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community, liberalism and christian ethics

This book explores some current issues on the borderland

between moral philosophy and Christian theology. Par-
ticular attention is paid to the issues at stake between
liberals and communitarians and the dispute between
realists, non-realists and quasi-realists. In the course of the
discussion, the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre, George
Lindbeck and Stanley Hauerwas are examined. While
sympathetic to many of the typical features of post-
liberalism, the argument is critical at selected points in
seeking to defend realism and accommodate some aspects
of liberalism. The position that emerges is more neo-
Barthian than post-liberal. In maintaining the distinctive-
ness of Christian ethics and community, as determined by
divine revelation, the book also seeks to acknowledge a
measure of common moral ground held by those within
and without the church.

DAV I D F E RG U S S O N is Professor of Systematic

Theology in the Department of Divinity with Religious
Studies at the University of Aberdeen. He is a consultant
editor and director of Scottish Journal of Theology and Chair
on the Editorial Board of Theology in Scotland. His publica-
tions include Bultmann (Geoffrey Chapman, 1992), Christ,
Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie
(T. & T. Clark, 1993), and The Cosmos and the Creator: an
Introduction to the Theology of Creation (SPCK, 1998).
 new studies in christian ethics

General Editor: Robin Gill

Editorial Board: Stephen R. L. Clark, Anthony O. Dyson,
Stanley Hauerwas and Robin W. Lovin

Christian ethics has increasingly assumed a central place within

academic theology. At the same time the growing power and ambi-
guity of modern science and the rising dissatisfaction within the social
sciences about claims to value-neutrality have prompted renewed
interest in ethics within the secular academic world. There is, there-
fore, a need for studies in Christian ethics which, as well as being
concerned with the relevance of Christian ethics to the present day
secular debate, are well informed about parallel discussions in recent
philosophy, science or social science. New Studies in Christian Ethics
aims to provide books that do this at the highest intellectual level and
demonstrate that Christian ethics can make a distinctive contribution
to this debate ± either in moral substance or in terms of underlying
moral justi®cations.

For list of titles published in the series see end of book.

COMMUN I TY, L I B E R ALI S M
AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS

DAVID F E RG U S S O N
         
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

  

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

http://www.cambridge.org

© Cambridge University Press 2004

First published in printed format 1998

ISBN 0-511-03794-5 eBook (Adobe Reader)

ISBN 0-521-49678-0 hardback
 Contents

General editor's preface page ix

Preface xi

1 Introduction 1
2 Christian ethical distinctiveness 22
3 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 48
4 Moral realism in recent philosophy 80
5 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 109
6 Communitarianism and its critics 138
7 Conclusion 16 1

Notes 174
Bibliography 206
Index 217

vii
 General editor's preface

This book is the thirteenth in the series New Studies in

Christian Ethics. It provides an expert analysis of some of the
most central themes in the series. David Fergusson combines
skills as both a theologian and a philosopher, and uses them
here to give a Christian response to one of the most challenging
debates of our age ± the moral debate between communitarians
and liberals.
Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue has succeeded beyond most
other recent books in setting an agenda which has challenged
many philosophers and theologians alike. Most of the other
contributors to New Studies in Christian Ethics have made use
of this seminal work. However, there has yet been no substantial
philosophical discussion of it in the series or of the more
speci®cally theological contributions of Stanley Hauerwas and
George Lindbeck. David Fergusson's new book, Community,
Liberalism and Christian Ethics, provides this. What he offers is an
appreciative, but ®nally critical, account of this debate, which
takes communitarianism seriously without abandoning all of
the achievements of realism and liberalism. Unlike theologians
such as Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank, he offers an
account of theology which is radical but not radically post-
modern. In doing this, he sees himself more as a neo-Barthian
than as a post-liberal.
What is at stake here? Within modern theology there is an
increasing division between those who see themselves as a part
of the liberal arts, engaging with secular disciplines and seeking
to in¯uence the wider political order from within, and those, in
contrast, who argue that theology must abandon liberalism in
ix
x General editor's preface
any form, looking instead to the unique resources of the
Christian community, and building up a radical theological
critique of post-Enlightenment thought. Within secular social
and political thought there is also an increasing division
between libertarians, who emphasise the autonomy of the
individual and the centrality of individual choice, and commu-
nitarians, on the other hand, who stress the need for commun-
ity, tradition, and interdependency. David Fergusson seeks to
offer a bridge between these polarised positions. For him, it is
essential that Christian ethics is distinctively Christian, albeit
focused less upon the church than upon God made known in
Jesus Christ. He is suspicious of those who exaggerate the
distinctiveness of actual Christian communities and believes,
instead, that Christians must still engage centrally with secular
society. Liberalism has made real gains both within society and
within Christian communities which do need to be recognised
more frankly than is apparent in the writings of MacIntyre or
Hauerwas. For David Fergusson, an appreciation of their dis-
tinctive contribution can be combined with a positive account
of some of the central features of liberalism.
All of this admirably ful®ls the two key aims of New Studies
in Christian Ethics ± namely, to promote monographs in
Christian ethics which engage centrally with the present secular
moral debate at the highest possible intellectual level and,
secondly, to encourage contributors to demonstrate that Chris-
tian ethics can make a distinctive contribution to this debate.
This book is a very welcome contribution to the series.

robin gill
 Preface

This book explores some boundary issues in theology and

moral philosophy. Its particular focus is on the current series of
disputes between communitarians and liberals, and realists and
anti-realists. The central argument is of a Barthian character.
There is a distinctive ethos governing Christian conduct.
Human action must be seen in relation to the divine act and
being which precede it and to which, at best, it bears the
character of faithful witness and correspondence. The know-
ledge and service of God within the church, therefore, shape
the moral perception, motivation, commitment, and seriousness
of the Christian life. However, in relation to some recent
ecclesial approaches to ethics, I seek to argue that the priority of
God's action must be stressed over against the secondary reality
of the church's polis. This in turn enables Christian theology to
recognise, without compromising its central theme, how the will
of God may be done beyond the walls of the church. I shall
argue, in consequence of this, that theology has some stake in
philosophical arguments for moral realism and that, within
pluralist societies, the church can recognise common moral
ground ± thus making common cause with other forces, agen-
cies, and movements ± even in the absence of common moral
theory.
I owe a debt of gratitude to many whose advice has assisted
me in this project. I am grateful in particular to Robin Gill, the
series editor, for his patience and encouragement in awaiting an
overdue manuscript, and to Alex Wright whose support was
important at an early stage. My Aberdeen colleague and friend,
Iain Torrance has been an invaluable source of advice and
xi
xii Preface
reading suggestions. His expertise in the ®eld of Christian ethics
has been of much assistance, as has his readiness to share so
many teaching and administrative tasks.
Earlier drafts of some sections were delivered at the Society
for the Study of Theology and the Society for the Study of
Christian Ethics, and I have bene®ted from comments made at
these occasions. The completion of the project was made
possible by a six-month period of research leave which was
spent at the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton. I am
grateful to Dr Wallace Alston, the Director of the Center, and
to Bishop William Lazareth and my fellow members for their
encouragement, support, and constructive criticism of my work
on numerous occasions during our very happy stay in Prin-
ceton. I am also grateful to the Carnegie Trust for the Uni-
versities of Scotland for their ®nancial support.
Since returning from Princeton, I have had the privilege of
attending in Aberdeen the fourth in the annual Scottish Journal
of Theology lecture series delivered by Stanley Hauerwas.
Although I have not been able to assimilate this material in the
present study, I wish to record my indebtedness to his writings
and to the stimulus he has provided, even where we have parted
company.
This book is dedicated to my parents for their interest and
support over many years.

David A. S. Fergusson
 chapter one

Introduction

the social context

This study explores some recent communitarian contributions
to Christian ethics by way of comparison with current trends in
moral philosophy. It is preoccupied with questions concerning
Christian ethical distinctiveness and overlap with other theories,
communities, and convictions. Christian communitarianism
draws strength from the increasing dissociation of church and
civil society in the western world. The emergence of pluralism
and secularism in the late-twentieth century have led to the
breakdown of any clear Christian consensus undergirding the
standards, assumptions, and policies of multiracial and multi-
religious societies. This social predicament has led to calls for
greater Christian authenticity. We can no longer assume that
Christian ethics simply endorses what everyone recognises to be
good for human beings qua human beings. There is neither
consensus as to what being truly human entails, nor universally
available criteria for establishing this. The time has therefore
come, it is argued, to bear witness to the speci®c virtues of the
Christian life, through reference to its setting within the church
under the guidance of Holy Scripture and the lordship of Jesus
Christ. Christian moral formation is not to be seen as the
pursuit of moral principles which are knowable by people in all
times and places. It is not the promotion of an ethical viewpoint
which can be set out apart from and independently of the
particular assumptions which sustain the existence of the
church. Christian witness in this social context bears the char-
acter not of seeking common ground with those who dwell extra
1
2 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
muros ecclesiae, but of articulating a vision that is distinctive and
sometimes counter to the prevailing culture. Parallels can be
drawn here with the early church which contested and provided
an alternative moral vision to that regnant in the Graeco-
Roman world. This was achieved not through mapping out
common moral ground, but through speaking decisively of a
new way that had been disclosed and enacted in Jesus Christ
and his followers. I shall be concerned largely to defend this
position while holding simultaneously that greater recognition
needs to be accorded to the presence of genuine moral insight
and practice outside the church. While there is no common
moral theory, there is none the less some common moral
ground which needs to be identi®ed. I shall argue that this
requires a theological explanation which can be presented in
terms that are broadly Barthian. For Barth, it is not the
uniqueness of the church that is decisive, but the uniqueness of
God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Accordingly, he maintains
the possibility of witness to the Word of God outside the church,
albeit witness the validity of which must be tested by reference
to Scripture, the theological traditions of the church, and its
impact for the life of the Christian community in the world.
Some writers often identi®ed as `communitarian' do not
admit the label. While I shall explore the reasons for this, I shall
argue also that the expression has some legitimate application
in terms of the epistemological signi®cance assigned to the
church, claims for Christian distinctiveness, the criticism of
liberal ideology, and the recognition that moral codes can only
be understood vis-aÁ-vis forms of social life and inherited tradi-
tions. Although it may be the church rather than any generic
notion of community that is morally signi®cant, one must
understand this approach in light of its more general criticisms
of liberal philosophy and society.
Theological variants of communitarianism have become sig-
ni®cant for sociological and philosophical reasons, as well as
theological ones. For this reason, philosophical parallels will be
pursued at some length in this study. In an age of increasing
cultural and religious diversity, the particular shape of a reli-
gious community is important for the way in which its members
 Introduction 3
understand themselves and the world. In both the UK and the
USA, there is not only a greater diversity within Christianity,
but a burgeoning of options in ancient and new age religion.1
This growing diversity is part of a wider social situation in
which traditional patterns of communal life are breaking down.
Much philosophical re¯ection has now been devoted to this
phenomenon.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville drew
attention to the way in which voluntary association in American
civic life was vital to the working of a democratic society. This
was particularly true in the absence of aristocratic forms of life
which, in European societies, had contributed to civic cohesion
through the de®nition of social roles. De Tocqueville, in work
which showed remarkable prescience, argued that the voluntary
associations formed by citizens contributed signi®cantly to the
creation of trust, a sense of collective responsibility, and a
concept of the common good. In a polity which emphasises the
equality of individuals, the common good can only be articu-
lated through voluntary association. De Tocqueville sensed that
this was part of the explanation for the economic success and
vitality of American society.
The ®rst time I heard in the United States that a hundred thousand
men had bound themselves publicly to abstain from spirituous
liquors, it appeared to me more like a joke than a serious engagement,
and I did not at once perceive why these temperate citizens could not
content themselves with drinking water by their own ®resides. I at last
understood that these hundred thousand Americans, alarmed by the
progress of drunkenness around them, had made up their minds to
patronize temperance. They act in just the same way as a man of high
rank who should dress very plainly in order to inspire the humbler
orders with a contempt of luxury. It is probable that if these hundred
thousand men had lived in France, each of them would singly have
memorialized the government to watch the public houses all over the
kingdom.2

Within this analysis there lurks a warning. If there is a decline

within the network of voluntary associations which regulate
society, the burden of individual expectations that are subse-
quently placed upon central government will prove too great.
4 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
According to various social commentators today, this negative
prophecy is being ful®lled. In 1985, Robert Bellah and the four
co-authors of Habits of the Heart (the title itself is an expression of
de Tocqueville) explored sociologically the way in which the
network of associations that make up civic life is being eroded in
the lives of modern American citizens. By re¯ecting on religious
and political af®liations, and the changing patterns of family life
and leisure pursuits in the responses of their subjects, they reach
the conclusion that the quality of human life is deteriorating
with the slow collapse of commitments to common goods.
[I]f we owe the meaning of our lives to biblical and republican
traditions of which we seldom consciously think, is there not the
danger that the erosion of these traditions may eventually deprive us
of that meaning altogether? Are we not caught between the upper
millstone of a fragmented intellectual culture and the nether millstone
of a fragmented popular culture? The erosion of meaning and
coherence in our lives is not something Americans desire. Indeed, the
profound yearning for the idealized small town that we found among
most of the people we talked to is a yearning for just such meaning
and coherence.3
These social trends together contribute to a situation in
which civic assocational ties are diminished. Here, the indi-
vidual selects his or her own goods as opposed to owning social
goods which are de®ned by traditions, stories, and communities
of memory. The increasing absence of a notion of the common
weal which commands the loyalty of the members of a society is
widely lamented. Although it is doubtful whether we can or
would genuinely desire to return to the past, this none the less
creates a situation in which institutions like the church, which
offer to create a common identity and a morally coherent world
of meaning, appear highly attractive. It is against this social
background that we need to understand the appeal of commu-
nitarian themes in Christian ethics.
Recent work in philosophy provides a related intellectual
context within which the recent ecclesiological emphasis in
theology must also be understood. So-called communitarians
such as MacIntyre, Taylor, and Sandel have raised searching
questions of the adequacy of post-Enlightenment liberalism to
 Introduction 5
provide an adequate account of the moral life and a basis for
modern pluralist societies. Of these philosophers, it is MacIn-
tyre whose work has received the closest attention in theology.
His writings form the basis of chapter 5 and contribute signi®-
cantly to the position advocated throughout the entire discus-
sion. The central and consistent thesis of his work is that,
despite three centuries of moral philosophy and one of so-
ciology, there is no adequate account of liberal individualism.
By contrast, the approach of Aristotle can, upon suitable
revision (in MacIntyre's latest work this is a Thomist revision),
restore intelligibility to the moral life.4

the church as a moral community

The closest theological analogue of MacIntyre's philosophy is
found in the writings of Stanley Hauerwas. He does not wish to
be too closely identi®ed with broader intellectual trends, since
his project is to speak of what it is that makes the church
distinctive, rather than to outline a moral theory, a social
analysis, a narrative hermeneutic, or a defence of a generic
notion of community. None the less, his frequent borrowing
from philosophy and social theory makes it possible to view his
work and its reception in this wider context.
For Hauerwas, our current situation is one in which the idea
of Christendom needs to be abandoned. Attempts at correlating
the moral ethos of the church and civil society must lead
inevitably to a loss of ecclesial identity and a failure of Christian
witness. The church's task is to be representative of the kind of
people God has made possible in Jesus Christ; a people com-
mitted to forgiveness, to the service of God, to loving one
another, and to making peace. References to the ethical signi®-
cance of the celebration of the Eucharist abound in Hauerwas'
writings. Perhaps this is surprising in a Methodist theologian.
Yet his theology of the Eucharist is a powerful sign of the
dependence of the church upon Christ cruci®ed and risen, its
unity through his lordship, and its fundamental calling to be the
same body of Christ before the world. How this works out we
shall discuss in chapter 3. It is clear, however, that Christian
6 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
existence takes its bearing from the church founded upon Jesus
Christ. It is here that we are taught how to live and die as
Christians. This ecclesiogical orientation of Hauerwas' ethics
makes for a distinctive Christian witness in the world, and
enables him to launch a full-scale attack on the nostrums of
modern liberalism.
The attractions of this position should not be underrated by
world-weary academics. The call for greater authenticity and
distinctiveness reminds a younger generation that the Christian
life is an adventure. Many of the prevailing assumptions and
trends in our society are to be contested. We are challenged to
live out new patterns of community in a world which shows a
bias towards individualism and the reduction of religion to the
private and recreational spheres of our existence.5 Moreover,
this way of thinking about moral practice seems to make better
sense of how we come by our standards than earlier types of
ethical theory. We learn to act morally, not so much by the
intuition of general moral principles, but through particular
examples and communal instruction in how to comport our-
selves. The communitarian perspective can make better sense
of the roles of parents and teachers. It reveals why stories and
historical examples are so important to our moral upbringing.
As I write in Princeton, it is Martin Luther King day, a day
marked by school holidays, public lectures, and McDonalds'
TV advertisements in honour of the civil rights leader. Here, the
particular takes precedence over the general. The recital and
memorising of great stories shapes the moral progress of our
little ones.6 This is how we learn to think, react, and live in
ways that are morally signi®cant.
None the less, in seeking to expound recent communitarian
trends in Christian thought, one is conscious of a range of
problems that can be readily identi®ed in the literature. These
are explored throughout this study, and have led to a modi®ed
version of communitarian themes.
One problem concerns the spectre of relativism. If Christian
moral standards are de®ned by reference to the polity of the
church and to its distinctive beliefs, practices, and narratives,
does this imply that the truth of these standards is constituted
 Introduction 7
merely by their faithfulness to one way of seeing the world? By
implication, it might be held that other moral positions are true
by virtue of their consistency with the frameworks of belief and
patterns of community which support them. Truth in morals is
thus constituted by reference to the beliefs and practices of
whichever community and tradition one owes allegiance to.
The possibility of a rational discrimination between rival com-
munities is thus ruled out of court. There is no Archimedean
position from which such comparison can take place. There is
no transcommunitarian fact at stake into which one can reason-
ably inquire.
As far as I am aware, such an unashamedly relativist position
is not avowed in any textbook on Christian ethics, even in a
post-modernist age. The exponents of communitarian ethics
typically argue that there is truth to be discovered and practised
which is not exhausted by reference to the rules of discourse
and behaviour governing the life of a community. The truth is
what God wills for us and all people, although this may only be
known through divine revelation in history and the patterns
that this establishes in the traditions of Israel and the church.
Truth is thus not relative to a particular framework, although
knowledge thereof is available only to those who inhabit the
framework. The position may be described as ontologically
realist but epistemologically relative.
This still leaves the problem of how moral perception outwith
the Christian community is to be assessed. I shall argue that it
must be assessed positively though critically, and shall defend
the arguments in recent philosophical literature for moral
realism. I am deeply sceptical about strategies which enthusias-
tically deconstruct all other forms of moral consciousness, while
making the strongest realist claims possible for moral per-
ception within the church. Apart from the intrinsic implausi-
bility of this position ± can one subscribe to arguments which
seek to undermine all forms of moral realism while claiming
immunity for one's own particular form? ± it is at odds with
much of what Christian theology has historically tried to
articulate in terms of natural law, common grace, and the
orders of creation.
8 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
A further problem posed by the communitarian turn in
Christian ethics concerns the way in which the church has often
adopted the concepts and precepts of secular theories. The
image of Christian discourse as a language game with its own
grammar and forms of life has to be squared with the borrowing
and appropriation of materials from other sources. This is a
problem for Christians who are deeply conscious of inhabiting
and being committed to more than one community. How
should they comport themselves? Has the Christian community
anything to learn from alternatives or should it pay exclusive
heed to its own Scriptures and traditions? Stated thus starkly,
this is a dif®cult if impossible position to defend in mainstream
Christianity given the manner in which feminism, ecology, and
an increased awareness of other faiths shape our understanding
of the modern world and condition our reading of Scripture. A
related issue concerns the criteria by which a community is
determined. Where does one community begin and another
end? What are the limits of a community? The concept of a
community is not univocal and has probably not been subjected
to suf®ciently rigorous analysis.7
This second cluster of issues gives rise to a third which is
perhaps the most ®ercely contested. Many mainstream
churches in western societies feel a strong sense of responsibility
for their civil polities. This is re¯ected partly through a commit-
ment to some of its institutions, e.g. parliamentary democracy,
the forces of law and order, welfare provision, etc., but also
through a desire to speak critically of the status quo and to call
for change. This stake in the political and social order is
conditioned by the way in which the church has historically
shaped the societies in which it has existed. Yet, with the
increasing dissociation noted above, problems arise as to the
stake the church has in identifying and seeking to promote a
social consensus. Is there a moral basis to the civil order which
the church can support or supply? If so, in what language
should that be couched, given that many of our contemporaries
espouse another or no faith? The response that one makes to
this problem will tend to be determined by the relative weight
one attaches to the priorities of witnessing to what is distinctive
 Introduction 9
on the basis of Scripture and tradition, or seeking common
cause with other groups and agencies. Closely related to this
dispute is a fundamental question about the theological pro-
priety of the discourse of human rights. The language of rights
is the only current candidate for a universal moral discourse.
Should this be welcomed throughout the oikumene, or should it
be viewed with suspicion as lacking any genuine basis and as
frequently hijacked for a plethora of incompatible claims which
are corrosive of community and informed moral choices? This
question will be revisited in the closing stages of the discussion.
Beneath these contested issues there lies a controversy about
the doctrine of the church. Recent communitarian approaches
to Christian ethics suggest a revival of a radical Reformation
ecclesiology.8 The church is a distinctive community set apart
from the world. It does not speak for society at large, but
develops its own moral ecology. The idea of a Christian society
has now been discredited, or so it is argued, and it is no
coincidence that the traditional practice of infant baptism is
increasingly being called into question within Protestant theol-
ogy. Thus the co-ordination of church and civil society that one
®nds in Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist ecclesiologies
is regularly queried.
In order to assess this approach to Christian ethics, I shall
look backwards and sideways: backwards, by assessing its recent
theological ancestry; sideways, by comparing it with recent
parallel trends in moral philosophy. In this way, communitar-
ianism will be seen to be neither theologically nor culturally
egregious. At the same time, however, these theological and
philosophical evaluations will reveal some of the weaknesses of
the approach and suggest ways in which it should be re®ned.

the moral ecology of the early churches

Any new development in theology will tend to seek support
from historical examples in the Christian tradition and from
Scripture itself. Recent communitarian approaches have coin-
cided with a range of studies which draw attention to the
importance of community in the moral world of the New
10 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
Testament and the early church. This is worth sketching at the
outset since there are some vital resources here for commu-
nitarian approaches, as well as some pressing questions.
The New Testament, of course, does not contain any clearly
worked out meta-ethical theory. It is none the worse for this. In
part, this re¯ects its thorough integration of the languages of
theology, doxology, exhortation, and witness. Ethics is not
compartmentalised in the manner of a modern theological
syllabus. The early Christians are urged to imitate the example
of Christ, to follow his teachings, to keep the precepts of what
became known as the Old Testament, to bring forth the fruits of
the Holy Spirit in their living, to observe and even surpass
standards already recognised in the ancient world.
The question has often been asked as to what new ethical
norms the church introduced into the ancient world.
What can this Gospel of Jesus be?
What Life & Immortality
What was it that he brought to Light
That Plato & Cicero did not write?
The Heathen Deities wrote them all,
These Moral Virtues, great and small.9
To discover the moral signi®cance of the early church for the
ancient world, it is not suf®cient merely to list its ethical
precepts and exhortations. One will ®nd strong similarities both
with Judaism and pagan culture. Parallels can be drawn with
many ethical precepts in the New Testament. Yet the particular
social context and con®guration of ecclesial forms, symbols,
and beliefs provide a new framework for moral practice. The
description of early Christian `socioecology' has been under-
taken in several recent studies by Wayne Meeks.10 His project is
to approach early Christian morality not by asking at the outset
what the church taught about marriage, war, or slavery, but by
delineating the new ecclesial setting within which ethical delib-
eration and guidance took place. In converting to the faith,
Christians described their new life with the most radical of
metaphors. They are chosen (1 Thess. 1:4) and called (1 Thess.
2:12) by God. They have turned from idols to God (1 Thess. 1:9).
Their new life is a source of estrangement but also the means of
 Introduction 11
their solidarity with others who share the same faith even
though they be scattered throughout the world (1 Thess. 2:14).
This dual sense of estrangement and solidarity is emphasised
throughout early Christian literature. Christians are described
by Paul as a new creation in Christ in which the old person has
passed away and a new life begun (2 Cor. 5:17). Those who were
once no people have now become a chosen race, a royal priest-
hood, a holy people, whose real home is in heaven (1 Pet.
2:9±10). One of the distinctive features of this new community
of faith is that it has a strong moral cast by comparison with
other religious cults. In this regard, it is more reminiscent of a
philosophical school than a religious sect.11
The sense of being set apart, of entering a new life, and of
being bound together with Christ and with one another is
strengthened by the rituals of baptism and the Lord's Supper. In
Romans 6, Paul uses an elaborate series of metaphors to
describe the way in which baptism signi®es dying and rising
with Christ. The discontinuity between life before and life after
baptism is stressed, as is the practical implication that Chris-
tians should walk in newness of life. Indeed, post-baptismal sin
on this reading is highly anomalous. In the weekly Eucharistic
meal, the memorial of the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 is a
reminder to Christians of the equality that arises from belong-
ing to the body of Christ.12 This subverts the traditional
manner in which a meal reinforced social strati®cation. Here,
guests were treated in different ways according to their social
status. This practice is contested by Paul as deeply inappropri-
ate within the church. The unity evoked and demanded by the
Eucharist is given wider expression in the famous passage from
the Didache, sometimes used in contemporary liturgies. `As this
broken bread was scattered upon the mountains, and then was
gathered together and became one, so may your Church be
gathered together from the ends of the earth into your
kingdom.'13
In being called into this new community, Christians are faced
with a range of practical problems about how they should
dispose themselves with respect to others in the church and to
those outside. Their ethical practice in these situations arises
12 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
out of the nature of their calling to the church. The moral
exhortation of the apostles is integrally related to what it means
to be a particular kind of people. In this respect, being takes
priority over doing. The kind of people Christians are called to
be results in their behaving in particular ways. A similar
relationship of imperative to communal identity can be found
in Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora. The keeping
of the law is the way in which Jews maintain their identity as the
covenant people of God. `The ®rst point in each form of the
variety of Jewish ethics, therefore, is to be Israel.'14
Following Loh®nk, Richard Hays makes the point that Jesus
did not have to found a church, because there already was one:
Israel.15 Prior to the church, the Hebrew notion of the covenant
people already provided a model of community life. Jesus'
calling of twelve disciples signals the restoration of Israel; Paul
understands the Gentile communities to whom he ministers as
`Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise' (Gal.
3:29). They are the spiritual descendants of the Exodus people,
all of whom drank from the one spiritual rock that was Christ
(1 Cor. 10:4). The communal identity of the church, therefore, is
determined by the nature of Israel as the chosen people of God
under the law of God.
Although ethical practice has to be understood within the
context of communal identity, it is also true that the practices of
the community contribute to its character.16 There is a mutual
enrichment of character and habitual activity. The importance
of showing hospitality to strangers is a prominent Jewish theme
which appears in the New Testament and in the literature of the
post-apostolic period. This practice helps to forge links with
Christians from other parts of the world. It is a way of
supporting the church's itinerant ministers. It also has the
symbolic function of reminding Christians of their own identity
as `resident aliens' since they have in this world no abiding city
(Heb. 13:14). Similarly, the gathering of funds for Christians in
other parts of the empire is an important expression and
reinforcement of belonging one to another, as is the regular
support of the sick and widowed within each congregation.
`Would not the very act of dropping those hard-earned coins
 Introduction 13
into a jar every Sunday have an effect on the way the partici-
pating members of the church would henceforth think about
the morality of wealth and poverty?'17
The new communal identity determined the character of its
members and called for their highest loyalty, even when this
occasioned martyrdom. The sacri®ce made by Jesus was itself,
in part, a model of martyrdom. Yet the polity of the church did
not require Christians to abandon all previous commitments,
social ties, and standards. In this respect, there is an ambiva-
lence in Christian orientation within the wider world. The
manner in which Christian groups often had their focus around
a particular household re¯ected social patterns in the Graeco-
Roman world. The members of the household were engaged in
the life of society at large. This gave rise to the type of problem
manifested in 1 Corinthians 8±10 where some Christians
participated in dinner parties at which meat previously sacri-
®ced to idols was consumed.
The ethical injunctions of Paul and other New Testament
writers bear some formal similarities to the conventions of
Graeco-Roman moral exhortation. 1 Thessalonians opens by
dwelling on the friendly relations between writers and recipi-
ents. It reminds the readers what they already know. There is
an emphasis upon imitating the example of others. More
signi®cantly, most of the virtues and vices listed can be found in
pagan literature. Meeks presents an aggregate of vices found in
eighteen different lists in the New Testament.18 He concludes
that all can be widely found elsewhere, although there is a
particular emphasis upon sexual impropriety and idolatry in
the Christian lists. Much of Paul's parenesis in 1 Thessalonians
4 would be familiar to non-Christians. Sexual purity, marital
®delity, brotherly love, leading a quiet life, and minding one's
own business are all commended. What is interesting in this
context is that Paul goes on to assert that others, on observing
such conduct, will respect and trust those who belong to the
church. Implicit in this claim, which was later to be developed
by the second-century apologists, is the idea that the heathen
can recognise the high moral standards set by the followers of
Christ.
14 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
In the early church, we can ®nd moral standards and
practices which are not dissimilar to those acknowledged else-
where. Yet their context in a particular socio-ecology gives
them a distinctive focus and signi®cance within the Christian
life. The rationale of the moral life and the way it is practised
re¯ect the particularity of the Christian faith. Not only moral
perception, but also the motivation, commitment, and serious-
ness of the moral life are recon®gured by one's ecclesial belong-
ing. The moral world of the ®rst Christians cannot be
understood except with reference to Jewish morality, the
example of Jesus, the relations within and across congregations,
and the symbols and rituals practised within the body of Christ.
Prior to the fourth century, the early Christians bound them-
selves to a minority religion which was often misunderstood and
sometimes violently persecuted. The church comprised small
but active groups of Christians whose commitment to their
congregations was intensi®ed by a sense of their standing out
from the majority.19 The demands of following Christ together
with the tensions experienced within the church produced some
signi®cant emphases. Divisions of race, class, wealth, and
gender were more acutely felt within the koinonia of the Holy
Spirit. This gave Christian ethics a stronger social dimension
than one ®nds in the traditions of Plato and Aristotle.20 In the
writings of John Chrysostom in the late fourth century, there is a
strong sense of a common humanity which imposes obligations
upon slave-owners and the rich. It is impossible to enter the
kingdom of God without the giving of alms. It is the heart of
virtue. The best way to utilise wealth, he counselled the rich,
was to disburse it to widows, orphans, the sick, and prisoners.
Domestic slaves are to be treated with respect. They are neither
to be beaten nor separated from their spouses. Friendship
between master and slave, contra Aristotle, is to be desired.
Think not that what is done towards a servant, [Christ] will therefore
forgive, because done to a servant. Heathen laws, indeed, as being the
laws of men, recognise a difference between these kinds of offenses.
But the law of the common Lord and Master of all, as doing good to
all alike, and dispensing the same rights to all, knows no such
difference.21
 Introduction 15
None the less, despite the high moral standards expected by
Chrysostom of followers of Christ, there is a constant recogni-
tion that all are sinners and dependent upon the grace and
forgiveness of God. This means that there can be no pride or
unseemly claim to virtue on the part of the Christian. It also
demands an attitude of humility and a readiness to forgive as
God forgives. This stress is less apparent in the pagan moralists
of antiquity.
The most theologically signi®cant features of this new life
are the way of Jesus and the authority of what became the
Old Testament. These are underemphasised by Meeks.22 This
may have something to do with a sociological approach which
tends inevitably to understate the signi®cance of theological
factors. Thus Childs, while not denying the validity of the
approach, wishes to accord greater emphasis to the way in
which the community is addressed by Paul in the name of
God who is `the source of Paul's comfort, authority, and the
norm of Christian behaviour'.23 We know that the early
church preserved the sayings of Jesus and that Paul attaches a
higher authority to them than his own ethical advice (1 Cor.
7:12). Writing almost a century later, Justin sees in the example
and teaching of Christ, the incarnation of that wisdom whose
seeds are present in the teaching of Socrates. The nature of
the Christian life as a calling by God to believe and respond
to the gospel of Jesus Christ as members of his body, the
church, bestows upon that life a de®nite orientation. We have
here the principal criterion for the nature of the life to which
Christians are called. Their calling is to serve the God of
Israel who has been most fully revealed in Jesus Christ. This is
the source and criterion of their new life. The grace of God as
the origin of the church explains why the early Christians
were compelled to attach such ethical signi®cance to humility,
forgiveness, and love. The Christological criterion does not
provide the church with ready-made ethical solutions for
every occasion. The wrestling with particular issues that Paul
engages in throughout 1 Corinthians testi®es to this. None the
less, the foundation of the church upon Jesus Christ provides
an authority which cannot be forgotten. This is especially true
16 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
of his teaching on the Sermon on the Mount which is
impossibly exacting. It provides an intensi®cation of Old
Testament law which cannot be ignored. This is re¯ected in
later Christian discussion of war, marriage, divorce and for-
giveness.24
The attitude towards the world that all this evokes is
strangely ambivalent. The church worshipped Christ cruci-
®ed, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks (1
Cor. 1:22ff.). It could not forget that its Lord had been
cruci®ed by the civil state. Christians were called to a new
polis, the full reality of which would only appear at the end of
the world. According to the Fourth Gospel, Christians are
chosen out of the world and cease to be of the world ( John
15:19). They are told to anticipate the hatred of the world just
as Christ had known it ( John 15:18). Yet the world remains
the creation of God through the divine Word. It is the object
of God's redeeming love and in it God's Word becomes
incarnate.
The ambivalence of Christian attitudes to the world is
already re¯ected in 1 Thessalonians. There, as we have seen,
Christians are urged to live quietly and to mind their own
business. Elsewhere, Paul claims that the secular authorities are
ordained by God and deserve the recognition that is appro-
priate to them (Rom. 13:1ff.). He urges those within the church
to live peaceably with all people (Rom. 12:18). On the basis of
the analysis offered, we must assume that Christians continued
to show commitment to the institutions and practices of the
world out of which they had been called. This was a necessary
condition for the presence of `households' at the centre of
Christian congregations. While many later followed a strict
ascetic line by withdrawing from the civil world, this was not
the rule for the majority. Peter Brown recounts the extra-
ordinary witness of those who made an ascetic commitment,
but notes that the silent majority must have been those who
married, raised children, preserved households, and thus contri-
buted to the survival of the church.25 At the same time,
apocalyptic strains in early Christian literature foretell the ®nal
destruction of earthly civilisations and polities. In this respect,
 Introduction 17
the Christian attitude to the state is eschatologically critical.
The church must live in the knowledge that the secular powers
are only provisional and may even be corrupt.26
The ambivalence of these attitudes towards the world may be
endemic to any theology of creation and redemption. In a
world created and fallen, yet still loved by God, the church
might expect to be confronted both by hospitality and hostility.
It is signi®cant that this ambivalence was removed most effec-
tively in the theology of Marcion by denying outright the
orthodox doctrine of creation through a disjunction of creation
and redemption.
The ethical orientation of Christian writers in the early
church reveals neither an exclusive differentiation from sur-
rounding society nor an assimilation to conventional norms.
One cannot ignore the ways in which Christian moral exhorta-
tion draws unashamedly upon pagan sources. Ambrose's trea-
tise On The Duties of the Clergy explicitly borrows from Cicero's
discourse by recommending, for example, the four cardinal
virtues of temperance, prudence, courage, and justice. In the
same context, Ambrose also repeats the point, found in earlier
Christian writers, that the great philosophers were expounding
wisdom that they had originally derived from Moses. Basil's
Address to Young Men on How They Might Derive Bene®t from Greek
Literature commends the moral example set by Pericles, Euclid,
Socrates, and others. These remain instructive when set within
a Christian context.
Also of signi®cance is the way in which patristic writers
regularly appeal to natural law, often citing Romans 1±2. This
was not presented in the systematic way that was later to
characterise Thomism, but used in an ad hoc fashion to indicate
the possibility of ethical recognition throughout the created
order. This can be seen in the writings of Clement, Basil,
Chrysostom, and Augustine.27 Some commentators have even
discerned a natural morality in the words of Jesus. `If you then,
who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how
much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things
to those who ask him?' (Mtt. 7:11)28
The Hebrew notion of `wisdom' provided an interpretive
18 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
principle for recognising moral order everywhere throughout
the cosmos. `She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to
the other, and she orders all things well' (Wisdom 8:1). Apolo-
gists of the second century ± Aristides, Athenagoras, and Justin,
for example ± could expound the Stoic notion that the universe
was governed by an order which was discernible in some
measure by all rational persons. This order was identi®ed by
Justin Martyr with the divine Logos through which all things
were created and which had become incarnate in Jesus Christ.
The appeal to a universal moral order had a dual function. It
enabled the apologists to recognise the moral perception of
pagan society at its best, thus demonstrating that the Christian
religion did not directly contradict what was already known in
part. But it also had the purpose of showing the distinctiveness
of Christian practice over against the customs of the host
society. Thus the apologists can point to the polis of the church
as morally exceeding the highest standards known in the
ancient world.29
The apologists might be perceived as adopting a craven
though understandable posture towards pagan morality. Yet
many of their themes are present in later writers and can be
detected in Augustine. Rowan Greer has argued that the
dominant model for con®guring the relationship of church to
world is that of alien citizenship.30 This is the paradox of
belonging provisionally to earthly polities, but simultaneously
and ®nally to a greater polity, the city of God. This strange
relationship of church to state is set out in the anonymous
Epistle to Diognetus around ce 130.
[I]inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of
each of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their
ordinary conduct, (Christians) display to us their wonderful and
confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries,
but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with
others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is
to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land
of strangers. They marry as do all; they beget children, but they do
not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a
common bed. They are in the ¯esh, but they do not live after the ¯esh.
They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They
 Introduction 19
obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by
their lives. They love all people, and are persecuted by all. They are
unknown and condemned; they are put to death and restored to life.31

