Theo 308.091 Christian Ethics & Morality Course Outline PDF

KENYA METHODIST UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF THEOLOGY, RELIGIOUS STUDIES & COUNSELING THEO 308/091 – CHRISTIAN ETHICS & MORALITY REV. CHARLES M. KANORU COURSE OUTLINE WEEK TOPIC SUB-TOPIC 1...

KENYA METHODIST UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF THEOLOGY, RELIGIOUS STUDIES & COUNSELING THEO 308/091 – CHRISTIAN ETHICS & MORALITY REV. CHARLES M. KANORU COURSE OUTLINE WEEK TOPIC SUB-TOPIC 1 Introduction  Defining ethics, morality and Christian ethics.  Purpose of Ethics 2 Ethics in relation to  Ethics and other disciplines other fields  Subject matter of ethics 3 Classification of  Branches of ethics Ethics  Principles of Ethics 4 Ethical Theories  Classical ethical theories  Modern ethical theories 5 Ethics of the  Foundations of the Christian Religion Christian Religion  Sources of Christian Ethics  Nature of Christian Ethics 6 The Ethics of Jesus  What Jesus taught  Eschatology and ethics  Ethical Perspectives of the Early Church 7 God, sin and the  God and the Christian character Christian Character  The Christian virtues  The nature of sin  Christian duty to self  Christian duty to society 8 Marriage and the  The meaning and purpose of marriage Christian Family  Family mutual relationships and responsibilities  Sexuality, abortion, domestic violence and divorce/separation 9 The Ethics of  The economic ethics of the New Testament  Economic Life  The Christian view to property, poverty and corruption  Moral responsibility of employers and employees  What is economic justice? 10 Culture and  The cultured person Christian Ethics  Conformity to a given culture  Culture as a manifestation of the divine  the Church and culture  Biblical and theological foundations to culture  Culture of hope, faith and love 11 Church and State  The Meaning of the state  Difficulties faced by Christians in the state  Biblical approach to Social justice  Entrenching justice and love  Liberty, equality and democracy 12 The Christian and  Christianity and the race problem Current Ethical  The Christian and the problem of Issues terrorism/conflicts  Christian issues related to science and technology 13 and 14 End of trimester exams Assignments: Due Date: 16th March 2017 1. a) Explain the principles of Christian Ethics b) Examine the Christian duties to God, others and to the self. 2. Discuss the ethical perspective of the Early Church on: a) Justice b) Economics REFERENCES 1. Dzurgba, A. (2000). Principles of Ethics. Ibadan; Agape Publishers 2. Harkness George (1957). Christian Ethics. California; Abingdon Press 3. Knudson, A.C. (1943). The Principles of Christian Ethicss. New York; Abingdon Press. 4. Ozumba, G. O. (2001). Ethics: A Philosophical Approach. Lagos; O.O. Publishers. 5. Peschke, K.H. (2001). Christian Ethics II. Moral Theology in the Light of Vatican II. Bangalore; India Theological Publications. 6. Kunhiyop, S.W. (2008). African Christian Ethics. Nairobi, Hippobooks, African Christian Textbooks. INTRODUCTION What is Ethics? Ethics is a systematic reflection upon human actions, institutions and characters. It is concerned with what is morally good or bad, right or wrong, correct or incorrect, valid or invalid. It deals with what people ought to do. It judges human conduct, action and behaviour on their levels of goodness or badness. It evaluates and judges all voluntary actions and inward activities such as speech and the movement of the doers. Ethics studies the conduct of human beings living in society and judges their conduct as right or wrong, good or bad, depending on how such conduct enhances the well being of the members of society. Ethics is a branch of philosophy termed as moral philosophy and is a pervasive discipline cutting across all aspects of man’s life such as politics, religion, economics, law etc. According to Harold De Wolf, ethics is the discipline concerned with the evaluation of human conduct that is with determining the goodness or evil properly ascribed to human choices and also a discipline concerned with establishing norms and methods. Christian Ethics Normative Science which is based on the revelation of God in the Bible, especially on the will of God as revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus that considers what Christians and Churches do, motivated and empowered by the Holy Spirit and God’s love. Sources of Christian Ethics The Bible: The Bible which is the scripture of the Christians is defined by Richard Jones as the assembled witness of the Christian and Jewish communities to the central events of their faith as authorised by the Christian church In about AD 376. It is persuasive with several ethical teachings which are found in both the Old and the New Testament. It contains passages of high ethical significance. In the Old testament we find the Ten Commandments which could be described as the Covenant Code. Others include Holiness code which can be found Leviticus 19vs 1-18, Deuteronomic code found in Deuteronomy 6vs 1-9. Ethical teachings of the Minor and Major Prophets, ethical teachings in the Wisdom literatures such as Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Song of Solomon, and other historical books such as Samuel, Judges etc. In the New Testament we have the ethical teachings in the synoptic gospels which has been described as the Jesus ethics. This is sub divided into Disciple Ethics, religious Ethics, Internal Ethics, Perfectionist Ethics, Relevant Ethics, Exemplified ethics, The Sermon on the Mount Ethics, Ethical writings in the book of John, Paul in 13 Corpus, James, Peter, Jude etc. These points of contact found in the Old and New Testament all play emphasis on principles which Christians must apply to their daily activities as a matter of duty or obligation. Faithfulness, Truthfulness, Honesty, Endurance, Justice, Accountability, Equality, dedication, Righteousness, Kindness, Tolerance, Discipline etc. These constitute the Ethical virtues for all Christians. Though the Bible is an Important source of Christian ethics, we must note two things: 1) When it comes to how a person should behave, the Bible is not a problem solver per excellence. Take for example Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount about Adultery, War, Divorce, Retaliation, Fasting etc. appears to contradict the Old Testament views for it gives room for divorce while the former is against it. Again we find theologians holding different and diverse views about some crucial moral issues especially in the areas of Medicine like the problem of Abortion, Family Planning, Blood Transfusion, Beer drinking or trading, Smoking, Sex before Marriage, War, Violence, participation in Politics, Suicide, Euthanasia etc. for these and many other issues some people have raised objections to the value and relevance of the Bible as a source of Christian Ethics and a few has the opinion that the Bible has no answer to modern day problems probably because Jesus did not envisage the problems. While it is difficult to arrive at a world view about the relevance or irrelevance of the bible, it is still certain that it is written by the inspiration of God and is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness. Scholars have argued it out amongst themselves and some are of the view that though Jesus did not live in the kind of modern society that has come to be known to us today, Christian ethics is still relevant and applicable to Social, political and economic aspect of Man’s life. Biblical Foundation For Christian Morality Introduction The term 'morality' has been defined in an explanatory way under two broad classifications in this article: (a) general description, (b) biblical description. The main reason for this classification is to be able to compare biblical system of morality, which is the focus of the study with other systems of morality. Scott B. Rae observed, 'most people use the term morality and ethics interchangeably. Technically, morality refers to the actual content of right and wrong. Morality is the end result of ethical deliberations, the substance of right and wrong'.1 While noting this difference, the terms would be discussed as an inseparable pair in this paper. General Definition of Morality According to the New Bible Dictionary, the words 'ethics' and 'morals' according to the Greek and Latin books mean 'customs'.2 The idea is to discover the things that are usually done and conclude that these are the things one ought to do. Logically, it follows that these are the things that will seem right to the individual and also to society. Scott B. Rae goes a bit further in stating what morality is primarily concerned about. He said that morality is primarily concerned about questions of right and wrong, the ability of distinguishing between the two, and the justification of the distinction.3 There may be norms in society, with reference to what is right and wrong. However, society faces so many new and challenging issues, that people are forced into ethical deliberations. Samuel Enoch Stumpf, in his book, 'Elements of Philosophy', possesses the following questions: Why can't we do just what we want to do? What difference does it make to anyone how we behave? Why does the question of ethics arise in the first place? Why should we think that one way of behaving is better than the other? That telling the truth is better than trying to get ourselves out of trouble by telling a falsehood? And who has the authority to tell us what to do? He concludes by saying that one should study ethics in order to find answers to the questions, what should I do? And why should I do it?4 From Stumpf's statement it can be seen that the main issue that divides people in their moral views is that of the ultimate source of moral authority. Norman L. Geisler in the first seven chapters of his book, 'Ethics: Options and Issues' shows this division among people as he discussed the basic approaches to ethics. He states that ethical systems could be broadly divided into two main categories: deontological (duty centered) and teleological (end- centered). Deontological systems are systems that are based on principles in which actions (or character or even intentions) are inherently right or wrong. Teleological systems, on the other hand are system that are based on end result produced by an action.5 Scott B. Rae, in his discussion on ethical systems included one more division - relativism, to that already stated by Geisler. According to him 'relativism' refers to an ethical system in which rights and wrongs are not absolutes and unchanging, but relative to one's culture (cultural relativism) or one's own personal preferences (moral subjectivism).6 However, this third category can still fit under Geisler's two divisions. Further, Geisler stated that there are six major ethical viewpoints: (i) Antinomianism - says there are no moral norms; (ii) Situationism - affirms that there is one absolute law (the law of love); (iii) Generalism - claims that there are some general laws but no ones; (iv) unqualified absolute laws that never conflicts; (v) conflicting absolutism - contends that there are many absolute norms that sometimes conflicts and one is obligated to do lesser evil; and (vi) graded absolutism - holds that many absolute laws sometimes conflict, but one is responsible to obey the higher law. Geisler pointed out these six sub-categories are based on a view of ethical approach, which revolves around norms - deontological.7 In contrast the other approach does not stress norms but ends - teleological, and is described as non-normative or utilitarian approach. Biblical Definition 1. General Observations D. H. Field observed that, 'biblical ethics are God centered, instead of following majority opinion, or conforming to customary behaviour, the scripture encourages us to start with God and his requirement - not with man and his habits - when we look for moral guidelines'.8 In order to understand the Bible's definition of morality, one needs to examine the scripture, as Field observed, to see what God says and requires. He points out five things from the Bible about biblical morality points us to the person of God to discover that nature of goodness. God alone is good and it is his will that expresses what is good and acceptable and perfect; ii) the source of moral knowledge is revelation. According to the Bible, Knowledge of right and wrong are not so much an object of philosophical inquiry as an acceptance of divine revelation; iii) moral teaching is phrase as commend not statements. With the exception of the OT wisdom literature, moral judgements are laid down flatly, not argued out reasonably. The philosophers on the other hand had to reason their moral judgment in order to convince people that they are good; iv) The basic ethical demand in biblical ethics is to imitate God. God sums up goodness in his own person. Man's supreme ideal according to the Bible is to imitate him; v) Religion and ethics is theocentric. The moral teachings of scripture loose its credibility once the religious undergirding is removed. Religion and ethics are related as foundation to building. Biblical ethics spring from biblical doctrine and the two are inseparable. 