Christian Ethics Introduced: Religious Convictions in Secular Times

Preface

This preface offers several introductions, the first of which briefly introduces the author. Subsequent paragraphs name and describe ethical concepts helpful throughout this book. To name them here: the goodness of the ordinary; the meanings of ethics and metaethics; the importance of language analysis for ethics; implications of relating American to Christian; and last, how or when moral issues begin.

The Author

I was raised in secular cultures, in both Germany and the USA, where religion was considered to be outdated and irrelevant. Religious belief—so the popular assumption—was left behind when magic and miracles lost credibility. If there was a sense of loss, it reflected a wistful admission that something reassuring was gone, and gone for good. No one in my family or in our neighborhood was a church-goer. Churches continued to offer worship service, though not in the church building but in modest side chapels. I do not recall any expressions of hostility to Christian faith or church-goers. It was simply a matter of time having left religion to the past.

I was greatly surprised, therefore, when attending a worship service simply to find out about religion while serving in the US Army as a young man that I was converted to the Christian faith. The experience that changed me was the awareness of being loved, surprised by love, filled by love. It was not a response to the sermon or a result of having made a decision to believe. Rather it was the awareness of being loved, so profound as to change the direction of my life! The meaning of that event was explained to me as being born again. And the love experienced was ascribed to God’s Spirit. A new vocabulary for me! When my Army enlistment ended, it was clear that whatever God intended for me would require an education. The GI Bill and savings as well as construction work in the summers paid for four years of college. After that, fellowships aided a theological education at Yale Divinity School and a PhD in religious ethics at Yale. And I still was unsure about a professional future. What eventually persuaded me was that my impatience disqualified me for pastoral responsibilities but might be forgivable in academics. My academic profession focused on Christian ethics, mostly in applied contexts such as in environmental responsibilities, in issues of warfare and in moral aspects of death and dying.

The Goodness of the Ordinary

Having survived the hardship years of the Second World War in Germany, the subsequent return to normal was slow. And childhood memories linger. The end of the war meant no longer having to get up in the middle of the night to shelter in the cellar. That bleak room was reinforced with logs to support the ceiling from collapsing from airborne bombings. Three houses down the street a neighbor’s house had a direct hit leaving only a large pit. No one survived. Bread was eventually no longer rationed. Children were no longer sent South by rail to escape bombing raids in the industrial North. Round reinforced bomb shelters offered new peacetime uses. And the awareness grew that we had been saved through it all, saved literally. Yet surviving modern urban warfare in the 1940s and writing about it may not offer a reliable precedent. A future world war will expose countless persons to improved and more deadly weapons. The current logic that human safety lies in mutually assured destruction may be the best argument against the assurance that humans are rational beings. May the current decades of ordinary times continue far into our future.

Key Terms for the Study of Christian Ethics

Every academic field of inquiry creates its own specialized terms. Learning to understand and use such key terms is the price for entering a field of study. The two terms introduced here are ethics and metaethics. Ethics, the word by itself, ordinarily means normative ethics. Normative ethics provides direction and guidance about how to respond to moral/ethical issues. The capacity to detect a moral problem when it occurs is assumed here. Lacking such ability would suggest moral blindness or indifference and indicates the lack of moral sense—a troubling human deficiency. The inclusive assumption here is that humans, by nature or upbringing, can and should function morally. The ability to discern moral right from wrong tends to be included in definitions of personhood.

Metaethics adds a Greek prefix, meta, to ethics. That addition means beyond, after, along with. For example, a meta-text would be a text about a text. It would be self-referring. In the context of ethics, meta-ethics means reflections about the nature and functions of ethics. Christian ethics creates both a new meta-perspective as well as transformed or new responsibilities. Christian ethics constitutes the affirmation of personal faith in the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus. Such faith focuses primarily on probing and practicing the love of God and humans manifested in the person and teachings of Jesus. Christians understand Christian ethics not only as being compatible with biblical traditional ethics (the dual commandments to love God and neighbor) but as fulfilling the spirit of ancient traditional laws. Christian ethics, moreover, not only affirms the spirit of ancient biblical ethics in looking to Jesus as a model of faith and ethics but relies on God/Jesus as sources of strength for fulfilling the demands of the new law taught by Jesus.

