Tag Archives: Christian ethics

Christianity and the Social Order (Part 6)

Leave a reply

In part six of our series, we are finally ready to address the questions “May Christians argue in the public sphere of a secular state for their preferred public policies? If so, how?”

Inescapable Limits

We are born into already existing societies with long traditions of culture and civilization and finely-woven networks of relationships negotiated over the centuries. There is no possibility of creating a society from scratch. I see no way to escape history and dream up, much less construct, a completely rational social and political order. We do the best we can do where we live and when. I live in the United States of America on the eve of its 250th anniversary. As a citizen, I have access to the means other citizens have to influence public policy. But how should my Christian faith and Christian moral convictions affect the range of policies I support and how may I argue for them? And how may I exercise these rights while taking care not to misuse Jesus’s and his apostles’ moral teachings, given to individual Christians and the Church, by claiming his authority for my public policy preferences?

Reason, Tradition, and Moral Law

Christianity’s moral vision is not utterly unique and other worldly. Indeed, it includes extraordinary virtues, behaviors, and attitudes that cannot be legislated by a state. But it also includes the common principles and moral rules that make human society possible. Peace, order, and justice are Christian as well as universal human values. Christianity prohibits murder, stealing, lying under oath, rape, and many forms of violent, anti-social acts. In arguing for policies that operationalize these basic social rules, Christians don’t need to appeal explicitly to Jesus’s teaching or the kingdom-of-God vision. We can appeal to practical reason, common moral sensibility or a common sense of decency. Moreover, in the USA Christians can appeal to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in legal arguments. Appealing in this way to practical reason we can be more persuasive to a public many of whom do not share our Christian faith. If we appeal to the authority of Jesus to support a policy that could have been supported by practical reason, we may unintentionally leave the impression that the rationality of the policy depends on faith in Jesus. Non-religious people may inadvertently be given an excuse to dismiss the proposal as religiously based. Additionally, such a strategy may provoke needless debates among Christians about the meaning of Jesus’s teaching for public morality.

Christian Realism

We may debate what virtues and vices may realistically be institutionalized in law. As examples, one can make some excellent rational arguments against drunkenness, divorce, fornication, adultery, pornography, and many other destructive behaviors. But society as a whole may not be convinced that making such behaviors illegal is worth the trouble. Even if we limit our arguments to those that can be supported by practical rationality and argue from moral principles recognizable by all people, we need to be realistic about how much restraint on their lust and greed people will tolerate. People welcome laws against murder, robbery, kidnapping, and theft, that is, laws that protect their persons and property. They can see the rationality of traffic and zoning laws. But they resent laws that restrict what they perceive to be their liberties. As we discussed in the previous essay, Christians should know that the kingdom of God cannot be realized in its fulness by human effort. I do not believe that it is our duty as Christians to impose morality on society beyond that necessary for the continuance of civilization. To attempt this is to risk becoming unnecessarily obnoxious to the general public.

Christianized Reason

If Christians need to limit their public policy arguments to practical reason and constitutional law, what difference, then, does being a Christian make in a person’s political involvement? In my view, something like the following may specify that difference.

Christians are being transformed into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18) and liberated from the powers of sin, death, and the devil (Romans 8:1-3). The Holy Spirit places the love of God in their hearts, and they are animated by the hope of the glory of God (Romans 5:1-4). Christians are called to live extraordinary lives, and they have been given the resources to do so:

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator (Colossians 3:5-10)

If they use the gifts they have been given, Christians can be liberated from irrational passions and habitual vices that obscure reason’s proper functioning. Christians may perceive the goodness and rationality of a policy that people blinded by bad habits and irrational passions cannot see. Even if Christians limit their public policy arguments to practical reason understandable by all, the policies for which they argue and the strength of their arguments will be affected by their Christian experience and faith. Christian citizens may be able to help non-religious citizens see what they could not otherwise see because of social pressure, passion, and habit.

Christianity and the Social Order (Part 5)

Leave a reply

In part four of our series on Christianity and the Social Order we explored how Christians will by their existence and day-to-day activities indirectly influence this order. In part five we will pursue the question of whether or not, given the inner nature of Christian faith, some public policies are to be preferred over others. This issue needs to be clarified before we can address the legitimacy of Christians attempting to influence the social and political order directly.

An Introductory Reminder

Many Christians take for granted their right and duty, guided by their faith, to exert through political means a moral influence on the social world in which they live. The only debatable issues are what policies, parties, and candidates are most likely to shepherd society to be more like the kingdom of God envisioned by Jesus. They vote, make campaign contributions, place political stickers on their cars, and run for office—all without asking themselves whether Jesus’s moral teachings warrant or even permit their efforts. I designed this series to examine this unexamined presumption.

