ETHICS AND RELIGION

In discussing the relation between ethics and religion, the terminological problem is acute. Both words are used in many ways, and it would be idle to deny the legitimacy of most of them. Yet the very nature of the questions raised varies with the uses.

Both terms can be somewhat illumined when viewed on a continuum from their narrowest to their most inclusive meanings. At the latter end of the continuum they virtually merge. Here, both ethics and religion refer to the totality of a style of life, a basic orientation, or a stance toward the world. At the extreme limit there may be an "ethics" which has no interest in norms and a "religion" unconcerned with the sacred. Yet to most ears this sounds paradoxical, and this fact suggests that it is difficult to dissociate the words entirely from their more restricted meanings.

In recent years the discussion of religion by Christian theologians has tended to stress the narrow use of the term, associating it especially with cult and the sacred. This has made it possible to bring to clearer consciousness the question of the relation of Christianity to religiousness. Is Christianity one expression of a universal religiousness, or is it a secularizing force? Since religion in the narrow sense is most fully and obviously embodied in the ancient mythical life and mentality, Christianity must be understood as at least in part a secularizing force. But Judaism, Buddhism, philosophical Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Confucianism, at least in their inception, have also been secularizing forces. This can lead to the extreme but intelligible statement that what are called the great religions of mankind are essentially non-religious! Since it is better to avoid the possibility of this paradoxical formulation, the need of a term other than religion to denominate these great movements has been recognized, and the term faith has come into use. However, the distinctively Christian connotations of "faith" create their own problems. The term Way, which is indigenous to most of these traditions, is more neutral, and it will be used in this paper to refer to that total style of life, basic orientation, or stance toward the world (together with the accompanying beliefs and practices) which has so often been called religion. Religious and secular Ways can then be distinguished without terminological confusion.

Even so, it would be odd to declare the great traditional Ways non-religious. These Ways may have been secularizing forces in relation to the ancient mythical mentality, but it is they that have largely shaped our understanding of the religious. Instead of understanding the religious simply in terms of the mythical mentality, we should consider what elements in postmythical existence are spontaneously deemed religious. Four factors come to mind: first, cultic observance whether public or private; second, the sense of the holy or sacred which is reflected in the sense of ultimacy or absoluteness; third, concern for that which is not accessible to sense experience God, demons, or the human soul, its feelings, images, and motivations; and fourth, the quest for salvation or wholeness.¹ All four factors played major roles in mythical life, and though the founders of the great Ways of mankind were critical of them in various respects, none advocated total secularization. Hence, all the traditional Ways of mankind have been religious to greater or lesser degrees.

The role of the religious in each Way can and should be examined without any a priori judgment as to how great or how small that role should be. New Ways are arising in our own time, some of which, while not wholly devoid of religious elements, attempt to place the emphasis exclusively on the secular. The most fully secular Way would be one in which no interest is felt in worship, all values and meanings appear relative, there is no concern for what is not accessible to sense experience, and individual ills are dealt with without reference to an overall ideal of wholeness or salvation.

Just as a narrow use of the term religion makes possible consideration of the role of the religious in the great Ways of mankind, as well as the possibility of a secular Way, so also a narrow use of the term ethics would facilitate a discussion of the role of the ethical in the several Ways. Here too four factors can be identified whose presence leads us to speak of ethics: first, a focus on overt behavior; second, consideration of such behavior in terms of principles applicable to life broadly rather than to restricted areas;² third, attention to the normative rather than to the descriptive, i.e., what should be done rather than what is in fact done or will probably be done; and fourth, viewing what should be done as "unconditioned" in the sense that it is not determined by particular purposes which one is free to entertain or not as he pleases.³

All four factors are involved in mythical existence just as are all the factors constituting the religious. Indeed, in this mode of existence the ethical and the religious are inseparable and even indistinguishable. The criticism of myth and taboo in the rise of the great Ways created the possibility of the distinction and made possible the question of their mutual relations. In this paper "ethics" will refer to the shape received by these factors in post-mythical life and thought, rather than to their undifferentiated role in mythical existence.

The distinction between ethics and religion is clearest when they appear in tension or opposition. A Hebrew prophet could use ethical criteria in attacking cultic practices, and a modern Christian ethicist can condemn pietistic preoccupation with the inner life as a flight from social responsibility. On the other hand a Hindu may see the ethical life of the householder as of little value in comparison with the religious quest for release or salvation, and a Christian theologian may see preoccupation with ethical behavior as an obstacle to that openness toward God in which alone salvation is achieved.

However, in the great traditional Ways, ethics and religion on the whole have been much more positively related. Religious beliefs and practices have sanctioned ethical norms, and ethical teaching has included the recommendation of religious practices. Ethical action has been regarded as essential to the quest for salvation, and religious motivation has been deemed requisite for ethical action.

Enough has now been said to indicate both that the ethical and the religious elements of life are different and that they are interrelated in diverse and complex ways. The remainder of this paper will be devoted to a discussion of these interrelations. The primary focus, as in these volumes as a whole, is on ethics rather than on religion. The following sections will: (a) analyze the ethical into its elements, (b) treat the unique and autonomous element in the ethical, (c) show how the place of ethics in life depends on extra-ethical decisions, and (d) discuss the place assigned the ethical in the Christian Way.

ELEMENTS OF THE ETHICAL

Above, we have simply delineated the aspect of life to which the term ethical is appropriately applied. In this section the judgments that are made in the ethical sphere will be analyzed to determine how they are supported. This will make it possible to discriminate the several ways in which the ethical has its own independent existence in terms of which it can criticize and influence religion.

The distinguishing characteristic of the ethical is that a particular mode of action is held to be required independently of particular purposes or desires. At this level honest disagreement among persons is not only possible but frequent. One person may believe that prior to marriage both man and woman should remain virgin. Another may be equally convinced that free expression of sexual desires is preferable. One person may believe that race should not be considered a relevant factor in the distribution of economic and political opportunity in South Africa. Another may be equally convinced that white dominance should be maintained. All such judgments belong to the sphere of the ethical, but in most instances their proponents recognize responsibility to support them. Such support usually consists chiefly in marshalling facts, making predictions, and appealing to authorities. It must always appeal as well to some more general principle, although this is not always--perhaps not even usually--expressed.

Proponents of pre-marital chastity might argue that the purpose of sexual intercourse is procreation and that marriage provides the only proper context for raising children. They would be appealing to the general principle that only what is according to nature (teleologically understood) is right. Their opponents might argue that there is more enjoyment and personal fulfillment where desires are freely satisfied. They would be appealing to a hedonist or utilitarian principle that only what maximizes happiness is right. It would also be possible, of course, that both parties to the dispute would appeal to the same principle. The proponent of pre-marital chastity might argue that in the long run greater pleasure and satisfaction are thereby achieved, or the proponent of free love before marriage might argue that nature intends the fullest expression of those drives it incorporates in men.

It might also be that both would agree that probable consequences are decisive and further agree as to what these are likely to be. They might agree, for example, that the general practice of free love before marriage would increase the total amount of physical and emotional pleasure in the world but decrease the overall strength of ego, self-transcendence, and intensity of consciousness. Yet both parties could regard these predictions as justifying their ethical conviction, if one regarded psycho-physical pleasure, the other, the development of the "higher" human faculties, as the greater value.

Similarly, in the debate about economic justice in South Africa, both might agree that negative social and economic consequences would follow from rapid moves toward equality. One might argue that such moves are nevertheless demanded because of the intrinsic rightness of justice, while the other, who views the maximization of enjoyment as the essential consideration, would regard the maintenance of white power as ethically requisite. Or both might accept a utilitarian principle and debate probable consequences of a redistribution of economic opportunity. In such a debate one might regard the sense that justice was being done as an important positive factor influencing the evaluation of the anticipated consequences, while the other might believe that people receive little or no satisfaction from the sense that justice in general is done, being interested only in their own economic advantages.

