On Wednesday, May 21, at the University of Waikato, Dr. Ron Smith and Dr. Matthew Flannagan debated the resolution, “Morality does not need God.” Flannagan is the co-author of Did God Really Command Genocide. You can find the video of the debate here.
A Twilight Musing
“Let’s sit down with a cup of coffee (or tea) and chat a while.” That’s a common invitation of people in our society, since partaking of a cup of something is associated with relaxed fellowship together. It has been so from ancient times, although the contents of the cup until modern times was wine, rather than a brewed hot drink. There are about 65 occurrences (by my count) of the word “cup” in the Bible, and it is striking that 55 of them have some sort of symbolic significance, while only ten of them have an entirely literal meaning, and in most of those the literal cup is in the context of a larger purpose or moral lesson. For example, when Jesus commends the giving even of so little a thing as a cup of cold water to honor Him (Mark 9:41), the cup has a significance beyond itself. When Jesus accuses the Pharisees of giving more attention to cleaning the exteriors of their literal cups than to spiritually cleansing themselves, the literal quickly fades into the symbolic. Why this preponderance of symbolic meanings in the figure of a cup in Holy Scripture? I think it is because what we imbibe is inherently associated with our relationship to God and to our fellow humans. What we drink, depending on our choices, can be a part of wonderfully satisfying fellowship, or it can be terrible in its consequences.
The symbolic references to drinking a cup are wide-ranging and multifaceted. In some places it signifies a fullness of blessings, as in Ps. 23:5; but by contrast, it is also used as a symbol of the administration of God’s wrath (Ps. 75:8, Rev. 14:10). In the institution and subsequent observance of the Lord’s Supper, partaking of the cup together is an act of deep fellowship between believers and a mystical union with Christ (Lk. 22:20, I Cor. 11:25). But immediately after the Last Supper, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane praying, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup [of suffering] pass from me” (Matt. 26:39). I think some spiritual benefit can be derived from a more detailed consideration of these four categories of figurative uses of “cup” in Scripture: the cup of blessing, the cup of wrath, the cup of communion, and the cup of suffering. The first two reflect the relationship between humans and God under the Old Covenant, and the second two deal with how that relationship becomes closer and more profound under the New Covenant.
The best known passage using the cup as an image of blessing is in Ps. 23:5: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” This is a summation of the Great Shepherd’s care and protection over His flock, so great that it overwhelms the speaker’s expectation and comprehension. Ps. 116:13 says, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” in response to “all His benefits” (v. 12). But more often mentioned, especially in the prophets, is the “cup of horror and desolation” (Ezek. 23:33) or the “cup of staggering” (Zech. 12:2) which God administered in judgment to rebellious Israel or another wicked nation. The underlying message of these passages is that God holds people accountable, and blesses those who obey Him and punishes those who do not, especially His own covenant people. God is merciful and will forgive when people repent of their evil, but the frequency with which He found it necessary to pour out His cup of wrath indicates that dependence on law-keeping was a precarious way to walk with God. The promise of the coming of the Messiah speaks of a more lasting covenant, one planted in the hearts of God’s people (see Jer. 30-33, esp. 31:31-34). But the New Covenant established through the Messiah would involve a radically new kind of cup to drink from.
A short time before Jesus “set His face toward Jerusalem” for the fatal last journey of His life, James and John came to Him requesting that they be granted “to sit one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:37). To which Jesus replied, “Your do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” (v. 38). When they presumptuously and ignorantly assured Him that they could, it was clear that they had no inkling of the cup of suffering from which Jesus asked the Father to deliver Him as He agonized in Gethsemane. It is not surprising, then, that none of the disciples realized the full meaning of Jesus’ words when He instituted the Lord’s Supper.
And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." (Mark 14:23-25)
None of the disciples understood what Jesus meant by His blood being poured out for many, nor that a New Covenant would be established through the shedding of His blood. But when they began to partake of the Lord’s Supper after the Day of Pentecost, when the New Covenant was activated and the Church was established, they were reminded constantly in partaking of the Supper together that the cup of blessing they had drunk with Jesus in that Upper Room was symbolic of the cup of suffering that He alone could drink on the cross. For every Christian observing this holy feast since the Day of Pentecost, drinking of the sacramental cup is a recognition that we are participating in His death by dying to self so that we can be alive with Him. As Paul puts it in Romans 8:10, “If Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness”— the righteousness of Christ provided through the shed blood that we symbolically drink in the cup of the Lord’s Supper.
This is a grave and serious matter, as Paul makes clear in his recap of the institution of the Lord’s Supper in I Cor. 11:27-29.
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
But in this act of gravity, we also look forward to the joy and assurance of His coming again. Until then, the cup of blessing and the cup of suffering are coupled in the Lord’s Supper, looking forward to that time to which Jesus referred when He said He would not drink again with His disciples until they are together in the final Kingdom of God, where we will celebrate the great wedding feast of the Lamb as His spotless bride, the perfected Body of Christ, the Church (Rev. 19:6-8).
The Victory of Christian Virtue
In Chapter One, it was argued that for a particular worldview to be compatible with virtue ethics, it has to meet two kinds of criteria. First, it must be able to account for teleology of persons and the world. Second, it must have a view of man that allows for the narrative unity of a single human life. Chapter Three will demonstrate two claims. First that experience and reason confront the Buddhism with facts that are difficult to explain away; these same facts naturally flow from the Christian worldview. Therefore, Christianity provides a better explanation for the nature of reality and human persons than Buddhism. The second claim is that Christianity can accommodate a virtue view of ethics.
Any account of Christian ethics must begin with God. In Christian thought, God is metaphysically necessary: “The existence of God is a first truth; in other words, the knowledge of God’s existence is rational intuition. Logically, it precedes and conditions all observation and reasoning.”[1] Further, he is the “infinite Spirit in whom all things have their source, support, and end.”[2] God is defined as the greatest conceivable or maximally great being. As such, he is said to possess all great making properties, like moral perfection and ultimate value. By definition and ontological necessity, God constitutes the good of Christian ethics.
As a maximally great being, God exists with certain attributes. Strong divides the attributes of God into two categories: the absolute or immanent attributes and the relative or transitive attributes. The absolute attributes are those attributes that God possesses without reference to anything else. God possesses life, personality, aseity, unity, and moral perfection as ontologically necessary properties. The life that God possesses is not biological life, but rather mental energy. He “lives” as a personal being, possessing “the power of self-consciousness and self-determination.”[3] God, then, is fundamentally and necessarily a unified, conscious, and rational person who possesses libertarian free will. In addition, he constitutes the ultimate ground of all value and moral objectivity.
The imago Dei explained
As a free being, complete within himself, God chose to create mankind in his image:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”[4]
While the Bible does not specifically explain the nature of the imago Dei, Erickson argues that there are at least six facts that can be inferred from what the Bible does say. His first five facts explain that the image of God is something bestowed freely by God, without reference to any trait or merit within man, and that all humans possess the image equally. Each of these facts is vitally important to ethics, and the application of ethics in particular. However, his sixth point is especially important to demonstrating that Christianity meets the requirements of virtue:
“The image refers to the elements in the human makeup that enable the fulfillment of human destiny. The image is the powers of personality that make humans, like God, beings capable of interacting with other persons, thinking, and of willing freely.”[5] Essentially, possessing the imago Dei is what makes human beings persons; the absence of which makes animals merely animals.
J.P. Moreland has argued that as the imago Dei relates to persons, there are five principle parts: consciousness, free will, rationality, the soul, and objective moral values and the intrinsic value of a human being. If Christianity is true so that people are, in fact, created in the image of God, then there ought to be facts about human persons that are difficult for other worldviews to explain away. This provides an excellent opportunity to offer an apologetic toward Buddhism and a fuller explanation of what constitutes the imago Dei and how it is relevant to Christian ethics.
The recalcitrant imago Dei: human persons and the failure of Buddhism[6]
One of the criticisms made of the virtue view of Buddhism is that it is motivated for some reason other than obtaining an honest interpretation of the Buddha’s ethics. Some Buddhist virtue ethicists even openly admitted that they had ulterior motives.[7] It was suggested that Keown was a kind of “revisionist.” This raises an important question: Why would someone want to reinterpret the Buddha in favor of a virtue ethic? The answer seems to be that a theory of virtue ethics makes better sense out the world than the theories that the Buddha taught. While the insights of the Buddha are tremendous, they are nevertheless out of step with what human beings can know by experience and reason. In particular, Chapter Two pointed out that a virtue view of ethics was guilty of ignoring or distorting truths about the nature of a human person and the moral quality of reality. There are recalcitrant facts about the nature of man and morality for Keown and other Buddhist virtue ethicists. These are facts about the sort of world human beings find themselves in as well as the sort of lives they experience, facts about the apparent narrative unity of the human life and the teleology of the world in general. Specifically, the Buddhist will have trouble explaining the five parts of a person who possesses the imgao Dei.
Consciousness
Moreland argues that “mental states require a subjective ontology–namely that mental states are necessarily owned by the first person sentient subjects who have them.”[8] According to Moreland, there are five states of consciousness and each is expressed in terms of a subject/object relationship. A sensation is a state of awareness. One might have the sensation of “seeing red,” or “feeling pain.” A thought is a “mental content that can be expressed in an entire sentence.” “All fire trucks are red,” is a thought and so is “My favorite fruit is apples.” A belief is a “person’s view, accepted to varying degrees of strength, of how things really are.” A desire is a “certain felt inclination to do, or experience certain things or avoid such.” And finally, an act of will is a “choice, an exercise of power. . . usually for the sake of some purpose.”[9] The states of consciousness do not constitute some conventional person nor are these states aggregates of a whole. Instead, the five states are all properties of a mind (mental states), which is a unified whole and indivisible. Moreland further suggests that there is an I that stands behind and above these various states so that they belong to a particular individual: “the first person perspective is not a property persons have, it is the thing that persons are – centers of a personal kind of consciousness.”[10] On this point, Moreland agrees with Strong:
Self-consciousness is more than consciousness. This last the brute may be supposed to possess, since the brute is not an automaton. Man is distinguished from the brute by his power to objectify self. Man is not only conscious of his own acts and states, but by abstraction and reflection he recognizes the self which is the subject of these acts and states.[11]
Moreland’s view of consciousness as mental states stands in contrast to the Buddha’s.
The Buddha believed that there are five aggregates that constitute a conventional person: form
(rupa), sensation (vedana), perception (sanna), mental formation (sankhara), and awareness[12]
(vinnana). The last four of these aggregates are mental states,[13] similar to the ones utilized by Moreland, although the Buddha is clear that these mental states do not belong to anyone. An unnamed monk, in a dialogue with the Buddha, argued that human persons mistakenly assume that one of the skandhas might be identified as the self.[14] Later in the discourse, the Buddha explains that each of these assumptions is unfounded. The Buddha asks the monk concerning each of the skandhas, “Is this what I am?” The monk responds, with Buddha’s approval, “No, lord.” There is no unified self; there is only an aggregate of parts with an illusion of self.
However, the idea that a person is merely a collection of parts does not solve the problem that Moreland raises. For example, the Buddha suggests that awareness or vinnana is the “awareness of sensory and mental objects.”[15] But awareness, as a mental state, requires necessarily a subject and an object. There must be a subject who experiences awareness of a particular object or state of affairs. The other aggregates (with the exception of form which merely describes the physical body) have the same requirement. Perceptions will require both a “perceiver” and an object to be perceived. Formations (sankhara), which are “a range of mental responses to objects,” also require a subject/object relationship.[16] By formulating the aggregates, the Buddha has not solved the problem of the I standing over and above the aggregates. Instead, he has merely described the conscious states that an I possesses. Further, it is not likely that the doctrine of “no-self” and a belief in the aggregates as mental states can be held simultaneously. The only option would be to either affirm that a conscious self exists over and above the aggregates or that the five aggregates are not describing mental states. The juxtaposition of the “no-self” doctrine and the strong sense of the reality of self creates a tension within the Buddhist worldview to such a point that the language employed must be understood as either being only conventionally true (there is a self) or ultimately true (there is no self).
Besides the subject/object problem implicit within the aggregates, there is a kind of cosmological problem. How could consciousness arise when reality is fundamentally empty, non-personal, and lacking any causal powers? A monk asked the Buddha this question directly: "Lord, what is the cause, what the condition, for the delineation of the aggregate of form? What is the cause, what the condition, for the delineation of the aggregate of feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness?"[17] The Buddha responded:
Monk, the four great existents (earth, water, fire, & wind) are the cause, the four great existents the condition, for the delineation of the aggregate of form. Contact is the cause, contact the condition, for the delineation of the aggregate of feeling. Contact is the cause, contact the condition, for the delineation of the aggregate of perception. Contact is the cause, contact the condition, for the delineation of the aggregate of fabrications. Name&-form is the cause, name-&-form the condition, for the delineation of the aggregate of consciousness.[18]
According to the Buddha, consciousness arises as result of a material cause (earth, water, fire, and wind) intersecting with particular conditions, the reality of dependent origination. While the
Buddha refrains from metaphysical speculation, there is nevertheless another tension in Buddhism at this point: how does consciousness arise out of reality as the Buddha understood it?
The answer is not clear. Consciousness, for Buddhism is a recalcitrant fact.
The unity of human life (the soul)
If mental states are something possessed so that there is an indivisible I over and above them, then another issue presents itself: the concept of a substantial soul. Moreland argues against naturalism, but his point can easily be adapted to a Buddhist view:
I. I exist, as does a particular arrangement of skandhas associated with me.
II. I am not identical with the skandhas associated with me.
III. I am not identical with any single skandha (like vinnana, for example).
IV. I do not have any proper part which is not part of the skandhas
V. Therefore, I have no proper parts: I am altogether simple entity.
The Buddhist would likely find (III) and (IV) uncontroversial. There would be no ultimate I to be identical to a set of skandhas and whatever an I is, it would consist totally of the skandhas. Clearly, there would a problem with (I). But, if Moreland is right about mental states necessarily requiring a “subjective ontology,” then (I) should be acceptable even if there is protest. If (I) makes it through, then so do (II) and (III). If there is a “subjective ontology” that possesses the five skandhas, then it follows that a person is not identical to the skandhas. The result is that the self is an “immaterial, non-extended substance”[19] that has no necessary relationship with the skandhas. This would explain why “we have very strong, deep intuitions that we are enduring continuants even though we undergo various changes and… experience part replacement.”[20]
The Buddhist faces a problem here: if there is a self that exists over and above the skandhas, that self would, presumably, not be conditioned by the laws of dependent origination or karma since it stands outside the space where those laws would have causal powers. The self would create a kind of dualism within Buddhism: there is what is unconditioned and without self (nirvana) and there is the unconditioned self. To explain these phenomena, Buddhism would need to develop a doctrine of the soul. The apparent necessity of an unconditioned self, enduring over time, and being metaphysically simple, the apparent necessity of the soul, creates another recalcitrant fact for Buddhists.
Free will
The concept of free will creates another tension in Buddhist thought. In one of the most important suttas, responding to the question, “What is dependent co-arising?” the Buddha said,
From birth as a requisite condition comes aging and death. Whether or not there is the arising of Tathagatas, this property stands — this regularity of the Dhamma, this orderliness of the Dhamma, this this/that conditionality. The Tathagata directly awakens to that, breaks through to that. Directly awakening & breaking through to that, he declares it, teaches it, describes it, sets it forth. He reveals it, explains it, makes it plain, & says, 'Look.' From birth as a requisite condition comes aging & death.[21]
From the dependent co-arising of things come “dependently co-arisen phenomena.” These phenomena are the complex conjunction of several “lines” of dependent co-arising and result in events like birth, becoming, craving, and so on. [22] The Buddha summarized his teaching on causality by saying that “Where this is present, that comes to be; from the arising of this, that arises. When this is absent, that does not come to be; on the cessation of this, that ceases.”[23] The Buddha extended this kind of causality uniformly to explain “the evolution and dissolution of the world process…plant life… and [even] to human personality.”[24] However, the Buddha is said to be able to break this chain of causation so that he is free from the cycle of rebirth. This assumes that the Buddha is able to enact “top-down” causation, and that he is significantly free from prior causes. In short, the Buddha possesses a form of libertarian free will.[25]
Once again, there is tension within Buddhism. The Buddha has explained the universe in fully deterministic terms so that every effect has, at least theoretically, a detectable cause. The Buddha also wants to maintain that he and others like him are sufficiently free to break the chain of causation. However, he provides no means by which this is possible. Persons, in particular, are not a good candidate for the sort of top-down causation that is required as persons are themselves an aggregate of parts reacting according to the laws of karma and dependent-origination. The apparent existence of free will establishes another recalcitrant fact for Buddhism.
Rationality
Buddhism faces a similar problem with the idea of rationality. The Buddha taught that the world was arranged in a rational way so that causes have predictable effects; he had a kind of process metaphysics. His teaching represents a “framework of thought that hinges on the ideas that sentient experience is dependently originated and that whatever is dependently originated is conditioned, impermanent, subject to change, and lacking independent selfhood.”[26] The Buddha consistently emphasizes that reality is a rational place in his teaching on Right View. A disciple named Kaccayana Gotta asked the Buddha, “What is right view?” The Buddha said that
This world is supported by (takes as its object) a polarity, that of existence and nonexistence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'non-existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one.[27]
Clearly, there is a twofold assumption here: first that reality is a fundamentally rational place and second that human persons are rational themselves so that they are able, at least potentially, to apprehend reality as it is. However, the Buddha does not provide reasons as to why reality and human persons would be arranged in just this way. Thomas Nagel suggests that the fact that humans have the ability to reason is only possible under two sorts of circumstances: either “we can reason in these ways because it is a consequence of a more primitive capacity of belief formation that had survival value when the human brain was evolving” or “the universe is intelligible to us because it and our minds were made for each other.”[28] In Chapter Two, it was shown that the sort of teleology presupposed Nagel’s second option is unlikely on the Buddhist view. Presumably, then, the Buddhist would have to accept some sort of naturalistic (naturalistic in the sense that it would arise out of the impersonal laws of dependent co-arising and karma) mechanism as the origin of rationality. But Nagel says that this answer is “laughably inadequate” and it would still not explain why reality itself is a rational place. In addition, Alvin Plantinga argues that naturalistic accounts of rationality are self-defeating; it seems likely that his argument would stand against Buddhist forms of naturalism.[29] Thus, once again, the Buddhist faces a recalcitrant fact.
Objective moral value and intrinsic human value
One final area of tension in Buddhism concerns the nature of morality and the intrinsic value of human persons. The ethics of Buddhism are “thought to be objectively true and in accordance with the nature of things.”[30] The dharma defines good and evil so that
Of paths, the eightfold is best. Of truths, the four sayings. Of qualities, dispassion. Of two-footed beings, the one with the eyes to see. Just this is the path — there is no other — to purify vision. Follow it, and that will be Mara's [the demon of corruption and desire] bewilderment.[31]
This objectivity of ethics in Buddhism led Velez de Cea to conclude that Buddhism has characteristics of moral realism because “certain external actions are unwholesome or wholesome.”[32] As moral realists, Buddhists believe that “moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right.”[33] A statement like “murder is wrong” is objectively either true or false.