Christian Preferences for Public Policies

Believers live in many different forms of political order. It is possible to be a Christian in any of them. My question here is this: beginning with the inherent nature and logic of the Christian faith, are certain public policies to be preferred over others? We are not yet ready to ask whether or not Christians—as individuals or as the institutional church in reliance on Jesus’s teaching—may attempt to influence the state to institutionalize their preferred policies.

The Kingdom of God

Christianity envisions a perfect community, which serves as the ideal by which it measures all other communities, including the church. Jesus taught us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). For Christianity, the ideal society involves universal justice, peace, unity and love of neighbor and love of God grounded in unanimous acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as Lord. Paul explains that the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus aims at Christ’s universal lordship:

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11).

Christians long for the coming kingdom and would prefer that it come sooner rather than later. However, I can detect no reason to think that Jesus or the early church expected the kingdom of God to be realized in its fulness through ordinary political means—war and legislation. It will be God’s work and will arrive only at the end of history when God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Christians should of course prefer that all people freely embrace the values of the kingdom, and in living as light in the world and preaching the gospel, they work toward this end. Given the nature of the kingdom, however, Christians should know better than to attempt to establish the kingdom by political means.

State Church

It seems to me that no Christian should want the state to establish Christianity as the official state religion. Many evils flow from such arrangements: religious persecution, widespread hypocrisy, and the politicization of doctrine. But I think the most basic Christian arguments against church establishment are that the individual act of faith must be free and Christian behavior must arise from sincere love. Legal coercion or worldly advantage are destructive of faith and love.

State Persecution

I don’t see how a Christian could prefer to live under a state that is actively hostile to Christianity. We are called to endure persecution if we must, but we are not obligated to seek it. Surely it is better from a Christian point of view to live in a situation where we can believe and practice our faith freely and share it with others without fear of state persecution.

Freedom of Belief and Practice

The logic of Christianity supports neither coercing people to practice Christianity nor persecuting them for doing so. It seems rather that Christians should rejoice to live within a society where one is free to practice Christianity, some other religion, or none at all.

Next: May Christians argue in the public sphere of a secular state for their preferred public policies? If so, how?

Christianity and the Social Order (Part 4)

Leave a reply

In the first three parts of this series, I argued that Jesus and his apostles addressed their moral teaching to individual believers, not to institutions. I examined three different ways people attempt to apply this moral teaching to the social/political order and pronounced them all failures. Does Jesus’s moral teaching, then, have no relevance to the order and conduct of society? Must Christians keep to themselves and “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60)? Or, is there a way Christians can participate in political society without distorting Jesus’s moral teaching?

No Easy Task

I acknowledge that this is a difficult and controversial subject. I have no illusions that I can resolve issues that have been debated since the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire. Additionally, Christians find themselves living in vastly different societies in every country and among every people in the world. I cannot presume to understand their situation well enough to answer their questions. They must think through their own situations. My thought is stamped with the fact that I was born in the United States of America and have lived there my whole life. The best I can do is methodically think through the question, given my experience. Perhaps I can shed a little light even for those who live in other nations.

Indirect Influence

Unavoidable

The first thing on which to get clear is that Christians cannot avoid having some influence on the society in which they live. To live in a society, we will have to participate in the market place and the workplace. We will relate to the state, at least passively, by abiding by laws and regulations, paying taxes, and many other ways. We will interact with family, neighbors, fellow workers, store clerks, doctors, and many others. As those shaped by the moral teachings of Jesus—if we truly are his disciples—even our ordinary interactions with people will witness to our faith. People will notice our “good lives” and perhaps ask why we live this way (1 Peter 2:12). And some may awaken to the moral law written on their hearts long buried by social corruption.

Good Works

We will exert influence not only by being law-abiding, peace-loving and helpful people but by doing good things beyond what we must. Jesus explained to his disciples:

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:14-16).

From the beginning, Christians have engaged in ministries to the poor, widows and orphans, founded hospitals, build schools, helped with famine relief, and braved plague-ridden cities to care for the dying. Christians don’t do these things to exert social and political influence; yet by displaying true virtue they gradually, indirectly transformed the moral ideals of whole cultures.  And these moral ideals gradually influenced the laws, order, and policies of nations.

Evangelism

Jesus imposed on his disciples a mandate for evangelism. Jesus said,

 All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you (Matthew 28:18-20).

As is obvious from these words, evangelism combines the call to believe the good news, to be incorporated into the church and to adopt the way of life Jesus had taught his disciples. Evangelism speaks a message to the world: repent, believe, receive baptism and learn how to live as a disciple of Jesus. Even though the evangelistic message is not a direct attempt to influence social policy or the individual morality of the general public, it may have an indirect influence toward those ends. The evangelist aims to convert people to Jesus Christ and won’t be satisfied with “making the world a better place.” Nevertheless, the good news of Jesus and the call to a life of high morals may indirectly have this effect.