The writer goes on to compare the relationship of Christians

to the world to that of the soul to the body. The soul dwells in
the body but is not a part thereof. The soul is imprisoned in it
and is persecuted by it, yet the soul loves and preserves the body
it inhabits. Through bodily hardship, the soul prospers. Like-
wise, through persecution the church increases in number. It is
stressed, furthermore, that the church is no earthly invention. It
is brought into being through the action of God in sending the
Son into the world to be its Saviour. It is by his healing of our
corrupted nature that Christians are made citizens of heaven.
The community of the church thus understands itself not as a
human creation but as constituted by God. This theological
prius becomes the criterion for the form and content of the
church's polity.
The tension between commitment to the civil society and
the church was sometimes broken in the inspiring example of
the martyrs. This led to a disowning of any stake in worldly
society, as for example in Tertullian's later writings. The
tension could also be broken in less praiseworthy ways,
especially after the conversion of Constantine. The order of the
empire could too easily be identi®ed with the order of the
kingdom of God as, for example, in the tributes of Eusebius to
Constantine. However, Augustine, in The City of God, returns to
the model of alien citizenship. The earthly city cannot be
identi®ed with God's sacred order. It is a community of corrupt
people in a fallen world. Its institutions must always remain
imperfect. Yet it is capable of attaining a measure of peace and
order through the restraint of evil forces. The people of God
whose home is the heavenly city none the less have a stake in
this earthly peace.32
Augustine also echoes Stoic themes about the eternal law of
God re¯ected throughout the creation. This is apparent even
within the earthly city, although our supreme end can only be
known and enjoyed through divine grace.
20 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
God, then the most wise Creator and most just Ordainer of all
natures, who placed the human race upon earth as its greatest
ornament, imparted to humans some good things adapted to this life,
to wit, temporal peace, such as we can enjoy in this life from health
and safety and human fellowship, and all things needful for the
preservation and recovery of this peace, such as the objects which are
accommodated to our outward senses, light, night, the air, and waters
suitable for us, and everything the body requires to sustain, shelter,
heal, or beautify it.33

Peace is found, for Augustine, in the well-ordered obedience of

faith to God's eternal law. This involves the love of God, the
love of oneself, and the love of one's neighbour. This love
(caritas) is infused into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The
understanding of the source of this love dominated Augustine's
ethical re¯ections and led to the subordination of the four
cardinal virtues of Stoicism to the theological virtue of love.34
We do this not through external imitation, but through `putting
on Christ' by the grace of God, and thereby knowing the full
measure of divine love. The pursuit of order through the love of
God, self, and neighbour entails signi®cant moral restrictions
upon the waging of war (this leads to the just war theory) and to
a ban on suicide (which the church has since held to). The
dominant image of the Christian life is that of pilgrimage to the
heavenly city.
This pilgrimage has a communal dimension. It takes place
within the body of Christ. We are supported by the angels who
already dwell in that glorious city. Within our mother church
alone Christians receive training and instruction. It is the
discipline, exhortation, and fellowship of the church which are
necessary for our earthly journey. It is there that we learn how
to honour our children and love our partners in marriage. It is
there that we learn how to be good citizens and rulers, and how
to relate to people of other nations, cultures, and races.35 The
heavenly city may be assisted by that measure of peace granted
the earthly city. The temporal stability of society and the
regulation of human life are useful to it in its state of pilgrimage.
This heavenly city, then, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out
of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all
 Introduction 21
languages, not scrupling about diversities in the manners, laws, and
institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but
recognising that, however various these are, they all tend to one and
the same end of earthly peace.36
Where does this preliminary sketch leave us? One should
beware of any attempt to see the early Christian communities
as ethically or culturally monochrome. Diverse attitudes can be
detected. A similar diversity can also be discerned in Jewish
communities throughout the Diaspora.37 None the less, it seems
clear that the early Christians understood their lives to be
shaped by their commitment to Christ and their belonging to
the church. The Christian life was a following of Christ's
commandments, which re¯ected also elements of the Torah. It
was also a learning to live in fellowship with Christians from
different backgrounds and of different social status. Towards
the civil authority, it was a working out of attitudes which,
without seeking confrontation, expressed a higher commitment
to God. In all this we ®nd an eclectic borrowing from pagan
writers and a recognition of examples of goodness outwith the
Christian community. None the less, both borrowing and recog-
nition are positioned within a Christian framework. The moral
life is part of the life of faith, of life within the church, and of
one's earthly pilgrimage. In this respect, it is neither a following
of the dictates of natural reason nor allegiance to a set of self-
evident autonomous moral principles. For the New Testament
and the early church, morality is determined by its position
within the life of faith as the response that God's grace calls
forth. While there is signi®cant overlap with pagan ethical
precepts, the new context for ethical behaviour provides a
heightened awareness and intensifying of its signi®cance. We
can see how this aspect of early Christian life is retrieved by
recent communitarian trends in theology.
 chapter two

Christian ethical distinctiveness

Recent ecclesial or communitarian trends in Christian ethics

can draw support from a variety of ecumenical sources. These
lie in close theological proximity to current debate. The con-
tours of these sources will be brie¯y sketched in this chapter.

karl barth
Some imperious claims for Christian ethical distinctiveness can
be found in the writings of Karl Barth. Although he is generally
studied for his contribution to dogmatic theology, ethics re-
mained a fundamental preoccupation throughout Barth's life.
The lectures given in MuÈnster (1928/9) and Bonn (1930/1) now
comprise a posthumously published volume of over 500 pages.1
The second half of Church Dogmatics ii/2, the entirety of iii/4,
and the material originally designed as iv/4 are all devoted to
ethical themes. This is in addition to numerous other writings
and portions of the Church Dogmatics which are of ethical import.
All told, therefore, one can make the surprising claim that
Barth is one of the most proli®c Christian ethicists of the
twentieth century.
For Barth, there is no sphere of human life which is not
governed by the divine intention. The doctrine of election
declares that God's purpose in the creation of the world is the
establishment of the covenant of grace in Jesus Christ with all
human beings. There is no province of human existence which
is not determined by this purpose. God's election is not exclu-
sively about divine action. It is a divine action which by its
nature summons a human response. Its goal is covenant
22
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 23
partnership. In this partnership, human beings acknowledge
and obey the divine rule. The gospel thus determines human
action, and in doing so it has the character of law. God wills to
take us into the divine service. We are commissioned for a share
in God's own work.2
The Word of God, according to Barth, is always laden with
ethical import. Theology thus includes the problem of ethics.3
In determining our action, God's activity is always primary and
human activity secondary. One consequence of this is that
human goodness must be described in terms of sancti®cation.
As the Word of God addresses, redeems, and sancti®es human
life, so genuine goodness becomes possible. It is for this reason
that Barth deals with ethics in terms of the leading concept of
the divine command. Moral imperatives are occasioned by the
command of God which governs human existence. The divine
command, however, is neither abstract nor general. It comes in
a particular way to each one of us in the historical circum-
stances of our lives. It carries an indispensable reference to Jesus
Christ and to Holy Scripture. All Christian living bears witness
to Christ, in whom the eternal decree of God is revealed and
enacted. God wills to be for us in Christ, and in doing so calls us
to be the witnesses and servants of Christ.4 What this entails is
revealed in Scripture which itself is an indispensable witness to
Christ in the dual form of promise and ful®lment. Ethical
action thus has the character of attesting the righteousness of
God.5
[P]recisely because perfect righteousness stands before them as God's
work . . . they are with great strictness required and with great
kindness freed and empowered to do what they can do in the sphere
of the relative possibilities assigned to them, to do it very imperfectly
yet heartily, quietly, and cheerfully. They are absolved from wasting
time and energy sighing over the impassable limits of their sphere of
action and thus missing the opportunities that present themselves in
this sphere. They may and can and should rise up and accept
responsibility to the utmost of their power for the doing of the little
righteousness.6

It is clear from the outset that Barth's approach to ethics is

dependent upon his understanding of the sovereignty of God,
24 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
the determination of human beings for covenant partnership in
Jesus Christ, and the uniqueness of Scripture as witness to the
Word of God. His ethics gives the highest priority to the divine
command, to the person and work of Christ, and to the church
as the community which hears and testi®es to the Word of God.
Situated in this way, Christian ethics is distinguished in form
and content from every other form of ethical belief.
The besetting question is whether distinctiveness is purchased
at too high a price. Is this approach to ethics excessively abstract
in ignoring both the ways we are customarily taught to be
virtuous and the rules that are an integral feature of most
ethical systems?7 Is it merely a historical accident that Prot-
estant ethics produced in the 1960s situationism, a theory which
held that all ethical instruction could be reduced to the one
value of love? One possible rejoinder is that Scripture clearly
speci®es a range of moral rules which are expressions of the
divine command. Thus we do not merely intuit the will of God
in the particular circumstances of our lives. We are given
distinct expressions of God's will in the Decalogue and the
Sermon on the Mount. Yet there are two related reasons why
Barth must qualify this response. First, the divine commands in
Scripture cannot be abstracted from the history in which they
arise and assume signi®cance. They must be set in the context
of the story of Israel and the life of Jesus. As such, they
summarise the lines along which human behaviour should
proceed rather than providing absolute injunctions which
provide a blueprint for all subsequent human activity. Barth is
here tilting at forms of Christian legalism. The commandments
not to kill and to love one's enemies summarise a concrete
command given to Israel and the disciples within particular
historical situations. It is possible, Barth claims, that different
things may be required of us in different circumstances albeit in
accordance with the general orientation of human behaviour
which is revealed in these biblical commands.8
The second, related reason why Christian ethics cannot be
reduced to a set of rules delineated in Scripture concerns
Barth's `actualism'. This refers to the way in which the Word of
God always assumes the character of a dynamic event rather
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 25
than a static deposit controllable by the human subject.9 The
capacity of the Bible to become the Word of God depends upon
the activity of the Holy Spirit in the present to appropriate its
words. In ethical terms, this implies that the will of God cannot
be encapsulated in a set of general moral rules.
God wills that (we) should be called and gathered to this people of His
choice to share in its of®ce of witnessing . . . How strangely would the
Bible deviate from its proper theme and content if it presented
matters otherwise than it actually does in the shape of this, so to
speak, historical ethics, if it were to describe the will of God as the
establishment and proclamation of general precepts and rules which
can be ®lled out only on the basis of the re¯ection and decision of
man!10
Barth treads a ®ne line between an ethical occasionalism on
the one side and a casuistic system on the other. He denies that
the command of God appears from nowhere in the instant of
each new ethical decision. His ethics is not a form of divine
command intuitionism. God's command belongs to a history in
which the Word of God has been disclosed. This is the history
narrated in the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the church. Our
human activity has the task of corresponding to the central
events in that history, namely the birth, life, death, and resurrec-
tion of Christ. It has a visible shape, therefore, and one that
calls for our obedience not merely in theonomous terms.11 On
the other hand, he is deeply suspicious of casuistic systems
which provide rules and procedures for determining the will of
God on each and every occasion.12 Furthermore, Barth repeat-
edly insists that the divine command liberates rather than
enslaves.13 This is what distinguishes it from every other
command. It appears to us as our highest good, pace Kant, and
not merely as our highest duty. God's command comprehends
all that is right and friendly and wholesome.14 It is the source of
our joy and delight. In this respect, obedience to the Word of
God ful®ls our deepest human aspirations, even as these aspira-
tions are thereby rede®ned.
Yet a further problem that arises for this account of ethics is
how it relates to ethical precepts and examples which are not
speci®cally Christian. We are taught how to behave by parents
26 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
and teachers who often make no reference to the command of
God. The ethical discussions that are conducted in modern
societies seldom refer to Scripture or the divine will. How is
Barth's ethical viewpoint to be positioned in relation to other
ways of speaking about human action? In his discussion of the
relationship of theology to philosophy, Barth is adamant that
theology cannot tolerate any ethical system which opposes the
view that `all ethical truth is enclosed in the command of the
grace of God'.15 In this respect, his divine command theory is
exclusive. Theological apologetics is proscribed in so far as it is
an attempt to justify theological claims on the basis of their
relation to foundational truths which are accessible both to
believer and unbeliever. No such common starting-point exists.
If it did it would compromise the nature of God's grace in Jesus
Christ. Here Barth's criticism of the doctrine of the analogia entis
has ethical force. The relation of nature to supernature in
Thomist theology presupposes that, by virtue of our created
nature, we can know of God and goodness. This facilitates a co-
ordination of moral philosophy and moral theology, of nature
and grace, and of reason and revelation. Barth argues that here
the sub-structure of nature inevitably becomes a foundation on
which the super-structure of revelation must be placed.16 This
is to be rejected because of the way in which it decentres the
eternal decree of the covenant of grace. Revelation loses it
character as the event in which God wills to be gracious to us in
Jesus Christ. This event is itself the basis by which every other
claim to knowledge of God's will is relativised. There is in
Thomism a foundation which the Christian gospel cannot and
must not admit. While this characterisation of Aquinas' moral
teaching can be questioned, it is none the less clear that Barth's
divine command ethics is intolerant of any rival claims about
the source and content of genuine moral knowledge.
Throughout much of his ethical writings, Barth is concerned
with describing the context of the Christian life. Thus, Christian
ethics includes what is often characterised as `the spiritual life' as
well as the problems of `the moral life'. It is signi®cant that his
treatment of special ethics in Church Dogmatics iii/4 begins with
an exposition of the Lord's Day as the day of worship, confes-
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 27
sion, and prayer. In similar vein, The Christian Life offers an
extended re¯ection on the opening petitions of the Lord's Prayer
as a way of describing the moral world of the Christian. This is
not the expression of a quaint piety. It shows rather the way in
which ethical belief, deliberation, and action are shaped by the
character of the Christian life as a glad and grateful response to
what God has already done. This fundamental setting deter-
mines the moral universe of the Christian. As Webster remarks,
`For Christian ethics, the world is a different place, and part of a
Christian theory of morality is a careful delineation of that
difference.'17 This aspect of Barth's ethics provides a place for
concepts of `virtue' and `character' which appear to be lacking
from his divine command theory. To do God's will involves
learning how to live as a member of the church in the world.
This means responding to God's grace and ®nding one's position
in a covenant history that has been established in Christ. It
involves the development of forms of activity such as confession,
invocation, thanksgiving, and service.18
On the other hand, Barth insists that Christian ethics must
not adopt an isolationist stance. There can be no diastasis
between Christian and other forms of ethical re¯ection. This
would lead to the unwelcome consequence of a theological
ethics concerned only with the province of the Christian moral
consciousness.19 The secular moral consciousness would then
need to be described in terms of an alternative theory. Yet the
command of God is the source of all ethical truth, and it
determines not only the church, but all who are elected for the
covenant of grace in Christ. Theological ethics is therefore
interested in philosophical representations of human thought,
affection, and agency. Barth uses a variety of terms to describe
an approach which resists a common foundation but denies a
lack of all positive relation. Theological ethics can `compre-
hend', `absorb', and `annex' claims that are made by philo-
sophical ethics. The term `annexation' (Annexion)20 is used
repeatedly throughout his ethical writings. While it is an aggres-
sive metaphor, it none the less reveals Barth's conviction that
ethical insights from outwith the church can be positively
appropriated.
28 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
This is further re¯ected by some surprisingly positive endor-
sements of non-Christian ethical action, especially in Barth's
later work. Non-Christians are not be rigidly separated from
Christians. They can be thought of as those whose calling lies
before them in the future.21 Everyone must be considered as
living in the context of the uniting of all things that has already
taken place in Jesus Christ. Each human being must be
approached and dealt with on the basis that he or she is one for
whom Jesus Christ is Lord whether that fact is acknowledged or
not.22 While this does not eradicate the signi®cant difference
between Christian and non-Christian, it seems to point to the
possibility of God's work in the lives of those outwith the
church. This is underscored by Barth's discussion of secular
parables of the Word of God. Here there is genuine witness to
God extra muros ecclesiae, although its adequacy must be tested by
reference to Scripture, the confessional traditions of the church,
and the upbuilding of its common life.23 This possibility is
already recognised in the context of his earlier discussion of the
divine command.
In all ages the will of God has been ful®lled outside the Church as
well. Indeed, to the shame of the Church it has often been better
ful®lled outside the Church than in it. This is not in virtue of a natural
goodness of humankind. It is because Jesus, as the One who has risen
from the dead and sits at the right hand of God, is in fact the Lord of
the whole world, who has His servants even where His name is not yet
or no longer known and praised.24
The possibility of genuine ethical perception and action,
outwith the community where the command of God is attested,
is thus af®rmed by Barth. He speaks positively of a non-
theological ethics which does not make absolute claims that
controvert those of the Christian faith, but which, within its
own limits, offers illuminating re¯ection upon the problems of
human life. Here Barth refers to the work of novelists, such as
de Balzac, Dickens, and Tolstoy, and to the philosophical
moralists. `Thanks to the wisdom and patience of God, and the
inconsequence of humankind, it is quite possible in practice
that Christian insights and deduction may actually exist where
their Christian presuppositions are wholly concealed, or where
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 29
a closer investigation would reveal all kinds of presuppositions
that are only to a small extent Christian.'25
Yet this is not merely to be thought of as the result of an
occasional action of the Holy Spirit or the reconciled status of
all people in Christ. The possibility of ethical perception and
action beyond the church is recognised not only under the
second and third articles of faith, but also under the ®rst. The
doctrine of creation provides a context in which the sharing of
convictions and insights can be recognised. By virtue of the
basis on which the covenant of grace is enacted, all human
beings ®nd themselves in social spheres which are under the
command of God. Creation is thus central to Barth's theological
ethics, although its signi®cance cannot be understood apart
from its eschatological goal. The action of God in creating the
world has `in view the institution, preservation and execution of
the covenant of grace, for partnership in which He has pre-
destined and called' humankind.26
In his early ethical work, Barth deployed the Lutheran
concept of the orders of creation. These are described as
creaturely standards by which the will of God meets us in the
kingdom of nature.27 Despite the way in which Barth subse-
quently adverts to Scripture and Christ, there is some tension
with his earlier dismissal of a theory of nature which discerns, in
independence of revelation, a knowledge of the will of God.
This largely accounts for his decision to drop the concept of
orders of creation in his later work and to prevent the publi-
cation of the earlier lectures.28
Although the concept of `orders of creation' does not appear
explicitly in Luther's social ethics, he wrote of the status econom-
icus, which included marriage and family life, and the status
politicus as orders which governed all human life.29 Through
these orders, human beings are bound in a network of relation-
ships which carry responsibilities and obligations. In nine-
teenth-century German Lutheranism, the notion of the orders
of creation (SchoÈpfungsordnungen) describes the ways in which
human beings by virtue of their social nature are aware of roles
and obligations apart from and prior to belief in Jesus Christ. In
the orders of creation we have a consciousness of the divine
30 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
command outwith the province of special revelation. This
provides an ethical basis for civil society, and a set of accessible
moral standards which can command the allegiance of Chris-
tian and non-Christian alike.30
Understood in this sense, the concept is rejected by Barth.
It establishes a source and norm of ethical knowledge prior to
what is given in the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It
fails to perceive that creation must be understood in the light
of the covenant of grace. It makes law prior to the gospel of
grace, rather than a form of the latter. This is a crucial theme
in Barth's theology which, in contradistinction to Luther-
anism, locates ethics within dogmatics. The grace of God is
the source of the command of God. In determining us by
grace, God also summons us to action. Both the gospel and
the law are rooted in God's eternal decision to be gracious
towards us in Jesus Christ. The law is the form of the gospel,
and should not be understood as prior to it or knowable
independently of it.31
In Church Dogmatics iii/4, the concept of the orders of creation
is rejected by Barth in his criticism of Brunner and Bonhoeffer.
To argue that we have a knowledge of God's will within the
orders of creation is to posit a revelation of God prior to God's
Word in Jesus Christ. Barth poses some critical questions.
Where does this knowledge come from? Does it not presuppose
a static understanding of the orders which makes it too easy to
identify God's will with the status quo?32 Yet despite this
rejection of the orders of creation, Barth recognises that some-
thing vital is here receiving improper expression. The Word of
God does not come to us in a way that is inexplicable and
irrelevant to our created nature. It comes in such a manner as
to make sense of the social nature of human beings. It engages
us in the sexual, economic, and political dimensions of our
natural existence. While rejecting the language of the orders of
creation, Barth continues to speak of the `spheres' of activity in
which the command of God addresses us.33 What we are to do
in these spheres is known only through God's Word, but its
directing of our lives comprehends the fundamental features of
social existence.
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 31
[I]f it is true that the divine command and human action cannot be
understood apart from them, it is just as true that they themselves must
not be understood apart from the divine command and human action,
but only as the reality of the event in which these two meet. Thus the
emergence of these spheres, relationships or orders does not make
possible a return to casuistry. They are not universal ethical truths, but
only the general form of the one and supremely particular truth of the
ethical event which is inaccessible as such to the casuistical grasp.34

In his theological anthropology, Barth describes the social

nature of human existence by the leading concept of co-
humanity (Mitmenschlichkeit ). The fundamental shape of human
nature has not been destroyed by human sinfulness although it
is everywhere defaced by it. It is disclosed by Jesus Christ who is
not only the one for God but also the one for others.35 The
being of Jesus for others corresponds to his eternal relationship
to God the Father. The eternal love within the Godhead is also
the love which is offered by Jesus to all other human beings.
Barth can thus speak of an `analogia relationis'.
This theology of the human person is determined by a
description of revelation. But, since the account is of human
nature within and without the Christian community, we should
not be surprised if there are parallels with philosophical for-
mulations. Barth makes speci®c mention of Confucius, Feuer-
bach, and Buber.36 He argues that this partial correspondence
is to be acknowledged and read as indirect though unnecessary
con®rmation of what is asserted from a theological perspective.
Where ethics is concerned, we should not be surprised in light
of this account of human nature to ®nd some similarities
between the content of moral beliefs inside and outside the
church. The possibility of good moral practice beyond the circle
of faith is thus a feature of Barth's doctrine of creation as well as
of his doctrines of reconciliation and redemption.
In attempting to offer a brief characterisation of Barth's
ethics, one is struck by the different nuances in his thought. His
strong realism is apparent in the insistence that what is right is
determined only by the command of God which is always
beyond human control. This divine command is sovereign and
cannot be set out in a system of rules. Yet it is not an occasional
32 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
event which bears no reference to the history that God has
established with Israel and in the sending of Christ. Its direction
is given us by the witness of Scripture. There is no source or
norm of moral knowledge in creation which can precede or be
set alongside the Word of God. Yet creation is characterised by
spheres or orders which set the context within which the
command of God is heard and obeyed. What constitutes good-
ness is known only from the side of faith, within the Christian
community, and by the action of the Holy Spirit. Yet the will of
God can be done, and witnesses can be found far beyond the
sector of the church. While asserting the distinctive bases of
Christian moral perception and action, Barth is also anxious to
af®rm activity that takes place on other bases. One might
summarise this as an attempt to recognise common ethical
ground with those outside the faith, without requiring any
common ethical theory. The existence of such common ground
is itself explained in terms of a distinctive theory about the work
of God as creator, reconciler, and redeemer.
The capacity of Barth's theological work to provide a distinc-
tive basis for Christian political witness was nowhere more
apparent than in the Barmen Declaration (1934) of which he
was the principal author. This continues to exercise in¯uence as
a model for Christian proclamation and political action. The
Barmen Declaration asserts the unique sovereignty of God's
Word in Jesus Christ, and its unlimited scope in determining
every area of life. `Jesus Christ as he is attested for us in Holy
Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and
which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.' The
in¯uence of Barth's theology can be discerned in theological
protests against apartheid37 and in recent reactions to ecclesi-
astical connivance at the proliferation of nuclear armaments
and American foreign policy. George Hunsinger thus calls for a
confessing church which will protest on a doctrinal basis against
the cultural captivity of much modern American Christianity.
`The Lordship of Jesus Christ over and beyond all relativities of
human culture is, so far as the church is concerned, a matter of
life and death, a binding truth and a decision of ultimate
signi®cance.'38
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 33
The symposium devoted to Hunsinger's essay contains
eighteen responses and counter-responses. Together, these
reveal the continuing in¯uence of Barth and the main lines of
reception to his ethical work. The need for a distinctive Chris-
tian ethical witness is af®rmed. Yet it is recognised that this is
problematic in democratic societies which attach a high
premium to values of tolerance and pluralism. It is urged that
faithfulness must take priority over considerations about effec-
tiveness in our current social situation. Yet this must happen
without isolation in an ecclesiastical enclave. The trappings of
an easy consensus and a tacit collaboration need to be admitted,
even while the possibility of making common cause with others
outside the church is endorsed.
The Church does not confront the world in absolute antithesis and
mutual exclusion (sectarianism), nor does it simply surrender itself to
the world's agenda, as if it were merely a valuable resource for the
accomplishment of secular ends (acculturation). The Church's soli-
darity with the world allows it to seek valid forms of contextualization
while guarding against ¯accid conformism. Yet its precedence over
the world requires it to maintain its essential distinctiveness without
retreating into rigid isolation.39

post-liberalism
An important trend in recent theology reinforces some of these
Barthian claims for Christian ethical speci®city through linking
them to a more general account of religion. Post-liberalism is a
label that has come to be applied to theological trends associ-
ated with the Yale theologians, Hans Frei and George Lind-
beck.40 Although it is not a monolithic movement, it gained
clearer focus with the publication of Lindbeck's The Nature of
Doctrine in 1984. Little more than 120 pages in length, this has
probably been the most widely discussed theological text of
recent years. Two related aims can be discerned in The Nature of
Doctrine. First, there is the ecumenical goal of understanding
doctrines as rules governing Christian speech, action, and
belief. In this way one can resolve apparent contradictions
between doctrines by understanding them as rules which are to
34 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
be applied in discrete ways under speci®c circumstances.
Apparently con¯icting rules may be reconciled by a better
understanding of their context of origin and proper application.
Thus there may emerge an underlying compatibility between,
say, the Eucharistic doctrine of transubstantiation and its Prot-
estant rivals. These `can be interpreted as embodying rules of
sacramental thought and practice that may have been in
unavoidable and perhaps irresolvable collision in certain histor-
ical contexts, but that can in other circumstances be harmo-
nized by appropriate speci®cation of their respective domains,
uses, and priorities'.41 To support this understanding of the
function of doctrine, Lindbeck sets out a second aim of his
study, the articulation of a cultural±linguistic theory of religion.
This understands religious utterances in the context of the
practical, linguistic, and textual shaping of religious commu-
nities. It is contrasted with two alternatives; a propositionalist
account of religion and an experiential±expressivist account.
The cultural±linguistic theory construes a religion as being like
a language in several vital respects. A religion is neither
primarily a range of beliefs nor a set of symbols expressive of
basic attitudes or experiences. It is a conceptual scheme which
makes possible patterns of experience and the holding of
beliefs. It is a public phenomenon which is the necessary
condition of individual feeling and cognition. It comprises a
vocabulary and a grammar which are rooted in a form of life.
Thus beliefs, values, and experiences are shaped by the com-
munal life forms which are their necessary conditions.
Lindbeck's presentation of the cultural±linguistic theory
draws explicitly upon the work of scholars in philosophy and
the social sciences, including inter alios Wittgenstein, Kuhn,
Berger, and Geertz. He considers the more original theme of his
work to be the rule theory of doctrine, and expresses surprise at
the debate occasioned by his presentation of the cultural±
linguistic theory.42 He claims modestly that this merely repro-
duces work that was carried out previously and is in wide
circulation. Yet the attention that his cultural±linguistic theory
has commanded can be explained in two ways. On the one
hand, its lapidary and ®nely illustrated presentation has helped
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 35
to clarify the main options in the study of religion today. As
Hans Frei has reported, many on reading The Nature of Doctrine
are struck with the realisation that it states what they had
already believed for some time but could not articulate prop-
erly.43 On the other hand, the defence of the cultural±linguistic
theory by way of rejection of propositionalist and experiential±
expressivist positions has attracted theological criticism from
both the right and the left. This is not surprising given the way
in which Lindbeck's defence of his approach maps out a post-
liberal theology, particularly in the ®nal chapter of The Nature of
Doctrine. Although the cultural±linguistic theory of religion may,
in principle, be theologically neutral,44 it is clearly being
deployed here to support a de®nite theological orientation.
David Tracy has commented, not without some justi®cation,
that `Lindbeck's substantive theological position is a methodo-
logically sophisticated version of Barthian confessionalism. The
hands may be the hands of Wittgenstein and Geertz but the
voice is the voice of Karl Barth.'45
Lindbeck's post-liberal theology attempts, partly through the
annexing of insights from philosophy and the social sciences, to
articulate a distinctively Christian position. This is done
through his understanding of the church and its position
vis-aÁ-vis contemporary culture. In a time of increasing dissocia-
tion between church and society Lindbeck argues that the
Christian future will be a sectarian one. The primary task of the
church is not to baptise whatever elements of secular culture
seem most religiously promising. Its task is to make greater
Christian authenticity possible by socialising its members into a
new way of life. This way of life is structured by the canonical
texts of the community and the ways in which they recite the
stories of Israel and the church. These stories, as they are read
and followed by the church, have the communal power to shape
belief, experience, and action. Here Lindbeck's cultural±
linguistic theory draws on resources from Frei's narrative inter-
pretation of Scripture. The Bible offers an identity description
of an agent, namely God. This description reaches its climax in
the story of Jesus, the divine±human agent, cruci®ed and risen.
The task of the church is to live out its communal life and
36 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
represent reality in light of God's character as depicted uniquely
and unsubstitutably in the story of Jesus.46 For the theologian,
therefore, the task of Christian self-description takes priority
over all attempts to correlate religious with other forms of
belief.
Pagan converts to the catholic mainstream did not, for the most part,
®rst understand the faith and then decide to become Christians;
rather, the process was reversed: they ®rst decided and then they
understood. More precisely, they were ®rst attracted by the Christian
community and form of life. The reasons for attraction ranged from
the noble to the ignoble and were as diverse as the individuals
involved; but for whatever motives, they submitted themselves to
prolonged catechetical instruction in which they practised new modes
of behaviour and learned the stories of Israel and their ful®llment in
Christ. Only after they had acquired pro®ciency in the alien Christian
language and form of life were they deemed able intelligently and
responsibly to profess the faith, to be baptized.47

Lindbeck's sectarianism is of a sociological rather than theo-

logical type. The sectarian church must learn to live in a
manner differentiated from its host society. Yet it continues to
live in continuity with the catholic or ecumenical church across
space and time. It confesses the ancient faith in the unique and
®nal lordship of Jesus over the whole world. To maintain its
catholicity today, it seems, the church must become more
sectarian in the sociological sense.
The differentiation of the cultural±linguistic theory from
propositionalist and expressivist theories has prompted lines of
criticism from both sides. These criticisms circle around the
charges of pragmatism and isolationism. Troubled by the rule
theory of doctrine and the Wittgensteinian proposal that
meaning is deeply connected with social use, one set of critics
claims that Lindbeck reduces theological truth to a function of
correct performance in accordance with the communally
authorised rules for speech and action. This criticism gains
plausibility from Lindbeck's notion of intrasystematic truth
which invokes the criterion of coherence with the total relevant
context. `Thus for a Christian, ``God is Three and One'', or
``Christ is Lord'' are true only as parts of a total pattern of
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 37
speaking, thinking, feeling, and acting.'48 He goes on to remark
that the crusader's war cry `Christus est Dominus' is false when
used to authorise the slaughter of the in®del, even though the
same words can be used in a different context to make a true
utterance. Thus, truth seems to be reduced to a function of
correct performance.49
On the other hand, Lindbeck works with a notion of truth
not only as coherence, but also as correspondence. Coherence
is a necessary but insuf®cient condition of ontological truth.
Ontological truth is made possible by the categorial adequacy
of the religion which obtains when forms of life shaped by
Christian narratives `correspond to God's being and will'.50
Utterances can be ontologically true, therefore, when the condi-
tions of categorial and intrasystematic truth are met. There is
thus a clear realist intention within Lindbeck's appropriation of
a cultural±linguistic theory, although the practical character of
religious utterances entails that this is not to be construed as a
simple isomorphism of proposition and reality. Within religion,
truth is to be characterised in terms of a correspondence of a
total way of life, which includes beliefs and propositions prop-
erly contextualised, with the divine being and action. Drawing
upon the Thomist distinction between the modus signi®candi
(mode of signifying) and the res signi®cata (thing signi®ed),
Lindbeck suggests that, while the thing signi®ed is beyond
comprehension, the mode of signi®cation may be ®xed by the
rules governing correct performance.
Seriously to commit oneself to thinking and acting as if God were
good in relation to us (quoad nos) in the ways indicated by the stories
involves asserting that he really is good in himself (in se) even though,
as the canonical texts testify, the meaning of this latter claim is utterly
beyond human comprehension.51

