of both Christians--leading me to believe that some lazy journalist probably just found four clerics who had nothing better to do that day than answer the phone. No one gets to the root of what sport hunting is or why it might be ethically problematic. Hunting, neither out of necessity nor even with any intent to make reasonably full use of the kill, is violence for violence sake, a behavior which is difficult to justify from the viewpoint of any of the three major religions. It is the agonistic modern analog to the gladiatorial arena, only instead of the helpless slave being thrown to the lion for the amusement of the masses it is the helpless herbivore which is turned over to the heavily armed and merciless hunter to end its life for his amusement.

Hunters who love the taste of venison, who eat whatever they kill and kill only what they will eat, are on ethically safe ground. In more omnivorous days gone by, I have even gladly shared in their spoils. But the point at which hunting is undertaken exclusively or even primarily for the thrill of killing and pride in the trophy, it becomes the exclusive province of lovers of violence, about whom God is quite clear.

Here's an Idea, Don't Vote: Christianity and the Moral Society

There's an election in a few days. Have you heard? This will come as a shock to no one who has ever visited this site, but I will not be voting this year. I also didn't vote four years ago. Or four years before that. Or...you get the drift. As a committed old, tried and true Christian anarchist, I have watched the campaign season very closely, the way I might watch a really interesting football game, or a Spike "world's most unbelievable car crashes" marathon. Politics--infinitely more than contact sports and traffic accidents--has proves itself again and again to be irredeemably violent. Beyond that basically standard pacifist complaint, however, I would like to offer three reasons why I, as a Christian, am not voting and, wait for it, why I encourage other Christians not to vote either. If you're not a Christian, you should vote; it'd be a shame if you didn't. (Not nearly as big a shame as it is that you're not a Christian, of course.) In any case...

One of the most common arguments I hear in favor of the notion that Christians have a duty to vote is that by not voting we are allowing society to slip deeper and deeper into the quagmire of sin. By not casting my vote--typically in this scenario for the Republican candidate, but it can go either way--I become culpable for constructing a society in which school children can see a man kissing another man on a taxpayer funded field trip to an abortion clinic. (Or, if you prefer, I become culpable for constructing a society in which a misogynistic plutocrat can oppress the poor, shackle his wife to the kitchen--metaphorically or literally--and deny life-saving medical treatment to his cancer-ridden, home-schooled daughter because God told him to.) Setting aside entirely the philosophical issue of moral culpability in the absence of intention or action, there is a more obvious problem here with the way Christians have come to understand their role in constructing a moral society.

It is simple enough to begin this argument with the rather inoffensive statement that God is omnipotent. As a subset of this omnipotence, it also seems fairly obvious to indicate that it is within God's capability to prevent people from doing evil. For those of us committed to the notion of free will (and I'm sure I'll lose some of you here), that God choose is not to prevent people from doing evil is an expression of a moral truth no less crucial than God's omnipotence: compulsory goodness is no goodness at all. God, in structuring the world, has made it evident to humanity that agency is a prerequisite for morality. That is why Jesus went to such great length to convince people of the value of the ethical teachings he proclaimed. Had he wanted to, ♫ he could have called ten thousand angels ♫ and told the world, "Love one another, or else." But he didn't. Christ, the great king, unlike every government devised by man put morality in the hands of human agents and tried to persuade them to make the right decisions.

You can see where I'm going with this, and it sounds nice in theory. But you're a good, Bible-believing Christian. If only there were a verse that clearly stated that it wasn't Christians' job to police the morality of the world. Enter Paul:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

I give you the context there so you can understand where Paul is coming from. There is rampant immorality in the church in Corinth--quite unlike the pure, wholesome churches of America--but it would seem that the Corinthians still seem more interested in condemning those nasty pagans with their nasty habits. Paul will have none of it. The purity of the world is none of his concern. He understood then what so few seem to understand now: it is foolish to expect non-Christians to act like Christians. You might as well beat your head against a wall. It would certainly elicit more sympathy than trying to beat the gay out of people.

The responsibility for Christians to construct a moral society is simple. The church is holy, and it is our job as Christians to keep it holy. The world is not holy. It has been given over to the lusts of impure hearts, to dishonor, to self-destruction, and to folly. Christians can purify the church; God will purify the world--with fire, no less, but don't tell limp-wristed, left-wing, bleeding hearts like me that...we can't handle the imagery. God is not interested in forcing people to behave. You can choose to live as a Christian or you can choose to live as a pagan. According to Paul, the only thing the church needs to worry about is making sure that it is composed only of those who are choosing to behave like Christians.

As for the residents of the rest of society, they are going to keep having abortions. They are going to keep going keep stealing, embezzling, defrauding, and withholding while people literally die in the streets. They are going to keep debauching themselves in inventive ways, videotaping it, and distributing it for a small monthly fee on the Internet. They are going to keep getting drunk, stoned, and...well, I lack the appropriate drug vernacular to put together a good list, but you see where I'm going.

Society will continue to be the Roman society that existed in the days of the apostles. The only difference between Paul and Christians now is that democracy has led us into the delusion that, having failed to do the difficult work of convincing the world that God is good and sin is bad, we can just pass a law and make everyone righteous. It won't work. We shouldn't try. It's wrong.

[Reason 2; Reason 3]

Pacifism and Ethical Dualism

As promised, we turn now to Cartwright's thoughts on an ethical dualism which is characteristic of many, especially popular, expressions of Christian pacifist thought:

The bold contrast that Koontz draws between those who have converted to the Christian position and those who have not reflects a broader conception of dualist ethics, one that sharply distinguishes the moral obligations of the Church from those of the (unconverted) world. According to the dualist conception, Koontz argues, those "committed to the way of Christ" are expected to live differently from those in "the world." The dualist conception therefore leaves open the possibility of a certain "quasi-legitimate" justification for war, provided it is chosen and waged not by Christians but by the state. This view of the "higher responsibility" of Christians has its origins in another ongoing conflict of interpretations within a number of Protestant traditions. As Koontz observes, the conflict arises out of two closely related scriptural passages, St. Paul's Letter to the Romans 12:9-21 and 13:1-7, and is dramatically evident in the 1527 Schleitheim Confession: "The sword is an ordering of God outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and kills the wicked and protects the Good."

There can be no doubt that Cartwright is correct, at least where such an ethic exists (and it is by no means a straw man). Dividing the world into two ethical spheres with equally legitimate, divinely sanctioned codes of conduct (even quasi-sanctioned) creates a problem for pacifists when it comes to being a witness for peace in the world. Fortunately for pacifists, and unfortunately for Cartwright's complaint, much of the ethical dualism that is present in pacifist thought is only apparent, the product of semantic imprecision. The fault of pacifists, certainly, but not a great deterrent to their overarching message.

The key is in the language even Cartwright uses when paraphrasing Koontz. Christian pacifists know they "are expected to live differently" from non-Christians and, consequently, they expect non-Christians to live differently than they do. If these expectations are divine expectations which are, or ought to be, understood as identical to divine moral imperatives--if God expects a certain code of conduct from non-Christians in order to rise to the level of ethical living and a separate code of conduct from Christians to meet that same threshold, even if to different ultimate consequences--then Cartwright's problem is real and damning. If, however, the expectations are human expectations, pragmatic realities based on a recognition of the core beliefs which govern any give person or group of persons' behavior, the problem disappears.

To put it another way, the government expects you to obey the law, and I expect basketball players to be tall. Now, when I help a Christian convert flee the country in order to avoid sharing custody with her lesbian ex-wife, the government arrests me and puts me on trial. Rightly so. I violated their expectations which have authoritative force. Meanwhile, Muggsy Bogues was once a big name in the NBA. I didn't try to have him expelled from professional basketball because he didn't conform to my expectations. There is an obvious difference between normative expectations and pragmatic ones, even if Koontz does not take the care to specify which he means and Cartwright doesn't bother to consider the alternative to ethical dualism.

