Thinking Theologically About Torture: Introduction

As I get the time, I will be writing a brief series of posts surrounding the issue of torture: Thinking Theologically About Torture. This is in part a response to Michael Westmoreland-White, who in his recent return to blogging wrote these powerful words:

We are a pluralistic nation, but over 80% of us in this country claim to be Christian. Well over 50% attend church regularly. Evangelical Protestants, who elevate the authority of Scripture above all else, make up between 40 and 50% of the nation, according to surveys. But far too many evangelical leaders have tried justifying the torture or covering it up. White evangelicals are practically the only group left in the country who still support Pres. Bush and hold him up as a “Christian leader.” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the presumptive GOP nominee for president, stood out among the GOP candidates as the only one willing to oppose torture–but after winning the nomination, he spoke out and voted against a bill that would have forbidden the CIA to use such “harsh interrogation” techniques as waterboarding (called in all other times and places “water torture,” used in the Inquisition and prosecuted by the U.S. in previous wars!), and then applauded Bush for vetoing it when it passed despite McCain’s efforts to shipwreck it. Yet, although he can’t decide whether he’s a Baptist or Episcopalian, McCain claims a deep Christian faith and courts the endorsements of conservative evangelical and fundamentalist preachers (including pro-torturers like Rod Parsely and John Hagee!).

How can any follower of the Crucified One countenance torture?

How can any nation dedicated to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law countenance torture?

U.S. Americans, especially U.S. Christians, have clearly lost their/our way–their/our moral bearings. History will not absolve us–nor will the Lord of History.

However, I am less interested in attacking any politician (be it a Bush or a McCain or anyone else) who clothes themselves in Christian garb while advocating for positions that seem incompatible with any Christian theological position than I am in exploring the issue of torture through various different approaches to Christian theological ethics.

To that end, Westmoreland-White asks some useful questions here. There are other questions that can be asked, as well.

I have already dealt with the ethics of torture here before, especially in this post from Sept. 2006, in which I engaged torture from a consequentialist ethical perspective. There I argued that - independent of concerns about inalienable human rights - torture could never be justified because no conceivable benefit from any act of torture could outweigh the respective harms from that act.

In this series, however, I propose to engage the subject of torture not from the grounds of a philosophic ethic but rather from the grounds of my Christian faith. This is a somewhat more limited perspective, because as Westmoreland-White rightly notes we live in a pluralistic country that cannot be bound to a distinctly Christian ethic. I am doing this, however, because I am deeply troubled by the willingness of some Christians to defend torture as a legitimate act by our state.

The first lens I will look through is a Christo-centric lens. That is, assuming that the task of Christian ethics is to model on ethic on the person, nature, concerns, and behavior of Jesus as the Christ, can a Christian justify supporting and defending acts of torture? If the answer to that question is, as I suspect (for reasons to be argued for in the forthcoming post) a resounding NO!, what then does this say about the living of a Christian life within a state that persists in engaging in acts of torture?

Other questions include something like: Is a Christo-centric approach the best possible approach to Christian ethics in general and the ethics of torture in particular? Even if it is, are there some limitations to it? And, can any state be bound to adopt or even consider a Christo-centric ethic, or is such an ethic binding only on Christians living within a particular state?

From there, further posts hope to explore other Christian ethical lens through which to view issues surrounding torture.

But, the first question is simply this: What do we mean by "torture"? What behaviors can rightly be considered torture, and what behaviors push up against the boundary of torture? When discussing torture, do we need a firm definition of torture, or will a list of actions that can be rightly termed "torture" suffice?

At this moment, I have only these questions. Their answers will have to wait for future posts.

Quote On Christianity and "Empire," Plus Reflections

Sorry I've been mostly AWOL of late, breaking my blogging fast only on occasion, merely to post Obama video clips.

I've been reworking some of my theological and academic projects, and such work can't be broken down in a nice and neat way for this blog. This blog started as a response to my own (accidental) participation in the "culture wars," and the content here has reflected that. While I grew up an evangelical Christian, I also grew up a liberal Democrat, and that created and interesting dichotomy from which to write. Additionally, my brief experiences as a pastor, and especially the abuse I took from a congregation that led to my resignation from ministry (and nearly, for a time, to the dissolution of my marriage) motivated me to write out my peculiar theological take on hot-button social issues.

While I have yet another post on abortion and scripture (an exegesis of Exodus 21:12-27, focusing on verse 22) outlined and ready to go, I can't bring myself to write it, much less post it. Why? Frankly, I'm tired of that conversation. It isn't getting us anywhere.

Many of the conversations that have happened here over the years have been the same way. Though I've loved them, at their best they serve merely to provide some relatively safe arena in which those on the left and the right rehearse their best arguments. There's a place for that, no doubt. That place may even be here. But I simply haven't been able to get up for those conversations lately.

Neither have I been able to get up for conversations concerning the role and authority of scripture, or principles of Biblical interpretation. And while I still hold that religious language is principally metaphorical, and that faith is a condition of radical dependency and a commitment to a comprehensive way of life rather that the ability to articulate intellectual agreement with speculative propositions, there really are only so many blog posts I can squeeze out of that.

Meanwhile, I've been cruising toward graduation wondering what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Least importantly, but most pertinent to this conversation, I've been wondering how I'm going to spend my academic life. One of my advisers tells me that at some point I'm simply going to have to drop anchor somewhere. But where? That question, far more than any of the artificially hot-button social issues that comprise the so-called "culture wars" that I've been fighting in and commenting on, has been burning in my brain.

To wit, I've been working on two separate thesis ideas, with one question navigating the treacherous waters between them: Am a philosophic theologian, or a theological ethicist? Of course, both of those rest on contrived distinctions created in an academic climate that favors specialism to the detriment, I would argue, of authentic theology (that is, theology that refuses to be sequestered into its own little corner of the academy). But, in the meantime, my friend who counseled me to "drop anchor" is right. I probably can't learn everything about anything, but I certainly can't learn everything about everything.

So I'm trying to choose between an overtly philosophic thesis that uses, among others, William James, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Alfred North Whitehead to speak to the relationship between religion and science, and an overtly ethical thesis that explores the history of Christian reflection on violence, especially revolutionary violence.

That overtly ethical thesis idea, you might guess, started with a post here on James Cone's defense of revolutionary violence. But as I study more, I'm beginning to notice that the way I've laid out the topic for myself, narrowly looking at Christian tools for resisting oppression and empire (which go hand in hand) especially concerning the moral permissibility of violence is flawed in two related ways: First, it is too limited, and second, it fails to understand the nuanced nature of empire and oppressive power differentials. Consider this quote (which made me jump up and down, and then run to the computer to break my unintentional blogging fast) by Joerg Rieger, from his essay "Christian Theology and Empires" from the book that he helped edit, Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians:

The fact that despite widespread initial support among the population some churches and bishops in the United States opposed this war [that is, the US invasion of Iraq - CB] might be seen as a sign that the empire can never completely control Christianity.

Yet this rejection of war is not enough because the methods of empire have changed dramatically. War is not the only problem and perhaps not even the primary one; war has not been particularly effective in recent history and many of its supporters have become disillusioned. The deeper problem has to do with more covert expressions of economic and cultural power which drive broad processes of globalization.

So what?

Broadly, this means that violence isn't the whole picture, and perhaps isn't even the biggest part of the picture. Violence is only one of many forms that coercive power manifests, and isn't always particularly effective. And any Christian ethic of resistance has to be concerned with much more than just the ethics of violence- whether it be criticizing oppression as a form of violence or reflecting on the moral permissibility of the oppressed responding violently to the violent oppression.

My task then, if I choose the theological ethics route, is to reflect on what tools Christian theological reflection has for responding to the complex phenomena of empire, oppression, and power differentials. The biggest tool, however, that I think Christian theological reflection (or any theological reflection - this claim is by no means limited to Christianity) has to offer is this: a prophetic refusal to allow the broad spectrum of human goods to be reduced purely to economics.

More on that later, as that is a rich sentence that needs to be unpacked.

Harry Potter and the Myth of Redemptive Violence

[Note: While this will engage some themes in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it should still be relatively safe reading for those who have not yet read the book but wish to do so. In other words, it should have no spoilers, though, of course, any discussion of any aspect of a piece of art involves a degree of spoiling. That said, no plot secrets will be revealed here.]

As I noted in my last pseudo-post, I've finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and have now had a few days to ruminate on it. I meant to post some initial observations on the end of the Harry Potter series earlier, but circumstances conspired against me until today. Perhaps there is some providence in that, as what I'm sitting down to write right now is not what I would have written right after I finished reading.

The final installment in the epic tale of Harry Potter was, like all of the others, and engaging - nay, enchanting -read. But, much like its immediate predecessor, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Price, it was also a disturbing read. Much has been made of the escalating violence in the Harry Potter books. While they began as children's books, they have been maturing with their audience, taking on more and more adult content.