Metaethics is primarily a philosophical term. The word ethics by itself is also used in philosophy and usually means normative ethics. In Christian contexts, as here, metaethics is replaced by theological ethics. Theological ethics can function inclusively or widely as a worldview and, again as metaethics, it can analyze and evaluate key ethics terms probing in depth. Theological ethics begins with assuming key confessional affirmations, as a creed. Creedal affirmations then become reference points with which to interpret life theologically and morally. Christian ethics can function inclusively in that it can reason morally in decision-making as well as metaethically when it analyzes biblical assumptions or cultural practices, affirmations, values.

A key goal in theological ethics—and in any philosophy or faith—is the importance of being able to make sense of human life in a wide range of contexts (metaethics). A view of life ought to be substantial enough to provide insights into inevitable moral complexities. A metaethics or a theological ethics should be able to create coherent visions of reality. The intent is to transform complex realities into a coherent, interconnected, and manageable perspective. The Christian faith may be said to create a version of metaethics when it seeks to make human life meaningful by relating everything to the biblical God. When successful, there is something satisfactory in making sense of life as a whole. At best, everything should have a name, an identity and a place in the grand scheme of things. The attraction of metaethics/metaphysics may lie in trying to make sense of most things with common or shared denominators. More modest versions of metaethics may simply attempt to make sense of life, coherently, low-key and ad hoc. Given the complexities of modern life, the quest for coherence may remain a work in progress. Besides, the biblical moral command is not to understand the ways of God but to imitate them, as in love of God and neighbor. Such love need not insist on the ability to understand the complexities of modern life. It only needs to love God back and take its bearings from the character of God—as expressed in the consistent patterns of God’s actions in creating and blessing humankind. Ordinarily, being moral need not require being smart, even if smart has its advantages.

In Praise of Naming

Metaethics can have amazingly creative effects. It names, identifies, probes reality. Any or all reality! One thinks of early discoverers of continents: Their very words of naming bestowed identity and ownership. Naming included claiming. Legal justice relies on naming. Law judges create both the guilty and the innocent by declaration. Human couples marry and their vows in the right context transform them into husband and wife. Parents name their newborns and thereby give them the family name and family membership. We do such and more simply with naming. Creating a livable culture, establishing a meaningful world we call ours, distinguishing moral right from immoral wrong—all of which presuppose metaethics—proceed and rely on naming, identifying and relating. In short, we create our coherent and understandable world with naming. Naming has its limits, however. It may not last forever but yields to new ways of seeing and understanding. Reading old laws may amuse. Rereading our old letters may surprise and take us aback: is that what I actually thought?! One of the advantages or disadvantages of being married and having children is that those closest to us remember what we said and hold us to it. Yet even our best old certainties may fade or fade out. Creating a livable culture, establishing a meaningful world we call ours, distinguishing moral right from immoral wrong—all of which presuppose metaethics (a coherent worldview) proceed and rely on identifying and naming. That is how we create our coherent and understandable world. But beware of letting anyone read your old letters.

Naming can create our reality. That would be noticeable in close human relationships. In the right contexts, clergy naming will officially transform bachelors into husbands and newborns into family members. With judgments decreed in court proceedings, judges may decree citizens into lawbreakers. Or, in my case, create citizens out of aliens. Since meta- means beyond, beyond ethics here, naming identifies, orders and provides a handle or connection with what is being named. To remain unnamed as a human being may result in dehumanization. Thus, in contexts of human slavery, some slaves were recorded as numbers rather than with personal names.

An example of the importance of naming: The inability to make sense of our world with naming can be alarming. An example of such an experience is the not uncommon experience of reality confusion when awakening in a strange place: lacking familiar reference points can elicit panic. When—in a flash—such strange place transforms into reassuring familiarity, one can breathe freely again. Theological ethics proceeds similarly in naming and thereby identifying and perhaps in claiming what is being named.

