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Christian Public Ethics Sagepub.Co.Uk/Journalspermissions.Nav Tjx.Sagepub.Com Robin Gill Theology 0(0) 1–9 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: Christian public ethics sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav tjx.sagepub.com Robin Gill This special online issue of Theology focuses upon Christian public ethics or, more specifically, upon those forms of Christian ethics that have contributed sig- nificantly to public debate. Throughout the 95 years of the journal’s history, there has been discussion about public ethics (even if it has not always been named as such). However, Christian public ethics had a particular flourishing between 1965 and 1975, when Professor Gordon Dunstan (1918–2004) was editor. When I became editor of Theology in January 2014, I acknowledged at once my personal debt to Gordon. He encouraged and published my very first article when I was still a postgraduate in 1967, and several more articles beyond that. And, speaking personally, his example of deep engagement in medical ethics was inspirational. When he died, The Telegraph noted the following among his many achievements: He was president of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology and vice-president of the London Medical Group and of the Institute of Medical Ethics. During the 1960s he was a member of a Department of Health Advisory Group on Transplant Policy, and from 1989 to 1993 he served on a Department of Health committee on the Ethics of Gene Therapy. From 1990 onwards he was a member of the Unrelated Live Transplant Regulatory Authority and from 1989 to 1993 he served on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. (19 January 2004) The two most substantial ethical contributions that I have discovered in searching through back issues of Theology were both published when he was editor and were doubtless directly encouraged by him. The first was written by the Anglican Professor Ronald Preston on his inspirational teacher and shaper of post-war welfare thinking, Professor Richard Tawney. The second was written by the Roman Catholic Professor Enda McDonagh on one of the most vexed politico- ethical issues at the time, the legalization of induced abortion. Both articles are searching and scholarly and raise many ethical issues that are still relevant today; they are republished in full in this online issue of Theology. Before setting them into context, it is worth mentioning some of the other con- tributions to Theology from the 1920s through to the 1950s. 2 Theology 0(0) In the first issue of Theology (July 1920), T. W. Pym (1885–1945), author eight years later of Spiritual Direction, wrote a review of the recent report of a committee appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The report was entitled The Church and Social Work. In his review, Pym commended the public role of the Church of England at the time: This Report is a natural corollary to the Report of the Archbishops’ Fifth Committee of Inquiry, ‘Christianity and Industrial Problems.’ The terms of reference were ‘to consider and report upon the ways in which clergy, Church-workers, and Church- people generally can best co-operate with the State in all matters concerning the social life of the community.’ The Report deals first with actual opportunities of social service, and is then divided into a consideration of (1) the clergy, (2) the laity, and (3) the parish in regard to it. There is a note on rural problems, and four Appendices which form perhaps the most valuable part of the Report as a whole. The book is a practical guide to those who, having read the Report on ‘Christianity and Industrial Problems,’ wish to take definite action. We welcome the frank recognition throughout that the Church must care for the whole man – body, mind, and spirit – and that the line drawn in the past between secular and religious service has often been fictitious. There is nothing in the Report that is better than the frank statement that the Church of England cannot rightly confine its social activities to the more or less limited circle of those who are attached to it; that this may very easily become, not co-operation with the State, but self- centred competition against it. ‘The Church must co-operate, not compete, with the State, and it must accept the responsibility for the fullest social welfare not merely of the select few but of the whole community.’ (p. 57) Six months later, Kenneth Kirk (1886–1954) wrote a substantial article in two parts (January and February 1921) on ‘Moral Theology: Some Lessons of the Past’. Not only was this article substantial at the time, it remained the longest article on moral theology or Christian ethics (I have never been very convinced about the difference between the two) until Ronald Preston’s articles in the 1960s. Kirk had served as an army chaplain during the First World War, before returning to Oxford as a tutor at Keble College. In 1920, he published his pioneering Some Principles of Moral Theology. He then became Reader in Moral Theology and subsequently Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, before being appointed Bishop of Oxford in 1937. He was one of the very few holders of this Oxford chair to contribute significantly to Theology on the subject of Christian ethics until the present holder, Nigel Biggar. Although substantial, Kirk’s article is, by modern standards, too dated to be reproduced in full here. In less ecumenical days he wrote at length about the Gill 3 ‘depressing deterioration of [Roman Catholic] moral theology’ – viewing it as overly legalistic and authoritarian (especially within the confessional): [M]odern manuals compare very badly with the Summa Theologica. In the latter St. Thomas assigns at most eight questiones to the decalogue, and is concerned rather with its duration and authority than with its contents; whilst he gives no less than 170 to the discussion of virtues and sins based upon the cardinal and theological virtues. On the other hand, in one of the most modern Roman Catholic manuals, the Summarium of Fr. Arregui, the cardinal and theological virtues are dismissed in 30 pages, whilst 145 are given to the Ten Commandments; and in this Arregui is no more than following the examples of Liguori and Gury. St. Alphonso gives 37 pages to the theological virtues, 800 to the decalogue; Gury 27 to the theological virtues, 97 to the decalogue. (pp. 58–9) In the issue of December 1930, the theologian Lionel Thornton (1884–1961) of the Community of the Resurrection wrote a significant article, ‘Christianity and Morality: Some Reflections on the Present Situation’. It is written in a less scholarly style than that of Kirk, but it does have some abiding value. The central point that he made is that purely secular accounts of ethics and attempts to derive ethics purely from science are, from a Christian perspective, inadequate: From the religious point of view the most far-reaching characteristics of the new morality are not to be found primarily in its divergences from the traditional Christian code, startling as these may be. For what is here called the new morality includes great varieties of opinion upon particular points of morals, some of them extremely radical, others relatively conservative. The essence of the new attitude appears to be comprised under three principles: (i.) The foundations of morality are to be sought in the facts of human nature; (ii.) the facts are to be discovered by the empirical methods of science, and the moral order based upon the facts is to be built up through the assistance of scientific information and equipment; (iii.) the goal of this moral order is human happiness conceived without reference to religious sanctions or to a supernatural end. These three points, taken together, give us the essentials of the new programme of morality. All else must be regarded as incidental detail or consequence; and it should be clear that it is only in the last of these three principles that there arises an inevitable conflict with Christian conceptions. For Christian faith, however, the third point overshadows the whole position. For us the facts of human nature include the facts of religion, without which any account of human life must be incomplete. So, too, a scientific interpretation of the facts should include an adequate explanation 4 Theology 0(0) of the facts of religious experience and of those high transformations of character and conduct which have been interwoven with that experience in Christian history. (p. 313) Nine years later, Britain was at war again. Unsurprisingly, war and peace became important topics in Theology. Two articles stand out above others. Karl Barth (1886–1968) was already famous in theological circles. He had by now been banished from Germany and had returned to his native Switzerland. In March 1940, Theology included a translated letter from him to a French pastor. It was theologically strident and deeply passionate, as can be seen from the following extract: The Church of Jesus Christ cannot and will not wage war. She can and will simply pray, believe, hope, love, and proclaim and hearken to the Gospel. She knows that The Event by which we poor men are succoured in an effectual, eternal and godly way has come, comes, and will come to pass, not, according to Zech. iv, 6, by force of arms or by power or by any kind of human effort and achievement, but only by the Spirit of God. The Church therefore will not see in the cause of England and France the ‘causa Dei,’ and she will not preach a crusade against Hitler. He who died upon the Cross died for Hitler too, and, even more, for all those bewildered men who voluntarily or involuntarily serve under his banner.
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