Ethics

Approaching Moral Decisions

Arthur F. Holmes

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780830875092
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

With over 60, 000 copies in print since its original publication in 1984, Ethics has served numerous generations of students as a classic introduction to philosophical ethics from a Christian perspective. Over the years the philosophical landscape has changed somewhat, and in this new edition Arthur Holmes adjusts the argument and information throughout, completely rewriting the earlier chapter on virtue ethics and adding a new chapter on the moral agent. The book addresses the questions: What is good? What is right? How can we know? In doing so it also surveys a variety of approaches to ethics, including cultural relativism, emotivism, ethical egoism and utilitarianism--all with an acknowledgment of the new postmodern environment.

1
 
The Moral Revolution

In the 1960s a moral revolution that had been brewing for decades burst upon us. Some of it was highly commendable, especially the refusal to accept abuses of political, economic and military power. But in rejecting establishment ways, it also changed accepted sexual morality, it took individualism to narcissistic extremes, and it placed in jeopardy existing ideals for marriage and family, work and government. This in turn has produced conservative reactions that polarize us both morally and politically over issues like human rights, criminal punishment and legislating morality, as well as sex and war.

In this mixed-up environment the Christian has to pick a way. Again and again the old groupings of left and right no longer seem helpful. Sloganeering and dogmatizing settle nothing, nor do emotional tirades and protests really help us sort things through in a thoughtful, biblical fashion. If we are to find our way and play a constructive role in the dialogue of our times, we need to understand the theoretical foundations of current views and to develop a Christian ethic that can be applied to current concerns.

An Introduction to Ethics

This book attempts to contribute to that end. It is a Christian introduction to ethics, to both ethical theory and moral application. Ethics is about the good (that is, what values and virtues we should cultivate) and about the right (that is, what our moral duties may be). It examines alternative views of what is good and right; it explores ways of gaining the moral knowledge we need; it asks why we ought to do right; and it brings all this to bear on the practical moral problems that arouse such thinking in the first place.

Plainly this differs from the way other disciplines address moral problems. Sociology and anthropology, as social and behavioral sciences, describe human behaviors and the functioning of social institutions, trying to explain them causally in the light of generalized theories about human and social behavior. For many centuries these disciplines, along with political science and economics, were regarded as branches of philosophy, extensions of ethical theory. But as empirical sciences, their interest in moral problems has focused increasingly on the causes of particular problems and on the social consequences. While ethical discussion and moral action are deeply indebted to them for this, ethics as such is interested less in what people in fact do than in what they ought to do, less in what their values presently are and more in what their values ought to be. In that it addresses the truth of our moral beliefs, it is a “normative” discipline.

Ethics is in many regards more closely related to religion than to social science, and the Judeo-Christian tradition is one of the main historical sources of the moral heritage of the West. Accordingly this chapter will ask what ethics contributes to Christian thinking and, reciprocally, what Christianity contributes to ethics. Chapters two through five examine some widespread views that appear unsympathetic to a Christian ethic, some of which deny that moral beliefs can be true at all, while others limit themselves to weighing the observable consequences of our actions. In chapters six through eight, I outline a proposed Christian ethic in dialogue with other ethical approaches. This proposal is applied to four representative moral issues in chapters nine through twelve. The final chapters bring us back to the relation of religion to ethics as they discuss moral agents and their character rather than moral actions: not what we should do, but the kind of persons we should be.

The Bible and Ethics

All religions are concerned with the promulgation of certain values and the cultivation of specific virtues, and most religions try to transform aspects of moral behavior. Religion and morality are closely linked, and Christianity is no exception to this. It too identifies values to be propagated and virtues to be cultivated; and it too speaks to various kinds of behavior. Whether our point of reference is the Ten Commandments, the book of Proverbs, the Old Testament prophets, the Sermon on the Mount or the letters of Paul, whether it is the historic teachings of the church or contemporary statements by ecclesiastical bodies, both Protestant and Catholic, the connection is plain. Religion comes hand in hand with an ethic.

Yet this observation may make some believers uneasy, as if a conflict of interest exists. If I have a religious commitment, why do I need an ethic? If I practice love, what more can anyone want? And perhaps most of all, if my religion teaches morality, what else can philosophical ethics contribute? Isn’t the Bible alone sufficient? Might not anything further muddy the waters? Might it not lead us away from true paths of righteous living?

Of course, one answer may well be that we need to see what biblical morality can contribute to ethics, not just what ethics contributes to biblical Christianity. Both questions in fact face us, but I want first to confront our original question head-on.