2. Morality in the Old Testament From a amore general overview of biblical morality, it is but proper to understand the concept as presented in the two testaments. In the OT a close understanding of the covenant, the Law and the Prophets can give one a clearer understanding of morality. These three aspects will now be examined individually examined. a) The Covenant The covenant God made with Israel through Moses (Exod. 24) had direct and far-reaching significance. God's grace as seen in his actions of love and concern in delivering Israel from Egypt, supplies the chief motive for obedience to his commandments. The Israelites as God's partners were united to respond gracefully to God's prior acts of underserved love. They were called to his will in gratitude for his grace, rather than submit in terror to threats of punishment. For this reason, for example, slaves were to be treated generously because God treated the Hebrew slaves with generosity in Egypt. The covenant also encourages an intense awareness of corporate solidarity in Israel. Its effect was not only to unite the individual to God, but also to bind all covenant members into a single community. A man's transgression therefore can affect the whole community (josh 7), and everyone is under obligation to help a needy person. The strong emphasis on OT ethics hinges on social ethics. b) The Law The covenant provided the context for God's law giving. A distinctive feature of the OT law was its stress on the maintenance of right relationships between people and between people and God. It can be noted that the most serious sequence of the law breaking was not any material punishment, but the resulting breakdown in relationships. (Ho 1:2). The Ten Commandments, which should be seen as the heart of the law, are concerned with the most fundamental of relationships. They set out the basic sanctity governing belief, worship and life. c) The Prophets Social conditions in Israel changed dramatically since Moses' time, and the Israelites failed to see how the law required obedience in their daily dealings in society, which also affected their relationship with God. The Prophets made it their business to interpret the law by digging down to its basic principle and applying these to the concrete moral problems of their day. 2. Morality in the New Testament Norman L. Geisler made the following observations about New Testament Ethics: 1) That Christian ethics is based on God's will. It is, as she puts it, a form of divine command position; an ethical duty, which is something we ought to do. It is prescriptive; 2) That Christian ethics is absolute. The fact that God's moral character does not change (Mal 3:16) means those moral obligations that flow from his nature are absolute. Geisler points out that whatever is traceable to God's unchanging moral character is a moral absolute e.g. holiness, justice, love, truthfulness and mercy. Other commands flow from God's will, but they are not absolute. That is, they must be obeyed because God prescribed them, but he did not prescribe them for all people, times and places. Absolute moral duties, on the contrary are binding on all people at all times and in all places; 3) That Christian ethics is based on God's revelation. What God commands has been revealed both generally (Rom. 1:19-20;2:12-15) in nature, and specifically (Rom. 2:2-18;3:2) in scripture. God's general revelation contains his command for all people. His special revelation declares his will for believer; 4) That Christian ethics is prescriptive since moral rightness is prescribed by a Moral God. Geisler pointed out that there is no moral law without a moral Lawgiver, or a moral legislation without a moral legislator. Therefore Christian ethics is prescriptive not descriptive. Christians do not have their ethics in the standard of Christians but in the standard for Christians - The Bible; and 5) Christian ethics is deontological. That is, based on principles in which actions (or character or even intentions) are inherently right or wrong.10 Chapter 1: What is Christian Ethics? This is a book on Christian ethics. Its main focus will be on Christian action and on the principles, derived from the Christian faith, by which to act. It is at the point of a multitude of decisions about what to do or what not to do — how to do right and how to avoid doing what a Christian ought not to do — that the daily strains of living are most acute. Though there can be no exact blueprint by which to settle all these dilemmas, there is light to be had from our gospel. The foregoing reference to action assumes the importance of Christian experience and personality. It was said of old of an evil man, "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he" (K.J.V.), and this may be said of the good man as well. The indispensable connection between Christian character and conduct will, I trust, soon become evident. Can a book on Christian ethics, however firmly rooted in the gospel, do more than to elaborate some great, but completely familiar, generalities such as that we ought to love God and our neighbor and try always to do the will of God? The answer is both Yes and No. No book, unless it is a manual put out by an authoritarian church or a dictatorial political power, can attempt to give specific rules for the manifold decisions of life — and even there the complexities of living are such that "circumstances alter cases." Jesus did not undertake to provide his followers with any such manual of rules, and it would be presumptuous for a modern Christian to attempt what our Lord apparently was too wise to do. Yet, on the other hand, some things can be said with a fair degree of certainty and assurance. Is adultery right or wrong? Are double-dealing and dishonesty to be condoned in business and politics? Ought children to be starved in body, mind, or soul? Christians have no doubt as to the answer, though how to carry out the implications of the answer may not be simple. Even on such moot matters as race relations and war, the Christian conscience has spoken in our time with an amazing degree of unanimity as to principle. And if principles can be agreed upon, the groundwork is laid for action. This book will attempt to fulfill two functions: to present this groundwork of Christian ethical principles and to discuss their application to the major issues of Christian ethical decision in today’s society. It is hoped that the reader whose primary interest is in the one or the other of these two approaches will agree to the necessity of the other. Said the philosopher Immanuel Kant, "Form without content is empty; content without form is blind." This is equally true in Christian ethics. Principles can never be rightly declared in a vacuum, and to try to say what is right in concrete issues without grounding decision in principle is to exalt personal preference — if not whim — into the status of universal truth. 1. Frames of reference But what is Christian ethics? Before any attempt is made to define its principles, an important prior question must be settled. What are we talking about? There are at least six frames of reference within which the term has been used. These overlap and meet at the edges, but much confusion has come about from failure to see clearly that they are different frames of reference. Christian ethics may mean (1) the best in the moral philosophy of all ages and places, (2) the moral standards of Christendom, (3) the ethics of the Christian Church and its many churches, (4) the ethics of the Bible, (5) the ethics of the New Testament, and (6) the ethical insights of Jesus. These are in a sense concentric circles, for nothing is apt to be called Christian unless it is in some way — whether tightly or loosely — linked with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Yet in another sense, depending much on the tightness or looseness of this connection, they may more accurately be regarded as intersecting circles. Both in current Western society and in the churches much is advocated that bears some relation to what the Bible records of the life and teachings of Jesus, yet does not center focally at this point. The focus may be in Greek philosophy, or traditional Christian thought or the Old Testament prophets, or the writings of Paul, or simply the demands of foreign policy and democratic action in the twentieth century, and still it goes by the name of Christian ethics. One has only to look at a cross section of the moral injunctions in the sermons, the popular religious writing, and the church pronouncements of the present to see this illustrated, and even the writers of important books on Christian ethical theory do not always define their standing ground. The term "Christian ethics," as I shall use it, means a systematic study of the way of life exemplified and taught by Jesus, applied to the manifold problems and decisions of human existence. It therefore finds its base in the last of these frames of reference, and in the other five only as they are consistent with the sixth and exist as applications or implications of the moral insights of Jesus. This is not to claim that we have a perfect record of the life and teachings of Jesus, for historical scholarship has made it clear that the records we have in the Gospels reflect not only what Jesus was and did and said, but also what the early Church believed about him. Still less is it to claim that any fallible human mind can enter so fully into the divine-human consciousness of Jesus as to say without error what his judgment would be in every concrete case of contemporary decision, It is only to affirm that we have an adequate, a dependable, and an indispensable guide to Christian action in what we know of Jesus and in what through him we know of God. No other guide, however important and useful, is either adequate, or so dependable, or so indispensable. To define more explicitly what is involved in the moral perspective of Jesus will require presently more extended treatment. But it will be a step toward it, and a step away from confusing it with something else, if we now briefly compare and contrast it with each of the other five frames of reference. 