Next: In part five, we will ask if some political orders, systems of laws and social policies are more compatible with Christian faith, morality and practice than others. If so, can a serious disciple of Jesus actively seek to bring about the order most compatible with Christianity?

Christian Ethics is for Christians!

Leave a reply

In this essay we continue our study of Christian ethics in which we attempt to reclaim Christian moral teaching from political opportunists. In the previous essay I listed five ethical principles that do double duty as conclusions and guiding principles of this series. Today we will address the first two:

  • Jesus and the apostles address their moral teaching to individual persons; not a single line is addressed to an institution.
  • The only entity capable of moral dispositions and actions is the individual human person.

I assume that most of my readers are familiar with the full range of the New Testament. Given this assumption, I will not take the space to document every instance of moral teaching in the NT. Nevertheless, in preparation for this essay I reread the four gospels and the letters of Paul just to make sure that my memory served me correctly.

Jesus

Jesus teaches his disciples about many things: the character of God and providence, the coming kingdom of God, and sincere religious practice. Included in his teaching are what I am calling moral teachings, that is, how we ought to act. The Sermon on the Mount serves as a convenient summary of Jesus’s moral teaching. Among the moral imperatives in that section of Matthew are:

  • Don’t get angry or insult your neighbor.
  • Don’t harbor lust.
  • Don’t divorce.
  • Don’t swear an oath.
  • Don’t take revenge.
  • Love your enemies.
  • Don’t worry. Trust God.
  • Don’t love money.
  • Don’t judge others.

Elsewhere in the gospels Jesus teaches his disciples to:

  • Forgive others.
  • Love their neighbors.
  • Purify their hearts from all hypocrisy.
  • Be humble and serve others.
  • Don’t seek honor from others.

Perhaps no other statement expresses the heart of Jesus’s moral teaching better than Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This command comes at the end of the section wherein Jesus insists, against the universal human inclination, that we ought to love our enemies. The moral actions Jesus commands can arise only out of a character assimilated to the character of God.

Paul

Paul’s writings deal centrally with the necessity in the first decades of the church of clarifying how trust in Jesus as the crucified and risen Messiah and Lord relate to the Law and how Jewish and Gentile believers can be united in one body. But Paul unmistakably continues to teach his converts—especially gentile converts—the moral vision embodied in the Law and the prophets as interpreted by Jesus. We can see this fusion clearly in Romans 13-15, Galatians 5, Ephesians 4 and 5, Philippians 2, and Colossians 3. But I am especially struck, however, by 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul, like Jesus, connects outward actions to the most intimate depths of the heart. God wants our souls! If we fail here, we “gain nothing” (v. 3).

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

This description reminds me of Jesus’s statement in Matthew 5:48 “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In 13:10, Paul even uses the same word “perfect” or teleios to describe the state in which everything is as it should be.

The Individual Christian

In my rereading of the NT, I could not find a single moral imperative addressed to the state as it existed in that day (the Roman Empire) or any hypothetical state. There are no moral instructions about justice or love or mercy directed to public or private institutions composed of nonbelievers or a mixture of believers and nonbelievers. The NT does not read like Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Politics or Grotius or Hobbes or Locke or Rousseau or Hegel or Rawls. Nothing resembling public policy advocacy can be found. When the NT speaks to the world, it says “Repent and believe the gospel.” And even then, it speaks only to individuals, for only individuals can repent or believe. Moral instruction follows conversion.

Indeed, the NT speaks about the church as an institution but only in descriptive terms. When Jesus or Paul or John presents moral instruction to the church it is always addressed to the community not as an abstract institution but as individuals of one mind and heart.

When you consider Jesus’s and Paul’s inextricable linkage of moral action with the depths of the inner person, it becomes clear why the NT addresses its moral teaching to individual persons only. Institutions don’t have hearts. They can’t believe. They can’t love.

Why, then, do so many clergy, politicians, intellectuals, and others, quote Jesus and the apostles as if their moral teaching could be applied directly to the political order or organizations composed of atheists, adherents of other religions, and nominal Christians? Can this practice be justified?

Next Time we will examine three ways people apply Jesus’s and the apostles’ teaching to public institutions and attempt to justify particular public policies.

Pearls, Pigs and Politics: Reclaiming Christian Ethics

2 Replies

6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces” (Matt 7:6).

 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory… 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit (1 Cor 2:7-14).