It is also possible that while both might agree on the primary importance of consequences, the kinds of consequences likely to follow, and the basis for evaluating those consequences, they still might draw opposite conclusions. They might agree that the results of surrendering power on the part of the whites would include an increase of happiness in the black majority and a decrease of happiness in the white minority. One side, following the utilitarian calculus, would then judge that the surrender of power is ethically required. The other, concerned only for the whites and seeing no reason to concern themselves with the fate of the blacks, would be confirmed in the view that the status quo should be preserved.

The debate could move in quite different channels if both sides appealed to the principle of justice as ethically decisive. They might agree that justice entails giving each person his or her due, and then judge differently as to what constitutes deservingness of opportunity. One side might see humanness as such as the one crucial factor, whereas the other might view past achievement in the economic and political spheres as decisive in the measurement of what is due.

The possible lines of debate in either of these instances could be further elaborated, but five types of factors involved in ethical judgments have already appeared, and most additional considerations could be classified under these headings with little distortion. These factors are: first, judgments about present facts and about the probable factual consequences of alternative courses of action; second, judgments of the relative value of different types of situations; third, judgments as to the scope of consequences that are ethically relevant; fourth, judgments as to the factors relevant to estimation of worth or desert; fifth, formal principles. We will now treat these factors in order, considering especially the role of the religious at each point.

1) Factual judgments, although essential for concrete ethical decisions, are not ethical in themselves. The judgment that a person is hungry, for example, may be made on grounds that have nothing to do with ethics and in a context in which it has no ethical consequences. An SS doctor might have made such a judgment about the inmate of a concentration camp in a quite neutral way. Nevertheless, such facts are of immense importance for ethical judgments. If I believe that I ought to feed the hungry, this general ethical view can have no concrete application until I judge that a particular person is hungry and that a particular course of action on my part will tend to relieve that hunger.

In our complicated society those who agree generally on all other factors relevant to ethical judgment find great difficulty in agreeing on concrete actions because of disagreements that I am here calling factual. For example, agreement that we should seek a society that offers equal opportunity for all leaves open immense areas of disagreement as to what kinds of actions on the part of individuals, groups, and governments will promote this end. Psychological, sociological, economic, and political theories are all relevant to the determination of what the facts now are and what the probable factual consequences of alternative actions will be.

Religious people tend, more than most current theories, to stress the importance of certain of the facts such as those about the unpredictability of history, the freedom of the individual, and the presence and potency of religious beliefs and practices. They may also believe that there are certain relevant facts that are ignored by others. For example, those who believe that the spirits of the dead may work injury on the living if their bones are disturbed will introduce this factor into their estimate of the consequences of erecting a building on the site of an ancient cemetery. Nevertheless, for the most part (at least today), religion plays a minor role in the direct determination of what is judged factual. Its chief relevance in shaping factual judgments is in its usually unrecognized influence on the psychological, sociological, economic, and political theories that play so decisive a role in predictions of consequences.

2) Judgments of Relative Value. Although widespread agreement as to general goals is often possible in confrontation with massive evil, differences of ideals or values remain real and important. An earlier example mentioned a possible difference between prizing pleasure and prizing higher levels of consciousness. Today, some prophets call us toward an ideal of overcoming all sense of duality between subject and object, all separateness between self and other. Others prize individuality, self-consciousness, privacy, and independence. Again there are some for whom the all-important consideration is the widest dispersion of economic well-being, while others regard this as a secondary consideration--valuable, if at all, only for its contribution to self-respect and participation in aesthetic enjoyment, emotional security, and personal creativity. Clearly in some instances such opposite evaluations of what is desirable will lead to diverging conclusions on concrete ethical decisions.

The role of religion in shaping valuations of this sort hardly needs mention. Secular valuations are possible, but most valuations are deeply rooted in the religious dimension of life. Indeed, insofar as there are genuinely ultimate valuations at work, they are religious.⁴ Almost by definition all determinative valuations are functions of some Way.

3) Judgments of Consequences. In our day humanism has sufficient official dominance to render rare the public admission that one does not include all human beings in the scope of consequences to be considered. Yet this situation is by no means to be taken for granted, and indeed there are boundary areas requiring constant theoretical reconsideration. Furthermore, vast numbers of people who give lip-service to this principle do not base their actual ethical judgments upon it.

For example, ethical judgments about the prosecution of a war rarely regard consequences to the "enemy" as having the same claim on consideration as consequences for our troops. Some may justify this selectivity on the ground that our military victory was in the best interest of all concerned, or at least of the majority. But if one points out that a statistical calculation of how many would benefit by our defeat or victory leads to no such clear cut conclusion, many defenders of military involvement might declare that their own national interest is their paramount ethical concern. This would justify the infliction of extreme disvalues, even on much larger populations, elsewhere.

That such reasoning is near the surface even in generally humanistic circles indicates that the question of the scope of consequences to be considered is a very serious one. Through most of history this scope has generally been restricted to an in-group. The frank espousal of such limits by the Nazis leading to the slaughter of Jews indicates how serious are the consequences for action that are entailed. There is also a continuing tendency for revolutionary groups devoted to humanistic goals to become contemptuous of those who oppose them and indifferent to the suffering their revolutionary activities inflict upon the defenders of the status quo.

Religion has an important influence on the scope of the consequences to be considered in ethical decisions, but for the most part this is mediated through the totality of the Way that includes both religious and ethical elements. These Ways constitute their own in-groups, tending to provide ultimate sanctions for concern for believers and relative indifference toward the fate of others. At the same time, all the great traditional Ways inculcate a concern for human beings as such, thus tending to overcome the indifference to the out-group. If we recognize that the in-group/out-group distinction is natural to human beings, then we must give credit to the great Ways for most of the influence universalistic humanism has in fact attained in ethical decisions.

The specific contribution of the religious to this movement toward universalization lies in its stress upon the unseen aspects of human beings. When the inner life is considered to be of chief importance, then in favor of a more basic unity, it becomes possible (although not inevitable) to depreciate the outward differences that alienate people from one another. It becomes possible also to affirm an intrinsic importance of human beings as such, which outward appearances do not justify.

A slightly different type of question can be subjoined to this one. One may consider consequences not so much for individuals as for groups. That is, the welfare of a family, tribe, city-state, nation, race, or religious community may be considered in itself independently of calculations of consequences for the individuals who comprise it. Such views are also bound up with religious attitudes and are functions of one Way or another. On the whole, though with many exceptions, the great traditional Ways have tended to oppose these recurring tendencies.

4) Judgments of Relevant Factors. Agreement as to the scope of consideration does not determine the factors regarded as relevant. For example, if we value very highly a just society, we will desire that political and economic power be fairly distributed. But fairness cannot automatically be taken to mean that every individual must receive exactly the same rights as every other individual. Some consideration must be given to age, sex, intelligence, education, experience, moral character, and so forth. One may decide to ignore most of these factors (it would be hard to ignore age altogether), but one cannot regard this as self-evidently just in all cases. It is not self-evidently just that the children of an adult who works hard and effectively have no economic advantages in relation to those of a shiftless cheat. Even consideration of ancestry and race cannot be ruled out without examination. Today, for example, some believe that in the interest of justice American society should discriminate in favor of blacks because of past injustices to them and to their ancestors. The issues raised here are complex and difficult. For example, to what extent is a person to be understood in terms of family and racial solidarity rather than simply as an individual? In this whole sphere, basic valuations and beliefs, often religious in character and almost necessarily bound up with a total Way, determine the degree of relevance assigned to the several factors.

5) Formal Principles. That all of these factors are involved in concrete ethical decisions explains the tendency of ethics to define itself in an extremely inclusive way. Those who propose to give guidance in such decisions must concern themselves with all the disciplines that throw light on the human situation, especially the behavioral sciences. They must develop and justify a system of values. They must have an understanding of human beings that provides a grounding for their position as to the scope of the consequences that are to be considered. And they must reflect on the aspects of the human condition that have graded relevance to the question of desert. They will also inevitably concern themselves with the causes of ethical actions, including their motivations--a topic thus far avoided in this paper. Thus ethics becomes virtually identical with total life orientation.

The foregoing analysis, however, is designed to show that although ethicists are concerned with many topics, these are not all distinctively ethical. They must study sociology and economics, but these disciplines are not thereby reduced to branches of ethics. They must investigate value theory, but value theory is no more bound to ethics than to aesthetics, logic, or psychology. Similarly, they must study the great Ways of humankind, recognizing their dependence upon them and specifically upon the religious element within them, but the history of religions and cultures as such is not ethics.