2. Christian ethics and moral philosophy The keynote in the life and teaching of Jesus with regard to man’s moral duty is found in "obedient love."1 This means that with faith in God as the energizing center of one’s being, one is required to seek to do the will of God by loving God supremely and one’s neighbor as one’s self. However, as the total impact of Jesus’ teaching makes evident, to love one’s neighbor as one’s self is not to be understood as any precise balancing and equating of love for others with self-love. Still less does it mean loving others for the sake of receiving love or other benefits in return. Agape love means, rather, an uncalculating, outgoing spirit of loving concern which finds expression in deeds of service without limit. Such "obedient love" is defined for us in the Gospels less by specific statements than by the whole tenor of Jesus’ ministry, culminating in his own death upon the cross in fidelity to it. Yet it is implied throughout his recorded words from the Sermon on the Mount to the Last Supper discourse. It is basic to his central teaching, the obligation to "seek first his [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness." Its supremacy over any ordinary love comes to clear expression in the words: For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt. 5:46-48.) How does this differ from the focus of reference in the various systems of classical moral philosophy? Though this is not the place for an extended exposition of them, even a casual glance may suggest that there are both affinities and differences. Platonic thought makes much of eros, and eros means love. Yet agape love, and Bishop Nygren has shown this at length in his now classic Agape and Eros, is not the same thing as eros. Eros (which must not be confused with its modern derivative, "the erotic’) means a quest for the highest values, the harmonious adjustment of personality in a well-rounded life, self- fulfillment through seeking the good. This is achieved in the individual only through promoting the well-being of others. It therefore involves mutuality in love. Its modern correlate is the quest for "the good life" through self-realization. But is not this what a Christian ought to desire? It has much to commend it, and no Christian ought to disparage it. But to the Christian is eros enough? That is our problem. Aristotle’s eudaemonism, with its emphasis on a life of moderation with every man fulfilling the function for which he is fitted by nature, and thereby ensuring happiness, is a practical and down-to- earth system which still has much modern relevance. The hedonistic, or pleasure-seeking, ethics of Epicurus was by no means the crass sensualism suggested by the oft-quoted ‘Eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die"; it centered in a refined enjoyment of congenial friends, simplicity of living, and freedom from tension in a cultured and unstrenuous life. Stoicism, on the other hand, with its appeal to courage in the face of life’s vicissitudes and the pursuit of virtue solely for virtue’s sake, was both a more serious and a more religiously grounded ethic. Its doctrine of an all-pervasive World-Reason, or Logos, and of a natural law of morality fundamental to all existence and embracing in its scope all men, had a note of universalism which made Stoicism particularly open to amalgamation with Christian thought.2 These, of course, are not the only classical systems of moral philosophy. There is the formal, duty ethics of Kant with its categorical imperative, or unconditional demand, to treat all persons as ends, never as means, and to act only in such a way that one’s conduct could be universalized. There is the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, centered in the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" and the measurement of all courses of action by their usefulness toward this end. And there is the modern, but in its elements very old, "social adjustment" philosophy of John Dewey which measures right conduct by the ability to take one’s place as a good citizen in an ordered, democratic society. It is apparent that there are good elements in all of these systems. But are they Christian? From the early days of Christianity to the present, various courses have been followed with regard to the relations of Christian ethics to moral philosophies stemming from other sources. One has been the process of incorporation and amalgamation. In practice, this has often meant the accommodation of Christian principles to what was incorporated. Starting from a laudable desire to propagate Christianity by finding points of contact with the non-Christian world, it has tended to de-emphasize what is distinctive in Christianity in order to stress common ground. At its worst, this has meant the complete subsuming of Christian ethics within philosophical ethics even to the point of disclaiming that anything to be called Christian ethics exists. At its best, it has bred a form of "coalition ethics"3 in which natural law and the insights of Plato, Aristotle, and other great philosophers are drawn upon to supplement Christian ethics in areas where the gospel gives no specific directives. Examples of such incorporation and amalgamation, with varying levels of success, are seen in the incorporation by Clement of Alexandria of the best in Greek philosophy, the Thomistic assimilation of Aristotle, and the present-day tendency to adjust Christianity to a workable synthesis with the rationalistic, scientific, and humanitarian ideals of modern culture. A second course follows as a reaction from the first. In alarm at the tendency to accommodate Christianity to the accepted standards of the secular world, there is a repudiation by Christian leaders of all sources of moral decision not specifically grounded in the Bible. This is seen in the familiar Barthian mood of the present. In general this movement in ethics has gone along with the rejection of philosophical theology in the attempt to base Christian theology solely on the Bible. It was illustrated in the early Church by Tertullian, who refused to give any credence to Greek philosophy, asking scornfully, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" It is illustrated today by the neo-orthodox school in its suspicion of not only liberal theology but the liberal social gospel,4 though the tendency is not uniform throughout neo-orthodoxy. Some of its exponents, notably Emil Brunner, have a large place for "middle axioms," or practical social directives, derived in part from the Christian ethic but less than a full expression of Christian agape.5 Christian ethics is on unsafe ground if it either sells its birthright by accommodation to secular standards or refuses to respect and learn from the moral wisdom of the ages. The third possible approach is less easy to define, for its center lies more in attitudes than in specific procedures. These attitudes may be characterized as those of mutual understanding and critical appropriation. What is involved is that Christian moralists must familiarize themselves as thoroughly as possible with the history of philosophy, seek to understand other world views in their best forms as well as their worst, give them sympathetic but critical evaluation — then appropriate what is worth appropriating if it is not at variance with Christian faith. But in this process, there must be no amalgamating of what is different, no surrender of what is distinctive in Christianity. If this process is followed faithfully, there can be some hope of mutuality, with some appropriation of Christian insights into secular philosophy, as there is not apt to be on any other basis. To state in barest outline what can result if this procedure is followed, there can be a partial acceptance by Christians of the insights of Plato and the Stoics, but no identification of eros with agape, no substituting of stoic fortitude for devoted submission to the will of God. From Aristotle’s ethics not a few elements of practical wisdom can be taken, but not their humanistic foundations. The self-centered hedonism of Epicurus must be rejected because it is squarely opposed to Christian agape, while the duty ethics of Kant the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, and the contemporary emphasis on social adjustment may well be used as instruments for carrying out some aspects of the Christian moral imperative but ought never to be confused with its goals. If this third position is accepted, we shall neither scorn moral philosophy nor identify Christian ethics with it. We shall rejoice that God has found many channels for the disclosure of truth to men and that these channels include the best rational thought of the ages on the nature and aims of the good life. Yet while we thus rejoice, we shall not substitute them for what God has disclosed to us in Jesus Christ or admit any to be true which stands clearly at variance with his gospel. This third position, which I believe to be the only valid one, is what we shall attempt to maintain in this study. For its wider philosophical basis, the reader is referred to my earlier book in this series, Foundations of Christian Knowledge,6 and for its historical backgrounds insofar as they relate to Greek and Roman thought to The Sources of Western Morality. 3. Christian ethics and the ethics of Christendom By Christendom we mean those geographical areas and those types of culture which have been largely influenced by Christian ideals. It is nearly, though not fully, synonymous with "the West." Two important elements prevent it from being synonymous. The first is the expansion of Christianity into the Orient, so that there is now a world Church and a large penetration of Christian influence into areas predominantly non-Christian. The second is the ambiguous situation in those areas under Communist domination, wherein a political regime officially atheistic includes within its scope millions of persons who are still Christians. Should Communism succeed in stamping out Christianity, these areas would no longer be a part of Christendom; fortunately, this appears not likely to occur. The identification of Christian ethics with the ethics of Christendom is more subtle, and hence more dangerous, than its identification with the various schools of moral philosophy. As one element it includes the latter, as is illustrated by the wide permeation of the social and educational philosophy of John Dewey within current American culture. Yet it is something more diffuse and usually more binding than the thought of any single philosopher or school. It involves the whole "climate of opinion" within which one is reared, lives, and does his work. And because there is so much that is good about this climate of opinion and environing structure, it is easy to identify it with the best and hallow it with the name of Christian. There is not space here to canvass in any detail the ways in which Christian ethics gets mixed up with the ethics of Christendom. This I have tried to do in The Modern Rival of Christian Faith,7 particularly in Part 2, where under the general caption of "Rival Secular Faiths" I have indicated elements of agreement and difference between Christianity and scientism, humanism, democracy, nationalism, racism, fascism, capitalism, and Communism. Further observations will be made on specific questions as we come to them later in this book. It may be noted in passing, however, that there is little danger of an identification of Christian ethics with humanism, racism, fascism, or Communism when these are recognized for what they are, since their foundations are so clearly opposed to those of the Christian faith. Even racism, widely practiced by Christians, is repudiated in principle. It is at the point of the other four — scientism, democracy, nationalism, and capitalism — and their diffusion into an exaltation of scientific and technological achievement, the American way of life, patriotism, and free enterprise, that the identification becomes most common. Add to these a sense of the dignity of man, humanitarian concern for the weak, the helpless, and the suffering, a wholesome respect for law, and in general, attitudes of kindness, generosity, and responsible citizenship — and one comes out with what most Americans regard as "acting like a Christian." Is this judgment mistaken? It is, and it is not. All the achievements and virtues above mentioned have in them large elements of goodness. Some of them — particularly humanitarian concern for others and a sense of the worth of every person — can be traced directly to Christian roots. Yet taken as a whole, they do not add up to Christian agape. One can believe in