Karma serves as the foundation of moral value: “For the Buddha, the moral order of the universe is contained first and foremost in the doctrines of kamma and rebirth.”[34] Given its lack of belief in a personal God, it seems fair, then, to characterize Buddhism as “atheistic moral realists” who “affirm that objective moral values and duties do exist and are not dependent on evolution or human opinion, but they also insist that they are not grounded in God. Indeed, moral values have no further foundation. They just exist.”[35] The trouble here is that it is difficult to understand how moral values could exist independent of persons. Craig and Moreland suggest that the idea may be incoherent and that “Moral values seem to exist as properties of persons, not as mere abstractions.”[36]
If moral values can exist as an abstraction that only raises another question: how is it that an abstract moral foundation would have any relevance to human persons? Even if moral value could exist as an abstraction, it would not provide moral obligation. The only way persons could be morally obligated to a set of values is if those values were grounded in a person: “A duty is something that is owed… But something can be owed only to some person or persons. There can be no such thing as duty in isolation.”[37]
Related to the existence of objective moral value is the intrinsic worth of human beings.
The value of the human person is often taken to be self-evident in Buddhism. For example, the
Dalai Lama begins Ethics for the New Millennium by stating that the proper goal of ethics is the “great quest for happiness,” a fact that “needs no justification and is validated by the simple fact that we naturally and correctly want this.”[38] According to the Dalia Lama, the natural and correct desires of human beings define what is valuable. Such a view seems to presuppose that human beings are, in fact, incredibly valuable. Keown points out that “compassion (karuṇā) is a virtue that is of importance in all schools of Buddhism” and that the Buddha serves as a primary example of this when he decided to delay returning to nirvana in order to teach others the dharma.[39]However, if persons only exist in the conventional sense, it is difficult to see how some ultimately impersonal, dependently arising, arrangement of parts could be said to possess intrinsic value. Further, given the questionable nature of the Buddhist moral universe, conventional persons may not be able to be moral agents in the first place. Thus the existence of objective moral values and duties, as well the intrinsic value of human beings, is also a recalcitrant fact for Buddhism.
These facts, the nature of consciousness, the soul, rationality, free will, the existence of objective moral values and duties, and the intrinsic value of human persons, are features not easily explained within the Buddhist worldview. However, these truths are central and fundamental to the Christian worldview. Alvin Plantinga makes this very point:
What is it to be a person, what is it to be a human person, and how shall we think about personhood? …The first point to note is that on the Christian scheme of things, God is the premier person, the first and chief exemplar of personhood. God, furthermore, has created man in his own image; we men and women are image bearers of God, and the properties most important for an understanding of our personhood are properties we share with him. How we think about God, then, will have an immediate and direct bearing on how we think about humankind.[40]
God, as a unified, conscious, personal, rational, and ultimately valuable person, created man in his image. Man possesses these same traits, though to a different degree, because he is essentially made in the imago Dei. Given the Christian doctrines of God and man, it has been demonstrated that it can ably accommodate the necessary components of virtue: the narrative unity of a single human life and an explanation of teleology in man and the world.
Aristotle argued that the good for man was to live a certain kind of life, a life characterized by the development and practice of the virtues. The driving question behind his ethic was, “What kind of person should I be?” The ancient Israelites had an answer to this question: “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy (Lev. 19:2).” Their “basic moral doctrine is the imitatio Dei, to be like God as much as is humanly possible.”[41] They were to do this by following God’s commandments. Primarily, the ethics of the Hebrew Bible were deontological. They were obligated to obey God in light of who God is and what he had done for them. While the character of God provided the standard of right actions, it did not constitute the
good for man in the Aristotelian sense. However, with the incarnation of the Son of God, the ethics of the people of God shifted: “Christ is the Word made flesh, the perfect revelation of the Father, which means that, to the Christian, God is most perfectly revealed in a person, not a set of commandments or any written or spoken words, although Jesus says he comes to fulfill the law, not to destroy it.”[42] The absolute center of Christian ethics is the person and work of Jesus Christ.
One of the key texts on Christian ethics was written by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.
Paul’s purpose in writing was to convey that God had begun “cosmic reconciliation” through his Son, Jesus Christ.[43] Given this wide scope, Ephesians is a good place to look for what is fundamental to Christian ethics. In the first three chapters, Paul explains the role that the individual, the church, and himself has within the plan of God for the world. In chapter two, Paul explains that the individual is “saved by grace, through faith.” Salvation is not given according to an individual’s actions, but because “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Here Paul affirms that people have both intrinsic value and a teleogy. They are intrinsically valuable because they are “a product God’s making (αὐτοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν ποίημα).” They possess a telos because they were made with a purpose: “created in Christ Jesus for good works (κτισθέντες ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς). On the basis of these realities, Paul formulates his Christian ethic throughout the rest of the book. But, Ephesians 4:22-24 is especially relevant: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
In these verses, Paul teaches that the Christian life is a process of putting aside sinful habits and attitudes, replacing them with habits and attitudes that are reflective of who God is. This dynamic component also corresponds to Aristotle’s ethic.[44] Aristotle taught that the moral life did not consist merely in performing right actions, but also in becoming a certain kind of person through the development of character. Through this development, one can reach his telos.
The process of sanctification in Christianity is similar: “sanctification is a teleological concept. More specifically, sanctification involves the growth and transformation of oneself and one's character toward a partially determinate picture of the human good or end.”[45] But what constitutes the telos of man in a Christian context? While not answering this question directly, Paul nevertheless provides the answer as he concludes his thought in 5:1-2: “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
When Paul provides an example of the end goal of this process of sanctification, he says that Christians should “walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us.” According to Paul,
Christ is the moral exemplar, the ideal man, and Christians should model their lives on the life of
Christ. The Christian answer to the Aristotelian question, “What sort of person should I be?” is
“You should be like Christ.” The gospels provide the fullest picture of the mission and life of Jesus Christ. According to Hauerwas, the key ethical feature of the life of Jesus was that he “did not direct attention to himself, but through his teaching, healings, and miracles tried to indicate the nature and immediacy of God’s kingdom.”[46]
The Aristotelian virtues were realized largely within a political context. The virtues were those goods that enabled the ideal kind of society, and individuals within that society, to flourish. Both Aristotle and Christianity agree on the social nature of human beings and that “human wellbeing and flourishing occur in various relationships where life is shared and common goods are realized.”[47] Aristotle argued that only within relationships between people of a certain class, gender, and social status can one achieve eudaimonia. Virtue was attained through relationships with people like one’s self. However, in the Christian context, the kinds of relationships that allow moral development are the kinds of relationships found within the kingdom of God – relationships between God, the individual, and the kingdom community.
While Aristotle required a group of like individuals for moral growth, Christian ethics emphasizes the difference between God and man.[48] Moral development occurs when a person exists in right relationships, not only with other human beings, but also with God himself (Matt. 22:36-40). Jesus demonstrates how these relationships should be worked out when he “comes to initiate and make present the kingdom of God through healing of those possessed by demons, by calling disciples, telling parables, teaching the law, challenging the authorities of his day, and by being crucified at the hands of Roman and Jewish elites and raised from the grave.”[49] Jesus demonstrated that the ideal life is characterized by obedience and love for God as well as sacrificial love for other human beings, especially human beings that are considered unworthy of that sacrifice. This is why Jesus is the human paradigm of virtue; “he realized our full human potential. He resisted selfish temptations, identified with the weak and oppressed, made love his motivation and guide, responded in love to both friends and enemies, was obedient to God (even to death), and found self-fulfillment in relationship with God rather than in autonomy.”[50]
Reuschling makes an excellent point here:
Jesus himself is the exemplar of the virtuous life. It might be easy to attribute the virtuous life to Jesus based on his divinity. Yet the virtues that Jesus taught were demonstrated in the life he lived through his humanity and in his social and personal interactions. It’s Jesus’ humanity that gives us the window through which to view the quality and shape of a life that pleases God. Jesus did not just teach about the virtue of mercy. Jesus was merciful. Humility was not an abstract idea in Jesus’ teaching. Jesus himself was the model of humility. Jesus did not present theories of justice. Jesus was reconciling, securing justice and righteousness as marks of shalom.[51]
A Christian ethic of virtue, then, is well founded and superior to a Buddhist virtue ethic. The Christian worldview provides the necessary foundations, an account of teleology and the narrative unity of human life, while Buddhism does not. Christianity does more than merely allow for a theory of virtue ethics. It provides a rich, substantive, and attractive theory of virtue. The Christian account affirms what we all we want to affirm and know intuitively: that human life is immensely valuable and that we were meant for some incredible good. Jesus Christ provides the fully realized example of the human telos that affirms these intuitions and calls humans to the good for which they were originally intended. By contrast, the Buddha asks men to deny a substantive good and even the commonsense understanding of themselves in order to achieve the extinguishing of life:
Delight is the root of suffering and stress, that from coming-into-being there is birth, and that for what has come into being there is aging and death. Therefore, with the total ending, fading away, cessation, letting go, relinquishment of craving, the Tathagata has totally awakened to the unexcelled right self-awakening, I tell you.[52]
In stark contrast, Jesus declares, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”[53] Jesus affirms what the Buddha denies, which is they very essentials of virtue. Therefore, I invite the Buddhist virtue ethicist, who correctly wants to affirm the goodness and value of human life, to identify with Christ, who, “in his full humanity and solidarity with us, became what we were created to be: the image of God.”[54] The good life does not consist in the extinguishing of it, but in entering into the Kingdom of God, conformed to the image of his Son.
[1] Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology: A Compendium and Commonplace-Book Designed for
the Use of Theological Students (Philadelphia: Griffith & Rowland Press, 1907), 52.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 251.
[4] Gen 1:26
[5] 158 Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983), 532.
[6] 159 This heading is adapted from Moreland’s The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure
of Naturalism
[7] 160 James Whitehill, “Buddhism and the Virtues,” in Contemporary Buddhist Ethics, ed. Damien Keown (Richmond: Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 17.
[8] James Porter Moreland, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (London: University of Nottingham, 2009), 20.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., 133.
[11] 164 Strong, Systematic Theology, 252.
[12] 165 Typically, vinnana is translated as consciousness. However, this translation is not consistent with what is usually meant by consciousness, “the totality of conscious states of an individual.”
[13] 166 Peter Harvey, “Theravada Philosophy of Mind and the Person,” in Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings, ed. William Edelglass and Jay Garfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 265.
[14] 167 Maha-punnama Sutta: The Great Full-moon Night Discourse, trans. Thanissaro Bhikku,
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.109.than.html
[15] Harvey, “Theravada Philosophy,” 266.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Maha-punnama Sutta: The Great Full-moon Night Discourse
[18] Ibid.
[19] Moreland, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei, 120.
[20] Ibid., 115.
[21] Paccaya Sutta: Requisite Conditions, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.020.than.html.
[22] Kalupahana, Buddhism as Philosophy, 29.
[23] 176 Ibid., 66.
[24] Ibid., 30.
[25] 178 Moreland, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei, 50.
[26] Noa Ronkin, “Theravada Metaphysics and Ontology,” in Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings, ed. William Edelglass and Jay Garfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 14.
[27] 180 Kaccayanagotta Sutta: To Kaccayana Gotta (on Right View), trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu,
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.015.than.html.
[28] 181 Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 75.
[29] See Plantinga’s “Naturalism Defeated,”
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/naturalism_defeated.pdf
[30] Keown, A Short Introduction, 25.
[31] Maggavagga: The Path, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.20.than.html
[32] Velez de Cea, “The Criteria of Goodness,” 134.
[33] 186 Geoff Sayre-McCord, “Moral Realism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford: Stanford University, 2007). Par 3.
[34] 187
Gowans, Buddhism, 29.
[35] 188 James Porter Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 492.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), 83.
[38] The Dalia Lama, Ethics, 5.
[39] Keown, A Short Introduction, 30.
[40] Alvin Plantinga, “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers (1984): 6.
[41] Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 316.
[42] Ibid., 316.
[43] D. A. Carson, Ephesians: New Bible commentary : 21st century edition (4th ed.) (Downers Grove, Inter-Varsity, 1994), 134.
[44] Wyndy Corbin Reuschling, Reviving Evangelical Ethics: The Promises and Pitfalls of Classic Models of Morality (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008), 117.
[45] 198 Joseph J. Kotva, The Christian Case for Virtue Ethics (Washington: Georgetown University, 1996), 72.
[46] 199
Stanley Hauweras, “Jesus and the Social Embodiment of the Peaceable Kingdom,” in The Hauerwas Reader, ed. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham: Duke University, 2001), 117.
[47] Reuschling, Reviving Evangelical Ethics, 116.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Hauerwas, “Jesus and the Social Embodiment of the Peaceable Kingdom,” 119,
[50] Kovak, The Christian Case, 80.
[51] Reuschling, Reviving Evangelical Ethics, 123.
[52] 205 Mulapariyaya Sutta: The Root Sequence, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu,
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.001.than.html
[53] John 10:10
[54] Kovak, The Christian Case, 80.
A few months ago, I alluded to the following poem:
“And they realized they were naked . . . .”
(Gen. 3:7)
What mystery was shrouded
By the fig leaves of our forebears?
Primordial tailors,
Their hands’ first fallen craft
Was born of shame,
The name of sin but freshly formed.
Why that immediate, desperate need
To cover their suddenly secret parts?
Their hearts alone have known
Both nakedness with innocence
And clothing worn in guilt.
For us, their heirs,
Only cloaked desire
Mingled with pain.
Elton D. Higgs
Oct. 1, 2009
In speculating about what life in the Garden of Eden was like before the Fall, we can only project the other side of the coin from the present state of evil that we know all too well. Of course, we have the picture of the eternal state in Rev. 21 and 22, in which there will be no death, no disease, no sorrow or weeping, no environmental disorders to disrupt and destroy life. But what is the flip side of the evils attendant on our sexual desires? We must assume that Adam and Eve’s becoming “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24) meant that their relationship before the Fall involved sexual intercourse. The perfection of their sexual intimacy seems to have been symbolized by their uninhibited, shameless nakedness (Gen. 2:25). It is also significant that the first consciousness of their changed state after they had eaten of the forbidden fruit was that “they knew they were naked” and felt compelled to cover up their genitals. The first victim of lost innocence was the unalloyed enjoyment of sex.
It’s also interesting that Adam and Eve’s recognition of their nakedness had immediate spiritual consequences, causing Adam to hide from God (Gen. 3:10). Surely it was not merely his physical nakedness that Adam didn’t want God to see, but at a deeper level, he was not able to endure God’s looking at the nakedness of his now-corrupted soul. God Himself makes the connection between the two levels of being unclothed: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” (Gen. 3:11). Adam would not have known he was physically naked had he not first exposed himself spiritually by his disobedience to God. The easy pleasure of walking with God in the Garden gave way to the agony of feeling Yahweh’s searching eyes. The protection of innocence had been permanently torn away.
Among the judgments God pronounced on Adam and Eve and their progeny were two things relating to the couple’s new-found knowledge of their nakedness (which was, by extension, a painful awareness of sexual vulnerability). First, He made pain a part of child-bearing and declared that wives would be dependent upon their husbands and be ruled over by them. Secondly, God provided clothing of animal skins for Adam and Eve to replace the crude fig-leaves they had sewn together for themselves. Herein we see God on the one hand administering severe discipline to the fallen couple, and on the other showing His mercy and provision, giving symbolic assurance that though they had foolishly and perversely thrown aside the beautiful and unproblematic existence God had given them in Eden, He was still with them, if in humility they accepted God’s judgment and submitted to His commands. Even in the face of the painful consequences of their sin, they could recover some of the beauty of the innocent nakedness they had experienced with God before they fell.
What might be some instruction we can take from these observations? First, the sexual communion that came naturally to Adam and Eve in the Garden now has to be worked at by men and women in the fallen world. The nakedness that they took for granted has to be re-embraced by married couples as a wholesome part of their experience and cherished as a mark of the intimacy that God intends for those who are committed to each other in covenant relationship with Him.
Second, the emotional bond that must have been natural between Adam and Eve is challenged in our fallen state. God’s decree that a wife is to expect and accept dependence on her husband and be subject to him is very problematic, especially in our egalitarian society. This dynamic is reinforced in the New Testament (Eph. 5:22-33), of course, so how is a spiritually committed but enlightened couple to work this out? In the Ephesians passage, the wife’s submission is balanced by the husband’s sacrificial care, and Paul refers back to what Genesis says about the initial relationship between Adam and Eve, that they were to “become one flesh” (v. 31). For this to occur in the fallen state, the woman has to resist using sex to gain power, and the man has to resist using his power selfishly. Each must work at respecting and enhancing the other.
As reflected in the last lines of the poem above, sexual desire in fallen humankind is experienced ambiguously as “cloaked desire / Mingled with pain.”
Married couples need to realize that although physical and spiritual nakedness with each other is risky, it can be joyful, too, if undertaken with the assurance that the God who disciplines is also the God who redeems. God is able and willing to use our ambiguous nakedness as an avenue to tasting even in this vale of tears a bit of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.
Image: By Thomas Cole - Unknown, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=182975
The title above reflects a sentiment that has for centuries been ubiquitously expressed in the popular songs and literature of Western societies. But the "love" referred to is associated much more with Cupid than with God. Love as the world defines it has to do overwhelmingly with the exhilarating whirlwinds of sexual attraction and desire, whereas God's love, magnificently presented in I Cor. 13, addresses the totality of human experience. After 1 Cor. 12, on the misuse of God's gifts of the Spirit, Paul launches into a concise, almost poetic meditation on Transcendent Love (agape), saying, "I will show you a more excellent way" than the petty competition to prove who is most spiritual (1 Cor. 12:31).
He begins his beautiful poetic-prose meditation on Divine Love with a comprehensive catalogue of spectacular spiritual gifts that are of no profit without the enabling grace of that Love.
If I speak in the tongues of me and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but I have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (I Cor. 13:1-3)
No humanly willed virtue, nor even the exercise of a divinely granted gift has significance within itself, but can draw its value only from being grounded in the Love of God. The carnal Corinthians have been emphasizing uses of their gifts that draw attention to themselves, but Paul wants to show that no matter how spectacularly "successful" they are in the exercise of their gifts, that success is empty unless its purpose is to be a transmitter of the transcendent Love that Jesus showed supremely in His death on the cross.
How are we to recognize this love that trumps the most notable good deeds that can be imagined? Paul follows up on his astounding statement by (1) giving a down-to-earth picture of what Love does and does not do and (2) showing that of all virtues, only Love endures past this world into eternity. The characteristics of Love are catalogued in verses 4-7. The first two items are overarching, comprehensive qualities (patience and kindness) that rule out six specific negative behaviors and cultivate a vital positive one. The six negative behaviors are all self-centered and injurious to others: arrogance, rudeness, selfish insistence, irritability, resentment, and fault-finding. The vital positive behavior generated by patience and kindness is rejoicing in truth. This might not seem at first to be so very important, but it springs from a key attitude of the Christian mind, that is, seeking and embracing truth even when it is painful to know and accept, in contrast to cherishing falseness and error when it is to our advantage.
