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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
This paper investigates how character ethicists use rules and principles in their virtue-centered and narrative-dependent theories, and how such limited use fails to appreciate the performative content of Christian doctrine. If they are correct in insisting that Christian ethics begin with the practical import of theological convictions, then they not only limit the description of such beliefs but also the performance of such beliefs. A more “comprehensive ethic” that includes rules, principles, practices, and virtues, when one begins with the performance of doctrine not scriptural narratives. Such an argument unfolds through three states of the article: (a) it describes how character ethics uses rules, norms, and principles in its own moral theory; (b) it further evaluates this theory based on its own procedural starting point; and (3) it constructs how rules and principles can emerge from such a methodological starting point.
1 I agree with James Donahue that “character ethics” best describes this method rather than “narrative ethics” or “virtue ethics,” yet both narrative and virtue are constitutive of such a method. See Donahue, James A., “The Use of Virtue and Character in Applied Ethics,” Horizons 17 (1990): 228–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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3 Porter, Jean, The Recovery of Virtue: The Relevance of Aquinas for Christian Ethics (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), 15.Google Scholar Porter shows that Aquinas combines virtues and principles in his discussion of justice because “true moral rectitude is necessarily grounded in the orientation of the whole personality that charity creates; and yet, charity cannot be exercised, or even exist, unless moral rules generated by right reason are observed” (Porter, Jean, “De Ordine Caritatis: Charity, Friendship, and Justice in Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae,” Thomist 53 [1989]: 206).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a similar discussion see Porter, , Recovery of Virtue, 124–54.Google Scholar
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5 See Comstock, Gary, “Two Types of Narrative Theology,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 55 (1987): 687–717;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGustafson, James, “The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church, and the University,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 40 (1985): 83–94;Google ScholarLauritzen, Paul, “Is Narrative Really a Panacea? The Use of Narrative in the Work of Metz and Hauerwas,” Journal of Religion 67 (1987): 322–339;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Oakes, Edward T. S.J., “Apologetics and the Pathos of Narrative Theology,” Journal of Religion 72 (1992): 37–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Wogaman, Philip, Christian Moral Judgment (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1989), 57.Google Scholar
7 Yoder, John Howard, “Walk and Word: The Alternatives to Methodologism” in Hauerwas, Stanley, Murphy, Nancey, and Nation, Mark, eds., Theology Without Foundations (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 82.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., 82; italics mine. Yoder's “hermeneutics of peoplehood” is further developed in The Priestly Kingdom (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 28–34.Google Scholar
9 For a brief description of the interrelationship of convictions, principles, and conduct, see Gustafson, James M., Can Ethics be Christian? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 145–68.Google Scholar For important discussions on rules, norms, and principles, see Curran, Charles and McCormick, Richard, eds., Readings in Moral Theology, No. 1: Moral Norms and Catholic Tradition (New York: Paulist, 1979);Google Scholar and Ramsey, Paul, Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics (New York: Scribner's, 1967).Google Scholar
10 MacIntyre, Alasdair, “Does Applied Ethics Rest on a Mistake?” The Monist 67 (1984): 499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 4.Google Scholar
12 MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 119.Google Scholar
13 For MacIntyre's discussion of the relationship of virtues and practices, see ibid., 187ff. For a fine summary of MacIntyre's tradition-constituted ethic, see Porter, Jean, “Openness and Constraint: Moral Reflection as Tradition-guided Inquiry in Alasdair MacIntyre's Recent Works,” Journal of Religion 73 (1993): 514–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Hauerwas, Stanley, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 1.Google Scholar
15 See Hauerwas, Stanley, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 120.Google Scholar
16 Such examples include Catholic moral theologians such as Charles Curran, Richard McCormick, S.J., and Timothy O'Connell. For criticism of Curran, , McCormick, , and O'Connell, , see McClendon, James W., Systematic Theology, vol. 1: Ethics (Nashville: Abingdon, 1986), 52–55;Google Scholar and Hauerwas, , Peaceable Kingdom, 53–64; 158–60.Google Scholar
17 See McClendon, 48-52; and Jones, L. Gregory, Transformed Judgment: Toward a Trinitarian Account of the Moral Life (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 22.Google Scholar Wogaman's positive presumptions also include the “goodness of created existence” and the “value of individual life.” Wogaman also lists negative and polar presumptions, and presumptions of character and authority (Christian Moral Judgment, 72-128).