Whether this defence of theological realism is suf®ciently

robust to ful®l Lindbeck's intentions is questionable. Can one
combine the unknowability of God, a pragmatic theory of
religious meaning, and an ontological account of theological
truth? At the very least, some account is required of how the
mode of signi®cation and the thing signi®ed are related. This
38 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
calls for a doctrine of revelation which defends the notion that,
in some sense, God is, within God's own self, who God is for us
in the stories of Israel and Jesus. At one point in his discussion,
Lindbeck seems to concede this. The gospel stories, he remarks
elsewhere, following Frei, `unsubstitutably identify and charac-
terize a particular person as the summation of Israel's history
and as the unsurpassable and irreplaceable clue to who and
what the God of Israel and the universe is'.52 The narrative
thus has a referential as well as a regulative function, the former
acting as a warrant for the latter. In other words, the regulative
functions of the religion are understood to derive ultimately
from the being and action of God. That Lindbeck's theology
has a clear realist hue is evident also from his strong commit-
ment to the eschatological lordship of Jesus. His concern for the
salvation of adherents of other religions in a way that does not
compromise this commitment can only make sense in light of a
strong Christian realism.53 Lindbeck's intentions, therefore, are
unashamedly cognitive and realist. The problem is that these
seem to lie in deep tension with a thesis about the unknowability
of God.
Some of the ambiguity in his position can be resolved by
construing the concepts of instrasystematic and categorial truth
as criteria of ontological truth rather than rival and incompat-
ible accounts of the nature of truth. This is the reading of The
Nature of Doctrine advocated by Bruce Marshall and subsequently
endorsed by Lindbeck himself. 54 If correct performance and
categorial adequacy are considered necessary conditions for
utterances which are ontologically true, these may be construed
in terms of justi®cation rather than as what makes the utterance
true. What makes the utterance true is the being and action of
God, but for us to speak truly requires necessary conditions of
behavioural coherence and the grasp of an adequate categorial
scheme. This need not be perceived as an accommodation to a
pragmatic theory of truth, provided we hold that truth values
attach not to sentences as such but to particular token utter-
ances. There is thus no sense in which the cry `Christus est
Dominus' can be true or false except as an occasioned utterance
set in context. An appeal is made here to the Aristotelianism of
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 39
Aquinas. `In Aquinas' intellectual setting, judgments, not sen-
tences in abstraction from acts of af®rmation, were propositions
capable of being true or false.'55
This co-ordination of Lindbeck's different constructions of
truth will allay some realist scruples. Yet Lindbeck's emphasis
upon the signi®cance of use for understanding meaning con-
tinues to cause realist anxieties with respect to his rule theory of
doctrine. There resurfaces here the drift in a regulative and
pragmatist direction. (Perhaps this is not surprising given the
prominence of Wittgenstein, Kuhn, and Geertz in the articula-
tion of the cultural±linguistic theory.) The rule theory of doc-
trine seems to be sustained in part by a conviction concerning
the unknowability of God. According to Lindbeck, the Athana-
sian understanding of consubstantiality can be understood `in
terms of the rule that whatever is said of the Father is said of the
Son, except that the Son is not the Father. Thus the theologian
most responsible for the ®nal triumph of Nicaea thought of it,
not as a ®rst-order proposition with ontological reference, but
as a second-order rule of speech.'56
Lindbeck does not deny that these second-order rules of
speech can also be used to make ®rst-order propositional
statements about the Godhead, but he claims that the priority
belongs to the former function of doctrine. (It is hard to believe
that Athanasius was not engaged at both levels.57) He is
sceptical about the prospects of resolving this side of eternity
®rst-order disputes such as that between eastern and western
theologians about the nature of the immanent Trinity, but is
more hopeful that agreement can be reached on the funda-
mental rules that are prescribed by Trinitarian language. He
offers a comparison with scienti®c theories. Disputes between
Aristotelian, Newtonian, and Einsteinian theories of space and
time are scienti®cally assessed independently of the very differ-
ent question of the way things really are.58 Similarly, a doctrine
is to be assessed in terms of its organisational function with
reference to Scripture, tradition, worship, and the Christian
life. This illustration seems to expose the central weakness in
Lindbeck's position. A commitment to realism is somehow
tempered by the assumption that `the way things really are' is
40 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
unknowable and irrelevant to the assessment of scienti®c the-
ories and theological doctrines. We have here a collision
between something like a realist theory of reference and an
instrumentalist theory of meaning. This sits very uneasily with
his earlier claims, drawn from Frei, for the gospel stories as the
unsurpassable clue as to who and what God is.59 It seems,
therefore, that it is ®nally the stress on the unknowability of
God which compromises Lindbeck's theological realism.
Differences within the so-called Yale school may be most
crucial at this juncture. According to Thiemann, part of the
logic of Christian discourse is that contextualised claims about
the action of God for us carry implications about the identity of
God. We cannot make sense of Christian faith, hope, and
practice without the assumption that the God pro nobis is also
God extra nos. Convictions about the prevenience of God's grace
and the revelation of God to us are constitutive features of the
church's canonical scriptures, sacramental practice, and
eschatological hope. Unless we assume that there is some
correspondence between God for us and God's self, the depth
grammar of the Christian faith will be undermined. It is part of
the meaning of the narrated promises of the gospel that it is not
possible to think of God other than God as here depicted.
Faith is a response to the God who issues the promise and who alone
establishes the possibility of the act of communication. Faith is a
necessary though secondary element in God's act of promise. Thus we
see again the same pattern of relation and priority. God's extra nos
reality as the existent God who issues his promises to the reader
through the text is recognized precisely as the pro nobis character of his
reality is acknowledged.60
This relation of the pro nobis to the extra nos mirrors a
characteristic feature of Frei's theology of the resurrection. The
way in which the gospel portrays Jesus as risen entails that we
must think of his presence here and now as enabled by his
resurrection extra nos. The way in which the identity of Jesus is
rendered requires that we think of his being raised from the
dead as an event primarily for him and secondarily for us.
A very different line of critical inquiry has come from those
who perceive the cultural±linguistic theory to be isolationist. It
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 41
attaches too high a value to intratextual faithfulness and per-
formance according to communal standards, as opposed to co-
ordination with the best knowledge and insights available from
other ®elds of inquiry. Thus, one reviewer could remark that
Lindbeck had effectively shut the door on the criticism of
religion. On the cultural±linguistic model, the `community has
generated rules to protect its intellectual self-understanding
which have been made independent of reference to what lies
outside the community'.61 A more plausible version of the same
point is advanced by David Tracy. He accuses Lindbeck of
failing to perceive the ways in which exponents of the
experiential±expressivist paradigm have been preoccupied with
the ways in which experience is embedded in language, forms
of life, and social practices. Their understanding of the relation-
ship between language and experience is thus more sophisti-
cated than Lindbeck gives them credit for. Yet Tracy perceives
that Lindbeck's criticism runs even deeper than this and is, in
principle, a protest against theologies of correlation. It is the
repristination of a confessional over against a correlationist
theology. For Tracy, however, there should be a mutually critical
correlation of the meaning and truth of the tradition with the
meaning and truth of the contemporary situation.62
Although Lindbeck eschews a correlationist approach, he
can respond to the charge of isolationism (or ®deism). The
cultural±linguistic theory claims that religion in some important
respects only is like a culture or a language.63 This implies that
in other respects religion functions in different ways. For
example, the understanding that a religious community has of
the world and its own canonical texts can change under the
impact of external forces. Lindbeck is well aware of this
mobility within Christian theology. He claims that the funda-
mental doctrinal rules governing the language of the faith and
the constitutive narratives of the community do not change.
None the less, within these parameters ®rst-order truth claims
change and vary `from the application of the interpretive
scheme to the shifting worlds that human beings inhabit'.64
Similarly, the notions of absorbing the world into the text and
of ad hoc apologetics indicate ways in which a religion might
42 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
evince its rationality and relevance in the modern world
without capitulating either to foundationalist or correlationist
strategies. To accuse Lindbeck of rendering religion immune
from external criticism or encounter with other disciplines is
well wide of the mark. As Marshall notes, his position may be
imperialist, but it is certainly not sectarian in this sense.65
Despite accusations of isolationism, Lindbeck, in the closing
stages of The Nature of Doctrine, writes as a soft rationalist. A
religion shows its reasonableness through its powers of assimila-
tion. This is done by offering a plausible interpretation of `the
varied situations and realities' its members confront.66 Apolo-
getics can be conducted in an occasional manner provided it is
not `systematically prior and controlling in the fashion of post-
Cartesian natural theology and of later liberalism'.67
Lindbeck's defence of a cultural±linguistic model of religion
within Christian theology re¯ects a substantive position on the
relationship between church and civil society. It is not in the
interests of withdrawal from society that he advocates a church
which differentiates itself sharply from its host culture. It is
because he reckons that such a church will better witness within
the world and will provide its members with the appropriate
skills and practices for its reshaping. Although not overcon®dent
that this is what the future holds, he judges that `provided a
religion stresses service rather than domination, it is likely to
contribute more to the future of humanity if it preserves its own
distinctiveness and integrity than if it yields to the homogenizing
tendencies associated with liberal experiential±expressivism'.68
Despite its problematic account of theological truth, Lind-
beck's post-liberalism provides a way of construing the Chris-
tian religion and the position of the church in such a way as to
support the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. If experience and
belief are conditioned by the particular rules and vocabulary of
Christian speech set within discrete forms of life, then both
moral obligation and perception will have a particular con®gur-
ation. The rationale for moral action will make reference to the
canonical stories and patterns of life prescribed by the language
of the religion. Christian moral discourse will involve `thick
description' which derives from the theoretical and practical
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 43
resources of ecclesial life.69 This discourse, however, need not
be radically incommensurate with other forms of moral lan-
guage. The possibility of absorbing the world and engaging in
ad hoc apologetics suggests that partial similarities and corre-
spondences may be sought and found.

`veritatis splendor'
The 1993 papal encyclical addresses some fundamental ques-
tions in moral theology. In doing so, it sets out a framework for
dealing with matters of moral perception which shows some
striking similarities with recent Protestant attempts to defend
the distinctiveness of Christian ethics.70 It is signi®cant that the
encyclical opens with a sustained re¯ection upon the encounter
of the rich young man with Christ. (Karl Barth likewise devotes
careful attention to this passage in his ethics. 71) Questions about
what is good and what ought to be done are to be answered
only by reference to Christ. Faith and discipleship provide the
context for a Christian understanding of moral law in terms
both of its content and of its goal. All goodness derives from
God, and the purpose of life is to live for the praise of God's
glory. The moral life is a response to the grace of God in both
Old and New Testaments.72 To follow the precepts of the
second table of the Decalogue is integrally related to the love
and obedience owed to God in the ®rst table. This setting of the
moral commandments in the context of one's life in Christ is
apparent to some degree also in the ordering of material in the
recent Catechism of the Catholic Church. The exposition of the
natural law and the Decalogue is set within Part Three which
deals with `Life in Christ' and expounds ®rst the human and the
theological virtues.73 As in Karl Barth, ethics is set within the
context of Christian dogmatics.
Christ, the incarnate Son, is the perfect expression of God's
wisdom. To follow him is `the essential and primordial founda-
tion of Christian morality'.74 This is not a matter of merely
heeding his ethical teachings. It means holding fast to his very
person, being conformed to him, and becoming a member of
his Body, the Church, by the grace of the Holy Spirit. In the
44 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
church our lives are recon®gured to the service of Christ
through baptism and the Eucharist. By being created anew in
this way we ®nd our true freedom. All this is summarised at the
opening of chapter two.
Our meditation on the dialogue between Jesus and the rich young
man has enabled us to bring together the essential elements of
revelation in the Old and New Testaments with regard to moral
action. These are: the subordination of man and his activity to God,
the One who `alone is good'; the relationship between the moral good
of human acts and eternal life; Christian discipleship, which opens up
before man the perspective of perfect love; and ®nally the gift of the
Holy Spirit, source and means of the moral life of the `new creation'
(cf. 2 Cor. 5:17).75
The exposition of the gospel encounter with the rich young
man is of considerable methodological signi®cance in the
argument of the encyclical. It situates later teaching about
human freedom, conscience, and natural law within some
Scripturally shaped assumptions. Thus we are told that freedom
is not an absolute but is dependent upon the truth. The
freedom that is to be valued is that by which we discover,
acknowledge, and follow what is true. Conscience does not itself
determine the criteria for what is good and evil. It applies the
universal knowledge of what is good to particular situations.
Conscience is described, following Bonaventure, as `the herald
and messenger of God'.76 The natural law is rooted in the
eternal wisdom of God, and is its human expression. Although
human beings can discern good and evil by the use of their
reason, the encyclical stresses the need for reason to be guided
by revelation and faith.77 This is reinforced by the description
of `connaturality'. The forming of conscience requires not
merely a knowledge of God's law. It requires a `connaturality' of
the human person and the true good. This is developed through
the cardinal and the theological virtues, and is also assisted by
the church and its magisterium.78 The teaching of®ce of the
church thus enhances rather than overrides the individual
conscience. The position that is mapped out is described as a
`participated theonomy'.79 The source of goodness and law is in
God. It is revealed in Scripture and taught by the church. But it
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 45
corresponds with our created nature, reason, and conscience as
these are ecclesially shaped.
The religious setting of the moral life is emphasised by the
encyclical's stress on Christian witness. Faith itself is a truth to
be lived out. It involves a commitment to God's command-
ments. In living faithfully we bear witness to the goodness of
God. `Christ's witness is the source, model and means for the
witness of his disciples.'80 The supreme work is that of charity
and the supreme witness is that of martyrdom by which one
imitates the sacri®cial love of Christ. In this witness, however,
Christians are not alone. One may see the moral sense of those
shaped by `the great religious and sapiential traditions of East
and West' as re¯ecting the work of God's Spirit.
The encyclical has engendered controversy within the
Roman Catholic Church mainly on account of internal disputes
within its moral theology. The attacks on `proportionalism' and
the distinction between the fundamental option and particular
choices are intended to safeguard the view that certain acts are,
by virtue of their object, intrinsically evil. This has been
perceived as an attempt to provide theoretical support for the
dubious prohibition on arti®cial contraception. Many perceive
this as the leading subtext of the encyclical.81 Other scruples
concern its use of Scripture,82 the failure to recognise the
evangelical message of justi®cation by grace, the gratuitous use
of non-inclusive language, its mariology, and its invocation of
papal authority at the expense of other magisterial resources
within the Roman Catholic Church.83
Leaving these criticisms aside, however, the encyclical still
stands as a powerful late twentieth-century defence of theo-
logical ethics over against secular trends. It connects a decline
or obscuring of the moral sense with the dechristianisation of a
community. This comes about through the loss of awareness of
Gospel morality and the eclipse of fundamental principles.84
The dissociation of freedom from divine truth leads to an
assertion of the autonomy of the individual. We ®nd this
reiterated even more strongly in Evangelium Vitae with its criti-
cism of the autonomous self devoid of reference to common
value and a truth binding upon all. In this moral context,
46 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
`everthing is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining, even
the ®rst of the fundamental rights, the right of life'.85 Thus
there is a risk of an alliance emerging between democracy and
ethical relativism.86 It is probably its robust response to this
situation through restating Scriptural and theological themes
which has elicited widespread support.
By going behind particular issues to focus on the instrumentality and
plasticity of modern moral reason, the Pope has gone to the heart of a
philosophical situation in which all Christians now ®nd themselves. If
there is a place for a Petrine of®ce in the Church (a matter on which I
keep an open mind), surely this encyclical is a creditable example of
the kind of service it may render.87
The way in which the encyclical positions natural law theory
in relation to positive theology and Scripture re¯ects a further
trend in the recent reading of Thomas Aquinas. The disjunction
between the natural law and a distinctively Christian life which
once characterised Catholic moral teaching has now been
called into question. For Aquinas, the natural law derives from
the eternal law of God which is ®rst in the order of being.
Although some rudiments of the natural law are present in the
minds of all rational creatures, this does not provide a free-
standing basis for an adequate moral theory.88 Our grasp of the
natural law is clouded by sin and error. There are cultural
variations in perceptions of it. Moreover, his account of natural
law is presented in the Summa Theologiae in the context of more
extensive treatments of the cardinal and theological virtues. To
understand the natural law and its application to human affairs
one must acquire a range of virtues, most notably prudence and
charity. Prudence is necessary to determine a substantive theory
of the good, while charity is the supreme organising principle of
the moral life. Through the supreme virtue of charity, the
individual participates in the mind and will of God. This
enables him or her to understand the will of God in particular
situations while also transforming his or her affections and
actions. Thus, although Aquinas maintains that human crea-
tures everywhere can know the most basic requirements of the
natural law, for example the prohibition on killing the innocent,
his moral theory presupposes a network of speci®c philosophical
 Christian ethical distinctiveness 47
and theological commitments which makes it more contextual
than has often been recognised. The cardinal virtue of pru-
dence is truly and perfectly present only where grace directs the
whole person to his or her ®nal good.89 No true or perfect
virtue is possible without the greatest of the theological virtues,
since our ultimate end is the enjoyment of God which is
attained through the gift of charity.90
The arguments of Veritatis Splendor, together with recent read-
ings of Thomas Aquinas, indicate a greater measure of con-
textualism in Roman Catholic moral theology.91 Ethics is to be
understood in terms of the good life which embraces religious
concerns. The rich young ruler is directed to a life in which the
One who alone is good can be found. The insights of the
natural law are fragmented and rudimentary until illumined by
the truths of revelation as these are known within a life of faith,
hope, and charity. The dignity of the human being, while
af®rmed in different ways by the secular conscience, is threa-
tened by the corrosive trends of a social life which loses sight of
its theological and transcendent context. In the following
chapter the most powerful attempt to develop an ecclesially
speci®c ethics in recent theology will be explored at greater
length.
 chapter three

Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas

A turn towards ecclesial ethics1 can be detected in the writings

of John Yoder, James McClendon, and Stanley Hauerwas
amongst others. This approach represents a signi®cant trend in
recent Christian ethics, and resonates with wider theological,
philosophical, and sociological trends. In this exposition of
ecclesial ethics, attention is devoted mainly to the writings of
Hauerwas, principally because he is the most proli®c and
widely discussed in this context. His approach can be intro-
duced by way of his criticism of liberalism and congruent
patterns of thought in theological ethics.2

the failure of liberalism

The crisis of liberalism can be seen in the increasing fragmenta-
tion of western societies and the dissociation of citizens from
moral traditions, institutions, and communities. The project of
liberalism was one of establishing a moral basis for the demo-
cratic state and the market economy. This was done in a variety
of ways, each of which shared the common feature of isolating
the individual and his or her own interests. A common morality
was sought which could underwrite liberal societies and which
did not require speci®c appeal to religious beliefs, historical
traditions, or contested metaphysical notions. According to
Hauerwas, the impossibility of this project has been manifested
in several ways.3
The individual of liberal theory does not exist. Our societies
comprise very different types of individuals who re¯ect in their
interests and goals speci®c beliefs and commitments which have
48
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 49
been mediated by their inheritance of historical traditions and
communities. The secular state, therefore, represents a compro-
mise between a range of competing interests, rather than
embodying a single moral theory to which all its citizens are
committed. Interests are neither a fundamental nor transparent
notion, but presuppose a prior description of a person's char-
acter, projects, and community. In order to create a corporate
identity for liberal individualism, the nation state becomes
necessary as a vehicle for articulating the interests of indi-
viduals, and this is often achieved only through violence. Social
cohesiveness is typically acquired through a good war.4
The preoccupation of moral philosophy with `quandary
ethics' re¯ects the ethical assumptions of liberal society.5 It is
assumed in much moral debate that ethical dilemmas can be
resolved either by clarifying the empirical facts or by ascer-
taining the correct application of some principle(s). In the case
of the abortion debate, the central issues are often depicted as
whether the foetus is a human person or whether the rights of
the foetus take priority over the rights of the mother. Yet the
way in which the abortion dispute seems incapable of resolution
suggests that the differences between the ethical perspectives of
the disputants run much deeper. `[T]his kind of analysis fails to
see that the issue is not one of principle or fact, but one of
perception determined by a history of interpretation.'6 The
context for one's moral judgment involves notions pertaining to
the way we perceive children, human sexuality, the body, and
human birth. These notions can only be displayed by reference
to historical traditions which provide examples of how life is to
be lived and understood. `Deontological or utilitarian theories
that try to free moral notions from their dependence on
examples and the narratives that display them prove to be too
monochromatic to account for the variety of our notions and
the histories on which they are dependent.'7 Moral principles,
for Hauerwas, only make sense when set within the context of
an understanding of what human life should be. In other words,
an account of moral principles involves some account of the
virtues or, which is the same thing, of moral character.
The crisis of theological ethics stems from attempts ever since
50 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
Kant to show that Christian theological insights overlap secular
insights and can be accessed by those outwith the Christian
community. In many respects, this was a worthy undertaking
since it enabled Christians to advocate social improvements
without requiring the acceptance of theological presuppositions
to recognise their desirability. For example, the post-war
churches in the UK could advocate the creation of the Welfare
State without implying that the Beveridge Report be under-
written by theological principles. There could be a constructive
moral contribution from the church to a religiously pluralist
society. However, the danger in this strategy is twofold. First,
there is a tendency to accept tacitly the underlying structure of
the society which is being reformed. The need for the church to
challenge and confront its host society can thus be overlooked.
Second, the attempt to present Christian moral insights to a
secular audience often results in the theological dimension of
ethics appearing either unnecessary or marginal. If the moral
principles underwritten by Christian beliefs can be known and
practised independently of these beliefs, then the latter start to
look redundant.8 This is con®rmed by the way in which
theological statements can usually be detached from the conclu-
sions presented in many textbooks without those conclusions
being unduly weakened. For Hauerwas, a proper Christian
contribution to society begins with the recognition that Chris-
tian convictions make a difference and presuppose the particu-
larity of the Christian community. This point is also argued by
Yoder in The Politics of Jesus. In surveying recent approaches to
Christian ethics, Yoder shows how often writers were able to
sideline the commandments of Jesus and thus to present ethics
in terms of principles or procedures which could be established
on the basis of what was natural. These strategies, which
reduced the teaching of Jesus merely to its eschatological or
existential signi®cance, thus prevented the emergence of a
distinctively Christian approach to ethics centred on the polity
of the church.9
Hauerwas also follows the recent assault on foundationalist
epistemologies in his attack on liberalism. The project of estab-
lishing foundations of knowledge on self-evident principles,
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 51
incorrigible sense-data reports, or propositions commanding
universal consent is now doomed, he claims. It was a misguided
epistemological adventure of the Enlightenment which ignored
the way in which many of our most deeply held assumptions are
embedded within the particular traditions and forms of life we
inhabit. Hauerwas is clearly hostile to foundationalism,10
although his recent writings suggest that he does not wish to be
positively identi®ed as an anti-foundationalist.11 None the less,
his writings share the now familiar attack on liberalism and its
doctrine of the unencumbered self.

virtue, community, and narrative

Hauerwas shows a fundamental preference for the language of
virtue over against the language of moral principles. His justi-
®cation for this is similar to arguments advanced for Aristote-
lianism by Alasdair MacIntyre. An agent's being takes priority
because moral actions only make sense within the context of
who we are, what sort of people we are seeking to become, and
the moral traditions and communities from which we take our
bearings. This, of course, presupposes a standard account of the
proper ends of human nature, and for this we must have
recourse to a moral tradition which, through story, precept,
example, and training, enables us to live well. Hauerwas' ®rst
monograph was devoted to the concept of character, and argued
that moral discourse could only make sense when set against
some account of the development of an agent's character. Thus
moral principles, divine commands, and ethical decisions all
require to be placed within the context of an account of the
formation of moral character. The self must be understood as an
agent whose character explains action without that action being
construed mechanistically or deterministically.12
The signi®cance of character in determining an agent's
moral choices requires that we have some account of what
virtues ought to be acquired and practised. These are our
habitual dispositions to act in ways that are morally praise-
worthy. Moral character is shaped by the development of the
virtues. This, in turn, points to the ethical signi®cance of the
52 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
communities to which we belong. Contrary to standard typolo-
gies, this account of virtue does not necessarily imply a pre-
ference for teleological theories of ethics over against
deontological theories. It is possible within an account of the
virtuous life to make sense of a range of deontological prin-
ciples. For example, the creation of a community in which the
virtuous life is possible may require respect for some funda-
mental rules. In this way the virtuous life would require respect
for duties binding upon all members of the community. `The
recognition and performance of duty is made possible because
we are virtuous, and a person of virtue is dutiful because not to
be so is to be less than virtuous.'13
The nature of the virtues is such that they can only be
learned, practised, and developed in human communities. To
be truthful, humble, and just presupposes a particular way of
relating to others, which can only be acquired within a social
form of life. Without the requisite community moral character
cannot be developed. There is thus a shift in emphasis from
Hauerwas' more individualistic treatment of character in Char-
acter and the Christian Life with its stress on sancti®cation, to a
stronger ecclesial emphasis in The Community of Character.14 The
concept of virtue is integrally related to the social concept of a
practice. The notion of performing well or virtuously in choral
singing, family life, building bridges, or writing poetry only
makes sense with reference to a social practice and the tradition
in which these activities have been developed.
Given the epistemological signi®cance of community, the
moral vacuum in liberal societies is a political rather than a
theoretical problem for Hauerwas.15 The distinctiveness of
Christian convictions is dependent upon the existence of a
discrete community in which these convictions are represented
and fostered. Christian ethics thus requires a church which is
independent of the secular state and the prevailing culture. `It is
my suspicion that if theologians are going to contribute to
re¯ection on the moral life in our particular situation, they will
do so exactly to the extent they can capture the signi®cance of
the church for determining the nature and content of Christian
ethical re¯ection.'16
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 53
The tradition of Christian virtues must be borne by a com-
munity in which historical examples are remembered and inter-
preted in the light of new circumstances and problems. The
emphasis on tradition and authority need not, in this respect, be
reactionary. The tradition must be learned and extended under
new conditions, but this can only take place in relation to the
past and to the examples which constitute the tradition.
Hauerwas' ecclesial epistemology may be seen as an attempt to
overcome the textbook distinction between Christian doctrine
and ethics. `A christology which is not a social ethic is de®-
cient.'17 Christian confession is ethically situated in the form of
life which Jesus makes possible. In this respect, Jesus and the
community which knows him are indispensable for Christian
ethics. Hauerwas appeals here to Lindbeck's cultural±linguistic
model of religion. Learning Christian faith is not so much
understanding a set of propositional truths as learning like a
child to speak the language of its community. This involves
participation in the social forms of life of that community.
This sets up an important ethical criterion for the truthfulness
of Christian convictions. The polity of the church, and hence of
the Christian tradition, is to be judged by the character of the
people it produces. In the same way as the fruitfulness of
scienti®c theories in terms of their explanatory and predictive
power is a mark of truthfulness, so the ability of the Christian
community to generate moral character is a mark of the
truthfulness of Christian beliefs.18 This is a surprising move for
a Protestant theologian to make. The dominant image of the
church is not that of a community simul iustus et peccator but of a
pilgrim people sancti®ed by God as a sacramental sign before
the world. `I am not a good Lutheran, and I want to argue that
the metaphor of the journey is and surely should be the primary
one for articulating the shape of Christian existence and
living.'19
The claim that Christian beliefs are acquired and tested only
by the forms of life in which they are embedded, risks being
construed as a non-cognitivist or regulative account of faith.
Christian belief might thus be reduced to a commitment to a
speci®c form of life. In the manner of a prescriptivist theory of
54 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
ethics, Christian confession is to be analysed in terms of
adherence to and recommendation of a particular way of life.
Yet, it is clear that this is not Hauerwas' intention. Although he
relates belief and practice very closely, he is careful at times to
distinguish these.20 We might say that, for Hauerwas, ethical
fruitfulness is a criterion of the truth of Christian claims but
does not actually constitute their truthfulness. This is consti-
tuted by the way things are with respect to God, Israel, and
Jesus independently of Christian confession. In this respect,
Hauerwas' theological ethics displays a strong realist commit-
ment. None the less, it has to be said that Hauerwas does not
have a great deal to say about the truth of Christian convictions
over and beyond their ethical fruitfulness, and some of his
statements seem almost to imply a regulative theory of theo-
logical truth.21 Doubtless, this relates to his fear that Christian
confession can all too easily be divorced from the practices
within which it alone becomes intelligible. As a Methodist, he
inveighs against trends in Protestantism which proclaim a
gospel of justi®cation by faith divorced from the social forms
that the gospel creates and within which alone it can be
received and proclaimed.22
Hauerwas' ontological realism and epistemological relativism
are apparent in his exchange with Julian Hartt, who charges
him with failing to distinguish adequately between aesthetic
truthfulness and theological truth. The former is appropriate to
the stories of ®ction and construes `true' in the sense of
`authentic' or `true to life'.23 Yet the Christian faith traditionally
claims that the gospel narratives are `true' in some further
sense. They are `true' in virtue of their characterisation of God
(what Hartt calls `truth in the ontological mode'), and it is this
truth which enables and sustains the Christian community.
Hauerwas' response is simply that the truth is such that it can
only be apprehended in a truthful manner.24
The category of `narrative' or `story' plays a central role in
Hauerwas' ethics.25 Narrative is described as `the connected
description of action and of suffering which moves to a point'.26
It is the cumulative description of how character is formed both
by what one does and what happens to one. In this respect, a
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 55
narrative can provide insight into how life should (or should
not) be lived, and is thus an indispensable vehicle for moral
appreciation. The presentation of moral principles indepen-
dently of an account of the way in which these can be embodied
and held together in a human story leads to distortion. The
primacy of being over doing is re¯ected in the need to assess
particular actions in the context of a narrative in which char-
acter unfolds. In the case of the abortion controversy, an
adequate assessment of the issues requires the moral agent to
consider the place that abortion has within a particular narra-
tive.27 Its relation to other notions which require narrative
display is crucial to any rational decision in the face of a moral
dilemma. The relatedness of moral decisions to narratives does
not imply relativism, for it is possible to judge one story as
better than another. Criteria such as `unity', `wholeness', `con-
sistency', `integrity' can be invoked, although these criteria
themselves can only be grasped through being trained to
appreciate `a good story'. Thus the category of story is episte-
mologically fundamental, and the moral criterion for assessing
each story is the character it forms.
Moral principles and decisions are informed by the unity of
virtues to be realised in a human life. The unity of virtues can
only be articulated in terms of narrative patterns combining
action and suffering. To be virtuous is, in one sense, therefore, to
allow one's life to be determined by a narrative in which virtue is
displayed. The value of such determination can be assessed in
terms of its moral effectiveness. `By their fruits you shall know
them.' Hauerwas sets out four positive effects that a narrative
might have upon a human life: power to release us from
destructive alternatives; ways of seeing through current distor-
tions; room to keep us from having to resort to violence; a sense
of the tragic, i.e. an awareness of the moral con¯ict that besets
even our best endeavours in a ®nite and imperfect world.28
In the same way as a scienti®c narrative can demonstrate its
truthfulness by the pragmatic criteria of explaining not only the
data, but also the success of previous theories which it now
surpasses, so a narrative of moral character can convince us by
its ability to shape more effectively the lives of its participants.
56 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
This does not lead to a pragmatic construction of truth. While
employing pragmatic criteria for determining truthfulness, it
does not reduce the concept of truth to pragmatic ef®cacy. In
this respect, Hauerwas' realism, as we have already seen,
retains a distinction between the criteria for truthfulness and
the constitution of truthfulness. This will become apparent as
we assess his reading of the speci®c narratives of Israel and
Jesus.
Hauerwas' focus upon narrative has the aim of signifying the
importance of the Christian community for the shaping of
virtuous lives. Without the narrative resources of the commun-
ity, the conditions of virtue will be absent from contemporary
society. The church is a community whose life is shaped by the
speci®c content of the narratives of Scripture. Here, considera-
tions more speci®c to Christian theology become apparent. The
narrative of Scripture is not simply a con®guration of human
stories constituting a social ethic. The narrative of Israel and
Jesus is the story of God's self-revelation in history. It is, in a
crucial sense, God's story before it is ours, although because it is
the story of God with us it can and must become our story also.
The nature of God and the type of community that God's
action makes possible cannot be disengaged from the particu-
larity of Jesus and the kingdom he proclaimed. The gospel
narrative is indispensable, for it describes the form in which
Jesus becomes paradigmatic for the Christian community. The
relationship of particular to universal is crucial at this juncture.
The story of Jesus is not to be read as a particular instance of
some universal truth. His signi®cance is not merely illustrative.
If this were so then Christian ethics could be set out indepen-
dently of Jesus and his story without any material loss. For
Hauerwas and the school of thought he represents,29 this
reverses the proper relation of particular and universal in
Christian theology. Jesus is of universal signi®cance because of
the constitutive power of his particular story. This implies a
belief in the eschatological ordering of everything in the light of
that one story. It is on the basis of the person and work of Jesus
that God relates to us and is signi®cant for us. For the Christian
community, there must be continual reference to the gospels'
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 57
narrative rendition of Jesus as the one in whom every human
life ®nds its meaning and purpose.
The story of Jesus is dominated by the message of the
kingdom proclaiming God's gracious rule over all creation and
history. As the story unfolds, however, Jesus' proclamation of the
kingdom becomes the church's proclamation of Jesus cruci®ed
and risen. Jesus thus represents the kingdom in person ± the
autobasileia, to use Origen's expression30 ± and the only way to
know the kingdom is to know Jesus. Knowledge of Jesus takes the
form of discipleship. Only by knowing the way in which his life,
death, and resurrection make the polity of the church possible
can one know him. The disciples can know Jesus in their
common life by taking up the cross and following him. Thus the
confession of Jesus Christ, the witness to God's kingdom, the life
of the church, and social ethics all stand together.
The way in which the coming of Jesus is also the coming of a
new social order in history is argued more extensively by Yoder.
He resists any attempt to construe the work of Christ indepen-
dently of the polity of justice and peace that he advocates and
instantiates in his earthly life. It is his ethico-theological com-
mitment which results historically in his cruci®xion. If we
construe the cause of his death only as the necessity of getting
immolated to satisfy the metaphysics of the atonement, we
break the link between the ethics of Jesus and those demanded
of the church.31 Similarly, the doctrine of justi®cation is not
given expression except in terms of the new social reality that
God's declaration of our righteousness in Christ brings about.
According to Ephesians 2, it is by the blood of Christ that our
estrangement from God and from one another is overcome.
The work of Christ creates one new humanity in which former
divisions are overcome.32
For both Yoder and Hauerwas, the quality of peace-making
is, above all, the characteristic of the Christian community in
the world. This is a constant theme across their writings. The
life of Jesus enacts the power of non-violent resistance. He
eschews both the sectarian (Essene) option and the militarist
(Zealot) option. The cost of non-violent resistance is cruci®xion.
The resurrection is the sign of God's vindication of Jesus' way,
58 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
which enables us to live at peace with one another. The need
for violence arises through fear or the desire for control and
power. These are negated by the gospel narrative which brings
a kingdom in which human differences are overcome and in
which the future rests secure in God's love. This is what
provides Christians with the means to be peace-makers and to
be witnesses against the power of violence in the world. `[L]ove
is the nonviolent apprehension of the other as other. But to see
the other as other is frightening, because to the extent others
are other they challenge my way of being. Only when my self ±
my character ± has been formed by God's love, do I know I
have no reason to fear the other.'33
As the central virtue of the church, peacemaking is directed
towards the world. It challenges the false peace and uneasy
compromises which are based on power rather than honesty.34
It challenges the apparent necessity of violence in the face of
provocation and threat. In a subtle argument which relies upon
Yoder, Hauerwas claims that the Christian narrative creates
possibilities which contest the assumption that violence is some-
times the only way. Defending my welfare and my property
cannot be paramount for anyone who acknowledges the Chris-
tian story. The overall effect of non-violent action is dif®cult to
calculate even when the short-term effects appear tragic; yet the
providential pattern found in the story of Jesus and his followers
provides grounds for con®dence that are not found elsewhere.
Christians have held that the death of a Christian believer, as a result
of his behaving in a Christian way at the hands of the agents of evil,
can become through no merit of his or her own a special witness and a
monument of the power of God. The death of that Christian disciple
makes a greater contribution to the cause of God and to the welfare of
the world than his staying alive at the cost of killing would have done.
For ever after it is looked on with respect. Why not accept suffering?
Jesus did.35