The statement in verse 8 that “love never ends” begins Paul’s assertion that the day will come when all of our experience of God, even faith and hope, will be folded into His Love, just as the Son will one day, at the end of God’s work with this world, yield back to the Father the authority given Him through the Incarnation, so that “God may be all in all” (I Cor. 15:28). Faith and hope in that day will find all that they looked forward to has become eternal reality and they will no longer be necessary. But Divine Love, which is the very nature of God, will never find its limits, for it will continue forever to be the quality that binds all beings together in a fellowship that will never be broken. All purposes since the Creation of the world have been leading toward the participation of God’s children in that state of Eternal Love. We will then know truly that “There ain’t nothin’ like love.”
There are two primary interpretations of Buddhist ethics: utilitarian and virtue.[1] Keown is quick to point out that Buddhist ethics will not fit neatly into any one category in Western ethics. However, Buddhist scholars see many benefits to interpreting Buddhist ethics in Western categories. Western ethics provides a highly developed vocabulary and conceptual framework that was never developed in Buddhism. Because of this, there is a strong tendency to identify Buddhism in terms of Western ethical theories, even if there is not complete congruence.
It is relatively uncontroversial that Buddhist ethics is teleological, at least to a certain point. While scholars agree that Buddhist ethics is aimed at the goal of nirvana, what is controversial is whether the means to that goal are morally good. One of the key issues in this debate concerns the nature of nirvana. Those holding a utilitarian view understand nirvana in a straightforward way: it is the desired end in light of the circumstances. It is a place of peace and rest, an escape from suffering. Those holding the virtue view believe that nirvana is similar to the eudaimonia of Aristotle and that it constitutes the telos of man.
The ethics of utilitarianism, broadly speaking, could be summed up like this: "Good actions are those actions that are instrumental to pleasure; evil actions are those actions that destroy pleasure." If the means to nirvana are merely instrumental, then Buddhist ethics is a kind of utilitarian ethic, where the “good exists in pleasure" and the means to that good are not important.[2] Only the consequences count in terms of moral evaluation. Good and evil only exist relative to the predefined goal. While utilitarian kinds of ethical systems are objective in the sense that they provide objective criteria for evaluating good and evil, these systems are not objective in the ultimate sense, meaning that utilitarian systems are not able to give an objective account of what is ultimately good or valuable. Generally, the end is decided based on what the community already counts as valuable or good in itself.[3] As such, utilitarian forms of ethics are, at some point, transcended. They require a prior account of what is valuable or morally praiseworthy so that the goal selected is not arbitrary. This is exactly the condition in which many scholars have found the teaching of the Buddha.
One proponent of this view was Winston L. King, who held that Buddhism "aims at goals which completely transcend the ethical and always places its ethics in that transcendent context."[4] The Dali Lama himself seems to share the instrumental view. For example, he seems to suggest that an act like stealing is not wrong in itself, but wrong because of the resulting consequences: “As a result of stealing, one will lack material wealth.”[5] Those holding this view take the Buddha’s classifications of the criteria within the Path, wisdom (panna), the virtues (sila), and concentration (samadhi), in a straightforward way. The virtues of the Path (right speech, right action, and right livelihood) are said to be made possible with wisdom (right view and right intention). By having wisdom and virtue, the monk is able then participate in the
“higher” order goods of the Path, the development of concentration (right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration) that leads to nirvana.[6]
If ethical practice is merely the means by which one overcomes the suffering of this world, then, at the moment suffering is overcome, the practice of the virtues is obsolete. In the sutta entitled “What is Purpose?” the Buddha explicitly addresses the reason for practicing the virtues:
Thus in this way, Ananda, skillful virtues have freedom from remorse as their purpose, freedom from remorse as their reward. Freedom from remorse has joy as its purpose, joy as its reward. Joy has rapture as its purpose, rapture as its reward. Rapture has serenity as its purpose, serenity as its reward. Serenity has pleasure as its purpose, pleasure as its reward. Pleasure has concentration as its purpose, concentration as its reward. Concentration has knowledge & vision of things as they actually are as its purpose, knowledge & vision of things as they actually are as its reward. Knowledge & vision of things as they actually are has disenchantment as its purpose, disenchantment as its reward. Disenchantment has dispassion as its purpose, dispassion as its reward. Dispassion has knowledge & vision of release as its purpose, knowledge & vision of release as its reward. In this way, Ananda, skillful virtues lead step-by-step to the consummation of arahantship.[7]
In this text, the Buddha never mentions that the purpose of practicing the virtues relates to an inherent value in doing so. Instead, the virtues are practiced because they “lead step-by-step to the consummation of arahantship,” which is nirvana. Once nirvana is achieved, then there would no longer be a purpose in practicing the virtues: "The highest life seems to be a complete escape from, or transcendence from, the ethical sphere."[8] Having achieved nirvana, terms like “moral” and “non-moral” no longer have any meaning.[9] The Reverend Saddhatissa also held this view, as he explained when outlining his two guidelines for understanding Buddhist ethics: “In the first place, according to Buddhist and other Indian thought, the highest state is one that lies beyond good and evil. In the second place, according to Buddhism there is no break between the moral teaching and that which pertains to the ideal state.”[10]
Given the instrumental nature of the virtues, they cannot be ultimately good: the “virtues are not sufficient in themselves. On the one hand, to be virtuous is not the ultimate goal of life… If there is any goal, it is freedom.”[11] They are described in a simile taught by the Buddha himself, like a raft that is to be abandoned once one has crossed the river: “for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping.”[12] They are only valuable insofar as they enable one to reach the goal of the ethical pursuit, nirvana.
The outline of Buddhist virtue
Besides the utilitarian interpretation, the other major view is that “the virtue ethics tradition is the Western tradition most congenial to the assumptions and insights of Buddhist ethics.”[13] Virtue ethics is also aimed at a goal, the good for man, which is objectively the best and most proper pursuit of mankind. Good actions, or virtuous actions, are good because they correspond to and participate in the good for man.[14] Keown suggests that a utility view is a mere caricature and that a proper understanding of Buddhism will show that the Buddha has much more in common with Aristotle than John Stuart Mill.
While there are several scholars who interpret Buddhism as a virtue ethic, Damien Keown’s work is regarded as the most developed. Most other accounts of Buddhist virtue take him as foundational.[15] Keown suggests that there are four points of convergence between Buddhist ethics and Aristotelian virtue ethics: the goal of ethics, the general psychology of each system, the particular psychology of moral choices, and the desire for the good.[16] Essentially, Keown is making two kinds of claims: (1) reality has certain moral properties (2) human beings, as agents within a moral reality, possesses a certain moral psychology. Since Keown’s discussion of moral psychology is primarily concerned with categories unique to Aristotle that are not directly relevant to this thesis and given his own statement that “the discipline of ethics only requires that one individual can be distinguished from another… to pursue the issue of ultimate ontological constitution of individual natures in this context is to confuse ethics with metaphysics,” only his first contention will be examined here.[17]
Key to (1) is the claim that nirvana is intrinsically and essentially good so that it serves as the good for man in a way similar to eudaimonia in Aristotle’s thought:
Nirvana is the good, and rightness is predicated of acts and intentions to the extent which they participate in nirvanic goodness. The right and the good in Buddhism are inseparably intertwined. If an action does not display nirvanic qualities, then it cannot be right in terms of Buddhist ethics whatever other characteristics (such as consequences) it might have.[18]
Keown takes it as being self-evidently true that nirvana constitutes the good for man: “Whatever else nirvana is, it is indisputably the summum bonum of Buddhism.” [19] Keown strongly emphasizes the difference between nirvana in this life and nirvana after death and narrows his discussion to accommodate only nirvana in this life.[20] In general, those holding to a virtue view of Buddhism draw some important limitations to their interpretations.[21]
Another key feature of Buddhism as a virtue ethic is the relationship of nirvana to the practices that the Buddha taught. While other interpreters of Buddhism, like King and Saddhista, understand the Buddha as teaching that the Eightfold Path reveals a hierarchal structure of practices, with moral virtue as merely the first step and meant to be discarded once it is mastered, the proponent of the virtue view disagrees. Instead, all practices taught by the Buddha are meant to be understood as equally important. If moral virtue is placed first on the list, it is not because it is a merely a stepping stone to more advanced practice, it is because moral virtue constitutes what is foundational for other practices so that to cease practicing the virtues is to fail at all other practices. Moral virtue is both a means to then end of Buddhist practice and the foundation of it.
Moral practice exists on the same continuum as nirvana so that nirvana is not a transcendent, amoral state, but moral practices participate in and constitute nirvana. As Keown says, "In both Aristotelian and Buddhist ethics, an action is right because it embodies a virtue which corresponds with and 'participates' in the goal of human perfection."[22] Even though he disagrees with the virtue interpretation, Kalupahana nevertheless agrees with Keown on this point: “Ultimate freedom [nirvana] is above the world, like the lotus that rises above the water without being severed from its root in the water.”[23] Moral practice is not merely a means because moral practice constitutes the good for man, nirvana.
Further, the means of attaining nirvana is inherently good because “it is the only way to secure the utility sought. But for consequentialist views of morality like utilitarianism, no means can have inherent value.”[24]This is an important distinction because, according to virtue ethics for an act to be considered virtuous, it must both be good in itself, regardless of the consequences, and participate in the final good.
The point of this critique will be to test for the criteria established for virtue in the first chapter: any worldview that wants to accommodate a virtue view of ethics must have an explanation of teleology in the world and the narrative unity of a human life.
G. E. Moore claimed that one cannot move from observations about the world to conclusions about what constitutes the good.[25] Empiricism cannot be the foundation of a moral theory. Those guilty of this have committed the naturalistic fallacy, which is to “conflate the ‘is’ and the ‘ought.’”[26] However, a virtue view of Buddhism seems to make precisely this move.
The Buddha was one the world’s finest empiricists. In fact the Buddha’s teachings are entirely based on his observations and experience. It was a result of his observations about reality that he formulated his Four Noble Truths–truths which were confirmed through his own experience and the experience of his disciples: “Monks, I have known two qualities through experience: discontent with regard to skillful qualities and unrelenting exertion. . . From this heedfulness of mine was attained Awakening. From this heedfulness of mine was attained the unexcelled freedom from bondage.[27]
The challenge that Keown and other virtue ethicists face here is the challenge of understanding the Buddha’s empiricism as teaching robust metaphysical concepts like eudaimonia and intrinsic goodness. In other words, they want to understand the Buddha as arriving at an “ought” from an “is.” Keown suggests that nirvana is sufficiently similar to Aristotle’s eudaimonia so that nirvana can be said to serve as the human good just as Aristotle’s eudaimonia does.[28] To make his point, he describes eudaimonia as being “desired for its own sake; everything else that is desired is desired for the sake of it; it is never chosen for the sake of anything else.”[29] He concludes that the same criteria can be applied to nirvana so that nirvana constitutes the good for man just as eudaimonia does. According to Keown, the fact that nirvana is desirable explains its role as the good for man.
However, the fact that eudaimonia is desirable is only part of the reason why Aristotle saw it as constituting the good for man. According to Aristotle, the first and most important claim about the good for man was not a claim about its desirability, but teleology: “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit is thought to aim at some good.” Given this teleology, Aristotle continues his argument: “If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good.”[30] Aristotle’s argument rests on a metaphysical reality: human beings, like all other things, have a particular end or function. There is, in fact, a telos for all things. Given this fact, Aristotle uses observation about desires and their objects to arrive at eudaimonia as the appropriate goal for man. Keown does not have a means of explaining a telos prior to defining nirvana as the good for man. The result is that Keown works backward, making observations about reality and then formulating metaphysical truths. Sallie King explains the problem:
There seem to be two non-reducible foundations of morality: (1) natural law, the Dhamma (conditionality); and (2) an empathetic, caring, compassionate response to the suffering of sentient beings; empathy, caring, compassion, fully manifest in Buddhas, are implicit in the whole enterprise of Buddhism. The first foundation, the claim that conditionality and interdependence universally characterize samsara, Buddhist thought extensively strives to demonstrate (though, of course, whether or not it succeeds is a separate issue). The second, the perception that suffering is bad, Buddhism assumes, but few would probably want to challenge this assumption. It is the second foundation—the assumption that suffering is a problem and the caring response to that problem—that takes us from is to ought, from metaphysics to ethics.[31]
Aristotle is making a distinction between eudaimonia and what is ontologically good that Keown does not. While equating nirvana with eudaimonia Keown argues that “Nirvana is the good, and rightness is predicated of acts and intentions to the extent which they participate in nirvanic goodness. The right and the good in Buddhism are inseparably intertwined.”[32] However, “Aristotle identifies eudaimonia with the highest human good of human flourishing, but not with the moral domain of the good.”[33] What Keown conflates, Aristotle keeps separate and by doing so, Aristotle avoids committing the naturalistic fallacy. What Keown needs to avoid this trap is to provide an explanation of nirvana as the good for man and the pursuit of nirvana as being morally his telos. He must provide a metaphysical account of both the existence of a moral domain and human teleology prior to formulating his ethical framework.
Another problem faced by a virtue view of Buddhism is an interpretive one. The Buddha described reality as it is and made recommendations about changing aspects of that reality in light of the circumstances. However, to understand the Buddha as introducing metaphysical concepts like “the good for man” in the Aristotelian sense seems to be more the result of idealization and eisegesis than an honest reading of his teachings. In one famous example, the Buddha is questioned by one of his disciples regarding the nature of the soul, the universe, and nirvana. The disciple wanted a statement by the Buddha on each of these subjects, but the Buddha responded by reminding his questioner that he has left such statements undeclared on purpose. They are undeclared because they “are not connected with the goal, are not fundamental to the holy life. They do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, self-awakening, Unbinding. That's why they are undeclared by me.[34]
The Buddha explains what he has declared and why:
And what is declared by me? 'This is stress,' is declared by me. 'This is the origination of stress,' is declared by me. 'This is the cessation of stress,' is declared by me. 'This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress,' is declared by me. And why are they declared by me? Because they are connected with the goal, are fundamental to the holy life. They lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, selfawakening, Unbinding. That's why they are declared by me.[35]
Given these statements by the Buddha, it seems like an anachronism to read concepts like teleology and “the good for man” into his teaching. However, Keown suggests this is not the case.
Providing man with a telos might solve the is/ought problem since possessing a telos means having a certain purpose, direction, and design. However, the telos brings up other difficult metaphysical questions. In particular, if a person has a function, design, or purpose, such a claim seems to presuppose a personal agent that can bestow such qualities. However, Buddhism does not allow for such an agent or any other means of accounting for teleology in human beings. Further, it seems completely foreign to Buddhism to suggest that there is a “good for man” in the Aristotelian sense. Without an adequate account of teleology present, the virtue view of Buddhism fails the first criterion established in chapter one. This leaves the criteria of the narrative unity of the human life.
The concept of the self is critical to any account of ethics. This is a point that even Buddhist scholars appreciate. For example, Jones beings the New Social Face of Buddhism by asking, “What is the self?” and “Who am I?” to which he responds, “These are the questions around which the whole argument of this book revolves.”[36] In virtue ethics, the nature of the self is even more important since it is an agent centered ethic: “in any account of virtue ethics, the self must play a prominent role.”[37] However, Keown seems unwilling to define and engage the nature of the self in his argument for Buddhist virtue. He limits the scope of his argument to nirvana in this life[38] and then adds that “I do not address directly the problem of the apparent albescence of a moral subject in the light of the no-self (annata) doctrine. It seems to me that Buddhism provides sufficient criteria for personal identity to allow the identification of subjects within the moral nexus.”[39]
This seems like a strange omission give the importance of the conception of self to most other forms of ethics. Why would Keown put such a crucial issue aside? One clue comes from the suggestion of Whitehill, who himself takes a virtue view of Buddhism. Whitehill calls Keown a “revisionist.”[40] Whitehill himself does not seem particularly interested in understanding historical Buddhism in its context, but rather as a means for expanding Western ethical “horizons.” [41] Perhaps Keown is motivated by reasons other than understanding the Buddha in his own context. Given the discussion of the no-self doctrine earlier, there is apparently no possibility for understanding a human life as a unified whole. All language regarding the self is mere convention, not referring to any substantive “person.”
Buddhist scholars who are willing to comment on the nature of the self paint a picture that is not compatible with MacIntyre’s requirement of narrative unity. Persons are only “persons” in terms of convention and not substance. They are a collection of parts, loosely associated with previous arrangements of other parts. This leads Siderits to conclude that, in light of the Buddhist no-self doctrine, “I should continue to identify with the past and future stages of this causal series. But I should not do so as the hero of the story that is my life.”[42] But it is just such an identification that is necessary according to MacIntyre. As a result, Buddhism fails the second criteria for a virtue ethic: the narrative unity of a single human life.
Notes:
[1] Siderits, Philosophy, 77.
[2] Julia Driver, “The History of Utilitarianism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford: Stanford University), par 3.
[3] 114
Goodman, Consequences, 23.
[4] 115 King, In the Hope of Nibbana, 4.
[5] 116
Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho and Donald S. Lopez, The Way to Freedom: Core Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism (India: Indus, 1996), 100.
[6] David J Kalupahana, Ethics in Early Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaiì Press, 1995), 93.
[7] Kimattha Sutta: What is the Purpose? trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an11/an11.001.than.html
[8] 119 King, In Hope of Nibbana, 30.
[9] Harvey, Introduction, 44.
[10] Saddhatissa, Buddhist Ethics, 4.
[11] Kalupahana, Ethics, 72.
[12] 123 The Middle Length Discourses, 229.
[13] 124
James Whitehill, “Buddhism and the Virtues,” in Contemporary Buddhist Ethics, ed. Damien Keown (Richmond: Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 17.
[14] Rosalind Hursthouse, "Virtue Ethics," in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford: Stanford University, 2010), par. 6.
[15] Whitehill, “Buddhism,” 18.
[16] 127
Keown, Nature, 195-222.
[17] 128 Ibid., 19.
[18] Ibid., 177.
[19] Ibid.,199.
[20] Ibid., 19.
[21] For example, Whitehill limits his interpretation by suggesting that his virtue interpretation is only for the sake of building bridges between Eastern and Western ethics, and not necessarily an attempt to offer a straightforward rendering of Buddhist ethics.
[22] Keown, Nature, 50.
[23] Kalupahana, Ethics, 86.
[24] 135 Damien Keown, “Karma, Character, and Consequentialism,” Journal of Religious Ethics 24 (1996), 346.
[25] 136 Michael Ridge, “Moral Non-Naturalism,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford: Stanford University, 2010), par. 9.
[26] Christopher Ives, “Deploying the Dharma: Reflections on the Methodology of Constructive Buddhist Ethics.,” The Journal of Buddhist Ethics 15 (2008): 25.
[27] 138 Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta: The Shorter Instructions to Malunkya, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu,
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.063.than.html
[28] 139 Keown, Nature, 197.
[29] 140 Ibid.,199.
[30] Book I, Nichomachean Ethics.
[31] Sallie B. King, “From Is to Ought: Natural Law in in Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and Phra Prayudh Payutto,” Journal of Religious Ethics 30, no. 2 (2002): 284.
[32] 143 Keown, Nature, 199.
[33] 144 Abraham Velez de Cea, “The Criteria of Goodness in the Pali Nikayas and the Nature of Buddhist Ethics,” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 11 (2004): 129.
[34] 145 Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ken Jones, The New Social Face of Buddhism: A Call to Action (Boston: Wisdom, 2003), 2.