A New Series

Today we begin a new series. I think I know the general direction and the destination, but I don’t know the exact route. I am guided by the conviction that much of what passes as Christian moral teaching today is really political ideology in religious disguise. That is to say, instead of helping individual believers understand how they ought to live as disciples of Jesus in an idolatrous culture, teachers focus on social/political issues and invoke the teaching of Jesus—and selectively the Old Testament and apostolic teaching—to support particular public policies. Instead of speaking of faith, hope and love, they instruct us about social justice. Instead of calling us to personal responsibility and repentance, they blame the social order for our sins and sufferings and call for political change. In short, they prefer to change the world than change themselves.

In this series I want to challenge this social/political distortion of the gospel and return Christian ethics to its proper subject: the individual person’s character and actions in relation to God and neighbor.

Ethical Principles

Below are some principles that will guide our discussion. I will have to unpack and defend them, but for now I was to assert them for your contemplation.

  • The only entity capable of moral dispositions and actions is the individual human person.
  • Jesus and the apostles address their moral teaching to individual persons; not a single line is addressed to an institution.
  • Christian moral teaching presumes the unity and inseparability of our highest religious duty (to love God) and our highest moral duty (to love neighbor); loving God takes priority.
  • Christian moral teaching demands that the dispositions of the soul and external actions dwell in harmony in the good and right.
  • The believing church—understood as a community of persons not as an institution—should endeavor to embody the perfect community of the Kingdom of God in this world.

The Journey

I hope you will walk along with me as we explore this subject. I am afraid I will have to kick a few sacred cows, step on a few toes, and deflate a few delusions along the way. But my goal is to discern and explain the way of life taught by Jesus and his apostles.

Christian Stoic or Social Justice Christian?

Leave a reply

The Stoics

Like all philosophical schools in the ancient world—Platonists, Epicureans, Academics, et al—the Stoics sought the truths, attitudes and conditions that would facilitate a good human life. They observed that such negative emotions as fear, desire, and anxiety are generated by thoughts about attaining or avoiding that over which we have no control. Clearly, these negative emotions are incompatible with the good life. The best life is one of undisturbed contentment with the gift of existence in our inner being wherein we are always in the immediate presence of good things that cannot change. For the Stoics, there is only one thing and one place over which we have control, that is our own free will. It is the only thing that we can have purely by willing it. The external world, including our bodies, operates under other laws over which we have no immediate control and to which we must adjust. And the free will of other human beings is completely beyond our control because it is totally under their control. To banish negative emotions, we must refrain from desiring to control that over which we do not have immediate and total control. Stoics determine to accept the flow of the events that happen in nature as their lot. These external events cannot threaten or even touch the inner world of free will unless we allow it to do so.

Social Justice Christians

There is a kind of Christian ethics that in effect proposes that we ought to remain in a state of discontent and outrage until we right every injustice done in the world. And because we cannot accomplish such radical changes in the world by appealing to the free will of others by doing good, speaking truth, and setting good examples, these same Christians resort to using force: intimidation, insults, rudeness, disruption, legal action, and, yes, even violence.  Apparently, these social justice Christians think that the coming of the kingdom of God depends on our human efforts to establish their ideal political order that includes everybody, believers and non-believers, saints and sinners. They turn the Stoic understanding of a good human life inside out. What matters most are the external conditions of life: equal access to bodily pleasure, equality of material goods, equality of social respect, and equality of external freedom. Because this level of control over the external social, political, and natural order is impossible, these social justice Christians ensure that everyone is angry, unhappy, fearful, and offended all the time. Not a happy life.

The Christian Stoic

There are, of course, great differences between Stoic metaphysics, cosmology and theology and the Christian view of God, creation, salvation, and providence. Jesus’s teaching concerning God’s providence and against the need for anxiety, however, bears some resemblance to the Stoic doctrine of limiting our concern to the place where we have immediate control, our free will. Jesus tells us to trust and align our wills with God’s will. Also, neither in Jesus’s teaching nor in the rest of the New Testament is there the slightest hint that Jesus’s disciples ought to seek to remake the world into a social justice paradise by political means. That day is an eschatological hope dependent completely on God’s power. To attempt to control the world in the name of God in a way only God can produces only tyranny and rebellion. The only community in which there is a little hope for an approximate realization of the kingdom ethics taught in the Sermon on the Mount is the church, that is, the community of those truly converted to Jesus Christ in their inner being. But history demonstrates that this kingdom community has never become a concrete reality even in the church, the community divinely commission to become such. Much more is it a vain dream that it will be realized in a society of the unconverted!

What is the Christian Stoic to do? First, we must understand that apart from God’s grace in the Holy Spirit our free will is not free in the most radical sense, that is free to know and love the true God above all things. Only God can make God present to our minds so that we can know and love him in this way. But given God’s grace, we can love God in return for his love for us. In loving God above everything else we live free from anxiety about all those things over which we have no control. Moreover, we know that the God who loves us possesses power to control all things for our good.

