Ethics and Religion

A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all Christian thinkers maintain that moral fault is necessary or sufficient for sin to obtain. Call this the “Moral Consensus.” I begin by clarifying the relevance of impurities to the biblical cataloguing of sins. I then present four extensional problems for the Moral Consensus on sin, based on the biblical catalogue of sins: (1) moral over-demandingness, (2) agential unfairness, (3) (...) moral repugnance, and (4) moral atrocity. Next, I survey several partial solutions to these problems, suggested by the recent philosophical literature. Then I evaluate two largely unexplored solutions: (a) genuine sin dilemmas and (b) defeasible sinfulness. I argue that (a) creates more problems than it solves and that, while (b) is well-motivated and solves or eases each of the above problems, (b) leaves many biblical ordinances about sin morally misleading, creating (5) a pedagogical problem of evil. I conclude by arguing that (5) places hefty explanatory burdens on those who would appeal to (b) to resolve the four extensional problems discussed in this paper. So Christian thinkers may need to consider a more radical separation of sin and moral fault. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 1, Page 64-75, January 2022.

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID‐19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.

Hick’s soul-making theodicy defends the omnipotence, omniscience, and all-goodness of God in the face of evil. It holds that the end of the creation process is the development of human beings into children of God. In order to achieve the end, an evil-dependent soul-making process must be employed. It then concludes that, because the end is so valuable, the omnipotent and omniscient creator’s not having prevented the existence of evil is morally justified and thus not in conflict with her being (...) all-good. In particular, God’s having created a world with evils and evil-dependent values, which may be called “an Irenaean world,” is morally justified. In the Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi holds that the actual world is, in reality, a world without evils and evil-dependent values, but with evil-independent values, which may be called “a Zhuangzian world,” while ordinary people mistakenly take the actual world to be an Irenaean world. In an insightful story in the Chapter “The Great and Venerable Teacher” of the Zhuangzi, he amounts to claiming that a Zhuangzian world is better than an Irenaean world. Without endorsing Zhuangzi’s two positions, I argue against Hick’s soul-making theodicy in this way: It is Hick’s burden to prove either that a Zhuangzian world is metaphysically impossible, or that the actual world, as an Irenaean world, is better than any Zhuangzian world. However, there are not any resources in his soul-making theodicy that can provide any such proofs. Therefore, Hick has not justified, nor rationally established, his soul-making theodicy. (shrink)

Realistic theologies are keyed to what is said to be actual, reading knowledge of God and the aims of ethical action from the given. Idealistic theologies are keyed to claims about truths transcending actuality. I am opposed to lifting realistic actuality above idealistic discontent, even as I acknowledge that idealism poses the greater danger. A wholly realistic theology would be a monstrosity, a sanctification of mediocrity, inertia, oppression, domination, exclusion, and moral indifference. Christianity is inherently idealistic in describing the being (...) or movement of spirit as the ultimate reality and in holding to transcendent moral truths. But an idealistic theology lacking a sense of tragedy, real-world... (shrink)

The concept of service found in Christian theism and related religious perspectives offers robust support for a political defense of nonhuman animal rights, both in the eschaton and in the present state. By adapting the political theory defended by Donaldson and Kymlicka to contemporary theological models of the afterlife and of human agency, I defend a picture of heaven as a harmoniously structured society where humans are the functional leaders of a multifaceted, interspecies citizenry. Consequently, orthodox religious believers (concerned with (...) promoting God’s will “on Earth as it is in Heaven”) have a duty to promote and protect the interests of nonhuman creatures in the present, premortem state. (shrink)

Of the many questions Cécile Laborde addresses in her magisterial Liberalism’s Religion, several relate to what she describes as ‘the puzzle of exemptions’. I examine some of the issues raised by her efforts to solve that puzzle: whether her ideal of moral integrity squares with the nature of religious belief; whether we should find the case for collective religious exemptions in freedom of association and the ‘coherence interests’ of associations; how much significance we should give to the ‘competence interests’ of (...) organised religions; and by which criteria we should assess individual claims to religious exemption. (shrink)

Abstract This essay uses James Baldwin’s thought about racism and homophobia as a critical lens for thinking about some influential strands of Christian ethics. The first part shows how Baldwin understood racism and homophobia and related them to one another by framing them as instances of spirit/flesh dualism and as effects of Christian supremacy. The second part relies on Baldwin’s categories to analyze and juxtapose the thought of select neo‐Anabaptist and neo‐Augustinian social ethicists. Like Baldwin, the ethicists I engage respond (...) to the distorting power of Christian supremacy and of spirit/flesh dualism. Unlike Baldwin, these ethicists frame their response to Christian supremacy and dualism as a recovery of a more authentic or faithful Christian tradition. Baldwin, who often relied rhetorically and morally on Christian claims and frequently called on Christians to reflect the example of Jesus and the precepts of love, related to the tradition from the perspective of someone who had become an outsider to the church. He tended to focus instead on what the problems he described reflected about Christianity. The contrast with Baldwin helps identify two distinct retrieval strategies, which characterize the neo‐Anabaptist and neo‐Augustinian ethicists I discuss. One strategy seeks to preserve the integrity of Christian faith, and the other seeks to protect its essential decency. In what follows, I highlight some of the weaknesses of these approaches to tradition retrieval. (shrink)