The Christian hymn, This is my Father’s world, is a form of Christian naming. This hymn is the equivalent of an early explorer naming a continent after his homeland. Except that this hymn lays claim to the whole world. Moreover, this world—read: our world—acknowledges the goodness and reliability of our world. The first verse of that hymn celebrates that assurance with, I rest me in the thought. In contrast, human experience remaining without familiar reference points remains chaotic and alienating. We create names, stories, and relationships with which to ban the chaos of reality devoid of meaning. Christians have reasons for considering this world as our world and for deeming it to be good. God created the world as a blessed home for humankind. The first chapter of the biblical Genesis celebrates biblical metaethics when it declares—no less than seven times—that God judged God’s creation to be good! The value judgment that human life is good because it is created and blessed by our good God is so direct and plain—to Christians—that it borders on a truism. Humankind is created purposefully in the image of the biblical God. That bestows status on humankind and on their claims to this world. We are not strangers to our God.

Metaethics and Verification?

One meaning of the claim that humans are rational is the quest for understanding everything. That includes the meaning of human life. Yet there may be no sure-fire verification of metaethical convictions. Some reassurance might result after having lived one’s conviction for a lifetime. But that also could end ambiguously. So, if asked, we may well invoke human rational limits or offer reassurance of the dignity of the quest for the meaning of life.

The previous paragraph gives voice to the skeptic. It makes the search for existential meaning a solely human quest. In contrast, the biblical story begins with God and offers the conviction that not only did God create humankind but made humans in God’s image. This likeness with God remains indefinite without further identification. But at least the image of God assures Christians that God has designs on and for us. Identifications of the image abound. Assuming that the biblical similarity refers to shared character, likeness may manifest itself in the human ability to love the neighbor and to respond to God’s love and invitation. Since Jesus includes love of enemies (Luke 6:27), that may reduce the crowd of willing imitators. Christians may well be tested by a text that makes the divine character the model for imitation. The reader may well be tempted by such imitation requirements to postpone its advent to a resurrected life. Those who claim redemption already in and for this life may invoke the enabling presence of God to initiate an enabling resemblance here and now. At least for those of us who affirm the Christian Story, God is not a stranger to us.

Normative Ethics

Normative ethics contrasted with metaethics insists on right or moral conduct. This ethics is prescriptive, directing human conduct, distinguishing moral right from wrong and insisting on what is right. The most obvious reason for the need of normative ethics is the fact that humans are not reliably, predictably or consistently moral. That holds for both the religious and the secular. Christian worship services begin with a confession of sins. To be sure, Augustine declared that loving God assured a natural spontaneity to do good, in which those who love God may do as they please. Perhaps Augustine may have had saints in mind. Ordinary mortals, however, secular or Christian, may not only see and respond to important facts differently but begin with different assumptions, motives and eyes.

Distinguishing between metaethics and normative ethics may be more problematic in practice than understanding the relevant definitions. Metaethics (what is or exists) and normative ethics (what should be done) are useful distinctions. Describing the facts of an issue and agreeing on what they are normally precede resolving disagreement. Agreeing on the facts and on their meaning precedes any resolution. Moreover, consensus in describing an issue or contested claim does not assure agreement in resolving the problem. The claim that facts speak for themselves, simply is not reliably true. Humans make facts speak. But it sounds better when the facts speak for themselves and the human interpretive contribution is obscured. Interesting facts may be said to speak in more ways than one. But the actual speaking remains a human contribution.

Metaethics and normative ethics seem easy enough to distinguish definitionally. But when applied to resolving moral issues their definitional clarity may become opaque. For example, human slavery was generally practiced and deemed morally acceptable for centuries. But there came a time when the practice became morally questionable. At that point, the claim that metaethics was merely descriptive broke down. It became no longer possible to restrict the word slavery to its factual or descriptive meanings without moral or ethical overtones or coloration. The word slavery itself took on odious connotations—as it should have from its origin. Human slavery became no longer immune from the charge of dehumanizing persons into property. Slavery, the practice and the meaning of the word, underwent transformation. Now the word slavery functions as immoral for everyone. The word slavery became both descriptive and normative in the sense that slavery was evil and should cease.