Christian Stoics know they cannot right every wrong and transform the world into a social paradise. This task is not under their power and therefore is not their job. Their main job is, with the help of God’s grace, to allow themselves to be transformed into the image of Christ. From that transformed inner world they can turn outward to do good, speak truth, and love neighbor and enemy. God may use their good works and words to transform others.

Christian Stoics refuse to be unhappy because the external world does not submit to their control. We have come to know that our primary task in life is purification of our own souls. That in itself is a dauting task and the work of a lifetime.

Is Liberation Theology Christian?

Leave a reply

I am taking a break from my essays on higher education to ask, “Is Liberation Theology Christian?” A few years ago, I would have answered this question, “It depends.” Perhaps that was because I knew it only from books. But now my first impulse is to say “No!” because I find myself surrounded by “liberation” theologians, and I know firsthand where they are coming from. It does not matter what they focused on in graduate school—biblical studies, church history, systematic theology or practical theology—everything is about liberating the oppressed. They’ve multiplied like rabbits. It seems that within the past 10 years, every theology graduate program in America decided that the only subject worth studying is oppression and liberation. Everybody is a social ethicist and a political activist. And you advance your academic career by discovering new classes of oppressed people and ever more subtle ways oppressors oppress their victims.

Before I go further into my complaint, I should probably define liberation theology. Liberation theology is a general term for any system of theological thought that privileges “liberation” as the lens through which it views all the topics usually studied in Christian theology. It evaluates every theological utterance by its tendency to oppress or liberate some group of people. There are no neutral theological statements! Everything is political, and everyone has an agenda. The purpose of liberation theology is to critique theologies that justify oppression and construct theologies that justify the efforts of designated oppressed groups to liberate themselves. It is not to listen to the word of God, repeat it to the church, and obey it.

What kind of oppression does liberation theology have in mind? Not sin, death, and the Devil! These three are the classic oppressors of humankind from which traditional Christianity sought liberation through the gracious saving action of the Father, Son, and Spirit. In liberation theology, the oppressors are human beings and the social structures they create. Liberation theologians work to expose and critique the capitalism, patriarchy, white racism, homophobia, colonialism, transphobia, etc., that they see permeating American society. Liberation theology focuses on political liberation. And it draws on the socio-political analysis of Karl Marx and his contemporary followers often called neo-Marxists. They divide the world into the oppressor classes and the oppressed classes. It’s a very simple analysis of a very complicated world. And from this simple analysis liberation theologians derive a simple theology that divides people into good and bad, guilty and innocent based on group identity. The oppressors can make no defense and the oppressed can give no offense.

What gives these liberation theologies the appearance of being Christian? The simple answer to this question is that they argue that the God of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ always took the side of the oppressed. Liberation theologians select such prooftexts as the Exodus story, some of Jesus’s statements, some of his interactions with the poor and rich, and a few other isolated statements in the Old and New Testaments. They sprinkle these quotes within an already complete system of social and political thought derived from Karl Marx and lead the reader to leap to the conclusion that the whole system springs from the essence of Christianity. But Christianity is completely superfluous to the doctrine. It is added to tickle Christian ears and, frankly, to deceive them.

Why do I say that liberation theology is not Christian? (1) Read any liberation theology you please—feminist, Black, womanist, gay, queer, and Latin American—and you will always find that the subjective experience of these groups is considered a divine revelation as authoritative, if not more so, than Scripture. No reading of Scripture, no matter how obvious to the ordinary reader, will be allow to subvert the “truth” of the subjective experience of oppression. But in any theology worthy of the designation “Christian,” Scripture must be acknowledged as the norm of all theological doctrine and ethics, and to reject this norm is to cease to be Christian. To continue posing as Christian is to lie and deceive. (2) Liberation theology selects one theme within Scripture—liberation—and subordinates everything else to it. Liberation theology does not therefore present the fulness of the gospel or the apostolic teaching; and this distortion through omission is a textbook definition of heresy.

“Dignitas Infinita” (Infinite Dignity) A Recommendation, Part Three

1 Reply

In this post I will conclude my reflections on the just released declaration of the Roman Catholic Church’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on “Dignitas Infinita” (Human Dignity). Below is the outline of the document. Today I will address the bolded point #4.

Presentation

Introduction

1. A Growing Awareness of the Centrality of Human Dignity

2. The Church Proclaims, Promotes, and Guarantees Human Dignity

3. Dignity, the Foundation of Human Rights and Duties

4. Some Grave Violations of Human Dignity

Conclusion

Some Grave Violations of Human Dignity

Under this heading Dignitas Infinita addresses several violations of human dignity:

poverty, war, mistreatment of migrants, human trafficking, sexual abuse, violence against women, abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia and assisted suicide, marginalization of people with disabilities, gender theory, sex change, and digital violence.