"Adult content" - I'm not quite comfortable with that phrase. It is so often a euphemism for the worst sort of juvenile depictions of sexuality and violence. And there is a great deal of violence in the final Harry Potter book. But when I use the phrase "adult content" it does not merely euphemistically skate around something crass; rather, it indicates a deepening of the social and ethical content in the book.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a great story, but it is not just great because it captures the attention and imagination of the readers with compelling characters and an engaging plot. It is also great because it is an act of modern myth making. In fact, this is J.K. Rowling's genius: she creates modern myths, in an age in which mythos has all but been pronounced extinct.

I argued earlier that these modern myths - which I then called "fairy tales" - entailed both an existential and a mystical component. They also, I should add, contain an ethical component. As the Harry Potter books have matured, they have grappled with issues of racism, sexism, classism, totalitarianism, and violence. The final book brings all earlier ethical reflection to its telos, its natural end, its mature completion.

One of my biggest concerns about the Harry Potter series is that it, like so many other mythic works, divides the world into two basic camps: Good and Evil. This, coupled with the justification of the use of violence by the Good against the Evil, is an essential element of what Walter Wink identified as the Myth of Redemptive Violence. Wink calls this myth "the dominant religion in our society today," and its influence is not at all difficult to see. When president Bush identified an "Axis of Evil," he was speaking in the language of the Myth of Redemptive Violence. When he speaks of a war between Good and Evil, in which the Good will prevail if only they have the resolve to do what is necessary to fight and win, he speaks in the language of the Myth of Redemptive Violence. It could easily be argued that it is this myth - the true mythos of our culture - that lead us into the quagmire in Iraq.

And, it is no coincidence that Wink first noticed this myth not in his studies of ancient religions (though later he found it there) but instead watching cartoons with his children on Saturday mornings. Of the mythic structure of children's cartoons, he writes:

I began to examine the structure of other cartoons and found the same pattern repeating endlessly: an indestructible hero is doggedly opposed to an irreformable and equally indestructible villain. Nothing can kill the hero, though for the first three-quarters of the comic-strip or TV show he (rarely she) suffers grievously and appears hopelessly doomed, until, miraculously, the hero breaks free, vanquishes the villain or prevents his or her reappearance, and restores order until the next episode.

That's a familiar pattern that most of us recognize from our childhood entertainment. As Winks notes, you can see it in everything from Popeye to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is also a pattern that can be found in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation story, circa 1250 BCE, which Wink sees as possibly the origin of the Myth of Redemptive Violence. This mythic structure, then, has been around for well over 3,000 years, and has long shaped how we reflect on the ethics of violence.

As I understand it, two important hallmarks of the Myth of Redemptive Violence are:

1. the ineffectual nature of redemption, and
2. the relatively low cost of violence.

These two together mean that, in such a polarized and polemical moral universe (Good v. Evil), the Good are justified in using whatever violence they must to resist and overthrown the Evil threatening them. Attempts to somehow convert or reform the Evil are seen as cowardice at best, if not a covert Evil. There are generally disastrous consequences for nonviolent attempts to resist Evil, but there are little or no consequences for violent resistance. Sometimes violence is, in fact, the only mode of resistance contemplated.

In some respects, the modern myth of Harry Potter participates in this ancient but endlessly repeating Myth of Redemptive Violence. The magical world is essentially divided into two camps. There is a monolithically evil threat, Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters, who use Dark Magic. This threat must be resisted, and the resistance to it is often quite violent.

In one moment in the final book, for instance, Harry attempts to disarm an attacker rather than kill him, and the consequences are almost disastrous. He is chastised, reminded that this is war, and that he must be prepared to kill if he does not want to be killed himself. Toward the end of the book we see both Harry and one of his former teachers using so-called "Unforgivable Curses" - curses which, we are told at the beginning of the seven-book series, may never be justified - against threatening Death Eaters, with no apparent remorse.

This participation in the Myth of Redemptive Violence is quite compelling at times, which is one of the reasons that myth has survived and thrived for so long. I shed many, many tears reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; some tears of sorrow, some tears of joy, and many, many mixed and confused tears. One of the most gripping moments in the book, one of the moments that drew out of my at least half my daily intake of water, was when Hogwarts rises up against Voldemort, and prepares for battle. As the defenses are raised, as each character - including the school itself, which becomes a character - girds themselves for battle, I realized just how gripping the Myth of Redemptive Violence can be.

But despite those participations in the Myth of Redemptive Violence, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows deviates in some important and ethically instructive ways from that dangerous if compelling myth. Most importantly, it challenges two of the most basic assumptions of the Myth of Redemptive Violence: the irreformable corruption of the Evil, and the relatively low cost of violence.

In the Harry Potter series, the magical world seems divided into two camps: Good and Evil. I noted that above. But, as the series matures, the moral universe in it becomes more complicated. There is some bleed-through between the camps. There are other camps that are not so easily identified. Characters become more complex, more human, and less easily identified as monolithically Good or Evil. In the final book, not only does Severus Snape - long the sole question mark in the series - become even more complicated; but also do such polarized figures as Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort - long personifications of Good and Evil - become more fully human, more complex, and less monolithic.

This book explores the errors of Dumbledore's youth, making him a more tragic, more flawed, and ultimately more human and therefore more heroic figure. It also sheds some light on Voldemort's motives for his behavior, making him - like Dumbledore - a more tragic and more human figure. He is no longer a pure personification of Evil, but is instead a corrupt human being who has at least the option of redemption, whether or not he chooses to accept it.

Also, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the escalating death-count makes real the high cost of violence. Even though, ultimately, violence is imaged here as the best response to the threat posed by Evil, there are tragic consequences for the violence used, even when that violence is deemed just. There is simply no way to walk away from this book thinking that violence is ever easy. Too many friends lay dead at the end for that. It is, then, a very realistic depiction of our own moral universe, a universe in which we may occasionally find violence unavoidable (though my pacifist friends would say that situations in which violence is unavoidable are brought about not by the inevitability of violence, but instead by a lack of creativity) but never without harsh consequences.

Finally, this book deviates from the Myth of Redemptive Violence by its use of Grace. While not all in it are redeemed, there is no one in this book ultimately so intractably evil that Grace is not offered to them. No one, in other words, is beyond Grace. And that may be the most morally instructive aspect of this book, and the way in which it - despite its justification of violence - more closely resembles the Gospel than the Myth of Redemptive Violence.

If J.K. Rowling's epic tales of Harry Potter are to be our new modern myth, then they are a welcome replacement for the Myth of Redemptive Violence that has long gripped us, even if they contain some elements of that troubled myth.

Charity v. Economic Justice

I had expected to take at least a little bit of heat for something I wrote in my last post:

...many who gladly give to Compassion International or World Vision are blind to the extent to which their daily economic activity exploits those whom their charity is designed to help.

After all, while evangelical Christians are among the most generous and socially concerned persons in the world, they are often characterized by people like me as being so interested in saving souls that they forget to save lives. I've heard many professors ignorantly declare that with their focus on the hereafter, evangelicals simply aren't interested in social justice. It isn't that simple. Evangelical Christians quite often are interested in the material well being of others. And many evangelical missions are at least as much about meeting present material needs as they are about saving souls. For many, many evangelicals, the two cannot be separated.

So, why would I say that many of them "are blind to the extent to which their daily economic activity exploits those whom their charity is designed to help”? And, perhaps more to the point, how have I gotten a free pass on that so far?

The second question is impossible to answer, so I'll tackle it first. Maybe my conservative friends have stopped reading this blog, or, at the very least, given up on trying to argue with me. Or, perhaps, they charitably granted my point, rightly noting that it is not their intentions or their charity that I am attacking, but rather their politics. They may disagree with my assault on their political and economic philosophies, but it might be refreshing to have at least one theological and social "liberal" grant to them at the very least good intentions. I've seen too many books come out this summer - riding, no doubt, a wave of anti-war sentiment for a more progressive politic - painting evangelical Christians as embodying everything that's going wrong in this culture.

But, in any event, the point remains: Evangelical Christians who mix conservative religion with conservative politics may indeed be quite charitable and quite generous, but their charitable generosity does not address the root causes of the desperate, grinding poverty whose pain their charity seeks to alleviate.

For my birthday (I turned 28 on Tuesday) my mother-in-law got me Michael Eric Dyson's newest book, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster. OK, really she got me the gift certificate that I used to buy the book, but that was thoughtful enough. In it he makes some compelling points, many of which may appear in future posts here.

