Less Hegel, More History! Christian Ethics & Political Realities by Nigel Biggar

FEATURE LESS HEGEL, MORE HISTORY! CHRISTIAN ETHICS & POLITICAL REALITIES BY NIGEL BIGGAR he good news is that the moral thinking of an educated Protestant T Christian in 2015 is likely to be far more theologically and biblically literate than it was a quarter of a century ago. In the 1960s and ‘70s, at least here in the United Kingdom, Christian ethics was often represented by philosophers who championed metaphysics against fashionable logical positivism—for example, Peter Baelz and Basil Mitchell. Or else it found expression in the thought of Anglican churchmen like Gordon Dunstan, who used to begin his undergraduate courses in moral theology with Aristotle and Aquinas, and who is famously reported to have commented on one student’s essay, “Best not to begin with the Bible”! 1 10 Through the Night With the Light from Above: Transcendent wisdom symbolized by the light of Providence While this more philosophical approach today what has recently been asserted to the discipline did have its merits—as I of her current conception of her politi- shall make clear shortly—its lack of immer- cal role: that she has yet to take serious- sion in biblical and theological traditions ly the intellectual task of developing a weakened its capacity to achieve critical dis- fundamentally theological understand- ing of it.3 tance from prevailing intellectual currents. I have in mind Faith in the City, the 1985 Likewise, on Changing Britain I com- report of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s mented that it permitted the church only Commission on Urban Priority Areas, “to proclaim more loudly the good that the and Changing Britain, the 1987 publica- world already knows; but not the good that tion of the Church of England’s Board for comes to the world as news”.4 Social Responsibility.2 Each of these dealt 7ZHQW\¿YH\HDUVODWHU&KULVWLDQHWKLFV with pressing social problems in Britain— in Britain (and in the United States) is much Faith in the City with urban deprivation, better educated in Christian ethical tradi- Changing Britain with cultural and moral tions, and its moral intelligence much more pluralism. Neither of them did so, however, fully informed by the full range of theo- with moral concepts that had drunk at all logical premises. In part this is due to the deeply from the historic wells of Christian remarkable surge of interest in the thought moral theology. The result was that their of Karl Barth during the 1980s, accentuat- moral analysis and criticism was too mes- ed, if not generated, by the centenary of his merised by current, liberal-left common ELUWKLQ%XWLWLVDOVRGXHWRWKHLQÀX- sense. As I wrote in the wake of Faith in the ence of Stanley Hauerwas, whose work now City’s publication: dominates Protestant circles and not a few If we may take Faith in the City as Roman Catholic ones. To these must be add- symptomatic (and it is certainly not ed Oliver O’Donovan’s thorough mining of wholly eccentric), then we can say of Christian biblical and historical traditions social ethics in the Church of England for the construction of a moral theology of 11 SROLWLFDOOLIHZKRVHH̆HFWVKDYHEHHQIHOWRQ Most wheels were invented long ago by our both sides of the Atlantic. Without doubt, predecessors in the faith, and it would be all of this has served to make Christian eth- foolish to waste time trying to build them ics more theologically coherent and more again from scratch. I myself spent most of self-consciously Christian, and that surely WKH¿UVWWHQ\HDUVRIP\FDUHHUVLWWLQJPHW- has to be welcomed. aphorically at the feet of Karl Barth, and I have never regretted it. It’s vitally import- evertheless, this upside has a major DQWWR¿WRXWWKHYHKLFOHRIRQH¶V&KULVWLDQ Ndownside. The academic discipline intelligence with worthy wheels that will of Christian ethics—and therefore the in- stay the course. But there nevertheless telligence of those pastors and lay-people comes a time when one has to stop admir- who have been trained in it—often seems ing the wheels, get in the car, and drive it to be locked into the tradition, engrossed somewhere. in deferential conversation with the likes of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and Karl sing the tradition as a refuge rather Barth, largely inattentive to the world and Uthan a resource is one problem with WKH GL̇FXOW SUDFWLFDO TXHVWLRQV LW UDLVHV contemporary Christian ethics. Another is a and assuming that an appeal to an author- tendency to want theology to do too much, itative voice in the tradition will settle the too quickly—a tendency unrestrained by case. Thus in Oxford last year during an the demands of philosophical rigour. For interdisciplinary conference on my book, In example, in its 2009 report, The Ethics of Defence of War, an expert in international Defence, the Church of Scotland judged security was provoked to erupt, “What on that the U.K. should abandon its nuclear deterrent on the ground that we should earth