The one point at which ethicists have a distinctively ethical subject matter is in respect to ethical principles. Without the application of some principle, no assemblage of positions on the preceding four points can generate any ethical decision. Wherever any statement is made as to what should be done, an ethical principle is implicitly invoked, whether or not the speaker knows this or could articulate it if asked. Ethicists can and should point out this factor which is so widely present in ordinary (and extraordinary) deliberations, and they should raise it to consciousness. But their task goes beyond this. It is their role to evaluate critically the principles to which appeal is made, with a view to determining their relation to one another and their relative validity. Ideally, he could then bring ethical principles to bear on concrete decisions in such a way as to strengthen their effectiveness and reduce confusion. They should, of course, never suppose that the right decision could be determined from the side of the ethical principle alone.

ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND MORAL RULES

In examples given in the preceding section a variety of possible ethical principles were mentioned, but not discussed. Rather, the other factors that are involved in concrete ethical decisions were analyzed. A more systematic approach would have begun with ethical principles, since the adoption of certain ethical principles would have excluded some of these factors from relevance. For example, a rigorous self-interest theory of ethics would render much of this discussion irrelevant, as would, in quite a different way, a strict Kantianism. This section will sketch the theory of ethical principles implicit in the preceding section. To begin let us consider four examples of imperatives that are often taken as ultimate ethical principles.⁵

1. Obey God.

2. So act as to achieve your own happiness.

3. Maximize pleasure and minimize pain among all men.

4. So act that you can will that the maxim according to which you act be a universal law.

Of these the first is in a class by itself. It needs to be considered because of the obvious way in which it subordinates ethics to religion. In the arguments treated in the preceding section, one side might have directly appealed to the will of God as sufficient justification for their position, but as an autonomous ethical principle this is problematic in two ways.

First, the content of God's will is usually supposed to conform to "the right" in such a way that one can really decide what is God's will only by deciding independently what is ethically right. In this case, the fact that God wills the right may instill a motivation of love or fear, but it does not provide a distinct ethical principle.

Second, when this is not the case, and otherwise unjustified types of action are declared to be required by divine command, one may still ask whether one ought to obey. Perhaps it would be ethically right to disobey God! If the answer is that one must obey God on pain of punishment, then the principle of prudence is treated as ultimate. If it is asserted that we owe obedience to God out of gratitude for God's creation of us or because God's intrinsic excellence deserves our devotion, then the ultimate appeal is to what is fitting or appropriate. This in no way militates against the rightness, or importance, of obedience to God, but the ethical requirement that we obey God follows from the combination of an autonomous ethical principle with beliefs about God. Thus either the content of obedience to God is determined by some other principle, or the rightness of such obedience requires justification by such a principle. This means that belief in God does not remove the need for identifying an ultimate ethical principle that can be formulated without reference to God.⁶

The other three principles present themselves as candidates for this role. In conjunction with the relevant factors considered in the preceding section, they generate all kinds of concrete ethical decisions by which people govern their lives. They are also clearly different from each other and capable of leading to diverse practical judgments. Determining their relative merits is not a merely academic exercise.

How can this be done? To whatever extent each is an ultimate principle, it can be employed as a basis for criticizing the others. But is there any way of judging them that does not itself presuppose an unproven alternative principle?

The question here is whether an ethical principle can be established by any kind of factual judgment whatever. If not, then ultimate ethical principles can give no reason why they should be accepted. There could in principle be no adjudication among them.

This question must be sharply distinguished from that of how factual judgments are seen as determinative of ethical judgment within the context established by an ethical principle. If one is convinced of the ethical principle that one ought to maximize values (and if the values realized are clear), then factual information about the probable consequences of two courses of action determines which action is ethically right. But if one is asking whether this is the correct ethical principle, one cannot justify its adoption by appealing to its beneficial consequences.

Furthermore, the meaning of an ethical principle is not identical with that of any factual judgment, even if factual judgments include judgments of value. The assertion that people ought to pursue their happiness is not identical with the statement that they do so or with the statement that happiness is the supreme value. It is intelligible to ask whether people ought always to pursue what they do pursue or to seek their supreme value.

Nevertheless, there may be a relation between factual judgments and ethical principles such that the acceptance of certain factual judgments uniquely and decisively warrants certain ethical principles. These factual judgments cannot be about the world in which action is carried out, since the different principles judge differently as to the ethical relevance of that world. They should be sought instead in the sphere of distinctively ethical experience.⁷

The factual judgment that I regard a mode of action as right has an important relationship to my entertainment of the principle that declares its rightness. Yet the factual judgment does not by itself warrant the ethical principle. I know that I may be wrong. What does the recognition of the possibility of error with respect to my ultimate ethical principle entail? It will be best to explain by examples.

Suppose it to be factually true that I believe that I ought always to act according to nature. Suppose then that someone challenges me to explain this principle and I find I cannot do so, or can do so only by reference to notions of nature which on reflection I am not prepared to support. It turns out, then, that I was wrong in holding this to be an ultimate principle. Or suppose it to be factually true that I believe that I ought always to sacrifice my interests to others. Suppose then that through the suffering resulting from my partial obedience, and larger disobedience, to this principle, I come to ask myself why I hold it. If I discover that it was pounded into me as a child, and that there is no reason for holding it other than this conditioning, I then judge that the principle was in error. Contrariwise, if reflection and experience strengthen the hold of such principles over me, I tend to judge them to be correct. If I am convinced that wider experience, deeper insight, or further reflection will indefinitely support or strengthen my belief in an ethical principle, I view that principle as valid. Hence the factual judgment that wider experience, deeper insight, and further reflection will sustain and strengthen belief in an ethical principle warrants the ethical principle.

This mode of warranting ethical principles does not allow for any final or universal adjudication among them. Each person must judge for herself or himself. Yet it may be that this will not lead to extreme relativism. It may be rather that when the question is clearly raised, and the many confusions that attend the establishment of ethical principles are dissipated, an impressive consensus can be achieved.

Viewed in this perspective the proposed principle, "So act as to achieve your own happiness," proves inadequate. I find that I can at least conceive of having genuine concern for others as well as for myself. Where that concern exists, I do not find that reflection leads me to believe that I ought to suppress action that expresses it. On the contrary, I find that my ethical judgment approves the extension of the concern and encourages action in accordance with it, even when the concern is weak or absent.

If it is argued that action in accordance with this concern conduces to my happiness and hence is in accord with the principle, this is still unsatisfactory. I do not find that the attempt to help others find happiness is ethically right only because it conduces to my own happiness. There seem to be instances in which I ethically approve the sacrifice of my own happiness for the sake of the realization of another's. If my happiness is so defined as to render this impossible, as when my true happiness is identified with virtue in such a way that even the sacrifice of my life for the sake of another is seen as a mode of self-realization, then the original principle loses all its specificity and distinctiveness as an ethic of self-interest, and a different formulation is needed.

This criticism of a principle of self-interest indicates that my ethical experience is more adequately expressed by the utilitarian formula: maximize pleasure and minimize pain among all people. However, this has two major weaknesses. First, like the principle just rejected, it presupposes questionable judgments in the second, third, and fourth of the relevant aspects of ethics discussed in the preceding section. It judges pleasure the only value, the proper scope of consideration to be all human beings and nothing else, and the status of being human to be the only relevant factor in the distribution of goods. One may or may not agree, but clearly a principle which has such assumptions is not an autonomous one. However, this criticism could imply that the formula must be modified in a way which, while drastic, would not alter its teleological character, which is its most important difference from the fourth principle. The revised principle could be something like: So act as to maximize value for whomever and whatever you consider it appropriate that value be maximized. Such a formula would allow both the self-interest and the utilitarian positions as extreme cases.