18 E.g., see Hauerwas, , “On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological” in Hauerwas, Stanley and MacIntyre, Alasdair, eds., Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 16–42.Google Scholar
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21 Ibid., p. 10. For a similar argument, see Hauerwas, , The Peaceable Kingdom, 20.Google Scholar
22 Jones is critical of MacIntyre's view that moral education takes place primarily through practices and virtues, not friendships and moral character. See Jones, , Transformed Judgment, 78.Google Scholar
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24 McClendon, James W., Systematic Theology, vol. 2: Doctrine (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 28.Google Scholar In Doctrine, McClendon more effectively connects practices and rules with doctrine, yet fails to show how moral rules and principles may emerge from such a connection. For his description of the “performative” aspects of doctrine, see ibid., 21-68.
25 Jones and Fowl are critical of Birch and Rasmussen's presumed linkage of the belief in God's creation with a universal obligation to “respect human life,” which surfaces in the particular duties of truth-telling, promise-keeping, trustworthiness, and respect for human needs and rights (see Reading in Communion, 25). For a similar argument against natural law, see Hauerwas, , Peaceable Kingdom, 63–64.Google Scholar
26 Saying this, however, oversimplifies the fact that McClendon, in contrast to Hauerwas and Jones, forges a three-tiered ethic which includes the spheres of the organic (human), social (church), and anastatic (eschatological-revelatory). However, McClendon is unclear how the distinction between the human “organic sphere” and the communal “social sphere” affect moral judgment. On one hand, the organic sphere includes human needs, drives, affections, and conscience, so moral judgment is embodied within a common human nature, but, on the other hand, the priority of social interaction is needed for the formation of rules, virtues, practices, and critical moral judgment. Although McClendon offers greater possibilities for a universal ethic than the others, his method, at times, appears to collapse the human into the social sphere (see McClendon, , Ethics, 78–109Google Scholar).
27 This type of argument leads critics to charge that such an ethic is sectarian and relativistic. Against these claims, however, these theologians demand that the biblical narrative itself implies “conversations with outsiders” and “openness to strangers.” Jones and Fowl provide explicit “rules of thumb” for ad hoc conversations with internal and external outsiders of the church (see Heading in Communion, 110-30). In this way, insiders can draw on outside sources of critical reflection through ad hoc conversations with other socially-embodied traditions. For Stephen Fowl's analysis of MacIntyre, Jeffrey Stout, and Donald Davidson on the issue of incommensurability, see Fowl, Stephen, “Could Horace Talk with the Hebrews: Translatability and Moral Disagreement in MacIntyre and Stout,” Journal of Religious Ethics 19 (1991): 1–20.Google Scholar Fowl “splits the difference” between MacIntyre's incommensurability and Stout's “thin conception of the good” by affirming the possibility of “translation” (i.e., Stout) but also that no such “thin conception of the good” is possible (i.e., MacIntyre). In the end, Fowl's argument underestimates the importance of Stout's “thin conception of the good,” when it is correlated with the universal application of Christian doctrine, particularly the practical import of the doctrine of creation.
28 Yoder, , “Walk and Word,” 87.Google Scholar
29 E.g., see Meeks, Wayne A., The Moral World of the First Christians (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986).Google Scholar
30 Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 380.Google Scholar For a comprehensive analysis see Modern Theology 8 (1992)Google Scholar, which is devoted solely to Milbank's book.