is all this about Augustine?!!”, after trust in God instead of placing other peo- two Christian ethicists had devoted much ple “in a position of fear or threat” (2.10). By of their time comparing what I had written threatening others rather than seeking to unfavourably to the Master. And when, this be reconciled with them, it implied, a pol- April, I presented a paper on human rights icy of nuclear deterrence is immoral. But, at Princeton, a theologian present con- as I argued this May in the online Scottish tradicted me by expounding Aquinas. To Review, “this is facile”: which my (unspoken) response was, “Well, yes, I know that, but, with all due respect, I For sure, fear and mistrust are not think Aquinas’s thinking on this matter is symptoms of a happy, healthy relation- confused and so I prefer something else”. ship. Ideally, they wouldn’t exist. In the world as we have it, however, persons Don’t mistake me: I think it’s enormous- and states sometimes do unjust things ly important for Christians to learn from that give others very good reasons to the tradition before they presume to speak. fear and mistrust them. In that case, 12 the road to reconciliation doesn’t lie in WKRVH ¿JKWLQJ LQ DQ XQMXVW RQH" $QG QR pretending that nothing has happened although all actual empires involve the and just holding out the hand of friend- use and threat of coercion (just like na- ship anyway. It begins, rather, with tion-states and, indeed, republics), they signalling to the wrongdoer that he has haven’t always been simply arbitrary or done wrong by opposing it and press- enslaving in their rule. The British empire, ing him to think again and change his ways in such a fashion that trust could for example, granted Roman Catholics in be restored. It may be true—as I be- Quebec freedom of religion in 1763 (much lieve it is—that we should always trust to the irritation of American colonists), sup- God. But it really doesn’t follow that we pressed the slave trade across the Atlantic should always trust Vladimir Putin or and in Africa throughout the 19th century, Islamic State.5 granted black Africans in Cape Colony the The report had tried to move far too vote (subject to a remarkably low property directly and quickly from the theological requirement) as early as 1853, and appoint- virtue of faith in God to the moral stance ed native Indians as judges under the Raj of indiscriminate trust in our enemies. It decades before the American republic ap- had no patience for the kind of careful eth- pointed African-American ones. ical analysis that formation in the intellec- Without bracing contact with empirical tual virtues of analytic moral philosophy and historical reality, abstract concepts too would have imparted. That is now a major easily become the vehicles of fashionable weakness. prejudice. further vice that infects Christian variation on this problem can be ethics today is the habit of trying A found in the writing of Hauerwas to grasp the world through abstractions, A himself. In one of his most mature works, which, preserved from interrogation by the for example, he sets the ‘church’ over and world’s angular realities, function as sub- against the ‘world’, and proceeds to de- VWLWXWHV IRU ORRNLQJ DQG FULWLFDO UHÀHFWLRQ scribe the latter in terms of broad-brush For example, I’ve noticed that some young abstractions, all of them pejorative: Christian ethicists now emerging from U.S. ‘Constantinianism’, ‘liberalism’, ‘moderni- universities are much impressed by the re- ty’, ‘democracy’, and ‘technocracy’.6 Let’s publican philosophy of Philip Pettit, and are take just one of these: ‘liberalism’. As I have therefore wont to assume that domination complained elsewhere, Hauerwas’s engage- is an intrinsically bad thing. In one sense, ment with political liberalism is ad hoc, un- since Pettit stipulates that ‘domination’ derdeveloped, and indiscriminate.7 Liberal means arbitrary rule and enslavement, they political thought is not all of a single kind. can’t be faulted, for it is indeed wicked by Indeed, some of it is not merely compatible GH¿QLWLRQ²OLNHµWRUWXUH¶RUµUDSH¶ with Christian belief but actually required The problem arises, however, when by it. Hauerwas doesn’t actually deny this, Pettit’s disciples proceed to assume that but he ignores it nonetheless.8 He contin- anything in the real world that involves ues to essentialise liberalism (negatively) hierarchy or coercion—that is, one person as he continues to essentialise the world dominating another—is necessarily an in- (negatively). stance of ‘domination’ as stipulated and At one point Hauerwas objects that therefore immoral. If one comes to this line ‘Constantinianism’ holds that the validity of thinking, as I do, from intensive study of the church or Jesus Christ or the New of the ethics and history of both war and Testament “is to be judged by standards the British empire, then it seems obviously derived from the world”.9 To which I say, wrongheaded.

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