Some of you might remember the sermon that was the beginning of the end of my pastoral career, "God of Wrath or God of Mercy: A Christian Response to Katrina." In it I argued passionately and, I had hoped, persuasively, against the poisonous belief that had infected my church, that God had used Katrina to destroy New Orleans for its sins and wickedness. Not surprisingly, Dyson has a chapter in his book titled "Supernatural Disasters?: Theodicy and the Prophetic Faith." I haven't gotten that far in the book yet, but if that chapter is worth exploring, God knows I'll explore it in an upcoming post.

But what, you might ask, does that book have to do with this post?

I'm so glad you asked. In Chapter 9, titled "Frames of Reference: Class, Caste, Culture, and Cameras," Dyson critically engages the media's portrayal of the impoverished black victims of the hurricane. The poor, and especially the black poor (53% of whom had no access to automobiles) were disproportionately victimized by the storm and the shoddy relief efforts that followed. Instead, however, of engaging the socio-economic forces that rendered these people unable to flee from the coming wrath, too often the media portrayed these poor souls who had been abandoned by their governments as fools, thugs, looters, rapists, and murderers.

In his discussion of the combination of race, class, and economic reality that created the oppressive situation that conspired to strand so many in a crumbling dome, Dyson notes the distinction between charity and economic justice. Many were charitable in the aftermath of the storm, giving generous donations. But their charitable contributions did nothing to address the economic structures that give rise to poverty. Dyson quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. as saying:

On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Then Dyson writes:

Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth - even if they decide to help the less fortunate - while others are shortchanged, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible.

Evangelical Christians, as a group, are generous and charitable, giving a higher percentage of their income to charity than any other group that I know of. But, when they mix that charity with support for a political and economic system that steals from the poor to give to the rich, they undermine the work that their charity seeks to do. This doesn't make them intentionally bad people, nor does it make them especially worthy of shame or ridicule. But it does mean that those of us who share their interest in helping the poor should appeal to that interest when addressing their politics.

Ben Witherington on "The Ethics of Politics and Illness"

One of the most cynical and depressing aspects of partisan politics in America is our willingness to ascribe the worst possible motives to those we disagree with and/or oppose. To wit, I am particularly upset with those who so easily claim that John Edward's continuing his presidential campaign in the face of the resurgence of his wife's cancer is either:

a.) a sign that he simply doesn't care about her,

b.) evidence that he is overly ambitious, and will allow nothing to stop his vainglorious pursuit of the presidency, or, most likely,

c.) both.

I have long held that each marriage, to a certain extent, has its own set of rules, and can never properly be judged from the outside. While there are a few definite do's and a few definite don'ts, by and large each couple decides on their own what works for them. What works for Sami and I may not work for another couple, and what works for them may not work for us. But, ultimately we are in a covenant with God and each other, and those are the only parties that can sit in judgment on our union.

Ben Witherington just posted a very thoughtful exploration of the ethics, as far as he sees it, of the decision by Elizabeth and John Edwards not to allow her cancer to destroy his opportunity to seek the presidency. If you care at all about the subject, do yourself a favor and check it out. In it he said what I hoped to say on the subject, only better.

This post should not be taken as an endorsement of Edwards, though I like him a great deal. I'm still leaning toward Obama in the Democratic primary, unless Gore enters the race. But I think that Edwards should be allowed to campaign without idiots taking pot-shots at him because his wife has cancer.

Al Mohler on Genetic Treatments for Homosexuality

For those of you who don't know of him, Al Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention. In some Baptist circles he is almost venerated, in others, well... not so much.

My step-grandfather, Wendell Garrison, is the former president of the Illinois Baptist State Association and served on the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee from 1976-1984. He has long been a leading moderate voice among Southern Baptists, and is perhaps the most respected Southern Baptist pastor in Illinois. He is also no fan of Al Mohler, seeing him as more of a politician than a pastor, and more of a polemical bully than a scholar. In his mind, Mohler represents everything that has gone wrong with the Southern Baptist convention.

Living in Louisville, however, I didn't need my step-grandfather's growing frustration to poison me to Al Mohler. I just need my own eyes and ears. Mohler's often-inflammatory rhetoric, rhetoric that paints his opponents as little anti-Christs seeking to ruin "Biblical" Christianity, is enough to make any fair-minded Christian sick to their stomach. Worse, too many of his disciples treat him as a quasi-God, a semi-divine being whose utterances are as close to the Word of God as humans ever get. I've seen too many star-struck students fawning all over him not to wonder what it is, exactly, that they serve in the seminary's cafeteria.

This year around Christmas I had the exquisite pleasure to spend a few days with my grandparents in their home in Swansea, Illinois, just on the Illinois side of St. Louis. Wendell and I spent long hours talking theology and church politics before we finally, and quite nervously, broached the divisive subject of homosexuality. While my views on the subject have changed a great deal over the past few years, as I've moved from a fundamentalist/literalist position to my current theology, I was never quite sure how to talk to my step-grandfather. After all, not only is he a fairly old man now - which in my mind has always unconsciously (and wrongly!) been associated with conservativism - he is also a retired Southern Baptist pastor. In all my life I'd never met a Southern Baptist who publicly professed anything other than that homosexuality is a vile sin, condemned unequivocally by the very Word of God.

Wendell eased into the subject by talking about how much Southern Baptists have changed during his lifetime.

We've always had a strong concept of the separation of Church and State, he told me, but now that we're starting to taste some political power we're selling out our most treasured ideals.

He moved from that to the subject of Biblical literalism, saying that Southern Baptists today have wedded themselves to a thoroughly modern reading of the Bible, a reading that he thinks is unsupported by the text itself. On the subject of inerrancy, he said,

Tell where the Bible itself says that it is inerrant! It isn't there. You can't say that the Bible is your primary religious authority, and say that the Bible is inerrant, because the Bible itself makes no such claim. And I don't feel like making claims about the Bible for the Bible. If it doesn't think that it is inerrant, I see no reason to impose that view on it.

Then we finally got where he was trying to take us. I think that he had guessed my evolving views on human sexuality before the conversation even started. He had, after all, helped talk me through my crisis in faith after I'd left pastoral ministry. He knew that, in the current climate in evangelical denominations, there was a deeper reason why I was allowing a bad situation at a single church to keep me from further pursuing my pastoral career. So he asked me bluntly:

What do you think about homosexuality?

I gave some half-hearted cowardly answer, not wanting to risk discussing such a divisive issue with a family member. He patiently listened to me stammer, before he replied,

I remember thinking about it as a young man. It occurred to me then that I hadn't chosen my sexual orientation, so it seemed unlikely to me that gays would have chosen theirs, either. And, if they haven't chosen to be the way that they are, then God must have made them that way. How, then, could it be sinful?

Al Mohler, it seems, has finally come around to seeing at least the first half of my step-grandfather's point. BluegrassReport.org, a progressive blog on Kentucky politics, in a scathing editorial pointed me to a post on Al Mohler's blog. In it he all but concedes that the phenomenon of same sex attraction is genetic rather than volitional.

However, rather than take the next step, and argue that because homosexual inclinations are not volitional they - and at least some of the behaviors that arise out of them - must not be sinful, he clings to his "Biblical" view that all homosexual acts are sinful, and must be roundly condemned. This places him in a difficult position, though there is no evidence in his post that he grasps the difficulty of his position. In this difficult position he advocates the use of genetic treatments to eliminate homosexual tendencies.

As Mark Nicholas points out in the BluegrassReport.org piece, that position is a difficult one for someone who has in the past roundly condemned kinds of genetic therapy for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other diseases. While I acknowledge that, from Mohler's point of view, there may be a difference between stem-cell therapy and the kind of genetic treatment that he thinks might be possible for homosexuality, taking his positions together I am forced to wonder if he really thinks that being gay is a more serious "disease" than any of the actual diseases that could be treated by stem-cell therapy.

This viewing of human sexuality as so seriously pathological that it demands an invasive intervention that fundamentally alters one's genetic make-up strikes me as more than a little disturbed. I highly encourage you to read Mohler's post for yourself, and to read it as charitably as possible. Especially look at his ten points at the end, which include, after some preliminary theological concerns, statements like:

If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

and

We must stop confusing the issues of moral responsibility and moral choice. We are all responsible for our sexual orientation, but that does not mean that we freely and consciously choose that orientation.

What do you make of this view?

On “Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)” by Stanley Hauerwas

Since joining the Christian Peace Bloggers blog-ring I've been meaning to post something on one of my favorite little essays, Stanley Hauerwas' “Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)”. I've been meaning to post on it because it combines two hot-button moral/political/theological issues in a really creative way. It seeks to explore

a.) how homosexuality relates to military service, and

b.) how Christianity relates to military service.