Hyde claims that the trickster spirit is necessary for the renewal of culture, and that he lives only in the ‘complex terrain of polytheism’. Fortunately for those of us in monotheistic cultures, Weber gives reasons for thinking that polytheism is making a return, albeit in a new, disenchanted form. The plan of this paper is to elaborate some basic notions from Weber, to explore Hyde’s thesis in more detail and then to take up the question of the plurality of spirits (...) both around and within us and whether the trickster is one of them. Weber has three roles in this argument. First, he theorises rationalisation, disenchantment and bureaucracy; second, he offers an argument that in a certain sense polytheism is returning ; and third, he presents a way to translate the mytho-poetic register in which Hyde works into terms acceptable to social science of a more materialist bent. The claim of the paper is that polytheism as a practical attitude means recognising that there are diverse and contradictory ethical orders built into the world around us and active with our psyches. Weber explains why this is especially difficult for us, and Hyde offers us the hope that we may be tricky enough to cope. (shrink)

The monastic movement originated among laity who recognized within themselves the potential to embody the Christian gospel. That a practice so central to early Christians and their Scriptural understanding would undergo such a decline contemporarily gives pause for reconsideration. This article posits that the kind of asceticism at the core of Christian monasticism maintains relevance as a transformative Christian practice in the contemporary world, as well. The argument draws on a tripartite model of spirituality in accord with Gregory of Nyssa’s (...) notion of epektasis. This suggests asceticism’s contemporary appropriation as an ethic of Christian spiritual development oriented toward perpetual ascent. Asceticism will be analyzed as a form of spiritual struggle; that is, physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual exertion aiming to progress in knowledge, similitude, and intimacy with Jesus Christ, for God and for others. The three stages of this ethic of Christian spiritual growth – 1) detachment from fleshly passions, 2) strengthening of the soul, and 3) union with God – find parallels in the three themes at the core of asceticism: sexuality, angelification, and divine indwelling. Situating asceticism within a framework of spiritual struggle creates an opportunity to recover and re‐envision a well‐established Christian practice in a contemporary context. (shrink)

Modern orthodoxy often perceives itself and is perceived by others as a movement which grants more importance to moral considerations in its interpretation of halakha and in its general worldview than does the ultra-orthodox movement. Accordingly, modern orthodox rabbis are often referred to as more “moderate” than their ultra-orthodox counterparts, a term which seems to imply that they are more open to moral arguments and more likely to adopt, or to develop, moral interpretations of halakha. A study of some central (...) figures like Walter Wurzburger, Eliezer Berkovits and Joseph B. Soloveitchick, however, indicates that the modern orthodox approach to morality is much more ambivalent. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this ambivalence and to speculate on its source. (shrink)

This closely reasoned philosophical study develops two metaethical positions: a pragmatist view of truth in ethics and a pragmatist view of principles in moral inquiry. To reach these notions Heney gives a close reading of Peirce, James, Dewey, and C. I. Lewis. In the process she engages with current debates in ethical theory.Heney makes a strong case for the importance of metaethics, the inquiry into the meaning of and justification for ethical terms and propositions. She focuses on the primacy of (...) practice, which implies consideration of how groups and individuals deal with moral discourse, moral disagreement, and value-laden experience.I will first elucidate her constructive position in... (shrink)

Bahá’í law differentiates between a secular and a sacred legal sphere, intertwining both by positing a religious duty for its adherents to abide by secular law. In Germany, it encounters a secular legal framework that aims at something similar – creating an equilibrium between state law and religious law by establishing the principle of the division of State and Religion, while at the same time facilitating religious freedom; it provides a secular justification for the recognition of religious law. With this, (...) both orders provide mechanisms ensuring that state law and religious law are able to enforce their own claim of validity, while at the same time avoiding conflicts between the respective legal orders. The article argues that this unique interaction between Bahá’í law and the German constitutional law framework impacted both legal orders. For German law, on the one hand, it proved to be crucial for the development and opening of this legal field – whose original purpose was the regulation of the relationship between the state and the Christian churches – for other religious traditions. The interaction with state law has impacted the Bahá’í Community of Germany, on the other hand, by catalyzing a number of developments that in other comparative law contexts have been dubbed “constitutionalization” effects. (shrink)