In each subsection, the Declaration draws on the theology of human dignity articulated in sections one and two as well as the secularized form stated in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (1948). [For this story, see the first essay in this series.] In my view, these abuses of human rights fall into two classes, although a few embody elements of both: (1) abuses wherein individuals or groups violate the inherent dignity of other individuals or groups; (2) abuses in which individuals violate their own dignity sometimes encouraged or aided by others.

Class One: Violations of the Dignity of Others

In this class we can place poverty, war, mistreatment of migrants, human trafficking, sexual abuse, violence against women, surrogacy, marginalization of people with disabilities, and digital violence.

As I said above, the Declaration draws on the biblical anthropology common to the ecumenical church. But it also wants to speak to those more at home with the secular language of human rights. Except for surrogacy—in which the genetic child of one couple is artificially placed in the womb of another woman, carried to term, and surrendered to the genetic parents—Western secular societies also view the items on this list as violations of human rights and dignity. The declaration condemns surrogacy as violation of the dignity of the birth mother and the child. Both parties as persons of infinite dignity should not be made the objects of a commercial transaction. Children should not be for sale. As for the other abuses of human dignity in Class One, many societies that formally condemn these violations overlook them in practice.

Class Two: Violations of One’s Own Dignity and Borderline Cases

In this class fall abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia and assisted suicide, gender theory, sex change, and digital violence. I will make comments on abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide, gender theory, and sex change.

Abortion is a grave offense against the dignity of the mother and the destroyed child. Abortion is most often justified as the prerogative of the woman, who supposedly has a right to control her own body. Ironically, this assertion appeals to the very principle of infinite dignity under discussion in the Declaration. It perverts an objective, ontological characteristic into a subjective, arbitrary right. And of course, the child is treated as a non-person that possesses no dignity or rights. However, the legitimate right to control one’s body has in view only violation and coercion by another person. But in relation to God, the Creator and one’s ontological dignity as the image of God, no one has a right to use their body as they wish; it is just as wrong to violate one’s own dignity as it is to violate another person’s dignity. Moreover, a woman carrying a child is not dealing merely with her own body. She is responsible to the Creator for the life of another. To treat her unborn child as a disposable thing is a grave violation of human dignity and an offense to the divine Giver of life. It not only robs a human being of life, it also sears the conscience of the mother. Additionally, it involves the assisting medical personnel in serious sin. The Declaration quotes Pope St. John Paul II:

Among all the crimes which can be committed against life, procured abortion has characteristics making it particularly serious and deplorable. […] But today, in many people’s consciences, the perception of its gravity has become progressively obscured. The acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behavior, and even in law itself is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake (Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae (25 March 1995), no. 58).

Advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide often appeal to the concept of dignity as if human dignity consisted of autonomy and independence. But identifying dignity with independence robs dignity of its inherent and ontological status and makes it dependent on a quality that can be lost, gained, or augmented. Suicide, whether self-inflicted or assisted, is not asserting one’s dignity but violating it. Like life itself, human dignity is a gift of God. No one has the right to destroy it.

Gender theory, which makes gender—an infinite scale of gradation of male to female characteristics—completely independent of biological sex. Gender, not biological sex, becomes central to one’s identity. Instead of embracing our God-given bodies as foundational to our personal identities, gender theory disengages personal identity from the created structures of reality. As the Declaration points out,

Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel.

Attempting to change one’s sex through surgery or hormone therapy rejects God’s creative will. It mutilates and destroys the body, which shares in the dignity of the image of God. For the image of God applies not to the soul alone or the body alone but to the union of body and soul. Pope Fransis asserted that “creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created” (Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (19 March 2016), no. 56).

Reflections on Dignitas Infinita

I hesitate to make any comment that sounds like a criticism. For this document is a brilliant and timely piece of practical theology. Allow me respectfully to make two observations that could be perceived as mild criticisms. (1) Like many Papal documents, Dignitas Infinita attempts to bridge the divide—or at least engage in dialogue—between Christian theology and ethics and secular anthropology and ethics. The Declaration’s several references to the UN Declaration on Human Rights (1948) witnesses to this desire. Hence the Declaration betrays an interest in influencing public policy at national and international levels. But the demarcation between what can be known about human beings’ nature and destiny through reason alone and what can be known only in faith in divine Creation and the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not clearly drawn. Hence many arguments, especially those concerning surrogacy, abortion, gender theory, and sex change seem less persuasive, because it’s not clear to which norm the document is appealing: to a self-evident natural law that can be known by reason alone or to norms grounded only in faith in divine revelation.