[37] 148 R. Scott Smith, Virtue Ethics and Moral Knowledge: Philosophy of Language after MacIntyre and Hauerwas (Burlington: Ashgate, 2003), 145.
[38] 149 This move seems arbitrary and unsupported by the Buddha’s early teachings. The Buddha did not draw
a sharp distinction between nirvana in this life and nirvana without remainder. However, Keown’s distinction is so great that he divorces his ethic from the ultimate goal of Buddhism, nirvana without remainder. Why would he want to do this? The answer seems to be, as argued later, that Keown is revising Buddhist teaching to be compatible with a virtue ethic.
[39] 150 Keown, Nature, 19.
[40] Whitehill, “Buddhism,” 19.
[41] 152 Ibid., 17. “My purpose in this chapter is to speculate about the optimal, future development of Buddhism
in the West.”
[42] Siderits, Philosophy, 77.
A Twilight Musing
1Let’s consider the idea of God as Coach for a few minutes. A coach is a guide, a mentor, an encourager, a challenger, and an overall strategist for the team, all of which functions are characteristics of God in regard to the people on His “team.” For example, imagine an intense basketball game in which a player is thoroughly engaged and feels he has finally hit his stride, and suddenly the coach calls him back to the bench. “But coach,” he might say, “I was really hyped up and hitting on all cylinders!” And he might well be right, but the coach has a different perspective from that of any individual player. First, he has to plot his strategy by setting the success of the team as a whole as his first priority, not the showcasing of individual talent. Secondly, he needs to manage the efforts of each individual so that each player is able to contribute his maximum to the team’s success. I can imagine the coach who has pulled the player from the game to be thinking, “Joe is going great guns, and his efforts so far have really empowered the team; but if I leave him in, he’s going to burn out completely and maybe not be of much use to us for the rest of the game. He needs to take a break and recover his strength, so that he’ll be ready when he’s needed to spearhead another drive.”
God sometimes interrupts a ministry in which we are intensively engaged to make us “sit on the bench” and rest; or He may even ask us to play a different position (i.e., take on another ministry). When I was a young man, I took it for granted that my early development in leading congregational worship meant that I would be doing that for the rest of my active life. When I became a part of a new congregation in my fifties, I felt rejected and unappreciated when I found that my abilities as a worship leader were not needed and moreover were not even recognized. It was hard to accept that I had been “benched.” But then the Lord opened the way for me to teach adult Sunday School classes and to serve as an elder for nine years. At that point we moved yet again, and our new congregation gave no consideration to my qualifications as an elder (benched again!) and gave me only fill-in assignments as a Bible teacher. What they did ask me to do was to serve in the newly-created position of deacon of prayer, which left me struggling to define exactly what the responsibilities of the position were. I have finally, in my late 70s, accepted the pattern of God’s reserving the right to change my assignments. It’s obvious now that each move to another congregation (or even just to another stage of my life) carries with it a new definition of what it means to serve God—and that definition is usually different from what I expected.
There are plenty of examples in Scripture of God’s “benching” and redirection of His “players,” sometimes repeatedly. Abraham was ordered out of Ur to embark on a journey to a far-away Promised Land. When He got there and was settled in and prosperous, but had no heir of his own blood, it seemed that his migration was pointless, until God promised him a son from whom a great nation would develop. But as God delayed fulfilling the promise and Sarah grew past the age of child-bearing, the old couple decided to modify the “game plan” on their own by using Sarah’s handmaid to conceive a child with Abraham. (We all know the disastrous results of that attempt to give the “Coach” some unsolicited help.) Finally, the promised son came, but when Isaac was a teenager, God seemed to contradict his previous Grand Plan for Abraham’s progeny by demanding that Abraham offer his son as a sacrifice. But by that time, however, the patriarch of our faith had learned to trust the Coach and to obey Him beyond what he could understand.
Joseph experienced a similar series of radical redirections. He was on a roll as a dutiful and gifted youngest son, favored by his father over his older brothers. But he engendered their jealousy and hatred, and they sold him into slavery. Nevertheless, he prospered again as the faithful steward of his new master, ruling Potiphar’s house so well that he left it to Joseph and turned to other matters. But then a cruelly unjust accusation against Joseph landed him in prison, where he had only the cold comfort of being in charge of the other prisoners. However, when the time was ripe with God, He called Joseph to “get back in the game” to fulfill the grand design for Joseph’s life as second ruler of Egypt at a crucial time in the life of that kingdom and the history of the children of Israel.
There is another set of biblical stories, though, that show the problem of being in the game too long. Consider the accounts of the reigns of the few good kings of Israel after David. Solomon started magnificently, but his youthful successes were greatly marred by his foolish and perverse departure from God’s principles in his polygamous old age. That resulted in the kingdom being divided after his death, and the only good kings afterward were a few in Judah, where the lineage of David was preserved, but even these would have been better remembered if they had been “benched” before they committed the errors at the end of their reigns. Consider the cases of Asa, Hezekiah, Amaziah, Jehoshaphat, and Josiah in the historical books of I and II Kings and I and II Chronicles. Surely it is a mercy of God when He “takes us out of the game” and redirects us before we begin to decline and mar what He has done to make us fruitful so far.
I will presume to conclude with another personal reference. My wife and I have been intensely involved during the last five years in being caregivers for our daughter, who suffers from a slowly progressing but incurable genetic affliction called Huntington’s Disease. Its symptoms are loss of both physical coordination and mental stability, which require an increasing amount of caregiving attention and energy. My wife and I have realized and said for years that it is a marvel of God’s power that we have been able to look after her for as long as we have. He has now made it clear that we have reached the limits of our ability to care for her on a day-to-day basis, and over the last month or so He has been in the process of providing an adult foster care home for her to move into. Yesterday was spent in getting all the papers filled out and signed and actually getting her moved in. The completion of this long and intensive stage in our lives leaves us with some ambivalent feelings. We are relieved that the daily pressure is no longer there, but we have deep regret that the disease has reached the stage that a radical change in her care is necessary and we can no longer have her with us. Our heads tell us that this is God’s way of continuing to provide abundantly and appropriately for her care, but our hearts mourn that things have reached this point. Previously, we said no to some ways of serving God that would have been good for us to do (e. g., visiting the sick, mentoring people who are struggling in their lives) because we just couldn’t take on any more. Now that we have been freed from our home caregiving, we have to consider (while we “sit on the bench” for a while) how God wants us to use the life and energies still available to us. Hey, Coach, what’s the new game plan?
Image: "Benched" By Jay Phagan. CC License.
Question: Hi, MA team:
I've been working through an argument for God's existence which takes as its starting point a conception of evil as wrongdoing or injustice. In other words, when we think about great evils, whether moral or natural, we tend to think of certain states of affairs that *ought not* obtain, or which depart from the way things should be, or which are simply not owed to us. All of these different conceptions, it seems to me, essentially boil down to two elements: 1) we treat the existence of evil as being 'out of step' with the character of the world, that is, as having a certain normative pull; and 2) such normative character points to an understanding of evil as in relation to some end or perfection, some maximum.
The argument I have in mind, then, proceeds thus:
1. To the extent that we understand evil as a wrongdoing or injustice -- that is, as a departure from the way things should be, or as something not owed -- we understand evil in relation to some end or perfection, some maximum. 2. But, given atheism, no such perfection or maximum exists. 3. Therefore, plausibly, theism is true.
I would be very interested in your thoughts, please. One possible objection that has been marshalled against my argument is the following (and I wonder how you would address it, provided that you think the argument works):
"I think most moral philosophers think premise 2 is false. Aristotle argued there is a highest human end (without God), so injustices are departures from that. Similarly, Kant argued that his "categorical imperative" is objectively true, not dependent upon God. Finally, I argue...that (1) is false: that evil is not a departure from some objective "maximum," but rather deviations from a conception of fairness that is rational for human beings to adopt given human psychology."
Thank you very much for your time, Paulo Juarez
Reply: This is all very interesting stuff! Thanks for the query, and sorry for the delay getting back to you. This approach, to my thinking, has tremendous potential. The notion that the world is, in some very strong sense, not as it ought to be seems profoundly right, but also rather difficult to reconcile with naturalism. After all, in something like a fully determined world, why should anything be different from what it is? Evil in any robust sense makes more sense in a theistic world inhabited with creatures with meaningful agency who have used their agency wrongly. In God and Cosmos, Walls and I make the case that what’s worse even than the problem of evil is the inability of naturalism to account for the category of evil at all. When the problem of evil ceases being a problem for one’s worldview, so much the worse for one’s worldview.
You’re characterizing as an essential feature of evil a relation to some end or perfection or maximum. First a word on that. Personally I might disambiguate between these three notions. The second and third of them—perfection and maximum—seem to go well together in Anselmian theology. If the God of classical theism is construed along the lines of the greatest possible being, then his perfection is constituted by instantiating all the great-making properties to the maximally compossible degree. So, regarding goodness, God has as much goodness as is possible in light of his maximal power, knowledge, etc. Tom Morris and I did an article on this in the recent issue of the Christian Research Journal. I think that makes great sense.
When we speak of an “end” of something, however, I’m not as confident that we need speak of a perfection or maximum. Regarding human artifacts, for example, like a pencil, its end is to write well, or something like that. Or a car’s purpose or function is likely to transport us around. Aristotle thought teleology was shot through everything, but if it is, in lots of cases the telos in question has little to do with perfection or a maximum.
Now, if human beings in particular have a telos, and if Christianity is true, then you could more effectively argue that the goal, the purpose, the telos of human beings does involve perfection—at the culmination of the sanctification process when we’re entirely conformed to the image of Christ. That classical theism and orthodox Christianity feature the realistic hope of total moral transformation in this way enables the “performative” variant of moral apologetics that’s one of the four variants of the moral argument this website often discusses.
But you wish to characterize even natural evils as falling short of a perfection, which likely seems predicated on the idea that worlds admit of intrinsic maxima, and I rather doubt they do. Unlike the case of God, who does admit of intrinsic maxima, worlds likely don’t, which is related to why one of Guanilo’s criticisms of the ontological argument fails, since the criticism assumed that, say, islands admitted of intrinsic maxima when, in fact, they just don’t. How many palm trees are on the perfect island, for example? There’s no principled, nonarbitrary way to say.
So I’m of two minds about your argument. On the one hand, I think there’s something profoundly right about theism providing the best explanation of the category of evil—along with hope for its ultimate defeat (by relation with God, the ultimate Good, a good so incommensurably good that relation to him can make the sufferings of this world, however horrific, pale by comparison). On the other hand, characterization of evil as intrinsically connected to a maximum or perfection strains credulity a bit.
More plausible, I think, is the claim that evil, as an instance of the way the world shouldn’t be, reflects a missing of the mark (even if the mark isn’t best cast as a perfection). Not every imperfection is an instance of evil, but every evil does seem to be a radical missing of some normative state of affairs. So I’d likely be inclined to recast your argument more like this:
To the extent that we understand evil as a wrongdoing or injustice -- that is, as a departure from the way things should be, or as something not owed -- we understand evil in relation to some end or standard.
Theism provides the best explanation for such normatively binding ends.
Therefore, plausibly, theism is true.
This still remains too brief and needs more fleshing out, but it’s the direction I’d encourage. And maybe I’m wrong! Perhaps you can still convince me of the need and plausibility of those categories I excised. But for now, my suggestion, for whatever it’s worth, is this: Leave behind the ontologically heavy notions of perfections and maxima and just refer to the intuitively strong idea that evil reflects something that is not the way the world ought to be. Then make the case that classical theism and orthodox Christianity can provide the better explanation of such normatively binding ends that make sense of how the world, people, etc. “ought to be.” On naturalism, assuming determinism at the macro level, it’s awfully difficult to distinguish between the way the world is and how it ought to be. That’s a very high price to pay for the committed naturalist, involving an eschewal of deep moral intuitions.
As for the Kantian and Thomistic concerns, I don’t think you have as much to worry with there as some might say you do. In various places in Kant’s works, he gives a variant of a moral argument for God’s existence. It tends to be a version of either the performative or rational argument (as discussed on this site and in God and Cosmos), but it’s undoubtedly there. Just recently I’ve been reading his Lectures on Ethics (which students of his put together based on his lectures). Here’s a telling passage (one among many!): “The ideal of the Gospels is complete in every respect. Here we have the greatest purity and the greatest happiness. It sets out the principles of morality in all their holiness. It commands man to be holy, but as he is imperfect it gives him a prop, namely, divine aid.” Even the categorical imperative is, to Kant’s thinking, connected in various and powerful ways to God, not least in Kant’s insistence we should think of all moral duties as duties to God for the sake of grounding their rational stability.
Regarding Aristotle, you might wish to read John Hare’s chapter on him in God and Morality. Our highest telos, for Aristotle, is contemplating the divine. So it’s actually not the case that the highest human good, for Aristotle, was independent of God. Naturalists who try to adopt him to their cause are misguided, for a number of reasons. Here’s one: Aristotle’s focus on what’s natural was by way of contrast with the artificial, not the supernatural. At any rate, much more could be said there (and has been said elsewhere), but take a look at Hare if you get a chance.
Thanks so much for the chance to reflect on this, and feel free to stick to your guns and defend your approach. Keep up the great work! Blessings!
Dave Baggett
The first step in evaluating Buddhist ethics will be to understand the Buddhist worldview.
Ethical systems are always intimately tied to a worldview, but this is especially the case for Buddhism. The Buddha’s teaching was in response to an ethical problem, the problem of suffering. Through much effort and insight, the Buddha was able to perceive reality as it really is; he saw the Four Marks of reality. The solution the Buddha offered was also ethical: the solution to suffering is to live a certain kind of life, a life characterized by the virtues of the Eightfold Path.
The Buddha often spoke in parables. In one famous parable, he explained that a man struck with a poison arrow does not demand that someone explain the origin of the arrow to him before it is removed by a physician with the antidote.[1] Here the Buddha is represented by the physician; humankind is represented by the warrior so unfortunately wounded. According to the Buddha, it is not so important why humanity is in this injured state, as the fact that the Buddha has provided a solution - a solution that is entirely ethical. Early Buddhism was an orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. But, practice is always related to belief. There is a fundamental relationship between reality as it is (Dharma) and ethics. The Buddha himself explained this using another parable:
Just, oh Gotama, as one might wash hand with hand, or foot with foot, just even so, oh Gotama, is wisdom purified by uprightness, and uprightness is purified by wisdom. Where there is uprightness, wisdom is there, and where there is wisdom, uprightness is there.[2]
In this context, the Buddha is equating wisdom with insight into the true nature of existence (Dharma). Thus, according the Buddha, living a moral, upright life is necessarily tied to understanding the universe as it really is. That being the case, understanding Buddhist ontology will be the first step in understanding Buddhist ethics.
The Buddha taught that there are four essential properties of reality. One early sutra records the Buddha’s teaching: “Whatever is phenomenal is impermanent. Whatever is phenomenal is suffering. Whatever is phenomenal is devoid of self. Nirvana is eternally tranquil.”[3] Reality is, at its most basic level, characterized by impermanence, suffering, the absence of self, and the existence of nirvana.
Impermanence
The Buddha taught that "all things are transitory [anitya]."[4] This is a straightforward point that is apparently confirmed by everyday experience: every material thing human beings encounter will, soon or later, pass out of existence. People will eventually die, so will flowers. Even mountains will eventually be brought down. Some of the early discourses draw out the implications of the Buddha’s idea, suggesting that everything that exists is changing moment by moment so that, as Heraclitus suggested, one can never step in to the same river twice.[5] Even
something as apparently static as a rock changes from moment to moment so that it is not identical to the rock that existed a moment before and will be different from the rock that will exist in the next moment. One way of understanding this point is to think of the Buddha as denying the existence of something like the Platonic forms, which are permanent and unchanging.
Another implication of the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence is that all conditioned things are ultimately contingent, the result of an endless series of other causes. Whatever arises, arises co-dependently with a multitude of other causes and will pass from existence sooner or later. One of the most famous illustrations of this concept is the Wheel Dharma which shows how each effect is dependent on a previous cause, which itself is dependent on another cause. Each effect also serves as the cause for the other effects.[6]
Suffering
The second characteristic of reality is that "All created beings live in sorrow [duhkha]."[7] Usually, duhkha is translated as suffering. However, as many authors have pointed out, suffering is not an adequate translation. When the Buddha said that all things suffer, he did not mean that existence in the world would always be uncomfortable; rather, he meant that phenomelogical existence would always be conditioned by states of ignorance, greed, and hatred.[8] Reality that is conditioned is called "samsara."[9] Because people exist within samsara, they are never able to have their desire for what is ultimate or eternal satisfied. They will always be disappointed with the temporary, fleeting happiness derived from the phenomenal world and are destined to be continually reborn so that suffering will never cease.[10]
The ideal sort of existence is an existence that is completely unconditioned, free from the vicious cycle of dependent co-arising resulting from ignorance, greed, and hatred. People suffer “because we take too seriously the useful fiction of the person.”[11] When a person is ignorant of reality as it is characterized in the Four Marks, then suffering arises as a natural result. Life based on the assumption that the world is permanent and that selves exist causes clinging to the cycle of samsara and thus there is rebirth.[12] To cease suffering is to cease being conditioned by external factors; this is nirvana. The doctrine of dukha teaches, simply, that the kind of existence that human beings experience is not the ideal. [13]
No Self
The third and most controversial of the Four Marks is the doctrine of no-self. The Buddha taught that "all states are without self [anatman]."[14] In affirming this doctrine, the Buddha was denying that composite entities, like rocks, people, and animals, exist in the commonsense way they are normally understood to exist. Instead, objects and people only exist as collections of parts, aggregates of other, more basic elements.[15] Persons, in particular, are composed of five
parts called the skandhas: form, feeling, perception, mental fabrications, and consciousness. As the Buddha taught, "The body is composed of the five skandhas, and produced from five elements. It is all empty and without soul."[16] However, the Buddha emphasized the importance of composite objects as they relate to themselves and to other objects. This tension in Buddhist discourse has resulted in a distinction between the conventional and ultimate existence of an object. A Buddhist might refer to an individual as a single, distinct person that exists through time; however, he does this only as a convention of language and not in reference to the person’s ultimate, ontological condition.[17]
“The Discourse of the Not-Self Characteristic” from the Pali Canon provides an excellent record of the Buddha’s argument against a persisting self. Within this narrative, the Buddha answers questions from five of his disciples. The Buddha explained that each of the five skandhas cannot be identified as the self. Each of the skandhas are subject to change, inconstant, and give rise to suffering. At the end of the analysis of each skandha the Buddha asks, “And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'?"[18] The disciples responded, “No, lord.” In response to this the Buddha gave his approval. The discourse concludes with an explanation of how to achieve freedom from the suffering arising through the skandhas:
Seeing thus, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones grows disenchanted with form, disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted with fabrications, disenchanted with consciousness. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, 'Fully released.' He discerns that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'[19]
The argument the Buddha makes here has at least two presuppositions: there is not an I that stands behinds the skandhas–the skandhas are all a person is–and if there were an ultimate self, it would be permanent.[20] From those two assumptions, he proves that since the skandhas are impermanent and cannot be identified with the self, then there is no ultimate self. The perception that a person possesses a substantive identity that endures over time is incorrect.