31 Milbank, , Theology and Social Theory, 328.Google Scholar
32 Ibid., 409, 390.
33 Milbank explains: “Christian belief belongs to Christian practice, and it sustains its affirmations about God and creation only by repeating and enacting a metanarrative about how God speaks in the world in order to redeem it. In elaborating the metanarrative of a counter-historical interruption of history, one elaborates also a distinctive practice, a counter-ethics, embodying a social ontology, an account of duty and virtue, and an ineffable element of aesthetic ‘idiom,’ which cannot be fully dealt with in the style of theoretical theology” (ibid., 422-23; italics mine). This metanarrative becomes propositional with the formation of doctrinal and theological convictions. Indeed, Milbank further says, the “theoretical, doctrinal, level tends to ‘take off’ from the level of narrative” (ibid., 383).
34 Outka, Gene, “Augustinianism and Common Morality” in Outka, Gene and Reeder, John P. Jr., eds., Prospects for a Common Morality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 114–48.Google Scholar
35 Meilaender, Gilbert C., Faith and Faithfulness: Basic Themes in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 9.Google Scholar See Oakeshott, Michael, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1962), 59–79.Google Scholar
36 Meilaender, , Faith and Faithfulness, 5.Google Scholar For a more detailed account of these two types, see Tanner, Kathryn, The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice (Minneapolis: Fortress/Augsburg, 1992), 35–70.Google Scholar
37 Meilaender, , Faith and Faithfulness, 13.Google Scholar In addition, Meilaender relies on Pieper's more comprehensive moral theory of virtue in his earlier work, The Theory and Practice of Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).Google Scholar
38 Meilaender, , Faith and Faithfulness, 12.Google Scholar He is not only critical of MacIntyre, but further contrasts his “world-affirming and world-forming theology” with George Lindbeck's sectarian “world-absorbing theology” (see ibid., 13). For a more favorable interpretation of Lindbeck's theory that is more consistent with Meilaender's, see Marshall, Bruce, “Absorbing the World: Christianity and the Universe of Truths” in Marshall, Bruce, ed., Theology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 69–102.Google Scholar
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41 Ibid., 19-20; italics mine.
42 Ibid., 127. See Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 120ff.Google Scholar
43 Meilaender, , Faith and Faithfulness, 146.Google Scholar
44 Ibid., 22.
45 Meilaender, , Theory and Practice of Virtue, 13.Google Scholar Also see Meilaender, , “Eritis Sicut Deus: Moral Theory and the Sin of Pride,” Faith and Philosophy 2 (1986): 397–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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47 See Nelson, , Narrative and Morality, 42;Google Scholar and Wogaman, , Christian Moral Judgment, 57.Google Scholar Regarding the problematic issues connected in the communal “performance” of bib-lical (not doctrinal) convictions and practices, see Nelson, , Narrative and Morality, 85–107;Google Scholar and Cahill, Lisa Sowle, “The New Testament and Ethics: Communities and Social Change,” Interpretation 44 (10 1990): 383–95.Google Scholar
48 The term “abridgement of tradition” is Michael Oakeshott's as found in his Rationalism in Politics, 91-92, 97-98. For a good discussion about how principles are tradition-constituted, yet offering prospects of trans-communal communication, see Stout, Jeffrey, Ethics after Babel; The Language of Morals and Their Discontents (Boston: Beacon, 1988), 16–32, 124–44, 266–92.Google Scholar
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50 Christian, William A. Sr., Doctrines of Religious Communities: A Philosophical Study (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 5.Google Scholar
51 Ibid., 7.
52 Ibid., 147.
53 Lindbeck, George, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Post-Liberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).Google Scholar Also see Charry, Ellen Z., “The Moral Function of Doctrine,” Theology Today 49 (1992): 31–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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55 James A. Donahue uses a similar kind of analysis to determine the procedural norms of character ethics. Donahue claims that despite the unwillingness of these ethicists to establish normative criteria for making moral judgments, they do in fact offer presumptions that may be useful in Christian applied ethics. Indeed, he contends that “there are formal processive norms that are necessary components of a virtue ethic which give virtue a normative framework providing a basis for moral decision” (Donahue, , “Virtue and Character in Applied Ethics,” 23Google Scholar). These norms include: (1) one's character is consistent in one's moral actions; (2) one's actions are coherent with one's personal and communal identity; (3) the continuity of action that belongs to the individual's and community's history; (4) faithful conversation between a community and its foundational narratives when moral issues arise; (5) the importance of communal convictions on character; and (6) community and individuals must be open to creativity and possible reformulation. By avoiding the reductionistic “decisionism” that character ethicists criticize, Donahue provides a set of factors that seeks to integrate the internal descriptive norms of communal beliefs with individual and community decision-making.