The Contribution of Ethics

What can biblical morality gain from philosophical ethics? One obvious response is that the Bible gives us a vast repertoire of ethical material in different literary forms and from different historical and cultural contexts. We have a succinct summary in the Ten Commandments, extended casuistry (case applications) in the Mosaic code, epigrammatic wisdom in Proverbs, reflections on life’s meaning and values in Ecclesiastes, preaching of social justice in the prophets, down-to-earth homilies in the Gospels and systematic statements in Paul’s letters. To gain the overall picture, not only on particular topics but on whatever all-embracing principles there may be, we must understand each part in relation to the whole. If then we want to apply biblical morality systematically to the problems of our day, we need to find within this immense potpourri some logical structure that will enable us to follow the biblical implications further than what is explicitly stated. The task of theological ethics lies in exhibiting the structures implicit in biblical thought, but in doing so theology inevitably learns from philosophical efforts at shaping an ethic.

Another response to the believer who questions the need for ethics is still more basic: Christians do not claim that the Bible is exhaustive, that it tells us everything we can know or can benefit ethically from knowing. It is silent about many things, including many moral problems we face today—problems in bio- and medical ethics, for example, problems about responsibility to unborn generations and about population control. Someone may say that we should draw our conclusions on such matters from other things the Bible says, perhaps from more general principles. But then we have invoked a structure of ethical thought that distinguishes general principles from more specific matters and that employs modes of moral reasoning. This is precisely what ethical theory is about.

Again, we are confronted at times with moral dilemmas in which every available option is morally undesirable and a decision cannot be avoided or postponed. Suppose that in Nazi-occupied Holland you are hiding Jews in your attic and the Gestapo comes searching for them. Do you lie to save innocent lives, or do you forfeit innocent lives to save lying? Whatever you do will violate some moral rule or another. How then do you choose, and to what extent are you blameworthy? Ethics addresses such questions about moral choices and exceptions to moral rules, and about the extent of moral responsibility.

Someone might respond that it is enough to love God with heart and soul and to love my neighbor as myself: then I can safely do as I want; I am free. But are love and liberty enough? Christian liberty is not the license to do as I want, but is rather being liberated to live within what God’s law requires. And love alone does not tell me what I ought to want and to do in every kind of situation; it still needs (and surely wants) instruction in righteousness of the sort the Bible gives. If I need and want more explicit moral guidance than liberty and love alone provide, then I will use every resource which God provides.

Scripture, of course, is not God’s only revelation of himself and his will. The first three chapters of Romans are quite explicit that, in addition to God’s special revelation of his law to Israel, we are accountable for a general revelation in the creation itself, and the Christian can rightly regard philosophical ethics as an attempt to understand that general revelation. Of course, not all ethicists see their task that way, and this fact often distorts how they interpret moral matters. The Christian will therefore want his philosophical and biblical ethics to go hand in hand, the biblical informing the philosophical wherever possible, and the philosophical serving the biblical.

The Contribution of the Bible

What does the Bible contribute to philosophical ethics? I shall develop some of these suggestions further in later chapters, but for the present we may note the following biblical input into ethics.

1. It gives a theological basis for our moral obligation, in terms of our obligation to do the will of God, the Creator and Lawgiver. (We shall return to this in chapter eight.)
2. It gives an account of the relation of morality to God’s purposes in creation, our perversion of those purposes through sin and our restoration to righteous living by the grace of God. (This will guide chapters six and following.)
3. It teaches us the principles of justice and love which describe God’s character and should also characterize us (chapters six and thirteen).
4. It reveals the moral law of God, declaring duties in many areas of human life. This is summarized in the Ten Commandments and spelled out by precept and example throughout Scripture. (See chapter seven.)
5. It demonstrates that from love for God and gratitude for his mercies come the motivation and dynamic for moral living (chapters thirteen and fourteen).
6. It depicts the ideals and promise of the kingdom of God that Christ came to establish, first in our hearts and lives and eventually throughout the entire world. (See chapters six, nine and eleven, for example.)

What we can hope to gain is an ethical structure that draws the many aspects of biblical morality into a coherent whole and guides our thinking about moral issues in other than biblical times and cultures. We can learn to distinguish universal and unchanging principles that transcend cultural and historical differences from case applications in culturally variable situations. We can look for ways of addressing philosophical concerns in ethics and of entering into dialogue with other approaches. And this in turn can contribute to apologetics an awareness of why and how a Christian ethic does and does not differ from its non-Christian counterparts, and wherein it can take us further.