Reality to be accessible to human understanding requires naming. Humans name reality and, in the right contexts, establish what the thing named is or shall be. Through naming clergy will officially transform bachelors into husbands and newborns into family members. With judgments decreed in court proceedings judges may change citizens into lawbreakers or aliens into citizens. Since meta- means beyond, beyond ethics here, naming identifies, orders and provides a handle or connection with what is being named. To remain unnamed as a human being may result in dehumanization. As noted, human slaves could be recorded as numbers rather than personal names.

Metaethics creates, discovers and names and thereby provides bearings and makes it possible to create coherence out of chaos. The Christian hymn, This is my Father’s world, acknowledges the coherence, reliability and goodness of our world. The first verse of that hymn celebrates that assurance with, I rest me in the thought. A world that belongs to our Father is a good and reassuring world. Christians have reasons for calling this world our world and for deeming it good. God created the world as a blessed home for humankind. The first chapter of Genesis celebrates biblical metaethics when it declares seven times that God judged God’s creation to be good! Secular metaethics, by definition, lacks such personal interpretations of the origin and nature of this world. It ascribes the coherence and malleability of our world to human creative discovery. Our meaningful world reflects human ingenuity and persistence.

Language Analysis and Assumptions

Attention to words is a responsibility of ethics. Philosophical ethics analyzes the wording of moral/ethical terms to recognize the leading or misleading quality of words. No doubt, those who sell and advertise have long been aware that words do more than communicate and inform. Political speech writers and other wordsmiths will remain in demand. And understanding them may well require the skill of those sophisticated in demythologizing public speech and to distill what was really said.

Language analysis reveals the importance of words. Understanding each other and making sense of the world requires a shared language. Study abroad—where English is not spoken—has been recommended for a liberal education. Naming, at least initially, is how we teach our children to speak, to learn and to find their way. As adults we do much the same, but with more sophistication. Since change in human perception and in learning tends to be gradual, we may only recognize change in ourselves when we reread old letters, newspapers or the like. Re-reading letters from years past can surprise those who wrote the letters. We may well disown our own earlier affirmations.

Word analysis or probing key terms at length is not unlike chemical analysis: one looks for what becomes visible only in closer perspective. Analysis may yield what was not apparent at first sight. One linguistic caution insists on being aware of the context of a word or a text. It may make a world of difference who said or wrote it. When it was said or written counts. Who and to whom it was addressed may matter. Was the speaker also the author? A friend? Were the words spoken in an official or in a private setting?

Language, while learned and acquired individually, is a social or communal invention and may teach us more than we may realize. Over time, our culture may mold us into its own image. Humans seem carried and moved by cultural tides that sweep us along. We speak the language of our times. When time hurries along, we may hasten to keep pace. But even when we intend to resist the flow, who can resist the tide? Thus, an American’s self-understanding may well be individualistic. But such expressions are widely shared, social and prove to be inclusive. We may discover when traveling beyond our national surroundings that we stand out, do not blend in naturally, and are easily recognized and identified as American.

Being American and Being Christian

American Christians may be said to have two identities—American and Christian. Both identities are precious. Or, to use Christian terms, both constitute great blessings. Given the poverty in our world, being born and being raised cannot be taken for granted. In the poorest nations poverty and hardship threaten survival. Becoming American citizens is the hope of countless refugees and was the intent of my parents in leaving Germany for the United States. Indeed, the land of opportunity is not a misnomer. However, becoming Christian was unforeseen and unintended. Secular cultures consider religious faith as a thing of the past.

