277 Malcolm Brown, Tensions in Christian Ethics

Book Reviews / Ecclesiology 9 (2013) 263–300 277 Malcolm Brown, Tensions in Christian Ethics: An Introduction (London: SPCK, 2010) xviii + 259 pp. £19.99. ISBN: 978-0-281-05827-3 (pbk). Nigel Biggar, Behaving in Public: How to Do Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2011) xvii + 124 pp. £10.99 / $16.00. ISBN: 978-0-8028- 6400-0 (pbk). Christian ethics is, according to Malcolm Brown, ‘one of the fastest moving disciplines in the theological curriculum’ (p. 235). Both of these books seek to help us find our way through the associated cross-currents. Both are writ- ten by Anglican priests and frame their overarching claims in terms of a necessary if unspectacular via media between noisy alternatives. Yet they do so in quite different ways and, for all the deference Brown shows to Biggar’s earlier work, from contrasting perspectives. Tensions in Christian Ethics originated in a course in Christian ethics for students at the Cambridge Theological Federation and is designed to be used as a textbook while also being ‘of value to thoughtful Christians of all kinds’ (p. x). Brown divides his book into two parts. Although they are not named explicitly, the first focuses on what he calls ‘meta-ethics’ and the second ‘concrete cases’ (p. 145). As might be expected given Brown’s previ- ous publications and current role as Director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Church of England, the chapters in the second part on ‘The Market Economy’ and ‘Human Rights and God’ are particularly strong. It is perhaps somewhat surprising however that neither they nor the chapters in the first part that underpin them give any extended attention to Roman Catholic social teaching, arguably the single most influential and sustained body of work in this area. Indeed, students using this as a textbook would gain little sense of the contribution of Roman Catholic thinkers to the enterprise of Christian ethics as a whole over the past half-century. Roman Catholic voices appear more distinctly in the second part of the book for their views on specific issues, as in a parallel fashion do Evangelicals, yet Brown does not give the reader much help in the first part of the book as to the distinc- tive sources and traditions here. Instead, Brown seeks to map the landscape of contemporary Christian ethics in terms of a number of fundamental but rather abstract ‘tensions’ – the guiding motif for the book. Much of this is relatively familiar, but there are two important respects in which Brown does more than might be expected of the textbook writer here. First, he develops a tension of his own © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI 10.1163/17455316-00902013 <UN> 278 Book Reviews / Ecclesiology 9 (2013) 263–300 as the key to understanding what he takes to be the pivotal debate in Christian ethics today: liberal/communitarian. While he acknowledges that this is a distinction borrowed from political philosophy, he believes that it can illuminate the discussion that has crystallised in particular around the influential figure of Stanley Hauerwas. Although one can see the analogy between Hauerwas’ view on ethics and communitarian think- ing about politics, it is not entirely clear what Brown wishes us to under- stand by liberalism in this context (pp. 235-38). Second, Brown asserts that the tensions he describes are indeed fundamental in the sense that they cannot be resolved through careful analysis but represent ‘incompatible’ approaches that are nonetheless all ‘equally authentic’ (p. xii); he concludes from this that they are therefore necessary as correctives to each other, so that we need some of each of them, but not too much. (It is difficult not to hear the striking echo of a particular version of Anglican ecclesiology at this point.) The closest Brown comes to explain- ing this assertion is by linking his tensions in Christian ethics to the tension he locates ‘at the heart of Christianity itself’ between mission and holiness, on the grounds that mission ‘entails compromising with the ethics of the surrounding culture’ (p. 19). Is it not possible that the holiness of the Church might actually be best expressed in loving and faithful engagement with the world for which Christ died? That would seem to be the implication of the plea made by Nigel Biggar in the moving final paragraph of his book under review here (p. 112). Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, is like Brown concerned with setting out a place for Christian theology that engages publicly with ethical issues. Also like Brown, he is conscious of working in an academic context where Hauerwas’ persistent attacks on existing versions of this enterprise have been a dominating influ- ence. Yet for Biggar, it is not so much a question of holding irreconcilable positions in tension as of finding a way to resist choosing between what appear to be the dominant options available to us: ‘either a “conservative” biblical and theological seriousness, which is shy of attending too closely to public policy; or “liberal” engagement with public policy, which is theologi- cally thin and bland’ (p. xvii). Moreover, this is not a textbook but a relatively brief volume based on a series of public lectures that Biggar has delivered in different contexts. Rather than surveying a range of different positions, it develops a specific case through its interlocking chapters. Finally, while Biggar also deals at some length with Hauerwas and believes his position to be inadequate in crucial respects, he does so not to contrast <UN>.

Load more