every one of them and be a decent, respectable, even admirable citizen, and still not be a Christian. A major, and perhaps the most difficult, task of Christian leaders is to induce people who are virtuous in all these respects to see that such goodness is not good enough. As long as one identifies Christian ethics with the ethics of Christendom, one does not cry out, "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" or lay hold in humility upon divine grace, or seek in costly self-surrender to follow the path of obedient love. 4. Christian ethics and the churches The ethics of the Church, and individually of the churches, stands midway between the ethics of Christendom and the ethics of the gospel as it comes to us in Jesus Christ. The Church, insofar as it is faithful to its mission as the carrier of the gospel and is a fellowship of persons sincerely trying to follow Jesus, sees more clearly what is right than does the surrounding society. It is for this reason that it is called to be the "conscience of the State" and is obligated without falling into a trite and secularistic moralism to proclaim and practice the principles of Christian morality. Its official pronouncements, whether in a papal encyclical or a statement of the World Council or National Council of Churches, or an action of a General Conference, are likely to be on a plane above that of current practice. This is not to say that any human document is flawless, but when the Church through its leaders tries to speak from a Christian frame of reference, it both indicts current practices and sets higher goals. This is as it should be if the Church is to be effective in applying the principles of its eternal gospel to the changing temporal scene. Nevertheless, except in such authoritarian churches as the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, it is seldom contended that the voice of the Church is to be equated with the voice of God in Christ. Even In Roman Catholicism this claim is not made except when the Pope speaks ex cathedra. It is the genius of Protestantism to recognize that any Christian may grasp something of Christian moral truth, and comparably, that no Christian, or group of Christians, has a monopoly upon the gospel and its ethical demands. The Church exists to be the carrier of the gospel in a fellowship of Christians. But the Church exists also as a human institution, a social group with a common center of professed loyalty to Christ, yet a social group made up of fallible human beings. These fallible human persons "who profess and call themselves Christians," who are of varying degrees of ethical insight and fidelity to Christ, are also enmeshed in a network of other human institutions, political, economic, domestic, recreational, cultural. It is only natural, therefore, that the standards current in these other social institutions should impinge upon their life as Christians and so find access into the structure of the churches. Hence, the churches are always in danger of themselves becoming secularized and conforming to the standards of the world instead of being agencies of Christian transformation. A statement on Christian Principles and Assumptions for Economic Life adopted by the General Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. puts this pointedly: The churches themselves own property, invest funds, and employ labor. Often their policies have been no better than those which the Church condemns in the secular world. Its divisions often reflect and seem to give a religious sanction to the social divisions that are characteristic of society at large. In all these matters judgment should begin at the house of God."8 This statement, unfortunately too true to give comfort to any discerning Christian, describes a state of affairs which can be countered only by a combination of clear Christian insight and courageous, patient Christian action. Both the individual Christian and those corporate groups that make up the churches need always to keep in mind the piercing injunction: "Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom. 12:2). It is apparent, therefore, that while churches are the natural media for Christian enlightenment, Christian ethics cannot be identified with the ethics of any of the existing churches. But what of the past? Was not the Church once pure? And if we look to the early days of Christianity, or to the Reformation, or to the beginnings of our denomination, do we not find there norms for action? There is always a tendency, when we do not find things as they ought to be around us, to take this backward look. The tendency is in part wholesome, but in other respects it is bound to cause distortion. It is true that there have been at intervals great creative outpourings of the Spirit of God, which have always had ethical accompaniments, and sometimes very significant ones. Among these, in addition to the supreme event of the life and death of our Lord, may be mentioned the era of the eighth-century prophets, the voices of Jeremiah and the Second Isaiah, the birth of the Church and the beginnings of missionary witness, the implanting of the gospel in Western Europe, the work and ministry of Francis of Assisi, the Protestant Reformation, the struggle for religious freedom, the Wesleyan revival, the emergence of the modern missionary and ecumenical movements. We do well to learn whatever lessons they have to teach us. Yet one of these lessons is that there has never been a forward movement without some mixture of human error and sin. The Church of today is further along the road toward a true Christian ethics than was Paul in his attitudes toward women, or Francis of Assisi in regard to the care of the body, or Luther in regard to the economic status of peasants, or Calvin in regard to infant damnation, or Wesley in regard to the requirements of world order and peace.9 The Church through the centuries has been the carrier of the Christian evangel and of a basic stricture of Christian faith. Out of this evangel and this faith the principles of Christian ethics are fashioned. We owe, then, to the Church of the past and to our fathers in the faith an incalculable debt. The past merits to be known and understood, to be viewed critically where necessary, but never to be treated lightly. We need to know what Augustine and Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley believed about the Christian life, both to learn from them and to avoid their errors. Yet while we acknowledge our debt to the "faith of our fathers, living still," and to those fathers who valiantly proclaimed it, let us not suppose that the Church of the past can be our norm for the ethical decisions of today. 5. Christian ethics and the Bible We come now to a frame of reference on which we are on firmer ground. The Bible is certainly indispensable to our knowledge of Christian truth and moral obligation. Without it, it is very possible that there would be today no churches, no Christendom, no knowledge of Christ. It is, of course, conceivable that God would have found a way to propagate the faith by word of mouth without a Book through all the centuries, and the fact that Roman Catholicism could exist so long without access to the Bible by the laity makes it impossible to say categorically that the Bible is the sine qua non of Christianity. Yet few would dispute the fact that without the Bible we should be infinitely poorer in our Christian experience and moral insight. Furthermore, in today’s world the Bible is the common possession of all Christians, and hence serves to unite Christians across deep divisions. This is not to say that all Christians agree on what the Bible says. There are differences in translation, and far more radical differences in interpretation. Acute controversies and sometimes schisms arise from this fact. Yet the Bible is still our common possession, and it is no accident that its sales continue year after year to exceed that of any other book, that it has been and continues to be translated into many hundreds of languages and dialects, that it has become so deeply embedded in our literature and culture that even those who have no personal familiarity with it daily use its phrases in ordinary speech. The Bible is the fountainhead of Christian theology. It is not the sole source, for there is a natural theology, also called philosophical theology, which finds evidences of God throughout his total creation and in the moral and religious aspirations and experience of all peoples. There is a place for such natural theology and at points where both biblical and philosophical theology are true, they cannot contradict each other. Nevertheless, the Bible is our firmer base for what is distinctively Christian, and the movement away from the more generalized conclusions of philosophical thought about God and his world to a more Christ-centered, biblically based structure of theology is in the right direction. If this is the case, is not the Bible all we need as the foundation of Christian ethics? The answer is Yes and No. This question may be followed by another. Are Christian ethical principles to be derived from the whole Bible or only from selected parts of it? Once more it is necessary to say Yes and No. Reviewing what has been said about the relations of Christian ethics to moral philosophy, to Christendom, and to the Church, we see that "no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." In the supreme duty of love to God and neighbor, rooted in faith, obedience, and humble acceptance of divine grace, we find "all the law and the prophets" — and enough to give a basis for centuries of ethical application. But this gives the basis; it does not give the applications. We are still left with a multitude of concrete moral decisions to make. For guidance in making them we must look — not to any ethical compendium above the Bible or beyond it in wisdom — but to other ranges of experience that may throw light on problems nonexistent in Bible times or not treated within its scope. What, for example, about slavery, birth control, juvenile delinquency, polio, speeding on highways, labor unions, stock-market manipulations, hydrogen bombs and war? The first and last existed in full force within the period covered by the Bible, but the Bible does not tell us what to do about them; the others are for the most part modern problems. It is apparent, then, that the Bible alone does not give us all we need. The thinking and experience of the centuries, whether in philosophy or the Church, will help us at some points. But we cannot live by the past, and we must know our times and the causes and consequences of prevailing evils. We must be continually on the alert to see what a sensitive Christian conscience, responsive to the call of Christ, will hold to be right and wrong courses of action in the circumstances where we are. Turning to the second question, we ask, "Shall we use the whole Bible, or only parts of it, as the basis of ethical decision?" This question may mean either of two things. One angle it takes is the question as to whether we should use the Old Testament as well as the New. And if the answer is Yes, shall we equate them in value? The other angle of the question goes to the heart of biblical interpretation and separates into two camps — at times one could almost say armed camps — the literalists and the liberals. This issue is, of course, the degree to which the historical method is to be used in discerning the ethical as well as the theological truth within the Bible. Let us look at these questions separately, though they impinge upon each other. As to whether we should look to the Old Testament for our ethical foundations, the answer is "Yes, but with discernment." I have said, and shall repeatedly insist, that the basic foundation of Christian ethics is in the ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ, as these bring to us the supreme revelation of God’s nature and will. Yet the Old Testament contains also much that is revelatory in its own