The previous sentence may mislead. It implies that the key question about God asks whether God exists. The fact of experiencing the presence and love of God makes the question of God’s existence moot. The actual questions focus on the implications of having met God. It seems as if God were standing in the door of one’s life waiting to be invited in. An encounter is not an argument. But it does create implications. For one, it may question the direction of one’s life. And whatever the direction, the singular I adjusts to the plural we.

Trying to describe God’s character—referring to coherent patterns of God acting over time –may well be misconceived. The creature describing the Creator? Yet children feel free to describe their parents. Especially when expressing gratitude and loyalty. And perhaps even complaints may prove to be manageable in a parent/child relationship. Surely mutual love will prove strong enough to sustain the relationship throughout both good and hard times.

Christian ethics relies on God’s character and directions for its own bearings. The basic commandments are to love God and neighbor (1 John 4:7–21; 1 Cor 13:1–13). Christians are invited to share that pattern. Redemption, being forgiven and restored, cannot be self-created. The religious term for such restoration is grace—the term refers to generosity and to being forgiven. Persons experiencing the love of God may emphasize forgiveness of (their) sins. And indeed, Christian worship ordinarily begins with repentance and praying for forgiveness, for good reasons. What may well be missing and odd, however, is the joy of being forgiven. Perhaps relief and the need to start over set the tone and mute the relief over being able to face God again.

Being American and being Christian does not remain a simple addition. Being Christian must transform being American. The biblical God is not a tribal or national deity. Every human being is God’s creation, has standing as God’s child and is protectable with human rights. Human rights are secular in origin. But their protective qualities should be affirmed and welcome into Christian ethics. We hold such truth to be universal and self-evident—as a secular parallel to the Christian conviction that all humans are created in the image of God, kin to God, as it were.

A Parental Analogy

Faith in God is a traditional Christian confession of faith. That confession implies that humans are not lords, that they belong to God in some important sense, that their individual liberty is constrained. To be sure, Christians pledge to serve God when they are old enough to know what they are doing. Nevertheless, being related to God is not only redemptive and restoring, it also obligates. Christians become responsible to God and to each other. They may not always do as they would. Of course, that holds true for being married as well. And adding children will limit one’s liberty further. Surely it is true that Christians are and remain bound to God in ways similar to the bonds between husband and wife or between parents and children. Christians address God as Our Father (of late as Mother as well). Moreover, that bond or relationship lasts for a lifetime. Parents remain responsible for their children. And they use possessive pronouns: my son, my daughter, my child. One hopes that God, too, uses possessive pronouns when speaking or thinking of us. These familial relationships last or should last for a lifetime, and will undergo change from close supervision to a child’s maturing independence. What sustains these relationships for a lifetime is mutual love, respect, help in need. A father or a mother will celebrate a child’s successes, worry when a child is ill, offer care and support when needed—as grown children will do for parents. Christians become personal when thinking or speaking of God. We speak to and with God and call it prayer. We implore and thank God and call it worship. We marvel at God’s ways and call that providence. And, of course, we become impatient with God and grumble. And we incline to call that justified.

Where Does Ethics and Morality Actually begin?

As a prologue to Christian ethics, it may be helpful to consider where ethics, including Christian ethics, actually begins. Dictionaries describe ethics as conduct that observes and follows certain rules and principles. That can be true, but that is not where morality or ethics begin. Morality begins with the awareness that there is a problem. Ethics, whether secular or religious, actually begins with the experience that something is not right.

A visual analogy may help. On entering a room, one may notice that a picture on the wall tilts. It is not hanging straight! And it is not going to self-correct. It remains noticeable and annoying. Someone should set it straight! The similarity with morality lies in noticing that something is not right but is askew morally. Humans are blessed and burdened with a moral sense. Moral perception uses a visual analogy. One sees a moral issue. Not noticing a genuine moral problem may imply poor moral vision. Or, if noticed, no one speaks up, perhaps to avoid offending. In fact, drawing attention to a moral problem requires resolve, not to say courage. Of course, such analogy turns conscience into a moral organ of perception and judging. But conscience is not as reliable as is actually seeing. Moreover, moral wrongs require explanations and justifications. Setting a picture straight does not. The analogy remains too simple. Yet moral perceptions seem similar to seeing.