christian homogeneity
In a range of writings, Hauerwas has argued imaginatively for
the normative ethical signi®cance of the Christian narrative
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 59
and the forms of life it makes possible. In this respect, his own
writings on applied ethics con®rm the claim he makes for the
distinctive contribution of the church to the world. Although
these are not the focus of the present study, they merit reference
since Hauerwas' contribution cannot be assessed except in the
light of its speci®c ethical outcomes.
According to Hauerwas, the standard debates between pro-
and anti-abortionists are too formalised and abstract in their
concentration upon the rights of the mother, the rights of the
foetus, and the question of whether and when the foetus
becomes a person. By engaging in debate on these terms, the
Christian ethicist has surrendered too much. Abortion must be
seen within the context of the community's understanding of
the signi®cance of life and the meaning of procreation.36 It is
only in terms of the community's commitment to children as a
sign of our trust and con®dence in life that the scandal of
abortion can be fully appreciated. This is not to say that
abortion must always and everywhere be wrong ± the tragic
dimension of life may occasionally necessitate it ± but the
establishment of abortion on demand in any society is funda-
mentally at odds with the political complexion of the church.
The church believes explicitly in the providential care of the God who
is both creator and redeemer. Its task is to witness to this providential
rule as a historic community of faith. In its life, therefore, it looks back
to the inheritance of faith and pledges its hope for the future by
creating and nurturing new life in its midst. For children are our
anchors in history, our pledge and witness that the Lord we serve is
the Lord, not only of our community, but of all history. The family is,
therefore, symbolically central for the meaning of the existence of the
Christian people.37
It is within this narrative and communal setting that Christian
convictions about the sanctity of life become intelligible.
Hauerwas talks not about the inherent value of life, but about
life as `the locus of God's creating and redeeming purpose'.38 As
a precious gift of the sovereign God, life is not ours to deny or to
destroy. In this respect, there must always be a presumption
against abortion as the destruction of new life. The ®rst task of
Christian witness is not to shape public policy by seeking
60 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
common moral ground with all opposed to abortion. The ®rst
task is to make clear why we believe in children and why we
desire to create and nurture new life in the community of faith.
This witness to the character of the church is the most important
contribution that Christians can make to public controversy.
Parallel considerations are advanced in support of marriage
as a speci®cally Christian institution. Rejecting romantic and
personalist approaches to marriage, Hauerwas appeals to the
uniqueness of the church's witness to the kingdom of God.
Here, both the single and married states can be justi®ed; the
single because the church grows through witness and conver-
sion; the married because children are a sign of our hope for the
future, a hope grounded in faith in God. Both marriage and the
family appear in a distinctively theological perspective by virtue
of their witness to God's faithfulness to us and our response to
God. `Our commitment to exclusive relations witnesses to
God's pledge to his people, Israel and the church, that through
his exclusive commitment to them, all people will be brought
into his Kingdom.'39
The campaign for nuclear disarmament is supported by
Hauerwas, but not on the secular basis that nuclear warfare
threatens the future of life on our planet. This ground for
peacemaking is rejected as `idolatrous'.40 Disarmament receives
a theological justi®cation from the thought that peacemaking is
a central aspect of Christian obedience, for we have been
shown that this is the way God deals with the world. Opposition
to nuclear warfare is built simply on the notion of obedience.
Strategies of survival are inappropriate, since it is not our
responsibility to ensure that history turns out all right. This has
already been settled by God.41
In his essays on the subject of disability, Hauerwas offers a
series of theological insights about the nature of Christian
community. These challenge the way we tend to construe
human status in terms of economic or physical power, or
capacity for independence. Those who are disabled can remind
us of our dependence upon one another and God; they can
bring resources and gifts which build up the Christian commun-
ity; they challenge our assumptions about normality. While
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 61
eschewing `a rights based' approach to those who are disabled,
Hauerwas tries to bring particular Christian convictions to bear
upon the debate in a way that is ethically constructive. In the
church we seek to live without fear or resentment of one
another. It is within this social context that we can erase many
of the prejudices and stereotypes that frequently characterise
our attitudes to the disabled. `If we can be this kind of commun-
ity, then we may ®nd that we do not even need the label
``retarded'', and that we can explore more creative ways at
once to help those different from us without that help becoming
a form of discrimination.'42
Hauerwas' writings create an excitement which is attribu-
table not merely to an elegant style, a provocative manner,
arresting illustrations, his generosity, and wit. He succeeds in
describing accurately aspects of our contemporary theological
and philosophical environment. He provides a framework for
thinking about Christian ethics which is lacking in much re¯ec-
tion upon ethical and political dilemmas, and he presents a
persuasive argument for the distinctiveness of Christian consid-
erations. This yields some dividends when he comes to re¯ect
upon nuclear war, abortion, marriage, and the treatment of the
sick and disabled.
His criticism of the defects of liberalism, though not original,
is largely persuasive. In particular, its doctrine of the self and its
inability to provide a coherent notion of the common good lead
towards moral fragmentation and rootlessness. In drawing
upon MacIntyre's After Virtue, he can point to the dif®culties
surrounding the so-called `Enlightenment project' of justifying
morality on the basis of claims the validity of which are
recognisable by every rational agent, qua rational agent. The
problems attending moral theories from Kant to emotivism
illustrate this. By contrast, the emphasis upon community and
tradition enables Hauerwas to argue that the church is indis-
pensable for the moral training of Christians and for the
knowledge of the people we are called to be in Christ. What is
required for virtuous living is neither a philosophical argument
nor an ethical theory. These have their places, but must always
be parasitic upon the practice of communities and the inherit-
62 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
ance of traditions. Christian ethics is thus no longer a list of
ethical precepts, but is an adventure in following Christ and
®nding the skills by which to interpret our lives and our world
in terms of his story. The knowledge of God and the practice of
Christian discipleship are thus ecclesial activities. `The church
is the colony that gives us resident aliens the interpretive skills
whereby we know honestly how to name what is happening and
what to do about it.'43
Hauerwas speaks to those who are conscious of the increasing
dissociation of church and culture in the late twentieth century.
The old strategy of seeking to articulate a moral consensus for
those within and without the church is breaking down.44
Christian theology and ethics become distorted by attempting
to stand on common ground with those outside the colony.
`Jesus was not cruci®ed for saying or doing what made sense to
everyone. People are cruci®ed for following a way that runs
counter to the prevailing direction of the culture.'45 This stress
upon the distinctiveness of the Christian community and its
narrative purports to provide a stronger basis upon which
ministry can be conducted. In a context of social fragmentation
and moral disarray, greater Christian authenticity becomes
possible. Having faded from the social landscape, Christian
faith emerges as something radically different and compelling.
Hauerwas and Willimon appear content to plead guilty to the
charge that this makes a theological virtue of a sociological
necessity.46
Hauerwas argues that the church's raison d'eÃtre is found
neither in its transformation of society nor in its conversion of
individuals, but rather in its witness to Jesus. Here he appeals to
a typology of Yoder. Distinguishing the confessing church from
the activist and the conversionist church, Hauerwas asserts that
`the confessing church ®nds its main political task to lie, not in
the personal transformation of individual hearts or the modi®-
cation of society, but rather in the congregation's determination
to worship Christ in all things'.47 The confessing church will be
concerned with individual transformation and social improve-
ment, but only in the context of its primary aim of confessing
Christ in every area of life. There are unmistakable echoes of
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 63
the Barmen Declaration here, and a strong sense of a be-
leaguered Christian community making a distinctive and provo-
cative witness before a hostile world. We should not
underestimate the extent to which Hauerwas is calling for a
distinctive church. His hints as to what we should actually do in
our current situation are sometimes oblique and uncertain, but
he suggests, for example, that the church should not admit to
the Lord's Supper those who make a living from building
weapons,48 that Christians should publicly declare their income
in the fellowship of the church,49 that separate Christian
schools are what we need,50 and that vegetarianism may be an
appropriate witness to the eschatological vision of creation.51 It
is, perhaps, the fact that Hauerwas' position cannot easily be
labelled as `right-wing' or `left-wing' which gives his work a
prophetic quality.
His theology also seeks to give central place to the virtues of
hope and patience in a way that facilitates ministry in our
current situation. The hope of the Christian community is an
eschatological one. The future is secured only by the grace of
God, and it is guaranteed and announced in the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead. This liberates the church from a
sense of having to be successful in numerical terms or in its
general in¯uence. It yields an eschatological hope which
enables witness, discipleship, and service in a world that is often
strange and alien. It also enables the community to live and to
worship patiently, since the justi®cation of Christian disciple-
ship is de®ned Christologically and eschatologically, rather than
in secular terms. For the church, this implies that faithfulness
rather than success is paramount. The measure of the minister's
effectiveness is not in terms of numbers or of secular in¯uence.
It is the community which in its worship and fellowship
witnesses to the gospel. `The church is the visible, political
enactment of our language of God by a people who can name
their sin and accept God's forgiveness and are thereby enabled
to speak the truth in love. Our Sunday worship has a way of
reminding us, in the most explicit and ecclesial of ways, of the
source of our power, the peculiar nature of our solutions to
what ails the world.'52
64 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics

the sectarian charge

There are a number of criticisms which Hauerwas ecclesial
ethics have provoked. These can readily be identi®ed in the
literature. One typical challenge comes from James Gustaf-
son, who accuses Hauerwas of succumbing to `the sectarian
temptation'.
Sectarianism ensures a clear identity which frees persons from ambi-
guity and uncertainty, but it isolates Christianity from taking seriously
the wider world of science and culture and limits the participation of
Christians in the ambiguities of moral and social life in the patterns of
interdependence in the world . . . At the meeting of the British
Society for the Study of Christian Ethics in September last, I found
enthusiasm for his work from theologians from the Church of Scot-
land, the Church of England, and the Roman Catholic Church. I
asked that some thought be given to possible incongruities between
the ecclesiology that is necessary for the sectarian ethics and the
ecclesiologies of these churches . . . A few days later at the conference
on Reinhold Niebuhr at King's College, London, I received an
answer from a Scottish theologian. The sectarian ethic of discipleship
is attractive because it made clear a historic confessional basis on
which Christian morality could be distinguished from the culture, and
how Christians could stand prophetically as Christians on matters of
nuclear armaments and the like.53
This anonymous Scottish sectarian was Duncan Forrester.
Whether or not this is an accurate account of the exchange that
took place, sectarianism is certainly one of the charges most
frequently levelled against Hauerwas.54 For Gustafson, sec-
tarian theology is an attempt to maintain the language and
culture of a minority tribe without reference to knowledge that
is available from other areas of experience and inquiry. It
sacri®ces relevance and coherence for some notion of historical
faithfulness. In doing so, it fails to take into account the
theological notion that the whole world and, therefore, all
experience and knowledge are within God's creation. It ignores
the sociological fact that members of the Christian community
also belong to other communities and cannot be hermetically
sealed up inside the church.
The term `sectarian' is a contested and pejorative label, and
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 65
it is not always clear what is meant. If, however, it suggests that
Hauerwas and other advocates of ecclesial ethics beat a retreat
from the realities of the world into an ecclesial enclave then it is
manifestly unfair.55 Their ecclesiology is world-af®rming and
their writings wrestle with the major moral conundrums of the
day. By being the church, Christians have the task of disclosing
to the world its true identity. This may sound imperialist to
some, but it is not sectarian. Hauerwas' claim is that, by living
genuinely as a distinctive Christian community, the church may
have more impact in its surrounding society than by advocating
consensus solutions to the problems we face.56
McClendon points to the way in which H. R. Niebuhr's
typology of churches casts the `sectarian' mode in an unfair
light. In Christ and Culture, Niebuhr presents a range of thinkers
from the author of the ®rst Johannine Epistle through Tertullian
to Tolstoy as advocating a withdrawal from the world. Their
concern is primarily with the purity of the church, and reveals
an indifference to the surrounding culture. Niebuhr castigates
this type of ecclesiology for the way in which it is ensnared in
contradiction ± we are all infected to some degree by our
surrounding culture ± and by its divorce of creation and
redemption. `At the edges of the radical movement the Man-
ichean heresy is always developing.'57 Yet his typology ignores
the possibility that the development of a distinctive church may
be for the sake not of withdrawal but of witness and mission.
The purpose of a counter-cultural distinctiveness, it may be
argued, is not isolationism, but a proper contribution to the
wider social world. It is to be faithful as the disciples of Christ in
the world where the mission of the church is to be conducted. It
is world-af®rming but from a distinctive perspective. Thus
McClendon writes of the so-called sectarians. `[E]ngagement
with the world was not optional or accidental, but lay at the
heart of obedient discipleship.'58
The charge of sectarianism is either false or misleading. It
would be better to drop this particular criticism and to examine
more carefully the underlying concerns that it represents. The
sectarian charge has arisen because of the way in which recent
ecclesial ethics requires a revitalisation of radical reformation
66 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
ecclesiology. This is demonstrated by Arne Rasmusson in his
recent study.59 Rasmusson argues that Hauerwas' theology
requires a doctrine of the church which is analogous to that
developed within the radical Reformation. His criticism of
liberalism requires a relationship of church to state which is
more antithetical than that found in the magisterial Reformers.
The repeated denunciation of the heresy of `Constantinianism'
calls for an end to the legitimation of a particular secular order
by the church. The ecclesiology that this requires is summarised
by McClendon in terms of ®ve characteristics. These are `the
awareness of the biblical story as our story, but also of mission as
responsibility for costly witness, of liberty as the freedom to obey
God without state help or hindrance, of discipleship as life
transformed into obedience to Jesus' lordship, and of community
as daily sharing in the vision'.60 The church is here described
apart from the world, but to characterise this as withdrawal is
misleading. The description of mission in the second character-
istic is strongly world-af®rming in presupposing the church's
responsibility for political witness and practice.
It might be countered, however, that this church advocated
by Hauerwas nowhere exists. It is a fantasy community, the
conception of which fails to re¯ect the ways in which the
members of the church are also positioned within civil society.
It does not correspond to any visible communion within the
oikumene. Hauerwas' own status as a Methodist who describes
himself as a high-church Mennonite under no particular
ecclesiastical discipline re¯ects this dissonance between the
church described in his theology and the church as we actually
®nd it.61 On one level, this criticism may be side-stepped by
arguing that his proposal is prescriptive rather than descriptive.
It is a call for the church to be the community that it ought to
be rather than a description of any empirical reality. This
imperative is made possible by the work of Christ which is
already real and in our midst.62 At the same time, Hauerwas
and Willimon have struggled to show that the church they
describe is present in the stories of many Christian congrega-
tions and lives. It is these which provide the most eloquent
testimony and inspiration. `Good communities are known by
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 67
their saints. By naming these ordinary but theologically and
morally impressive people, we discover resources that we did
not know we had.'63 A similar locating of the Christian story in
the biographies of the saints can be detected in McClendon's
writings. By reciting with care and insight the stories of Sarah
and Jonathan Edwards, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Dorothy Day,
he displays the way in which the pattern of discipleship can be
learned from lived examples. Through recounting how indi-
viduals have exempli®ed the character of Christ under changing
circumstances, the church can enlarge its moral perception and
reinvigorate its moral will.64
The claim that this ecclesiology contains a critical standard
by which to challenge the empirical church is necessary if
Hauerwas is to meet feminist criticisms that his theology
legitimises a patriarchal institution. This challenge is one in-
stance of the typical criticism that communitarian ethics is
characteristically oppressive and authoritarian. Thus Gloria
Albrecht in a recent article review assserts, `That Hauerwas can
lavish praise upon the practices of an exclusively male, hier-
archically authoritarian tradition, as a good example of Chris-
tian community, reveals important de®ciencies in his
epistemology and in his proposed ecclesiology.'65 Albrecht's
thesis is that the hermeneutics of suspicion needs to be applied
not only to secular liberal culture, but also to the Bible and the
institutional church.66 Without this critical edge, ecclesial ethics
will fail to liberate the oppressed from historical forms of
servitude. If this charge is to be met, some distinction will be
required between the church as it is and the church as it is
called by God to be.67 This, in turn, requires some criterion of
theological truth over and against the particular claims of
ecclesiastical tradition. In what follows, I shall try to argue that
the principal weakness in Hauerwas' theology is its overdeter-
mination of the distinctiveness of the church. This is re¯ected
both in an attentuated reading of the person and work of
Christ, and in a reluctance to describe the possibility of ethical
perception and action outwith the Christian community.
68 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics

the nature of theological truth

The link between truth and performance is a crucial feature of
Hauerwas' theology. He insists upon the close relationship
between Christology and ecclesiology to the extent that the
truth about Jesus can only be perceived from within a life of
discipleship in the community of the church. At times, this
becomes an attack on Protestant individualism.68 He even
commends the insistence of Vatican II that tradition and
Scripture together form one sacred deposit of the Word of God.
The Bible should be withheld from Christians until they have
developed better habits of discipleship to facilitate its correct
understanding. This resonates with the emphasis throughout his
writings that being positioned within the Christian community
is the indispensable condition for confessing Christ.
As was argued earlier, Hauerwas does not attempt to reduce
the truthfulness of Christian convictions to correct perform-
ance. The latter is more akin to an epistemological condition of
the former. None the less, the way in which he seeks to integrate
his description of the person and work of Christ with its ecclesial
resultant raises a number of dif®culties. These can be traced to
his overdetermination of the doctrine of the church. In out-
lining the signi®cance of Christ for the Christian life, Hauerwas
frequently implies that Jesus is to be understood as the exemplar
and initiator of a new social order, the kingdom of God.69 The
traditional language of the incarnation and atonement is muted
by contrast with his insistence upon the importance of the life of
Jesus as this is narrated in the Synoptic Gospels. This clearly
arises out of a concern with the way in which the exposition of
dogma can too easily prescind from the way in which Jesus'
mission is loaded with ethical import.70 Yet the outcome of this
concern is that Jesus is generally characterised as the prototype
of Christian existence, the founder of the church, and the one in
whom God reveals how we are to live. The Christological
language tends to be that of revelation rather than redemption.
The latter seems con®ned to a quality of life realised only in the
church.71
Despite the desire to integrate ethics and dogmatics, there is
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 69
some imprecision in Hauerwas' exposition of dogmatic themes.
In particular, it is not clear in what sense the work of Christ can
be described as completed in his resurrection and ascension, or
in what sense Christ is active in the church by the power of the
Spirit. If his work is principally the establishment of a commun-
ity, then its continuing signi®cance must be de®ned in terms of
an act of recollection by which that community is reminded of
its constitution. Christ's continuing presence and activity to his
disciples are thus a function of memory inspired by the sacra-
mental re-enactment of a story. If, however, one construes the
work of Christ as `a once for all' achievement which is accom-
plished extra nos, as is suggested by the New Testament procla-
mation of his exaltation, then its relationship to the life of the
post-Easter community is altered. Christ continues to be
present and active in the life of the church and the world, but
this presence and activity are dependent upon what is already
accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection. The church is
not the extension of the incarnation, but exists to bear witness
and to live faithfully in light of this unrepeatable and unsubsti-
tutable event.72
Symptomatic of a failure to distinguish adequately the life of
the church under the third article from the work of Christ in the
second, is a somewhat reductionist treatment of the doctrine of
justi®cation in Hauerwas. He is rightly uneasy about individu-
alist and quietist readings of justi®cation as the article on which
the church stands. He aims to locate these notions in the
context of a new social order that Christ has created. ` ``Sancti-
®cation'' is but a way of reminding us of the journey we must
undertake it we are to make the story of Jesus our story.
``Justi®cation'' is but a reminder of the character of the story ±
namely, what God has done for us by providing us with a path
to follow.'73 Yet this is hardly suf®cient as a description of the
church's dependence upon the person and work of Christ, and
the New Testament description of the Christian life as `in
Christ'. Hauerwas points to the signi®cance of the Eucharist in
our coming to understand the story of Jesus. Yet the Eucharistic
prayer is traditionally one of praise and thanksgiving which
declares what God has already done in creation and redemp-
70 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
tion. Here, there is a commemoration of what God has brought
about in the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of
Christ. Missing from Hauerwas' account in this context are
suf®cient mention of Christ's overcoming of sin, evil, and death;
of our union with him by the bond of the Spirit; of the character
of the community as the Body of Christ; of the eschatological
expectation that his lordship will ®nally be exercised over all
creation. To make mention of this is not to seek to impugn his
orthodoxy nor to challenge the claim that the context of the
celebration of the sacrament is the life of discipleship. It is
rather to raise a query about the nature of the relationship
between Christ and the believer upon which the life of disciple-
ship is established.74 The agency of the church derives from the
activity of Jesus and continues through the Holy Spirit to be
dependent upon it. This relationship is more nearly described
by Barthian language of correspondence than by Hauerwas'
more linear notion of continuing what has been begun.75 It is
perhaps symptomatic of his approach to Christology that the
books of the New Testament from which he most frequently
cites are the Synoptic Gospels. In his analysis of Hauerwas'
exegesis, Richard Hays points out that there are only occasional
references to Romans and 1 Corinthians, and almost no
mention of the Johannine writings and Hebrews.76 His use of
Ephesians signi®cantly appears to deal with the Haustafeln
rather than its rich Christology which understands the nature of
the church and the cosmos in relation to the ascended Christ.77
These concerns registered above may re¯ect some dif®culties
inherent in Lindbeck's post-liberalism which has exercised an
in¯uence upon Hauerwas. The criticism has frequently been
made that the cultural±linguistic model of religion reduces
theological truth to performance according to the form of life
created by the narratives of Scripture. Once the rules governing
correct use are mastered, a participant in the religion is enabled
to speak and behave truthfully. While capturing the self-involv-
ing nature of religious language ± and thus the ethical dimen-
sion of Christian confession ± this account seems to jeopardise
the realist claim that truth is not of our own making. It is
constituted by the way things are independently of and prior to
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 71
correct performance. To articulate this within one's theology, a
distinction is required between the linguistic practices of the
community, the words of Scripture, and that to which these
ultimately refer. Transposed into theological categories, this
entails that something like Barth's threefold strati®cation of the
Word of God is necessary both for distinguishing and describing
the patterns of dependence between the witness of the church,
the words of Scripture, and Jesus Christ, the Word of God
revealed.78 The confession of the church depends upon the
normative witness to Scripture. Yet Scripture itself only bears
witness through the activity of the Spirit to its central theme
and object, Jesus Christ. The church's story is truthful because
of its dependence upon God's story. This story can neither be
added to nor subtracted from by the church. We can hold to
this account of theological truth without denying either that our
knowledge of God is dependent upon the Bible and the Chris-
tian community, or that the witness of the Christian life is an
indispensable sign of its truthfulness.
At stake in this attempt to rework Hauerwas is the nature of
ecclesial dependence upon the person and work of Christ. This
is central to Hauerwas' description of the virtue of patience and
hopefulness as central to the Christian life. These virtues are
made possible by the con®dence that arises from knowing that
the future of the world is ®nally secured not by our own ethical
performance, but by the work of Christ which has already been
accomplished once for all.79 To be sustained, however, these
virtues of the Christian life must be grounded upon a conviction
about what God has promised rather than on prognostications
concerning the church's ef®cacy.80 Where a distinction is main-
tained between the church, the Bible and the Word of God
revealed, the danger of a captivity of either Scripture within the
church, or the Word of God by any one reading of Scripture
recedes. Hauerwas' recent polemics against Protestant individu-
alism lead him close to a position whereby the Bible can be
domesticated by the institutional church. This grates violently
with the way in which his own theology assails the church by
frequent appeal to Scripture. In his writings, the Bible is time
and again unleashed upon the church as much as upon the
72 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
world. It is not clear what the theological rationale for this can
be if the Bible can be read and understood only under the
conditions of ecclesial life. Yet with a clearer strati®cation of
church, Scripture, and revelation this problem can be eased.
The revision I am pleading for shares some similarities with
Reinhold HuÈtter's argument that ecclesial ethics needs a
stronger pneumatology if it is to avoid the twin dangers of a
`quietistic inwardness' or a `utopian activism'.81 In particular, a
surrogate `works righteousness' is to be avoided by the recogni-
tion that the work required of us is by the power of the Spirit
according to our determination by Christ. `For we are what he
has made us, created in Jesus Christ for good works, which God
prepared beforehand to be our way of life' (Eph. 2:10).
In some respects, this reading of Hauerwas is curiously
redolent of Barth's criticism of Bultmann. For Bultmann, there
could be no expression of the signi®cance of Christ which
prescinded from the self-involving nature of faith. Christ could
only be confessed in the language of non-objective existential
utterance. The Hauerwasian analogue of this is that there can
be no confession of Christ which prescinds from the ethical
commitments of the Christian community. Yet, just as in
Bultmann there is a slide from Christology into anthropology,
so in Hauerwas there is a slide from Christology into eccle-
siology. Barth's criticism of Bultmann was that the true nature
of faith can only be expressed by speaking ®rst of the priority of
the person and work of Christ extra nos. The gospel story of Jesus
is not an elliptical way of talking about the faith of the
Christian. This might be transposed into a criticism of
Hauerwas. The true nature of discipleship cannot be grasped
simply in terms of a moral emulation of Jesus. The Jesus
narrated in the gospels is not merely the prototype of Christian
existence. Discipleship involves a recognition of the priority of
Jesus, and our dependence upon his life and work extra nos.82

church and world

The excessive concentration upon the distinctiveness of the
church in Hauerwas also generates dif®culties in construing the
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 73
relationship of church to world. In one respect, this can be
interpreted as a hermeneutical problem. The Christian moral
conscience which interprets the Bible in the church is ineluc-
tably infected by secular assumptions. For example, what Chris-
tians say today about the role of women in church and society,
the political signi®cance of our equality in Christ, and the status
of homosexual relations reveals a debt to post-Enlightenment
secular culture that is sometimes unacknowledged by
Hauerwas. His dissociation of church and world may be over-
simpli®ed. He arguably overdramatises the crisis of liberalism
and the counter-cultural force of the Christian polity. Sympto-
matic of this is his exaggeration of the differences between
Christian and secular marriage and parenting. This places him
at odds with both the Catholic and Protestant traditions which
have seen these institutions as wider in scope than the church,
and have detected good practice in non-Christians as well as
Christians. His remark that `from the world's perspective the
birth of a child represents but another drain on our material
and psychological resources'83 is, to say the least, hyperbolic.
His argument against abortion shows how a Christian perspec-
tive sets the issues in a new light, yet, if he is not to criticise
methods of contraception pari passu, he still needs to engage in
well-worn debates about when a human life begins, the moral
status of the embryo, and criteria for personhood. His paci®sm
provides a perspective from which we can perceive the way in
which violence is endemic to our way of life, but to describe an
argument against nuclear weapons based on concern for the
future of life on this planet as `idolatrous' is to depict secular
arguments in the worst possible light. While not only unfair on
much that is sane and decent outwith the church, this char-
acterisation of an alternative position renders allies as foes and
hinders the process of making common cause. He appears also
to disjoin to an unnecessary degree the liberal discourse of
`innate human dignity' with the Christian recognition of the
claim of God upon each human person.

The problem with slavery is not that it violates the `inherent dignity of
our humanity', but that as a people we have found that we cannot
74 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
worship together at the table of the Lord if one claims an ownership
over others that only God has the right to claim.84

The `secular' insight into the dignity of the human being

differs from the Christian claim that human beings are created
in the image of God, redeemed by Christ, and sancti®ed by the
Holy Spirit. Yet the latter claim is capable of recognising that
there is some wisdom in the former. In the light of Christian
convictions about the status of the world as created, it should
not be surprising if there are secular af®rmations of the dignity
of the human person. Instead of casting such assertions aside,
the theologian needs to rehabilitate them within a Christian
frame of reference. We shall touch on this issue later with
reference to the contested discourse of human rights.
This further criticism relates to the earlier appeal to Barth. A
theology which distinguishes more clearly between the Word of
God extra nos, and the church's testimony to it, has the resource
to account for the possibility of secular witness. The sovereignty
of Word over church is compatible with the view that God may
enable the church to hear the Word through the effects of
forces, agencies, and examples extra muros ecclesiae.85 This possi-
bility, which is realised especially in Barth's later theology, is
harder to assimilate in Hauerwas' ecclesial ethics. For Barth,
the existence of secular parables of the Word of God is entirely
compatible with claims for the distinctiveness of Christ. There
is only one Word, but there can be witnesses to him outwith the
church. Any putative witness must be tested by reference to
Scripture, tradition, and the life of the church, but the convic-
tion that God is the creator and redeemer of the world gives
grounds for the con®dence that such witnesses will be en-
countered.86 The church enacts and witnesses to the eschato-
logical kingdom before a fallen and hostile world, yet, since
God has not abandoned the world, we may expect signs of that
same kingdom in strange and surprising places. The commun-
ity, as Barth says, is not Atlas bearing the burden of the whole
world on its shoulders. Even within the world which opposes it,
God can raise up witnesses to that cause. `This is the message
which the community has to learn through these true words of a
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 75
very different origin and character. In this respect, too, it would
be foolish and ungrateful if it closed its ears to them.'87
This critical accommodation of secular insights provides a
means of contributing to the moral consensus which alone can
sustain a pluralist culture. However fragile and problematic this
consensus, it requires buttressing at selected points. Jeffrey
Stout has pointed out that the moral disagreements in liberal
societies tend to take place on the basis of a moral consensus on
other issues.88 There is a range of moral principles which are
platitudinous, and, precisely because of that fact, do not receive
the attention of philosophers and theologians. It is wrong to
torture the innocent for pleasure; it is wrong to abuse sexually
little children; disagreements between the major religions
should not be settled violently; slavery is evil. Anyone who
queried these platitudes would be regarded as a dangerous
moral deviant rather than someone whose opinion is to be
respected within the pluralism of the body politic. It may thus
be possible to ®nd common ground with those outwith the
church even in the absence of any common theory which can
be assented to by all parties. Stout's example of the moral
culture of the nursery illustrates the ways in which our children
are induced into a common morality irrespective of the reli-
gious tradition they inherit. The nursery is where infants are
taught the value of friendship, courtesy towards strangers, fair
play, truthfulness, benevolence, and ways of resolving disagree-
ment without recourse to violence.
Michael Walzer has argued that different thick moralities
typically display accounts of thin moralities.89 These are
minimal standards and practices which should be demanded of
all people and societies. They are a function of thicker and
culturally determined moral understandings, but the con-
vergence of these on minimal common ground provides some
basis for the maintenance of pluralist societies. It ought to be
possible to provide a theological description of this phenom-
enon in terms of a (thick) understanding of our created and
redeemed nature, without returning to earlier constructions of
natural law and the orders of creation. Most Christian people in
liberal societies do not belong only to the community of the
76 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
church. They belong to other communities through their work,
leisure, and political and cultural interests, and there they make
common cause in a variety of ways with others who do not
share their religious convictions. Some theological description
of how this is possible and how they should comport themselves
is owed them. Hauerwas himself wishes to acknowledge that the
kingdom is not coextensive with the church.90 What is required,
therefore, is a reading of the church's constitutive narratives
which displays the implications of this.
As we have seen, the ecclesial ethics of Hauerwas carries with
it a relentless assault on the institutions of liberalism. He points
to liberalism's failure to cope with moral disagreement, and to
provide the resources of tradition, community, and practice
necessary for moral formation. The moral vacuum within the
liberal state is masked by the empty rhetoric of human rights
and an idolatrous attitude towards the nation state, often
sustained by war. The assumption that the church has a stake in
this polity is disastrous for authentic Christian witness which
needs to challenge rather than to endorse the state. Hauerwas'
writings are thus replete with attacks on constitutional democ-
racy in America.91
It is one thing to recognise the shortcomings and defects of
liberalism, however, and another to appear to enter into whole-
sale condemnation. It is worth recalling in this context that the
Enlightenment project did not simply spring from a miscon-
ceived epistemological programme, but had its historical
context in the religious wars of the seventeenth century. Liber-
alism was thus borne of a desire to establish a civil order which
could unite competing religious factions on moral grounds
which everyone could assent to independently of particular
traditions. While it is correct to point out that appeals for
freedom of speech and religious toleration did not extend to
some groups, for example Roman Catholics, the current need
to incorporate more rather than less diversity within civil
society actually strengthens these arguments for a pluralist
polity.92
Stephen Toulmin has argued that greater attention must be
paid to the historical context within which seventeenth-century
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 77
thinkers operated. The ®rst half of that century was a time of
strife, social instability, and economic deprivation. Following
the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, the nation states
sought a greater measure of international peace and social
stability. It is against this background that Descartes' search at
the beginning of the century for an ideal method which
transcended historical divisions must be understood. Similarly,
Leibniz' interest in developing a universal language for inter-
national communication and the rational resolution of intel-
lectual problems must be seen in the context of the years
following 1648. Leibniz was a political activist and assiduous
European correspondent, and it is a mistake to divorce his
metaphysical concerns from these practical interests.
The three dreams of the Rationalists thus turn out to be aspects of a
larger dream. The dreams of a rational method, a uni®ed science, and
an exact language, unite into a single project. All of them are designed
to `purify' the operations of human reason, by decontextualising
them: i.e., by divorcing them from the details of particular historical
and cultural situations.93
Eighteenth-century attempts to justify morality on bases
which can be assented to by all rational persons irrespective of
culture, language, or religion must be viewed against the
concerns of early modernity. Although these attempts may be
judged unsuccessful if one accepts MacIntyre's reading of the
history of modern moral philosophy, the practical problem of
the ethical bases on which a pluralist society is to be ordered
becomes more rather than less pressing. If ethical perception is
dependent upon particular communities, practices, and narra-
tives, what is it that gives moral cohesion to a society comprising
many overlapping sub-cultures?
One possible rejoinder to this problem is to argue that no
common morality can be articulated and that to search for one
is merely to compound the confusion. It would be better for
Christian ethics to concentrate on making its distinctive contri-
bution, on the assumption that this is more likely to be socially
fruitful. This recalls Lindbeck's claim that a religion is more
likely to be fruitful in preserving its own distinct identity than in
seeking a shared one.94 The weakness of this is that it neglects
78 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
the possibility of some measure of translation between the
moral language of the Christian community and other forms of
ethical speech. The Christian whose working life is spent servi-
cing institutions other than the church is left without the skills
to translate the language of Christian virtue into those forms of
discourse used in the workplace. Without some effort at trans-
lation, it is dif®cult to see how a constructive ethical criticism
can take place. Similarly, the only plausible candidate for a
universal moral discourse is that of human rights. This is
fraught with problems, but to eschew it altogether is to leave
one without the moral vocabulary for making common cause
with agencies and forces whose goals are not wholly antithetical
to those of the church. Christian theology has traditionally
responded to these issues in terms of its doctrine of creation
whereby human nature, even in its fallen condition, shows some
awareness of those social goods required by human beings. The
challenge that is thus posed for ecclesial ethics is whether it is
capable of accommodating and reinterpreting older claims
about natural law, the orders of creation, and natural rights.95
Robert Jenson hints at similar criticism in one of the most
perceptive remarks on Hauerwas' theology.
All address by the church to the world must indeed be `violent' ± as all
mutual address by factions within the world undoubtedly must be ±
unless the church and the world are always antecedently involved in
one conversation. That is, unless there is God and unless he is in
converse with the world by ways others than by way of the church. We
may not want, as I do not want, to construe this converse by the
categories of `natural' and `law'. But Hauerwas has arrived at a
position where he must acknowledge and construe it somehow, or end
with a silenced church.96
All this implies a more ambivalent reading of the relationship
between church and civil society than is suggested in Hauerwas.
But, if the argument of an earlier chapter is valid, it is one for
which we ®nd Scriptural warrant. The early Christians were
taught that their highest loyalty was to Christ and therefore to
the church rather than the state or any other institution. This
required a new orientation of their lives and often brought
con¯ict, tension, and even martyrdom. Yet the virtues of the
 Ecclesial ethics ± Stanley Hauerwas 79
Christian life, despite the way in which they were now resitu-
ated, sometimes displayed overlap with those advocated in the
Graeco-Roman world. Christian writers could defend their
practice by arguing that it re¯ected and often surpassed the
highest standards acknowledged elsewhere. The state could be
the enemy, but it could also exercise a legitimate authority and
where possible Christians were urged to live peaceably with
others. Thus a path was marked out between withdrawal and
assimilation by those whose citizenship was ultimately in the
church but who were called to serve God in other places and
communities.
 chapter four