structure, as well as preparatory for the coming of Christ. We could not dispense with the Ten Commandments or the great moral insights of the prophets or the matchless devotional poetry of the psalms. Even the ups and downs of Hebrew history, with their sordid spots as well as high moments, with moral weaklings as well as giants in the story, and much that reflects the lights and shadows of the times, teach us that God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. The discernment we need, if we are to see God’s light in the midst of earthly shadows, is found in the measuring rod of Jesus Christ. Are the polygamy, the trickery, the vindictiveness, found on many pages of the Old Testament Christian? Unquestionably not. Are the twenty-third psalm, or Isaiah’s vision in the Temple, or Micah’s definition of true religion Christian? Unquestionably yes. They are not the whole of Christianity, but they are fully consistent with what Jesus taught and did. So, too, are a wealth of other passages in the Old Testament. The Old Testament, we must remember, was Jesus’ Bible. He did not repudiate it; he loved it and learned from it and often quoted it. But he did not slavishly feel bound to it. In the Sermon on the Mount the six-times-repeated "You have heard that it was said to the men of old.... But I say to you..." indicates how he used it. He took it as a foundation, but put deeper meaning into the issues involved. This we must do, drawing from his insights. On the question of a historical versus a literalistic approach to the Bible I have stated my convictions elsewhere and need not here discuss the subject in detail.10 It is not a question of inspiration, for one who sees in the Bible a progressive revelation of the living God as he moves in the events of Hebrew history, the coming of Christ and the birth of the Church, accepts the Bible as the Word of God as truly as does any literalist. What he attempts to do is to hear this Word more clearly as he discerns the Spirit of God moving in the midst of the human, historical situation, and thus aims to discover in the Bible the heavenly "treasure in earthen vessels." He is likely to be called an infidel by one who believes that the Bible must be taken "letter for letter" or not at all. But that does not matter if his studies lead him to clearer vision and deeper faith. If we are to find in the Bible dependable guidance for our own time, such a historical approach is indispensable. No situation is an exact replica of the past, and words spoken in the past to other situations take on distorted meaning unless these situations are understood. This is not to say that the literalist discerns no moral truth in the Bible. He does, and often lives by it in his personal relations an admirable Christian life. Yet in matters of complexity and doubt as to the right thing to do, he tends to follow his own course of action and find a proof text in the Bible to support it. He usually defends a traditional point of view in which an attempt is made to preserve the status quo, not infrequently with harsh words and attitudes toward those who differ. For ethical sensitivity and responsiveness to the Christian thing to do in doubtful situations, one who sees the Bible in its total historical setting is on safer ground. 6. Christian ethics and the New Testament The final question for this chapter is a closely related but still a somewhat different one. What about the authority of the New Testament, not only in relation to the Old, but within it in the relations of its parts? Most Christians, without rejecting the Old Testament or disparaging its many marvelous elements, find the New Testament more authoritative for their faith and living. This is as it should be, for while the Old Testament tells us much about God and foreshadows the coming of Christ, it is the New Testament that records for us the historical revelation of God in Christ. Their interrelatedness has thus been well expressed by a group of eminent scholars in the ecumenical movement: It is agreed that in the case of an Old Testament passage, one must examine and expound it in relation to the revelation of God to Israel both before and after its own period. Then the interpreter should turn to the New Testament in order to view the passage in that perspective. It is agreed that in the case of a New Testament passage one should examine it in the light of its setting and context; then turn to the Old Testament to discover its background in God’s former revelation. Returning again to the New Testament one is able to see and expound the passage in the light of the whole scope of Heilsgeschichte.11 Seeing the Bible as a whole, we make the revelation of God in Christ our norm for understanding and for judgment. But within the New Testament, is one part any more authoritative than another? In order to answer this question, we must avoid two common courses, both of which have been responsible for error. One of these courses is to take the New Testament as if it were all on the same level of Christian insight. Because the words are there, Paul’s words enjoining women to keep silent in the churches and Jude’s words contending "for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" have again and again been used as a bulwark against change. That these injunctions reflect particular situations in the early Church instead of being universal principles, and stand squarely in opposition to Paul’s other word, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom," is too frequently overlooked. Passages attributed to Jesus which seem to predict a speedy Second Coming and a catastrophic end of the world by divine intervention are equated in importance with the Sermon on the Mount — and seemingly ranked superior to it — by eminent theologians whose conception of Christ as the hope of the world is primarily eschatological rather than ethical.12 On the other hand, the recognition that the Gospels are the product of the experience of the Church in the first century, not firsthand accounts, and that Paul’s early letters antedate by nearly a quarter- century even Mark, which is the earliest of the Gospels, has led some scholars to shift the focus of attention away from Jesus to Paul. There is wide latitude among New Testament scholars as to the historicity of the Gospels; there is general agreement that none is completely historical, with John the latest and least so of the four. That Paul has much to teach us both about redemption through the grace of God in Christ and about the requirements of the Christian life need not be disputed. Yet it may be asked whether it is not Jesus of Nazareth, seen clearly even though not photographically through the records we have in the Synoptic Gospels, that is our surest foundation of the Christian life, Paul was a great Christian, a great theologian, a great missionary and administrator, a great teacher, but it was not he in whom "the Word became flesh" to dwell among us. It will be a basic assumption of this book, as it is not of some contemporary treatments of Christian ethics,13 that the picture we have of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels is in essential outlines correct and that what we see there of his life and death, his ministry and teaching, is the one adequate foundation for Christian ethics. Yet to take this as our base does not mean that we can indiscriminately take every word recorded as spoken by Jesus to be accurate or authoritative. At the end of Mark, in a passage now generally regarded by scholars as a later addition to the original text, Jesus is reported as saying: And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick; and they will recover. (16:17-18.) Regardless of what we may today believe about the exorcism of demons, speaking in tongues, or healing by the laying on of hands, can we really believe that the Christian ethic requires snake handling and the drinking of poison as a proof of faith? Some of Jesus’ more naive followers have tried it in our own time, and they died. We should doubt that Jesus ever said it even if there were no textual evidence to the contrary. To cite another example, there is a verse at the end of the parable of the pounds as it is given in Luke which is generally omitted when the story is read. In Luke 19:27 appear the words: "But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me." Why do we omit it? Because it does not sound like Jesus! It simply does not seem like the words of one who could say on the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." And even though the textual accuracy of Luke 19:27 is less disputed than of Luke 23:34, we stilI believe it is the latter in which the real Jesus speaks. These illustrations indicate what must be a basic procedure — a difficult but a very necessary procedure. This is to get to know Jesus from the total picture the New Testament gives of him — find our main point of reference in the first three Gospels, then interpret these Gospels and all the rest of the New Testament in the light of what we believe he was and said and did. This, of course, immediately opens the door to the charge that one is reading in what he wants to find there. But there is no other way. We cannot take the record as it stands, and we cannot discard it. Whatever interpretation we place upon it, we shall still be interpreting. And the best interpretation is that which is most faithful to the total picture of Jesus as our Lord, the Son of God, the supreme revelation of the Father and the supreme gift of God for our redemption. What, then, is Christian ethics? It is the systematic study of the way of life set forth by Jesus Christ, applied to the daily demands and decisions of our personal and social existence. Since Christian ethics centers in the ethical insights of Jesus, a logical "next step" might be to move directly into an examination of these as they are to be discerned from his recorded words and deeds — thence to an application to the problems of our time. The reader who wishes to follow this sequence is free to do so, and the table of contents will direct him in it. Yet if we are to understand Jesus, or if we are to discern the centrality of his message in reference to the entire Bible, we cannot proceed so simply. Jesus had a past, and from his life and influence came the Church of which the beginnings are recorded for us in the New Testament. It is essential, therefore, to look first at the Old Testament, then at Jesus, then forward from his earthly life to the birth of Christianity. From this wider biblical perspective we shall be the better equipped to judge what is truly Christian. NOTES: 1. This phrase is taken from Paul Ramsey’s Basic Christian Ethics (New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1950), where the term is used repeatedly to indicate the central note in Christian ethics. 2. The reader who desires a rapid survey of these types of ethical theory, but with more amplification than is possible here, will find it in my The Sources of Western Morality (New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1954), chs. vii and viii. 3. The phrase again is Ramsey’s, op. cit., p. 344. 4. American neo-orthodoxy, and to an increasing extent the European, has a place for Christian social action in the fashioning of "the responsible society," but this is seldom called the social gospel. In many minds the latter term is too closely associated with the liberal emphasis on "building the Kingdom" which is thought to savor too much of human presumption. 5. For example, the use of coercion and physical force for the maintenance of justice in the social order. 6. New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1955. 7. New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1952. 8. Adopted September 15, 1954. 9. Wesley, of course, preferred peace to war, but he seems to have given no major concern to the issues involved. It will be recalled that he sided with the British in the Revolutionary War and protested the rebellious spirit of the colonies. 