Instead of “substance-selves,” the Buddha argues that people are “process-selves” that exist only momentarily and only “in a dependent sense.”[21] The "self" is dynamic so that a new self arises and departs each moment.[22] However, there is a causal connection between these moments, so there is a loose relationship between past, present, and future “selves” in a single collection of parts. This conclusion should be understood as a middle way between the sort of egoism taught in other Indian schools of thought and a complete denial of the existence of self in any sense.[23] Clearly, the Buddha wanted avoid the sort of clinging that results from egoism, but he also acknowledges that there is at least a conventional self even if there is no ultimate self. Sideritis sums up the matter: “The Buddhist view of non-self says that a person just consists in the occurrence of a complex causal series of impermanent, impersonal skandhas.”[24] “The person who lives at 9 a.m. this morning is the result of the person who lived at 7 a.m.”[25]
Nirvana
The final mark of reality is nirvana and it the most difficult of the Four Marks. The term nirvana literally means “‘extinguishing,” and in its broadest sense nirvana is the extinction of samsara: “This is the peaceful, this is the sublime, that is, the stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of all attachments, the destruction of craving, dispassion cessation, Nibbana.”[26] Nirvana is the cure for what ails humanity.[27] However, it is not merely the proper goal of all conditioned beings, it also the ultimate reality in Buddhism: "‘Nibbana is supreme,’ say the Buddhas.”[28] So in addition to being the foundation of reality, it is also the soteriological goal of Buddhism.
Buddhist doctrine teaches that the solution to suffering is the attainment of nirvana: “It signifies soteriologically the complete extinguishing of greed, hatred, and fundamentally delusion, the forces which power saṃsāra."[29]As the soteriological goal, there are two elements: “the Nibbana-element with residue left and the Nibbana-element with no residue left.”[30][31] The element with “residue left” refers to the kind of nirvana that was available to arahants[32] that still exist in their composite form. The Buddha described the arahant in this condition as a person who has
The holy life fulfilled, who has done what had to be done, laid down the burden, attained the goal, destroyed the fetters of being, completely released through final knowledge. However, his five sense faculties remain unimpaired, by which he still experiences what is agreeable and disagreeable and feels pleasure and pain. It is the extinction of attachment, hate, and delusion in him that is called the Nibbana-element with residue left.[33]
On the basis of this text and others, there are several conclusions that can be made about nirvana in this life. First, the Buddha takes it as self-evidently true that nirvana is the appropriate goal in light of impermanence, no self, and suffering. Second, it is clear that the arahant lives without ignorance concerning the way things really are. He lives in light of the fact that all is impermanent, there is no ultimate self, and that all conditioned states are full of suffering. He exists in contrast to the unenlightened who still suffer from greed, hatred, and ignorance. Whereas the unenlightened might despair over his home being destroyed in a flood, the arhant recognizes that the home destroyed is not his and that clinging to material possessions only results in more suffering. He is able to face such disaster with steadfastness and a kind of aloofness, not because he is apathetic, but because he views the disaster as if it happened to someone else far away. He feels concern that such destruction results in more suffering, but he is not overwhelmed and he does not experience it as a personal disaster.[34]
Some might object that this kind of existence would create a lack of empathy for others or even an unhealthy lack of concern for one’s self. The Buddha himself is said to have been living in a place called Atuma when “two people were killed, being struck by lightning, but the Buddha, who was seated under a tree close by, did not hear a sound.”[35] However, Buddhists argue apathy is not the result of attaining nirvana. Instead, it is the realization of what is actually important: the destruction of suffering which arises out of ignorance. The Buddha himself is the greatest example of a person who achieved nirvana in this life, and though he seemed aloof in the example of the lightning strike, he nevertheless reacted appropriately. Even though he was passive in this incident, there are other examples of the Buddha taking an active role in bringing about the cessation of suffering, the greatest example of course being his commitment to teach the dharma. So, Buddhists argue, while an arahant might have behavior that seems apathetic to the ignorant, his behavior is nevertheless justified in light of the dharma. They are illuminated so that they act appropriately in light of all the facts. The arhanant becomes liberated from selfishness and an unfounded concern for his own well-being to the freedom of experiencing “delight and enjoyment at whatever happens in the present moment.”[36] Only through this sort of liberation is one able to have peace.
The Buddha further taught that nirvana with remainder was not the ultimate goal of life. Nirvana without remainder, nirvana after this life, was the desired destination. The Buddha describes this element of nirvana: “Here a bhikkhu is an arahant. . . completely released through final knowledge. For him, here in this very life, all that is experienced, not being delighted in, will be extinguished. That, bhikkhus, is called the Nibbana-element with no residue left.”[37]
This aspect of nirvana is notoriously different to articulate. One of the reasons for this is that the concepts and definitions derived from conditioned reality do not apply to nirvana which is unconditioned. The Buddha illustrated this point in a conversation he had with a disciple named Vacchagotta. Vachhagotta asked whether an arahat would exist after death. In response, the Buddha asked Vachha whether, once a fire was extinguished, it made sense to ask, “to which direction did it go: to the east, the west, the north, or the south?”[38] The answer, of course, is that the question does not apply. In the same way, concluded the Buddha, the question of whether an arahat exists after death does not apply. In the Udāna, the Buddha gives his most complete teachings on nirvana.[39]At the end of his first teaching on the subject he says
There is, bhikkhus, that base [sphere of reality] where there is no earth, not water, no air; no base consisting of the infinity of space, no base consisting of the infinity of consciousness, no base consisting of nothingness, no base consisting of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world nor another world nor both; neither sun nor moon. Here, bhikkus, I say there is no coming, no going, no deceasing, no uprising. Not fixed, not moving, it has no support. Just this is the end of suffering.[40]
The point is that the question of existence beyond the conditioned does not fall into easy to understand categories. Nirvana is both not static and not dynamic The arahat does not exist but he also does not cease to exist. This is not a contradiction of logic, as some naïve interpreters have understood it to be. Strictly speaking, the Buddha does not teach something like “A and not A.” Such a claim would violate the law of non-contradiction. What he actually suggests is “Not A and not B,” while offering distinctions between what is, apparently, not distinct.[41] The Buddha is expressing that nirvana is not comprehensible while trapped in samsara and conditioned by ignorance. To achieve nirvana is to transcend conventional ways of understanding the world; it is to understand the world as it really is, without conditions. The extinguishing that takes place in nirvana is not the destruction of an individual; the individual never really existed anyway.
Instead, it is the extinction of all conditioned states. The illusion of self is destroyed.
Karma
Intimately related to the Four Marks is the law of karma since "in the moral order, Dharma is manifest in the law of Karma."[42] Karma is the mechanism that allows present actions to have effects on future states of affairs. In this way, karma is like the law of cause and effect. Gowan suggests that karma "is an impersonal feature of the causal relationships in the world, and there is no prospect of deviation from the causal effects of kamma on the grounds of mercy."[43] According to Keown, "Karma is not a system of rewards and punishments meted out by God, but a kind of natural law akin to law of gravity."[44] Karma is a moral arithmetic. Certain actions have certain effects. Karmic actions are like a seed that will ripen into a specific fruit.[45] The Buddha explained it this way:
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draw the carriage. All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.[46]
Thus, according the Buddha, karma has at least two important aspects. First, it is objective. It operates according to predefined, constant values. If one performs action X, it will have result Y. However, there is no set way that consequences are dispensed.[47] The consequences of a particular action may appear immediately, in the next life, or even several lives from now.[48] Second, while the law of karma cannot be changed to suit one's needs, it can be used to bring about desired consequences. The Buddha makes this clear when he says that by performing actions with "pure thought," one will, as a matter of fact, be rewarded with happiness. The Dali Lama states this rather explicitly: "To suppose that karma is some sort of independent energy which predestines the course of our lives is incorrect. Who creates karma? We ourselves. What we think, say, do, desire, and omit creates karma."[49] Therefore, as Harvey states, "Good actions are thus encouraged because, through their goodness, they lead to pleasant, uplifting effects for the doer."[50] Karma is the rudder that allows one to steer from suffering to liberation in nirvana.
Karma is typically understood as having a moral dimension. There are differing interpretations regarding just how karma is related to morality. There are proponents for understanding karma as a deontological moral law, although this view is not widely held.[51] There are others who suggest that karma is a means to a desired end, nirvana. Another option is to understand karma as rewarding actions that are good in themselves. Keown has proposed that at this point Buddhism faces its own version the Euthyphro dilemma: Is an action good because it generates good karmic results or does an action produce good karmic results because it is good? If actions generate karma because they are good in themselves, like the virtues of Aristotle, then Buddhist ethics might be a kind of virtue ethic. If an action is good because it generates the desired consequence, then Buddhism is more similar to utilitarianism.[52] Which of these interpretations is most likely will be discussed later in this chapter.
The Four Marks represent that which is most fundamental to Buddhism, the Dharma.[53] When the Buddha received enlightenment, it is these Four Marks that he perceived. From these marks, he assembled his Four Noble Truths: (1) suffering arises, (2) the origin of suffering is desire, (3) suffering ceases when desire ceases, and (4) the Eightfold Noble Path is the way to bring desire to an end.[54] Many have pointed out that the Buddha's Four Noble Truths are like a doctor's diagnosis and prescription. In the first two truths, Buddha gives his diagnosis. In the third he provides the cure. In the fourth he gives a prescription.
The prescription suggested by the Buddha is the most critical part of his Four Noble Truths for ethics. One might rephrase the fourth truth like this: ethical practice is the way to reach nirvana. The Eightfold Path consists of eight criteria for reaching nirvana: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. One might further clarify the purpose of the Path as having the purpose of helping those who practice it to understand reality as it really is: "The principal cause that allows us to overcome our cyclic existence [samsara] and the basic misunderstanding that underlies it is familiarizing ourselves with the dependently existing nature of things."105 The way to escape suffering is to act appropriately in light of the true nature of reality (impermanence, not-self, and [55]suffering) both practically and intellectually. This moves one closer to achieving nirvana. According to the Buddha, it is the Eightfold Path that "opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind."[56]
Therefore, the Fourth Noble Truth should be understood as defining the goal of Buddhism: to extinguish the conception of self, to remove the clinging to this world that causes samsara in order to achieve liberation. Karmic merit, accumulated through adherence to the Eightfold Noble Path, is instrumental in achieving the liberation, nirvana, that the Buddha saw as the solution.[57] Indeed, all of Buddhist thought and practice is designed to aid in the obtaining of nirvana. It is because nirvana is described as the goal that it is sometimes as seen the telos and meaning of Buddhism. As Keown argues, "Nirvana is the perfection of these virtues [listed in the Eightfold Path]."[58] However, others are more reserved in ascribing a telos to Buddhism. For example, Siderits argues that “there is no one whose life either has or lacks meaning. There is just the life.”[59]
This Fourth Noble Truth reveals how ethics is related to ontology in Buddhism. The way a person ought to live is determined by the certain desired outcomes; in this sense, Buddhist ethics is teleological. Ethical practice in Buddhism is at least partially motivated out of soteriological goals. Harvey points out that "from the perspective of the Four Noble Truths, ethics is not for its own sake, but is an essential ingredient on the path to the final goal."[60] Keown agrees and says that "It is the purpose of the Eightfold Path to bring about the transition from saṃsāra to nirvana."[61] The question that remains for a virtue view of Buddhism is whether Buddhism is merely teleological. Is the Eightfold Path merely a means to an end or is it good in itself? Is Buddhism a utilitarian or a virtue ethic?
Notes:
[1] See the Majjhima Nikaya.
[2] "Sonadanda Sutta," in Dialogues of the Buddha , trans. T. W. Dīghanikāya, Rhys Davids, and Caroline A. F. Rhys Davids. Sacred books of the Buddhists (London: Luzac,1956.), 157.
[3] Ekottara-agama
[4] Magandiya Sutta, in In the Buddha's Words, ed. Bhikkhu Bodhi (Somerville: Wisdom, 2005), 205.
[5] 56 David Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy (University of Hawaii, 1984), 36.
[6] Tich Nhat Hahn, The Heart of Buddha’s Teaching (New York, Random House, 1999), 229.
[7] Magandiya Sutta, 206.
[8] 59 Paul Williams and Anthony Tribe, Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition (London, Routledge, 2000), 42.
[9] 60 Ibid., 51.
[10] Kalupahana, Buddhist, 37.
[11] Mark Siderits, Buddhism As Philosophy: An Introduction (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007), 76.
[12] 63 H. Saddhatissa, Buddhist Ethic: Essence of Buddhism (New York: G. Braziller, 1971), 21.
[13] 64 Some, like Tich Naht Hahn , have suggested that second mark of existence is nirvana. In a sense, nirvana
and duhkha are, as Hahn suggests, two sides of the same coin. Nirvana is the state of being without duhkha and dukha is existence in anything but nirvana.
[14] Magandiya Sutta ,206.
[15] 66 Charles Goodman, Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 11.
[16] "The Skandhas and the Chain of Causation," in Anthology of Asian Scriptures, ed. Robert E. Van Voorst (Belmont: Wadsworth), 89.
[17] Siderits, Philosophy, 56.
[18] 69 Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu,
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.than.html
[19] Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic.
[20] Siderits, Buddhism, 39.
[21] 72 Christopher W Gowans, Philosophy of the Buddha. (London: Routledge, 2003), 23.
[22] 73 Winston L King,. In the Hope of Nibbana; an Essay on Theravada Buddhist Ethics (LaSalle: Open Court, 1964), 15.
[23] 74 Kalupahana, Buddhism, 39.
[24] 75 Siderits, Buddhism, 69.
[25] 76 Gunapala Dharmasiri, Fundamentals of Buddhist Ethics (Antioch: Golden Leaves, 1989), 13.
[26] Bodhi Ñāṇamoli, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nik⁻Aya (Boston: Wisdom, 1995), 540.
[27] Gowans, Philosophy, 135.
[28] 79
Buddhavagga: The Buddha, trans. Acharya Buddharakkhita
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.14.budd.html
[29] 80 Williams and Tribe, Buddhist Thought, 49.
[30] 81 The Nibbana Element, trans. John D. Ireland, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/iti/iti.2.042-
[31] x.irel.html#iti-043
[32] An arahant is a person who has achieved nirvana.
[33] The Nibbana Element.
[34] Gowans, Philosophy, 144.
[35] Kalupahana , Buddhism, 76.
[36] Gowans, Philosophy, 142.
[37] The Nibbana Element, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/iti/iti.2.042-049x.irel.html#iti-043
[38] The Middle Length Discourses, 593.
[39] Gowans, Philopshy,148.
[40] Nibbana Sutta: Parinibbana, trans. John D. Ireland,
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.8.01.irel.html.
[41] Although, the Buddha is not really offering distinctions. He is pointing to the fact that distinctions made on the basis of conventional reality are not valid. In reality, the categories of “existence” and “non-existence” just do not apply.
[42] Damien Keown, Buddhist Ethics A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Kindle Edition, location 294.
[43] 93 Gowans, Philosophy, 105.
[44] Keown, A Very Short Introduction, locations 308-19.
[45] Dale Stuart Wright, The Six Perfections: Buddhism and the Cultivation of Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 53.
[46] "Wisdom of the Buddha," in Anthology of Asian Scriptures, ed. Robert E. Van Voorst (Belmont: Wadsworth), 98.
[47] Lynken Ghose, “Karma and the Possibility of Rebirth: An Ethical Analysis of the Doctrine of Karma in Buddhism,” Journal of Religious Ethics 35, no. 2 (2007): 286.
[48] Dharmasiri, Fundamentals, 37.
[49] Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho, Ethics for the New Millennium (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), 186.
[50] 100 Harvey, Introduction, 28.
[51] 101 Charles Goodman, Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 23.
[52] Keown, A Very Short Introduction, locations 652-63.
[53] 103 Williams and Tribe, Buddhist Thought, 7.
[54] 104 Ibid., 41-46.
[55] Sonam Rinchen, Ruth Sonam, Nāgārjuna, and Tsoṅ-kha-pa Blo-bzaṅ-grags-pa. How Karma Works: The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising : An Oral Teaching (Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 2006), 27.
[56] "The Sermon on the Four Noble Truths," in Anthology of Asian Scriptures, ed. Robert E. Van Voorst (Belmont: Wadsworth), 88.
[57] 107 Tribe, Buddhist Thought, 47.
[58] Keown, Nature, 107.
[59] 109 Siderits, Philosophy, 77.
[60] Harvey, Introduction, 41.
[61] Keown, Nature, 107.
A Twilight Musing
Have you ever put your fingers in front of a projector to create the shadow image of a rabbit or some other object? This old trick illustrates the three elements necessary to create a shadow: a source of light, an object that interrupts the projection of light, and a screen or background substance on which the shadow can be cast. The biggest shadow show for human beings is an eclipse, as when the shadow of the moon blocks out our view of the main body of the sun, or the earth comes between the sun and the moon and we have an eclipse of the moon. In the eclipse of the sun, we are in the shadow being cast by the moon, whereas in an eclipse of the moon, we see the shadow of the earth cast on the moon. However, we never see a shadow cast by the sun, because there is no source of light greater than the sun, nor a “screen” on which its shadow could be cast.
Perhaps theoretically the conditions might exist that enable the sun to cast a shadow, but from our perspective it does not and cannot.
What is true of the sun relatively speaking is applied to God absolutely in the book of James:
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17, ESV)
James’s use of the imagery of light and shadow here is quite instructive. One might say that God, like the sun, casts no shadow, for He is Absolute Light, just as He is Absolute Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, beyond Whom and outside of Whom there is no reality. The conditions that create shadows in our physical world are in constant flux, for either the source of light or the objects that interrupt it are moving. Shadows are ephemeral, visual experiences that have only brief existence and cannot be captured or preserved. Even photographs of shadows are preserving only secondary images of a fleeting phenomenon.
Shadows in biblical poetry are used to reflect the briefness and transitory nature of human life, especially in light of the eternality of God. (All biblical quotations are from the ESV.)
Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding. (II Kings 20:11) Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Surely a man goes about as a shadow! (Ps. 39:5b-6a)
My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass. (Ps. 102:11)
Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow. But you, O LORD, are enthroned forever; you are remembered throughout all generations. (Ps. 144:1)
Beyond the use of shadow to depict the brevity of life is the representation of death as transition to a land of shadow and darkness, as depicted by Job:
Are not my days few?
Then cease, and leave me alone, before I go—and I shall not return— to the land of darkness and deep shadow, the land of gloom like thick darkness, like deep shadow without any order, where light is as thick darkness. (Job 10:21-22)
And of course, there are the references to the shadow of death, represented most familiarly in Ps. 23:4.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Here, however, there is also a positive element connected with shadow, for God is not only immune to shadows Himself, He gives comfort to those who are vulnerable to its threats. This picturing of shadow as a symbol of God’s protection is seen repeatedly in the Psalms:
Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings, (Ps. 17:8)
How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. (Ps. 36:7) He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, "My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." (Ps. 91:1-2)
Thus the God Who casts no shadow has ultimate control of it, and can turn even the “shadow of death” into Good News. Ps. 107 depicts those who “sat in darkness and in the shadow of death” and were in physical and spiritual prison. They “cried out to the Lord in their trouble,” and in response “He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death” (Ps. 107: 10, 13, 14). In the same vein, Matthew quotes from Isaiah in regard to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: “The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned" (Matt. 4:16).