Moral realism in recent philosophy

Claims for the particularity of Christian ethics have tradition-

ally been tempered by the belief that some moral truths can be
grasped by every rational person irrespective of tradition,
culture, or upbringing. On account of this knowledge each of us
is worthy of praise or blame for our actions, and moral appeals
can be made by the church to those outside. This commonality
of moral belief has received a range of theological explanations
through the categories of natural law, the orders of creation,
and common grace. Similar assumptions about the universality
of moral knowledge informed the Nuremberg trials. Despite the
absence of any positive law, prosecution of war crimes took
place on the basis of there being natural moral truths which had
been seriously violated.
Christian ethics has historically been committed to two
closely connected theses about moral realism. First, there are
moral truths which are not of our own making and which have
been disclosed at least in part to us. Second, some of these moral
truths can, in limited ways, be recognised by those outside the
Christian faith. Theological ethics thus has a stake in defending
a realist construction of what has sometimes been called `the
ordinary moral consciousness'. This, however, can be contested.
It is possible that there are moral truths which are known only to
those who have been illumined by faith and brought to a clearer
understanding of the theological source and mandate for ethical
action. On this basis, one might af®rm moral realism on
theological grounds, while offering a non-realist account of the
moral beliefs and behaviour of those outside the circle of faith.
One might construe non-Christian ethics in terms of the
80
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 81
authoritarian imposition of codes of behaviour by social forces
with vested interests. Alternatively, one might see `the ordinary
moral consciousness' merely as a confused amalgam of frag-
ments of ethical traditions which have disintegrated in modern
societies. Although I shall reject this position, it is one which will
receive further consideration in the next chapter.
In what follows, attention will be devoted to recent philo-
sophical discussion of moral realism. This is generally cast in
global terms, in so far as its consideration of moral belief is not
relative to any one religion, culture, or tradition. Although this
debate has received little attention in theological discussion, it
concerns arguments for moral realism in which Christian
theology has a stake.

realism vs. anti-realism

Perhaps no metaphysical dispute is as fundamental as that
between realists and anti-realists. At a time when far-reaching
disputes about realism have dominated wider philosophical
discussion it is not surprising that moral philosophy has inter-
nalised this debate.
Michael Dummett has argued that the realist is generally
committed to the notion of a determinate reality which exists
independently of our experience and language.1 The world so
conceived is mind-independent, and the truth value of our
statements is determined by the way the world is. For the realist,
therefore, meaning tends to be conceived in terms of truth
conditions. We know the meaning of a statement when we know
what it would be for that statement to be true. Since the world
is mind-independent, it is possible that truth conditions may be
unavailable to us. As such they are veri®cation-transcendent.
Many classes of statement fall in this category; those about
inaccessible reaches of space and time, unrestricted general-
isations, subjunctive conditionals, and the mental life of other
persons.2
Dummett's attack upon realism concerns these veri®cation-
transcendent truth conditions. He argues that since our state-
ments cannot possess such meaning the realist conception of the
82 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
world is a delusion. A theory of meaning must also be a theory
of understanding. It must capture what is involved in the
understanding of a language so that an account of the meaning
of an expression will explain what it is to use and understand
that expression. Language-users are capable of constructing
and understanding an in®nitely large number of sentences
through a knowledge of sentence components and an ability to
combine them in appropriate ways. The task of a theory of
meaning is to offer a theoretical account of this practical ability.
The test of its adequacy will be whether it succeeds in showing
in what that practical knowledge consists.
A theory of meaning must show that the language-user has the
implicit knowledge that it ascribes to him or her. It must specify
`what counts as a manifestation of that knowledge',3 and here,
Dummett argues, the truth conditions theory of the realist breaks
down. In our learning of assertoric language, we are exposed
only to states of affairs that we are capable of recognising. States
of affairs that we could not have been in a position to recognise
could have played no part in our linguistic training. Hence, it is
unclear how veri®cation-transcendent truth conditions could
have entered into our understanding of assertoric language. The
realist assumes an understanding of language which we could in
no way have acquired. Both the process by which we come to
grasp, and the subsequent use we make of, statements of the
disputed class suggest that we could not have derived from these
any notion of what it is for a statement to be true independently
of what we recognise as warranting its assertion.4
A mind-independent determinate reality which transcends
our criteria of veri®cation has no part to play in our under-
standing of how language works. Common-sense realism thus
presents a beguiling view of reality. Meaning must now be
elucidated by veri®cation conditions and `truth' must be con-
strued as `warranted assertibility'. The dramatic metaphysical
consequences of this argument are brought out in passages like
the following:
If we think mathematical results are in some sense imposed on us
from without, we could have instead the picture of a mathematical
reality not already in existence but as it were coming into being as we
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 83
probe. Our investigations bring into existence what was not there
before, but what they bring into existence is not of our own making.
Whether this picture is right or wrong for mathematics it is available
for other regions of reality as an alternative to the realist conception
of the world.5
It is not necessary to discuss the merits of Dummett's arguments
for a global anti-realism.6 Our purpose here is to consider why
some moral philosophers have opted for a non-realist interpret-
ation of moral statements. But, before examining some of these
proposals, it is worth noting the presence of similar (and
perhaps better known) disputes within the philosophy of
science.
A realist view of science typically holds that the entities to
which scienti®c laws refer exist independently of our inquiries,
while their behaviour is accurately described by these same
laws. This realism asserts that true scienti®c laws can explain
why observable phenomena are the way they seem and why the
progress of science re¯ects an ever-increasing success in unco-
vering the structure of reality. Science is understood as a
progressive enterprise in which we seek to characterise the most
fundamental constituents of the universe, and thus to explain
the way the world appears to us.7 Yet realism in the philosophy
of science has met with a number of serious objections which
point towards the possibility of an alternative conception.
An instrumentalist philosophy of science denies the existence
of unobserved entities postulated by scientists. These entities
and the laws which characterise their behaviour are to be seen
as heuristic constructs which enable us to make better predic-
tions about what will happen in the empirical world. The goal
of science is conceived in terms of maximising our ability to
predict what will happen in the observable world. The attrac-
tion of an instrumentalist view of science lies in its apparent
ontological simplicity and its links with a veri®cationist theory
of meaning. Thus the early A. J. Ayer proclaimed all empirical
hypotheses as no more than `rules for the anticipation of future
experience'.8
One major dif®culty encountered by instrumentalism con-
cerns the need to distinguish between observational statements
84 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
and theoretical statements. The latter, it is claimed, are merely
instrumental devices enabling us to organise and predict the
former. As a rigid logical distinction, it is dif®cult to elucidate
satisfactorily. An entity may at one time be postulated by a
scientist but will later be detected under experimental condi-
tions or through the use of a more sophisticated measuring
instrument. Are we to say that what began life as an instru-
mental construct has now become an entity which actually
exists? Are we to say that whereas once electrons were heuristic
devices facilitating prediction they can now be said to exist and
to feature in our ontology of observable entities.9 The dif®culty
seems to be that the instrumentalist is construing a difference in
degree as a difference in logical kind. Although what is obser-
vable can often be distinguished from what is postulated, this is
not a hard-and-fast distinction. What is observable will often be
relative to the state of scienti®c theory and the sophistication of
measuring instruments at a given time.
More recent arguments against realism in the philosophy of
science have utilised Thomas Kuhn's well-known thesis on the
incommensurability of paradigms. Kuhn points out that the
history of science is not an evenly paced progression towards
ultimate truth. It is punctuated by sudden changes from one
frame of reference to another. These paradigm shifts in the
history of science, it is argued, lead to theories being generated
within different frames of reference which render them incom-
mensurable. There are no transparadigm standards such as
`meaning' or `reference' which can measure shifts against one
another. As a consequence, the notion of `truth' seems to be
relative to a given paradigm.
In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of
competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One
contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that
repeat their motion again and again. In one, solutions are com-
pounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a ¯at, the other in
a curved matrix of space. Practising in different worlds, the two
groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same
point in the same direction.10
Although Kuhn's intention is mainly polemical, the upshot of
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 85
his incommensurability thesis is a form of relativism which
threatens the realist. If all our statements are relative to a given
paradigm, then it cannot make sense to speak of terms referring
to objects in a mind-independent realm. The nature of an
object and the concept of reference only make sense within a
particular paradigm. A paradigm itself cannot be thought of as
measuring up to some an sich reality. We lack the conceptual
tools even to make sense of such a notion. As a culturally
determined matrix, each paradigm is likely to be superseded.
Since there can be no trans-paradigmatic categories of assess-
ment, there can be no question of which paradigm is closest to
the truth. What we are left with is a world-view not dissimilar to
Kant's transcendental idealism in which the noumenal world
can only be described in terms of concepts which are of our
own devising.11
Alongside Kuhn's incommensurability thesis, an inductive
argument from the history of science is sometimes advanced to
discredit the realist's position. In the same way as earlier
theories in the history of science were replaced by later ones
with different laws and terms, so, it is argued, our contemporary
theories will be replaced by better ones in the future. If this is
the case, then we cannot be con®dent that our present science
succeeds either in referring to or in making true statements
about the way the world is. This meta-induction undermines
the realist conception of the world and the progress of science.
The argument is eloquently stated by Richard Rorty.
We would like to write the history of the triumphs of rational inquiry
in terms of gradual progress. But if we have a picture of knowledge as
either in touch with the world or not ± of language as either hooking
or failing to hook onto the world ± then it is hard to see how centuries
of failure to name the real world could culminate in a sudden success
in doing so. Secondly if we have to say that our ancestors quite
literally did not know what they were talking about, why should we
assume we are any better off ?12
The realist response to this meta-induction is to claim that
successive scienti®c theories are not simply true or false, but
possess increasing verisimilitude. Realism must be seen as
critical, not naive. Scienti®c progress must be viewed in terms
86 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
of a gradual convergence upon the truth through a re®ning of
old theories and the creation of new and more powerful ones.
The strongest argument for verisimilitude, convergence, and
critical realism is that by presupposing these we are led to
greater success. This is to be explained by the truth of these
hypotheses. This is the argument of Hilary Putnam in Meaning
and the Moral Sciences13 and is one of the most powerful that the
realist has at his or her disposal. It can be extended to include
the success of human behaviour and belief in general. The fact
that our everyday actions are based upon a whole range of
beliefs and are generally successful in outcome can be explained
by the realist in a way not open to the non-realist. `Realism is
indeed con®rmed day by day in innumerable ways.'14
Realist and anti-realist arguments in the philosophy of
science are replayed, mutatis mutandis, in moral philosophy. The
realist argues, typically, that the phenomena of moral judgment,
discovery, disagreement, and convergence are to be explained
by the world's manifesting moral characteristics. For the anti-
realist, the phenomena of moral diversity and change are best
explained in terms of a projectivist account of moral realities.

intuitionism and emotivism

In the early twentieth century, intuitionist accounts of morality
prevailed amongst many British philosophers, before being
eclipsed by emotivist theories. The issues at stake between
intuitionists and emotivists adumbrate the more sophisticated
debates that have taken place in the late twentieth century
between realists, anti-realists, and quasi-realists.
Intuitionism sought to defend the assumption of the ordinary
moral consciousness that moral beliefs are about the way the
world is. That we are morally obliged to perform certain
actions is a fact of which we are aware day and daily. This is as
obvious to us as simple arithmetic truths. In addition to this, the
intuitionists argued that moral truths were not reducible to, or
necessarily entailed by, natural facts. There is always a logical
gap between the description of a natural fact and the assertion
of a moral truth. That I have a moral duty to help my child is
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 87
not entailed by any description about his needs or my desires.
My having a duty is a state of affairs sui generis, and is not
entailed by any non-moral set of conditions. The upshot of this
is the intuitionist view that moral truths are non-natural and are
known by some special faculty held by all human beings.
According to H. A. Prichard, much moral philosophy has
attempted mistakenly to answer the question `Why ought I to be
moral?' This is a mistake, because the procedure fails to notice
that moral obligation is sui generis and cannot be reduced to
anything more fundamental, for example the agent's interests.
[I]f, as is almost universally the case, by Moral Philosophy is meant
the knowledge which would satisfy this demand, there is no such
knowledge, and all attempts to attain it are doomed to failure because
they rest on a mistake, the mistake of supposing the possibility of
proving what can only be apprehended directly by act of moral
thinking. Nevertheless the demand, though illegitimate, is inevitable
until we have carried the process of re¯ection far enough to realize
the self-evidence of our obligations, i.e. the immediacy of our appre-
hension of them.15
As an attempt to offer a theory which encapsulates much of
the ordinary moral consciousness, intuitionism is bold and
admirable. Yet the dif®culties it generates are formidable.
Three are relevant in this context.
First, it has trouble explaining morality as a practical project.
If through intuition I discern various moral truths, it is not clear
why these perceptions should motivate me to act in a particular
way. On the standard model of explaining action, beliefs need
to be accompanied by relevant desires. Yet no mention is made
of desire in intuitionism, and it is not clear how the having of
moral intuitions should move me to act accordingly. This gap
between belief and action is not easily closed on intuitionist
premises.16
Second, the faculty which makes moral perception possible is
opaque. Given the non-naturalism of intuitionism, it seems that
this must be some peculiar moral faculty possessed by human
beings. It enables us to perceive moral truths as self-evident, in
much the same way as we perceive mathematical truths. Yet,
the more we inquire about this faculty, the more obscure it
88 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
becomes, and the intuitionist account of how we arrive at our
moral judgments becomes increasingly detached from the type
of explanation that we would give in defence of the ordinary
moral consciousness. We would appeal to upbringing, social
context, the roles and commitments into which one entered to
explain why we hold our moral beliefs. Yet, in order to preserve
the non-naturalist thesis, the intuitionist has to posit a distinct
moral faculty which is independent of these natural phe-
nomena. It is hard to see exactly what this is and how it coheres
with what we know about social conditioning.
Third, the disjunction between natural and moral facts leads
to a certain banality in intuitionism. Its exponents tended to
talk about the most general of moral concepts ± goodness,
rightness, and duty ± and these were illustrated by common-
place moral examples, for example the importance of generally
telling the truth. Yet intuitionism, almost by de®nition, has very
little to say about disputes concerning contested moral concepts
such as justice. If people have con¯icting moral beliefs, how can
these be resolved on an intuitionist basis which appeals to what
is self-evident in defence of the ordinary moral consciousness?17
All the problems permeating intuitionism seem to involve its
abstraction from the particular needs, commitments, and pro-
jects of human beings which provide morality with its content
and function.18
Emotivism was, in many respects, the fashionable successor
to intuitionism in the analytic tradition. It appears better placed
to explain both moral diversity and its integral connection with
human practice. To achieve these it robustly eschews moral
realism. Thus A. J. Ayer, writing in 1936, rejects the realism of
the intuitionists by offering an altogether different account of
morality.
The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its
factual content. Thus if I say to someone, `You acted wrongly in
stealing that money', I am not stating anything more than if I had
simply said, `You stole that money.' In adding that this action is wrong
I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing
my moral disapproval of it. It is as if I had said, `You stole that
money', in a peculiar tone of horror, or written it with the addition of
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 89
some special exclamation marks. The tone, or the exclamation marks,
adds nothing to the literal meaning of the sentence. It merely serves to
show that the expression of it is attended by certain feelings in the
speaker.19
Emotivism thus outlined can explain why moral belief in-
volves a commitment to action. The expression of a moral
opinion is, by de®nition, an account of the practical goals to
which one is attached and is a recommendation that others
commit themselves likewise. Unfortunately, its apparent success
in explaining the practical nature of moral judgment is pur-
chased at a high price. It no longer becomes possible to make
sense of moral disagreement, for when the non-moral facts have
been established disagreement can amount to no more than a
difference in personal preference upon which one can make no
rational judgment.
A more detailed defence of emotivism is offered by C. L.
Stevenson. There are, he argues, roughly two different purposes
for which language can be used; either to record, clarify, and
communicate beliefs, or to express and in¯uence the moods and
actions of ourselves and other people.20 It is with respect to the
latter purpose that moral discourse is to be understood. The
emotive meaning of moral terms has arisen through the history
of their usage, and as a result they can produce signi®cant
affective responses. `The word ``good'' has a laudatory emotive
meaning that ®ts it for the dynamic use of suggesting favorable
interest.'21 When we attempt to get someone to change her
mind, we do so by affecting her feelings in such a way as to alter
her sympathy and temperament. In moral disagreement there
can be nothing else taking place. The appeal to moral truth is
met with incomprehension by Stevenson.
I can only answer that I do not understand. What is this truth to be
about? For I recollect no Platonic Idea, nor do I know what to try to
recollect. I ®nd no inde®nable property nor do I know what to look
for. And the `self-evident' deliverances of reason, which so many
philosophers have mentioned, seem on examination to be deliver-
ances of their respective reasons only and not of mine.22
Despite these protestations, there does appear to be some-
thing lacking on this account. In moral disagreement, we are
90 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
not merely attempting to sway someone's feelings. We are
attempting to change moral perception, to promote a different
way of perceiving the situation. And this is done not by
manipulation, but by reference to inter-personal evaluative
standards. Raphael gives the example of two football supporters
disagreeing over whose is the better team.23 Their argument is
not an attempt to bring about a transfer of allegiances so much
as a discussion about the comparative standards of either side.
Whether we are talking about football, cars, wine, or music
there are always criteria governing the correct use of evaluative
terms. In moral disagreement, we appeal analogously to objec-
tive standards of evaluation. The emotivist might attempt to
argue that our assent to these standards is nothing more than
the result of feeling, but here the theory starts to reduce to
absurdity. What feelings are we talking about? Feelings can
often vary or be entirely absent in particular cases of moral
disagreement without the meaning of our utterances under-
going any signi®cant change. Emotivism is thoroughly reduc-
tive. Instead of explaining the meaning of moral discourse,
which Ayer and Stevenson purport to be doing, the theory now
seems to abolish the discourse altogether. `[I]f and insofar as
emotivism is true, moral language is seriously misleading and, if
and insofar as emotivism is justi®ably believed, presumably the
use of traditional and inherited moral language ought to be
abandoned.'24 Emotivism undermines the apparently realist
tenor of our ordinary moral discourse in a way that threatens to
destroy morality as a social phenomenon. As this is neither
desirable nor likely to happen, it is worth examining more
recent and plausible attempts to wrestle with the issues sur-
rounding ethical realism.

realism and moral vision 2 5

Recent realist strategy in moral philosophy has appealed to
analogies between moral and sensory perception. It has been
argued that, just as our sensory apparatus can disclose certain
features of the independent world, so our moral perception
affords insight into the moral character of the world. The moral
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 91
realist claims to do justice to various common-sense assump-
tions about morality. In making a moral judgment, we are
generally inclined to the view that we are expressing an opinion
about the way things are rather than the way we or others wish
them to be. In acting in accordance with such a judgment, we
often believe ourselves to be authorised by the facts of the
matter rather than by any individual preference. (In this
respect, almost all of us have some appreciation of Kant's
distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives.)
The realist is also impressed by the phenomenon of moral
disagreement in which disputants appear to be making claims
about what is or is not the case, in the hope that opponents can
be defeated and even converted to a different way of seeing
things. The ability of human beings to reach a moral consensus
will carry more weight with the realist than the prospect of
irreconcilable moral claims. `[I]t is remarkable and heartening
to what extent, without losing hold of the sensitivities from
which we begin, we can learn to ®nd worth in what seems at
®rst too alien to appreciate.'26 In this context, the importance of
moral training is often emphasised. In the same way as we have
to be trained to appreciate the value of a work of music, art, or
literature, so we have to be trained to perceive the appropriate
moral features of the world. Thus morality is not solely con-
cerned with the will. Moral perception has an indispensable
role in right action.27
The non-realist while not insensitive to the above features of
our moral discourse discerns too many problems in the realist
hypothesis. It is not clear what sort of things moral properties or
values are supposed to be, over and above the natural features
of the world. Moreover, historical accounts of moral diversity
and change will tend to be interpreted not in terms of con-
vergence, but as con®rmation of the hypothesis that values are
largely invented by societies for a variety of human ends. And,
®nally, the anti-realist will note the crucial disanalogy with
sensory perception. Moral beliefs are intimately connected with
motives and generally possess action-guiding force. This char-
acteristic of moral discourse (emphasised at the expense of
others by emotivism and prescriptivism) can be better dealt
92 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
with in an account which stresses not perception of moral
properties, but the intrinsic connection between the institution
of morality and human interests. Once this connection is noted,
it is argued that the analogy with sensory perception becomes
redundant in any adequate description of the ordinary moral
consciousness.
John McDowell's ethical writings re¯ect the in¯uence of Iris
Murdoch in their stress on the signi®cance of moral perception
in stark contrast to non-cognitivist theories.28 According to
McDowell, the question of what one ought to do should be
approached by ®rst considering what it is to be a virtuous
person. Taking the virtue of kindness as an example, he argues
that a `kind person has a reliable sensitivity to a certain sort of
requirement which situations impose on behaviour'.29 This
sensitivity is likened to a perceptual capacity. He points out that
the knowledge of what kindness requires in certain situations is
conditioned by other conceptions relating to the fair treatment
of persons. In this respect, no one virtue can be fully possessed
independently of the other virtues. Here we have a revival of
the twin Socratic themes that virtue is knowledge and virtue is
one.
McDowell goes on to argue that moral action is not codi®-
able. It is not possible to specify what actions are prescribed of a
moral agent merely by citing a set of moral rules together with
procedures for their application. Moral sensitivity is too rich
and innovative to conform to this pattern. This generates a
further argument for the thesis of moral realism. If the concep-
tion of how to live virtuously cannot be spelt out by reference to
a hierarchical ordering of concerns (as in utilitarianism), some
other explanation of what is involved must be found. The realist
has recourse to the notion of moral perception as explaining
what otherwise remains inscrutable. `A conception of how to
live shows itself, when more than one concern might issue in
action, in one's seeing, or being able to be brought to see, one
fact rather than another as salient.'30
One particular problem that this perceptual model of moral
realism faces is that of explaining how beliefs lead to moral
action. How, it might be asked, can a mere perception motivate
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 93
an agent? Does one not require to postulate a desire or an
interest in morality which provides the agent with a reason to
act in accordance with his or her moral perception? Once we
have appealed to such a desire or interest in morality this will
tend to provide the rationale for virtuous living and render the
explanatory thesis of moral realism redundant. There will be
nothing left for the realist to explain which has not already been
elucidated by reference to the point of morality. The explana-
tion of moral action will thus undermine the perceptual model
of moral judgment. McDowell's response to this problem of
moral psychology is to argue that the perceptual state of the
virtuous person is itself practical and action-guiding. If we
perceive one fact about a situation to be morally crucial (for
example the possibility of assisting a friend in trouble) then that
perception places us in a psychological state in which we have
an overriding reason to act.31 This, it may be countered, fails to
explain why the agent should be committed to virtue in the ®rst
place. But McDowell's rejoinder is to argue that this type of
strategy presupposes some external vantage-point which is
essentially above moral concerns and which can pronounce on
their rationality. This is an illusion, since the rationality of a
practice can only be discerned from within the practice itself.
One requires the necessary moral training and appreciation in
order to perceive moral truths which are action-guiding. Just as
one may have defective powers of sensory or scienti®c per-
ception, so one may suffer from inadequate powers of moral
perception. To presuppose some Archimedean point outwith
the practice of virtue from which its rationality can be inspected
is to embrace an erroneous `scientistic conception of reality'.32
When one has acquired the requisite powers of moral per-
ception no further explanation is required as to why virtuous
action follows.33
Moral vision requires the exercise of discipline and humility.
In this respect, it cannot be attained except within the practice
of a committed ethical life style.
If we resist non-cognitivism, we can equate the conceptual equipment
which forms the framework of anything recognizable as a moral
outlook with a capacity to be impressed by certain aspects of reality.
94 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
But ethical reality is immensely dif®cult to see clearly. If we are aware
of how, for instance, sel®sh fantasy distorts our vision, we shall not be
inclined to be con®dent that we have got things right.34

McDowell's perceptual analogy is developed in further essays

which draw an analogy between moral awareness and our
awareness of secondary qualities. The false `scientistic concep-
tion of reality' identi®ed above tends to assume that the only
truly objective description of the world is one which makes no
reference to the particular perceptions of sentient beings. Thus,
an objective description of the world is one which would make
no reference to colours or tastes since these secondary proper-
ties are the result of the impact of other primary properties
upon our sensory surfaces. McDowell contests this hidden
assumption by insisting that our perception of an object as red
itself discloses something about the world, viz. that this object is
such as to appear red to a sentient being under normal
circumstances.35 In this respect the analogy with secondary
qualities can be used constructively to support the realist
hypothesis.
Shifting to a secondary-quality analogy renders irrelevant any worry
about how something that is brutely there could nevertheless stand in
an internal relation to some exercise of human sensibility. Values are
not brutely there ± not there independently of our sensibility ± any
more that colours are: though, as with colours, this does not stop us
supposing that they are there independently of any particular ap-
parent experience of them.36
The signi®cance of this argument is that it contributes
towards demystifying the realist position. If Blackburn accuses
the realist of positing `a mysterious ability to spot the immutable
®tnesses of things', McDowell can protest that this caricatures
the position.37 Unlike the intuitionists of the early twentieth
century, he can explain why and how moral properties are
perceived by some people but not by others. Perceptual capa-
cities require to be developed for proper moral awareness. In
this respect, those who have been trained in moral practice will
be capable of a commensurate level of moral knowledge.
McDowell's realism has also been charged with the criticism
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 95
that it posits a realm of moral truths which bears no relation to
human needs and nature. These are typically the stuff of ethical
claims, yet their connection with the world of values is unclear.
In his recent response to this dif®culty, McDowell has taken
pains to distance himself from a `rampant Platonism' which sets
out moral reasons in such a way as to leave untouched the
description of the natural world. Our apprehension of ethical
truth is not based upon inferences from the facts of nature, but
is an apprehension which engages with the contingencies of our
existence. Moral perception is described as a second nature
which `could not ¯oat free of potentialities that belong to a
normal human organism'.38 Thus while there is no inference
from a non-moral description of the natural world to moral
claims, none the less ethical perception is of that same world
albeit in moral categories which are sui generis. This is a view
which he attributes to Aristotle. It is also close to the Aris-
totelian thesis of MacIntyre in which the virtues are viewed as
internal rather than external aspects of the good life. This will
be examined in the following chapter. The realism of McDo-
well, however, can be further assessed by comparing it with its
principal rivals in recent analytic philosophy.
J. L. Mackie's rebuttal of moral realism has strong af®nities
with Hume's ethical theory. For Hume, morality is essentially a
device for offsetting the worst effects of a lack of external goods
in the context of limited human benevolence. It is a social
institution for regulating human affairs for the well-being of
society and for enhancing the quality of personal life therein.
The social and arti®cial virtues are those which contribute to
the regulation of society (for example justice and truthfulness),
while the natural virtues (for example temperance and cheerful-
ness) are those which tend to promote the well-being of their
possessor and/or associates.
For Mackie, following Hume, morality is something that we
invent for human purposes rather than something we discover
within the fabric of the universe. None the less, he concedes
that the ordinary moral consciousness is infected with the
assumption of objectivity. `Ethics, we are inclined to believe, is
more a matter of knowledge and less a matter of decision than
96 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
any non-cognitive analysis allows.'39 In denying this moral
assumption, Mackie expounds an error theory which explains
both why it is untenable yet why we have come to hold it. The
former task is discharged by appeal to two arguments; the
argument from relativity and the argument from queerness.
Together these undermine moral realism.
The widespread phenomenon of moral diversity is appealed
to by Mackie in support of his contention that the values we
adhere to cannot be the result of our perception of an objective
moral reality. The facts of moral disagreement and diversity
across space and time are best explained, he argues, not by
varying perceptions of the same reality but by the different
forms of social life in which moral values are embedded.40 The
argument from queerness addresses the unique nature of moral
values and perception, and states that the obscurity of these
entities and the faculty which perceives them must call into
question the claim for objectivity. In important respects, Mackie
rehearses the principal argument against intuitionism and
claims that any commitment to moral objectivity is inevitably
ensnared by the standard objections to the intuitionist. In
particular, the problem of the relationship between the moral
and natural qualities of actions, situations, character, etc. is
particularly puzzling. The fact that an action possessing certain
natural characteristics also possesses moral characteristics is not
a matter of logical necessity. The moral characteristics must in
some way `supervene' upon the natural features, yet how or
why this is so is hard to explain without reference to human
desires, needs, and purposes. And as soon as these are intro-
duced the objectivist model threatens to become redundant on
Mackie's analysis.41
In this context, we can allude to a similar anti-realist strategy
advocated by Gilbert Harman. He illustrates the difference
between moral and scienti®c explanation by reference to two
examples. In one case, a physicist seeing a vapour trail in a
cloud chamber thinks, `There goes a proton.' In another case, a
spectator witnessing a group of children setting a cat on ®re
judges their action to be wrong. The crucial differences between
these cases undermine moral realism. In the scienti®c instance,
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 97
the physicist's judgments explain what is happening by describ-
ing the situation. In the moral instance, the spectator neither
explains nor describes what is happening because this has
already been done in purely natural terms, i.e. the children are
burning the cat. The moral judgment merely explains some-
thing about the spectator and her moral sensibility. The
explanatory chain between principle and observation is signi®-
cantly different. In the one case, the principle explains why
something happened, in the other it contributes nothing to the
explanation of why it happened.42
Having exposed some overriding dif®culties with the realist
account of moral perception, Mackie can then explain the
illusion of objectivity. Here he appeals to Hume's observation of
the mind's `propensity to spread itself on external objects'. The
social dimension of morality makes it necessary that moral
judgments be shared by all members of a given community, and
the need to invest such judgments with authority results in their
being read into the structure of the world itself. This pattern of
objecti®cation facilitates the point of morality by promoting a
common acknowledgement of moral precepts, and it provides
the non-realist philosopher with an explanation of the various
moral phenomena which otherwise count in favour of ethical
realism.
The strength of Mackie's position resides in its metaphysical
simplicity and its ability to explain the necessity and purpose of
morality within human societies. There is no need to populate
the universe with obscure entities called values which supervene
in mysterious fashion upon natural states. The nature of mor-
ality is to be explained by reference to the need for social
regulation as a condition for individual prosperity. Without the
order imposed by moral rules it would be impossible to live a
life that would be desirable or worthwhile. An exponent of this
position might appeal to the understandable lawlessness of
emerging underclasses who no longer have a personal interest
in the maintenance of our social institutions. Where human
beings cease to have a stake in the regulation of society, they
cease to have a reason for acting morally, except within the
limited circle of their immediate acquaintances.
98 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
Perhaps the truest teachers of moral philosophy are the outlaws and
thieves who, as Locke says, keep faith and rules of justice with one
another, but practise these as rules of convenience without which they
cannot hold together, with no pretence of receiving them as innate
laws of nature.43
At the same time, the simplicity of Mackie's thesis entails an
attenuated view of morality. The phenomena of moral disagree-
ment, seriousness, conversion, and commitment are hard to
accommodate on this account. The prospect of moral argument
and revision appears to indicate that there is some fact of the
matter about which disputants are concerned which is not
reducible to mere disagreement about social ef®cacy.44 Mackie's
account explains morality in terms of its functional signi®cance,
yet this appears to preclude any account of the good life to
which virtue is internally related. We shall see what this entails
when examining the revival of the ethics of virtue, but in the
present context it seems clear that Mackie's robust eschewal of
moral realism in favour of a Humean account allows only for
the notion that moral dispositions can be justi®ed by reference
to the non-moral goals that they promote. Yet many answers
that have been given to the question `how should I live?' make
reference to moral ends which cannot easily be cashed out in
non-moral terms. On Mackie's account, virtues are to be
justi®ed by reference to their social or personal utility. Any
innate tendency towards such dispositions is to be explained in
evolutionary (i.e. non-moral) terms.
A further development within recent analytical philosophy
has been the emergence of a position which subtly lays claim
to the strengths of the realist position without commitment to
its metaphysical dif®culties. This view is articulated by Simon
Blackburn and there are hints of it also in some arguments of
Bernard Williams. According to Blackburn, the realist view
encounters insuperable dif®culties which necessitate the
formulation of an alternative account. He mentions three in
particular which are reminiscent of Mackie's earlier argu-
ment.45 First, the metaphysical fecundity of realism leads to
the postulation of a realm of mind-independent values and an
obscure faculty by which we become aware of this. By con-
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 99
trast, an account which explains morality by reference to
human needs, desires, etc. which are projected on to the
external world has a simplicity and explanatory power lacking
in realist rivals. Second, the problem of how moral properties
adhere to natural circumstances, i.e. supervenience, is dif®cult
for the realist to resolve in the absence of any conceptual
patterns of entailment. By contrast, an explanation is available
to the projectionist in terms of human ends. `From the anti-
realist point of view things are a little easier. When we
announce the A-commitments we are projecting, we are
neither reacting to a given distribution of A-properties, nor
speculating about one. So the supervenience can be explained
in terms of the constraints upon proper projection.'46 Third,
the integral connection between moral evaluation and action
is better explained on an anti-realist basis, since evaluative
attitudes are more akin to commitments than beliefs. The
explanation of moral motivation is already available by virtue
of the anti-realist explanation, whereas the realist is typically
beset with the problem of how a form of perception can
explain moral behaviour.
In light of these criticisms, we can see how Blackburn's
position shares many of the features of Mackie's anti-realism.
The difference lies in their con¯icting estimates of projec-
tionism. For Mackie, the projecting of moral evaluations onto
the external world is an error which is engendered by psycho-
logical, social, and even biological phenomena. In this respect,
he shares Hume's scepticism about the objectivity of moral
values and his desire to expose this illusion which grips our
second-order moral discourse. Blackburn's position is more
sophisticated in arguing that our projection of moral realities is
an important feature of moral sensibility and re¯ection and one
which it is vital to maintain. In this respect, his position is quasi-
realist, although it is informed by some of the fundamental
tenets of anti-realism. Quasi-realism argues that the features of
our moral discourse which are so precious to the realist must be
retained. The need for discussion, consensus, and improvement
of sensibilities are all central to the function of morality, and can
only be met by the adoption of realist forms of discourse. They
100 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
cannot thus be abandoned as erroneous, as Mackie's error
theory seems to imply.
Quasi-realism is the enterprise of explaining why our discourse has
the shape it does, in particular by way of treating evaluative predicates
like others, if projectivism is true. It thus seeks to explain, and justify,
the realistic-seeming nature of our talk of evaluations ± the way we
think we can be wrong about them, that there is a truth to be found,
and so on . . . [Q]uasi-realism at least removes the most important
range of objections to projectivism ± namely, that it cannot account
for the phenomena of ordinary moral thinking.47
The quasi-realist thus seeks to take on board many of the
features of moral phenomenology which the realist appeals to ±
moral disagreement, conversion, the training of our sensibilities
± but without the unnecessary metaphysical encumbrance of
realism. At the level of ®rst-order moral discourse the quasi-
realist leaves everything intact, whereas at the second-order
level of explaining that discourse realism is eschewed. Quasi-
realism thus attempts to harness the explanatory power of
realism to the metaphysical simplicity of projectivism. Black-
burn can appeal here to an analogy within the philosophy of
mathematics. One might opt for a constructivist view of
numbers and arithmetic formulae, but this would not lead one
to doubt at the ®rst-order level that 7 + 5 was `really' 12. The
formula would be assented to with unshakeable conviction
irrespective of whether one preferred a non-realist theory of
numbers.48
Can the quasi-realist have his cake and eat it too? Blackburn
has complained about the obscurity surrounding the realist's
faculty for perceiving moral truths. But a similar obscurity may
be held to surround the process of projection which leads to
Hume's staining and gilding of the world with the colours of the
mind.49 How does this happen? When does it happen? Must it
happen? If we revert to Mackie's explanation which has psycho-
logical, social, and biological ingredients, then we appear to be
in the grip of a reductionism which undermines quasi-realism.
We become victims of an illusion induced by forces external to
us.
It is not clear that moral discourse could survive a quasi-
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 101
realist construction. The function of a quasi-realist rendition of
moral discourse is to promote discussion, sensibility, and agree-
ment. Yet, without some moral distinction between how things
seem to us and how they are, it is not clear how this will work.
Stout writes about the signi®cance in moral judgment of the
logical space between what a competent judge holds and what
actually obtains. Without this distinction, the nature of moral
agreement and the criteria of competence are radically altered.
Thus the judgement `slavery is evil' does not reduce to a series
of statements about what ideals observers would agree on. The
truth of the statement, independent of anyone's judgment,
explains why there is agreement and what competence in
judgment entails.50
Is it possible to hold at one level that values are human
inventions while acting and believing otherwise at another
level? Analogies with quasi-realist theories of religion may give
some credence to this notion, yet it must remain doubtful
whether one can continue to experience and to believe in the
authority of moral demands while convinced that at the deepest
level of explanation they only have the force with which we
have invested them. Blackburn considers the case of those who
cannot live with the notion that values have a subjective source,
and accuses them of being in the grip of defective sensibilities.
It might be that there are people who cannot `put up with' the idea
that values have a subjective source; who cannot put up with the idea
that the meaning of their life and their activities is ultimately some-
thing they confer, and that even critical re¯ection on how best to
confer them conducts itself in the light of other sentiments which must
be taken simply as given. But this will be because such people have a
defect elsewhere in their sensibilities ± one which has taught them
that things do not matter unless they matter to God, or throughout
in®nity, or to a world conceived apart from any particular set of
concerns or desires, or whatever. One should not adjust one's meta-
physics to such defects.51