To say any more up front would be to steal from the delight of reading about it. So, here is a slightly edited version of a paper I once wrote on the essay:

________________


In this brief essay, Duke Divinity School Theological Ethics Professor Stanley Hauerwas takes a unique approach to the issue of whether or not gays (as a group) are being unfairly discriminated against by not being allowed to serve in the military. He only briefly addresses of discrimination, saying “I see no good reason why gays and lesbians should be excluded from military service,” but that discrimination does not concern him. In fact, he says “I think it a wonderful thing that some people are excluded [from military service] as a group. I only wish that Christians could be seen by the military to be as problematic as gays.”

While his essay is not, in the end, primarily concerned with either the moral value of homosexual behavior or the discrimination of groups on the grounds of sexual orientation, he does provide at least a cursory treatment of the issue of discrimination against gays, saying “Discrimination against gays grows from the moral incoherence of our lives” and not from “the threat that gays might pose to our moral or military culture.” This is because most people are not “secure in their convictions and practices.” After all, “people who are secure in their convictions and practices are not so easily threatened by the prospects of a marginal group acquiring legitimacy through military service.”

His approach to this issue does not even consider the moral value of homosexual sexual acts. I believe that, given what I know of his theology, and given the subtext of this essay, that Hauerwas does not believe that homosexuality is consistent with Christian ethics. But, on the issue of whether or not gays should be allowed to join the military, the moral value of their actions is, to Hauerwas, irrelevant. Why? I think that there are at least two reasons for this.

The first reason is that, for Hauerwas, the military itself is immoral. In fact, he spends the bulk of his essay arguing that Christians should, on moral grounds, be exempt from military service because their ethics would so contrast with the ethics of the military. Hauerwas asks, for instance, “What if Catholics took the commitment to just war seriously as a discipline of the church?” What would be the result of such a commitment? He says that the result would be the exemption of Catholics from military service, because Catholics would question the nature of the American military, and the way in which the military wages war. They would object to the use of nuclear weapons, even as a deterrent; and they would object to bombing runs which kill civilians. They would even object to having a standing army, because “[t]he very fact of our standing army means too often such discussion [on when to go to war] is relegated to politicians who manipulate the media to legitimate what they were going to do anyway.”

He also asks us to “[i]magine Catholics, adhering closely to just war theory, insisting that war is not about killing but only incapacitating the enemy.” Imagine Catholics deciding “[t]hey could participate only in wars designed to take prisoners and then, if that is not a possibility, only to wound. Killing the enemy is a last resort” for them. If Catholics decided to make just war theory an important part of their religious life, then would they be fit for military service? Wouldn’t they pose a much greater threat to the military way of life than gays?

And, to Hauerwas, Catholics are not the only Christians whose lives should threaten the military ethic. In fact, all Christians ought to live in such a way that their lives are incompatible with, and threatening to, the prevailing ethic of our military culture. After all, “Christians are asked to pray for their enemy.” Could a soldier “really trust people in [their] unit who think that the enemy’s life is as valid as their fellow soldier?” Could someone who views all life as a gift from God, and all people as (at least potentially) children of God, really be effective at the kind of wars waged by the United States? Such wars require the dehumanization of the enemy. Such wars require even the acceptance of some civilian casualties as inevitable.

So, the first reason why Hauerwas refuses to, in the context of this essay, consider the moral value of homosexual sexual acts is because the military is, itself, so immoral. Christian ought to, on moral grounds, be exempt from military service; and, as long as they are not, and as long as gays are, “it seems clear... that gays, as a group, are morally superior to Christians.”

The second reason why I think Hauerwas refused, here, to consider the moral value of homosexual sexual acts, is a more subtle one which is not overtly contained in the text, though some passages hint at it. It has to do with the way that he views Christian ethics, and who is bound to Christian ethics. Evangelical Christians, particularly in today’s culture, tend to want to turn America into an ethically Christian culture; at least in the sense that all Americans should be bound to uphold a Christian sexual ethic. But, given that in a number of important and non-sexual ways (such as the military) American culture is totally incompatible with Hauerwas’s understanding of the Christian ethic; such a goal (to conform America to a Christian sexual ethic) seems ill conceived and totally impossible.

I suspect that Hauerwas would say that the goal of evangelical Christians in America ought not to be to conform American culture to a Christian ethic, but instead ought to be to convert individual Americans into Christians. Then, and only then, will they, as Christians, be bound to uphold a Christian ethic, and such an ethic would contrast with American culture in many more important areas than sex. As it is, evangelicals are getting it backwards. They are trying to change society as a whole, forcing their ethic onto people who are not bound to that ethic. Such acts, rather than encouraging those people to convert to their kind of religion, actually serve as a deterrent, turning them off to the evangelical expression of Christianity.

While the essay in question was written in 1993 to address the issue of gays in the military, the ideas contained in it and drawn from it are particularly helpful in the wake of the 2004 election, in which 11 states passed referendums on amending their constitutions to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. Hauerwas writes, “Gay men and lesbians are being made to pay the price of our society’s moral incoherence not only about sex, but about most of our moral convictions. As a society, we have no general agreement about what constitutes marriage and/or what goods marriage ought to serve. We allegedly live in a monogamous culture, but in fact we are at best serially polygamous. We are confused about sex, why and with whom we have it, and about our reasons for having children.”

All of these moral confusions create an environment in which we, wishing to establish a firm moral line, come down on people who are different from us. “[T]he moral ‘no’ to gays becomes the necessary symbolic commitment to show that we really do believe in something.” And, of course, the one thing on which we are sure is the one area in which we are not tempted. Christians so often wish to be told that homosexuality is wrong so that they can overlook the ways in which they sexually misbehave. They claim that homosexuality poses a threat to marriage to overlook the more obvious threats to heterosexual marriage; heterosexual sexual misconduct.

As quoted earlier, “people who are in their convictions and practices are not so easily threatened by the prospects of a marginal group acquiring legitimacy.” This quote, of course, was intended to apply to gays serving in the military, but it certainly also applies to the prospect of gay marriage. Legitimizing marginal groups does not threaten those who are secure. Secure heterosexuals who adhere to a morally coherent heterosexual sexual ethic and who live in secure marriages should not be personally threatened by the prospect of allowing persons of the same sex to marry each other. This statement does not depend on the moral value of homosexual sexual acts.

And so, in an essay which concerns issues of import to gays, Hauerwas does not include any statements on the morality or ethics of the homosexual lifestyle. Why? Because, presumably, his audience does not primarily include gays. It primarily includes heterosexual evangelical Christians who use gays and lesbians as a scapegoat for the problems contained within their own heterosexual marriages. It primarily includes heterosexual evangelical Christians who love using the issue of homosexuality to make themselves feel better about their own sexual deviance. As long as they have gays and lesbians to point to and to blame for their own problems, they don’t have to face up to the role that they have played in undermining the sexual morality in their society and in their church. As long as they have gays and lesbians to point to and blame for their martial problems, they don’t have to own up to their own role in the so-called “decay of marriage and traditional families.”

Secure, married, heterosexual Christian couples know that the state and health of their marriage does not depend on whether or not gays, as a group, are legitimized by either being allowed to get married, or by, as a group, being allowed to serve in the military. They know that the state and health of their marriage depends entirely on their own actions and attitudes. And so, to introduce a discussion on the moral value of homosexual sexual actions would be to distract from the main point of Hauerwas’s essay, which serves as a form of moral and ethical instruction to Christians who already have their own opinions on homosexuality, and use those opinions as a means by which to ignore the ways in which they fail to live up to the ethical standards of their own religion.

Crtitique of McFague's Concept of Sin

Patrik of God in a Shrinking Universe is asking for some help picking a book. His criteria includes the following:

The book should be:

1. fairly recent (post 1980-ish)

2. immensely important, a future classic

3. deal with systematic theology

4. between 200 and 300 pages

5. I prefer originality to the kind of book that claims to offer the final version or overview of some ancient debate

I especially appreciate the fifth one. For me, it is so much more exciting to read someone's developing thoughts than it is to read a historical overview which may include a couple of original ideas disguised as new interpretations of old arguments.

Anyway, I very cautiously recommended Sallie McFague's The Body of God, a treatise on the ecological implications of a particular interpretation of incarnation. I say "cautiously" because not only is MacFague's basic framework barley recognizable as Christian (a fact which in no way detracts from its value), but it doesn't really meet his need for a work of systematic theology. Rather, it is an exploration of the relationship between our concepts of God and the ethics we derive from them, with a more thorough exploration of the way in which a particular understanding of what it means to say that God is incarnate should inform our environmental ethics.

McFague's main theological project concerns a radical re-interpretation of the Christian doctrine of incarnation. In chapter 5 of The Body of God, she turns the traditional Christian concept of the incarnation on its head. While traditional Christianity holds that God was made incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, and that this was a unique occurrence of incarnation, McFague holds that, in fact, the entire created universe is a part of the body of God. That everything that exists participates in God’s incarnation.