The still more basic question about any teleological approach is whether in fact only anticipated consequences are relevant to judging the rightness of an act. A teleologist must judge that this is the case. The justification for usually telling the truth is that the consequences are usually better; but in any given instance should one judge that the consequences of lying are preferable (however slightly) one is not only permitted to lie, but ethically bound to do so. The same applies to murder, theft, rape, and the like. This does not mean, of course, that utilitarianism encourages such practices. They would stress how rarely they would lead to preferable consequences. Nevertheless, the judgment in each case depends entirely on one's anticipation of consequences. I find that my own judgment is very largely influenced by anticipated consequences, but I also find that the rightness of an act seems to have another referent as well. If I have promised to perform an act, I consider that the keeping of this promise has some intrinsic rightness independent of anticipated consequences, and this view seems to be sustained and strengthened by critical reflection.

This leads directly to consideration of Kant's famous categorical imperative. It is designed to express precisely this fact--that there is a rightness in an act independent of consequences. This rightness can be brought to light by formulating the maxim of which the particular action is an application. If one can will that everyone always abide by this maxim, the action is right. Otherwise, one is making an exception in one's own favor.

In its more general formulations Kant's statement is admirable. Unfortunately his own interpretation of his profound insight was such that few find it an accurate account of their ethical experience. Kant made two errors. He formulated his maxims in too general a way, and he minimized the role of consequences in testing their susceptibility to universalization.⁸ Neither mistake is required by his fundamental insight, which can be so interpreted as to constitute a needed correction of teleological ethics rather than its total rejection.

If I contemplate telling a lie, the teleologist tells me to consider only the probable consequences and to act so as to maximize values. Kant tells me to contemplate a universal law that all men should lie whenever it suits them. Both are unsatisfactory. What I need to do is to consider the consequences in the way the teleologist recommends, and then to ask the Kantian question. What would be the result if, whenever the anticipated consequences were balanced in just this way, men were to tell lies of just this seriousness? Surely I could then recognize the rightness of lying to a murderer to save a friend's life. But surely I would also recognize that usually, even if the foreseen consequences of lying seemed slightly better, I should stick to the truth. Otherwise I must expect of my most trusted friend that in every instance he would tell me what he thought it best for me to hear--that truth or falsity would play no independent role in guiding his decision. I could not will a world in which truth as such was no longer considered normative.

The reference in Kant's formula to all human beings raises the question of its dependence (like utilitarianism) on extra-ethical judgments determined by the Ways. The sense of mankind as constituting the relevant unit of consideration does indeed display this dependence. If one supposes that certain classes or races are incapable of distinctively ethical action or that certain non-human beings are, then the process of generalization would not be in terms of all human beings. Even among humanists who would draw the line with Kant between human and other animals, the question of young children arises. New born babies are surely not to be considered ethical agents, and it is arbitrary to set any definite age at which the transition to the status human being is made. Hence it is better to speak of "all ethical beings," understanding thereby all agents of action insofar as they are capable of reflecting on their actions in terms of right and wrong.

The principle I propose, based on these reflections, is as follows: Act as you will all ethical beings to act when the ethically relevant factors are balanced in just this way.⁹

This formulation of the categorical imperative leaves entirely open the important question of whether there are general ethical rules and how they are related to each other. It is conceivable that situations could vary so drastically from one another that no generalizations would be possible. However, in fact this is not the case. On the contrary, many generalizations are possible, and it is possible to draw up long lists of them. For example, acting as I will all ethical beings to act leads me to avoid murder, to pursue happiness, to seek the greatest good, to tell the truth, to pay debts, to keep promises, to obey laws, to work for a just society, to treat equals equally, to give to each what that person deserves, and so forth. All of these rules have their ethical weight whenever they have relevance to a decision.

As long as in any given situation only one of these rules is relevant to action, ethical decision is unproblematical. But in many instances more than one rule applies, and not all dictate the same action. For example, truth telling may conflict with my pursuit of happiness. In that case, which rule shall I follow? The seriousness of the lie must be weighed against the seriousness of the harmful consequences truth telling will engender. The generalized rules help me to keep in mind the ethically relevant factors to which the categorical imperative refers, but that imperative must be directly invoked.

There can also be generalizations about the relative weight to be assigned rules. Thus we may generalize that the rule against destroying human life ordinarily takes precedence over the rule against the destruction of property. In many cases of conflict between these rules, this generalization will serve to solve this issue quickly and correctly. However, the correctness is always to be judged by reference back to the categorical imperative, and one can always find instances where from some point of view destruction of some human life is preferable to destruction of some property. (I would not have favored the destruction of the art treasures of the Louvre to save Hitler's life.)

It may be possible to formulate either a rule or a generalization about the relative weight of rules that will always be vindicated by the categorical imperative. Perhaps for example, "Seek the general good!" always takes precedence over "Obey the formal rules of courtesy!" Still, even that would have to be decided in extreme cases by reference to the categorical imperative.

Further, rules can be so formulated as to take exceptions into account, and therefore require no exceptions. In this questionable sense innumerable "absolute" rules can be provided. For example: Always obey the law when (1) this is relevant and (2) no other relevant moral rule opposes such action.

The moral rules mentioned above are for the most part relatively independent of the special beliefs and values of particular Ways. When the categorical imperative is brought into relation with the understanding of human beings and their fulfillment involved in such a Way, more specific rules and generalizations about their relative weight are possible. Thus even where both Christians and Hindus accept the categorical imperative and derive numerous rules in common, their ethics differ by virtue of their differing visions of reality.

There is immense practical importance in the working out of the rules and the ranking of rules by which daily life is lived. Only when many rules are taken for granted can one falsely suppose that rules are not needed. That they are not absolute does not reduce their value and validity. Nevertheless, no elaboration of rules will be attempted here. What was needed was a statement of the autonomous and ultimate ethical principle, and such a statement has been offered. I find that I can conceive of no experience, insight, or reflection that would count against this principle, and hence I hold it to be valid.

A concluding word is in order on the question of absoluteness and objectivity in ethics. Usually an absolutist ethics is understood as one that regards specifiable moral rules as absolute. Kant's doctrine of truth telling is an example. In this sense the position of this essay is totally opposed to absolutism. Unfortunately, the rejection of moral absolutes is too often regarded as entailing the denial (1) that there is any absolute principle and (2) that moral rules have any objectivity. Thus ethical reflection loses rational character and is reduced to arbitrariness and taste. The present argument is that an absolute ethical principle can be formulated and that many moral rules have objective validity.

An absolute ethical principle must be purely formal. It can prescribe only a universally valid way of reaching ethical decisions, not what those decisions will be. What they will be depends on judgments in the other four areas described in Section II. Hence it differs markedly from what is usually understood by a moral absolute. Yet its existence as absolute is the essential ground of the objectivity of moral rules which are not absolute.

The objectivity of what is not absolute is difficult for some to grasp in the field of ethics,¹⁰ although it is easy to recognize elsewhere. An analogy may help. Suppose in a family council it appears that four members are eager to take a trip that will inconvenience a daughter significantly but not seriously. Suppose then that the family decides to take the trip. Though the interests of the daughter have been subordinated to those of the other four, this does not mean that her interests lack intrinsic importance for the decision. If it is a real family, interests have not been ignored; they have been recognized as objectively important. Full consideration has been given to compromises designed partially to satisfy them while also meeting the needs of the other members of the family. Even if in the end no such compromise was possible, no one should suppose that the decision to act contrary to her interests is a denial of her objective rights. It is a denial of the absoluteness of her rights. If her rights were absolute, no one else could have any rights at all. Her only "absolute" right is that her interests be taken into account, not that they be determinative of the action taken.

That truth telling is an objective but not absolute moral rule is analogous. Whenever the issue I face involves speaking truthfully or falsely, the obligation to speak truthfully demands a hearing. Its right to be taken into account is objective to my desires and my interests. But speaking truthfully is no absolute obligation, for then all other obligations would be denied (as Kant seems to deny that I have any obligation to preserve the life of my friend). To consider truth telling an objective rule entails that even when other objective rules are of greater relevance and weight, I seek compromises which avoid outright lying. But even if no such compromise is possible and the lie becomes ethically mandatory, that does not deny the objective validity of the moral rule.