The ultimate good and perfect gift of the Father of Lights Who casts no shadow will be the creation of the New Jerusalem, where “night will be no more” and there will be no need of “lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light . . . “ (Rev.22:5). Into this eternal City of Light will be called all who in the midst of this dark world of shadows have walked in God’s light (I John 1:5-7). “’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished,” if one can radically re-apply the words of Hamlet.
Addendum to this Musing
Shadows
Shadows lengthen, deepen, merge.
Darkness is all, and I am there.
No thought of shadows when
The sun is full, for then
They merely accent the brightness.
When all is shadow, love may thrive,
Though hope be dim; when all is bright,
Shallow bliss holds sway.
Even the Arctic is both night and day.
Darkness gives more to defining light
Than light to the understanding of dark.
I will see the shadow grow,
And dwell in it even, to know
That light is its own verity,
And darkness but an island in its midst.
--Elton D. Higgs
Matthew Flannagan, co-author of Did God Really Command Genocide? and atheist moral philosopher Ron Smith, engage in a lively and thoughtful debate concerning theistic morality. Dr. Smith argues that theism is not necessary for morality; that it is incoherent and leads to atrocities. Dr. Flannagan defends divine command theory. The debate took place at The Lady Goodfellow Chapel, Waikato University on 11 May 2016.
Image: "Christ Gives the Law" by Lawrence OP. CC License.
Dr. Baggett felt inspired to write this book about a Michigan campmeeting when his mom was sick and in the hospital in Lansing, Michigan about nine months before she died. As he walked the grounds at the Eaton Rapids Campground in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, thinking about her physical decline, he felt nostalgic thinking about his parents’ love of the place and its formative role in his upbringing. The idea occurred to write a history of the 130 year old holiness campmeeting, and now, four years later, the book by him and his wife, with Joelee Bateman, is done and available for purchase. It’s called At the Bend of the River Grand, and available at, for example, Amazon.com. The price currently listed on Amazon.com is 45 dollars, but that’s going to change to 31.50 very soon. For those acquainted with campmeetings, you’ll appreciate reading the book and may well recognize much of what’s discussed; for those less familiar, we hope the book brings a little bit of campmeeting to you. Before too long we at MoralApologetics.com may feature a Campmeeting writing contest, the winner of which will receive a free copy of the book. If you’re wondering how campmeeting connects with moral apologetics, that will become clear in the course of the interview, but quickly: campmeeting is about both evangelism and living a victorious Christian life. So it touches in a very practical way on what we here at the site call the performative variant of moral apologetics: how by God’s enablement we are made able to live victoriously, finding victory over sin, and, ultimately, being conformed entirely to the image of Christ.
Rumination # 1
There is something to be said for the non-believer who manifests a common-sense, pragmatic positive approach to life. Such a one may admit that he does not perceive designed reasons for his existence, but nevertheless he or she says, “Even though I don’t see the point in the God thing, I can focus my attention on the good that it is possible to experience in life. Although I have to recognize that I live in an imperfect world, I might as well make the best of it, without being bitter.” Thinking thus is compatible with either agnosticism or a sanguine kind of atheism (as opposed to militant atheism). But one who accepts life without bitterness and tries to live it constructively in spite of its downsides has already given a nod in the direction of the objective existence of good and evil and has tried to make a responsible choice between them. He/she is manifesting a kind of stoical common-sense decision to accept the ambiguity of the world at face value without feeling persecuted or mistreated.
On the other hand, there is also some sense to be made of a person with faith in God, or at least in Divine Purpose, who is willing to deal with the philosophical complications that such faith brings in order to be in touch with mysteries that enrich life beyond merely “making the best of things.” That, too, is internally consistent, and it shows once again a responsible choice to exercise discernment toward the mixture of good and evil in the world.
There is, however, a third position one often encounters which is totally inconsistent, i.e., angrily indicting God for cruelty or malice and making that a reason for refusing to submit to Him. It is ironic when one believes in God’s existence only to have someone to blame for the ills of the world.
Rumination # 2
It is interesting to contemplate the idea that if it were not for evil, love could not be fully manifested. Extreme love can be seen only through a willingness to incur hardship for the benefit of the beloved. If people had no impediments to their happiness and no bad character traits, what significance could be attached to their being loved? One may ask whether God Himself could have shown supreme love had it not been for the needs of sinful mankind (the idea of felix culpa, or “happy fault”). And since supreme love involves sacrifice, what was God to give that would be a real sacrifice for Him, since He is wholly sufficient within Himself? He could only give a part of His own nature—His Son. God’s love is most fully reflected in us, not when we love those who are easiest to love, but when we show the love that sacrifices even for the unworthy.
And a Couple of Aphorisms
• No one can be ill-tempered if he is convinced that God loves him.
• The way people justify their behavior does not always explain it.
• Christian living begins in creative despair.
Image: "Think" by R. Frasser. CC License.
Aristotle, the great teacher of Greece, once asked, “What is the good for man?” This is a question that every worldview seeks to answer. The Israelites said that good for man consisted in living a life of holiness to God, as a separate and distinct people. The Greeks said that man was meant for the polis.[1] Christ taught men were for his kingdom. The Buddha held his own view.
The heart of Buddhism is ethics.[2] This is evident even in the legendary accounts of the Buddha’s life. The Buddha first encountered the problem of suffering after he finally escaped the isolation of the palace he had grown up in. His father, a powerful ruler, wanted to force his son into a life of politics and war. He had been warned that if his son was exposed to the kind of life people experience every day, a life marked by suffering, that his son would likely become a great teacher instead of a ruler. However, despite his father’s best efforts, the Buddha eventually ventured outside the palace walls. There he was faced with illness, old age, and death. As a result, the Buddha became a renunciate; he gave up his royal lifestyle and began searching for a way to bring an end to suffering. In his search, the Buddha tried all the available philosophies and religions; whether they be hedonistic or ascetic. Whatever he tried, the Buddha excelled beyond his teachers, but in each case, he found that suffering still remained. Eventually, while under the Bodhi tree, and after much effort, the Buddha attained enlightenment. He saw reality as it really is and was able to formulate a solution.
The solution he came up with was an entirely practical one: cultivate happiness.[3] This was to be achieved by taking “the appropriate action: seeking nirvana.”4 This emphasis on action means that Buddhism is primarily an orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy.[4][5] What is important is “the harmony of behavior, not harmony of doctrines.”[6]
What this means is that Buddhism as a worldview is in a unique position. Since it is primarily a particular set of practices, essentially an ethic, the validity of the Buddhist worldview rises and falls on whether or not Buddhism succeeds as an ethical system. This provides an opportunity to test Buddhism to see whether it is a coherent worldview.
There are two leading interpretations of Buddhist ethics. The first and most popular interpretation understands Buddhism as a kind of utilitarianism. Proponents of this view argue that Buddhist ethics are merely provisional and ought to be disregarded once nirvana is attained.
The well respected Saddhatissa takes a utilitarian view and argues that the moral teachings of the Buddha "were never ends in themselves, confined to a mundane life, but were the essential preliminaries, and the permanent accompaniments, to attaining the highest state."[7] However, a system that is merely provisional will not do if it is agreed that ethics must account for what is ultimately good or valuable. But there is another interpretation. Damien Keown, as well as several others, suggests that Buddhism is a kind of virtue ethic, very much similar to the kind taught by Aristotle.[8] A Buddhist version of virtue ethics offers the possibility of a complete, substantive account of ethics. Whether or not virtue ethics can be meaningfully understood in a
Buddhist context is the first problem that thesis will seek to solve.
The second problem concerns whether a Christian worldview might accommodate a virtue view of ethics better than a Buddhist one. Increasingly, Christians are adopting a blended approach to ethics, usually holding to a combination of deontological and virtue ethics.[9] This thesis will put the possibility of a Christian virtue ethic to the test. If it turns out that Christianity can, in fact, provide a more robust context for a virtue ethic, then in order to be a fulfilled virtue ethicist, one ought to abandon the Buddhist worldview and adopt a Christian one.
A prima facie look at this thesis might cause some readers to think it is relevant only to Buddhists who hold to a virtue view of ethics–the subject matter here ought not concern the average Buddhist, much less anyone else. However, this is not the case. To understand the importance of this thesis, one must first understand just how the topic falls within contemporary scholarship. First, there is the current state of Buddhist ethics as a scholarly discipline. Many writers on the subject have been quick to point out that serious study of Buddhist ethics from a theoretical standpoint is a rather new phenomenon.
So far, there have been primarily only two theoretical accounts of Buddhist ethics offered: utility and virtue. If one agrees that a utility view is not a satisfactory account of ethics, then there is only one other viable option: the virtue view. Of course, there can also be new interpretations and revisions to old ones, but that is why this thesis is significant: the best contemporary interpretations of Buddhist ethics may need to be adjusted. Second, since Buddhism is primarily a system of ethics, then whether or not it succeeds as an ethical system is vitally important to the entire worldview. If the Buddhist worldview does not succeed as an ethic, it does not succeed at all.
Foundational questions of worldviews are always weighty, so it is hard to overestimate the importance of engaging the foundations of a religion, especially a religion as influential as Buddhism. While it has been shown that the discussion in this thesis will be relevant for more than just a few, it also needs to be understood that a goal of this thesis is to be part of a wider conversation about the nature of Buddhist and Christian ethics and not the final word. The topics discussed are immensely important; the thesis itself is only part of that vital conversation.
Hopefully, it will contribute to a greater understanding of both systems.
As stated above, this thesis seeks to discover whether a virtue ethic interpretation of
Buddhist ethics is viable. This thesis addresses the question both negatively and positively. Negatively, the position taken on this problem is that a virtue view is inadequate for multiple reasons. Positively, this thesis holds that a Christian view of virtue ethics succeeds and is superior to the Buddhist view. Consequently, if one wants to be a satisfied virtue ethicist, one ought to abandon the Buddhist worldview and become a Christian.
Since the label “Buddhism” covers a wide array of beliefs and practices, this thesis will be limited specifically to early Buddhism. All Buddhist scriptures are taken from the Pali Canon, a set of scriptures considered authoritative by nearly all Buddhists. Further, the clarification needs to be made that Buddhist cosmology or metaphysics itself is not under scrutiny. It is specifically the relationship between worldview and ethics that is being examined. This means that questions like, "How can it be the case that these are the four marks of existence and not three others?" will not be addressed. Also, this thesis will be limited to metaethical concerns.
Issues of practice will not be discussed. Primarily, the goal will be show that foundational issues in early Buddhism prevent Buddhist ethical practices from being applied in a way consistent with a virtue view of ethics.
Comparative ethics can be a difficult endeavor. There are two primary pitfalls. The first is to presume the truthfulness of one view at the start. The result is that opposing viewpoints are inadequate due to mere definition and no understanding is gained. A Buddhist, presuming Buddhism to be correct, might say that Christianity is inadequate simply because it does not further progress toward nirvana. The other danger is to assume that there can be no conclusions. Systems may be compared, but each one is right in its own context. The best we can hope for is greater understanding. This produces unsatisfactory results as well. There ought to be resolution: one view demonstrated to be superior to another. To avoid these dangers, a neutral framework is needed. The first component of this framework is a shared assumption: the fundamental relationship between ethics and reality. This is the same assumption as made by Geertz:
It is the conviction that the values one holds are grounded in the inherent structure of reality, that between the way one ought to live and the way things really are there is an unbreakable inner connection. What sacred symbols do for those to whom they are sacred is to formulate an image of the world’s construction and a program for human conduct that are mere reflexes of one another.[10]
The second component needed is an account of virtue ethics that is neutral to both Christianity and Buddhism. Alasdair MacInytre has established such a view of virtue ethics. His view presupposes at least two features that are required of a worldview in order to accommodate a virtue ethic: an account of teleology and the narrative unity of a single human life.
The next step will be to take these criteria and their necessary conditions and apply them to Keown’s interpretation of Buddhist ethics. If it turns out that Keown has adequately accounted for these in his system, then perhaps it is correct to characterize Buddhism as a kind of virtue ethic. However, if Keown does not succeed, then he has not saved Buddhist ethics from the other primary interpretation: Buddhist ethics is merely utilitarian. The final step will be to apply the criteria to the Christian worldview in order to determine whether the Christian worldview provides a superior account of virtue.
Notes:
[1] Rosalind Hursthouse, “Virtue Ethics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford : Stanford University, 2007). Par 6.
[2] 2
Damien Keown, Buddhism A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1.
[3] 3 Christopher W Gowans. Philosophy of the Buddha (London: Routledge, 2003), 25.
[4] Mark Siderits, Buddhism As Philosophy: An Introduction (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007), 22.
[5] Keown, Buddhism, 3.
[6] 6 Paul Williams and Anthony Tribe, Buddhist Thought (New York: Routledge, 2000), 99.
[7] 7 H. Saddhatissa, Buddhist Ethics: Essence of Buddhism ( New York: G. Braziller, 1971), 81.
[8] 8 Keown, Buddhism, 33.
[9] This is the position of Reuschling, Moreland, and Craig .
[10] Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia(Chicago: University
of Chicago Press), 97.
Image: CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=202801
Letter: Hello professor, I was just wanting to reach out to you and ask you for some guidance. I recently came across a post of the computer that stated this. Do you identife with a specific religion? If you do, ask yourself these questions: 1. Why did so many Gods and beliefs predate your own? 2. Why didn't your God choose a global revelation instead of a culture specific one? 3. Why were you born in the "right religion"? Now I am kind of stumped by these questions. Do you think, if you have time, could you give me your thoughts on them? Thanks, Billy
Response by Jonathan Pruitt
Hi Billy,
Thanks for writing to us at Moral Apologetics! Dr. Baggett has just left on vacation and so I’ll be responding to your letter. Let’s take these one at a time. The first question is “Why did so many Gods and beliefs predate your own?” The question as stated is imprecise, but I think the heart of the question is something like this: “As a Christian, what do you say about the fact that there are religions older than yours?” That’s a fair question and one we can offer several responses to.
First, we might ask what the problem is supposed to be. If there are religions older than Christianity, does that suggest Christianity is not true? I am not sure how an argument for that position might go. The age of the religion has little to do with the likelihood of it being true; what’s more important is the sort of evidence that gives credibility to the claims of the religion. Say, for example, that tomorrow all the stars moved in space so that from earth they spelled out, “Scientology is true.” That would make Scientology much more plausible than, say, Baal worship, even though the Baal religions are much older.
Second, if what the Bible teaches about God’s interactions with mankind is true, then the Christian God has been revealing himself to mankind since the beginning. Worship of the Christian God was the original religion, according to the Bible. So the first question presumes a certain view of the development of religion and of world history in general that Christians deny. Worship of the Christian God is as old as mankind itself and so, in a sense, Christianity is the oldest religion.
The second question concerns the kind of revelation that the Christian God provides. The questioner seems to think that if a religion were true, then it ought to have “global revelation” pointing to its truth. I take it that this is a critique of the resurrection of Jesus, which happened at a specific time and place in history. This sort of revelation is what I suspect the questioner means by “local” revelation—sometimes this goes by the name “the scandal of particularity.”
In response, I will first say that I share the questioner’s concern. If God exists and he is good, then we should expect that he provides everyone with adequate reasons for believing in him. Of course, what the skeptic thinks are adequate reasons and what actually are adequate reasons are not always the same. As Paul Moser points out, we are often presumptuous when considering the evidence for God. We ask, “What evidence would satisfy me?” And we expect God to personally tailor the evidence to fit our expectations. We do not usually ask, “If God exists, how would he like me to know him?”
That said, I think God has given universally accessible reasons to believe in him. Let me give some examples. First, even if we take the resurrection which is supposed to be an example of a “local” revelation, the fact of the matter is that most people in the world are aware of the Christian claim to the resurrection of Jesus. Most people in the Western world even have the resources to conduct serious investigation into the veracity of these claims. So even though the resurrection is a localized event, it is open to investigation by a very large number of people.
The Bible also teaches that God does reveal himself universally. For example, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, God’s righteousness, and the coming judgment (John 16:8). Paul says, “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). In his speech in Athens, Paul proclaims,
The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ (Acts 17:24-28).
So the Bible clearly teaches that God reveals himself on a global scale and that he specifically arranged the world so that people would have the best chance at knowing him. The Bible teaches that God is intimately concerned with the salvation of the whole world and that he has actually revealed himself to every human being.
We also have highly intuitive theistic arguments which are universally accessible. If there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver. If there is a universe, there must be a cause to the universe. If the universe appears intelligently designed, then likely there is a designer. Those are just very brief and rough summaries of only three of the theistic arguments, but the point is that they rely on common sense and basic empirical observations; they are open to investigation by any human person. In that way, they provide a kind of universal (or global) revelation of God.
The third and final question is “How do you know you were born in the right religion?” Clearly, if a person inherits their beliefs from their parents, this does not make them true. But the fact that I learned Christianity from my parents does not make it not true, either. If the questioner intends to say that, he would be committing the genetic fallacy. But if we answer the question as asked, we can provide two kinds of responses. The first answer is that I know that Christianity is true on the basis of my encounters with the Christian God. The Holy Spirit has provided the conviction of the truth of the gospel to me. And I have direct awareness and relationship with the Jesus of the Bible. These provide good reasons for me to believe in Jesus. But I also know that Christianity is true on the basis of critical thinking and the use of evidence. I mentioned some of the theistic arguments earlier, but there are also good arguments that Christianity in particular is true. There are philosophical arguments, like the one provided by Moral Apologetics contributor Brian Scalise that says a Trinitarian (and therefore Christian) conception of God makes the most rational sense. And there are empirical and historical arguments, like the minimal facts case for the resurrection employed by scholars like Gary Habermas and Mike Licona. So I know that I was born in the right religion because I have encountered the living Jesus myself and because careful and fair analysis of the evidence leads me to that conclusion.
In sum, it seems that the questioner is concerned about why we should think Christianity is true given the many religions in the world. The bottom line is that Christianity is better evidenced and more plausible than any other worldview.
A Twilight Musing
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'' (Robert Browning, “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” lines 1-6)
[su_dropcap size="4"]S[/su_dropcap]ince I have chosen to allude to my age in the overall title of my weekly articles, I suppose it would be appropriate for me to say a few words about the way I have come to regard my “twilight years.” Although I don’t completely share the sanguinity about aging expressed by Browning’s character, I do see some advantages to being old, in spite of the minimal inconveniences attached to this stage of life (reduced energy, less supple joints, erratic memory, and other less mentionable difficulties). However, I acknowledge that by the grace of God and through no merit of my own, I have not had to struggle with the chronic illness and economic insecurity that often bedevil people my age. It is with that qualifier to my credibility that I presume to share with you some of the advantages I see in having completed almost 79 years on this earth.
The first advantage to the elder years is that I have a wider perspective from which to evaluate both my experiences and those of others. When I was young, I was much more absorbed in what was happening to me, and I judged events to be good or bad by how they made me feel, not how they affected others. What was it to me if I received the Dean’s Award and others saw it as evidence of favoritism? In my imperceptiveness, their anger was a total surprise to me. Later on, in the midst of my career, what if my losing out on an appointment as dean meant that the person who got the job was thereby launched on a highly successful administrative career? Any ability to celebrate his success was obscured by my feelings of rejection. As I matured, the real value of such successes and failures diminished, and I was able to understand that I not only had to look beyond myself, but also had to view events over a period of time to evaluate accurately what was happening to me and those around me. The same widened perspective also eventually made me less prone to snap judgments about people’s character.