(2) My second mild criticism derives from the confusion described in the first. The concept of dignity, that is, infinite dignity, makes sense only within the biblical framework; for apart from a relationship to God nothing about humanity can command infinite respect. When cut loose from its grounding in Christian faith, dignity loses its precise meaning and can easily be perverted into the autonomy of the self. The moral force of assertions of human dignity is very persuasive when applied to respecting other people, but in application to oneself they become subject to confusion. The concept of dignity, then, needs to be supplemented with a concept of obligation to God. We are obligated to the Creator to be thankful and respectful of his gift of ourselves, body and soul, and the bodies and souls of others.

Interlude: Why Bother?

3 Replies

Today I want to step back from the current series (The Road to Moral “Progress”: From Obedience to Self-governance to Autonomy and Beyond) and address a question some of you may be asking:  Why bother with so much history? Why approach the contemporary moral climate in such a roundabout way?

Why History?

As many of you know, I am very interested—bordering on obsession—in how certain very powerful segments of contemporary culture came to think as they do about morality. But some readers may be wondering why we need to understand the historical origins of the crazy ideas that emanate from university social science, education, and literature departments. What does it matter from where Hollywood and Silicon Valley got their twisted values? Whatever their origin—you may be saying to yourself—these ideas contradict the reason and common sense of every right-thinking person: everyone knows that we are born male or female, men can’t have babies, and people are not born equal in every respect.

Indeed (you may concede), it is helpful to realize that progressive philosophy presupposes that the goal of human progress is liberation from all limits. But we don’t need to study the entire history of modern moral philosophy to see that striving toward this goal is futile. We already know that achieving it is impossible! And if the goal that drives a historical process is impossible, we can be sure that this striving has been misdirected from the beginning. So, why trace out how it went wrong?

Good Observations…

I admit that you don’t need to know the historical origin of a bad idea to see that it is illogical or immoral or empirically false or impractical. It may be only curiosity that leads some of us to ask how otherwise intelligent people could believe that a person can be born in the “wrong” body or that it is morally permissible (or even imperative) to give female hormones to an underage school boy (with or without parental consent) or to attempt by way of surgery to transform a female body into a male body. Perhaps so. But there may be more at stake than merely satisfying a curiosity.

I see your point, but consider that these ideas appear absurd to you only because you hold to a different way of looking at the world. And your worldview also has a history. You believe in the God revealed in the Bible: the all-knowing, omnipotent, all-wise, Creator of heaven and earth, the author of the moral law, and the hope of the world. You were taught to accept the limits imposed by the Creator, to trust God even when you do not understand God’s ways, and to worship God alone. Judged by this worldview, the modern progressive view—that we ought to aspire to divine status—appears not only rebellious, disobedient, and immoral but absurd, insane, and suicidal! Viewed through this lens, we see that the divisions in contemporary culture result not merely from the clash of a few contradictory moral ideas but from the collision of two diametrically opposed worldviews.

You may suggest, then, that the most reasonable response to the errors of progressive culture is to preach the Christian gospel and explain the worldview implicit therein and call for conversion. For only then can people see what is wrong with progressive moral philosophy. I agree with this strategy up to a point. Each misguided moral perspective makes sense only when placed within the complete progressive worldview. Likewise, Christian morals make sense only within the Christian worldview. Challenging each progressive absurdity individually will probably be ineffective. Complete conversion is needed.

To share Christianity effectively with some people, however, it may be necessary to explain the historical origins of the progressive worldview. Most progressive-leaning people are not postmodern philosophers or social science professors who incessantly quote postmodern philosophers—usually, I might add, without understanding them. They are not Hollywood actors or tech industry workers who say whatever they need to say to fit into their corporate cultures. Nor are they politicians who do whatever it takes to hold together a progressive coalition. For the most part they are college educated professionals whose main impulse is to conform to the trends dominant among other college educated professionals. Their moral beliefs are an unstable mixture of progressive and traditional ideas.

Reasons for Studying History

How might learning about the historical origins of contemporary progressive philosophy help people to rethink their progressive ideas? Three ways come to mind:

1. It dispels the illusion that progressive ideas are self-evident.

When everyone around us voices progressive ideas, the rewards for conformity are great and the punishment for nonconformity is severe. We have little motivation to question them. But the study of history demonstrates the contingency of progressive morality. Chance and circumstance—not merely reason and goodwill—contributed to the construction of progressive culture. When a way of thinking loses the aura of self-evidence, we are forced to ask the question of its truth.