Of course, neither the absoluteness of the principle nor the objectivity of the rules can be absolutely established. That is an entirely different question. How a principle is warranted has been explained above, but that view may be wrong. Even if it is the right method of warranting, it may be that neither the principle proposed nor any principle whatever can be warranted by it. If an absolute were something of which one could be absolutely certain, then even one's own existence would not be an absolute, and certainly there could be no absolute ethical principles.

Likewise, if objective were taken to mean accessible to sense experience or presence in the public world, obviously moral rules would not be objective. The objectivity here claimed for them is only that sufficient reflection along the appropriate lines leads to their recognition rather than to arbitrary choice. This objectivity is more analogous to that of mathematical objects than to that of physical ones.

THE ROLE OF THE ETHICAL IN HUMAN EXISTENCE

Thus far the autonomy of ethics as a discipline, the absoluteness of the ultimate ethical principle, and the objectivity of moral rules have been asserted. These are bold claims in a time of relativism, but many of the legitimate demands of relativism have been taken into account at every point. Ethics as autonomous has a highly limited province; the ethical principle as absolute is purely formal; and moral rules as objective are not absolute. This section and the following one will present further respects in which the ethical is relativized as well as affirmed.

The autonomy of ethics from religion and the dependence of concrete ethical judgments on religion have thus far been discussed in intra-ethical terms. The question has been, given the concern to be ethical, what is entailed? But there is also an extra-ethical question to be asked: Shall one concern oneself with ethics at all, and if so, why, and to what extent?

The possibility of asking this question does not indicate that concern with ethics is an entirely optional matter. One could avoid ethical considerations altogether only if one never reflected about the nature of the consequences of one's actions. The ethical question would not arise in a totally spontaneous life or in that of the totally other-directed person. But these approximate animals and automatons, and represent ideal limits rather than actual possibilities for normal human beings.

Persons whose life stance is essentially ethical would see the question in a quite opposite light. To them the question is absurd. It is tantamount to asking, Ought I do what I ought to do? They might recognize that there is a pre-ethical stage in life in which the young child acts unreflectively, but they would argue that once children raise the question of what they are to do, they are bound by the ethical demand.

However, those who identify themselves with their ethical will would be mistaken in supposing that this identification is simply universal or self-evidently preferable to all others. In their mode of existence the emotions, the imagination, and the appetites are alien forces to be controlled. But there are others whose selfhood is identified with emotional feeling and desire, and for whom it is the ethical will that is problematic. Among their feelings are those of ethical obligation, and they may be able to recognize that these feelings have a structure of their own. Nevertheless, these ethical feelings are experienced alongside feelings of love, anger, and desire, in relation to which they lack any evident primacy or superiority. If their violation causes painful feelings of guilt, one may seek to lessen the pain by weakening the role of ethical feelings as easily as by subordinating other feelings to them as determinants of action.

From the perspective of this Way or life style the question about ethics is a serious one, which must be respected. Two types of answers are possible. First one might accept the life style as given and discuss how best to deal with ethical feelings within it. One may show that criticism would help distinguish between irrational and rational feelings of obligation, and discuss the advantage of weakening the former and taking the latter seriously; one may show also that ignoring rational ethical feelings often leads to action that provokes undesirable reactions from others. In any case, one must also recognize that there are advantages in the more spontaneous life of feeling that too great attention to the ethical would destroy.

The second type of answer would be to criticize the life style as such. One might argue that, for all its advantages, it is self-defeating in the long run. Or one might argue that, however pleasant and successful it is for the one who adopts it, it is morally irresponsible and reprehensible. To be effective this latter argument must appeal to the existing ethical feelings and gain a decision in their behalf which alters the very structure of the existence of the one addressed.

It should not be supposed that such questioning can occur only from outside the ethical structuring of existence. A reverse movement is possible. People who have operated in terms of ethical structure may be persuaded that the rigidity and harshness of their personalities are due to this fact and that these characteristics render their ethical actions ineffective. They may be persuaded that spontaneous expressions of joy and anger, affection and hostility produce better consequences in the long run for all concerned than do controlled ethical actions. In that case the categorical imperative itself paradoxically requires that they assign the effort to obey it a subordinate role in their total stance toward life!

Thus the ethical is an inescapable element in most human lives, but its role in the totality of human existence is highly problematic. One ought, of course, to do what one ought, but that by no means determines the desirability or importance of raising this issue. Insofar as the question is raised, formal answers are possible which do not depend on the life style or Way of the questioner. But the role or status assigned to the ethical in general clearly does depend on this life style.

The situation is analogous with respect to the logical, and since this is more often recognized, a brief discussion may clarify and reenforce the point of the preceding paragraphs. One may seriously ask the question: Shall one concern oneself with logic at all, and if so, why, and to what extent? In this case, too, it would be foolish to suppose that the possibility of the question implies that such concern is purely optional. If one wants to draw reliable conclusions from evidence, one must conform to logical principles; a life in which no such reasoning occurs is an extreme limit not possible for people in general. But the fact that logical reasoning must play some role in life by no means settles the question of how much attention is to be paid to it. Some may believe that they get along better by generally trusting their immediate intuitive judgments and perceptions in each individual instance than they would by attempting to relate these to each other in a logical way. Others, seeing how frequently people are led astray by intuitions and perceptions, urge the importance of logical reasoning. Conversions occur in both directions. In all cases, it is recognized that, whatever role in life is allotted to logical reasoning, in itself it has an autonomous structure.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE ETHICAL

The role of non-ethical factors in the shaping of concrete ethical judgments was discussed specifically in the second section above. Everything stated there applies to any ethics. Hence, for the Christian, all concrete ethical judgments will be affected by one's faith as well as by the autonomous ethical principles one accepts.

This has been obscured by the fact that many persons who consciously reject or ignore the Christian faith make the same ethical decisions as Christians. They believe themselves to do so on neutral or rational grounds. For example, both Christians and other Western humanists judge human beings to be of intrinsically immeasurable worth. Both place the burden of proof on anyone who would assert that one person deserves greater opportunity than another. Hence when the ethical decisions of Christians are shaped by this judgment, they do not recognize them as Christian. However, in fact it remains so. The non-Christians who share the Christian judgment have probably derived it from Christianity. Even if they derived it from some other Way, such as Stoicism, whose judgments overlap those of Christianity, the Christian's judgment is no less Christian.

More important for the Christian's self-understanding is the question whether such judgments about the inherent importance of human beings have self-validating power once they are understood. If so, then Christians would recognize that what was once distinctively Christian is now independent of that historical origin. Their own setting of the judgment in the context of its origin would be essentially extraneous and irrelevant to the ethical decision. If not, then the failure of others to recognize the dependence of their judgments on a total Way renders them highly vulnerable to criticism.

The issue here is a subtle one. Rationality in the form of disinterested reflection has a universalizing tendency. To reflect disinterestedly about present enjoyment and the suffering likely to follow is to check the tendency to seize the proffered pleasure. To reflect disinterestedly about myself and another person involves considering us both from a perspective more neutral than my present emotions. To reflect disinterestedly about the in-group and the out-group is to perceive that their differences are not as drastic as had been supposed. For these very reasons, disinterested reflection on such matters is rare. Nevertheless, humanists who no longer seek support for their universalism in a traditional Way, may support it by the cultivation of disinterested reflection.

However, disinterested reflection alone will not suffice to sustain all the commitments the humanist shares with the Christian. Disinterested reflection brings under judgment every in-group/out-group distinction, but it does not support egalitarianism. By virtually all standards of judgment some people are more deserving than others, and by most standards some deserve evil rather than good. The humanist's sense that persons as persons are immeasurably worthful is not based on disinterested reflection alone. A purely secular view of persons as they appear to the eyes and ears of others provides no grounds for this conviction. Only a view of human depths, or mystery, or inwardness can provide such a basis, and even that will fail if not touched by a sense of ultimacy. Perhaps some new vision of the human inwardness can arise that sustains the ethics of a genuinely post-Christian humanism. If so, it will be to that extent religious by the account given in the first section above. But thus far this has not happened, and as it distances itself from its Christian (and Stoic) roots Western humanism tends to lapse into thoroughgoing secularism.