2

Cultural Relativism

Ethics, we have said, is not an empirical science concerned with explaining existing moral practices, but a normative discipline interested in the truth or falsity of moral beliefs. This difference sometimes leads to conflicting points of view. Compare, for instance, the ethicist’s emphasis on true moral beliefs with the following statement by anthropologist William Sumner.

It is of the first importance to notice that, from the first acts by which men try to satisfy needs, each act stands by itself, and looks no further than the immediate satisfaction. From recurrent needs arise habits for the individual and customs for the group, but these results are consequences which were never conscious, and never foreseen or intended. . . . A higher stage of mental development must be reached, before they can be used as a basis from which to deduce rules for meeting, in the future, problems whose pressure can be foreseen. The folkways, therefore, are not creations of human purpose and wit. They are like products of natural forces which men unconsciously set in operation, . . . which are handed down by tradition and admit of no exception or variation, yet change to meet new conditions, still within the same limited methods, and without rational reflection or purpose.[1]

Notice two implications of this statement that challenge the ethicist’s emphasis on moral truth. First, moral practices vary with and depend on human needs and social conditions. Second, moral attitudes and practices are basically noncognitive responses rather than the product of rational direction. These views are often extended beyond primitive folkways to modern cultures and their moral codes. This chapter examines the first view, namely, cultural relativism; the next chapter will look at the second view, the emotivist interpretation of ethics.

Cultural relativism is the view that moral beliefs and practices vary with and depend on the human needs and social conditions of particular cultures, so that no moral beliefs can be universally true. There can be no universal “oughts.” We shall distinguish within this definition a “diversity thesis” and a “dependency thesis.”

The Diversity Thesis

Moral practices and beliefs do in fact vary from culture to culture and at different times in history, and none are universal. While assuming this thesis is descriptively correct, just how relevant is it to the ethicist’s questions about moral truth? Since the ethicist is talking about what people ought to do or believe, not what in fact they do, this thesis does not logically deny what the ethicist claims. Descriptive statements do not necessarily contradict normative ones and so do not themselves settle the issue. But is it at least telling if all moral practices do indeed vary from culture to culture?

Let us look more closely. Are all moral practices as diverse as the relativist claims? And if exceptions to the diversity rule occur, are they due to purely accidental similarities between cultures or to universal characteristics of humans and their societies? Plainly similarities do exist; every culture is reported to have taboos against incest, for example, and against wanton killing within one’s in-group. Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn has documented such universal elements.[2] Even where particular moral practices and rules vary, universal areas of value related to human needs can readily be identified: life and health, economic sufficiency, marriage and family. Is this purely accidental? Is there not some common basis for such similarities?

The diversity thesis further fails to distinguish diversity in particular moral practices from diversity in the principles implicit in such concerns. Practices, like moral rules, are guided by more general concerns. Thus, how societies define property rights and how they punish wrongdoers can vary greatly, but they may still be equally concerned about both conserving property and punishing offenders, and equally concerned about an ordered society. Diversity seems to be more widespread in specific application than in principle.

William Frankena argues that many uncritical beliefs might well change with more adequate information and moral enlightenment, reducing significantly the ethical diversity relativists describe.[3] Consider, for example, what has happened to cannibalism and slavery, and the effect of moral persuasion and legal sanctions on racial and sexual discrimination. At least some of the diversity has yielded to reasonable persuasion. From a Christian perspective this is especially noteworthy, inasmuch as the effects of sin corrupt conduct and distort judgment in ways that the light of truth might correct.

Notice, too, the impracticality of relativism when cultures conflict. If all morality is relative, then what moral objection could one make to the Nazi Holocaust, to the economic deprivation of a Latin American underclass, or to a militaristic nation’s unleashing nuclear devastation on others? And what would be wrong with conducting painful experiments on young children, using them for case studies on the long-term psychological effects of mutilation? In a world where no moral court of appeals exists, might makes right. The only appeal can be to power, unless we can find a basis for coexistence in common concerns and values.

The diversity thesis, then, badly overstates both the variety and the extent of ethical relativity. In any case it in no way implies either that moral practices ought to vary as they do or that moral beliefs cannot be true independently of how people actually behave.

The Dependency Thesis

Relativists like the anthropologist cited above hold to the dependency thesis; that is, that morality is not a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural context. Therefore the particular morality of a people cannot be other than it is: the truth or falsity of their moral beliefs does not really arise.

Suppose I was brought up in a rural community to believe that animals have equal rights with humans to life, liberty and property. That background, no matter how influential or widespread, implies nothing about the truth or falsity of my belief. Or suppose that under Eastern influences you come to believe in the sacredness of cows so that their right to life, liberty and food must take precedence over any human need. Those influences say no...