10. "In Understanding the Christian Faith (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1947), ch. ii; Foundations of Christian Knowledge, ch. v; and throughout my Toward Understanding the Bible (New York: Chas, Scribner’s Sons, 1954). 11. From Biblical Authority for Today by Richardson and Schweitzer, 1952. The Westminster Press. Used by permission. Heilsgeschichte (the history of salvation) refers to the dominant theme of the Bible as giving us knowledge of God’s redemptive activity within human events. 12. Note, for example, the First and Second Reports of the Advisory Commission on the Main Theme for the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches and the address by Professor Edmund Schlink at the opening session of this assembly. 13. Note, for example, Emil Brunner’s classic The Divine Imperative (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1947). The index lists forty-six references to Luther, thirty-five to Calvin, twenty to Paul, and none to Jesus. By diligent search one finds an occasional mention, but they are few. Viewed 538229 times. return to religion-online Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Georgia Harkness was educated at Cornell University, Boston University School of Theology, studied at Harvard & Yale theological seminaries and at Union Theological Seminary of New York. She has taught at Elmira College, Mount Holyoke, and for twelve years was professor of applied theology at Garrett Biblical Institute. In 1950 she became professor of applied theology at the Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, California. Published in 1957 by Abingdon Press. This book was prepared for Religion Online by Harry W. and Grace C. Adams. Chapter 2: The Covenant, the Law, and the Prophets For a triple reason, we turn now to certain basic ideas in the Old Testament. The first is the light that the Old Testament can throw upon Jesus as we note what he retained, consciously or unconsciously from his heritage and what he set aside in response to higher insights. The second is the need to understand the Old Testament as a whole and to see it in perspective, since it too is the Christian’s Bible and grave errors of ethical interpretation have often resulted from lack of such perspective. The third arises from the fact that the social teachings of the prophets supply a degree of concreteness and of social application to specific circumstances which appears only marginally in the teachings of Jesus. This is not to say we can substitute them for Jesus, but where they are not at variance with his view, they can throw valuable light on our present need for concrete directives within comparable historical circumstances. It is obvious that within a single chapter it is impossible to canvass the total ethical structure of the Old Testament.1 I shall attempt to deal only with three key concepts: the covenant, the law, and the message of the prophets. 1. The covenant The idea of the covenant between Yahweh and his chosen people is the most basic and distinctive idea in the Old Testament, affecting as it does the total religious and moral outlook of Israel. In it are involved the nature of their God, his relation to them and to the stream of history, the framework within which they conceived their moral obligation, the grounds of divine judgment, and the hope of salvation which was to grow into the expectancy of the promised Messiah and the kingdom of God. This is not to say that in the initial establishment or acceptance of the covenant the people foresaw all this, but it laid the groundwork on which all the rest could be erected. We need not here go into the moot question as to whether Yahweh was a Kenite deity taken over by Moses for his people or whether the Yahweh concept has earlier roots. What is vital to our study is that from the time of Moses onward the people felt themselves to be in a particular relationship to their God.2 This relationship centers in a covenant voluntarily initiated by God, offering Yahweh’s protection and support in return for obedience to his will and law. The nature of this covenant can best be seen in terms of certain contrasts. There were blood covenants among many primitive peoples, ratified often by ritualistic sacrifices, but with the assumption that the deities must be appeased, or their vanity flattered, or at best that the honor of the gods depended on the faithfulness of the people. As Israel’s God is different, so is the covenant different. There are elements of primitivism in Israel’s faith, yet its primary note is the union in Yahweh of sovereign power with righteousness. Yahweh was not obligated for any extraneous reason to enter into covenant relations with Israel; he did it freely. Yahweh’s chief pleasure was not in the blood of the rams or bullocks, though the ceremonial law might require them; it was in obedience to his holy will, which came in the insights of the prophets to mean "mercy and not sacrifice." It is now commonly believed that Israel’s faith was not fully monotheistic before the sixth century B.C. and that a watershed is marked by the great declaration of the Second Isaiah in Isa. 44:6 where Yahweh is represented as saying: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. However, the existence of monolatry before that time ought not obscure the fact that apparently from the beginning of Israel’s thou, about God, he was more than the common run of tribal deities. Though other deities were believed to exist, Yahweh alone had any power function. The making of a golden calf or the worship of the Baalim was apostate religion. He alone was the maker of heaven and earth, and the determiner not only of the total structure of nature but of the eve of history. In his control of events he revealed both his righteous judgments and his saving power, and in spite of the attribution to him bellicose and other anthropomorphic traits the God of Israel is singularly free from common primitive tendencies. Its [Israel’s] God stands quite alone. It is he who, even in the old creation story (Gen. 2:4 ff.), created all things without assistance or intermediary; his very name Yahweh claims for him this function. No pantheon surrounds him. He has no consort (the Hebrew does not even have a word for "goddess") and no progeny. Consequently the Hebrews, in sharpest contrast to their neighbors, developed no mythology.3 This is not to say that no myths are to be found in the Old Testament. They are there, but they do not constitute the nature of deity or form an integral part of ritualistic worship, as in so many pagan faiths. Rather, they serve to illustrate the nonmythological character of the Eternal.4 Yahweh is a moral Being who controls all nature and all history. Hence, when he chooses to establish a covenant with Israel he is not to be bargained with, but his sway and his will are to be gratefully accepted and flouted only at the people’s peril. But did the people in their acceptance of the covenant make a bargain with their Deity? The answer is both Yes and No. It was not in a case a bargain based on equality of status, such as might be made between the "party of the first part" and the "party of the second part." Still less was it a social contract — a voluntary surrender of power order to delegate authority to a sovereign — as envisaged by Hobbes Rousseau.5 The covenant was more of a command than a bargain, stemming from the inherent, undelegated authority of Yahweh over the total structure of existence. Yet it was not without its elements of give and take. What is involved on both sides is epitomized in the Hebrew word hesed, for which there is no single synonym. On God’s part it signifies divine grace, a continuing requirement of obedience, but mercy and "lovingkindness" even in the midst of judgment. On man’s part hesed denotes the response to divine grace, complete loyalty to Yahweh and obedience to his will. It was not their own obedience, all too often patently surrendered, which made the Hebrews sure that God would not go back on his part of the covenant; it was their faith in his faithfulness that gave them confidence in his righteous judgments even when adversity seemed to indicate denial of his protection. The covenant was thought to have all the inviolability of the order of nature, not because of its impersonality, as we are prone to think of nature, but because both nature and history stemmed from a common personal source — the will of Yahweh. The doctrines of creation, judgment, redemption, and providence, never systematically formulated but always presupposed in Hebrew thought, had a single foundation — the sovereign rule of Yahweh over his people and his world. This is at the root of the common observation that Hebrew faith, as contrasted with Greek philosophy and religion, is historical. Both the events of Hebrew history and the interpretation the people placed upon them — notably but not exclusively the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Covenant on Sinai, then Israel’s conquest of Canaan, her struggles with her foes, and finally the exile and return — are impregnated with the idea that the supreme Ruler of heaven and earth had in a special way chosen Israel as his people and was concerned in all their fortunes. It was not a covenant of merit, for it was never assumed that Israel deserved to be thus chosen; it was a covenant of grace. A note of greater universality in regard to God’s love was destined to emerge in the teachings of the prophets, to be reflected in Jonah and some of the Psalms, and to come to full expression in the teachings of Jesus. But this does not alter the fact that the Old Testament as a whole has a note extremely important to Christian ethics today: namely, that God alone is the final arbiter of human affairs and that in him power, righteousness, and grace are inseparably joined. Apart from the conviction that God alone has absolute sovereignty, the nation or some other political, economic, or social structure becomes regulative. Apart from the conviction that the supreme Ruler is also good, the vicissitudes of history appear as the "trampling march of unconscious power"6 or at most as stages in the spiral of evolutionary progress wherein the anticipated goal fails to redeem the loss along the way. Israel’s covenant relation foreshadows in a number of ways what was to become more explicit in Christianity. The most obvious connection is, of course, the "new covenant" and the establishment of Church as the "new Israel" with Christ as its center and head. But this is not all. Both judgment and redemption on God’s part rest the foundation of the covenant idea; likewise the demand for obedience and hence for unremitting moral responsibility on man’s side. So does the hope of the coming of the Kingdom, not as something earned by man’s good works nor yet as a state in which God can be indifferent to human effort, but rather as a consummation in which the condition of the covenant would be fully met. The apocalyptists of later Judaism distorted the covenant idea into an expectancy of the salvation God’s elect solely by the direct intervention of God; those Jews who envisaged Israel as a holy commonwealth whose holiness was to be tested and proved by moral obedience came closer to its meaning. Apart from the covenant idea, both the prophets’ preaching of the doom to fall on a sinful and rebellious people and their hope for the future either would have been nonexistent or would have taken a very different turn. Here again there are modern counterparts and derivatives, for apart from foundations in a God of supreme power, righteousness and grace who is implicated in the suffering of his people, who condemns their sin yet offers release, prophetic preaching today escapes from soporific optimism only to fall into moral diatribe. 