There is, then, no distinctively Christian ethical principle, but there is a distinctively Christian ethic, which is little different from the popular Western humanist ethic for which it normally provides the context and grounding. It differs more dramatically from a traditional Hindu ethic, a tribal or racist ethic, or a Nietzschean ethic, but even with these there will be areas of agreement. The spelling out of the Christian ethic in its similarities and differences from other ethics is an important task in every generation.

The major concern in this section, however, is not with Christian ethics but with the role of the ethical in Christian existence. Concretely, the ethical in this instance can only take the form of Christian ethics, so the question may be rephrased as the place of Christian ethics in Christian existence. In this form the question has rarely been raised, chiefly because Christian ethics has been conceived as inclusive of the whole of Christian existence. For example, when Christian ethics is described as an ethics of love, it is difficult to discuss the relation of love to the more limited realm that I have called Christian ethics.¹¹

My topic is close to that traditionally treated as the place of law in Christian life, and one may regard my question as simply a reformulation of that one. There are, however, advantages in the reformulation in that the notion of law is negatively weighted in Christian theology, whereas ethics is not. Further, the change is not only terminological, since there are unfortunate connotations of "law", from some of which it would be almost impossible to rid the term.

First, the theological notion of law connotes an element of irrationality. This is partly because the Jewish law did contain irrational elements derived from ancient taboos. Especially in the areas of sex and religion such irrationality has continued to play a role in our Christian understanding of law. The Christian understanding of ethics, on the other hand, is neutral in this respect.

Second, in the theological context law tends to connote primary attention to personal habits, especially those connected with sexuality, indulgence in other pleasures, honesty, reciprocity, kindness, and the like, and to turn attention away from social and political action. Ethics encompasses the individual and the social equally, or perhaps favors attention to the larger concerns.

Third, even if the notion of law could be purified for Christians of its irrational and narrowly personal overtones, it would remain heteronomous in its connotation. I encounter a demand as law when I encounter it as coming to me from outside myself from parents, community, state, church, nature, or God. I may recognize that there are good reasons for the law and that its source is justified in its claim to authority over me. Even so, I confront it as something alien and demanding. Again, ethics is neutral and open to interpretation in fully autonomous terms.

Fourth, law almost always refers to moral rules, and the adjective legalistic is bound up with the idea of their absolutization. It is often supposed that one has shown the weakness of a "legalistic" approach when one has shown that it is sometimes right to violate moral rules. It may be unfair to "legalists" to think that they have not generally recognized that laws conflict with each other in concrete application and that no rules are absolute, but it would be virtually impossible to rescue the notion of legalism from this taint. Ethics can refer to the formal principle as well as to moral rules, and an ethics can recognize that the rules are never absolute.

The ethics outlined in the preceding section (like many philosophical ethics) is free from irrationality, excessive individualism, heteronomy, and legalism. As such it offers a much more serious claim upon the Christian than does law as often understood. Only when these special and negative connotations of law are eliminated from the discussion can the deeper issues in the theological discussion of law and gospel be fully appreciated. What role, then, does Christian ethics have in the totality of the Christian Way? Nine points are offered below as being involved in an adequate answer to this question.

1. Christianity Stresses the Importance of Ethics. The Christian critique of law, both in its Jewish form and in the many new forms it has assumed in Christian history, has never meant indifference to the consequences of action. Antinomianism, insofar as it rejects not only the irrationality, heteronomy, and the absolutization of moral rules so often characteristic of law, but also ethical concerns as such, is a misunderstanding of the Christian intention which was vigorously repudiated already in the New Testament and by the church of all ages. Christianity accentuates the importance of right action in human relations (Mt. 25:31-46), sharpens the conscience, and cultivates ethical sensitivity. If it were necessary to choose between ethical action and intensification of the religious life, the weight of New Testament teaching would support the former. Even the attack on legalism is rooted as much in ethical passion as in any other source.

2. Christianity Relativizes the Ethical. This statement in no way contradicts the previous one. Indeed, if the importance of the ethical is not stressed, the relativization of the ethical is not understood or appreciated. When we read that if we give all we have to feed the poor, we may be none the better for it, that does not depreciate the ethical act. When others are hungry and I have food, I should feed them, and they will benefit regardless of my motives. It would be profoundly un-Christian to fail to help my needy neighbor until I had confidence that I was doing so from acceptable motives! Nevertheless, acting ethically in and of itself has only an indirect bearing on salvation. The hungry will gain from my gift, but I may not. If I give grudgingly or seek by giving to attain virtue, my spiritual condition is not improved. Only love heals my inner being, and no outer act insures its presence. I cannot be healed without ethical action, but ethical action in itself profits me nothing (I Cor. 13).

3. Christianity Motivates Ethical Action. Thus far there has been no discussion of why people do or do not act ethically. The distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous, which falls within the ethical sphere, has been neglected. But clearly this distinction is of immense importance especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition. My recognition that I ought to take account of the consequences for others of a contemplated act in no way insures that I will consider them, or having considered, will act as I judge right. I am quite capable of consciously violating my own ethical principles in favor of some immediate enjoyment or to avoid something I fear. What, after all, will cause me to do what I believe I should do, when I want to do something else?

The only purely ethical motivation for righteous action is the sense of obligation. The sense that I ought to do something motivates me to do it. The stress on the importance of the ethical in Christianity greatly enhances the power of this motivation. Nevertheless, if ethical action depended entirely on this one motivation, it would be relatively rare. Fortunately, this motive is reenforced by others that are closely allied to it: the dislike of feeling guilty, the enjoyment of the approval of others, and the preference for sustaining a self-image of oneself as righteous. One step further removed is the fear of punishment and the hope of reward based on the conviction that there is ultimate justice in the universe. All of these motives for ethical action have come in for unduly harsh criticism in recent times. This has been due partly to the confusion of ethical action with conformity to rules, which even centuries of Christian and humanist teaching have not erased. Ethical action, in distinction from legalism, is of such crucial importance that we should not despise those motives which support it even if they are not so pure as righteousness for righteousness' sake. Certainly Christianity has in practice appealed to all of them.

Nevertheless, there is nothing distinctively Christian about any of these supporting motives; in fact, they can easily support unrighteous as well as righteous actions. My guilt feelings may be irrational and operate as blocks to righteous behavior. The desire for the approval of others leads to conformity to established patterns, which are often unrighteous. My desire to regard myself as righteous can lead to conformity to taboos, to falsely universalized rules, and to avoidance of the ambiguous situations in which tough ethical decisions are made. Hence, the purely ethical motive often has to stand alone against all these others. Even the sense of obligation is prone to attach itself so absolutely to relative rules that it fails to conform to its fundamental principle.

Christian love enters the picture as a far less ambiguous motive to righteous action. It is directed toward God and neighbor indissolubly. To love God is to love the neighbor, and vice versa (I John 4:20-21). Insofar as one is really concerned about others, one will want to take that action which benefits them. One will also discern more accurately the actual consequences of one's acts in terms of their feelings and emotional reactions. Love of neighbors tends to overcome the false absolutization of rules which can otherwise inhibit truly righteous action toward them. Further, since Christian love is directed toward people as people, it undergirds and carries through the universalizing tendency of disinterested reflection.

4. Christianity Frees People from the Need to be Righteous. As in the relation of Point 2 to Point 1, Point 4 in no way contradicts Point 3. Christianity stresses the importance of ethics and it provides the most effective motivation for righteousness. At the same time, it relativizes ethics in relation to motivation and liberates us from the need to believe ourselves to be righteous.

This human desire was mentioned in the preceding section as one of the subsidiary motivations to righteousness. A danger was also mentioned, namely, that one falsely identify righteousness with freedom from violation of certain taboos or moral rules. But there are other and more fundamental problems.

The need to see oneself as righteous is a function of understanding oneself primarily ethically. Only then is one's ability to accept oneself primarily dependent on one's view of oneself as righteous. If one succeeds in so acting as to gain one's own approval (whether by self-deception or not), one recognizes one's own righteousness and rejoices in it; one is, inevitably, self-righteous. Implicitly, if not explicitly, one judges others who fall short of these standards to be fundamentally inferior human beings. Since one's righteousness is achieved at some sacrifice of gratification of spontaneous appetites and desires, it is almost impossible that there be lacking elements of resentment which are then directed toward those morally inferior persons who indulge their appetites more freely. The unattractiveness of the self-righteous person has been so much emphasized that further elaboration is unnecessary. The point to be stressed is that for those who define themselves ethically, self-righteousness is the inevitable consequence of success.