Second, in my latter years I am better able to appreciate the value of long-term relationships. I am able to have a much deeper kind of intimacy with my wife of 56 years than I had any conception of when we were young. And long-term friendships become special treasures. We have lost touch with most of the friends we had in our younger days, but with those we are still close to we share a richness of mutual understanding that comes only with long and growing acquaintance. Moreover, in those rare instances when it is possible to establish new significant friendships, I have learned to cut through superficialities to the meat of getting to know each other and discussing things that really matter.[su_pullquote]Old age brings with it a sharp understanding of the fact that this world is not our home, and a willingness to hold it loosely now and to let it go gladly when the time comes.[/su_pullquote]
Third, I have learned in my early winter years not to be too concerned with what people think of me, which in turn frees me to state my convictions clearly and directly, though I now see more clearly the need to do so gently and with patience. But in the latter part of my life, I have also discovered the need of attentiveness to the words of others. Truly listening to others leads not only to being listened to more intently oneself, but to finding out how interesting and complex other people’s lives are if you encourage them to tell you how they came to be who they are.
Fourth, through long experience in struggling to see God’s will being worked out in my life and those of others, I have been privileged to compile a record of God’s faithful provision that convinces me to the core of my soul that He is always at work, sometimes especially when we’re not able to see it, or when in His wisdom He doesn’t let us see it. Many times my wife and I have looked back and realized that God’s perfect timing required that His resolution to a problem be delayed until other circumstances were in place. In the buying of our present home, for example, we looked for months until our agent informed us of a house that had just gone on the market, and it turned out to be the perfectly suitable and pleasant home that we still live in.
Finally, old age brings with it a sharp understanding of the fact that this world is not our home, and a willingness to hold it loosely now and to let it go gladly when the time comes. This, too, has a freeing effect, not only liberating us from the fear of death, but enabling us to embrace with eagerness the transition that brings us into the presence of our Savior.
Psalm 92:12-15 declares that the righteous “flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green.” Because of the borrowed righteousness from our Lord Jesus, one of the richest benefits of my twilight years has been God’s gifts of renewed possibilities to “bear fruit in old age.” Besides opportunities to serve in a fellowship of Christians that I became associated with only when I was 70, and the recent boon of singing with my daughter in a local choral society after years of absence from singing with a group, the privilege and challenge of writing this column has been a wonderful stimulus to my creative skills and disciplined thinking that might easily have become inactive. I pray that for those who read these “Twilight Musings,” my “sappiness” will always be reflective of my being planted, by His grace, in “the courts of our God.”
Editor's note: Stanley Jones (1884-1973) served much of his life as missionary to India, ministering among the most disenfranchised—members of the lowest castes and the outcastes. Known affectionately as the Billy Graham of India, Jones sought to present the gospel disencumbered from Western ideologies, looking for means of translating Christianity in South Asian cultural terms. This work gained Jones inroads to the higher castes, including students and academics, and made possible interreligious lectures that he delivered throughout the continent. His most important writing is The Christ of the Indian Road (1925), which sold over one million copies.
The Christian Answer to Suffering
by E. Stanley Jones, Asbury College Radio Program
I’m going to talk to you this morning about the Christian answer to suffering, merited and unmerited. It’s a world of suffering and getting worse. It’s going to steal into many a heart and embitter it, and we have to be able to answer this question. Suffering, not answer it as a verbal thing but as a vital thing. I can understand merited suffering. It’s a world of moral consequence. I am free to choose, but I am not free to choose the results of my choosing. Those results are in hands not my own. It’s a world where I don’t break the laws of God; I break myself on the laws of God. Action is followed by reaction, and it’s according to the quality of the action that determines the quality of the reaction. I can understand that I must reap what I sow. If I do wrong, the consequences of that wrong are going to come back on me, unless of course God steps in and takes it on himself and bears it and delivers me of the consequences of my wrong through forgiveness and the new birth. I can understand merited suffering, but what about this unmerited suffering? Why should people suffer when they don’t do wrong? Other people do wrong, and the consequences of that wrongdoing hit the innocent. Why should little children suffer? This war, very few people chose it, and yet here we are in a world of suffering because of the sin of not many but a few. It’s at the place of unmerited suffering that the mind of man reels and sometimes rebels.
Differing systems coming to this whole question give differing answers. One answer is the Greek answer, the Stoic. He said, “My head might be bloody, but it will be unbowed under the bludgeonings of chance.” He would match his inner courage against the circumstances of life. It was a noble creed. Good, but not good enough. Then there’s the answer of Omar Khayyam, the great Persian poet. He said he’d like to take the steam of things entire and smash it and remake it according to the heart’s desire. It’s lovely poetry, but you and I can’t take hold of the steam of things entire and smash it. We have to work out our destiny under things as they are in large measure. Margaret Fuller once said, “I accept the universe,” and Carlyle’s comment was, “Gad, she’d better.” There’s nothing else to be done.
The ancient Buddha had his answer. He sat under the Bodhi tree at Gaya and pondered long and deep upon the problem of suffering and came to the conclusion that existence and suffering are one. As long as you’re in existence, you’re in suffering. The only way to get out of suffering is to get out of existence, and the only way to get out of existence is to get out of action. The only way to get out of action is to get out of desire. At the root of desire, even for life, as we stop the weed of existence from turning round, and then you go out into that passionless, actionless state called Nirvana, the state literally of the snuffed out candle. I asked a Buddhist monk once whether there was any existence in Nirvana. He laughed and asked, “How could there be? There’s no suffering, and if there’s no suffering, there can be no existence.” In Buddha we get rid of the problems of life by getting rid of life. We would get rid of our headaches by getting rid of our heads. Too big a price.
The Hindu has his answer. He says that the thing that comes upon you from without isn’t from without really. It’s the result of your sins of a previous birth. They’re finding you out now. Whatever is, is just. So where there is suffering, there has been antecedent sin. A Hindu said to me one day Jesus must have been a terrible sinner in a previous birth because he was such a terrible sufferer in this one. According to the strict law of karma, that’s right. But I would suspect a premise that brought me to that conclusion.
The Mohammaden has his answer. He says that which comes from without is the will of God. Everything that happens is God’s will; bend under it. Islam literally means submission to the will of God. But I question whether everything that happens is the will of God. If so, what kind of a God is there? His character is gone. When I turn to the Old Testament, I find several answers. One is, “No plague will come neigh your dwelling. Only with your eyes will you behold and see the reward of the wicked.” In other words, the righteous will be exempt. The Old Testament prophets had difficulty in fitting that in with the facts of life. They saw that the righteous did suffer. They were puzzled.
When we come to the New Testament, a great many Christians give the Mohammaden answer: “It’s the will of God, bend under it. Accept it as the will of God.” Others give the answer that the righteous will be exempt. Oh, I grant you that they are exempt from a good many things that come upon other people. They know how to live better in a universe of this kind. They’re not breaking their shins on the system of things all the time. They know how to live better in a universe of this kind. But they’re subject to other sufferings which do not come upon the unrighteous. The world demands conformity: if you fall beneath its standards, it will punish you. If you rise above its standards, it will persecute you. It demands a grey, average conformity. But the Christian is a departure upward. His head is lifted above the multitude. Therefore, that head gets whacked. And if it doesn’t get whacked, well, it’s not above the multitude. “Woe unto you,” said Jesus, “when all men speak well of you.” You’re like them. If you’re different, you get hurt.
A man said in one of my roundtable conferences in India, he said, “You know I’ve lost my faith. I asked God for something anybody could have answered. My brother was wounded in the last war. I prayed that he might get well and might be spared. And when he wasn’t spared and he died, my faith died too.” A professor walked across the street in Chicago and was knocked down by a motor truck, leg broken. After many weeks in the hospital, he came back to the university chapel service and said, “I no longer believe in a personal God. Had there been a personal God, he would have whispered to me when he saw me in that danger. But he didn’t whisper to me, so when my leg was broken, my faith was broken.” These converge upon one idea, namely if you’re only righteous, you’ll be spared. And when they weren’t spared, their faith crashed.
Well, let’s look at it. Suppose that were true, what would happen? First of all, to religion. Well, we’d take out religion, as you’d take out a fire insurance policy. You’d say, “I want to get through the fires of suffering, and therefore, I’ve become religious to be exempt.” And religion would be degraded to the level of a fire insurance policy—no more, no less. Besides, what would happen to the character of the universe? The universe would soon become an undependable universe. You wouldn’t know what to expect. If a good man leaned over the parapet too far, the law of gravitation would be suspended. If a bad man leaned over too far, he would need an operation. You wouldn’t know whether the laws of nature would be in operation or suspension because you wouldn’t know the character of the person concerned. Now I know if I lean over the parapet too far, the law of gravitation isn’t going to ask whether I’m good, bad, or indifferent; it’s going to pull me down. So I don’t lean over too far. It’s a hard school, but I know the rules.
Suppose it could be proved that motor trucks would not knock you down, what would happen to the character of the righteous? Well they’d become the champion jaywalkers of the world. They’d roam around amid the traffic meditating and vegetating. And that quickness of decision which comes from a world of chance and circumstance would be taken away, and that elimination would be their exemption. Now when I walk across the road, I know if I don’t belong to the quick, then I will belong to the dead. So I watch, both ways. I belong to the quick. No, that’s not the answer. If that were the answer, the righteous would be the petting child of the universe, and the petting child is always the spoiled child.
What, then, is the Christian answer? It’s none of these. But it’s more wonderful than all of these put together. It’s this. That you can take hold of suffering and sorrow and frustration and injustice and not bear it, but use it. Almost everything beautiful in the pages of the New Testament has come out of something ugly. Almost everything glorious has come out of something shameful. They don’t ask to be exempt. They don’t ask to be taken out of suffering. All they ask is inner soundness of spirit so they can take hold of the raw materials of human life as it comes to them—justice and injustice, pleasure and pain, compliment and criticism. And they can take it up into the purpose of their lives and transmute it and make it into something else. That is an open possibility of living—in spite of.
I know a man who went out to China on an adventure of service and love for his master, he and his family. And they came back from China a shattered, battered remnant of that campaign for Christ. The father caught an infection of the eye, which left him blind. The mother died of a painful illness, cancer—long, lingering illness. One son died of Addison’s Disease; another got an abrasion upon the heel on a sports field and died from that infection. The daughter was stricken with infantile paralysis and hobbles around on crutches. The only remaining son had to give up his course at the seminary to undergo a major operation. But on an airfield in Miami, Florida, at midnight, he took me by the hand and said, “I’m proud of my family.” And well he might be.
What happened to that family? The only two remaining ones at home were the father, blind, and the daughter, a cripple. Between them, they had a seeing-eye dog and a pair of crutches to come back to life with. Were they beaten? Oh, no. The father has a church where he is on the pastorate, preaches all over the country evangelistic sermons with his seeing-eye dog. And the daughter organizes the games of the church, hobbling around on crutches, and keeps house for her father, still hobbling on her crutches. Between them, they have a seeing-eye dog and a pair of crutches. Oh, no. They have an unconquerable spirit. No wonder that boy at midnight said to me, “I’m proud of my family.” Well he might be. You see, they’ve taken hold of injustice, apparent injustice, and turned it into victory.
General Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang are wonderful people. I was talking to Madame Chiang one day in China, and I said to her, “Is General Chiang a real Christian?” She said, “Yes, he is. He reads his Bible every day and prays, gets strength from God.” But then she turned to me and said, “You must remember that he’s only a babe in Christ.” It was interesting. He was seated right there, and his wife was saying that he was only a babe in Christ. How did he become a Christian? Three influences really helped him to be a Christian. One was his mother in law. You can chalk that up in favor of the mother in laws who are so often maligned. Sometimes we should call them mothers in love. The second influence was a Negro evangelist who prayed for a child in that home where Chiang Kai-shek was, and the child was healed. . . . And the third influence was a doctor.
When Chiang Kai-shek’s army swept across that country, in the early days, there was a communist left wing, and they looted a hospital belonging to a missionary left with a shell, his life work went to pieces. But he followed after the army and tended to their sick and their wounded. When Chiang Kai-shek heard about it, he said, “What makes that man follow after and tend to the sick and wounded of the very people who looted his hospital? What makes him do it?” And they said, “He’s a Christian. That’s why he does it.” Then said Chiang Kai-shek, “If that’s what it means to be a Christian, I’m going to be a Christian.” Then, in the midst of an anti-Christian movement that was sweeping that country, to the astonishment of everybody, Chiang Kai-shek announced that he was a Christian. That doctor had calamity come upon him, but through that calamity, he showed his spirit. And through the revelation of that spirit, he won one of the greatest men of this age. And through him, it may win a great nation. You see, he took hold of injustice and turned it into something else. He had mastered a way to live. And it may be that through your suffering and frustration and defeat, you can show a spirit, and that spirit will do far more work than all your years of work. They’ll look through that little revelation, and they’ll see something eternal abiding in that moment. That’s the Christian answer. The Christian answer is to take hold of everything and make it into something else. That is victory.
Several days ago, during my morning devotional time with my wife, we were talking about some disturbing things in our domestic life and in the nation, and I ended up saying, “Boy, what a mess!” I then opened up a book of daily readings that I use, and the headline for the meditation of the day was “Greater than the Mess!” We both responded with a laugh and a rush of amazement at how God often gives comfort and instruction in unexpected ways. We talked later about personal and biblical experiences of God’s showing Himself to be “greater than the mess.” The most notable of these in our life was the time in the mid ‘90s when we were under great stress from caring for our emotionally troubled daughter and her young child, whom we had adopted at birth. Our home was in disarray because of the complexities and pressures of our situation, and we were desperate for relief. As my wife commented, “One of us is going to wind up in an institution. We just don’t know yet which one.” Then, when it seemed we couldn’t cope anymore, the Lord supplied a politician who had a word with a mental health director, who cut through the red tape and supplied us with an adult foster care home for our afflicted daughter within a week. Our daughter’s psychological counselor told us she had never seen such a fast placement. God was greater than the mess!
Scripture is full of examples of this truth. The Israelites were caught between the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s terrible chariots—what a mess! But God opened the sea for them to pass over and closed in on Pharaoh’s army. God was greater than the mess!
Elijah destroyed the prophets of Baal while Jezebel was away, but when Jezebel came back she sent her soldiers in hot pursuit of him, so that he had to run and hide in a cave—what a mess! But God showed Elijah that 400 other prophets were also on God’s side, and He sent Elijah out in renewed hope to anoint his successor, Elisha. God was greater than the mess!
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego dared to refuse Nebuchanezzar’s order to bow down to his golden idol, and the king in his wrath cast them into a furnace so hot it killed those who put them in. Quite a mess! But a fourth figure was seen in the furnace with the three faithful Hebrews, and they came out of the furnace without even a singed hair. The God they had trusted to deliver them was greater than the mess!
Paul and Silas cast out a prophetic demon from a poor, exploited young woman, and they were seized and arrested and beaten for their merciful deed. What a mess! But while they were singing in jail at midnight, God sent an earthquake and broke them out, so that they could preach to the jailor and convert his household. Once again, God was greater than the mess!
All of us who have served the Lord any length of time have personally seen many instances of His being greater than the mess, and the Scriptures are full of illustrations as well. Why, then, do we find it so hard to feel that truth when we are still in the midst of some mess? I will suggest three reasons. First, although we rejoice in the times when God has shown Himself to be greater than a particular mess, we forget that God is in His essence greater than any and all manifestations of evil and suffering. In a sense, He does not have to prove Himself in each instance to be Master of the Mess, for He is the one than whom no greater can be imagined. His power simply has no rival, and there is no threat He cannot overcome.
Second, we find it easy to focus on the particular mess that we are involved in, and we lose sight of the many other personal, social, and environmental messes in the world at large. Therefore, we aren’t aware that our suffering is interlocked with the larger suffering in the world around us. As my high school principal used to say, “If you’ve got a boil on your neck, it’s hard to be concerned about starving people in Africa.” But God, of course, sees the whole picture, and His timing in solving our particular mess may be connected with what’s needed to remedy some other mess or messes. That larger concern is illustrated in II Peter 3:9, in answer to the question of why God delays his righteous judgment on an evil world: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (ESV).
Third, our difficulty in seeing past our immediate pain may blind us to the possibility that God is in the process of transforming us in ways that we don’t even see the need of. As the writer of Hebrews says, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11).
At the center of the “peaceful fruit” spoken of in this verse is the sure hope we have as children of God that Father will complete the supreme and overarching example of His being “greater than the mess.” His ultimate solution has already been launched in the coming of Jesus Christ, His own Son, who was sent to die the sacrificial death which would take care of the systemic mess of sin and death for which Adam and Eve were the catalysts. Therefore, we endure in confident faith that, although we still live in the weakness of our own mortal flesh and exist in a sin-stained and disordered world, these bodies we live in, the scarred planet we inhabit, and the corrupt society in which we carry on our daily lives will be gloriously replaced by immortal bodies in a perfect world, living in the harmony of full communion with the eternal Master of the Mess—Jehovah Jireh, the God Who Provides.
Image: By Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24564985
BIBLICAL ETHICS SUCCEEDS WHERE KANT FALLS SHORT
In comparing the three proposed biblical principles of ethics with Kantian ethics, it is evident that both Kant and the biblical principles attempt to achieve many of the same objectives despite having different foundations to ground morality. Kant’s ethic, however, proves to be less plausible when his justification for objective morality, his requirements for moral worth, and his argument that humans possess inherent value are compared with a biblical view of ethics.
Kant departs from the first biblical principle by grounding objective morality in the “good will” that is produced by reason in every rational creature. In accord with the Enlightenment ideals of human autonomy and reason, humans can legislate morality apart from God. Assessing the philosophical merit of Kantian ethics versus the biblical ethic on this point deserves careful attention because both views stand or fall with the ability that their intrinsic “good” has to ground objective morality.
The classic problem that confronts any moral system that claims some absolute standard as the ground of objective morality is the Euthyphro dilemma. This dilemma, which goes back to the time of Plato, questions whether God’s commands could really determine what is good (or “pious”). The dilemma is stated: “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?”[1]
Both horns of the dilemma are a challenge to any proposed absolute standard of goodness. For any purported standard of objective morality, one can ask whether that standard merely recognizes goodness (i.e., goodness is external to the standard) or whether that standard determines goodness arbitrarily. Consider first whether the biblical ethic is able to defend that the Christian God is plausibly the ground of objective morality in the face of this challenge. It will not do for objective morality to be arbitrary (if good is merely what God says), and God cannot ground objective morality if there is a standard of morality outside of God (if God simply affirms what is independently good). Fortunately for biblical ethics, there is a third alternative—God Himself is the “Good.” The third alternative is that “God’s own holy and perfectly good nature supplies the absolute standard against which all actions and decisions are measured. God’s moral nature is what Plato called the ‘Good.’ He is the locus and source of moral value.”[2] So God is the Good. God’s will and essentially holy nature are fused such that God only wills that which consistently flows from His nature. God is not an arbitrary “stopping point” for morality’s foundation, as there are “principled reasons to think that God’s existence is necessary and that God functions as the very ground of being.” If God is the “primordial good of unsurpassable value,” then goodness is anchored in an unchanging, personal, and necessarily perfect source.[3] It is reasonable that the ground of objective morality would have these properties; morality seems to be essentially bound up with personhood, and anything that would ground objective morality would have to be unchanging and beyond human opinion.