With regard to the use of force by government (e.g. war), it is important for Christian pacifists to be clear about what they mean when they say that they expect, or even that God expects (particularly in this latter case, with its anthropomorphic thrust), governments to employ violence. It is not an affirmation that their use of violence is legitimate, or even quasi-legitimate. It is a recognition that non-Christians in non-Christian institutions will employ non-Christian means to achieve non-Christian ends. To expect them to do otherwise--that is, to expect them to act like Christians--is to either live in a perpetual state of disappointment or, as has been more often the case, to find one's own view of what is Christian being slowly conformed to what is not even as Christians try to Christianize non-Christian instruments of power (e.g. civil government).

It is ultimately a matter of sequence not ethics, and it applies, for Christian anarchists, beyond the narrow scope of war. For example, when I say that I believe US government should legalize same sex marriage, that is not an endorsement of the morality of homosexuality. It is a recognition that it is inconsistent, even hypocritical, for the government to outlaw a behavior solely on the grounds that it violates morality. By the internal logic of the American system of government, in the political vision of the framers of this country, that kind of abridgment of freedom is anathema. I still think gay marriage is wrong, but I realize that expecting a country of non-Christians to behave as if they were Christians achieves nothing except to further open the name of Christ to ridicule.

The same logic then operates for the use of violence. I expect the government to use force not because it is virtuous to use violence beyond the walls of the church but because I understand that civil government necessarily sustains itself through the use of coercive force. The primary problem is not that Washington has a military and likes to use it. The primary "problem" is that Washington isn't Christian. Trying to coerce the state into becoming pacifist has all the logical consistency of going overseas to invade countries so they'll stop being hostile toward us. Which we would never do. Because it's stupid.

The solution to the problem of violence, as with the problem of homosexuality or any other ethical problem, is first to convert the problem people in question. Before I can convince someone that war is wrong, I first have to convince them that God exists, that sin is a problem, that God intervened through the Incarnation to remedy the problem, that the work of Christ inaugurated a new, peculiar existence for those who join themselves to him, and that this new life in Christ comes with a set of covenant expectations. Only then can we share the kind of internal logic necessary to get from the world needs war to thrive to Christ has called you to love your enemy, not resist the evildoer, and bless those who persecute you. There is no dualism there. Just a recognition of the organic nature of the human transformation which occurs when someone comes out of the kingdom of the prince of this world and into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Ross Douthat is a Genius.

Seriously. You'll not hear me say that very often about anyone, but in this case I think it's justified. The ouster of Metropolitan Jonah has all the makings of a brilliant story. A high level church official, the highest actually, has been implicated in a cover up of a rape by a deranged priest. There is sex, alcohol, religion, and scandal, but all anyone can seem to talk about is an article Douthat wrote about the statistical decline of the Episcopal Church. Small newspapers in smaller midwestern towns are giving each other high fives at the downfall of the nominal Christian. Episcopal bishops repudiate the criticisms, Episcopal parishioners echo them, and Episcopal priests try to temper them. Meanwhile, emergent, missional, politically leftist, and every stripe of hipster Christian have launched an Occupy the Blogosphere movement to protest the caricature. How did Douthat do it? It has been outrageous, and I am clearly by no means immune. (I've even caught myself arguing in the comments of other articles with people clearly too riled to think straight.)

Considering how heated the discourse has become, a few clarifications and disclaimers seem to be retrospectively in order on my part.

The liberal-conservative continuum is a useful but not flawless tool for discussing contemporary Christianity. I endeavor to be very careful with the labels I use in describing Christian groups. A historical perspective has afforded me a wonderfully rich taxonomy with which to precisely categorize various manifestations of the faith as they have appeared repeatedly throughout history, and I am convinced that it is safe to talk about a "liberal" wing of Christianity and a "conservative" one that dominate the scene in the American religious landscape. Now there are important qualifiers there. First, only America is in view here. Talking about liberal and conservative Christianity in Africa would conjure completely different images if not, more likely, be entirely nonsensical. Second, liberal and conservative Christianity dominate but do not constitute the American religious landscape. There are many groups, some significant theologically and some powerful within small segments of society, that fall into neither group neatly. Any kind of binary system of categorizing Christianity will necessarily fall short. (Sorry, Byron Williams.)

Ambiguity is the mother of conflict. Much of the tension that has arisen in the wake of Douthat's article has been a result of uncertainty about just what is meant by "liberal Christianity." Some of this has been on the part of self-styled liberals misreading what is being said in an effort to serve their own agendas. Much of it has been on the part of conservatives who are so busy rejoicing in their arguments that they do not take the time to clarify them fully. Even Douthat is somewhat at fault. It has been rightly pointed out that liberal Christianity can and does thrive in ways beyond what can be measured by attendance in the Episcopal Church. Douthat, however, is very careful to limit his criticisms to institutional bodies that have embraced liberal Christianity. Thus, saying that the "spiritual but not religious" demographic (who are often embracing the label "liberal Christians") yet grows is not to debunk Douthat but to confirm him. They are leaving the liberal churches because they have nothing left to offer. Additionally, many have complained that certain liberal church groups are continuing to grow, churches that cling to the traditional core of Christian doctrine but play free-and-loose with traditional Christian forms. Again, however, Douthat makes very sure to define liberal Christianity as theological liberalism, the marginalization (if not obliteration) of all theology and dogma in favor of left-wing social and political causes. Cf. Burklo. Churches that keep the faith and update the practice are the kind of liberal churches Douthat wants. Which leads me to...

The decline of liberal Christianity is nothing to be happy about. Douthat is careful not to gloat over the predicted demise of the Episcopal Church, and other conservative Christians should follow suit. The conservative church has always existed in order to temper the unbridled pursuit of progress as its own end, to sustain the truths which might be (and in many cases have been) discarded when they become inconvenient, and to continue the stress on holiness which has characterized God's relationship with His people from its earliest recorded moments. What the conservative church needs to realize is that the liberal church has an important function as well. It prevents the rest of the church from embracing the fallacy that something must be done a certain way because it has always been done a certain way. It keeps the faith fresh, timely, and growing. And, perhaps most importantly, the liberal church has historically stressed social ethics as a counterpoint to the conservative church's stress on personal ethics. Conservatives rightly have a problem with vulgarity, sexual libertinism, divorce, and substance abuse. Liberals rightly have a problem with war, poverty, oppression, and disease.

The two groups or, more appropriately, the two impulses within Christianity serve each other through their constructive tension. It is only when that tension becomes conflict that we see the kind of partisan infighting which is quickly coming to define every aspect of American life. So conservatives, put away the fireworks. The demise of a powerful liberal branch is among the worst possible outcomes for American Christianity. And liberals, there's no reason to equate Douthat with sexists and racists. His article has the same purpose that my responses to Burklo did: to encourage the liberal branch of Christianity to recover "a religious reason for its own existence" and "consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world." Because I want a strong, vibrant, liberal voice among institutional churches. Otherwise, the Southern Baptist Convention gets to set the tone of the message, and I'm not ready for that.

Answering Allison: Pacifism and Institutional Ethics

As part of my research for the Anarchy in May series, I was lured in by the title of Dale Allison’s The Sermon on the Mount: Inspiring the Moral Imagination. Hoping to have my moral imagination inspired, I cracked the spine only to find that I still feel more invigorated by the old familiar text of Matthew 5 than by Allison’s exposition of its meaning. More than anything, his attempt to take to task the pacifist interpretation of the command to “resist not the evildoer” stirred the polemicist in me, unsurprisingly. In fact, quite contrary to the very limited homiletics training I had many years ago, I managed a list of five distinct problems with his critique that can be answered with relative ease.