To make her argument, McFague uses a unique interpretation of Exodus 33:23b, which reads: “And you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.” She interprets this as saying that all that is visible is the backside of God. The entire universe, everything that we see, comprises that backside. This avoids pantheism by saying that the universe does not comprise the entirety of God. After all, we cannot see the face of God. But, all of the universe is contained in God, and is a part of the incarnation of God.

This does not immediately jive with traditional Christian theology. After all, if the entire universe is God incarnate, then Christ is not uniquely incarnate. But, whether it is Christian or not, as a theistic model, it is very helpful. How can I pollute the rivers or the air if I view those spaces as being God incarnate? How can I stomp on the rights of another person if I view that person as part of the incarnate God? How can I exploit animals if I view each one as being, in nature, God incarnate? How can I look down on anyone if I see in them the nature of God?

According to McFague, this is also important because whenever any part of the universe, which is the body of God, suffers, God suffers too. And this is where her theistic model begins again to mirror traditional Christianity. In traditional Christianity God, through Christ, enters into the suffering world, taking on all of the world's suffering, fully participating in that suffering. So, whether or not the details of incarnation match, McFague’s concept of incarnation mirrors the Christian concept of incarnation insofar as it has God, through being incarnate, sharing in the suffering of the world.

McFague uses this unique version of incarnational theology as the basis for an environmental ethic, showing the essential link - at least in the lives of religious people - between theology and ethics. Simply put, what we believe about God matters, because it informs (or, at least, ought to inform) our moral attitudes and behavior.

Reflecting on McFague's book, and whether or not it was worth mentioning to Patrik, reminded me of a paper I wrote for an undergraduate course, "Religion, Ethics, and the Environment." This course, an upper level religious studies course, looked at two different books, and used those books as jumping off points for an ongoing discussion of how various religions have dealt with the natural environment, both in theory and in practice. The two books, both well worth the time and energy it takes to read them, were McFague's The Body of God, and David Abram's damning indictment of the Western philosophical and religious tradition's treatment of the environment, The Spell of the Sensuous.

Anyway, for those with nothing better to do than contemplate the merits and demerits of MacFague's theory and arguments, here is the paper I wrote in that class, a critique of her concept of sin:

___________


In The Body of God, Sally McFague outlines an original and quite informative concept of sin. As theologians are wont to do, she takes traditional Christian terminology and turns it on its head, providing a very original ethic which may make Christianity more palatable to liberal academics; many of whom have intellectual problems with traditional Christian teachings and moral problems with the way that Christianity has traditionally been practiced.

McFague says, simply, that sin is our “refusal to accept our place.” We, as humans, need to realize the earth is our home. But, while this realization is profound and ethically informative; we also need to realize that while the earth is our home, we are not its only residents. And, not only are we not its only inhabitants, we are not necessarily its chief inhabitants. We are one of many forms of life which depend on the earth for survival. We are one of many groups on the earth which compete for the resources which the earth provides to ensure our survival. And yet, we tend to act like we own the place, and are justified in imposing our will on it. We act as though we are justified in taking more than our share of resources, harming other humans, other animals, and the natural environment as a whole. We need to understand our place within the context of the entire natural environment.

And, what is our place? It is a place of dependency. McFague points out a simple rule about the nature of life: “The higher and more complex the level [of life], the more vulnerable it is and [the more] dependent [it is] upon the levels that support it.” In other words, we depend on other forms of animate and inanimate life to support us; but that dependency is not reciprocal. They do not depend on us. If we did not exist, the world, and the less complex forms of life which occupy it, would continue to exist just fine. But, if the world, or even the less complex form of life which occupy it, were to cease to exist, then we too would cease to exist.

And so, knowing our place implies knowing the extent to which we are dependent on things outside ourselves for our survival. Knowing our place also, then, means allowing our knowledge of our dependency on others to inform our ethics and our actions. So, we depend on other humans, other animals, and the natural environment (with many inanimate or unconscious forms of life) as a whole; and we must exist in ethical relationships with other humans, other animals, and the natural environment as a whole. This is knowing our place. This is accepting our place.

And so, since sin is refusing to accept our place, sin manifests itself in our lives when we live a lie. The great sins which we commit are just this: living a lie. We can do so in relation to other humans, in relations to other animals, or in relation to nature. Our relationships in each of these realms of action, then, must be characterized by our knowing our place and by our accepting our place.

In the realm of human to human interaction, we live a lie when we pretend “that all the space or best space belongs to some so that they can live in lavish comfort and affluence, while others are denied even the barest necessities for physical existence.” In the realm of interaction with other animals, we live a lie when we fail to recognize “the interrelationship and interdependence of all living beings as well as the distinctive individuality and differences among living forms,” and so treat other animals as objects rather than experiencing subjects who exist in the context of a relationship of interdependency. In the realm of interaction with the natural environment, we live a lie when we “objectify nature so totally that [we] human beings are essentially distinct from it.” In doing so we fail to accept or appreciate that we do not exist except within the context of the natural environment.

This concept of sin, as living a lie and refusing to accept our place, is, while novel, not entirely different from the way in which sin is traditionally presented within Christianity – though some of the conclusions drawn by McFague on how humans ought to interact with other humans, other animals, and the natural environment are not conclusions that Christians traditionally draw from their concept of sin. After all, most Christians accept that sin is a violation of the will of God. They also tend to accept that individuals are given their identity by God. And so, going against your own identity (in other words, not knowing or accepting your place) would be going against the will of the God who gave you your identity; and so it would be a sin. So, McFague’s concept of sin is, while quite unique, not totally incompatible with traditional Christianity, even though the ethic that she draws from it would seem strange to most Christians.

However, is McFague’s concept of sin a good, comprehensive concept of sin? In my opinion: not really. While she has developed a concept of sin which could help inform our actions toward and interactions with other humans, other animals, and the natural environment, it is not broad enough to cover all, or even many possible ethical situations. It is also does not allow for a number of important moral distinctions.

There are several sorts of distinctions which, in my opinion, ought to be made in any comprehensive concept of sin. The first such distinction is, perhaps, the most important, and it is one which is left out altogether in McFague’s concept. It is the distinction between volitional action and situations or actions which arise from unconscious conditioning. Simply put, the motives for our actions and the intentions behind our actions are morally relevant. One cannot be held morally responsible for actions which arise totally outside one’s volition, and which are, as such, not acts of will.

We are conditioned by a great many things. We are conditioned by our genetic make-up. We are conditioned by the environment in which we were raised. We are conditioned by the experiences we have had. We are conditioned by the culture in which we live, and the religion with which we were raised. Each of these conditions on us came up totally outside our wills. We have made and can make no choices concerning the nature and identity of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. We have made and can make no choices concerning the nature and identity of our siblings or our cousins, our uncles and aunts, or even our first-grade teachers. Further, we have made and can make no choices concerning the impact that each of those people have had on our lives, or the choices which each of those people have made which have effected and continue to effect us. We have made and can make no choices concerning our genetic make-up. We have made and can make no choices concerning the environment in which we were raised. These factors, and many other like them, lie outside our volitional will, and have conditioned us to a great degree. And, we cannot be held morally responsible for our conditioning.

But, now that we are conscious, experiencing entities, we can become aware of the extent to which we have been conditioned. That state of awareness is something which can be accomplished at least in part by an act of our will. And, once we, by an act of introspection and self-observation, become aware of our conditioned nature, we can consciously change aspects of our identity. We can, through an act of our will, consciously begin to condition ourselves.

And, even within our own conditioned nature, we can be aware enough to make choices. We can commit volitional actions, and those volitional actions do have moral value. So, any comprehensive concept of sin must, while allowing for unconscious conditioning, must also hold people morally responsible for their volitional actions. As such, any comprehensive concept of sin must make a distinction between volitional actions and unconscious conditioning.

This is a problem for McFague because many of the instances of sin which she cites could be considered instances of unconscious conditioning rather than volitional action. While, for instance, the kind of commercialist capitalism found in America is exploitive of other people, other animals, and the natural environment; most Americans are culturally conditioned to behave this way and are unaware of the harm done by their actions. And so, while their actions may serve as evidence of a cultural sin, it is a different kind of sin than an intentionally harmful volitional action, such as if I were to take a baseball bat and hit someone with it. While harm is done in both cases, the nature of the acts are not the same. Any comprehensive concept of sin must allow for this distinction to be made.

Another distinction that should be made in any comprehensive concept of sin is the distinction between sins of commission and sins of omission. Harm may be done by a particular action, or harm may be done by the withholding of a particular action. And, while harm is done in either case, the cases are not the same. It is not the same thing to intentionally, by an overt action, cause someone harm, such as by hitting them (again) with a baseball bat as it is to refuse to help them after they have been hurt. It is not the same thing to steal from someone as it is to refuse to give them some kind of monetary aid. Both actions cause harm. Both actions may be instances of sin. But, they are not both the same sin. They are not both accurately described by the same description.