The pejorative labelling of such realist scruples as `defects'

comes close to begging the question. It is precisely the search
for some such notion which seems necessary in order to do
justice to our realist discourse. If no such notion is tenable, then
102 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
the sense of authority which pervades `the ordinary moral
consciousness' may indeed require to be abandoned as erro-
neous and in need of revision. In this respect, the position of
quasi-realism may be thoroughly unstable. Charles Taylor has
argued that quasi-realism is impaled on the horns of a dilemma.
It tries to show the compatibility of ordinary moral experience
and non-realism. Yet this experience itself is resistant to any
non-realist construction. Either one must abandon the deliver-
ances of moral experience or else reconsider the case for moral
realism. Yet our use of thick moral terms is essential to the way
we understand, explain, and judge ourselves and others. It is
what we have to deal with, and will not vanish whatever our
prejudices. `Your general metaphysical picture of ``values'' and
their place in ``reality'' ought to be based on what you ®nd real
in this way.'52
If the moral realist can make good sense of some fundamental
features of our moral practice, there are also signi®cant dif®cul-
ties surrounding moral diversity and the queerness of values.
Although the anti-realist can offer a simpler account and one
which makes better sense of the integral connection between
action and moral orientation, there are none the less dif®culties
here with explaining crucial features of moral thought and
discourse. Much of this discussion, however, is narrowly focused
and pays little attention to the historical and societal context in
which moral judgments are made. The language of morals is
not homogeneous but re¯ects in numerous ways the changing
cultural matrices in which it is formed. Attention needs to be
given to moral diversity and to the ways in which ethical
judgments, rather than re¯ecting timeless principles, generally
display the marks of their social history.53

moral pragmatism
Unlike Mackie whose ethical irrealism is contrasted with scien-
ti®c realism, Richard Rorty seeks to defuse at a global level all
disputes between realists and non-realists. The concept of
`truth' cannot be cashed out in terms of correspondence or
®ttingness with the way the world is. The function of language
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 103
is more like a tool enabling us to cope with the world rather
than a medium through which the structure of the world can be
grasped.
The pragmatist . . . drops the notion of truth as correspondence with
reality altogether, and says that modern science does not enable us to
cope because it corresponds, it just plain enables us to cope. His
argument for the view is that several hundred years of effort have
failed to make interesting sense of the notion of `correspondence'
(either of thoughts to things or of words to things). The pragmatist
takes the moral of this discouraging history to be that `true sentences
work because they correspond to the way things are' is no more
illuminating than `it is right because it ful®ls the Moral Law'. Both
remarks, in the pragmatist's eyes are empty metaphysical compliments
± harmless as rhetorical pats on the back to the successful inquirer or
agent, but troublesome if taken seriously and `clari®ed' philosophi-
cally.54

Pragmatism is distinguished by three characteristics.55 First,

there is the adoption of an anti-essentialism towards key philo-
sophical concepts such as `truth', `knowledge', and `morality'.
These concepts cannot be elucidated isomorphically. They
should not be seen as providing us with images of the constitu-
tive features of the world. Instead they should be understood
practically in terms of what they enable us to do, what practices
they make possible, and to what they commit us. A second
characteristic of pragmatism is its dissolving of the traditional
differences between science, morality, and art. It is impossible
to drive a ®rm wedge between facts and values, between the
objective truths of science and our subjective evaluations. All
our judgments and commitments can only be assessed in terms
of pragmatic criteria involving notions of coping, convenience,
and control. Third, the constraints of inquiry are not realist ±
the nature of objects, the mind, or God ± since we cannot make
sense of these notions in realist terms. Rorty describes the
constraints on inquiry as `conversational'. What is true is what
can survive criticism and objection. Since this cannot be
anticipated, there can never be any assurance that truth is ®xed
or an inquiry closed. This conversational criterion has signi®-
cant ethical consequences for Rorty. The notion of openness to
104 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
truth is a central conviction of a liberal society. It suggests a
community which is marked by tolerance and a plurality of
opinions. Open-mindedness is to be sought merely for its own
sake and not as a vehicle to ultimate truth. `Truth' is to be
de®ned as the resultant consensus from whatever open disagree-
ments take place.56
There thus emerges within a pragmatic construal of moral
truth some social norms which we ought to recognise. In this
respect, Rorty avoids subjectivism and relativism. He advocates
a form of pluralism which is conditioned by certain agreed
norms, for example respect for other human beings, the pro-
hibition of cruelty, the resolution of disputes by non-violent
means, freedom of expression, etc. We have to learn to value
these norms and the radical diversity within liberal societies
without seeking an ultimate justi®cation in terms of an essential
human nature, objective moral realities, or the being and
purposes of God. This is the position of the liberal ironist and
the communities to which he or she belongs. The attempt to
marry private ideals with social regulations is misplaced. The
individual must be given the space within which to express and
develop his or her interests. The only social norms that are
justi®ed are those which provide each and every individual with
this opportunity. Rorty has even described the ideal world order
as an `intricately-textured collage of private narcissism and
public pragmatism'.57
One problem that Rorty immediately faces is that of doing
justice to the moral dissident. If moral truth is to be de®ned
pragmatically in terms of what the community ®nds useful or
convenient, how can we make sense of those who confront
society with a moral alternative? Rorty's solution is to argue
that the moral dissident is one who confronts society with the
ideal of liberalism over against the shortcomings of the status
quo. It is essential to a liberal society that it provide its poets
and revolutionaries with the space in which to challenge con-
ventional wisdom and practice.
In his recent Oxford Amnesty lecture, Rorty argues persua-
sively that the human rights phenomenon is now a brute fact of
liberal societies and should be accepted as such. It is neither
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 105
possible nor necessary to seek justi®cations of a Kantian sort for
our belief in the inalienability of human rights. Such attempts
make little philosophical sense and are of no practical use. We
should not agonise over the unanswerable question that pre-
occupied Plato: why should I be moral? Instead we should seek
to stimulate the sympathies and sentiments which enable us to
recognise other human beings as like us in important respects.
A better sort of answer is the sort of long, sad, sentimental story which
begins `Because this is what it is like to be in her situation ± to be far
from home, among strangers', or `Because her mother would grieve
for her.' Such stories, repeated and varied over the centuries, have
induced us, the rich, safe, powerful, people, to tolerate, and even to
cherish, powerless people ± people whose appearance or habits or
beliefs at ®rst seemed an insult to our own moral identity, our sense of
the limits of permissible human variation.58
Rorty's writings have something of a therapeutic quality.
They force us to face the unpleasant fact that philosophy has
been unable to resolve many of the traditional disputes that it
engendered. The only alternative on offer is a pragmatism
which offers operational substitutes for our key semantic con-
cepts. Yet, when presented with this radical alternative, Rorty
assures us that we can avoid nihilism. As good liberals we can
hold on to the values for which our communities stand even in
the absence of metaphysical justi®cation. Learning how to do
this is the vocation of the liberal ironist, and assistance can be
found in the art and literature of our societies. Is this a tenable
view?
Many of the dif®culties which Rorty's position has en-
countered are of a general philosophical nature. Whether the
concept of truth resists reduction to pragmatic criteria is a moot
point. It may well be that the realist's conception of truth is one
which the pragmatist cannot avoid even in formulating a
different set of criteria.59 A similar problem of self-referential
coherence attends Rorty's reading of the history of philosophy.
If this is presented as a true and objective account of what has
happened, it is hard to see how Rorty is not commending his
position in a manner that it judges impossible. This is the
burden of Alasdair MacIntyre's complaint.
106 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
But at once the question arises of whether he has written a history
that is in fact true; and to investigate that question, so I should want to
argue, is to discover that the practice of writing true history requires
implicit or explicit references to standards of objectivity and ration-
ality of just the kind that the initial genealogical history was designed
to discredit. Indeed when Rorty invites us to assent to the version of
the history of philosophy which he has presented . . . he is surely not
merely trying to elicit our agreement in the light of present socially
accepted standards of work within philosophy and history. For he is ± as
philosophers characteristically are ± himself engaged in advancing a
philosophical theory about the nature of such standards. And this
theory he presumably takes to be true, in the same sense as that in
which realists understand that predicate. If not, then I am unclear just
what he is claiming.60

A further dif®culty in Rorty's pragmatism is that it leaves

unexplained what seems to cry out for explanation. He ac-
knowledges our feeling that there is a fundamental difference
between the discourse of astrology and the discourse of particle
physics, but in the end the only possible discrimination that can
be entertained is of a pragmatic sort. We can only prefer physics
if it is more useful; it can only be vindicated in terms of its
providing us with a better tool than astrology. Why it is more
useful cannot be explained. Yet here the realist can legitimately
retort that there is an explanation in terms of the way the world
is independently of our perceiving it.61 To describe our pre-
dicament in terms of being trapped inside our conceptual
scheme with no access to the independent world is to misrepre-
sent our true position. It is in terms of our language that we
attempt to describe the way the world is, the progress of physics
being explained by our increasing success in doing so. The
desire for understanding and the sense of discovery which
characterise the work of practising scientists are not explained
here. Thus Polkinghorne remarks, `I have never known anyone
working in fundamental physics who was not motivated by the
desire to comprehend better the way the world is.'62 Similarly,
although there is no pure language of morals which infallibly
represents ethical truths independently of historical context,
this does not undermine the realist's case. As Stout argues, the
fact that we can only talk about ethics in terms of a particular,
 Moral realism in recent philosophy 107
culturally bound vocabulary, does not imply that we are not
talking about something beyond our own culturally conditioned
preferences.63
Bernard Williams has offered a plausible criticism of Rorty's
treatment of the language of science. On the pragmatist
account offered by Rorty, various features of natural science are
left unexplained. It becomes dif®cult to make sense of the
postulation of theoretical entities (for example electrons) at one
stage in the history of science being con®rmed inter alia by the
observation of such entities (for example through an electron
micrograph) at a later date.64 Moreover, science itself has
sought to explain, through evolutionary biology and neurolo-
gical science, why its own enterprise is possible. We are beings
who have evolved in such a way as to succeed in describing and
understanding our environment. The self-explanatory power of
science cannot be made sense of on pragmatic criteria. The
most that we can say is that we ®nd these accounts useful for
self-understanding. Yet science is driven by the search for
explanation, the quest for an adequate and not merely a useful
account of reality. `The sense that one is not locked in a world
of books, that one is confronting ``the world'', that the work is
made hard or easy by what is actually there ± these are part of
the driving force, the essential consciousness of science.'65
This leads Williams to a curious reductio ad absurdum of Rorty's
proposal. For the enterprise of science, the most useful assump-
tion is that it can explain with increasing power the way the
world is. The pragmatist, however, in advocating the abandon-
ment of such assumptions, threatens their usefulness, and this is
self-referentially incoherent. The most pragmatic policy for the
progress of science would therefore be the abandonment of
pragmatism.
If Rorty's global pragmatism breaks down, this will inevitably
have repercussions for his moral philosophy. While the pursuit
of truth remains valid for science, it must at least be an open
question whether it is valid also in ethics. Rorty's insistence
upon the absence of absolutes, and also upon human rights as
an unassailable fact for our culture, is questionable. The
features of our moral discourse which constrain realism and
108 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
which are present in much of Rorty's own moralising cannot be
made sense of on pragmatist grounds. The banishment of moral
realism is accompanied by a sense of the loss of moral discovery
and authority. In this context, a criticism of Guignon and Hiley
is worth registering. Noting that Freudian neuroses of oppres-
sion have been widely replaced by more recent neuroses of
disorientation, lack of purpose, and lack of sustaining values,
they ask whether Rorty's vision of free personal expression can
do anything other than aggravate the current disorders of the
self.66
Rorty's defence of moral pragmatism and the criticisms it has
encountered direct us to wider issues surrounding the concept
of the self, human communities, and the social ends of moral
conduct. The most signi®cant attempt in recent philosophy to
recognise the signi®cance of these without abandoning moral
realism will be considered in the next chapter.
 chapter five

Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre

the aristotelian constant

Since the publication of After Virtue (1981), Alasdair MacIntyre's
writings have become a seminal philosophical in¯uence in
recent theology. While this work appeared to initiate a new
phase in MacIntyre's career ± one that has led him back to
Christianity, though this time in a Thomist form ± many of its
characteristic themes are adumbrated in earlier works, pace
Gellner.1 Three of these deserve attention. His insistence that a
study of ethical concepts must be set within a socio-historical
purview of their context dominates his Short History of Ethics and
sets it apart for its blend of sociology and philosophy.2 This
paves the way for his later apocalyptic pronouncements about
the inevitable failure of `the Enlightenment project' and his
relentless assault upon modern liberalism, both of which, he
claims, ignore the integral connection between standards of
conduct and socially embodied practices based on agreement
about those goods which are to be sought. This perception of
the relationship between moral theory and practice may init-
ially have arisen out of MacIntyre's study of Marx. In an early
work on Marxism, written when he was 23, MacIntyre provides
an exposition of Marx's view that philosophy must be evaluated
in historical context if its true signi®cance is to be shown. His
remarks on Marx anticipate the striking claims of After Virtue.
`[I]t is in Marx's own thought that philosophy has for the ®rst
time become conscious of its historical basis in seeking to
transform that basis and has therefore passed beyond the
limitations of earlier philosophy.'3
109
110 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
MacIntyre's admiration for Aristotle is also re¯ected in his
earlier writings. There he claims that Aristotle correctly per-
ceived, partly in reaction to Plato, that human action is to be
evaluated in terms of its contribution to the proper ends of
human conduct. The concept of the `good' thus takes epistemo-
logical precedence over what is `right', the virtues are central to
ethics as those habitual dispositions which both facilitate and in
part constitute human goodness, while ethics and politics are
deeply intertwined insofar as the good life requires a particular
social ordering of the polis. This invariant commitment to
Aristotelianism entails that MacIntyre's ethical realism is of a
more naturalist and historical cast than that encountered in the
previous chapter. Moral truth cannot be isolated from claims
about the purposes of human life nor from the social contexts in
which these purposes are articulated and pursued.4
The argument of After Virtue expands and extends those
earlier positions.5 It might in part be seen as a research project
which con®rms the thesis of Elizabeth Anscombe in her 1958
article, `Modern Moral Philosophy'.6 The concepts of modern
ethical theory from Kant's deontology onwards cannot be
understood except in terms of the social and metaphysical
context in which they emerged. Consequently, the Enlighten-
ment project of justifying them, once detached from their
proper context, leads only to the vacuous claims of emotivist
and prescriptivist theory. The moral discourse of modern
western societies is a survival of fragments from older traditions.
Located outside these traditions, the discourse has ceased to
make sense, as the spectacularly unsuccessful series of attempts
to justify morality since the eighteenth century has shown.
Without a strong theory of human nature to sustain them, the
philosophical status of moral judgments will baf¯e us. Philo-
sophical analysis of our current predicament must therefore be
conjoined with a historical perspective.7
MacIntyre's criticism of contemporary forms of moral dis-
course resonates with other independent analyses. Basil
Mitchell raises a similar query about the ability of liberalism to
provide an adequate moral basis for social life. A society has no
alternative but to make some moral decisions which presuppose
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 111
ideals of human excellence. For example, legislation governing
marriage and parenting must re¯ect substantive conceptions
about how human beings should live and behave. These cannot
be based entirely on thin concepts of equality, freedom, and
tolerance. `Ideals are not, as a rule, arbitrarily chosen but
depend upon deeply held and broadly rami®ed convictions
about human nature and the human predicament.'8 Mitchell
goes on to illustrate how traditional convictions about the
sanctity of human life started to become puzzling when di-
vorced from the theological framework which had sustained
them. A symptom of this puzzlement was the emergence of
intuitionism which af®rmed various duties as incumbent upon
us without any explanation of why we come to have them or
how they are connected.9 In this respect, his criticism of
liberalism shares some strikingly similar features with MacIn-
tyre's After Virtue.
MacIntyre's pessimistic analysis of modern moral theory is
counterbalanced by a study of ethics in classical Greece, where
the teleology of Aristotle is presented as possessing a coherence
lacking in Enlightenment projects.10 In Aristotelian ethics, the
good life is largely elucidated in terms of citizenship in the city-
state. Ethics is thus perceived as irreducibly social and political.
The virtues are those habitual dispositions which will enable
the citizen to achieve well-being, and in themselves they
constitute a condition of such well-being. In this respect Aris-
totle's account of the virtues differs signi®cantly from Hume's.
The exercise of virtue is itself part of the good life and not
merely something which accidentally affords pleasure. This
formal feature of Aristotelian theory is shared by the New
Testament and enables the later synthesis of Aquinas. Although
there are important differences between the New Testament
and Aristotle in their taxonomy of virtues ± Aristotle, he
claims, would not have admired Jesus ± there are signi®cant
formal similarities. A virtue is that quality of character which
enables us to live as we ought. Furthermore, its relationship to
our ®nal end is internal. It is not merely as a means to an end
that we are called upon to develop the virtues of prudence and
charity.11
112 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
Although the modern reader of Aristotle is struck by the
relative neglect of rules in his ethics, none the less the virtuous
life involves obedience to the laws of the city-state when these
are properly enacted. These laws make possible the social
framework and relationships without which the good life
cannot be attained. To show contempt for civic law is to under-
mine the shared project of citizenship, and is necessarily at odds
with the pursuit of the good. For the virtuous person, certain
types of action are absolutely forbidden. Aristotle's position is
teleological therefore, without being consequentialist. This
account of the virtues as integral to the pursuit of goodness
informs Aristotle's account of practical reasoning. The major
premise of a practical syllogism that certain goods are to be
pursued by an agent under certain circumstances can only be
grasped by judgments about the goals of human life, judgments
which themselves require the exercise of virtue.
In expounding and restating these elements of Aristotelian
moral philosophy, MacIntyre also cites various weaknesses. It
may be useful to delineate these for they are crucial to the sequel
to After Virtue and, in particular, to the turn to Thomism in
MacIntyre's own philosophy. The tension in Aristotle between
the good as a social end and the good as metaphysical contem-
plation is never entirely resolved, although the presence of a
theology in Aristotle is later used to claim Aristotle for Thomism
over against the neo-Aristotelianism of Nussbaum and others.12
The problem of how to reinstate Aristotelian teleology without
Aristotelian metaphysical biology is noted. MacIntyre rejects as
inadequate the suggestion that biological needs might in them-
selves provide a conception of the good life. While such needs
place constraints upon human conduct, this approach ignores
the extent to which culture shapes and generates rival concep-
tions of human well-being. Similarly, the provincialism of Aris-
totle's notion of well-being in the Athenian polis raises dif®culties
for the formulation of his ethical theory in larger and more
pluralist forms of political organization which seek to accommo-
date different conceptions of human ¯ourishing.
The setting of the Aristotelian taxonomy of virtues in context
gives rise to three concepts that are crucial to the later develop-
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 113
ment of MacIntyre's own thinking. These are the related
concepts of a practice, a narrative, and a moral tradition.
A practice is a form of socially established co-operative
activity through which certain goods are achieved through
excellence. Those goods which are achieved are internal to the
activity in the sense described above.13 Football, chess, farming,
and painting are all practices in this sense. Virtues are integrally
related to practices in that they are those acquired qualities
which enable us to achieve those goods which are constitutive
of practices. To understand and master a practice one has to
submit to the socially acknowledged authorities in the ®eld. The
idea of inventing standards of one's own without reference to
those that are socially established is meaningless.
Every particular account of the virtues is also linked to some
notion of how a life as a whole can possess a meaning and a
shape. The goods which are sought in different practices must
be ordered and harmonised, and this requires a conception of
how life can possess a shape in which commitments are made
and priorities set. This gives rise to the broader and more
comprehensive notion of a history in which we are situated. As
agents, the activities we undertake can only be explained by
reference to the history of institutions. These histories require
narrative display. One cannot understand the excellence that is
appropriate to any of one's social roles except by reference to
examples which explain and educate.
It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children,
good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons
who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world
and eldest (sic) sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and
go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn
both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters
may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the
ways of the world are. Deprive children of stories and you leave them
unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words.14
The narrative of a person's life history must inevitably intersect
with someone else's narrative. This results from the social
dimension of the practices in which we engage and the roles we
occupy. Our histories are bound up with the histories of the
114 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
institutions to which we belong and in which we participate,
institutions such as the family, the university, the farm, the
hospital, and the church. A tradition arises in part through a
provisional consensus about how the goods sought in a wide
variety of practices and institutions are to be ordered, and how
they are to serve some overall telos of human life. Within a
tradition, however, there is inevitably con¯ict, tension, and
ongoing debate about the nature and ordering of such goods. In
this respect, a living tradition must evolve and adapt. Con¯ict
and criticism are two of its necessary features.15
This presentation of what constitutes a living tradition,
however, contrasts sharply with MacIntyre's analysis of con-
temporary moral discourse in the closing stages of After Virtue.
Except in those marginalized communities which retain strong
links with the past, modern liberal societies can only draw upon
the disconnected fragments of older traditions whose virtues
they have ceased to practise. Modern politics no longer involves
genuine moral debate, but rather the suppression of con¯ict
through the use of rhetoric which masks the ethical rootlessness
of our societies. The only ¯icker of light is the prospect of some
neo-Benedict who can construct `new forms of community
within which the moral life could be sustained so that both
morality and civility might survive the coming ages of bar-
barism and darkness'.16

the turn to thomism

The sequels Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three Rival
Versions of Moral Enquiry see MacIntyre's thought taking a
remarkable theological turn. The wistful hope of a neo-Bene-
dict has been replaced by a commitment to the tradition of
Thomism, as the best alternative to a discredited liberalism and
a Nietzschean nihilism. In Whose Justice? Which Rationality? the
concept of a tradition of inquiry is developed and illustrated
with reference to classical Greece, twelfth-century Europe, and
Enlightenment Scotland. The focus of MacIntyre's inquiry is
now upon the discontinuities in the history of moral inquiry and
the need to provide an explanation for these.17
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 115
Modern disputes about the nature of justice are impervious
to rational resolution, because the typical discourse of such
disputes conceals the extent to which these rival conceptions
are embodied in competing traditions of inquiry. Inquiry is
situated within a tradition in the history of which standards of
rational justi®cation have emerged and been developed. The
understanding of this context is a necessary condition for
grasping its related moral standards. According to MacIntyre,
rather than setting up incommensurable rival conceptions, this
description of moral inquiry as tradition-situated enables us
better to appreciate the nature of contemporary moral disagree-
ment and to render it amenable to resolution.
He makes several further points in elucidation of this thesis.18
Exponents of these traditions of inquiry need not have thought
of themselves as expounding one of several traditions. It is only
in circumstances of radical crisis and self-examination that an
adherent of a tradition considers his or her most fundamental
principles. Justi®cation within traditions often proceeds by
reference to ®rst principles which are assumed to be uncon-
tested. Yet what justi®es these principles in times of radical
dispute is the superiority of one construction of the tradition,
including its ®rst principles, over alternative attempts to char-
acterise the tradition of inquiry.19 A second observation on the
status of tradition-constituted inquiry is that past history is
crucial to an understanding of the present state of the tradition.
In this respect, there is a sharp distinction from the pre-Enlight-
enment ahistorical model of moral inquiry in which the circum-
stances surrounding the emergence of moral standards and
doctrines are irrelevant to their rational assessment. Hence the
bulk of the two sequels to After Virtue is taken up with descrip-
tions of particular historical episodes in moral inquiry.
From a theologian's perspective, the most interesting and
perhaps most elusive aspect of MacIntyre's philosophical
project is his rehabilitation of Thomism. How does MacIntyre
advance from Aristotelianism to Thomism, and on what basis
is the latter to be defended? It is clear from his discussion of
Augustinianism that he perceives four crucial differences
between the Christian moral theory of Augustine and the
116 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
paganism of Aristotle. First, the scope of morality is extended
beyond selected groups within the polis to include all human
beings. This is reinforced by theological conceptions about
divine laws and a created nature which can know these.
Second, the reality of sin and grace for Augustine entails a
radical shift in moral psychology in which the will occupies a
central place in determining human action. The explanatory
role assigned to the will would have been unintelligible to
Plato and Aristotle. Third, Augustine's taxonomy of the virtues
differs from that of Aristotle on account of this alternative
moral psychology. The most fundamental sin is that of pride,
its correlative virtue being that of humility. Fourth, the telos of
human life is now to be described theologically and not merely
in terms of a life style within the polis. The moral life requires
some overriding notion of the end of life and this can only be
made sense of in a theistically ordered universe. The moral
life, therefore, can only be ful®lled in the religious.20 MacIn-
tyre's description of Augustine probably represents his own
position.
Jesus points us toward that immutable form of justice in God which
we ®rst directly apprehended within our own minds, but toward a
clearer apprehension of which we continually move, as we come to
love God more and more, as He is revealed in Jesus Christ.21

In the later writings of Thomas Aquinas, we see an overcoming

of the con¯ict between Augustinian Christianity and Aris-
totelian philosophy. Aquinas, by virtue of his education was able
to inhabit both traditions and thus to reform Augustinian
Christianity by accommodating the best insights, concepts, and
arguments of Aristotelianism. For MacIntyre, Aquinas provides
not only an illustration of a dynamic tradition of rational
inquiry, but also the most adequate tradition available for
resolving the moral problems of modernity.22 How does
MacIntyre justify this claim?
The vindication of Aquinas' synthesis lies not in any demon-
strable refutation of the leading alternatives from agreed ®rst
principles. Instead its rationality resides in its ability to accom-
modate the best insights of its rivals while setting these within a
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 117
new framework which alone is capable of resolving the dif®cul-
ties faced by those rivals.
What justi®es his representation of the order of things over against its
Averroist, Neoplatonist, and Augustinian rivals is its ability to identify,
to explain, and to transcend their limitations and defects, while
preserving from them everything that survives dialectical questioning
in a way which those rivals are unable from their philosophical
resources to provide any counterpart.23
To the objection that, for Aristotle and Aquinas, rational
justi®cation is a matter of deduction from self-evident ®rst
principles, MacIntyre makes the following response. Although
there are some principles which are so fundamental as to be
undeniable, their application is not uncontroversial. Thus,
while the good is that which we ought to seek ± the most
fundamental law of practical reason ± the nature of goodness
remains contested in relation to our biological, social, and
rational ends. Moreover, attaining recognition of those ends is a
work of `dialectical construction'. It is only as we understand
the implications of ®rst principles that we come to recognise
their truth, and to deepen our apprehension of them.24 There is
thus a sense in which the fullest discovery of the ®rst principles
of right action is the telos of the moral life, an account of
rationality which MacIntyre claims places Aquinas at odds with
Descartes, Hume, and Kant.
How is Aquinas able to integrate Augustinian and Aris-
totelian traditions and what makes his reshaped tradition
persuasive? MacIntyre is here elusive, at best suggestive.25 He
claims that in the early stages of his career Aquinas developed
conceptions of truth and being in the opening sections of the
Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate and in the De Ente et Essentia,
which enabled him to develop a metaphysic capable of recon-
structing both Aristotelian and Augustinian traditions. At the
heart of this metaphysic is a concept of a reality which is
necessary and self-explanatory, and which constitutes the ®nal
telos of all other beings. How other particular goods are to be
organised and related to the ultimate good is a complex matter
for human re¯ection and for Christian faith. Debate on this
question is ongoing. Thus, `every article in the Summa poses a
118 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
question whose answer depends upon the outcome of an
essentially uncompleted debate'.26
The concept of truth is handled in a way that is both
participatory and critically realist. In a craft such as furniture-
making, ®shing, or farming, the mind of the participant must
become adequate to an independent good. The embodied mind
must therefore seek to correspond to the object which is sought
through practice, and this is achieved through the intellectual
and moral virtues.27 Yet the progressive nature of the moral life
is such that this correspondence of embodied mind to object is
partial, incomplete, and open to revision.
Aquinas' conception of rational inquiry is, in an important
sense, both holistic and eclectic. In the Summa, every single
article ®nds its place within a larger whole and makes a
corresponding contribution to that whole. At the same time, in
the exploration of each question Aquinas draws upon an array
of sources including the biblical writers, Greek and Roman
philosophers, Arab and Jewish thinkers, and Christian theolo-
gians from across the centuries. `The length and details of the
Summa are not accidental features of it, but integral to its
purpose and more particularly to providing both Aquinas
himself and his readers with the assurance that the arguments
adduced for particular articles were the strongest produced so
far from any known point of view.'28
It is clear from Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry that
MacIntyre advocates something like a post-modern reading of
Thomas Aquinas. The role of philosophy as a craft is strongly
emphasised. As such, philosophy is not primarily an epistemolo-
gical project to which all rational inquirers have immediate and
equal access. It is a practice, the art of which one must learn
through teaching, discipline, acknowledgement of authority,
and a realisation of the good which is sought therein. To learn
the craft requires that the practitioner ®nds his or her identity
within the history of the craft, and his or her participation in
the development of that history.29 On this reading, Aquinas'
Summa becomes a way of instructing the reader into the crafts of
philosophy and theology rather than the setting out of an
epistemology on the basis of perspicuous ®rst principles. The
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 119
Thomism of Cajetan and Aeterni Patris (1879) is thus preferred by
MacIntyre to that of Suarez and Kleugten. Aquinas is read not
as someone who provides an answer to the epistemological
questions raised by Descartes and his successors. Aquinas' work
cannot be understood except in relation to traditions of inquiry
which include those of the classical philosophers and the
Church Fathers. According to the encyclical Aeterni Patris, the
exercise of reason is not a free-standing activity which should
take place without reference to the Christian faith. Only within
this context can the errors and obscurity of unaided reason be
avoided. Even the great philosophers of antiquity fell into
appalling error.
A wise man, therefore, would not accuse faith and look upon it as
opposed to reason and natural truths, but would rather offer heartfelt
thanks to God, and sincerely rejoice that, in the density of ignorance
and in the ¯ood-tide of error, holy faith, like a friendly star, shines
down upon his path and points out to him the fair gate of truth
beyond all danger of wandering.30
MacIntyre proceeds to interpret Thomas Aquinas' ethics in a
manner similar to that outlined in chapter 3. The section on
natural law cannot be read except in the context of the search
for the good and the necessity of the virtues. The cardinal
virtues cannot be properly exercised except with the gift of the
theological virtues. In this holistic reading of Aquinas, it
becomes impossible to extract his teaching on natural law as
characterising the moral reasoning of every rational person
irrespective of tradition and training.
The role here ascribed to history and tradition contrasts
sharply with the classical liberalism which MacIntyre inveighs
against and which he sees exempli®ed in the ninth edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. Here the history which has given rise to
the statement of a set of rational principles is merely a prologue
irrelevant to the task of rational assessment. Sidgwick's remark
that `Principles will soon be everything, and tradition nothing'
epitomises the spirit of the encyclopaedia. In the moral theory,
expounded by Sidgwick in his article on `Ethics' and subse-
quently in Outlines of the History of Ethics, moral principles have
come to be recognised, since the Reformation, as dictated by
120 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
the common experience and reason of human beings.31 Moral
principles have now become disengaged from superstition,
ritual, and other irrational trappings. The `ought' of moral
obligation is not reducible to any non-moral concept. There is
rational consensus regarding moral conduct throughout the
civilised world. Moral principles are therefore self-evident and
detachable from any particular understanding of human
nature, history, or God. Practical reason obliges us to seek both
the general and also our own personal happiness. According to
MacIntyre, the implausibility of this account is evident in
several ways. The potential for con¯ict between the twin goals
of universal and egoistic happiness is endless. Moral claims
become vulnerable to those of prudential self-interest. This
cannot be resolved while the moral `ought' is radically divorced
from its context in a system of rules and beliefs. Moreover, the
fragmentedness of the discipline of moral philosophy and the
radical nature of subsequent moral disagreement discon®rm
Sidgwick's thesis about the emergence of rational moral prin-
ciples independent of tradition. `Thus post-Sidgwickian moral
philosophy, judged by the standards of the Ninth Edition and of
Sidgwick himself, has turned out to be a dubious type of
activity.'32
At the same time, MacIntyre's realism emerges in his attack
on the genealogist who deconstructs the encyclopaedist's quest
of truth as masking only the will to power within a particular
social class, and who attacks the tradition-constituted model of
inquiry for its oppressiveness and innate conservatism. The
genealogist may correctly perceive that the encyclopaedist has a
social context in which powerful interests suppress the notion
that tradition, background, or prejudice are germane to ra-
tional inquiry. Nietzsche thus understood academic discourse to
mask repressed and repressive sentiments behind a mask of
pure objectivity.33 Yet the genealogist's deconstruction of the
notions of rationality and truth are rejected in MacIntyre's
tradition-based approach. The problems for the genealogist are
those problems which typically beset the opponents of
realism.34 Its subversive use of language cannot recognise the
manner in which meaning is delimited by social conventions.
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 121
Without such delimitation, language acquisition and communi-
cation would be impossible. The identity, unity, and continuity
of the self who performs the activity of intellectual deconstruc-
tion cannot be made sense of in terms of the position that is
being advanced. Finally, the narrative presented by the genealo-
gist, which seeks to expose the illicitness of other narratives,
demands exemption from an otherwise universal scepticism.
Again this presupposes a location of the narrator which is
unexplained in terms of the philosophy being promulgated.
The exponent of a tradition-based concept of rationality will
not deny that every thesis, argument, or doctrine must be
understood as situated within a history of inquirers whose lives
have been shaped by particular practices, narratives, and
methods of education. None the less, the direction and meaning
of the tradition derives from a conception of truth as indepen-
dent of that tradition. Its success or failure is to be assessed in
terms of a realist understanding of what it is that makes our
utterances true. This concept of truth is denied by the genealo-
gist in such a manner as to lead to self-referential incoherence.