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The second flawed argument that Allison makes against pacifism is acheived by bifurcating personal and institutional ethics. He writes:

Jesus and Matthew and the pre-Constantinian Christians were outsiders or belonged to minorities, as have most proponents of pacifism. Now outsiders and minorities are not, by definition, responsible for the institutions of society. This circumstance makes it easier for them to promulgate ideals that seemingly take little or no account of the conflicts that inevitably arise when the follower of Jesus becomes involved with such institutions. But others, in contrast to Jesus and Matthew, have found themselves both Christians and members of governmental organizations; and they have necessarily found new ways of understanding 5:38-42. Rather than condemning the exegetical changes brought by the Constantinian revolution we should regard them as inevitable and consistent with the fact that the Sermon on the Mount offers examples that call the moral imagination into play.

No wonder I didn’t find my moral imagination inspired reading Allison’s work. His idea of moral imagination is the ability to re-imagine Christian ethics if Jesus had wanted to be involved in the same things we want to be involved in. Allison actually makes a number of very telling concessions in the above quote. For starters, he admits—as do most responsible historians and biblical scholars—that the pre-Constantinian (or at least up to the time of Marcus Aurelius) church did in fact understand the Sermon on the Mount as enjoining total non-violence on Christians. He also admits that this interpretation, the antique interpretation, directly conflicts with the exigencies of governmental involvement. (So far, he sounds almost like a Christian anarchist, no?) Finally, he admits that his reinterpretation of Christian ethics only works if you admit (1) that Christian comingling with government is inevitable and (2) that the teachings of Jesus (not to mention the example, which modern Christians, he admits, incidentally contrast with) are intended to be inspirational rather than normative.

Of course, that’s where he loses me. I do, obviously, agree with the accepted historical fact that the early church was pacifist. I also, clearly, agree that the obvious conflict between the traditional Christian ethos and the new involvement with government constituted a conflict for fourth century Christianity at large. What I cannot accept is that the choice of power over ethics was inevitable—unless, of course, we mean by that temptation and succumbing to it are inevitable. Allison speaks about the political ascendency of Christianity as something which occurred by happenstance, something which the Christians had no control over and for which they are therefore not responsible. Then, the reinterpretation of Matthew 5 changes from a deviation to necessarily finding new ways of understanding the text. Of course, Christian involvement in government is by no means mandated. It was not a historical inevitability. It is not a present imperative.

When it is realized that Christianity will be just fine—dare I say better off—without getting into bed with human structures of power, then Allison’s argument falls apart. Christian politics not being inevitable, we return to the fateful decision (condensed and dramatized as if it were a single deliberative moment) between Christian ethics as they were preached by Christ and as they have always been practiced and a modification or total abandonment of them in an effort to pursue what seems right on the surface. If only there were a biblical example that might offer guidance, say the disciples’ choice between allowing Christ to die as he taught them he must and taking up arms in his defense. And if only Jesus gave a clear teaching in response to this, say Jesus rebuking Peter for his armed defense or telling Pilate “if my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight.” Of course, if, like Allison, you believe that biblical teaching and example are intended exclusively or primarily as stimulants for the moral imagination, then these examples can be creatively reexamined to fit with whatever happens to us, quite passively, as the human race floats aimlessly through history.

What ultimately struck me, however, is the somewhat less logically rigorous but more evocative nonsense of dividing personal behavior into essentially occupational categories. Set aside for a moment that Allison gives no biblical reasoning for his separation of the two categories, no testimony of Jesus for how governments are allowed to operate by a different moral code than people, and consider instead the ethical absurdity of that line of reasoning. Allison is of the belief—as, notably, was Augustine, the founder of modern just war theory—that if a man walks up to you with a gun and murderous intent, you as a private, Christian citizen should not defend yourself. If, however, that same day, you happen to be wearing a uniform and badge, it magically becomes ethical for you to shoot that assailant in the face because you are an agent of the government which operates by a different set of ethical rules. Our society realizes the absurdity of such a position and makes self-defense permissible. Pre-Constantinian Christian ethics realizes the absurdity of this defense and labels institutional violence immoral. Only Allison (of course, not only Allison, but follow me here) believes that the tension can be maintained. When Obama kills a thousand men through the office of the presidency, it is just. If I were to kill the same thousand men, it would be unjust. It simply does not compute.

Customized Christianity: Ethics à la Carte

The following is one of a multi-part response to an article by Jim Burklo entitled "How To Live As a Christian Without Having to Believe the Unbelievable." For an introduction to these thoughts, see Burklo's Bible.
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I have made a number of arguments against Jim Burklo’s vision of a believable Christianity over the past week. I criticized his willingness to assume an oppositional relationship between faith and practice, his inability to distinguish between marginal and central biblical stories and truths, his dangerous Christology, and his selective hermeneutic. All of these, however, are part of a broader flawed attempt to collapse religion into ethics. It is only by elevating ethics to the status of comprehensive and exclusive truth that he can effectively disregard the doctrine, dogma, and fantastic stories that he believes hinder people from finding genuine Christianity. Unfortunately for Burklo, Scripture gives us every indication that ethics are rooted in theology, conditioned by soteriology, and aimed toward eschatology (just to name a few of those evil, confusing categories that label trivial matters).

Burklo, as mentioned repeatedly, believes that the central message of the Gospel is the Sermon on the Mount. Far be it from me to ever stand in the way of someone trying to refocus Christians on the Sermon on the Mount, but the majority of Protestant Christianity is going to have a bone to pick with Burklo. And rightly so, as there seems to be a general consensus that, if a single passage encapsulates the gospel, the real text of central importance is John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Look at that. We have a theological statement about the nature of God flowing into a soteriological statement about the mechanism of salvation flowing into an eschatological statement about the eternal destiny of humanity. Do you notice what’s missing? Any mention of ethics. This has been the animating sentiment of so much of Protestantism, precisely because of its antinomian character, from Luther’s sole fide to the now widespread evangelical idea (specifically derided by Burklo) of a personal relationship with Jesus.

Certainly, I am part of a generation that wants to correct the stress on faith without ethical strictures, but there is much to commend Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus (one of those passages where Jesus is speaking but Burklo apparently isn’t listening, as there is nothing about social justice) as a good synopsis of the purpose of the Incarnation. The biblical text is not the narrative of the struggle for a moral principle to take root among moral actors but of a perfect God trying to reconcile to Himself a willfully imperfect creation. This reconciliation, the New Testament makes very clear, takes place not with Jesus preaching on the mountain top but with him dying on the cross, being buried in the tomb, and conquering death in the resurrection. Christianity is not an ethical system which we can be convinced to believe but a comprehensive experience of a personal God that radically shapes more than just our ethics.

Otherwise, the poor are left to hope in the moral regeneration of the world for their deliverance. The sick are left to hope in the dedicated work of altruistic physicians for their healing. The oppressed are left to hope for a people powerful enough to enact their liberation but righteous enough not to use that power to oppress. It’s a false hope, an empty hope, very much like faith in an unresurrected Christ is an empty faith. Faith in Christ and hope for an inbreaking kingdom are realities which transcend how we treat one another. They have to do with the totality of existence, and all of reality falls inside the scope of Christian faith.

Genesis, historical or not, teaches us about the nature of the physical world and God’s relationship to it. The Psalms reveal the human character, both as it is and how it can be when it allows itself to be transformed, more than just morally, by the redeeming power of God. Job guides us through the problem of evil and, centuries before the greatest philosophers the world has known would reach the same conclusion, declares that it is irresolvable (but nevertheless God). The prophets instruct us on the interrelatedness of piety and social justice, a lesson Burklo could stand to revisit. Micah introduces us to a vision of the culmination of reality which will define not only Judeo-Christian eschatology but the whole of Western civilization’s utopian vision: peace, fertility, leisure, uncoerced global unity, and the eternal pursuit of knowledge.

