A discussion of the relations of religion and morality often becomes clouded simply by the fact that terms involved evoke different historical and contemporary responses from the parties engaged. The term ethics, for example, in the context of both Catholic and non-Catholic philosophy sometimes by definition rules out the possibility of "Christian ethics", on the grounds that ethics cannot have any private grounding which isolates any sphere of it from rational judgment and justification. To denominate ethics as "Christian" seems to bring it under the authority of "revelation", which is virtually by definition ultimately not subject to full rationalization. This, of course, would simply move the discussion to revelation, what it means, and how it is used. The term "Christian ethics" has been largely used in Protestant discourse, and has included theological developments as they pertain to morality, Biblical studies as they pertain to ethics, practical guidelines for moral action of Christians, and many other things. It has never functioned ecclesiastically. "Theological ethics" sometimes has been a special field within the broader Christian ethics; the latter might include "social ethics" (which is many things to many men, but always includes Christian thinking about the morality of social life, including state and other institutions), whereas the former focuses on the theological ideas and their implications for ethics. (In Catholic discourse a distinction is made between ethics as a philosophical discipline based upon reason and moral theology, based upon faith. In this terminology "Christian ethics" would be the philosophical discipline as set in the context of the Christian sense of human dignity and purpose.)

As we shall see, the discussion is sometimes further clouded by lack of consensus on what is included and excluded in the use of the term ethics. For some it has a highly restrictive use; it might be the logical analysis of imperative statements. For others it can be generously speculative, and permit within its scope developments of highly generalized principles about the moral order of the universe. For some it includes the questions of philosophical anthropology; for others these are ruled out as matters of psychology.

I shall attempt to get at some of the questions of the relations of religion and morality by proceeding to answer this question: in what senses might there be a Christian ethics? I shall attempt to alert the reader to the points at which others might for various reasons object to the answer I have given.

CHRISTIAN JUSTIFICATIONS FOR MORALITY

There is a Christian ethics in the sense that there are particular religious justifications for morality, and for persons being moral, which are part of the Christian faith. If one moves from the first orders of moral discourse, in which the agents and the observers are giving reasons for their intentions and actions, to other levels or discourse in which they are giving reasons for their reasons, one is likely to find Christians giving theological reasons for their ethical reasons and ultimately for their actions. There are stages in ethical discussions at which all justifications tend to become somewhat circular; if the reasons given for morality is that it contributes to the happiness and well-being of man, and the question is asked why one ought to be concerned for the happiness and well-being of man, the answer is likely to be simply an assertion, or to be circular in its argumentation. One reaches such stages in ethical discourse within the arena of religious faith and life as well. The religious man might answer that he is concerned for the happiness and wellbeing of man out of gratitude to God the giver of life and well-being to all creation. Or he might answer that God has created man so that it is man's nature to be fulfilled in his being, and that in pursuing actions which bring human welfare he is acting in accord with nature as God created it. There are other ways in which Christians might answer questions at such a level.

In Protestant ethics the relationship between religious reasons and moral actions has sometimes become so intimate that an act is not morally good unless it is done for the right religious reasons. Thus the man who is not "in faith", cannot do anything which is morally good; the questions of faith and ethics are collapsed into each other in such a way that the question of ethics becomes the question of faith. There are passages in Luther and in Barth which are susceptible to this interpretation--to indicate the persistence of this possibility historically in Protestant theology. One need not collapse ethics into religion and faith as fully and immediately as such statements do in order to make the point that there are distinctively religious (Christian) justifications for morality. One is only indicating that at certain levels of justification Christians are likely to give an answer that is not persuasive to those who do not share the religious faith that they hold.

Objections can be raised to this point. One might be that ethics is one thing, and its justifications are another. One might have all sorts of metaphysical justifications for morality, and Christian religion could provide one of them. But these do not intrinsically affect the ethics itself. There one would find those justifications upon which rational men could agree, and these would not range into the more speculative questions of theology and metaphysics, or if they do it must be "natural" theology. It might also be asserted that differences in the metaphysical justifications

for morality make no positive differences in moral acts themselves; whether a man attends to the needs of his neighbor because Christ met his deepest needs or whether he meets them to seek the greatest good of the greatest number, makes no difference in the moral action. There are moral principles agreed upon, but which each party adheres to for different reasons; these principles constitute the proper realm of ethics.