56 Roberts, Robert C., “Virtues and Rules,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1991): 325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Roberts, Robert C., “Therapies and the Grammer of Virtue” in Bell, Richard H., ed., The Grammar of the Heart: New Essays in Moral Philosophy and Theology (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 149–70.Google Scholar
57 In recent years MacIntyre has shifted toward a more comprehensive theory based on a Thomistic “tradition of enquiry.” For example, he says to “progress in both moral enquiry and the moral life is then to progress in understanding all the various aspects of that life, rules, precepts, virtues, passions, actions as parts of a single whole” (MacIntyre, , Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 139.Google Scholar However, when he admits that “rules and virtues are interrelated,” he further claims that to “understand the application of rules as part of the exercise of the virtues is to understand the point of rule-following” (ibid., 139). This philosophical interpretation of moral rules becomes problematic for a community whose primary theological beliefs are constitutive of such doctrinal and moral rules.
58 Roberts, , “Virtues and Rules,” 331.Google Scholar
59 Roberts further says: “The grammar of a virtue is its set of internal factors that comprise a particular virtue, and connections and disconnections with such things as motives, objects (what the virtue is properly about), intentions, roles, other virtues in its system, vices, a concept of human nature, diagnostic and explanatory concepts, and so forth” (Roberts, , “Virtues and Rules,” 338Google Scholar). For the interrelationship of emotion, virtues, and narrative, see Roberts, , “Emotions among the Virtues of the Christian Life,” Journal of Religious Ethics 20 (Spring 1992): 37–68;Google Scholar and Gilman, James E., “Reenfranchising the Heart: Narrative Emotions and Contemporary Theology,” Journal of Religion 74 (1994): 218–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
60 Roberts, , “Virtues and Rules,” 334.Google Scholar
61 Roberts claims there are four groups of Christian virtues: (1) “emotional virtues” such as hope, joy, peace, contrition, gratitude, and compassion; (2) “behavioral virtues” such as kindness, hospitality, gentleness, peaceableness, justice, and generosity; (3) “virtues of will power” which include self-control, patience, perseverance, and courage; and (4) “attitudinal virtues” such as humility, meekness, mercy, forbearance, and forgiveness. The latter three groups are structurally dependent on the first group, which could be seen as the primary virtues. See Roberts, , “Emotions among the Virtues of the Christian Life,” 37–59.Google Scholar
62 For an important article on the relationship of moral responsibility and the theology of God-world relations, see Tanner, Kathryn, “A Theological Case for Human Responsibility in Moral Choice,” Journal of Religion 73 (1993): 592–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Furthermore, unlike some narrative theologians who only affirm the performance of narrative-dependent biblical convictions, Tanner insists that doctrinal (and theological) beliefs form the basis for a “narrative” interpretation of Scripture (see Tanner, , “Theology and the Plain Sense” in Green, Garrett, ed., Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987], 59–78).Google Scholar
63 Tanner, , Politics of God, 56.Google Scholar Put simply, the “transcendence of God functions as a protest against all absolute and unconditioned claims” (ibid., 69). Such an argument is reminiscent of Niebuhr's, H. RichardRadical Monotheism and Western Culture (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960).Google Scholar For a good discussion of the importance of Niebuhr in arguing for an “open confessional” in contrast to a sectarian method, see Cook, Martin L., The Open Circle: Confessional Method in Theology (Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress, 1991).Google Scholar
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65 Ibid., 130; italics mine.
66 Stout, Jeffrey, Flight from Authority (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 97.Google Scholar