Most, if not all, of these themes are taken up explicitly or alluded to by Jesus in his ministry and, if we are going to accept the validity of the biblical account, they must be engaged by Christians as well. We cannot simply call them trivialities, hindrances in the way of creating a heaven on earth (something which Burklo doesn’t seem to believe that Scripture explicitly states is beyond the scope of human possibility). God’s transformative work is not limited to human behavior. Being in Christ is a total transformation, and that includes those pesky truths that Burklo encourages us to ignore. We may never understand them perfectly and we may dispute about them until the second coming, but pursing those truths is part of the great pursuit of perfection, of conformity to the image of Christ.

And, of course, an unwillingness to engage these doctrines and stories, the marginalization of everything that isn’t explicitly command in the social ethics of Jesus, has profound and tragic implications for ethics. Burklo relishes the fact that “Jesus said nothing about [homosexuality and abortion] whatsoever in the New Testament. There’s no hint in the Bible that these topics mattered to him at all.” While the factual accuracy of much of this may be disputed, the real issue is with Burklo’s logic. By the same reasoning, Jesus never mentioned eugenics and therefore there is no reason to assume that the actions of Nazi Germany bothered him. He certainly didn’t talk about atomic weaponry and therefore the atrocities in Nagasaki and Hiroshima probably wouldn’t have mattered to him. After all, harkening back to the points about the divine sparks, Truman probably reasoned that the bomb was how many Americans thought they could express love for the Pearl Harbor widows.

In truth, Jesus presented a radically different view of reality, and more than presenting it, he inaugurated it. The mission of Christ was not primarily one of persuasion. It was one of redemption, and it is impossible to crack the pages of Scripture and think otherwise. The greatest change achieved when he ascended into heaven was not that he had presented a wonderful new ethos for people to construct their own heaven but that he had made of himself the conduit through which humanity might find themselves reconciled to God—which, it turned out, is “heaven.” Trying to take Christianity and customize it, sanitize it, by saying, “I like the ethics but not the other teachings” (i.e. doctrine, dogma, and stories) is a little like saying, “I’m a Muslim but only because I feel compelled to make a trip to Mecca once in my life.” Religions are not like buffets: “none of that ‘I’d rather gouge out my eye than go to hell’ nonsense but I’ll have a double helping of the meek shall inherit the earth.” They stand or fall on the strength of their interrelated features. Frankly, without a benevolent, personal deity who became incarnate as an expression of love to recreate the world and me with it if only I choose to allow myself to be transformed, the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t make sense. If I’m imagining my most pleasurable world, my “heaven on earth,” I’m ashamed to admit that liberating the oppressed is a lower priority than legalizing marijuana and prostitution. Certainly turning the other cheek doesn’t sound heavenly at all.

Customized Chrisitanity: Finding Your Divine Spark

The following is one of a multi-part response to an article by Jim Burklo entitled "How To Live As a Christian Without Having to Believe the Unbelievable." For an introduction to these thoughts, see Burklo's Bible.
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As promised, let us turn now to that nasty dogmatic discussion of Arianism, a spectrum of beliefs which, in their many forms, share the common denominator of a belief that Jesus was somehow less than divine. The Trinity, and its necessary belief in the full and equal divinity of Jesus, is among those pesky doctrine that Burklo would have us do away with if we find them at all offensive. What he proposes instead is a benign, new age rendition of the divinity of Christ more palatable to our refined, enlightened sensibilities.

When Jesus asked us to believe in him, he wasn’t asking us to believe a list of ideas about him. He was asking us to believe in that spark of the divine that was inside of him, because he wanted us to believe in the spark of the divine that is in every one of us.

Let's ignore, for the time being, the unfortunate reality that Jesus never actually says what Burklo wants him to. He never references a common divine spark shared between himself and humanity. He doesn't mention a divine spark at all. But this willingness to pick and choose and distort Burklo's own chosen source material to conform to his preset notion of who Jesus ought to be is a problem to deal with tomorrow.

Instead, let's assume, arguendo, that Burklo's argument isn't self-defeating on its face and look to the disastrous implications of his vision of Christianity. What Burklo has offered us is a perverted version of Jesus message read anachronistically through the lens of Enlightenment humanism. It imagines Jesus not as something other than or apart from the human condition but as an exemplar of the ideal human as humanity can and ought to be. If only humanity would see and embrace love ("who is God") which is already available to us, already accessible, then we could construct a heaven on earth.

It is, for all intents and purposes, a functionally atheistic form of Christianity. Except that really isn't fair because what it actually does is deify humanity creating a vulgar, anthropotheistic religion. This devastates theology, particularly the cosmic story of fall and redemption, creation and recreation, that dominates the biblical narrative, replacing it instead with universe which revolves around me. Just the way we like it. This paring away of the annoying doctrines of soteriology, cosmology, and eschatology will be the subject of my final complaint. More crucially here, Burklo's vision of Christianity even undermines his all important ethical consideration. After all, if God is love and I have God (i.e. love) inside me and practicing love is the whole duty of man (not, as the narrator of Ecclesiastes says, fearing God and keeping His commandments) then any behavior which I can reasonably justify as originating from love--whatever that is, however I feel like defining it, since I have the divine spark equal to that of Jesus--is moral.

In fairness, Christians of all stripes do this anyway. I'm loving that homeless man by not giving him a few dollars because he'll probably just use it to buy liquor anyway. I'm loving my spouse by being obstinate because, in the long run, what I know is right will be best for both of us. I'm loving my enemies by invading their country and setting up a democracy because that's how God wants their lives to be governed. It's all ridiculous, but, by making Jesus the messenger of love and divine sparkliness, Burklo actually exacerbates the problem. If Jesus really did come to say, "Hey, I have a divine spark, and I'm living consistent with it. You should look to your divine spark too and live in accordance with its law of love," then he freed every man to be a canon unto himself, the measure of what love is and how it should be applied through the loose framework of "willingness to feed the hungry, liberate the oppressed, heal the sick."

Sure, it makes you always feel good about the kind of loving your doing because it is always consistent with your divine spark, but you're left feeling a little suspicious of the guy down the road whose working just as hard to liberate a different set of oppressed people--maybe the people you thought were oppressing your oppressed people--and in a way that you don't think is all that loving. I guess maybe his divine sparkler just sparkles different from yours.

Customized Christianity: Choosing Between Faith and Practice

The following is one of a multi-part response to an article by Jim Burklo entitled "How To Live As a Christian Without Having to Believe the Unbelievable." For an introduction to these thoughts, see Burklo's Bible.
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In reading Burklo's article, one of the first things that became immediately apparent, is that Burklo sees believing creeds, dogmas, and fantastic stories as somehow and to some degree opposed to living like Christ.

Christianity asks you to do very hard things that are supremely worth the effort. Loving your enemies – that often seems impossible. Willingly giving up your power and money and time and influence in order to serve the poor and the sick and the oppressed – that can be downright scary. Having a heart full of pure love in all circumstances – how can we do it? But if we do it, we build heaven on earth. These are things that matter, things Jesus asks us to do. It takes a lifetime of serious spiritual and physical and emotional work to come even close to rising to these challenges.

Compared to them, believing in the factuality of the fantastic stories in the Bible is trivial. And that is exactly why it makes no sense to let such questions matter very much in living a faithful Christian life...Don’t let dogma and doctrine get in the way of practicing Love, who is God. Doctrines can be interesting. They help us understand the origins and background of our religion. But repeating creeds is not the price of admission into Christianity.