So confronted by the incommensurability of the genealogist's theses

about the self with metaphysical and theological claims about
accountability, we can enquire whether in telling the tale of how he or
she came to advance those claims, the genealogist does not have to fall
back into a mode of speech in which the use of personal pronouns
presupposes just that metaphysical conception of accountability
which genealogy disowns. Or to put this question another way: can
the genealogist legitimately include the self out of which he speaks in
explaining himself within his or her genealogical narrative? Is the
genealogist not self-indulgently engaged in exempting his or her
utterances from the treatment to which everyone else's is subjected?35

It transpires from all this that MacIntyre is, in some sense, both
a communitarian and a realist, and that the only tenable
combination of these resides in the Aristotelian±Thomist tradi-
tion. The attractions of this for contemporary theology are
considerable but require careful and judicious assessment. A
range of dif®culties in MacIntyre's position is now becoming
apparent from the burgeoning secondary literature that it has
122 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
elicited. These dif®culties might be identi®ed as af¯icting both
his realism and his communitarianism respectively.

critical reception
The problem of perspectivism arises through claims that tradi-
tions deal with problems in terms of criteria of rationality which
are, in an important sense, internal to those traditions. How
then is it possible to adjudicate rival claims of traditions without
assuming the Archimedean point which MacIntyre claims to be
illusory? Are traditions not sheerly incommensurable in the
absence of any tradition-transcendent criteria capable of resol-
ving disagreement? MacIntyre's problem arises in part from his
desire to explain the impervious nature of our modern disagree-
ments without abandoning realism by assuming the role of the
genealogist. His response to the charge of perspectivism is that
traditions are indirectly commensurable by virtue of one tradi-
tion's ability both to accommodate the insights of another while
also resolving new problems which are incapable of resolution
in the rival account. MacIntyre provides parallels from the
history of science to justify this claim. A new scienti®c theory
succeeds not only by accommodating the recalcitrant data that
its rivals faced, but also by explaining why its predecessor could
succeed within its own limits. Galileo, for example, succeeds
over against his predecessors in part because he is able to
explain their successes and failures. His own account not only
can improve upon earlier versions, but also can make sense of
their achievements. `The contributions of Plato, Aristotle, the
scholars of Merton college, Oxford and at Padua, the work of
Copernicus himself all fall into place. Or, to put matters in
another and equivalent way: the history of late medieval science
can ®nally be cast into a coherent narrative.'36
How this response avoids perspectivism without abandoning
the tradition-centred model of rationality can be seen by
considering MacIntyre's views on incommensurability and
radical translation. Although traditions are in some measure
incommensurable, translation is possible from the discourse of
one tradition to that of another. It is by attempting such
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 123
translation and acknowledging its shortcomings that one learns
that what can be said in one language cannot be said in
another. The inhabitant of two traditions and the speaker of
two languages (with the ¯uency of a native) can come to the
realisation that certain things can be thought and spoken of in
one tradition or language but not another. In this respect, the
recognition of incommensurablity can be achieved without
lapsing into perspectivism or assuming that one holds an
Archimedean position.37
It is worth noticing that the prospect of translation and the
recognition of its occasional impossibility presuppose a belief in
a shared environment and low-level standards of rationality,
including those of formal logic.38 It also implies a theory of
reference by which exponents of rival traditions of inquiry can
agree that they are referring to the same subject-matter and
attempting to characterise it in different ways.39 Indeed, else-
where, MacIntyre can plead for recognition of the large
measure of agreement about standards across traditions.40
Yet the suggestion that a tradition is like a language with its
distinctive concepts which cannot exactly be translated into
the concepts of another language may imply an exaggerated
level of homogeneity and incommensurability. It is never
entirely clear where one tradition breaks off and another
begins, and in contemporary debate all traditions incorporate
variations which are in part the result of in¯uences from
without. On the issue of translatability, MacIntyre has shown
how dif®cult it can be to express in one language what is said
in another. The translator of ancient texts soon becomes
aware of the impossibility of an exact one-to-one translation
between the terms of an ancient language and those of a
modern language. The anthropological concepts of classical
Hebrew, for instance, cannot adequately be captured by the
conceptuality of classical Greek. This conceptual difference
re¯ects disparities in belief and practice. Yet does this problem
of translation entail incommensurability? Stout has argued
that, despite dif®culties in translation, any belief embedded in
another culture can be rendered intelligible with suf®cient
explanation and digression in another language.41 The lack of
124 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
conceptual resources to provide an adequate simple trans-
lation can itself be explained in another language. This is a
necessary condition of drawing the sorts of comparisons
between traditions that MacIntyre believes will advance ra-
tional debate. A similar criticism is offered by JuÈrgen Haber-
mas, who argues in Davidsonian fashion that MacIntyre's
ability to show the disparity between linguistic resources
presupposes a standpoint of `¯exible identity'. Through com-
paring and contrasting meanings in rival traditions, MacIntyre
assumes the position of one who is `bilingually extended'.42
This criticism echoes MacIntyre's own attack upon the
posture of the genealogist which is inexplicably immune from
the criticism made of all other postures. On the other hand,
MacIntyre can make the rejoinder that, while translation of
this sort into `trans-Atlantic and trans-Paci®c English' is
possible, the detachment of concepts from the cultural and
historical context in which they originally derived their intel-
ligibility makes corruption inevitable. Only an imaginative
inhabitation of this context would enable the translator to
begin to understand its concepts.
Related to the issue of perspectivism is the even more
pressing problem for the realist of relativism. By setting rational
inquiry in the context of a tradition with its principles and
presuppositions, has MacIntyre relativised the concept of truth?
If truth is to be evaluated in terms of the `best theory so far',
does this not lead to the substitution of `warranted assertibility'
for a correspondence notion of truth? What is true is deter-
mined by the most coherent organisation of data within the
most successful tradition. The criteria of truth are given by the
constraints and organisational success of traditions. MacIntyre's
response to this problem of relativism is that a tradition-centred
model of rationality cannot avoid a realist conception of truth
which must be perceived as distinct from the concept of
`warranted assertibility'. The latter can be a property of state-
ments generated by the basic criteria of a tradition, but the
need in times of epistemological crisis to revise those criteria
themselves can only be understood in terms of a realist notion
of what is adequate to the way things are. Thus it is the
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 125
correspondence theory of truth which is presupposed in this
account of how traditions themselves ¯ourish or wither.
The concept of warranted responsibility always has application only
at some particular time and place in respect of standards then
prevailing at some particular state in the development of a tradition of
enquiry, and a claim that such and such is warrantedly assertible
always, therefore, has to make implicit or explicit references to such
times and places. The concept of truth, however, is timeless. To claim
that some thesis is true is not only to claim for all possible times and
places that it cannot be shown to fail to correspond to reality in the
sense of `correspond' elucidated earlier but that the mind which
expresses its thought in that thesis is in fact adequate to its object.43
The charge of relativism is thus met by emphasis upon the
defeasibility of translation, the ability of participants to inhabit
several traditions, the possibility of one tradition defeating its
rivals in virtue of its greater explanatory power, the incoherence
of genealogical accounts of the concept of truth, and the
ineluctably realist nature of truth. `To claim truth for an
expression is to presuppose that this is the way things are
irrespective of how they appear from whatever point of view.'44
The emphasis upon tradition, practice, community, and
authority as necessary conditions for the apprehension of truth
has also prompted the criticism that MacIntyre's neo-Thomism
is seriously oppressive. The communitarian thrust of Whose
Justice? Which Rationality? has resulted in a much more hostile
reception than After Virtue encountered. Before considering this
reception, it is worth asking in what sense MacIntyre's phil-
osophy can be characterised as communitarian. The concluding
sections of After Virtue appeared to recommend the cultivation of
a variety of small-scale communities which enabled their inha-
bitants to develop those virtues that were appropriate to their
shared practices and beliefs. This proposal seemed to endorse
the ideal of a variety of local communities which could coexist
and interrelate in modern liberal societies. Such an ideal might
be construed as a form of neo-Aristotelian communitarianism.
By contrast, the Thomism of MacIntyre's latest work appears to
advocate the ideal of one civic order which strives to organise
the goals, practices, beliefs, and institutions of justice amongst
126 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
its members. Within certain limits, the authority of this way of
life must be secured by the use of sanctions. It is this strand of
MacIntyre's philosophy which has evoked the wrath of Martha
Nussbaum who discerns the spectre of an oppressive church
riding roughshod over diverse and discrete local traditions
while invoking the doctrine of original sin in support of its own
necessary authority.45
This last point, however, provides an opportunity for a
rejoinder on MacIntyre's behalf. He fully acknowledges that the
creation of a society within the Thomist tradition is unattain-
able under present constraints. The most that can be realised
are more local sub-groups which seek to foster the traditions
and practices which produce Christian virtues. It is clear, more-
over, that this tradition can only manifest its rationality through
encounter and confrontation with rivals. This seems to require
the condition of a polity in which different traditions are
tolerated and brought together in dialogue. The progress of
reason thus requires the peaceful coexistence of rival traditions
which can debate and argue their most fundamental differ-
ences. MacIntyre's description of a tradition presupposes
ongoing development and debate. It recalls John Henry New-
man's dictum that claims about the meaning of human life `are
not placed in a void, but in the crowded world, and make way
for themselves by interpenetration, and develop by absorp-
tion'.46 In this respect, MacIntyre's position may have more in
common with liberalism than is usually recognised. Indeed, in
his own academic career he has frequently found himself tilting
against a range of established positions. In playing out the role
of the dissident, he has depended upon an academic culture in
which there is scope for radical disagreement and dissent.47
The modern university is advocated as a forum within which
competing traditions may engage. The university should be a
`place of constrained disagreements'.48 The rationality of the
most superior tradition can only be evinced through confronta-
tion, dialogue, and a testing of assumptions and counter-
assumptions. Jean Porter has accordingly argued that if a
tradition survives and prospers by engagement with its rivals,
then a condition of tradition-constituted inquiry must be the
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 127
maintenance of tolerance, pluralism, and openness to change
within our societies. And these, of course, are amongst the
central values of liberalism.49
Further clari®cation of MacIntyre's position is given in a
recent interview in Kinesis. The dif®culty in a variety of volun-
tary associations pursuing their own goods is that this merely
weakens any commitment to and articulation of a common
good within society.
What I'm talking about, by contrast, is the kind of local community in
which the variety of goods that people pursue ± in the workplace, in
their leisure, in the schools, in clinics and hospitals, in a variety of
activities ± are integrated into the life of an overall community, a
community that is able to recognize that it has a life of its own and to
celebrate that life by things that it does together, in a ceremonial and
festive way.50
On the other hand, the current political impossibility of
creating such a monolithic society seems to imply the need, on
an interim basis, for the cultivation of more local forms of
community. This remains part of MacIntyre's strategy for
moral survival in a post-liberal age.51 Here we ®nd a criticism
of other forms of communitarianism which is crucial to the
shape of MacIntyre's present position. As we shall see in the
following chapter, `communitarian' is an adjective that he
rejects, in part because he perceives amongst so-called commu-
nitarians a desire for the state to embrace some vision of the
common good. This, however, is fraught with dangers of
distortion and authoritarianism, for the nation state is essen-
tially an inadequate vehicle for the formation of the common
good.
What must emerge from this is an interim commitment to a
pluralist polity. The nation state cannot reform itself. To
attempt such a reform is to court fascism. Therefore, it is better
in the interim if the state continues to assume as best it can its
principled neutrality between competing conceptions of the
good. Communitarianism for the present must develop in local
ways and at grassroots level. For MacIntyre qua Thomist, it is
presumably the church rather than the state which is best
placed to develop such community.
128 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
In this regard, what is required is a theory of church and state
which distinguishes these on the grounds that the former is a
free association of those who confess a common good, whereas
the latter accommodates within its perimeters individuals and
groups of differing persuasions. While, as MacIntyre has shown,
there will be acute dif®culties establishing a moral basis upon
which such a polity is established and the limits of moral
disagreement permitted, it seems that for the time being
accommodation must be made to some such polity. Yet it is not
clear that his moral philosophy can say much about how a
pluralist society can be organised or what the disposition of the
Thomist should be towards it. In this respect, other critics have
found his proposals of little positive application. Brian Barry
argues that any attempt to model the societies we currently
inhabit on the basis of Thomism is a non-starter. It makes no
sense to reconstruct our world in such a way as would entail
rolling back not only the Enlightenment but also the Reforma-
tion. `The problem is akin to that of ``keeping 'em down on the
farm after they've seen Paree'' but on a much, much bigger
scale.'52
It is precisely because there is no present prospect of wide-
spread agreement upon the ends of human life, social goods,
and the ordering of the virtues, that liberals typically argue for a
polity that is based upon fundamental procedural rules of
freedom and equality. Ronald Dworkin claims that political
decisions must be, so far as is possible, independent of any
conception of the good life. Citizens will differ in their concep-
tions, so it is incumbent upon government to treat all equally by
refusing to give preference to any one. The scheme of civil
rights in the USA is interpreted as ensuring that citizens are not
discriminated against in this way, and for the most part
Dworkin judges this successful.53 The fear of the totalitarian
imposition of a very speci®c conception of the common good
may lead us to prefer a social order which construes freedom
and equality around the idea of legitimate non-interference.54
MacIntyre's criticism of liberalism suggests that such proce-
dural rules are too thin and rootless to sustain social life and its
institutions of justice. None the less, one might be tempted to
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 129
conclude that, in the absence of any alternative proposal in
MacIntyre for the organisation of a pluralist society, we have to
make the best of liberalism.
Yet MacIntyre's notion of moral inquiry is fundamentally at
odds with liberal claims that there are moral norms which
transcend all traditions, societies, and cultures. His hostility to
the only contemporary candidate for a universal moral discourse
± the language of human rights55 ± con®rms this. For some
theological critics, this is a principal weakness of his moral
theory.56 The Christian tradition has persistently claimed that
there are laws of morality which are known outwith the visible
church and which Christians share with all other human beings.
MacIntyre's philosophy, however, despite its frequently comba-
tive style may be able to accommodate such claims. It is incum-
bent upon any prosperous tradition to explain the best insights
of its rivals, and MacIntyre provides resources for this in his
redescription of natural law theory. It is already a feature of his
account of a practice in After Virtue that practitioners are neces-
sarily committed to the virtues of justice, courage, and honesty.
`We have to learn to recognize what is due to whom; we have to
be prepared to take whatever self-endangering risks are de-
manded along the way; and we have to listen carefully to what
we are told about our own inadequacies and to reply with the
same carefulness for the facts.'57 Anyone who wishes to learn a
practice to achieve those goods towards which it is directed must
espouse justice, courage, and honesty. The social nature of the
goods we seek entails a commitment to these virtues in one form
or another. We thus ®nd here a minimalist account of human
nature which presupposes the necessity of some set of rules
governing all forms of human conduct aimed at the good. This
can be combined with the recognition that `different societies
have and have had different codes of truthfulness, justice and
courage'.58 A commitment to the indispensability of basic moral
rules is even more apparent in his recent writing. The achieve-
ment of our human good is dependent upon observance of
principles, respect for which is a necessary condition of social
well-being. In particular, the negative precepts of the natural law
must govern every genuine ethical practice.
130 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
[A] ®rst primitive conception of each of the virtues that we need to
acquire, if we are to achieve our good, can be articulated only
through a set of rules which turn out to be another application of the
primary precepts of the natural law. We can only learn what it is to be
courageous or temperate or truthful by ®rst learning that certain types
of action are always and exceptionlessly such as we must refrain from
if we are to exemplify those virtues.59

Such features of his Thomism are well placed to recognise

and explain why a Kantian, for instance, should assert the
primacy and universality of moral principles concerning
honesty and respect in one's dealing with others qua human
beings. The natural law reveals to us exceptionless negative
precepts which must govern our lives. The examples offered
are those of not committing murder and not telling lies. While
human reason needs to be instructed and corrected by divine
revelation, none the less these negative precepts have the
character of fundamental rules governing all ethical behaviour
worthy of the name. Failure to respect them is destructive of
those very forms of life which make any virtuous life
possible.60
The perception that there are fundamental moral norms
governing human life is not limited, according to MacIntyre, to
Thomist Christianity. In his recent discussion of the work of
the Danish philosophical theologian, Knud Lùgstrup, MacIn-
tyre insists that all interaction between human beings requires
a basic trust.61 In the encounter with the other person, I
become aware of some fundamental moral claims upon me ±
here a further comparision with Levinas is drawn. I am under
a demand to do what is best for the other in so far as it lies
within me. This may provide at least some minimal moral
norms even for a pluralist society beset with disagreement
about the ends of human life. There is no return to foundation-
alism or a thick moral code independent of a particular
tradition. None the less, MacIntyre's philosophy, despite its
onslaught upon liberalism, may possess resources for acknowl-
edging on non-liberal grounds the importance of tolerance,
individual freeedom, respect for persons, and the maintenance
of a pluralist polity.
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 131

theological issues
There has been considerable theological interest in MacIntyre's
moral philosophy and especially its recent Thomist turn. Its
theological signi®cance might be viewed in relation to one of
the main theological options today, post-liberalism. As has been
argued, this offers modern theology a way of asserting both the
distinctiveness of the church and the truthfulness of its faith.
There are some striking similarities between the tradition-
constituted model of rational inquiry and the cultural±linguistic
model of religion. The denouncing of liberalism, the rejection
of foundationalism, the assertion of incommensurability, the
denial of radical translation, the epistemological indispensa-
bility of a community ± all these are shared features of MacIn-
tyre's philosophical and Lindbeck's theological programme.
Moreover, the criticisms of relativism, perspectivism, non-
cognitivism, and sectarianism have been directed at both. A
similarity less obvious is a shared ambivalence surrounding
liberal themes. While both MacIntyre and Lindbeck are appar-
ently hostile to liberalism and vociferous exponents of some
form of communitarianism, their writings display a commit-
ment to realism and a recognition of the pluralist context within
which Christian theology must be conducted.62
As MacIntyre claims that a tradition will evince its rationality
by demonstrating an ability to cope with new situations and
problems, so Lindbeck speaks about applicability as futurology.
`A theological proposal is adjudged both faithful and applicable
to the degree that it appears practical in terms of an eschatologi-
cally and empirically defensible scenario of what is to come.'63
Alongside applicability, Lindbeck cites intelligibility as a further
possible mark of a religion. This rational intelligibility is not the
result of some demonstrative argument, but is rather the
accumulation of positive tests, checks, and arguments from
within a living tradition. The current imperative for the Chris-
tian community is to socialise its members into a distinctive form
of life. This alone can provide a vision of social co-operation and
service which will provide an alternative to the individualism of
acquisitive theories of justice and rights entitlements.
132 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
One disanalogical feature in Lindbeck is the apparent
absence of any notion of translatability in the presentation of
the cultural±linguistic model of religion. This absence prevents
due attention being devoted to the possibility of cross-fertilisa-
tion between traditions and to the in¯uencing of a tradition by
external forces. Lindbeck's accommodation of `relevant data'64
must refer not to raw empirical information, but to the insights
of other communities, associations, and traditions. Yet the
modern Christian citizen will ®nd herself typically belonging to
various forms of social organisation through the workplace,
leisure pursuits, and voluntary commitments, and these it must
be assumed will have some in¯uence upon her understanding of
the forms of the Christian life. A communitarian theology must
therefore be able to accommodate the insights that will be
gleaned from diverse places, and which must be pressed into the
service of the Christian faith. The greater emphasis upon
realism, conversation, and partial translatability in MacIntyre
may thus enhance aspects of Lindbeckian post-liberalism.
What ®nally of MacIntyre's understanding of God? Here he
is uncharacteristically reticent. He has much to say about the
fusion of Augustinian Christianity with Aristotelianism, but why
one should ever adopt the former standpoint is not entirely
explained. What is it that makes Thomism a more viable option
than some form of neo-Aristotelianism? This is the root of
Nussbaum's complaint. MacIntyre shows how Aquinas was
able to accommodate Aristotelianism within Augustinian Chris-
tianity. Yet why should an Aristotelian assent to Augustinian
Christianity? `The astonishing fact is that, in this lengthy book
about Aristotelianism and rational justi®cation, this question is
never seriously asked . . . We are simply transported into the
Christian era.'65
The most extensive discussion of this problem is that offered
in John Milbank's Theology and Social Theory.66 According to
Milbank, MacIntyre's presentation is too rationalist in attempt-
ing to argue on philosophical grounds from Aristotelianism to
Thomism. The discontinuity between a secular and a Christian
moral vision is not adequately accounted for in MacIntyre's
arguments for the rational superiority of Thomism. There can
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 133
be no refutation of the secularist. `Hence there is a question-
ableness about every switch of tradition, which escapes dialec-
tical adjudication.'67 The only possibility is an out-narrating of
other traditions by the persuasive power of the Christian mythos.
Milbank has accurately pointed to a lack of theological
development in MacIntyre's position. Yet the switching of
traditions, according to MacIntyre's account, is never an action
to which one is compelled on grounds of rational contem-
plation. One may have some sense of the inadequacies of one's
position and the possibility of a better one through rational
scrutiny, but the full realisation of another alternative takes
place only through something akin to conversion. One must
learn to inhabit the new tradition, to see oneself and the world
in its terms, to acknowledge its authorities in order properly to
understand its greater adequacy. Rational persuasion, for Mac-
Intyre, can take place only from inside another way which is
created by divine grace. Moreover, his philosophy seeks to
explain how one may fail to see one's tradition as inadequate by
contrast with another which is rationally superior. `[S]ome at
least of the adherents of a defeated set of positions may remain
unable to recognize that defeat.'68
For MacIntyre, the notions of truth, realism, and rational
justi®cation stand or fall together. In this respect, his insistence
upon one position being capable of rational justi®cation even in
the presence of intractable disagreement is a corollary of his
realism. The concept of `truth' cannot be reduced to any
operational or pragmatist alternative without our practices of
assertion, commendation, and argument becoming seriously
distorted. In order to avoid perspectivism and relativism, our
moral theory is committed to the view that this is how things
are and not merely how they appear from this particular
standpoint. In making this claim about how things are in
distinction from how they appear one is also committed to the
view that one's position can be rationally justi®ed. At the very
least, this includes the assumption that arguments advanced for
rival positions are unsound in some respect or other. What
MacIntyre's critics have not always recognised is that his
account of rational justi®cation is entailed by his realism rather
134 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
than by any covert foundationalism. Conversely, any abandon-
ment of this notion of rational justi®cation entails a retreat for
him into a perspectivism or relativism which is ®nally inco-
herent.69 It is not clear, in any case, that one can appropriate
and commend to one's public MacIntyre's arguments against
post-Enlightenment liberalism without assuming that these are
rationally persuasive.70
The distance that Milbank perceives between the Christian
mythos and MacIntyre's understanding of tradition-centred ra-
tionality may be exaggerated by virtue of the former's instru-
mentalist construction of science which tends towards the type
of perspectivism that MacIntyre seeks to avoid. MacIntyre's
own account of the history of science is explicitly critical of any
attempt to substitute the realist conception of truth with a
functionalist alternative. A problem may also be generated by
Milbank's criticism of MacIntyre's account of (partial) translat-
ability and incommensurability. The claim that we may `hold
inside our heads several subjectivities'71may be psychologically
true, but it does not in itself exclude the possibility that we can
re¯ect upon these and compare them. This possibility is all that
MacIntyre's philosophy requires.
MacIntyre's position has the capacity to recognise that de-
pendence upon divine revelation for Christian perception is not
incompatible with a certain style of apologetic argument. For
example, he argues that the moral psychology of Christianity
employs notions of the will, sin, and grace which are lacking in
classical philosophy but which are adequate to our moral
predicament. The irrational and ¯awed aspects of human
nature ± which are powerfully attested to in modernity ± are
signs of a disorder which Christian psychology has long recog-
nised. Yet the fullest acknowledgement of such disorder comes
for the Christian only in the recognition of his or her true end
as revealed by God's grace. The following sentence in MacIn-
tyre is remarkable for its theological potential.
The self-revelation of God in the events of the scriptural history and
the gratuitous grace through which that revelation is appropriated, so
that an individual can come to recognize his or her place within that
same history, enable such individuals to recognize also that prudence,
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 135
justice, temperateness, and courage are genuine virtues, that the
apprehension of the natural law was not illusory, and that the moral
life up to this point requires to be corrected in order to be completed
but not displaced.72
This brings us to the second claim that MacIntyre advances
for theism, its teleology. The ordinary moral life requires to be
understood in Aristotelian terms as a series of projects which
individually and collectively aim at the good. `What is the good
life?', is the question that each of us must ask himself or herself.
This question in turn raises further issues about the ordering of
goods, the complex set of relationships into which we must
enter, and an account of what it is to succeed or to fail ®nally in
one's moral endeavour. Such an account can only be provided if
the universe itself is teleologically ordered.
[T]he only type of teleologically ordered universe in which we have
good reason to believe is a theistic universe. Hence, the moral
progress of the plain person towards her or his ultimate good is always
a matter of more than morality . . . The moral progress of the plain
person is always the beginning of a pilgrim's progress.73
This is not an argument which can compel the moralist to
become a believer. It does not remove the need for grace and
conversion. Yet it does show how the inadequacies of the moral
life may ®nd their resolution in the Christian life. MacIntyre's
long-standing commitment to Aristotelianism requires a theo-
logical setting and this is best supplied by some form of
Thomism. A future task is to defend the view that `the predica-
ments of contemporary philosophy, whether analytic or decon-
structive, are best understood as arising as a long-term
consequence of the rejection of Aristotelian and Thomistic
teleology at the threshold of the modern world'.74
None the less, a theological criticism not dissimilar to those of
Milbank and Banner can be registered. MacIntyre approaches
Aquinas primarily as a resource to complement and correct an
Aristotelian moral philosophy. Yet, if the Christian life is viewed
merely as the correction of the moral life, the radical nature of
God's grace ± a theme in the Augustinian Christianity not only
of the Reformation but of Aquinas also ± is threatened.75
MacIntyre mentions the forgiveness of sins and the nature of
136 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
redemption, yet is it not signi®cant that his reading of Veritatis
Splendor takes its point of departure from the middle rather than
the beginning of the encyclical? Little attention is devoted in the
structure of his argument to the notion of our union with Christ
± a gift that is given by grace prior to any works of obedience ±
as the context and presupposition of Christian discipleship. The
emphases in Veritatis Splendor upon the Christian life as one of
response and witness, as lived within the body of Christ and
enabled by the sacraments, are strangely muted in MacIntyre's
neo-Thomism. Perhaps this is because it is approached from the
perspective of moral philosophy rather than theology. Our love
of God is more often stressed as the goal of the moral life, than
God's unconditional love for us is presented as its presupposi-
tion. For all that the context of Aquinas' discussion of the
virtues is emphasised for interpreting his natural law theory, not
enough is said about the nature and presuppositions of caritas
which reorients the moral life within a religious life enabled by
the work of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit. The setting
of the Christian life as a response to God's prevenient love for
us in Christ is, I suspect, unintentionally lost in passages such as
the following.
Grace often corrects, as well as completes, what we have so far taken
to be conclusions of reason, but, when grace does so correct us, it is
always because we have in some way failed as reasoners.

But unless we can understand and obey the law adequately, we will be
unable to recognize the truth concerning our own natures and to
realize their potentiality for an exercise of rational freedom through
which we can perfect our individual and communal lives.76
The Christian ethos of the moral life is not adequately
captured in such remarks. The way in which moral activity
within the Chritian life is determined by a range of conceptions
including the divine command, obedience, grace, justi®cation,
the body of Christ, sancti®cation, and response to God's action
extra nos seem somehow to be missing. These shape not only the
moral perception of the Christian, but also the moral serious-
ness, commitment, and motivation which characterise a life of
faith.
 Virtue, tradition, and God ± Alasdair MacIntyre 137
This Protestant query notwithstanding, MacIntyre's work is
of major signi®cance in reintroducing the discourse of the
Christian faith to moral philosophy at the highest level. In this
respect, he has achieved more than any theologian. The theo-
logical de®ciencies of his work are more in the nature of
lacunae than fatal ¯aws. We see as yet only the outline of a
theological position. But, if MacIntyre can continue to advance
and develop his argument, one of the bene®ts to theology will
ironically be a more prominent place in public debate.
 chapter six

Communitarianism and its critics

communitarian themes
MacIntyre's philosophy has frequently been identi®ed with the
movement known as `communitarianism'. It is often set in
contradistinction to liberalism. This is hardly surprising given
the assault on liberalism that one ®nds in his and others'
writings. I shall argue, however, that despite the legitimacy of
this attack on liberalism many of its characteristic themes need
to be accommodated within theological ethics. While there
may be no common theory shared by all citizens within a
pluralist society, there may none the less be some common
ground which needs to be articulated in the terms of rival
theories.1
Communitarian approaches to ethics typically begin with
criticisms of the project of liberalism which seeks to provide a
moral basis for societies in the absence of any shared conception
of the good. This basis is usually articulated in terms of the
rights of individual citizens to various freedoms and to equality
of treatment. The critics of liberalism argue that not only is the
justi®cation for such a moral basis elusive without some govern-
ing notion of the good, but also that this basis is too thin to
sustain the polity of a pluralist society. Both the self and the
social units to which it belongs require to be situated in the
context of a thicker morality which expresses a substantive
conception of human nature and those goods which are to be
sought. These will tend to be social in so far as they cannot be
achieved except in relationships of co-operation and friendship
with other human beings. Having begun with a critique of
138
 Communitarianism and its critics 139
liberalism, the communitarian programme seeks to promote
human ¯ourishing through the fostering of those forms of
association without which we cannot achieve well-being. The
importance of moral training within the home and the school is
frequently emphasised. However, in the absence of any single
overriding conception of the common good in modern pluralist
societies, many communitarians are anxious to promote local
groups and voluntary associations within a polity that promotes
diversity.2
Although I shall argue that the differences between commu-
nitarians and liberals become blurred upon closer inspection,
the main lines of debate have been drawn in the following
terms. Liberalism asserts the right of each person to free and
equal treatment. Since modern societies comprise citizens with
divergent notions of the good life, the state should adopt a
position of relative neutrality with respect to these. Its function
is to maintain the equality and freedom of each citizen. In this
respect, the right may be said to precede the good. The
communitarian, by contrast, is more impressed by the essen-
tially social nature of the human being. The self is formed by
its roles, attachments, and relationships with other people,
institutions, communities, and traditions. Conceptions of what
is right and how society should be organised always presuppose
some vision of the common good. In this respect, the good
presupposes the right. Modern societies, although not united
by any commonly agreed conception of the good, should none
the less seek to promote those civic ties, communities, and
institutions through which alone the self is formed and can ®nd
ful®lment.
The above delineation presents the contrasting emphases of
communitarianism and liberalism. In many books and articles,
these are presented as mutually exclusive alternatives. This
creates an impression that to be communitarian is to be anti-
liberal and that to be liberal one cannot recognise the import-
ance of shared social goods. Charles Taylor, however, has
argued that the terms liberalism and communitarianism are too
unre®ned to be of much use in contemporary debate.3 As
overworked portmanteau terms, they conceal two distinct but
140 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
related problems. The ®rst is what he calls the ontological
problem of how the self is to be characterised. Here there is a
debate between atomists and holists, a debate which has been
raging for three centuries. The atomist will tend to explain
social structures and conditions in terms of the properties of
individuals; the holist will appeal to larger social units in terms
of which individual identities are, at least in part, de®ned. A
second issue is the advocacy issue of what policies one supports.
Here there is a dispute between individualists and collectivists
concerning the relative importance assigned to individual rights
and freedoms on the one side, and communities on the other.
`At one extreme we would ®nd people like Nozick and Friedman
and other libertarians; at the other, Enver Hodja's Albania, or
the Red Guards of the cultural revolution de®ne the ultimate
benchmarks.'4 Although there are connections between these
two issues, Taylor's distinction none the less provides a useful
means of examining the rise of communitarianism in the 1980s
and 90s.
Communitarianism is sometimes dated from the publication
of a series of works by MacIntyre, Sandel, Walzer, and Taylor
himself which appear to attack liberal atomism.5 In this sense, it
is concerned with the ontological question of the constitution of
the self. According to Sandel, the self is already shaped by its
social attachments and situation prior to any choices that it
makes. These attachments inevitably determine subsequent
choices. Thus, built into John Rawls' conception of the original
position is a faulty doctrine of the unencumbered self. The self
must be understood as a rational agent who transcends any
particular choices or commitments. There is no possibility here
of the self being constituted by its attachments. `No role or
commitment could de®ne me so completely that I could not
understand myself without it. No project could be so essential
that turning away from it would call into question the person I
am.'6
Taylor criticises atomistic accounts of the self for their failure
to make sense of common goods that are more than a concate-
nation of individual ones. At a trivial level, my conversation
with my neighbour about the weather is a way of our acknowl-
 Communitarianism and its critics 141
edging that this is a matter that we share. It is something that
we attend to together. Our conversation is a common action
which is informed by linguistic conventions and phatic utter-
ances.7 It is a means of af®rming that there are certain goods
that are valued by us together rather than by each of us as
individuals. In the republican ideal, citizens are committed to
the laws of the state through a sense of shared or common
values. This is not to be analysed in terms of enlightened self-
interest, but in terms of the virtue of patriotism.
In the sociological work of Robert Bellah and his co-authors,
the corrosive effects of individualism in American society are
carefully explored. Habits of the Heart, in Toquevillean fashion,
points towards the social disintegration and sense of anomie
caused by the decline in traditional forms of community life and
voluntary association. The stress on independence and self-
reliance at the expense of civic concerns for shared goods
impoverishes national discourse `by the monotones of a strident
and ultimately destructive individualism'.8 A community which
nurtures moral commitment and shared goods is de®ned in
contradistinction to a life-style enclave. The community is a
group of people who are socially interdependent, share certain
practices, and whose lives are thereby shaped. By contrast, the
enclave merely re¯ects a similar private life through common
appearance, consumption, and leisure activities. The commun-
ity generally owns a history which the enclave lacks.9 The main
thesis of Habits of the Heart regarding the deleterious erosion of
forms of community life is restated by other social theorists and
philosophers.
Robert Putnam has produced the striking example of the
increase of the number of persons who now bowl alone. At a
time (1980±93) when the total number of bowlers in America
increased by 10 per cent, league bowling decreased by 40 per
cent. This poignant image of `bowling alone' is interpreted as
signifying a decline in social capital, those `features of social life
± networks, norms, and trust ± that enable participants to act
together more effectively to pursue shared objectives'.10
Whether or not the bowling example is empirically accurate,
there seem to be wider indicators of this decline in communal
142 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
activities. Membership of groups as diverse as the pta, the Elks
club, the Red Cross, trade unions and bowling leagues has been
steadily declining by 25 per cent±50 per cent over the last thirty
years. Of all the possible causes suggested for this decrease in
civic activity, none is more signi®cant or banal than that of TV
watching which comes at the `expense of nearly every social
activity outside the home, especially social gatherings and
informal conversations'.11
In the UK, a similar diagnosis has been advanced by the
Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, though with greater emphasis
upon the decline of social capital within family life. In his Reith
Lectures, Sacks laments the decline of the family as an institu-
tion of moral formation. Marriage is a covenant in which the
partners bind themselves in mutual loyalty and trust. It provides
the basis for the upbringing of children to whom religious and
social traditions are handed down. The family is thus crucial to
our moral development and understanding. `It lies behind our
ideas of individual dignity and freedom, of social kinship and
concern, and our sense of continuity between the future and the
past.'12 Elsewhere, he argues that the family is the best means
we have discovered for the nurturing of successive generations.
Its in¯uence is deeper and more lasting than that of teachers,
schools, politicians, or the media. There are three functions of
the family that are vital to our subsequent progress as moral
agents. We learn about welfare through the care of dependants;
we discover education through the transmission of wisdom to
the next generation; and we encounter what he calls `ecology',
a concern with and investment in the future of the world
beyond our own lifetime. All this leads to a negative verdict on
contemporary trends. The temporary attachments and random
encounters which increasingly substitute for marriage are, he
claims, disastrous for the nurture of children.13
Underpinning Sacks' description is the philosophical claim
that a consumerist notion of the individual has now invaded
discourse about personal relationships. The grati®cation of the
individual's interests is the criterion by which marriage and the
family are to be evaluated. In the absence of such grati®cation,
divorce and desertion can be justi®ed. The rhetoric of the
 Communitarianism and its critics 143
market-place has now invaded the home, despite Adam Smith's
attempt to distinguish these on moral grounds. The funda-
mental defect, therefore, in the moral chaos of our private lives,
is a faulty understanding of what it is to be a person. The
person is not an individual with interests to be satis®ed. He or
she is a person whose identity and ful®lment are inextricably
bound up with relations and communities. Other people are
constitutive of rather than instrumental to my identity and well-
being as a person.
This pessimistic analysis of contemporary trends is sup-
ported by some medical and sociological evidence. Dennis and
Erdos claim that, whenever the data make assessment possible,
the lack of a father's commitment in each social class generally
disadvantages a child.14 They go on to point out that, even
where there is an extended family which provides support, this
reposes upon the practice of long-term marriage. Grannies
and grandpas, uncles and aunts, are likewise dependent upon
the same institution. `When marriage is weakened, the whole
network of kin is weakened, and the present generation of
one-parent families, where they are fortunate enough to be
able to depend on kinsfolk, are depending upon a wasting
asset.'15
These sociologists offer a similar philosophical analysis to
that of the Chief Rabbi. The threat comes from a rampant
individualism which permits the egregious injustice of men
fathering children for whom the state alone must make subse-
quent provision. A. H. Halsey, renowned for his work on ethical
socialism, argues that this may ironically be perceived as an
effect of Thatcherism, despite its incantation of traditional
family values.