2. The law In the previous section I have stressed mainly the kind of God who was believed by Israel to have entered into the covenant relation with his chosen people. We must now look at what the people believed commensurately was required of them in this crucial bilateral agreement. There were two basic tests of being a Jew. One was circumcision; the other was the more general requirement of the keeping of the law. The first was clearly repudiated by Christianity, as became evident in the very important decision recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Acts. What Christianity did with the law is a much more complex question, and the answer depends on what aspect of the law is being considered and in what context it is understood. As we shall note again in Chapter 4, it is both necessary and difficult to draw a line between the moral and the ceremonial law of Israel. Christian ethics must make this distinction, else we not only shall lose the Ten Commandments from Christianity but will be obliged to ascribe to Paul a disregard of the moral law at variance with the moral concern which appears on every page of his letters. Yet it is a distinction which is not easy to make, for in all of the great law codes of Israel — the Covenant Code (Exod. 20:23-23:33), the code embedded in the book of Deuteronomy, and the Holiness Code (Lev. 17- 26) — specifications for ritualistic and ceremonial observance stand side by side with those indicating humaneness and moral insight. A further distinction, important to make but not self-evident, is the extent to which Israel simply took over prevailing social regulations, and on the other hand, gave unique and distinctive meaning to the duties they believed laid upon them by their covenant with Yahweh. It is easy to err in either direction. There is ample evidence that Israel’s morality did not simply emerge full-grown out of supernatural revelation. In some respects it follows the common pattern of primitive societies; in some it shows Canaanitic and through this channel Babylonian influences. In others, however, the morality of the covenant and hence its embodiment in reverence for the law of Yahweh is unique among all Israel’s neighbors and contemporaries. Its uniqueness centers in the event, the condition, and the promise, which Israel in her worst apostasies never forgot: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. (Exod. 19:4-6.) The moral implications of the covenant did not readily take on the character of universal obligation and were never so conceived by the rank and file of the people. Not until Jesus, and the "new covenant," was it fully universalized. Yet it was assumed throughout Israel’s history that the law of the covenant must be observed as divine command within the covenant brotherhood, and this had a radical influence on Israel’s attitude toward the law. In part, this limitation of obligation to the covenant brotherhood was an aspect of the common tendency, primitive but still persisting to our day, to draw a sharp distinction between the "in-group" and the "out-group." But in part also, it was uniquely related to Israel’s God. This will become apparent if we note some stages of development in her history. It is probable that the most primitive code in the Old Testament is the ceremonial code (the so-called J Decalogue) which is found in Exod. 34. Its content need not detain us except to observe that the codification of Hebrew law begins, not in a statement of general ethical principles such as the prohibitions of murder, adultery, theft, lying, and covetousness found in the Decalogue of Exod. 20, but in provisions for exclusive and imageless worship of Yahweh, feasts and sacrifices. The note of exclusive worship was vital to the keeping of Israel’s faith pure; the ceremonialism, which it shared in kind with other primitive groups, was destined to be in tension with morality throughout Israel’s history. Though the dating of the Decalogue as it appears in Exod. 20:2-17 is in dispute, and it is doubtful that in its present form it is Mosaic, there is no adequate ground for doubting that under Moses both the religious and the social structure of Israel took shape.7 What is more significant than its date is the unique convergence of duties owed to Yahweh with universal moral principles which it embodies. Without this convergence, it could neither have occupied the place it held in Israel nor lasted to be normative in Christianity up to our own time.8 The Covenant Code, which is affixed to the Exodus Decalogue, illustrates admirably the blending of moral with religious considerations, and within religion the mixture of adoration and gratitude with ceremonial observance, which characterizes Israel’s faith as a whole. It begins with an injunction to imageless worship, provisions for altars and sacrifices, and assurance of the divine presence and blessing. Then follow nearly three chapters of very explicit provisions concerning slaves, punishment for deeds of violence and theft, restitution for injury to property, family relations, helpfulness to the stranger and to the poor, observance of the Sabbath as a day of rest for servants and even for the animals. They are not provisions for our day, but in the setting of agrarian society in the tenth century B.C. they show an admirable sense of justice, moral responsibility, and humane concern for the underprivileged. Interspersed are stern warnings against sacrifice to strange gods and firm injunctions as to the modes and times of sacrifice to Yahweh. The code proper ends with t:he strange injunction,9 which sounds to modern ears neither moral nor religious, "You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk," and is followed immediately by the renewal of the covenant. Not only its preface and epilogue, but recurrent references to the Hebrews having been strangers in the land of Egypt, give the Covenant Code its setting. Without a sense of gratitude to Yahweh and of moral obligation derivative from his care a law code might have been developed in Israel at this time, as had occurred centuries earlier in Babylon in the Code of Hammurabi. But without the covenant it is doubtful that it would have been so humane; it is certain that it could not have had the powerful sanctions it possessed. Yet it is not so clearly in the codes as in the voices of the prophets that we see the roots of Israel’s attitude toward the law. In the next section we shall consider further what they say to us today. But we cannot read them correctly unless we see them in protest against perversions of the covenant, endeavoring to call Israel not only forward but back to what was deepest in her history. Many generations have thrilled to the story of Nathan finding the courage to say to the guilty; David, "Thou art the man" (II Sam. 12:7 K.J.V.), and of Elijah rebuking Ahab for the theft of Naboth’s vineyard (I Kings 21). It was not simply because murder and theft were forbidden by the law of the land, but because they were contrary to the law of a higher Sovereign, that these men could thus speak up to kings. The message of Amos is in no sense an abrogation of the doctrine of the chosen people, as is sometimes inferred from Amos 9:7; it is an attempt to jolt the people loose from a self-centered, complacent, mechanical conception of the covenant. Its true center, he saw, lay in obedience to God’s law, not in feasts, solemn assemblies, and burnt offerings, and divine election meant election to moral responsibility. The stance from which Amos speaks, giving meaning to all he says about social justice and the corning "day of the Lord" in his call to repentance and prediction of doom, is epitomized in the words: You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. A similar note rings through the prophecies of Hosea, Micah, and the first Isaiah. The harshness of Amos is alleviated by the portrayal of God’s tender love for his erring people, the promise that a remnant shall repent and be spared, the prevision of the coming of the Prince of Peace. But at no point in the writings of the eighth-century prophets is the law of the covenant abrogated or universalized. It is because the Hebrews are God’s people that they are obligated to obey his law. Their disobedience cannot cancel out God’s hesed, but neither will God’s mercy save them from destruction if they persist in flouting his just demands. With the appearance of the Deuteronomic Code and the great reformation under King Josiah in 621 B.C., the law becomes both more ritualistic and more humanitarian. The emergence of both notes, the one so clearly in keeping with the teaching of the prophets, the other apparently at variance with it, calls for explanation. We shall understand it best if we do not import into it modern notions of "narrowness" versus "breadth," but see both as aspects of Yahweh-centeredness. The political situation of Judah was becoming more precarious; the people had seen Samaria swallowed up by Assyria a century before, and now the new Babylonian octopus was extending its tentacles from the East. What more natural than that the combination of nationalism and fear should intensify the demand for the destruction of all foreign cults (Deut. 12:1-3), make idolatry a capital offense (Deut. 13), and center all worship in Jerusalem alone (Deut. 12:13-14 16:5-6)? Again and again it was affirmed that the very existence of the nation depended on loyalty to the God of the covenant and obedience to his law. The prophets had said this repeatedly, and it was only natural that the law should be understood as entailing both ceremonial and moral obligation. The dual thrust of the book of Deuteronomy should not surprise us in view of the fact that in our own time political and social insecurity appears to be giving an impetus to a revival of religion which is in part marked by moral discernment while in other aspects it is perfunctory and external. A few years after the great reformation, a fresh voice was heard, proclaiming persistently in opposition to the soothing optimism of the lying prophets of the time that this was no true reform (Jer. 6:13-14; 8:10-11). We cannot at this point follow the tragic, challenging story of Jeremiah, but with reference to the law he saw, more clearly than any other man of his time, that its essence could not be fulfilled by cultic busyness at the temple. Only the clean heart could suffice. This the people were not rendering to Yahweh (cf. Jer. 4:3-4, 14; 7:21-23; 31:33), and without it neither flirtation nor warfare with Egypt or Babylon could save them. There is a stark hopelessness about Jeremiah’s message which sets forth in bold silhouette the great hope of the new covenant. This complete despair of the inviolability of the national state, reinforced a little later by Ezekiel, paved the way for a new understanding of Israel’s destiny. With the Exile, as every student of the Bible knows, came the discovery that Israel could still be Yahweh’s people, even without a political state, far away from the Temple and in a strange land. It is significant that this period is marked not only by the emergence of the synagogue as a place of worship but by a fresh attempt to recover, codify, and study the law. >From then on, Judaism was to be a religion of the Book, and no small part of it, along with the accounts of the great events of their past, was embodied in the law. It was a natural development that postexilic Judaism should have become essentially a community of the law. From earliest times, Israel’s primary obligations had been to worship Yahweh only and to obey his law. These obligations had not been set aside by the destruction of the state and of Solomon’s Temple; in fact, the doom which had fallen through failure to observe them had but validated their binding character. The final chapters of Ezekiel, which give the constitution for a new messianic state centering in a purified Temple and its cult, foreshadow the emergence of a new legalism. From the time of the Restoration onward, two strains characterize Judaic thought. They were prevalent in the time of Jesus, and as the Evanston discussions of "Christ — the Hope of the World" made evident, their counterparts were taken over into Christianity and persist to the present. One