Burklo is right to say that repeating creeds isn't the price of admission into Christianity, but there are at least two reasons why, pragmatically, that assertion is meaningless. First, the majority of churches do not use creeds as the terms of admission. The majority of Christians still belong to churches where admission to the faith is managed through baptism, at various ages. A creed may be read during the process, but it is not the central feature of admission into the faith. What's more, they aren't even necessary for continuance in the faith in most denominations. Anyone can walk into the high holy service at an Episcopal church and refuse to say all or part of the creed during the service (and I always refuse to say at least part during my frequent visits) without being asked to leave or denied the Eucharist. In fact, barely over a week ago I was at an Episcopal wedding and the priest made a point of reading what has been in every bulletin at every Episcopal service I've attended: anyone who is baptized is welcome to partake of the Lord's Supper. That has been my experience at a variety of denominations. Some require baptism in their particular sect, but I have never once been asked to recite a creed to determine my status as a Christian. If you walked into a Methodist Church today and they happened to be reciting a creed, you could repeat "watermelon" over and over like a kid who doesn't know the words to a song and not receive so much as a sidelong glance from an usher.

Even if none of that were true, however, the greater pragmatic truth is that the overwhelming majority of Christians accept the overwhelming majority of the creeds, even churches that are non-creedal, even churches that are anti-creedal. The Apostle's Creed does little more than copy and paste statements from the Gospels and Paul. If you can't affirm those truths, with whatever interpretation you want to wash them over with, then you find yourselves on the most extreme margins of what might be considered Christianity.

And having wasted too much time on those considerations, the true flaw in the argument is to suggest that believing a central Christian doctrine or a biblical story might ever impede "practicing Love." Just the opposite, every word of Scripture was canonized precisely because the teachings and stories therein were shown to be conducive to living the Christian life. The church historical has always understood there to be a harmonious relationship between faith and practice, between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. It is a fallacy of modernity, and particularly in our day of emerging Christians, that believing in the Trinity might somehow be contrary to turning the other cheek. The Trinity was not a doctrine arrived at in a void of philosophical speculation. If Burklo would turn to the history he encourages others to study, he would find Trinitarian dogma the result of centuries of struggle against beliefs that were set to gut Christianity, soteriologically, theologically, and, yes, even ethically. Fashionable as Arianism has become once again, the ancients saw in it the potential to utterly distort everything that Jesus had come to offer the world (a trap which I intend to demonstrate later this week Burklo has fallen into). The same, of course, is true of the other dogma which have formed the core of Christianity for lo these many centuries since Chalcedon.

Dogma, particularly those enshrined in the central creeds, was not established to force conformity of belief on "trivial" matters. They were established precisely because the early church realized how far-reaching the effects of wrong belief can be. That is not to say there isn't some validity in moving toward a greater balance. Certainly the doctrines and stories of Scripture exist almost exclusively to shape behavior, but that they exist should be a reminder to us of just how much our behavior needs shaping. Ideological purity, as Orwellian as that term sounds, serves a legitimate ethical and existential function. Who God is, who Christ is, should have a profound effect on what it means to seek God and to be Christlike. If it doesn't, then our faith has become unthinking, non-specific, and worthless. Burklo encourages spiritual disciplines like prayer, but in a doctrinal void, does he know who he is praying to?

Jesus did not come to reveal to us and reconcile us to the idea of a deity but to a particular, engaged, personal God with particular attributes and about whom particular statements are either relatively true or relatively false. Who that God is and how He has chosen to reveal Himself is the content of doctrine. How He has intervened in human history and the human condition is the fantastic biblical narrative. When who God is and what God has done are set in opposition to how God wants us to live, Christianity implodes.

Customized Christianity: Burklo's Bible

While browsing another blog, I came across an article by Jim Burklo entitled "How To Live As a Christian Without Having to Believe the Unbelievable." Within, Rev. Burklo--the Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, an ordained United Church of Christ pastor, and the author of books on progressive Christianity--lays out his vision of a Christianity which allows the adherent to pick and choose buffet style which beliefs to accept provided a set of core ethical values is maintained.

There is a great deal of commendable observation in Burklo's article, provided of course it is read in isolation of his broader argument. In particular, his assertion that the Bible is not self-aware is a sermon that I never tire of preaching. His recognition that the full scope of Christianity with its manifold traditions, doctrines, and mythology is a hard pill to swallow for many modern seekers is perhaps the defining problem for Western evangelism in today's world. The reminder that Christianity is neither an ancient legal code nor a modern political ideology is among the most necessary messages for American Christians.

Nevertheless and unsurprisingly, I find most of Burklo's points as well as his overarching message to be severely flawed, both by his own internal logic and by legitimate external standards. I am certainly not one to suggest that the Bible should be confused with a history book or, worse still, a science book. Just the opposite. Moreover, I have never been one to use the forms of creeds as tests of fellowship. Barton Stone would turn over in his grave. I admit a great deal of latitude in recognizing and drawing conclusions from the human components of Scripture, at least by majority Christianity standards. With all that said, however, I have the following objections to Burklo's vision of Christianity.

1. Burklo mistakenly implies an oppositional relationship between believing creeds, doctrines, and "fantastic stories" on the one hand and living like Christ on the other.
2. Burklo fails to make any meaningful distinction between essential and non-essential data in Scripture when suggesting what might be disregarded as non-factual.
3. Equating the "divine spark" in Christ with the divine spark in all is idolatrous, anachronistic, unbiblical, and reenforces the need for the Christological dogma found in the creeds.
4. The desire to focus only one what Jesus said and not what he did is self-defeating.
5. Burklo confuses ethics with religion, and thereby fails to grasp the comprehensiveness of Jesus' mission.

I will treat each of these more fully over the next few days, hopefully with uncharacteristic brevity, with the intent of moving toward a Christianity that can be forward thinking without divorcing itself from its past and, equally importantly, away from a Christianity which is comfortable with sentiments such as, "If [doctrines] don’t make sense to you, don’t worry about them."

Anarchy in May: Jesus on Ethics

The following is part of the Anarchy in May series which examines Christian anarchism and quotes prominent Christian anarchist thinkers. For a more detailed introduction and a table of contents, please see Anarchy in May: Brief Introduction and Contents.
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We began this investigation of Christian anarchism with a brief definition of the idea that stressed, in part, the necessity of all human structures of power to perpetuate themselves through immoral means. This observation about the intrinsic violence in government has often been the cornerstone for anarchist thought, and so I would like to conclude the series--on this final Wednesday in May--by quoting by far the oldest and most important anarchist text: Matthew 5. Unlike Eller, I shy away from calling God the "Primal Anarchist," because Christian anarchism is only anarchic with regard to human powers. God, therefore, is not an anarchist but the Supreme Archae, the only true and legitimate source of authority. It is with this authority that Jesus ascends the mount and delivers the famous sermon which is the greatest and fullest expression of Christian ethics. Within this sermon, no teaching has come to symbolize Christianity more than teachings at the close of chapter five (with the possible exception of the golden rule in chapter seven), and yet no teaching has been so diluted and distorted in an effort to escape its uncomfortable implications. Christian anarchism makes an effort to embrace those implications and to carry them to their logical ethical conclusions. If I must love my enemies, I cannot wage war against them, and I cannot elect someone else to wage war against them on my behalf. If I must not resist the evildoer, I cannot detain or execute criminals, and I cannot elect someone else to detain or execute them for me. If I must pray for those who persecute me, I cannot legislate that persecution away, and I cannot elect someone to legislate it away for me. No amount of ethical or exegetical contortionism has ever been able to convince me that the following means anything other than what it appears on its face to mean:

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 the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