Finally, another distinction must be made in any comprehensive concept of sin: the distinction between harm caused by action or inaction in the external realm, and the internal harm done by holding in improper state of mind. The way that we think has, in its ability to cause harm, and in its ability to influence action, moral value. But, the moral value of our states of mind is not the same as the moral value of our actions. While harm is done both by thinking about hurting someone and acting out that thought, the harm is not the same. And so, while each may be sin, they are not the same sin. Any comprehensive concept of sin should also allow for this.

A comprehensive concept of sin which makes the distinction between volitional action and unconscious conditioning, the distinction between sins of commission and sins of omission, and makes the distinction between harm done externally and harm done internally through improper mental states; is a concept of sin which can be more morally informative than McFague’s helpful but limited concept of sin, while avoiding the unhelpful tendency found in McFague to blame people for situations beyond their control and outside their volition. Such a concept of sin could affirm two precepts, which could guide most moral or ethical situations – if not all of them. The first precept is: cause no harm, by action or inaction, by act of will or thoughtlessness, by state of mind or external situation. And the second is: do as much good as you can, through you actions and your restraint of action, through your thoughts and your intentions. Cause no harm, and do as much good as you can. These do not, of course, tell us what we should do or think in each situation. That is not the purpose of a precept. But, they do help us evaluate our own actions, thoughts, intentions, and conditioning. In doing so, we can overcome some of the unconscious conditioning which has given rise to the problems which McFague attempts to address in her book. That will inform our actions toward and interactions with other humans, other animals, and the natural environment.

If Virtue is Self Interest, is it still Virtue?

As I wrote in this post, I've long been fascinated with the connection between virtue and self interest. That is, I've noticed that often the universe seems structured in such a way that behaviors which are generally considered to be altruistic virtues are in fact in the best interests of the person exhibiting those behaviors. Of course, that they are in that person's interests does not necessarily make them selfish, as it turns out that the ancients may well be right, and our universe may be so interconnected and interdependent that there is finally no real conflict between the best interests of persons. Or, to put it more plainly, virtue may be in the interests of the virtuous, but it is also in the interests of everyone else. When people act in ways that have long been identified by ancient philosophies and religions as virtuous, everyone benefits.

For me this notion has been an intuitive suspicion, with no hard data to back it up. I have observed it, but by no means in any kind of clinical or scientific way. Rather, it has been the sort of folksy it seems to me... kind of intuition derived from anecdotal observation. As I do more reading, however, it seems that sometimes hard science really does support folk wisdom.

For Christmas by brother Tom got me Gregg Easterbrook's book The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. Easterbrook, who's been mentioned here before, is perhaps best known for his football column the Tuesday Morning Quarterback, now published on ESPN.com's Page 2. Being a geek who likes sports, I love the geek take on sports. But, in addition to being a geeky sports writer, Easterbrook is also a fellow in economics at the Brookings Institution, a senior editor of The New Republic, and a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, an intellectual "heavy dude" who may be an insufferable know-it-all, but is by God a witty insufferable know-it-all.

As you can probably guess from its title, Easterbrook's book is an attempt to understand how it can be that, while most indicators of quality of life in the West (the United States and the European Union, though Easterbrook is primarily concerned with the United States) have been constantly improving for generations, happiness (to the extent that it can be measured) has remained static while unhappiness has increased dramatically. Having been enthralled with this book I've been meaning to write about its broader project since I started reading it last week. However, today I am interested in a much more narrow part of it.

Easterbrook, as you might have guessed from the context, devotes a chapter of his book to the relationship between virtue and self interest. That chapter, titled "Selfish Reasons to Become a Better Person," depends heavily on recent scientific studies which support my contention that the universe is structured in such a way as to reward virtue. Perhaps the best example of this, though by no means the only, is forgiveness. Easterbrook, by way of summary, writes:

Forgiveness is good not only for the person forgiven, but for the person who forgives.

That being forgiving is good for you, in addition to the person you forgive, is among the most compelling findings of positive psychology. Research now suggests that those who take a forgiving attitude toward others not only make better friends, neighbors, and coworkers - anyone would guess that - but are themselves happier, healthier people who live longer than others and know more success in life. Are they forgiving because happiness makes them magnanimous, or does forgiving improve their well being? Studies suggest the latter.

If this is true, if it is in fact the case that virtue in general and forgiveness in particular actually produce ultimately better outcomes for the virtuous and the forgiving; what does this have to teach us about the nature of the religions which have long taught the value of virtue, and especially forgiveness? My own faith, Christianity, is built on the virtue of forgiveness, stressing both the liberating power of God's grace, and the moral mandate to extend that grace to others. Jesus taught that forgiveness is an essential part of the nature and will of God. In a very real sense, if to be Christian is to be a follower of Jesus, then Christians are (or ought to be) marked by forgiveness, both as receivers (being fundamentally forgiven by God) and especially as givers (forgiving all others in light of God's forgiveness). Forgiveness is the virtue modelled by the incarnation, and should be present in the lives of all Christians.

So, is religion in general and Christianity in particular vindicated by modern studies which, if Easterbrook has summarized them correctly (and it seems to me that he has, though I am no expert on recent trends in psychology) teach that the universe is structured in such a way as to reward the virtue of forgiveness? In at least a limited sense, I think the answer must be "yes." But it is a very limited "yes."

Much has been written recently about the harm done by religion. We are all too aware of the violent dangers of fundamentalism. We are surrounded by the very credible claims that, at least in some cases, religious devotion makes people much worse, both in terms of their own happiness and in terms of their moral behavior. While the events of 9-11 or the violence in the Middle East are the most poignant examples of the corrupting power of at least some expressions of religious devotion, we have also probably all experienced this in at least some degree in our own lives.

We have probably all known someone who, in the sublime ecstasy which follows a religious conversion experience, became so self-absorbed and self-righteous that we simply couldn't stand to be near them any longer. And, of course, while the recently converted may see the conflicts that arise between the newly converted and their former social circle in more spiritual terms (rejecting the ways of "the world" creates conflict with "the world," etc.) many of us know that at least in some cases this conflict is brought about because, simply put, when the convert "found religion" they became an insufferable ass.

But, to the extent to which a religion correctly identifies virtues and encourages virtuous behavior, these studies suggest that it has manifested a very tangible good. This good is felt both in the life of the virtuous and in all those touched by that virtuous behavior. As Christianity encourages forgiveness, it encourages a trait which brings about positive outcomes.

But this raises a couple of troubling questions:

First: is it in fact the case that Christianity encourages forgiveness? As a theological question, the answer must, of course, be "yes." Forgiveness is at the heart of Christian teaching. But, if this is a sociological or historical question, I am sure that the answer will be more nuanced. At its worst, rather than encouraging publicly beneficial virtues like forgiveness Christianity can become the kind of purity cult that Jesus so strongly protested against.

Second: even if it is the case that Christianity encourages forgiveness, and that other religions through history have correctly identified various similarly beneficial virtues; does the fact that the universe seems to reward virtue point to the existence of a benevolent creator, or instead does it simply mean that religions have identified traits which natural selection tends to favor, and labeled them "virtue"?

That question may well be impossible to answer, though research does indicate that the benefit from forgiveness does not depend on any religious motivation for forgiving. Easterbrook writes:

[F]orgiveness can have either a spiritual or secular basis, and both seem equally effective at improving the life of the person who forgives. One of [Kenneth] Pargament's [note: Kenneth Pargament is a psychologist at Bowling Green State University, whose research on forgiveness came up earlier in the book. One of his theories is that, despite the health benefits of forgiveness, many therapists do not discuss forgiveness with patients because they assume that is can only have a religious motivation. - CB] studies, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, compared three groups of subjects who had been wronged by someone in a significant way and sought counseling. The first group received forgiveness counseling based on religious precepts; the second group received forgiveness counseling that made no mention of faith, simply argued for the benefits of forgiving; the third group, which was the control, received conventional anger-management counseling that said nothing about forgiveness. The study found that people in the first and second groups had better outcomes than those in the third, and by about the same margins in each case. This is to say, whether someone forgave for reasons of faith or of secular ethics, the benefits were the same. What mattered was not the reason the person forgave, but simply that he or she decided to forgive.

Jesus was right, then, when he asserted that clinging to the claims of self brings about a kind of death, while releasing those claims, "dying to" those claims and learning how to forgive and let go brings about a kind of liberating rebirth. But Jesus is not the only on to teach the merits of forgiveness, and, clinically speaking it doesn't matter whether you forgive someone because Jesus told you to, or simply because you realized it was in your best interests to. The outcome is the same in either case.