was the apocalyptic expectancy of the establishment of the kingdom of God by divine intervention. The other was the necessity to keep the law of the covenant within such remnants of the state as might remain and under any political regime that might temporarily hold sway. They stemmed from a common source9 the rule of Yahweh over his people, and were expressions of a common hope, the "good time coming" when Yahweh would again restore his people to greatness. Yet both the nature of this consummation and the requirements for its fulfillment were different. "If the Apocalyptic longed for the establishment of the Kingdom by the direct activity of God, the law gave voice to the strong feeling that God would neither bless nor set up his Kingdom over a people which did not keep his law." 10 From the latter conviction stemmed the minutiae of oral tradition which constituted the Mishnah and the written commentary upon it which made up the Talmud. It produced both a "holy commonwealth" of the faithful and an artificial legalism against which Jesus had repeatedly to protest. Let us see now what general observations can be gleaned from Israel’s course with reference to the law. The first is that the law was by no means the barren and external thing that the legalists of Jesus’ time or the literalists of ours have too often made it. It was founded on bedrock — the righteous, sovereign rule of a protecting, gracious God who demanded its observance. It took on concreteness from the circumstances of the times — social, political, and economic — as ours inevitably must. Yet its basic frame of reference is timeless. Second, as the God of the Hebrews was too small, so was their moral outlook. Reference has been made to the humaneness of the codes. This was there, but so also was the line between the Hebrew and the alien. Those "strangers" living within the community of Israel had some rights, those outside it none. This distinction appears again and again with regard to treatment of enemies, family relations, slavery, debt, and even to the selling of diseased meat.11 The laws about sacred seasons, Sabbath observance, details of sacrifice, clean and unclean foods, bulk large in all the codes recorded in the Old Testament. And these were but the nucleus of the "sumptuary legislation" which had become so complex in Jesus’ time that thirty-nine different types of labor were forbidden on the Sabbath, each type requiring further oral legislation to designate what did or did not constitute it. 12 Why? The basic reason is that the Hebrews believed Yahweh to be the kind of God who required these things, and not all the preaching of the prophets could dispel this view. This, of course, is not the whole story. There were injunctions to justice, mercy, and faith both in the law and in the prophets before Jesus’ time, and the Old Testament concept of God has in it grandeur as well as narrowness. Yet the codes could go no further than what the people believed their God to require, and in the concrete details of living their restricted vision of God left them limited. The third deduction we must draw is in regard to what Jesus did with the law. Both of the foregoing elements must be taken into account to understand his attitude. He stood in a great tradition of law observance which he felt no desire or impulse to surrender. It was embedded in all his past, and with good reason he could say that he came not to destroy but to fulfill the law. Yet such fulfillment could come only through obedience to the God whose moral demands had undergirded it at its best, not through the petty legalism into which it had fallen. And his God was not the God of Israel only, but the Father whose love with infinite concern for human need embraced all men within its scope. Thus, where the law served both to honor God and to serve human need, he could rejoice in it; where it was at variance, he could boldly set it aside. It need not surprise us, though it did both surprise and anger his contemporaries, to hear Jesus say: The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. (Mark 2:27.) There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him. (Mark 7:15.) If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matt. 5:23-24.) Any other attitude toward the law would have been to forsake both the hesed of his fathers and the way of the God he came to serve and to reveal. It was obedience in love which actuated Jesus, and it is this which he sets before us today. 3. The prophets Jesus brought together the universal love of God and universal moral obligation, and saw in both the true fulfillment of the law. The prophets before him had in a measure approximated this insight, and Jesus stood in the prophetic tradition. Though we have already had occasion to speak of them, we must now see what was distinctive in their approach to the problems of social morality. It is the almost universal consensus of serious students of the Bible that in the message of the prophets is the high-water mark of the Old Testament. There are fascinating and meaningful stories in the J, E, D, and P documents and the postexilic short stories, great devotional passages in the Psalms, substantial wisdom literature, and as we have seen, significant structures in Israel’s law. Yet the insights of the prophets from Amos through the Second Isaiah surpass them all. I shall attempt not to deal with the message of each one individually, for this has been done many times,13 but to draw some deductions from their general structure of thought. The first observation to make is that the prophets, like the compilers of the law, proceeded from the assumptions of the covenant. This made their messages both religious and ethical, with an intertwining which makes it impossible to withdraw either element without losing the heart of their message. They never doubted that Israel was the chosen people of God and that a righteous, gracious, but exacting God demanded obedience of his people. What they objected to, as the burden of their message, were the misunderstandings of God’s will which substituted ceremonialism for justice, mercy, and faith, and the apostasies whereby the people persistently violated their side of the covenant. Did the prophets reject the cultic side of Israel’s religion? Their invectives against the substitution of ritualistic correctness for righteousness leave open this possibility, and of the greater prophets Ezekiel alone, standing on the threshold of the postexilic period, expressly calls for a purified ritual as an integral part of the worship of Yahweh. Opinions differ as to whether the others rejected outright the sacrificial cult. It seems more probable, however, that what they protested was not its existence, deeply embedded as it was in the covenant relation, but its perversion through exaltation to a place of primacy. Comparably, no Christian today need object to the ritual and traditional observances of the Church when these contribute to the worship of God, but every Christian ought to protest when "doing things right" in the Church becomes a substitute for righteousness. Second, the prophets must be understood in both an individual and a social context. This is true whether what is being considered is the source or the object of their message. They were for the most part lone figures assailing the popular mores, and hence misunderstood. But to assume that they were solely individual religious geniuses is to miss the fact that they emerged out of a religious community and spoke to a religious community. They were Hebrew prophets, not Greek philosophers or Buddhist Bodhisattvas, and they never dreamed of stepping outside of this framework. Furthermore, though we are accustomed to think of a progressive growth in a sense of individual responsibility from Amos to Ezekiel, the difference at this point is probably overstated. The message of every prophet, Moses, Samuel, Nathan, and Elijah as well as those who came later, was to every individual within the community of Israel, and neither king nor humblest subject was exempt from the obligation to obey the will of Yahweh. The application of this fact to mistaken modern notions of an "individual" versus a "social" gospel is obvious. Third, though explicit monotheism and universalism were a late development, their nucleus is implicit in all prophetic preaching. The ceremonialism of Israel, though understood by the people as the mark of Israel’s particularity, had actually much in common with other primitive religious rites. This similarity was one reason why they found it so easy to take over Canaanitic worship. It was in the ethical insights of Israel, as these were seen most clearly by the prophets, that the greatest distinctiveness lay, and in their vision of the God of righteousness was the germ cell of monotheism. The gods of the nations were many because the nations were many; the God of righteousness was one, and in his hand lay the destinies of nations. As we noted earlier, no sharp distinction was drawn between nature and history; God was the Maker and sovereign Ruler in both spheres. From this conviction, implicit in the whole idea of the covenant but seen with fullest clarity by the prophets, it was a logical step to the conclusion that God had given to Israel special privileges in order to be the special servant of all mankind. This insight, glimpsed by Amos, was destined to come to full expression in the Second Isaiah. Fourth, the prophets saw with utter clarity the persistent fact of sin, and saw it not as maladjustment or even as failure to "hit the mark" of some objective human standard, but as sin against God. It was rebellion against God and disloyalty to God that made the self-centered luxury of the rich, the exploitation of the poor, bribery, drunkenness, and harlotry such evils. This is not to depreciate the prophets’ sense of social justice; they had it in splendid measure. But it was grounded in something more basic than human law or tribal standards. Micah said: what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? This conviction was the basis of both prophetic judgment and the message of hope. The God who could not countenance sin would not save from destruction even his chosen people who persisted in sin. But neither could the God of mercy abandon his people to their sins. A remnant would return; the Messiah would be sent; the Kingdom would come. Although one reads in the prophets page after page of denunciation and promised doom, it was never the prophets’ last word, for it was not God’s last word. Those prophets and theologians of today who, like the Old Testament prophets and Paul, from whom they draw much of their message, have a clear and powerful sense of sin would do well to accent as much the prophetic note of hope through the grace of God. And fifth, in everything the prophets said, they spoke to the current situation. They spoke from a perspective that was more than "current," but they never spoke in abstractions. Where they enunciated general principles, as in Micah’s definition of true religion just noted (6:8) or Isaiah-Micah’s still unfulfilled vision of a warless world (Isa. 2:2-4; Mic. 4:1-4), they spoke to the people as they were, in terms of what ought to be. The prophets saw and set forth visions that still stir us, but they were not "visionaries." It is because of their utter realism as they spoke within the conditions of a social and political community — or to adopt a current term, a responsible society — that next to the teachings of Jesus we find in them our firmest basis of social ethics. 4. Jesus and the Old Testament Let us now try to draw together what Jesus took from the Old Testament and what, therefore, Christians may hold to be of permanent validity. First, Jesus shared with Old Testament thought the general structure of God-centered moral living. It apparently never occurred to him to give ethical injunctions derived from any other source. A great deal of our contemporary problem about "love perfectionism" centers in the attempt to groun