And lest the interpretation and application of this passage be seen as the invention of a squeamish modern mindset, let me offer a few words of commentary from the second century Christian Athenagoras who, long before Anabaptists and Garrisonians and Tolstoyans, embodied the original spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and appealed to its honest and literal manifestation in the lives of ordinary Christians as the single greatest testimony to the truth of the Gospel. Above logic and apologetics and theology, the authentically lived Christian life confirms Christ:

If I go minutely into the particulars of our doctrine, let it not surprise you. It is that you may not be carried away by the popular and irrational opinion, but may have the truth clearly before you. For presenting the opinions themselves to which we adhere, as being not human but uttered and taught by God, we shall be able to persuade you not to think of us as atheists. What, then, are those teachings in which we are brought up? “I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven, who causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”39 Allow me here to lift up my voice boldly in loud and audible outcry, pleading as I do before philosophic princes. For who of those that reduce syllogisms, and clear up ambiguities, and explain etymologies, or of those who teach homonyms and synonyms, and predicaments and axioms, and what is the subject and what the predicate, and who promise their disciples by these and such like instructions to make them happy: who of them have so purged their souls as, instead of hating their enemies, to love them; and, instead of speaking ill of those who have reviled them (to abstain from which is of itself an evidence of no mean forbearance), to bless them; and to pray for those who plot against their lives? On the contrary, they never cease with evil intent to search out skilfully the secrets of their art, and are ever bent on working some ill, making the art of words and not the exhibition of deeds their business and profession. But among us you will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth: they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbours as themselves.

Activism vs. Quietism: Where Anarchism Falls

The following is part of the Anarchy in May series which examines Christian anarchism and quotes prominent Christian anarchist thinkers. For a more detailed introduction and a table of contents, please see Anarchy in May: Brief Introduction and Contents.
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As is so often the case, the question of whether Christians are to be quietists or activists presents a false dichotomy. It is one, nevertheless, which has powerful rhetorical force. There are few, if any, legitimate quietists left in the world, and those that do exist have a relatively muted voice in the public discourse (unsurprisingly). The specter of quietism, however, looms large because any time anyone expresses any pessimism about the ultimate efficacy of human effort—divinely empowered or otherwise—they are immediately labeled as quietist heretics and left to scramble for some other justification for Christian service to society.

There is some value in this, admittedly, because quietism is antithetical to the Gospel. For our purposes here, let quietism be defined as the belief that because humanity is incapable of achieving the aims of the Kingdom by its own activities, such activities are meaningless. How can this view stand up to Scripture? Jesus came to announce the imminence of the Kingdom and with this made a clear effort to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and set the captive free. In enjoining that his disciples do the same, Jesus made impossible any honest attempt at quietism.

But activism is no less futile and no less incompatible with the true message of the Gospel. Activism is just as destructive if we understand it to be the belief that we have been tasked with the Kingdom purpose of feeding the hungry and therefore must believe it is possible and pursue as an end the total elimination of hunger by human effort (with the same being true of healing the sick and setting the captive free). Such a hope and such an effort is not only the height of human pretension, but it has always invited Christianity to align itself with decidedly unchristian forces pursuing the same ends—because, of course, it is the temporal end of defeating biological hunger which is falsely kept in the forefront.

Anarchism, properly understood, provides an alternative social ethic. Unfortunately, the temptation toward quietism is great for anarchists, and accusations of quietism make the temptation toward activism even greater. Rightly employed, however, anarchist thought invites Christians to take the possibility of achieving total implementation of the Kingdom out of the picture. In fact, at the heart of anarchism is both a hearty pessimism about human ability to achieve anything, especially the aims of the Kingdom, and the eschatological mindset which makes attempts to achieve those aims nonsensical anyway. What Christian anarchists are left with is a clear command to engage in social ethics without any confusion about whether or not society can be redeemed through our efforts.

Instead, the anarchist social ethic—active without being activist—insists that the hungry are fed as a critique of contemporary human (and therefore futile, transitory) structures of power and as a witness to the church’s proleptic experience of the eschatological Kingdom. We feed the hungry as a condemnation of a world which has refused to feed them in spite of protestations that it is within their power and as an invitation to the hope that there is a God who can make good on His promises. With this in mind, quietism can be ultimately rejected as a false Christianity which, in neglecting its social duties, is in fact neglecting the very proclamation of the Gospel, the living homily which calls people out of the flawed, oppressive, and dying world and into a community oriented toward the perfect, liberating, and eternal Kingdom. At the same time, this social ethic can never follow activism down the path of unholy alliance with the coercive and incompetent methods of secular attempts to solve social problems out of a misguided, optimistic, and ultimately idolatrous humanism.

This is not to say that Christians cannot or should not praise or even participate in efforts toward social justice out of some vague judgment that Christians can only be involved in Christian charities. (Although, if Christians were doing social justice right, it would be everyone else who would be coming to us to get involved and not the other way around.) It merely means that the social ethics enjoined by Christ and incumbent upon all Christians are not an end unto themselves to be pursued by any means and with any company. Almost more importantly, the social aims of the Kingdom are certainly and necessarily beyond the scope of human power to achieve, and any confusion on that point is an invitation to idolatry: the belief that if we just work hard enough, there are human solutions through which every little African baby will be cured of AIDS and every American can have health insurance and all God’s children can eat their fill of organic, free-trade flaxseed burgers. We pursue social justice not because we can achieve it but as a testimony to our participation in a kingdom and commitment to a king Who, greater and more faithful than human governments, can do all we ask or imagine.

J. W. McGarvey: On Repentance

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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In all likelihood, the title of McGarvey’s sermon “Conditions of Forgiveness” would have chaffed against many nineteenth century Christians the way that it would grate on modern ears. No one likes the idea, much less the explicit language, of conditional forgiveness. We prefer to think of salvation in terms of “a free gift,” without delving too deeply into how the offering and the reception of that gift might play out practically. In truth, however, McGarvey’s points are not all that radical and are probably less so by modern standards than nineteenth century ones. His three conditions of forgiveness are faith, repentance, and baptism, and he makes very clear that belief that “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” is the bedrock on which the other two rest. He makes clear, both in this sermon and the following sermon (“Faith,” which was treated in the previous entry), that he falls well within the bounds of Protestant sole fide dogma.

McGarvey insists, nevertheless, that faith must be an active faith. Just as in faith, Enoch walked with God, Noah built his ark, and Abraham uprooted his family, the faith of the Christian must be productive or else, in the words of James, it is dead. In view of this, he launches proudly into what amounts to a month long defense of his belief that faith must manifest itself in practice. Even to an audience of Disciples who must have largely shared his beliefs about the necessary outgrowths of faith, McGarvey admits that nothing is more difficult than translating that belief into action:

The greatest obstacle to the salvation of men is the obstinacy of the human will. It is not very difficult, in this country particularly, to induce men to believe the Gospel--to plant faith within the soul. Indeed, we may say it is difficult in our blessed land for a man to be an unbeliever. Multitudes of men try to be, and fail; and some women do the same. And even when they think that they have succeeded in persuading themselves that there is no truth in the Gospel or in the Bible, often, when they come to face death, their unbelief vanishes, and they find themselves among the number who believe and tremble. Neither is it very difficult to persuade men to be baptized, when they become penitent believers. I have never yet met with a person, who was a genuine believer and sincerely penitent, that raised any question about being baptized. They are ready to go where they are led.

The difficulty is to induce them to repent. I have often, in my preaching experience, studied and prayed and reflected and read, to find some way by which I could have more power in inducing people to repent. I would rather have that power than all the other powers and gifts that could be bestowed upon me as a preacher. But we modern preachers need not be discouraged, I think, on account of our weakness here, because we find, on reading the Gospels, that our Saviour experienced the same difficulty. When He was bidding farewell, or about to bid farewell, to Galilee, where the most of His mighty works were done, and upbraided the cities whose people had heard Him most, it was not because they did not believe; it was not because they refused to be baptized by John; but it was because they did not repent. With all the tremendous efforts that He had put forth to bring them to repentance, He had failed. Not surprising, then, that there should be found the same difficulty in the way of modern preachers.