This brings up an interesting paradox. If altruism (at least of a kind) is in a person's self interest, can someone be motivated by self interest to be altruistic, or does it then cease to be altruism? Can someone give and forgive selfishly, or is there merely a self interest benefit for the selfless?

That question may never be answered, and it may not even be that important. We have already discussed (in an earlier post) the Buddhist concept of "giving without attachment." But, does it matter to the person receiving the gift whether it was really given without any sort of attachment, so long as the attachment can never be detected? In other words, if you were motivated to give a gift without attachment because you were convinced that doing so would eliminate your own potential for suffering in the act of gift giving, but held on to the cessation of suffering as a sort of attachment, would that kind of attachment, which could never be detected by the person receiving the gift, matter to the receiver? Would it detract from their ability to enjoy the gift, which has all the appearances of being given freely?

Similarly, should it matter to me whether someone forgives me, or acts charitably towards me, because God told them to, they thought it was the "right" thing, or simply because they honestly believed that a little bit of charity might make them happier? In any case, I will have benefited from their act, whether it is truly altruistic or a case of enlightened self interest. In any case the world would be much better off if people acted virtuously, whether their motivation comes from God, ethics, or self interest.

If virtue is self interest, is it still virtue? That question is the title of this post, though so far this post has not directly considered it. It seems to me that, if virtue is defined as acting in such a way as to bring about positive outcomes for all people impacted by a particular action, then it matters not one whit why someone acted the way that they did, what their motive was, so long as that motive was not to harm. If good is the collateral benefit of a selflessly selfish action, then so be it. May the universe reward virtue wherever it appears. And may there be more virtue to reward.

Cal Thomas is at it again

My brother Tom called me yesterday to say that if I hadn't read Cal Thomas' latest op-ed piece I just had to drop everything and read it. It was simply too inflammatory to let stand. Since I was in St. Louis visiting my grandparents (more on that in a coming post) I didn't read Thomas' rant masquerading as an essay until just now. Simply put, I am stunned. I've picked Cal Thomas apart here before, but I've always tried to be charitable enough to avoid using phrases like flamingly stupid or ignorant beyond the point of my endurance.

In my last dissection of a Cal Thomas piece, I wrote that "[h]e is more than capable of making a good argument, though he does it less and less these days. But he is trading good reason for a flamethrower, which is not only intellectually dishonest, but morally reprehensible." The more he writes, however, the more I have to wonder whether or not he really can construct a decent argument. After all, building a sound argument, like building anything else, depends first and foremost on where and how you start. If your argument doesn't have a good foundation then it will crumble, no matter what you put on top of it.

Here is the foundation for Thomas' recent blustering:

Which of the following scenarios constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution: (1) aborting a baby with a fully developed nervous system and probably inflicting great pain; (2) murdering a nightclub manager in cold blood; (3) taking 34 minutes — twice the normal time — to execute the murderer of the nightclub manager?

While he is clearly trying to manipulate us into thinking that options (1) and (2) are so obviously cruel and unusual that it would be absurd for anyone to pick (3), in reality, per the way that he is setting up his argument, (3) is the only option one could honestly pick.

Why? Because here we are having a discussion on constitutional law, as Thomas makes clear with his reference to the Eighth Amendment. As such, we can only discuss - per the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against the state's imposing a cruel and unusual punishment on someone found guilty of violating a law - the constitutional value of actions committed by the state. So, the only actions which can be deemed by the Constitution to be cruel and unusual are actions by the state. See the trend here?

In scenario (1), Thomas' graphic depiction of an abortion, the state is not an actor. Thomas is free to argue that abortion is immoral, and he is even free to argue that in most or all cases abortion should be illegal. I am not entirely inclined to agree with him, as I think

a.) that abortion is under limited circumstances morally permissible, and

b.) that outlawing abortion would produce more harm than good, failing to attain the good aim of limiting the number of abortions while simultaneously maximizing the worst possible end, which is an even greater loss of lives as abortions are performed underground rather than in medical clinic.

But we could, of course, have that argument. An argument we could never have, however, is one about whether or not an abortion procedure counts as cruel and unusual punishment per the Eighth Amendment. This is, of course, because the state commits no action in an abortion. As being a fetus is not a crime, and certainly not a capital one; and as being aborted is not the mandated by our criminal justice system or imposed by any state; an abortion may have a positive or negative moral value, it may be deemed to be right, wrong, or somewhere in the vast middle, but it will never be cruel and unusual punishment per the Eighth Amendment, and to claim otherwise is recklessly stupid.

The same is true of scenario (2). While this situation is less morally problematic that the first one (is there a serious debate in this country about the moral value of murder?) it is still not a situation under the purview of the Eighth Amendment, as it was certainly not the state who murdered "a nightclub owner in cold blood." Rather, it is the state who has rightly deemed such an action to be illegal, and in need of the harshest justice which can be legally administered.

So, the only action which could be considered cruel and unusual per the Eighth Amendment is the one in scenario (3), as it is the only action committed by the state. As such, it should be considered apart from the actions in scenarios (1) and (2), as there can be no serious comparison between the three. They simply don't have anything in common.

Bracketing off the moral consideration in abortion, which Thomas has so recklessly introduced here to conflate the topic, I have to ask this question:

Do we want the standard for the moral and legal value of actions committed by the state to be determined by the worst criminal acts? Do we really want murder to be the standard for criminal justice? Do we really want the state to justify the taking of a person's life by saying, like a spoiled preschooler, "He did it first!" or "She started it!"?

If I'm reading Cal Thomas correctly, that's exactly what he's saying.

Baptists Go After Wal Mart!

The Bible Belt Blogger, Frank Lockwood, is reporting that some Baptists are "challenging Wal-Mart's treatment of its employees, suggesting some of the company's policies are anti-family and un-Christian." There is even a new TV ad, staring Louisville's own Rev. Joe Phelps of Highview Baptist.

Check out Frank's articles here and here, and see the ad here.

I never thought I'd say this, but:

You go, Baptists!

Jesus and Legalism: Bultmann on the Sermon on the Mount

I've always wanted to write a series on the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps Jesus' most famous teaching moment. The stark, uncompromising demands he makes, his inversion of the law and the religion of his day, has always challenged me. If we hear his words as somehow being the words of God, as being the foundation of our religious tradition, we are too often inclined to hear in them only what we expect to hear, what we've been taught in church and in Sunday School. They - radically unconventional in their day - become the new convention. They - a sweeping oratory against legalism - become the new law.

But if we hear these words as we might have heard them when they were first uttered, as the words of an unconventional teacher, part rabbi, part prophet, but not really either; as the words of a man who cannot really be pinned down: Is he a lunatic? Is he a genius? Is he a sage? Is he a fraud?, then we might hear just how strange they are. Just how challenging they are. Just how much their radical character demands of us, if we are truly listening.

If we give ourselves permission, just for a moment, to forget all we've ever thought we've known about Jesus and see him with fresh eyes, unshaped by two thousand years of Christological baggage, we might arrive at exactly what it is that Jesus was trying to teach the crowds that gathered around him that day.

But I've never had the intellectual ammunition or moral courage to do that. I've never been able to see the Sermon on the Mount through first century eyes. I've never been able to allow myself to hear the words of Jesus with the same critical ears I use when listening to anyone else preach or teach. And so, up until now, I've never written anything worth reading on the Sermon on the Mount. I've written on the person of Jesus. I've written on how Jesus has been seen through time, how our Christologies have developed. I've even written on how my own view of Jesus as the Christ has shifted oer time, how my own Christology has changed. I've exegeted more than a few parables, finding in them subtle nuances previously undetected (and quite possibly not there!). But I've never had anything meaningful to say about Jesus' most challenging teachings.

Still nursing my broken and now surgically repaired wrist, I've been unable of late to punch into the sporting goods time clock, a blessing and a curse. Being unable to work for my hourly wage, we're a little short financially right now. However, I'm long on time. There are so many books that I've been meaning to read, and as I nurse myself back to health (or, rather, as Sami nurses me back to health) I've finally got the time to read them.

So, with my new surplus of time, I picked up Rudolf Bultmann's treatise on the teachings of the "historical Jesus," Jesus and the Word. Much to the disappointment, I'm sure, of my college German professor, who used to impress upon me the value of reading the great German theologians and philosophers in their native German (Herr Baker. Du muss Kant auf Deutsch lesen!) I'm reading Bultmann in the 1934 English translation by Louise Pettibone Smith and Erminie Huntress Lantero. My German will, I'm sorry, never be that good. I'm too quintessentially American.

Anyway, Bultmann's project here is to bring his readers into an encounter with Jesus' teachings in their historical context, or at least to describe his own encounter. No comment is made about the person of Jesus, as Bultmann believes such knowledge is forever lost to history. As he puts it,

I do indeed think that we can know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary; and other sources about Jesus do not exist.