The issues developing from this objection are two. One is whether the discipline of ethics includes the justifications of morality. This is a point open to discussion, but the judgment made will have some degree of arbitrariness no matter where the line is drawn. If the justifications of the normative ethics are permitted to range to a level of generalization which might involve what appears to be speculation, another point of query would be whether religious "evidences" or arguments are too private to be permitted in the discussion. One need not reach this stage swiftly; the Christian might give reasons with which others might agree, that a certain action is right or its consequences good, before he justifies them at another level as God's will.

The second issue is whether the justifications given for morality in any way affect the moral action. Does it make any difference to what one does if he does it in obedience to God, or out of gratitude for God's love, and whether he does it because it is ultimately to his own interest to do it, or because it contributes to the general welfare? What kinds of difference might it make? We shall return to these questions subsequently.

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE MORAL SELF

The first point I have made could be developed under the heading "theology and ethics", that is, it would deal with theological ideas as justifications for ethics. The point I now wish to make is more properly one of "religion" and morality. Thus: There is a Christian ethics in the sense that participation in the faith and life of the Christian religious community is in part formative of the kind of persons men become, the kind of perspective they have on life, the kind of dispositions they have toward others, the kind of affections which in part determine their responses, the kind of character that they have. The religious belief, for example, that the ultimate power wills man's well-being does not merely provide a kind of ultimate ideational justification for morality; for the person who trusts in that ultimate power as understood in that belief, it provides a basic posture or orientation toward the world and toward other persons. The internalization of such a belief so that it becomes part of one's "second nature", sets one's moral actions in a general, but specifiable moral course. It provides

a fundamental directionality to the agent. It predisposes him to seek the

good rather than the evil, to seek the well-being of the neighbor rather than his own good (as it is informed, e.g., by the meaning of sacrificial love).

The assumptions that are involved in speaking of a Christian ethics in this regard are many. It assumes, for one, that the moral actions of persons are in part determined by the persistencies and identities that they have. There are certain generalizations one makes about persons, based on inferences drawn from expressions and actions one has observed, which lead to the possibility of some degree of predictability in their actions. Perhaps it was these persistencies and identities that the notion of habitus sought to account for in classical Christian thought about ethics. The terms which can be used to talk about these persistencies are often unclear and ambiguous, but the ethicist accepts them as part of the data about which he reflects.

It assumes, secondly, that religious beliefs and practices, and that moral intentions and actions informed and governed in part by religious beliefs, have consequences for the kind of person one becomes. Indeed, the point could be made from a theological frame of reference in the following way: whatever God's grace does for human action uses as mediating causes their dispositions, affections, character, etc. Catholics will not be taken aback by such an assumption; some radical Protestant theology tends to denigrate it as the imposition of a position of philosophical or psychological anthropology which presumes to limit how God can work.

To handle the many queries that can be raised by this second general point about the sense in which one can speak of a Christian ethics would involve a book-length undertaking. There are important philosophical queries: it opts for a position within the determinism-libertarianism spectrum on the question of the freedom of the "will" which appears to be a soft-determinism. Such a position, that moral actions of Christians are in some sense "caused" by the kinds of persons which, in part, their religious faith has shaped them to become, opens the thorny problems of motivation, the conditioning of actions, etc. There are queries of how one can more precisely speak of the influences that might be exerted from, for example, the experience of adoration and worship of God upon the orientation of perspective that the self has toward the world.

There is also the question of whether matters such as this belong properly within ethical inquiry. If they are part of what some contemporary philosophers call "moral psychology", is that a legitimate part of the ethical inquiry? Obviously, I have judged that it is.

Just what is it about persons that affects their moral intentions and actions? When one uses words like character, virtue, disposition, affection, etc., to what is one referring? Or, if one chooses to make this second general point by saying that there are Christian "motives" for acting, how is that term to be used precisely and meaningfully?

These and many more issues require exploration to substantiate the contention that there is a Christian ethics in the sense that participation in the faith and life of the Christian community accents the kind of moral person one becomes.