The same is obviously true in our own day, and McGarvey’s specific critiques of America still ring true. The profession of belief continues to be widespread, and many would argue (though with diminishing success) that it is difficult to be a genuine atheist in American culture. There is an abundance of faith in the States, at least faith defined as a profession of belief. What Americans lack—and what perhaps all Christians have struggled with—is manifesting that belief in practice. Looking at Jesus’ critique of the unrepentant Galileans, McGarvey imagines that much the same criticism will be made of America. That is why he concludes “that this city, and this State, and this country of ours, are the worst places on this broad earth from which to go to hell…Why? Because, if that which has been done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have lived.”

What McGarvey is calling for is not merely proliferation of good works, and any accusation of merit based salvation is either uninformed or malicious. He goes into minute detail, risking the damning accusation of being one who likes “to multiply words,” to explain that good works may be the fruits of repentance and sorrow over sin may be its cause but that the true essence of repentance is a change of disposition. In many ways, his view of repentance mirrors that of his understanding of faith. To come to believe is to shift the mind from confidence in itself about things seen to confidence in God about things unseen. This same transition happens in the will through repentance. It turns from an impulse toward sin to an impulse toward righteousness.

When we take this understanding of repentance as situated less in behavior than in the will, we begin to find grounds on which to approach understanding in Christian ethical discourse. I am by no means one to shy away from the rigorous and frequent examination of moral behavior, and I as often as not disagree stridently with those around who seem to propound a Christian ethos (particularly when it smacks of jingoism, chauvinism, or militarism of any kind). But Christians need to realize that to repent from one’s sins is not to receive an infallible understanding of right and wrong. It is only to commit oneself to pursuing the right instead of the wrong. I will never stop trying to convince my fellow Christians who are politicians or soldiers that their vocations are incompatible with Christian ethics. I will never stop combating the notion that abortion can be morally justified through appeals to exigent circumstances. This is in no sense an appeal for ethical agnosticism. At the same time, we all need to understand that, just as a faith in a common God does not automatically equal a perfect understanding of that one God, our common repentance from evil does not automatically ensure a perfect and common understanding of what the good is to which our will is now directed.

Christ, Jain, and the Nature of Ethics

In one of the previous examinations of Jain and Christianity, there was an affinity observed between the way both Christ and the teachers of Jain both moved the ethic of violence beyond mere action into the heart of the moral agent. In this final comparative look at the two faiths, it will be interesting to notice that this shift in morality beyond the realm of action extends beyond just questions of violence. In fact, that may be the most potent quality of both ethical systems. In each, what makes a good or bad person (or more precisely a moral or immoral person) is more than merely the incidental fact of good or bad actions. The measure of a person is the heart (taken metaphorically) from which flows a wellspring of not only right action but right thought and right disposition. This is exemplified in the Mahavrata, or Five Great Vows, of Jain. These vows--intended as binding on Jain monks and as an ideal for the Jain laity--were handed down by Mahavira and form the core ethical canon for Jain. Briefly stated, they are:

1. Renunciation of violence
2. Renunciation of lying
3. Renunciation of stealing
4. Renunciation of sex
5. Renunciation of attachment/possession

There are a number of interesting points of contact here with the Christian faith. Most obviously, they appear to form a kind of atheistic distillation Decalogue, with its laws against murder, dishonesty, theft, sexual impropriety, and covetousness. Beyond this lies a more basic commitment of each faith to ethical behavior, because both insist that what someone does in this life has eternal repercussions. The most interesting parallel, however, requires a fuller, closer reading of the text of the vows. Take the first vow, as an example:

I renounce all killing of living beings, whether subtle or gross, whether movable or immovable. Nor shall I myself kill living beings (nor cause others to do it, no consent to it). As long as I live, I confess and blame, repent and exempt myself of these sins, in the thrice threefold way, in mind, speech, and body.

Each of the vows conforms to this same basic pattern: "I shall neither speak lies, nor cause others to speak lies, nor consent to the speaking of lies by others," "I shall neither take myself what is not given, nor cause others to take it, nor consent to their taking it," and so on even down to attachment to material things, so that the Jain monk commits never to offer even consent to others being attached to worldly possessions. For the practitioner of Jain, it is not enough merely to avoid theft with the body. Theft must be excised from the mind. It is not enough to merely avoid dishonesty in speech. Dishonesty within oneself or dishonesty with one's actions are no less lies than those which are spoken. Chastity is more than merely going one's whole life without having sexual intercourse. The Jain monk must be chaste not only at his own core, but he must also not incite or consent to impropriety in anyone else.

Taking this final example, we can see that--in a less concisely stated way--Christianity offers a similar picture of ethics. The New Testament presents a very definite picture of an ethical system which is committed to a very narrow definition of sexual propriety. Overemphasized as it is today within the larger scheme of Christian moral thought, it is still undeniable that there is a basic vision of sexual ethics in Christianity which is indisputable: sex belongs between a single consenting man and a single consenting woman within the institution of marriage. This, in behavioral terms, excludes a host of sexual sins, including but not limited to rape, premarital sex, homosexual sex, and extramarital sex. These, however, are only the bodily manifestations of sexual impurity. As with Jain, the chastity extends far beyond that. For Christ, sexual purity is no less important in the mind. In fact, Jesus famously insists that the desire to have sex with a woman in a way which is inappropriate is the same as committing the act. The moment the heart wills the sinful behavior, whatever prevents it from actualizing that will is incidental. What is necessary of thoughts and actions Paul will expand to include speech as well, counseling Christians against engaging in any kind of lewd talk. As with Jain, Christianity takes the commitment to chastity and applies it to body, mind, and speech, or, more appropriately given the obvious merism at work, the entire human person.

The Christian understanding of sexual propriety, as with Jain, extends beyond merely the individual moral agent as well. The New Testament also presents an ideal of Christian behavior which echoes the Jain commitment to neither incite nor consent to sin. In fact, much of the commitment to modesty in Christian ethics should be understood in these terms (though it should be noted that "modesty" in the New Testament has a much broader meaning and application which does not always neatly collapse into a rejection of sexually provocative dress and behavior). Christians commit not only to resisting the temptation to be sexually inappropriate but commit to not being that temptation for others. What is more, out of a concern for communal purity, Paul makes it very clear that Christians cannot offer their tacit approval (their "consent" in Mahavira's terms) to improper sexual behavior in their midst. It must be opposed, at least as it appears in the context of a church.

Christianity suffers (if that is not, perhaps, too strong a term) from not having the comprehensiveness of its ethic as neatly concentrated as does Jain. Nevertheless, it is important for Christians to realize that, for example, a Christian sexual ethic is not just being faithful to one's wife or taking a purity pledge as a teenager. It certainly isn't making sure that you scream the loudest to prevent homosexuals from getting married. It is a holistic understanding of ethics which grasps that God created sex with a purpose, and that the church is a place in which that purpose is both joyously celebrated and fiercely guarded. The same spiritual process of cutting to the heart of an ethical concern and then marveling at the depth and breadth of its impact can and should be carried out on any of the above moral maxims or any moral impulse within Christianity. Taking the cue from Jain, Christians need to realize that a commitment to honesty, chastity, non-violence, charity, or any other guiding ethical principle of the faith is more than just a legal concern, a commitment to compliance. It is a richer statement about the way the world was intended by the One whose intentions formed it. In broadening the understanding of Christian ethics, their scope and their interrelatedness, Christians can better understand that the moral precepts of Christ are not a guidebook to technical propriety but an invitation into a perfect kingdom in which all people are at harmony with themselves, with each other, with creation, and with the Creator.