Too often it is supposed that the problems of self-righteousness can be overcome by allowing oneself a few vices. For example, the social activists may indulge themselves sexually, and they may even be the more complacent about themselves because they do so. Indeed, they may self-righteously condemn those who do not so indulge themselves for their self-righteousness! But of course this is irrelevant to the real alternatives. If one defines oneself ethically, one needs to be righteous, however many "vices" such righteousness may include. If one fails to be righteous in one's own eyes, then one stands before oneself condemned. The alternative to self-righteousness is despair, and despair, too, breeds resentment and anger.

The problem can be somewhat alleviated if, for the purely ethical, there is substituted a code of laws. If these are modest in their demands, one may manage to obey them at less cost and hence with less likelihood of resentment. But such half-way measures do not alter the basic situation.

Christianity liberates us from this self-definition in ethical terms; our acceptance of ourselves no longer depends upon our righteousness. Hence, if we are not ethically righteous, we need not despair. We can recognize the unrighteousness of our actions without ultimate threat to our being, and hence we can more honestly appraise ourselves. Even if we should indeed find ourselves wholly righteous in our outward acts (an extreme possibility!), this will not lead to self-righteousness since we do not identify the value or merit of our selfhood with our ethical achievement. In the sphere that counts, those who are honest will not suppose that they have fulfilled the requirements of perfect love of God and neighbor, and to whatever extent they have approached this impossible possibility, they will have so lost interest in their own virtue that the phenomenon of self-righteousness cannot arise.

5. Christian Love Partially Replaces Ethics. When love is present in personal relations much of what ethical reflection would require is done in the absence of such reflection and without any feeling of obligation. This point differs from what was said above about love as a motivation of ethical action. In that capacity love inclines me to act as my ethical reflection leads me to believe I should act. The additional point is that in much day to day interpersonal interchange love can act spontaneously. One comforts the hurt child or reassures the troubled friend, not because reflection has led to the belief that this should be done, but because the obvious need of the other calls forth the spontaneous expression of love.

Of course, problems in interpersonal relations often arise in which ethical reflection is required. If the child's injury is serious, love's comforting is not enough and alternative courses of action must be reflectively evaluated. If such reflection is not consciously required, this is only because reliable habits of action have been established by past reflection. One may learn also that one's spontaneous expressions of love do not accomplish love's purpose, that the child or the friend is encouraged in excessive dependency by the loving acts in question. Then spontaneous love must learn to check itself and channel its energies in controlled and ethical ways.

Furthermore, as soon as we love beyond personal relations to the vast areas of our responsibility for political communities and social institutions, spontaneous expression of love is almost irrelevant. In these areas Christian love emphasizes the importance of the ethical, requires the acceptance of its informed calculations, and subordinates its spontaneity to the results.

Nevertheless, the spontaneity of love is not to be belittled. We are far more deeply supported, affirmed and reassured by spontaneous affection than by being dutifully assisted. Also we experience inner freedom and wholeness when we act spontaneously, whereas the concern to do what is right, even when it arises purely within us, is often felt as a pressure or burden. Love is a deeply personalizing relation, whereas the self-conscious performance of ethical action tends to be impersonal, even if it is motivated in part by love. Love may accomplish what love and ethical reflection alike find needed, where ethical action alone is powerless.

6. Christian Love Overcomes the Tension of Obligation and Desire. This statement, even more than the preceding ones, speaks of a possibility that is only very fragmentarily realized in the experience of Christians. Genuine concern for others functions as a supporting motive for ethical action as indicated in 3. In this capacity it may increase the inner tensions involved in doing what one ought to do rather than what, with much of one's being, one wants to do. A man may, for example, give up a job he enjoys and which gains for him the respect of his associates, in order to engage in political action which his associates condemn, but which he believes right. He may be motivated both by genuine concern for the victims of injustice and by purely ethical feelings. But these motives, while victorious over his desire to enjoy the benefits of pleasant work and the admiration of acquaintances, will not displace them. Especially if his new activities are distasteful and unappreciated by those for whom he is making the sacrifice, the inner tension will be extremely painful.

We admire a man who perseveres in the face of such tension, and we rightly view him as a Christian of unusual stature. Nevertheless, we cannot regard him as having achieved the full measure of Christian sanctity. For that ideally involves the transformation of the total motivation by love. Insofar as love becomes not only determinative of action, but also of desires, the inner tension is reduced.

It is dangerous to speak of this goal of tension reduction in the Christian life. Adherence to the ideal all too easily leads to self-deception and repression from consciousness of unacceptable desires. Alternately it leads to the pursuit of freedom in the opposite direction, namely, by reducing concern with obligations and judging concern for others only in terms of its contribution to one's own self-realization. Over against this pursuit of equanimity, Christianity is to be understood much more as an intensification of tension than as a release from it. Nevertheless, the goal of serenity at the new level of concern for others remains--as a fragmentarily realizable ideal--important.

7. Christian Love Is in Tension with Ethics. Thus far Christian love has been presented as calling for conduct identical with ethical righteousness. This is and remains of primary importance for the relation of love and ethics. Nevertheless, there are three respects in which love is in tension with ethics.

First, although Christian love is concern for human beings as such and hence for every person, it is not impersonal as is ethics. The immediate presence of human suffering elicits a response of peculiar urgency from the Christian. Ordinarily the action that expresses that response is also the action that is ethically required, but it need not always be so. There are situations in which a larger total good might be served by ignoring the immediate claim and proceeding with established plans.

The opposition here is a very subtle one. Ethically I could not will that everyone, when confronted with such a choice, would always sacrifice the immediate for the wider claim. I would prefer a world in which people would make some sacrifice of the larger good for the sake of meeting present need. Hence I could approve of the deed of love. Even so, a tension remains between the spontaneity of love and the calculation of ethics, and we must expect that at times the expression of the former must appear wrong to the latter.

Second, although the loving Christian, like the ethical person, must learn to avoid squeamishness and to act vigorously in the midst of ambiguities, the question remains as to whether there are any limits to what love will do. Suppose, for example, that one is deeply committed to the liberation of a people from a hated oppressor, and fully convinced that mankind will be greatly benefitted by victory in a revolution. Suppose one is then confronted with a situation in which the torturing of innocent children is required to further the revolutionary cause. Suppose that one's ethical calculation leads to the conclusion that such torture, for all its horrors, is justified and indeed ethically demanded. Can Christian love reconcile itself to such an act?

The question is not a rhetorical one. Perhaps love can reconcile itself even to this. Alternately, one might argue that one cannot ethically will such a deed regardless of the balance of calculated consequences. Nevertheless the questions of ethical rightness and of appropriateness to Christian love are distinct questions, and that means that there can be a tension between the expression of Christian love and the claim of ethical duty.

Third, the tension is clearest where one's own fate hangs in the balance. Normally the tension lies between too great consideration of my own benefit, on the one hand, and impartial concern for all, on the other. Here Christian love supports the ethical call for impartiality. But Christian love can go further and lead to the sacrifice of one's own interests for the sake of another.

Often this too can be ethically justified. Sometimes the self-sacrifice of the health or life of one person enables several others to live, and hence it may even be ethically required. But occasionally a woman with great capacities for helping others may give her life to save someone much less gifted. Here ethical calculations are likely to condemn the deed. Nevertheless, the uncalculating aspect of Christian love gains peculiarly vivid expression in such an act.

In all these instances love is not simply juxtaposed to ethics, for love is on both sides of the alternative. Love calls for ethical action at the same time that its spontaneity resists the constrictions of ethical calculation. Whatever love may do, it must recognize the ethical rightness of the ethical requirement. Though it may violate the ethical, it can never establish such violation as a new principle or higher law or judge its acts in any objective way superior to the ethical.