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What Is Christian Ethics?

Christian ethics may be conceived as the study and practice of moral (specific) and ethical (general) meanings and implications of Christian faith. Christian faith, in turn, is a relationship with God revealed and offered in the teachings, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The inclination to conceive of Christian faith as affirming a coherent set of theological truths or beliefs can mislead in regard to Christian faith. That faith is a personal relationship with the living God. Human personal relationships focus on connections with persons that are acknowledged, relied upon, counted on, celebrated or grieved, but as long as life lasts, they are open-ended. That is, they continue and demand mutual care and respect. And, when genuine and deep, they sustain us. Even if we are hard-pressed to describe or fully understand these personal relationships. Marriage, a pledged lifelong commitment, binds persons to each other, even if the partners would be unsure about describing just what their life together means over the span of decades. Christian faith is a lifelong commitment as well, initiated and sustained by the God who creates us in God’s image and insists on sharing our lives for better or worse.

That God would be personal when it comes to relationships with human beings is good news. After all, that was the point of creating human beings in the divine image. We use family metaphors when it comes to speak about or celebrate God. It is our personal relationships—our conversations, gratitude, expression of needs, complaints, petitions, invocations, celebrations, confessions that describe and express our God-relationship. The inclusive relationships of persons of faith with God is love: God’s love for us and our love for God. For biblical believers there is the additional affirmation that a resurrection and judgment will resume and continue what God began by creating, loving and redeeming humankind.

Christians confess themselves to be loved and redeemed by God. They identify the story of Jesus, his life, teachings, ministry, death and resurrection as God’s good news for humankind. They worship in Jesus’ name and understand themselves to be called to live a life that witnesses to God, honors, and testifies to God’s friendship for them and for all.

But why should they or anyone else study Christian ethics? What follows serves as initial answers. The most important reason for studying Christian ethics in the USA is that American Christians are Americans. That is a good thing in the sense that we belong to a people and a land that is our home. Countless refugees and would-be immigrants seek admission and asylum. In fact, my parents and I were among them in the late 1940s. Ours is a good and promising land, endeavoring to protect and promising opportunities for all.

Whether born here or becoming citizens by choice, US culture, language, laws, traditions, values—whatever makes us all into Americans—penetrates and permeates our identity. That is normal and right in that belonging forms our core and makes us into who we are. However, that also includes the risk that we assume our American ways and values to be both normal and normative. We do not readily recognize our own assumptions regarding what is good and right. Rather we tend to take them to be self-evident. No wonder academic advisors encourage a year abroad that exposes students to new perspectives. Such exposure makes us all aware that our native take on everything is not universal and might in fact be questionable.

The naturalizing process in which we are not just citizens but see, think, speak, and act American poses a special risk for Christians. The USA is now modern and deeply secular. We enjoy religious rights, yet the advocacy of religious social and political values—according to the rules of public expectations—should remain private and personal. To be sure, our money affirms that we trust in God. And every major political speech ends with may God bless America. These remain mere pious flourishes! Ceremonious decorations! For decades US policy has put its faith and confidence in nuclear deterrence with nary a thought about God. The invocation of national blessings to conclude important political speech uses God for a cameo appearance. God will never have played a role in the policy parts of the speech. In politics, Christianity plays a supportive role, more supportive than critical or reforming.

Biblical traditions and faith communities, in contrast, believe in a real, that is, in a living God with critical and reforming features. This God is public and Lord of everything. This God cannot be confined to the private heart. This God holds all nations accountable. That explains why American Christians can and should find themselves with divided loyalties. In a secular nation, biblical faith cannot avoid countercultural dissonance and dissent.

The natural inclination is of course not only to avoid such conflict but to prevent even noticing it. The slogan For God and country can enable a patriotic blending of different loyalties. Loving both God and country may indeed be the right Christian dedication. But only in the best of all possible worlds would that be possible without cost. The phrase can reflect a certain glibness