The Wisdom of Peter of Damascus

In his Treasury of Divine Knowledge, Peter of Damascus presents a more perfect way of reading the Scripture by reminding us that true hermeneutics is moral rather than theoretical and that understanding and application are so paradoxically intertwined as to never be possible in isolation:

For this reason the fathers say that we ought to search the Scriptures assiduously, in humility and with the counsel of experienced men, learning not merely theoretically but by putting into practice what we read; and that we ought not to inquire at all about what is passed over in silence by Holy Scripture...For the Lord commands that we should search the Scriptures above all by means of bodily and moral actions, and in this way find eternal life.

Causality vs. Moral Culpability

The issue of causality vs. moral culpability has been weighing on my mind for months now. The more I mull it over, the more I am startled by our culture's unwillingness to make any effort to change its behaviors and perceptions for fear that it will somehow be an admission of guilt. It is as if, in ignorance, we have collectively walked into a bear cave and been mauled, but rather than agreeing that we should avoid bear caves in the future we keep walking foolishly into them because to stop would be a tacit admission that we were somehow guilty of our own mauling. It’s nonsense, plain and simple.

In conjunction with my reflections on The Obedient Wives Club, I promised to give a fuller discussion of this problem. This is it. My thoughts on this coalesced in response to a story that broke back in March, and I wrote the below then. If facts have changed in the particular case in question, there may be some factual inaccuracies or at least some strokes imprecisely brushed. The point, however, remains the same.

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There is a difference between causality and moral culpability that is critical for the construction and preservation of a healthy society. Unfortunately, this distinction is not only not acknowledge but is feared, with the ultimate consequence being that in an effort to empower victims, we actually ensure a sort of universal victimization. Let me explain.

For every moral event, there is both a morally neutral set of causes which brings about the event and a moral actor who is the cause of the event itself. Moral culpability necessarily resides in the latter, but, with the exception of omniscient and omnipotent beings, the moral actor cannot have exhaustive power over the former category. While the emphasis of my point will be on negative moral actions, let me illustrate this principle first with a positive example. Let us imagine that your spouse needs you to go to the grocery store on a stormy day. When you arrive, you are forced to park at the back of the parking lot. There you see a woman without an umbrella carrying a baby. You go to her and offer to share your umbrella.

From a deterministic perspective, we can posit an infinite causal catena or, if you prefer, an immense chain of cause and effect which stretches back to the beginning of the universe (be it in God or in natural causation) leading to any particular interchange, including the one described above. For practical purposes, however, let us admit a number of more direct and evident causes. First, had it not been raining, there would have been no need either for you to have your umbrella or for you to offer it to the woman. Furthermore, had the woman not forgotten her umbrella, you never would have acted virtuously in offering yours to her. Finally, had your spouse not needed you to go to the store, you would never have encountered the woman.

All of the above, I hope, is entirely self-evident. I hope it is equally obvious that any moral culpability (and here, I intend both positive and negative moral value) belong to you alone as the moral actor. The fact that an obvious causal connection can be seen between your spouse needing groceries and your moral action does not lead you automatically to impute moral virtue to your spouse. Even more nonsensical would be to suggest that the woman with the baby is morally virtuous because had she not been there without an umbrella you never would have behaved virtuously. The recognition of causality has essentially no bearing on moral culpability.

With the principles thus laid out--hopefully in a way that is totally uncontroversial--I will shift to address negative moral action, first in a hypothetical case and then in the actual case that has spawned this musing. Let us take the same inoffensive logic that recognized causality but imputed moral virtue only to the moral agent at the grocery store and apply it to a touchier subject. Imagine now that you asked your spouse to go to the grocery store on a stormy night, New Years Eve to be precise. While driving to the store, your spouse’s is engaged in a fatal collision with a drunk driver. Looking once again at the obvious and direct causes, we can say that had you not needed groceries, it is likely that your spouse would be alive. Had it not been stormy, it is likely that your spouse would be alive. While there may be some impulse in us to blame God for making it rain or yourself for needing the errand run, ultimately we know that moral culpability for the death is on the moral actor alone: the drunk driver.

Let me go a step further, however, and point out that neutral moral causality is not entirely out of our hands. While it may be psychologically dangerous to dwell on this in the actual instance of tragedy, for the purposes of our hypothetical let us admit that we can make a reasonable assumption about the danger of driving on New Year’s Eve (when drunk drivers abound) in stormy weather. Had we been thinking with a level head about the dangers of driving when compared with the pressing need for groceries, we may very well have concluded that it would be better to wait rather than risk grievous injury. We make these kind of decisions all the time, trying to control or predict insofar as is possible for us the various morally neutral causes which may come to bear on our lives. If you don’t want to get mugged, don’t walk down a dark alley at night. It is common sense.

I imagine at this point, if you have bothered to read that interminable build up, that you may be wondering if anything of any real substance will be said, anything which runs against the grain. In truth, I agree that all of the above seems totally innocuous. There has been, however, outrage over a recent story about a young girl who was gang raped by nearly twenty men. More to the point, there has been outrage over some of the coverage of the story which quotes members of the girl’s community describing her dress and behavior as promiscuous. The culprit in question is the New York Times which reported:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”

I am sure that we would all agree that the act perpetrated by these men is truly despicable and that they alone are responsible for it. It would, in fact, be wrong to try to defer any blame for what happened onto this girl or her parents. None of that is in question, and frankly none of that is truly addressed by the quotes which the New York Times reported. It would appear, at first blush, that the members of the community of Cleveland cannot totally ignore causality. It is something which we ought to be able to recognize, perhaps even intuitively and particularly those causes which are within the realm of our control. Certainly, anyone can be raped, and there is nothing to say that an Amish woman locked in an isolated country home with a state of the art security system (if you can even imagine such a thing) still couldn’t be raped. In theory. From the perspective of our experience though, we know that if you go jogging alone at night, you are at risk. We know that if you let a stranger mix your drinks, you’re at risk. And if you let your eleven year old daughter present herself to the public as an object of sexual desire, dressed immodestly and surrounding herself with older males, then you can imagine that she is at risk. Not at fault, mind you, but at risk.

And why shouldn’t we notice that with relation to this story? We tell women never to go jogging alone at night. We tell women not to let strangers mix their drinks. It is that same logic which ought to permit us to say, “Look! Our culture creates permissive parents and children who think that promiscuity will lead to happiness. Maybe that has something to do with a world where twenty men can gang rape a child.” There is nothing in that which says, “She got what she deserved,” nothing which tries to mitigate the legal or moral responsibility of the rapists. It only recognizes causality and suggests a preventative.

In a perfect world, we could behave in ways which are morally neutral without any thought of evil. I could send my wife to the store and would only need to worry about events which were truly accidents. People would stop at stop signs, never drink and drive, and never take advantage of opportunities for sin. Shocking as this may be for the more delicate among you, however, we do not live in such a world. In the treacherous endeavor of navigating through life, it is pragmatic (if not always encouraging) to remember that humanity is a base, degenerate group of semi-rational beasts. For every saint who offers an umbrella to a drenched mother there is a vicious, nasty, brutish scoundrel who cares only for himself. If you don’t want your wives and daughters raped, then don’t send them out on the street in clothing which invites sexual objectification. It is no guarantee, but it is a cause which is within our limited sphere of control. You are all welcome to defend parents rights to be as negligent as they please and a person’s right to be as reckless as he or she pleases, but I dare say that it would be more constructive for us as a society to take instances like these as nauseating object lessons in the necessity of living shrewdly but innocently in a world which demands both.