8. Christianity Witnesses to a Possibility of Achieving Ethical or Supra-ethical Goals by Other than Ethical Means. The sphere of the ethical is bounded by what we can perceive as our situation, our knowledge of causes and effects, and our existing judgments of value. In all of these areas we recognize our extreme fallibility. Our most righteous acts may turn out to have been wholly misguided, and the motivation of love is no protection against such results.

For these reasons we are often well-advised to seek advice from wiser and more experienced persons before reaching decisions. In some instances we may find it best to follow their advice even when they cannot explain to us why they judge as they do. Of course, here too, we may be led astray.

Henry Nelson Wieman has stressed that we can transcend our ethical limitations in another way. We can identify that process which makes for good, and we can commit ourselves wholeheartedly to it in trust. We will not attempt to foresee the outcome and calculate its desirability in terms of our existing judgments of value, for we will expect our very judgments of value to be progressively transformed by the process. He calls this process creative interchange, and he has devoted much time and thought to identifying and describing it.¹²

At times Wieman speaks of creative interchange as God, thus pointing to the more general question whether the Christian can know God's will in such a way as to transcend ethical calculation. If God is in the world working toward the realization of unforeseen and unforeseeable goods on the basis of a comprehensive perception of reality never accessible to us, then the ethical principle itself would support our aligning ourselves with God's work if we could.

The question is whether we have any other access to God's present purposes than our grasp of ethical principles and our reason. I believe the answer is that we do, that God in every moment offers us possibilities for our self-actualization which we can neither create nor judge. These possibilities exercise an influence upon us such that apart from our willing even in spite of our willing, we participate more richly in life, in value, and even in goodness than we deserve. These ever new possibilities are in tension with desires and ambitions by which our past seeks to exercise rule over our present. To act spontaneously or to be guided by hunches is more often to subordinate our reason to unconscious pressures from the past than to fulfill more perfectly the possibilities offered us by God. Hence the attempt to transcend the ethical by the religious is profoundly dangerous.

Yet there are those who have developed deep sensitivity to God's work within them and who have progressively unified their lives around this sensitivity. This I call saintliness. To whatever extent saintliness is achieved, the ethical is transcended even in the sphere of action. For the saint, spontaneous response in each situation is that action which fulfills the possibilities there offered by God. The action may differ from that which rational ethical calculation would dictate, or it may not. In either case it transcends all sense of obligation by the grateful acceptance of grace. It is free from anxiety about consequences through the faith that its rightness is beyond human judgment.

9. The Sphere of the Ethical Is but One Aspect of Christian Existence. This section has dealt with Christianity in its relation to ethics. That relation is a many-sided one, and in a variety of ways, even in the sphere of behavior with which ethics is concerned, there is a transcendence of the ethical. Even so, the erroneous impression may be left that Christianity is focused upon action to a greater degree than is the case. Among the great Ways of the world, Christianity allots to action as high an importance as any, but it knows too that life is more than action and that the ethical must find its appropriate place in the whole.

Christian existence is a suffering as well as a doing. It is anguish and joy, bondage and release, despair and hope, doubting and believing, negating and affirming, turmoil and peace, dying and rising. It is a mode of appropriating the past and of facing the future. It is a terrifying acknowledgment of the power of evil and a passionate assurance that its victory is not ultimate. It is self-discipline and freedom, penitence and forgiveness, entering the depths of inwardness and moving outward to the structures of the world. It is a lonely pilgrimage and a communion of saints. It is an apprehension of life as meaningful yet mysterious. It is devotion and commitment, and it is spontaneity and grace. It is a total vision of history and nature from which God is absent, yet in which God is all in all.

School of Theology

Claremont, California

l. This understanding of religion is developed in Chapter V, "Christianity as a Religion," of my book, God and the World (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), pp. 103-116.

2. The rules of safe driving as such are not normally considered part of ethics. The rule that we drive on the right side of the road, for example, is ethically arbitrary. However, the careful formulation and observation of rules, many of which are arbitrary, is required by the ethical requirement that we act so as to safeguard life, health, and property.

3. I do not mean to limit the ethical to what Kant calls the categorical. Discussions of what one must do to attain virtue, excellence, fulfillment, or happiness and how one may meet the needs of another individual or of society in general are ethical. On the other hand, treatments of what one must do to bake a cake, sell an automobile, or drive a competitor out of business are not. I suggest the line between these is that we hold the former ends to be proper to human beings as such whereas the latter are "particular" purposes which one is free to entertain or not as one pleases. But the line is not a sharp one. On which side should we place a treatise on habits conducive to good health?

4. See the second factor in the account of the religious in the first section above.

5. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Among other claimants are: act as love requires; conform your life to Christ; do what is fitting; fulfill your highest potential; act in accordance with nature; live by reason. These and other principles are worthy of full discussion. In general, however, they seem to me either too specifically determined by the beliefs of one Way, too vague, or vulnerable to the criticisms directed below to the four principles selected for criticism. Where the vagueness is cleared up, several of them may be alternative (I think less satisfactory) accounts either of the ultimate principle proposed below in this section or of the Christian Way in its relation to the ethical as described in the last section.

6. This discussion is carried on from the perspective of rational reflection. It is quite possible that there are experiences in which some demand is felt to supersede rational reflection. In this essay such supra-rational demands are not treated as ethical.

7. A more precise development of this approach from a slightly different point of view is to be found in my book, A Christian Natural Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 19665), pp. 113-125.

8. Kant states that if I tell a lie even to save a friend from a murderer, "so far as in me lies I cause that declarations should in general find no credence, and hence that all rights based on contracts should be void and lose their force." Lewis Beck, ed., Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 347. A lie thus under any circumstances "vitiates the source of law itself" (Ibid.). Kant's limited concern for consequences is seen in that he does not ask whether lying to save a friend from a murderer, either in this case or if it became a general practice, would have beneficial or harmful consequences. The only relevant consequence is that which would follow from the total abolition of the grounds of credence. Even here Kant seems to see the harm done to mankind more as the intrinsic evil of vitiating the source of law than as the imagined social chaos with its accompanying misery that would follow.

9. Fletcher may be criticizing this kind of formulation when he writes "and to say `universal only for exactly similar conditions' is to run away from the variety of life" (Situation Ethics, [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966], p. 131). He does not elaborate his objection, and it strikes me as having no apparent force.

l0. Fletcher's identification of "intrinsicalism" with the legalism he rightly rejects is a major flaw in his book (Situation Ethics, pp. 74-75). He seems to see no way in which it is possible to say that truth-telling is, in and of itself, i.e., intrinsically, superior to lying while also saying that there are situations in which lying is called for by love. But I find no argument in his book against this (to me almost self-evident) point. Further, just as Fletcher allows no intrinsic rightness to truth-telling over lying, he also seems to allow no intrinsic value to the goods which love seeks to actualize for others. In a peculiarly confusing passage he states that he replaces the utilitarian "pleasure principle with agape" (p. 95). But of course the pleasure principle for utilitarianism has to do with the evaluation of the consequences expected from the act and not with the reason for its performance! In the next sentence it becomes clear that in fact he replaces "pleasure" by "welfare". But the vagueness of this term does not seem to bother him. Love or goodwill is held up as solving all the problems of relative value under the rubric of "welfare".

11. This is characteristic of "situation ethics" and "the new morality". Love is contrasted with law, which is identified with moral rules. Even when the need for such rules is recognized as in the mediating work of Bishop John A. T. Robinson in Christian Morals Today (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964), it is clear that they cannot constitute ethics, which is what love as "a deep concern for persons as whole persons, in their entire social context, really requires" (p. 33). Fine, but then what does such concern require? Is it not the task of Christian ethics to think that through, in the light of the Christian vision of reality and stance toward life as well as the categorical imperative? And must we not then still ask how the Christian ethical life thus understood is to be related to the love taught by Jesus for which "not only all prudential calculation of consequences to fall upon the agent himself, but likewise all sober regard for family and friends, duties towards oneself and fixed duties to others, both alike were jettisoned from view." (Quoted from Paul Ramsey with approval by Robinson, op. cit., p. 27.)

12. Wieman's finest formulations are in The Source of Human Good (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946).