Further, he is unsure of the value of discussing Jesus' personality.

However good the reasons for being interested in the personalities of significant historical figures, Plato or Jesus, Dante or Luther, Napoleon or Goethe, it still remains true that this interest does not touch that which such men had at heart; for their interest was not in their personality but in their work.

Bultmann's concern, then, is neither with the Christology of the church, which he regards as legendary, nor with the study of the life and personality of Jesus, which he regards as both impossible and undesirable, distracting us from the real substance. No, Bultmann is exclusively concerned with Jesus' teaching.

Bultmann has long been presented to me as an almost exclusively negative writer. That is, he primarily negates traditional church teachings about Jesus rather than affirming something of value. Having not read any Bultmann before this week I cannot say whether or not that is true of the bulk of his writing. But I can say that in this volume on the teachings of Jesus, what is most interesting is not Bultmann's rejection and negation of traditional doctrine, but rather what he affirms about the teachings of the man who stands before and behind the religion which grew up around him.

He sees Jesus as both a rabbi and a prophet, but neither in a conventional sense. Like the rabbi, he shares a reverence for the word of God and a knowledge of the laws of God. But, according to Bultmann, he often inverts those laws, viewing them rather than as a system of commands instead as an invitation to radical obedience to the call of God. He shares the prophet's interest in reforming religion through an inversion of traditional practices, a call to a renewal which escapes rote religious repetition and ritual, and which incorporates and encompasses one's entire being. But he does not share the prophet's social concerns, he "does not speak of the state and civil rights."

The polemic of the prophets against the worship of false gods in Israel was combined with the struggle against political and social wrongs. Their teaching demanded justice and righteousness for the common people, and their demand was asserted by the command of God. The words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount show that Jesus sets the requirement of law and justice over against the command of God.

So while Jesus shares characteristics and concerns in common with both prophets and rabbis, he is neither a rabbi nor a prophet, nor truly some combination of the two. Rather, according to Bultmann, Jesus is best seen, through the lens of his teachings, as someone who calls others through crisis to the point of a radical decision. As such, it makes no sense to speak of the "ethic of Jesus," because Jesus calls us not to some universal ethic or ideal, but rather to a decision to be made over and over again,in each situation: to follow the will of God, or to rebel.

The Sermon on the Mount is often used to discuss Jesus' relationship to the law. And, rightly so. Like a good rabbi, this, his seminal teaching, offers an apparent commentary on the law. He looks at pieces of the law of Moses and offers fresh interpretations of them, radicalizing the law. These teachings follow a certain pattern:

You've heard it said

followed by a command from the law, then followed by,

but I say to you

followed by what is often seen as a kind of new law, a radicalizing of the previously given command.

You've heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not murder'; and 'whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire. (Matt. 5: 21-22, NRSV)

Here we see an expansion of the law. Not only is murder forbidden, but anger, which leads to murder, is forbidden. Unkind words, a form of metaphorical murder, are forbidden. As Bultmann says of it,

He who indeed refrains from murder but does not master anger has not understood that he must decide completely [to follow, or obey, the will of God].

There are other such apparent expansions of the law which Bultmann considers:

Matt. 6: 27-28, in which Jesus expands the command against adultery to include lust,

Matt. 5:31-32 and Luke 16:18, in which Jesus expands the concept of marriage beyond the possibility of divorce,

Matt. 5: 33 and 37, in which Jesus expands the prohibition against giving false witness to a demand for radical honesty,

Matt. 5: 38-41, in which Jesus expands the proportional limitation which the law places on retaliation to a call for non-violence, and

Matt. 5: 43-48, in which Jesus expands the command to love to include even love for one's enemy.

Of these he says

In all these passages the decisive requirement is the same: the good which is to be done is to be done completely. He who does it partially, with reservations, just enough to fulfill the outward regulation, has not done it at all.

How does this, according to Bultmann, work out in each of the individual passages? We have already seen his treatment of the expansion of murder to include even anger and insults. Of the rest, he says:

He who avoids adultery, but keeps lust in his heart, has not understood the prohibition of adultery, which requires of him purity. He who refrains simply from perjury has not seen that absolute truthfulness is demanded. He who divorces his wife has not understood that marriage requires of him a complete decision, but thinks of it as a relative action which can be annulled. He who takes revenge for injustice does not realize that by so doing he himself upholds injustice; to reject injustice completely means not to retaliate. He who is kind only to friends does not know what love means; for complete love includes love of enemies.

This much is a fairly conventional, but still insightful interpretation of this teachings of Jesus. But to stop here runs the risk of doing what has so often been done in the name of Jesus, but which, according to Bultmann, is the antithesis of Jesus' own teachings: that is, to set up these teachings as a new law, and to see Jesus as a new lawgiver.

According to Bultmann this is, in fact, the opposite of what Jesus is doing here. Jesus is not replacing old commands with new ones, or even supplementing the old commands with new, permanently binding interpretations. Rather, Jesus is inviting the hearer to a radical obedience of the will of God which does not depend on any law, any fixed regulation.

Law claims a man so far as his conduct can be found by formulated precepts. Beyond these it leaves free play to man's self-will. Jesus' belief is on the contrary that the human will has no freedom before God, but is radically claimed by Him. Under the law, the question "How well does my conduct conform to the commandment?" becomes a question of content, of the What of the action. Obedience must be determinable, and therefore law must concern itself with the What of action, not the How. Hence formal obedience to the law as such is no radical obedience, though of course true obedience can exist in fulfillment of the law.

Jesus has wholly separated obedience from legalism; hence he does not set up a better law in opposition to a less good law; he opposes the view that the fulfillment of the law is fulfilling the will of God. For God demands the whole man, not merely specific acts from the man.

Jesus then sees the act as expressing thewhole man, that is, he sees his action from the view-point of decision: Either-Or. Every half-way is an abomination. It would obviously be a complete misunderstanding to take these "But I tell you" passages as formal legal precepts of an external authority, which can be fulfilled by outward behavior. Whoever appealing to a word of Jesus refuses to dissolve an unendurable marriage, or whoever offers the other cheek to one who strikes him, because Jesus said so, would not understand Jesus. For he would have missed exactly the obedience which Jesus desires; he would imagine that he could achieve and present an act of obedience when obedience is not really present as a determining factor in his life. All these sayings are meant to make clear by extreme example that it is not a question of satisfying an outward authority but of being completely obedient. It is also wholly impossible to regard Jesus' teachings as universally valid ethical precepts by which a man can once for all order his life. Unless the decision which is demanded in these sayings arises out of a present situation, it is not truly the decision of obedience, but an achievement which the man accomplishes; he stands outside of his action, is not wholly identified with it.

Jesus, then, is not establishing a new law, or issuing some comprehensive ethic which will apply in every situation. He is instead issuing a radically situational ethic: in all situations, in every thought and action, one must obey God. One must in every way conform to the will of God.

This is a dangerous ethic because, though it demands that humans surrender their freedom, it still leaves the decision making process entirely in the hands of us imperfect people, who often "hear" the voice of God speaking to us, even if it isn't God we hear at all. This crisis theology ethic of radical obedience, as reflected in Bultmann's reading of Jesus, is built in part of Kierkegaard's teleological suspension of the ethical, one of the most dangerous theological concepts I've ever encountered.

If we had perfect access to the will of God, then calling us to such radically situational obedience would be obviously beneficial. As Bultmann represents Jesus' teaching, we humans already know what we are to do. God speaks to us in every concrete situation, teaching us right from wrong, showing us how to obey. It is simply up to us to choose obedience in each moment.

And perhaps this is both an accurate representation of Jesus' teachings and our situation. Still, there are so many competing influences disguising themselves as the voice of God; and so often it is impossible for us, mired as we are in our own situation, chained as we are to our own perspective, to distinguish between our own wills and the will of God.

That, of course, does not mean that Bultmann or his view of the teachings of Jesus is wrong. It just means that, if we take this call to radical obedience seriously we must be constantly checking against ourselves, to make sure that we do not use the calling of God as a licence to disguise our own voices as the voice of God, and then pompously set our own wills up as a kind of idol in the place of God.

Kevin Tillman speaks out

Kevin Tillman, a former Army Ranger and the brother of the late Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger killed by "friendly fire" in Afghanistan, has ended his silence, speaking out against the war in Iraq and the Bush administration. Here is a quote:

Somehow, the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country. Somehow, this is tolerated. Somehow, nobody is accountable for this.

You can read the full piece at Truthdig.com, or you can read the AP article here.

While you're at it, make sure to check out ESPN.com's three part E-ticket investigation, The Truth About Pat Tillman:

An Un-American Tragedy,

Playing With Friendly Fire,

and

Death of an American Ideal.