2. Understanding the genesis of the progressive worldview frees us to ask where it might lead in the future.

I admit the difference between historical development of an idea and the logical unfolding of an idea. Logic is timeless; history is temporal. History does not necessarily follow the path of logical implication. Chance and human freedom and caprice also influence the flow of history. Nevertheless, there is a certain resemblance between logical and historical movement. Each generation tends to modify or contradict or extend the ideas of preceding generations. One generation argues that belief in human dignity demands freedom from kings and priests. The next generation demands freedom from all traditional moral rules, and the next asserts freedom from God and nature. What’s next? Where will it all lead?

3. Historical study places before us a decision between two starkly different worldviews and ways of living.

As I said above, most people hold to a mixture of progressive and traditional beliefs. Studying the origin and historical development of progressivism demonstrates that these two types of beliefs are incompatible. Progressive moral values presuppose a progressive worldview and traditional beliefs presuppose a traditional worldview. The history that led to the creation of contemporary progressive culture gradually replaced God, Christ, and creation with humanity, science, and technology. Perhaps the study of history will help some people see that these two worldviews are incompatible. You can’t have it both ways. You have to choose between them and reform your life accordingly.

The LGBTQ+ Question: Debated or Debatable?

2 Replies

“In the beginning was the Word…and the Word became flesh and lived among us.” (Jo 1:1-14). This Word could communicate the truth about God because “the Word was God.” God’s Word is truth by nature because it is God by nature. In contrast, our words are not by nature God and hence not by nature truth. We are subject to error. At best, words communicate accurately the fallible thoughts of the human mind from which they come. I say “at best” because the process of choosing the right words to communicate our thoughts is also fallible. Often, we are not clear on what we think, and even if we possessed inner clarity of thought, experience teaches us that words cannot perfectly reproduce our thoughts in the minds of others. Not only so, others hear our words through the filters of their own vocabularies and experiences.

Given these challenges many thinkers have observed that open-ended, personal conversation is the best way for two minds to achieve mutual understanding. The back and forth, trial and error, proposal, correction, and counterproposal method of dialogue gradually creates mutual understanding. Writing, podcasts, public speaking involve one-way communication. They are highly subject to misunderstanding, distortion, and caricature. Ideally, we would engage in conversation with everyone we wish to understand. Because the ideal is unachievable, we have to learn to read and listen carefully, analytically, and critically to one-way communications.

An author whose book I read recently drew an inference I think is unwarranted. They based that inference on the verbal similarity between two words. This author observed, quite correctly, that over the last 10 years traditionally evangelical publishers—Eerdmans, Zondervan, and Intervarsity—have started publishing books on both sides of the debate about the Christian acceptability of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living. So, the subject is debated among self-identified evangelicals. But the author inferred from the fact that the moral status of people who identify as LGBTQ+ is debated that the subject is now debatable within Bible-believing, evangelical churches.

I do not think this inference is warranted. To say that an issue is debated is to make a statement of fact apart from any judgment about its status in relation to Christian doctrine. To say that a subject is debatable is to make a claim about its legitimacy as a viewpoint that may be held under the umbrella of Christian faith. For sure, to label a matter debatable takes no position as to which side is correct. But it envisions a state in which churches must tolerate and listen to both parties in the dispute with an open mind.

Within the history of the church many issues have been designated debatable, disputable, or indifferent matters on which believers may disagree without breaking fellowship (See Romans 14 and 15; Acts 15). But which matters were debatable was itself debated! This debate (about which matters were debatable, disputable, or indifferent) turned on the distinction between matters that were essential beliefs, scruples, and practices and those that were in some way adjunct. In the end, however, the church had to make judgments, come to consensus issue by issue, and enforce those decisions as community standards.

With regard to the debate over the Christian acceptability of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living, it will take more evidence than the mere existence of a debate to prove that it is now a debatable matter within Bible-believing churches. This change from a settled to a debatable question would overturn a consensus that is unanimous in the Bible and the universal church until recently. The mere presence of a few authors that dispute that consensus does not warrant breaking with that settled teaching. They would need to convince the church that it has misread the Bible and held to a false, cruel, and destructive teaching for 2,000 years.

In my view, the claim that the issue of LGBTQ+ acceptance is a debatable issue because it is now openly debated within evangelical circles is a rhetorical ploy designed to grant legitimacy and gain a hearing for a viewpoint that has not earned that legitimacy the hard way. Hence the debate today is not only about the Christian acceptability of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living, it is a debate about this issue’s debatability. And the “debatability” of an issue cannot be decided by a few authors’ assertions but is a judgment that only the church can make. In the meantime, the church—given the prima facia teaching of Scripture and the 2,000-year consensus—has every right (and in my view is obligated) to debate with this new teaching as it does with other error and heresy.