CHRISTIAN NORMS FOR PARTICULAR ACTIONS

There is Christian ethics in the sense that there are positive moral norms, values, and rules of life sanctioned by the faith and the tradition which are applicable on certain occasions to particular acts. The limits of this assertion must be made clear. It is not asserted that on each occasion of moral action the tradition or insight into God's will provides unique or even distinctive norms, values and rules of action. On most occasions Christians appeal to norms and rules which other persons appeal to as well. Even if the Christian might give a different (a religious) justification for them, at the level of discourse at which conduct is determined in particular circumstances, on the whole, he has no distinctive norms or rules. And, on the whole, the Christian will proceed to justify his actions with reference to principles and rules which he shares in most instances with other persons.

What is being asserted is that to belong to a particular community, in this case a Christian religious one, is to participate in its ethos, to be governed by its mores. This more general aspect of special Christian morality suggests that within that community one is likely to use its own language, its own justifications, its own accented ways of acting. There seem to be certain principles of conduct which not only historically adhere to the Christian community, but which are consistent with it religious beliefs. Again, to avoid misconstrual of what is being stated, it is not proper to infer from this that all actions of different members of this community are similar to each other, nor that the actions of members of this community can be readily distinguished on all occasions from the actions of members of other moral communities. Nor ought one to infer that the reason why there might be distinctive positive morality among Christians on some occasions is merely because they are subservient to a powerful institution which claims authority in matters of morals. The possibility of distinctively Christian positive morality is as great among sectarian groups with little institutionalization of authority as it is of the Catholic Church.

What the statement of a Christian ethic in this sense is saying is that on occasions the Christian might act in a way which he judges to be morally justifiable for him, but which he would not expect others to do (he would not apply the principle of universalizability), and in a way which others would not justify on the basis of other principles than theological ones. For example, he might on occasion deem a commandment to be morally right because God commanded it. There are a number of occasions on which he might judge the ultimate sanction for its rightness to be this, but be ready to give other ethical reasons in support of it (which is to say that God commanded it because it was right). I would contend however, that on certain occasions the only justification would be a particular religious one, and the way in which the religiously justified command is stated might require a particular moral judgment in particular circumstances. One can cite, for example, passages from Leviticus in which certain things are to be done because God is the Lord and he has commanded them; independent moral reasons are not given. Or in Christian ethics it is conceivable that the confessional Christian pacifist would claim that pacifism, with the restrictions of activities that it implies, is a special moral obligation he has by virtue of his faith in, and obedience to, Jesus Christ. He would not expect others to adopt the same principle because others do not have the same faith and object of obedience. He is likely to argue with other Christians that they ought to adopt it, since he would defend its normativeness as an inference drawn from the religious belief which they share. He might however, not even do that; he might claim only that his conscience is bound by his loyalty and his understanding of Christ.

The difficulties here bristle in conversations with philosophical ethicists. One might, for example, argue that if a principle has that private a justification, and if the connections between a religious belief and a particular command are that close, the person has a religious, and not a moral principle, and his obligation is a religious and not a moral one. This opens the large question of the degree of autonomy of these two areas, and the ways in which they are or can be related to each other. I believe, however, that one's decision about the question of the degree of autonomy will determine whether the possibility I have developed in this section is warranted. Without defense of it in this presentation, I would suggest that most theological affirmations include moral values or moral imperatives, or that if they do not, one can infer that certain moral values and imperatives are consistent with certain theological affirmations. With reference to this section, there might be theological affirmations which determine in a strong sense that certain imperatives follow for the adherent to the religious belief. And, it must be added, for the exceptional case only the religious belief provides the authorization for the moral imperative. It is a moral imperative for several reasons--it involves a judgment of what is right conduct, it involves consequences which pertain to human well-being, and one's obedience to it involves one's personal integrity.

These brief, and in many respects cryptic remarks, represent the distillation of more elaborate work. I hope they do provide evidence that to ask the question, "Is there a distinctive Christian ethics?" is a productive way to explore the larger question, namely, the relations of religion and morality.

Yale University,

New Haven, Connecticut