Although the biblical grounding of objective morality in God’s holy nature appears to survive the Euthyphro dilemma, Kant’s “good will” does not fare as well. Kant may seem to split the horns of the dilemma by claiming that the good will is intrinsically and necessarily good. The problem, however, is that there is no reason why the good will must be good “without qualification” in the way Kant says it is. Louis Pojman raises the problem that the good will itself—the rational faculty that recognizes the CI as the supreme moral principle—could potentially be “put to bad uses.” Although the good will seems to be a good, Pojman insightfully recognizes that it is “not obvious” that the good will is necessarily good or that it is “the only inherently good thing” since a “misguided do-gooder” could act in accordance with what he believes is good and yet carry out what most of us regard as bad actions. Perhaps the good will is a “necessary condition to any morally good action,” but it does not seem to be sufficient.[4]
Ultimately, for Kant, the good will is intimately tied to the principle that it produces—the CI and its requirement of universalizability. The problem is that universalizability is unable to stand as the ultimate moral criterion. For one thing, Kant does not adequately specify parameters for the characteristics of a maxim that is appropriate to universalize as moral law. Aside from the limitation that a maxim must not violate the Principle of Ends, Kant “provides no guide for determining what features must be included in the maxim.” This leaves open the door for morally problematic actions “to be based on a maxim that a person would universalize.”[5] Also, it is highly dubious that reason necessarily produces the same conclusions in all rational beings. For example, one could justifiably will to universalize the maxim that “one should always tell the truth no matter what consequence might come about as a result.” Indeed, Kant believed that reason demands the acceptance of this maxim. Yet many would argue that reason demands the acceptance of the maxim that “one should tell the truth unless doing so would harm others.” It is unclear which maxim is necessitated by reason, and both positions have defenders. This example also highlights the difficulty the CI has in handling moral conflicts.[6]
If, however, God’s unchanging and necessarily good character is the intrinsic “Good,” then there is no concern about disagreements among rational human persons as to what should be universalized—that is, what is good. Only God, out of His necessarily holy nature, stands as the ontological ground of goodness, and conflicting human beliefs are irrelevant to the existence of objective morality. With biblical ethics, the existence of moral values and duties (moral ontology) does not depend upon the conclusions we reach as we try to know what these moral values and duties are (moral epistemology). What happens when two maxims that appear to be legitimately justifiable according to our best human reason disagree with each other? If objective morality is rooted in God, then such a situation is irrelevant to moral ontology.
In addition to providing a better foundation for objective moral values, having a biblical ground of ethics can adequately justify moral duties while the Kantian ground of ethics cannot. Since biblical ethics grounds objective morality in God, God’s commands are justifiably our moral duties because they are derived from His essentially holy nature.[7] Biblical ethics is able to sustain itself as a truly deontological ethical system. On the other hand, although Kant would deny it, significant voices have charged that Kant’s good will is unable to produce true moral duties without appealing to a more subjective consequentialist justification for them. The famous utilitarian ethicist John Stuart Mill, for example, claims that the CI does not avoid seemingly “immoral” actions on purely logical grounds; rather, he says Kant merely shows “that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one would choose to incur.”[8] Mill has a valid point. Some seemingly immoral maxims do not lead to any obvious contradiction if universalized, though we can see that the consequences of universalizing it would be morally bad and may produce a negative result. For example, consider the maxim that “two consenting adults who are not already in a committed relationship should always have sex with each other if they desire to do so.” The universal acceptance of this maxim would not in any way lead to a logical contradiction that would undermine the very practice of the maxim, and it is not obvious that the Principle of Ends is being violated since both individuals are consenting and may well have a legitimate interest in the wellbeing of the other person; however, one can reasonably will that this maxim should not be universalized because of the consequences it would have. Such promiscuity is known to carry a heavy emotional weight for those who engage in it, and it also raises the likelihood of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Such behavior also makes it more difficult to form meaningful committed relationships, which one can reasonably argue have significant value. In fact, there are actually “Kantian consequentialists,” such as R. M. Hare[9] and David Cummiskey. Cummiskey argues that Kant’s ethical system “is consistent with and supports a consequentialist normative principle” even though Kant sought a fully deontological ethic.[10] If that is the case, then it is hard to see how Kant’s good will allows for objective moral duties; however, because God Himself is the necessary “Good” and His nature produces moral truth that is essential and binding upon us, moral duties transcend humans, and their existence does not depend upon our own assessment of what actions will probably produce “good” consequences. It is not clear that Kant’s CI is able to account for the full range of objective duties that are binding on us and that it can do this without recourse to subjective human considerations of consequences.
Moreover, the authority and bindingness of moral duties seems to be much stronger and more plausible if the source of these duties is a person rather than something impersonal, such as “reason.” Merely “acting and thinking rationally does not constitute a full explanation of moral belief and practice. Moral obligation carries extra clout and punch, which needs accounting for.”[11] When we fall short of our moral duties, we sense that we are guilty in a sense that goes beyond simply violating a principle of reason. Locating the source of moral authority in an essentially holy personal God better explains the objective guilt that seems to accompany violating one’s moral duty. In view of all these considerations, the biblical ethical principle that the standard and basis of all goodness is found in God is quite plausible, and this fact is highlighted by the apparent problems that Kant’s system has in establishing the good will as the one intrinsic good that grounds objective morality.
Moving to the second principle of biblical ethics, Kant’s insight in agreeing with the biblical principle that moral worth depends on our motives as well as our actions has been noted; however, Kant’s view of moral worth proves to be too narrow when compared to the biblical assessment of moral worth. As Joseph Kotva points out, Kantian ethics and all ethical theories that are based strictly upon “rules or duty” are at a disadvantage in accounting for the biblical recognition that the moral life is more than rules. Kant fails to see that life is a “race” that requires ongoing character development. While Scripture goes beyond virtue ethics, it captures its insights. We are constantly to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us” as we model ourselves after Jesus (Heb 12:1-2). Paul emphasizes the need to develop such virtues as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23), and he exhorts others to grow in character by following his example as he follows Christ (1 Cor 11:1). While Christian ethics certainly has a strong deontological component, Kotva rightly points out the biblical emphasis on developing virtues and constantly struggling for moral growth in order to become a person of greater character.[12]
The key shortfall of Kant’s view of moral worth is that he does not credit moral worth to a person who grows in character such that she no longer does an action out of rational duty but out of modified and improved inclination. We have seen that Kant is clear that there can be no moral worth involved when an agent is “so sympathetically constituted” that she performs kind acts out of the pure joy of doing them rather than a sense of duty.[13] While biblical ethics would applaud someone of such character who enjoys doing virtuous things, Kant does not recognize such a person as morally praiseworthy. He thus fails to capture the value of moral growth and the fact that one should strive both to “will and act” according to what is good (Phil 2:13). While feeling joy from doing what is good should not be our sole moral motivation, “normal healthy human considerations of self-interest are a perfectly legitimate part of moral motivation.”[14]
Therefore, although Kant is certainly right that duties such as the command to love others should be done regardless of inclination, loving others is something that we ought to work towards wanting to do so that the duty does not have to be against inclination. Finding joy in doing what is good is a mark of moral development and personal character, and the Bible more completely captures this. Such character is exemplified in Jesus, who, though He dreaded it, even found joy in sacrificing Himself on the cross for others (Heb 12:2).
Finally, Kant’s ethic falls short of the third biblical ethical principle in terms of justifying the idea that humans possess value. We have seen that Kant attempts to ground the intrinsic value of humanity in our rationality. Kant argues that pure reason forces us to the conclusion that humans must have value because nothing can be valued without rational beings to do the valuing. In contrast, biblical ethics holds that humans have value in virtue of being made in the “image of God” (Gen. 1:26-27). Human value is based on “the relationship for which we were created” rather than because of any “distinguishing characteristic” that is found in human capabilities.[15] This is attractive; for if human value is rooted in a capacity like reason or rationality, then how can the value of babies or the brain damaged be upheld?[16] The reason that the biblical justification for the value of humans is superior to Kant’s follows from the earlier point that God is a far more credible “stopping point” for objective morality than the good will.
If God truly is the ultimate “Good,” then perhaps human rationality is an instrumental good rather than an intrinsic good. Rather than agreeing with Kant that the “rational nature” of humans is itself sufficient for regarding humans as “ends in themselves,”[17] it may be that rationality functions as an instrumental good in so far as it allows us to have a relationship with the one true source of ultimate value—God Himself. If that is the case, then Kant is correct in valuing rationality but wrong in thinking that it has intrinsic value.
Beyond the automatic implications that locating objective morality in God has for human value, careful consideration of the question of human value by itself reveals that humans, if they are to justify having truly objective value, must justify their value by appealing to something outside of themselves. If humans consider themselves intrinsically valuable merely because they value themselves, then how can David Hume’s is-ought problem be avoided? Just because it is the case that humans tend to ascribe value to their own lives and the lives of other people does not mean that we necessarily ought to do so.
Finally, there is a sort of argument from contingency that points to God as the proper justification for human value and dignity. Kant and many others have claimed that we are the sort of beings who have intrinsic value.[18] But even if Kant were right that our rationality provides a basis for intrinsic human value, this would not negate the fact that God is necessary for us to have value because “relationality and intrinsicality are neither at odds nor mutually exclusive.”[19] If there is no possible world in which beings like us could exist apart from God, then there is no reason in principle why our value could not come from both our relationship to God as well the intrinsic qualities God has given us. Paul Copan argues that morality and value are “necessarily connected” with personhood. Since an essential attribute of God is that He exists necessarily and is the ontological ground of all other persons, morality and value would be impossible without God.[20] Using this logic, it is plausible that the source of intrinsic value can only be found in a necessarily existing person. Thus, in response to Kant’s view that the mere possession of rationality endows all rational creatures with intrinsic value, one must ask on what basis humans persons exist to have rationality. God, if He does exist as Kant himself believed, is the only reason that there is rationality. Even if it were true, as Kant claims, that rationality brings about value, God is the source of rationality. Ultimately, in view of these considerations, the biblical justification for human value appears more plausible and legitimate than Kant’s justification.
CONCLUSION
The three biblical principles of ethics proposed in this paper appear to be eminently plausible when held up to philosophical scrutiny. Because Kant, without grounding morality in God, sought to achieve many of the same goals that these biblical principles accomplish, Kantian ethics serves as an instructive litmus test of the plausibility of biblical ethics. Morality must be objective and universal if it is to avoid the total collapse that relativism ensures. Kant is undoubtedly correct in recognizing this. Furthermore, we have seen that objective morality—to be truly objective—must have a plausible absolute standard of intrinsic value and goodness that grounds it. Biblical ethics provides a philosophically justifiable basis for accomplishing this by identifying God as that source. In contrast, Kant is unable to legitimize the “good will” as being “good without qualification” and able to produce moral principles and binding duties that are defensibly objective and have an ontological basis that is fully independent of humanity. Biblical ethics also legitimizes the attractive conviction that humans really do have intrinsic value. Kant is right to recognize the truth that humans are “objects of respect” and should be “treated as ends,” but he is unable to objectively ground this apparent truth in a justifiable source. God Himself is the ultimate standard of goodness and value, and it is only by way of our relationship with God that we, as creatures made in God’s image, can have intimate connection to the ultimate source of value and can ourselves be endowed with objective value.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sources Cited:
Baggett, David, and Jerry L. Walls. God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning. Oxford: University Press, 2016.
Copan, Paul. “A Moral Argument.” In To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview. Edited by Francis Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and James Porter Moreland. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.
Craig, William Lane. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. 3rd ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008.
Cummiskey, David. Kantian Consequentialism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Driver, Julia. Ethics: The Fundamentals. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
Gert, Bernard. Morality: Its Nature and Justification. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Grenz, Stanley. The Moral Quest. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998.
Hare, John E. The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. In Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: In Commemoration of the Centenary of its First Publication. 2nd ed. Translated by F. Max Müller. London: Macmillan, 1907.
--------. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. In Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment? Translated by Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959.
--------. “What is Enlightenment?” In Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment? Translated by Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959.
Kotva, Joseph J. The Christian Case for Virtue Ethics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996.
Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2001.
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1906.
Moreland, J. P., and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003.
Plato. “Euthyphro.” In The Trial and Death of Socrates. 3rd ed. Translated by George Maximilian Anthony Grube and John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.
--------. Plato’s Republic. Translated by George Maximilian Anthony Grube and C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992.
Pojman, Louis. Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2009.
Porter, Burton Frederick. The Good Life: Alternatives in Ethics. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001.
Smith, R. Scott. In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014.
Tiffany, Evan. “How Kantian Must Kantian Constructivists Be?” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 49, no. 6 (December 2006): 524-546.
Wielenberg, Erik. Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Additional Sources:
Craig, William Lane. “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations for Morality.” Foundations 5 (1997): 9-12. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5175 (accessed February 12, 2016).
Kant, Immanuel. “Critique of Practical Reason.” In Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 42. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952.
McElreath, Scott. “The Inadequacy of Kant’s View of Moral Worth.” Philosophical Writings, 19-20 (Spring/Summer 2002): 23-42.
Ritchie, Angus. From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implications of Our Ethical Commitments. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Notes:
Plato, “Euthyphro,” in The Trial and Death of Socrates, 3rd ed., trans. George Maximilian Anthony Grube and John M. Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000), 11.
J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 491.
Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 286.
Pojman, Discovering Right and Wrong, 127.
Bernard Gert, Morality: Its Nature and Justification (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 306.
Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 167.
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 182.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1906), 5.
John E. Hare, The Moral Gap, 18-19. Hare notes that R. M. Hare is a Kantian who believes he is consistent with Kant in applying act-utilitarianism to Kant’s CI to determine whether an act should be universalized.
David Cummiskey, Kantian Consequentialism (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996), 9.
Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 176. This quote is in the context of showing a limitation of Erik Wielenberg’s secular approach to ethics, but this particular criticism applies to Kantian ethics as well.
Joseph J. Kotva, The Christian Case for Virtue Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996), 156.
Kant, Foundations, 14. Kant believed happiness must result from moral living for us to press on in the moral life, but our motivation to be moral must be duty and not happiness. See Hare, The Moral Gap, 76-78.
Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 266.
Stanley Grenz, The Moral Quest (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 217.
Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 117.
Kant, Foundations, 46.
Erik Wielenberg, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 83-84. Wielenberg, a secular moral realist, contends that rooting human value in God devalues the intrinsic human value that common sense tells us we have.
Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 286.
Paul Copan, “A Moral Argument,” in To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview, ed. Francis Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and James Porter Moreland (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 113.
While much attention has been given to the conquest narratives in the Old Testament (which skeptics commandeer to disprove a loving and good God) and how Christians can responsibly advocate for divine love in lieu of these episodes, one potential issue has gone relatively underappreciated and therefore unanswered—How is God’s love witnessed in the eschaton in which His wrath is existentially poured out on the world? Would a loving God really destroy a world and the majority of its people, sending them to an eternal lake of fire, and only preserve those who follow Him? Or, as has been popularly promulgated, does love win in the end and everyone eventually receive a reward in glory?
The book of Revelation seems to argue that God’s love does win in the end—God’s special love for his people—and this, as will soon be argued, seems to be an argument in favor of divine goodness. However, to understand this appropriately, one must appreciate at least one important image that is employed throughout the Canon to illustrate the love and goodness of God—marriage.
Both God and the God-man have been portrayed as a husband for thousands of years. However, God is never portrayed in Scripture as being married to the world. Instead, he is said to have been and is depicted as married to Israel in the Old Testament (Isa. 54:4-8; 62:1-5; Jer. 3:14; 31:31-33; Hos. 14:-20) and to the church in parables (Matt. 22:1-14; 25:1-13), comparisons (Eph. 5:22-33), instructional material (2 Cor. 11:2), and prophecies (Matt. 26:26-30; Mk. 14:22-31; Lk. 22:14-23). The marriage image is even revisited at the very end of Revelation itself as it describes the much anticipated marriage supper of the Lamb.
“Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, ‘Write, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”’ And he said to me, ‘These are true words of God.’” (Rev. 19:7-9)
These passages not only portray the love exchanged between God and humans, but something of its exclusivity. To be sure, theists believe that God loves the world (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8). However, these same theists also affirm that God’s love is not applied in the same way to everybody. Instead, as depicted above, God appears to especially love certain groups (see passages above). This special love, applied to Israel in the Old Testament and the Church in the New Testament, is ultimately and in part a product of God choosing (volitionally) those who have pleased him (upon his evaluation) and will persevere in a relationship with him that will continue to the end.
In fact, “choice” is something engrained in the very semantics of “love” as it appears in the Scriptures. For instance, אהב seems to involve choice in the context of Malachi 1:2-3 when it says, “Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated.” Not only that, but the New Testament suggests that in order to follow the Lord one must choose Him over one’s family and oneself—signifying superior love for the former, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple” (Lk. 14:26). Most agree that “hate” in both these contexts is not equal to disdain as much as it is comparable to allegiance in relationship. In other words, Jacob was chosen and therefore involved in a special relationship with God and, in that relationship, and object of God’s special affection. Similarly, Luke 14:26 suggests that anyone hoping to be a disciple of Jesus chooses Him over and above all others, thereby entering into a relationship with him that does not compare to anyone else.
Nowhere is this most appropriately encapsulated than within the context and image of marriage. In a marriage, a groom has chosen a bride above all others to remain with him until death. He does so in the best of situations, not under compulsion, but because his wife is pleasing to him and within the context of their marriage, he knows that she will consistently bring delight and affection into their home. Most, even in today’s morally deprived world, agree that a man who loves his wife in special and exclusive ways can be called “good.” If he loved every woman in the same way, he would otherwise be labeled a reprobate and/or womanizer.
The same is true of God as witnessed in Revelation. God’s hatred and wrath poured out over a world that has rejected him (witnessed in John’s graphic apocalyptic and prophetic presentation) indicates not only his holiness and justice, but his incomparable love for His wife—the church. God’s love, and by proxy, his goodness, might be called into question if he showed the same love and granted the same rewards to everyone in the end—even those who never responded positively to his constant overtures.
Therefore, one might say that “love wins” in the end, but not in the way it is popularly promoted. God’s love for his bride wins in the end and this is an eschatologically significant consideration pertaining to His goodness. If love for all wins, God’s love would not be particularly special or meaningful—God would not be as good as the faithful husband he is presented as through the Scriptures in general and in the book of Revelation in particular.
Image: "Jesus" by x1klima. CC License.
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“The message of the gospel—God’s act of forgiveness and salvation in Jesus—is rooted in hesed. Hesed describes the disposition of God’s heart not only toward His people but to all humanity. The love of God extends far beyond duty or expectation. His forgiveness of sin fulfills a need that is basic to all other needs in the relationship between human beings and God—the restoration and continuation of fellowship with God in Jesus Christ. God’s hesed manifested in forgiveness makes a relationship with Him possible. That forgiveness comes to us freely as a gift from God based on the sacrificial act of Christ.”
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