[B]y an irony of history, while Mrs Thatcher forbore to extend the

ethic of individualism into domestic life, and tacitly accepted that the
family was the one institution that properly continued to embrace the
sacred as distinct from the contractual conception of kinship, those
who denounced her doctrines of market-controlled egoism with the
greatest vehemence were also those who most rigorously insisted on
modernizing marriage and parenthood along her individualistic and
contractual lines.16
144 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics

liberal rejoinders
It is possible to concede this analysis while also recognising that
there are other relevant considerations which need to be taken
into account. There is a danger of constructing the past as a
golden age from which present standards have declined. Com-
mentators have been swift to point to the oppressive conditions
under which families and communities existed in the past.
Evidence shows that couples were often locked into oppressive
and loveless relationships through economic necessity or the
threat of social disgrace.17 Hang-ups about sex abound in
English literature, and it is doubtful if the fear of detection,
infection, or conception did very much for the cause of sexual
ful®lment. The family, moreover, has been the locus for physical
violence and sexual abuse, the latter only coming to light in
recent times. Many commentators have noticed destructive
forces at work within traditional family life, and have argued
that there is no way back to the past. The economic unity of the
family in pre-industrial times has now been destroyed. The
members of a family have different employers, and go their own
separate ways in terms of education and work, if they are
fortunate to have such. MacIntyre has criticised Sacks for
paying insuf®cient attention to the workplace in his argument
for the regeneration of the family. Fu®lment in the home is
closely linked to ful®lment in the workplace. Where people are
threatened with unemployment or meaningless work for low
wages, the family will inevitably suffer as a consequence.18
Other critics of communitarianism have criticised its latent
oppressiveness. In his sociological study, Derek Philips con-
cludes that strong expressions of communitarian sentiment
have historically been accompanied by dislike, contempt, and
even hatred of outsiders. He cites the examples of the Puritan
settlement in early Boston, the German home-towns of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, classical Athens, and
Nazi Germany.19 Others argue that the pluralist culture of our
modern cities needs to be preserved to avoid the imposition of
the standards of one community upon all others. The voluntary
forms of association which characterise urban life are to be
 Communitarianism and its critics 145
cherished in the interests of a politics of difference. It is the rich
social differentiations of the city which facilitate new patterns of
relationship and promote fresh cultural experiences.20 These
can only be maintained where no single overriding conception
of the common good is imposed upon the entire community.
The impossibility of imposing upon a modern pluralist
society any one local conception of the common good provides
the impetus to recent defences of procedural ethics. One of the
most signi®cant is that found in the writings of JuÈrgen Ha-
bermas. Writing in a neo-Kantian vein, Habermas claims that
the very nature of moral communication logically requires a
commitment to certain procedures of speech and action. It is
these and these alone which form the fabric of morality.
Conceptions of the good can be debated ethically, but must be
undergirded with procedural rules of justice which apply by
virtue of the rational nature of moral agreement and disagree-
ment. All communicative action depends upon the intersubjec-
tive recognition of validity claims.21 When I make an assertion
about a state of affairs to another speaker, it is assumed that I
am making a sincere truth claim which can be supported by
reasons. In an analogous way, a claim or command to act
rightly depends upon the common observance of various
norms. The social currency of any norm depends upon its
acceptance as valid within the group to which it is addressed.
Habermas thus offers the Kantian formulation that a `moral
principle is so conceived as to exclude as invalid any norm that
could not meet with the quali®ed assent of all who are or might
be affected by it'.22 This establishes a principle of universalisa-
tion according to which all affected can accept the conse-
quences for the satisfaction of everyone's interests of a general
observance of a norm. Arising out of this logical condition of
practical discourse are social requirements concerning imparti-
ality, consensus, and compromise. Against the charge of pro-
moting an empty formalism, Habermas responds that he has
sought to provide a procedure for assessing those norms which
arise from particular forms of life and which constitute the stuff
of moral debate.23 These procedures of justice, however, are
more fundamental than notions of human goods whose discus-
146 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
sion they regulate. It is impossible under the conditions of
modernity to permit any substantive account of the good life to
dominate moral discourse. With the collapse of sacred canopies,
the world has become disenchanted. Pluralism is now an
inescapable feature of modern societies. The moral perspective
must continue to function as a means of impartial adjudication
between competing claims. Each should put himself or herself
in the place of the other in assessing the fairness of a proposed
norm.
While this procedural ethic has some appeal in a modern
pluralist polity, it suffers from serious defects which have been
exposed from the MacIntyrian perspective outlined in the
preceding chapter. There are two in particular. One is the
dif®culty of showing why the logical shape of moral discourse
creates an obligation on each citizen to respect the principle of
universalisability. Here the problem of the grounding of Kant's
categorical imperative re-emerges. Does a commitment to the
well-being of every citizen make sense except on the basis of
substantive convictions about the worth of each individual life?
Can this be replaced by considerations relating to mere rational
consistency? This leads to a second and related problem of
whether a substantive and thick notion of the human good must
underlie the procedural rules of justice. The sense of import-
ance that attaches to moral obligation does not seem to be
captured by considerations about the logical form of moral
judgments. What is good or valuable about these norms, or why
they should command assent seems altogether to be missing on
a purely procedural approach. Without some reference to those
goods which are to be valued above all others, the signi®cance
of morality cannot be articulated. Charles Taylor points to a
`strange pragmatic contradiction' in which procedural ethics is
caught.24 In order to prevent parochial oppression in the name
of one culture or tradition, the rules of justice are exalted over
conceptions of the good life. This move is itself based upon
ideals of freedom, altruism, and universalism, the `hypergoods'
of modern culture. Yet commitment to these very goods causes
the procedural ethicist to deny that the rules of justice are based
upon any substantive conception of what is good.
 Communitarianism and its critics 147
Some recent liberal theories have responded to this type of
attack by arguing that the real issue at stake is not that of
metaphysical individualism or rational consistency, but rather
state neutrality. In a society which is composed of different
moral communities and competing conceptions of the good life,
the state must adopt a relatively detached position which
permits citizens to make their own choices about which goods
to adopt. Within such a society, some moral consensus is
necessary. John Rawls has argued that his own theory of justice
is best understood as outlining principles of justice and equality
which can command consensus support in constitutional
democracies. In this respect, his proposal is political rather than
metaphysical. It remains open for anyone accepting his theory
to argue that the self can only attain its good through social
attachments and shared practices. Yet the variety of goods
sought within modern cosmopolitan societies requires that
citizens be granted the space within which they can pursue their
chosen projects. Rawls' advocacy of principles of equality and
distribution of wealth are an attempt to articulate what might
be acceded to by different moral doctrines. In this respect, it is
best viewed as a pragmatic consensual proposal rather than a
metaphysical theory.25 The neutrality of the state is, of course,
relative in practice to some notional moral consensus that
obtains within civil society. Rawls claims that a partially com-
prehensive consensus about values is suf®cient to establish
agreement about the priority of certain political values in a
pluralist society. These political values will express `the terms of
fair cooperation consistent with mutual respect between citizens
regarded as fair and equal'.26
Other liberal rejoinders to communitarianism have been
willing to concede that the self cannot be understood apart
from its social roles and attachments. Any ful®lled life is one in
which the self is committed to goods that are essentially social
in nature. According to Will Kymlicka, the point of liberalism is
to enable the self to articulate and to choose which social goods
it wishes to pursue. The self is not unencumbered, but it can
and should make choices about whether it wishes to stick with
the roles that have been assigned to it and the community in
148 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
which it has been reared. `We do indeed ®nd ourselves in
various roles and relationships, but we may not like what we
®nd. The roles and relationships may be oppressive or de-
meaning, they ``may be experienced as suffocating rather than
embracing''.'27 The liberal ideal is not the evasion of all social
roles but the protection of the space within which one can
endorse, revise, or even reject the commitments with which one
®nds oneself. The importance of communities is not neglected
here. In a sense it is af®rmed. Moreover, in an effort to provide
socially embedded persons with a worthwhile range of possible
attachments, one can argue for proper welfare provisions and
government subsidies for the arts, leisure, and sport.
Seyla Benhabib has provided a reading of Habermas' com-
municative ethics which recognises the legitimacy of commu-
nitarian criticisms. Over against the strong deontological thesis
of Habermas' ethics, she sets a weaker interpretation by which
his universalist and communicative model may be construed as
a moral strategy for dealing with the plurality of conceptions of
goodness we ®nd in our societies. Assent to this model of ethics
will doubtless rest upon varying substantive presuppositions.
We should not conceal the discrete attachments and ends that
constitute our moral selves, and which we bring to moral
discourse. These will be the basis upon which we commit
ourselves to procedures which are essential to the regulation of
modern society. On the other hand, communicative ethics
requires that we are willing re¯ectively to distance ourselves
from our social roles. The communitarians are correct to
recognise the ways in which traditions, communities, and
practices shape our identities. Yet this should not preclude an
ability to criticize, challenge, and question the content of these
identities and the practices they prescribe. Without the facility
of this re¯ective distance, which is a central liberal concern,
communitarians `are hard put to distinguish their emphasis
upon constitutive communities from an endorsement of social
conformism, authoritarianism, and, from the standpoint of
women, of patriarchalism'.28 The value of communicative
ethics does not depend upon its ability to provide a single,
integrated moral scheme. However, it may none the less max-
 Communitarianism and its critics 149
imise the participation in democratic processes of those who are
committed to more speci®c and provincial ends. Its ability to
make a participationist contribution to problems inherent in
modernity is judged to be the abiding value of Habermas'
ethical work.29

towards a convergence?
What we have here has been described as `the communitariani-
zation' of liberalism.30 Trends in recent political thought indi-
cate ways in which communitarian concerns are compatible
with liberal themes of state neutrality and individual choice.
When coupled with the residual liberalism of communitar-
ianism which we noted earlier, we have a case for a possible
convergence of what were taken to be mutually exclusive
positions. There are, of course, other forms of liberalism which
offer a more radical individualism, for example that found in
the writings of Robert Nozick. The salient point, however, is
simply that it is possible for liberal theorists to accommodate
within their thinking assumptions about the signi®cance of
social attachments and shared goods.
Much feminist literature should be located within this
context as mediating between forms of liberalism and commu-
nitarianism. It does not seek to deny the extent to which human
beings are shaped by their social roles and attachments. Nor
does it deny that it is within particular types of relationship that
shared goods are to be pursued. What it does stress, however, is
that many of the attachments and social models which we
inherit need to be subject to closer inspection, criticism, and
reform.31 One ®nds here a preference for fostering those com-
munities of voluntary association that are typically present in
the modern urban environment. Patriotism, family values, and
those communities of memory referred to in Bellah's Habits of
the Heart are viewed with suspicion. Yet social networks which
nurture and support those damaged by more traditional com-
munities are to be af®rmed and cultivated.32
The argument towards a convergence of liberal and commu-
nitarian themes can be reinforced by considering in more detail
150 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
certain advocacy issues. `The Responsive Communitarian Plat-
form: Rights and Responsibilities' was ®rst drafted by Amitai
Etzioni and after amendment was issued in 1991.33 It is the
charter of the new communitarian quarterly, The Responsive
Community: Rights and Responsibilities. The statement claims that
individual and social goods are correlative, and that individuals
cannot prosper except within a network of social environments.
Individual rights and social obligations similarly require corre-
lation. There are no rights which do not produce corresponding
obligations upon some person or agency. The communitarian
perspective is against neither rights nor individuals. It does,
however, demand that greater political attention be accorded
`the social side of human nature; the responsibilities that must
be borne by citizens, individually and collectively, in a regime of
rights; the fragile ecology of families and their supporting
communities; the ripple effects and long-term consequences of
present decisions'.34
Etzioni and his colleagues are clearly sensitive to two criti-
cisms levelled against communitarianism. Communitarianism
is not majoritarian. It does not suppress the identity and claims
of minority groups and cultures. The community must be
responsive to all its members, and not merely some majority
group. To do this it must develop moral values that are applied
equally to all members, and which are accessible and under-
standable to all. The expression of a need for a common
de®nition of justice upon which all citizens can draw has a
curiously Rawlsian ring to it.35 Secondly, it is denied that
communitarianism is anti-liberal. It is only by defending the
social units which preserve individuals rights and liberties that
anarchy and the subsequent threat of coercive government are
avoided. The overemphasis upon the interests and rights of
individuals in political and moral discourse is threatening to
destroy the communal structures without which these cannot be
met. The current danger in western democracies is not totali-
tarianism but anarchy. If we are to avoid further social dissolu-
tion and fascist calls for strong-armed leadership, we must
devote greater attention to the communitarian agenda. Com-
munitarianism is thus presented as an ally of liberalism against
 Communitarianism and its critics 151
state coercion. With respect to advocacy issues, it is again
governed by key liberal tenets.36
The policy goals outlined in the communitarian platform
include a reinforcing of the institution of the family as the
primary moral community. This is to be achieved through a
reform ± possibly a tightening ± of divorce laws, but also
through a recognition that fathers need to be more deeply
involved in the upbringing of their children. Educational insti-
tutions from kindergartens to universities are to be more
concerned with character formation and moral education. To
the question as to whose morals are to be taught in these
institutions the following answer is given.
We ought to teach those values Americans share, for example, that
the dignity of all persons ought to be respected, that tolerance is a
virtue and discrimination abhorrent, that peaceful resolution of con-
¯icts is superior to violence, that generally truth telling is morally
superior to lying, that democratic government is morally superior to
totalitarianism and authoritarianism, that one ought to give a day's
work for a day's pay, that saving for one's own and one's country's
future is better than squandering one's income and relying on others
to attend to one's future needs.37
Further social goals include national service, enabling citi-
zens to become better informed of public affairs, wider partici-
pation in voting and jury service, a reduction of the role of
private money in public life, stronger legislation on public safety
and health, and laws curbing gun ownership. One problem
with all this is that most of us will probably warm to some of the
programme but not to all of it. Gun control, the regulation of
the funding of political parties, and public health measures
might command broad support within some sectors of society.
Many of us, however, might be less sure about the desirability of
national service and the tightening of divorce laws. It is argu-
able, particularly in modern liberal societies, that people will
select from the communitarian programme whatever appeals to
them personally. Whatever convergence there is between lib-
erals and communitarians at the philosophical level, debates
will continue about the likely effects on human well-being of
particular communitarian proposals. One could acknowledge
152 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
this, however, while also recognising that the shift of attention
to social goods and civic responsibilities is a welcome corrective
in political debate.
Ironically, it is on account of this apparent convergence
between liberalism and communitarianism that several writers
have become wary of adopting the label `communitarian'. Here
some signi®cant theological issues arise. MacIntyre, despite
being frequently identi®ed with it, has wasted no opportunity to
distance himself from the communitarian movement. His
fundamental objection is that the modern nation state cannot
sustain the common good. By virtue of its presumed neutrality
and its attempt to mediate between irreconcilables, the state
lacks the moral commitment and resources to facilitate the
common good.
The modern nation-state, in whatever guise, is a dangerous and
unmanageable institution, presenting itself on the one hand as a
bureaucratic supplier of goods and services, which is always about to,
but never actually does, give its clients value for money, and on the
other as a repository of sacred values, which from time to time invite
one to lay down one's life on its behalf . . . it is like being asked to die
for the telephone company.38
To pretend that the nation state can deliver is to court fascism.
On the other hand, to encourage a polity in which smaller
voluntary associations can pursue their own goods is to lose any
commitment to a common good. MacIntyre's endgame is a
society in which the variety of goods that are sought are
integrated into the life of the whole. These should then be
celebrated in ceremonial fashion.39
While closely associated with the communitarian movement,
Robert Bellah has expressed reservations about the value of
merely reviving small-scale local communities.40 The danger
inherent in this strategy is that it leaves unchecked the wider
structures of political and economic power. It is not suf®cient to
engage in rhetoric urging men to be faithful to their wives and
to support their children. Nor is it enough to encourage people
to leave their TV sets more often to form face-to-face groups
within their local communities. The economic and political
pressures on family life need to be addressed. We need to
 Communitarianism and its critics 153
recognise that voluntary activity in the community is generally
correlated with income, education, and occupation. Many local
forms of associations are designed merely to enhance the
quality of life of more af¯uent sectors of society. Yet many of the
forces that undermine community life at every level derive from
neo-capitalism. The pressures of a global market economy, for
example, are producing a `deracinated elite' which has seceded
from society `into guarded, gated residential enclaves and ultra-
modern of®ces, research centers, and universities'.41 In its
wake, there is an increasingly anxious middle class concerned
about its future job security and an impoverished underclass in
inner-city areas that have been evacuated by the better-off.
Only if these forces can be tempered by strong government
intervention and the in¯uence of other social factors can the
deleterious effects of individualism be overcome.42 Communi-
tarianism, therefore, cannot be the panacea for our social ills if
it remains at the level of individual moral exhortation and
enthusiasm for small-scale forms of voluntary association.
Stanley Hauerwas likewise has similar dif®culties with recent
communitarianism. Where the church seeks to be a part of a
moral consensus, it imperils the distinctiveness of its own
witness. Where Christians assume that they inhabit common
ground with other groups in a civil society, they risk compro-
mise. Here one can detect several misgivings. Appeals to shared
moral values which are a part of the communitarian platform
mask genuine con¯icts about which goods are to be sought and
on what basis.43 They do not provide us with the resources to
deal with issues in medical ethics, warfare, and the distribution
of wealth. Where the church is lured into becoming part of a
pragmatic moral consensus it may already have disowned its
inheritance. This is said not in the interest of withdrawal from
secular life, but in the interests of making a more distinctive
contribution. The church is called upon to expose the tribal
prejudices and distortions of American culture. It can do so only
by refraining from the easy option of collaborating in a comfor-
table consensus.44 Calls for a religious contribution to the civic
life of the nation are more likely to lead to the subordination of
Christian imperatives to a violent nationalism.45
154 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
A further theological dif®culty which can be identi®ed in
communitarian proposals concerns the reinvigoration of
groups of people with a common moral purpose. It is not
suf®cient merely to point to the harmful social effects of a
rampant individualism. Unless there are other options capable
of sustaining and commanding the allegiance of communities,
there is little alternative but to acquiesce in some of these
individualist trends. The church will not be revitalised by the
observation that civil religion has a socially cohesive role to
exercise. Nor will its polity be maintained simply because it is
morally ef®cacious in organising the lives of its adherents. Its
reinvigoration is dependent upon persons becoming convinced
that it points to `the way, the truth and the life'. Without the
presence of such convictions manifest in thought and action,
there can be no maintaining or renewing of the church. In a
similar connection, Taylor makes the point that Bellah's com-
munitarianism elides distinct issues of social ef®cacy and
meaning.46 The loss of meaning in our culture is a discrete
problem and one that is not solved by demonstrating the
functional value of religion. For the church, this is a theological
matter which cannot be solved by a nostalgic recollection of the
historic role of religion in shaping our society. The sociological
thesis of Bellah thus needs to be matched philosophically and
theologically by something akin to MacIntyre's rehabilitation
of Thomist Christianity.
This last point can be illustrated by further consideration of
Rawls' advocacy of a partially comprehensive consensus about
political values. He claims that this is suf®cient to establish the
primacy of political values concerning fairness, tolerance, and
practical reasonableness. Yet the commitment that we have to
these political values will tend to repose upon some conception
of the human good. Their sustenance will tend to depend upon
our ability to provide some description of the goals of human
life from which a commitment to fairness etc. derives.47 This
reveals the need for some substantive conception of the good
which can command our intellectual and practical allegiance.
In the absence of some vision of the common good which
mobilises persons, the commitment to the politics of fairness is
 Communitarianism and its critics 155
hard to sustain. There may be non-theological ways of articu-
lating such a vision, but a religion which presents human life as
a gift held in trust, as having a purpose conferred upon it, and
as capable by grace of achieving a measure of goodness is likely
to have an important social role to exercise.

the incipient liberalism in theology

One might agree that the temptation to make an easy alliance
with liberal society is all too apparent. This is exposed in the
South African Kairos document's description of `church theol-
ogy' and its espousal of neutrality. `Neutrality enables the status
quo of oppression (and therefore violence) to continue. It is a
way of giving tacit support to the oppressor, a support for brutal
violence.'48 There are times when a position of neutrality
between competing ideological forces is inadmissible. One
should not underestimate the ease with which one can collude
with a liberal polity from a position of privilege. The security
one can ®nd in academic pursuits may be more fragile and
questionable than is often realised. The words of John Courtney
Murray remain cautionary. `It is a Christian theological intui-
tion, con®rmed by all of historical experience, that man lives
both his personal and his social life always more or less close to
the brink of barbarism, threatened not only by the disintegra-
tions of physical illness and by the disorganizations of mental
imbalance, but also by the decadence of moral corruption and
the political chaos of formlessness or the moral chaos of
tyranny.'49
Yet, currently, there are secular ideals which cannot be
gainsaid. Although the commitment to freedom, human
dignity, universal justice, and universal benevolence may often
be observed in the breach, these cannot be dismissed. They
have contributed to the spread of democracy and to greater
equality between sexes, races, and social classes. They have
helped to bring about the abolition of slavery, universal adult
suffrage, comprehensive education, and systems of social se-
curity. While we need to hear about the ways in which our
societies distort and manipulate these standards, and how we
156 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
are often myopic in our perception of their application, we
cannot dismiss them merely as relative or as having ulterior
motivation. As Taylor remarks in his impressive defence of
these moral imperatives, `it is too easy just to make the
intellectual gesture of wiping this aside as a bit of prideful
illusion'.50 The need for an ecclesial recognition of secular
norms is expressed in the following remarks of Eberhard JuÈngel.
[T]he church may be thankful that its spiritual goods now exist in
secular form. For example, the secular respect for freedom of con-
science, the secular assertion of the inviolability of the dignity of the
person, the secular commitment to protect handicapped human life,
universal schooling and many other achievements of the modern
constitutional state are secularised church treasures, and not least of
the Protestant Church ± treasures which were often recognised in
their full signi®cance only when they had been secularised.51
The stake that the church has in liberal societies can be
shown by reference to the necessary distinction yet co-ordina-
tion of church and civil society. There are at least three
arguments for maintaining both a differentiated yet positive
relationship between the common good that is sought by the
Christian community and those principles on which civil orga-
nisation is founded. Each of these recalls arguments that have
been advanced in the history of theology to correlate the
provinces of church and state. First, the church is a community
to which one belongs not by social coercion but by one's free
consent. This applies even where the practice of infant baptism
is acknowledged. The baptised belong to the body of Christ, yet
they are not held there against their wills. Their freedom may
be constrained by the action of the Holy Spirit, yet it ought not
to be restricted by any civil polity. There ought to be no
compulsion either for or against belonging to the community of
the church. This creates a theological obligation upon the state
to recognise and maintain the space within which the individual
can confess the Christian faith by belonging to the church. One
can ®nd historical support for this position. For Luther and
Calvin, despite their differences, the church and the state are
generally to be distinguished both by the scope of their jurisdic-
tion and by the methods they employ to exercise their respective
 Communitarianism and its critics 157
functions. Yet the church and the state are to be perceived in
relation to one another as under the rule and serving the good
purposes of God.52 Oliver O'Donovan has written recently of
the `social space' required by the mission of the church. Secular
authority is authorised by the Word of God to provide and
ensure that space.53
Second, there is embedded within this distinction between
church and state a theological recognition of the individual's
entitlement to an area of moral and social freedom. The state
should not coerce the dissident to membership of a particular
religious polity, nor, by the same token, should it prevent the
dissident from exercising choice. This stress upon the integrity
of the individual can be seen in Old Testament injunctions to
respect the stranger in one's midst. In the teaching and ministry
of Jesus, the solitary individual is an object of God's grace. As
such, she or he is worthy of respect irrespective of religious
status or group af®liation.54
It might be countered that the purpose of God's grace in the
ministry and parables of Jesus is to include the marginalised
individual within a community. Similarly, there is to be a place
accorded the stranger in the house of Israel. In this respect,
these biblical themes cannot be construed as support for a
political theory which establishes the rights of the individual as
logically prior to the existence and well-being of a community.
It is precisely against such false prioritising that communitarians
inveigh. The individual must ®nally be understood in terms of
his or her having an appointed place in the kingdom of God.
The community under the rule of God is thus the goal of each
individual life. The relationships in which it exists both to God
and others are essential to its theological identity. This response
raises a possible theological objection to liberal individualism
and, indeed, also to any easy embrace of a radical pluralism.
The concept of the kingdom of God situates each individual
within a speci®c polity. In so far as this is a polity under the
divine sovereignty, it is religiously particular. The rule of God,
moreover, is closely linked in the New Testament to the lordship
of Christ which will be universally acknowledged at the end of
the world (Phil. 2:9±11; Rev. 5:13).
158 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
This rejoinder, however, provides a third argument for a
theological accommodation of liberal ideals. The kingdom of
God is ultimately an eschatological reality not to be confused
with any penultimate political state. The church may bear
witness to the kingdom through its own polity, but it is not to be
identi®ed with it. The church is a penultimate reality to be
distinguished from the heavenly polis of Revelation 22. In the
meantime, we must reckon with human weakness and failing
within the world and the church. As Courteny Murray argues
on the basis of the American experience, neither the privilege of
theocratic power nor persecution are to be actively sought. The
state must position itself between these two damaging options in
relation to the church.55 Attempts to bring about the common
good are inevitably obstructed and corrupted by the particular
interests of individuals and groups. In this situation, the state
has the ameliorative role of protecting its citizens from abuses.
Here again, there is a theological rationale for the protection of
individuals against forces which infringe their legitimate
freedom. The conclusions of a theological re¯ection upon the
relationship between church and state may thus resonate with
secular claims about the dignity of the person and the rights of
each individual.56
The foregoing considerations do not imply that standard
liberal theories can simply be annexed by Christian theology.
We have here another instance of common ground without
common theory. The assumptions on which ideals of individual
freedom and equality are founded do not re¯ect, in this case, a
commitment to any doctrine of the unencumbered self, or a
procedural ethic such as that found in Habermas. They are
instead essential elements of a theology which must distinguish
yet correlate the provinces of the church and the state.57 Their
articulation may, none the less, differ in some respects from the
description of freedom and equality of liberal individualism. For
example, the importance of participation in the economic and
social life of the community may be a more signi®cant feature
of the rights of each person for a philosophy or theology which
stresses the importance of community for the moral formation
and ful®lment of the self.58 Thus a theological rationale for
 Communitarianism and its critics 159
liberalism yields a conception of the civil state which is not
wholly equivalent with classical liberal individualism. The
degree of commensurability should not be overstated.
For the church to function as a community which bears
witness to the kingdom of God within a wider civil polity, some
doctrine of the state is necessary. The church demands from
the civil community space within which to practice. In this
respect, it seeks something like a social consensus concerning
religious toleration and freedom. It requires tolerance not
because religious convictions do not matter or are merely
matters of private taste, but because the church seeks a polity
which will respect the conditions under which it can worship
and witness. While the church may survive impressively under
oppressive regimes, this is none the less the condition that it
seeks for its own well-being. Thus, even the Reformers ± some-
times accused of theocratic tendencies ± could argue that the
state was ordained by God for the maintenance of peace and
order within its geographical bounds but that its function and
jurisdiction were distinct from that of the church. This provides
a situation in which the church can support and af®rm the
value of the state and civil society, although this support is
always critical and provisional. This attitude of critical support
is doubtless perpetually in danger of lapsing into either assim-
ilation or separatism. However, there is little alternative for
Christians but to attempt to live accordingly. With the greater
moral and religious diversity of our societies, the arguments for
relative state neutrality apply a fortiori. For the time being at
least, there must be compromise, consensus, and the kind of
pragmatic moral bricolage that Jeffrey Stout describes. This
may rightly make us uneasy, but the alternatives appear too
bad to contemplate. The civil polities that most of us live under
require both our criticism and quali®ed support.59 Unless
something better is on offer, anarchy is not an option. For all
that he is accused of sectarianism, ®deism, and imperialism
Karl Barth still has something to say in this regard. In his co-
ordination of church and state, he claims that neither an
absolute heterogeneity nor an absolute equating of state and
church is possible.
160 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
The only possibility that remains ± and it suggests itself compellingly
± is to regard the existence of the state as a parable, as a correspon-
dence and an analogue to the Kingdom of God which the church
preaches and believes in. Since the state forms the outer circle, within
which the church, with the mystery of its faith and gospel, is the inner
circle, since it shares a common center with the church, it is inevitable
that, although its presuppositions and its tasks are its own and
different, it is nevertheless capable of re¯ecting indirectly the truth
and reality which constitute the Christian community.60
If we are tempted to discern here an outmoded and complacent
European ideal of a Christian society, we should remember that
this was written shortly after the time of the German church
struggle. The state may not command our absolute allegiance,
yet we do not have the right to withhold support from every
civil government. Despite the impressive gains of MacIntyre's
tradition-centred rationality, the criticisms of communitarian
thinkers, and Hauerwas' suspicion of a sell-out, the church has
a more positive stake in the articulation of a social consensus
and the defence of state neutrality than is conceded. Some
theological sense needs to be made of our social institutions
prior to the eschaton, and those within the church who ®nd
themselves involved in communities other than the Christian
one may need greater encouragement than that found in whole-
sale denunciations of liberalism.
 chapter seven

Conclusion

The preceding discussion has attempted to review some of the

leading disputes on the interface between theology and moral
philosophy. It has been preoccupied with the role of community
in moral formation and the defence of moral realism. These
coexist in some tension. The stress on the formative role of
community may suggest a commitment to relativism in which
virtues are embedded in the particular practices, traditions, and
forms of life espoused across time by one group of people.
There is no possibility here of appeal to a standard which
transcends the particularities of one moral tribe. Thus there is
no independent criterion by which one may be judged more
true or false than another. By contrast, moral realists, drawing
on analogies from sense perception, typically present moral
perception in terms as universal and constant as our knowledge
of medium-sized physical objects. Moral knowledge, according
to Kantians, utilitarians, and intuitionists, is available to any
sincere and rational agent irrespective of context. Realism thus
appears at odds with a communitarian emphasis upon the
formative role of a speci®c moral society.
Arguments for moral realism tend to claim that the phe-
nomena of moral (dis)agreement, argument, conversion, and
evaluation together with the measure of moral consensus found
in pluralist societies presuppose that notions of objectivity and
truth ineluctably apply in ethical discourse. This ontological
realism about moral truth can, however, be combined with an
epistemology which stresses the signi®cance of tradition, com-
munity, and practice for moral perception. Moral truth,
although not created by a tradition, is knowable only in terms
161
162 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
of the language, virtues, practices, and beliefs of a tradition.
This position need not collapse into perspectivism where tradi-
tions are seen as mobile, partially commensurate, in conversa-
tion with one another, and capable of attaining a degree of
consensus with other positions.
I have argued for a neo-Barthianism in which the Christian
life has a distinctive ethos on account of its understanding of
human action as determined by the prior, ongoing, and future
action of the triune God. This establishes a strong notion of
Christian distinctiveness and gives high priority to the polis of
the church which bears witness by the Spirit in manifold ways
to the action of God. At the same time, since distinctiveness is
derived from God primarily and acknowledged by the church
secondarily, there is an open possibility of human action outside
the church also being determined by God. This meshes with
philosophical arguments for moral realism and theological
recognition of values shared in part with liberalism. It is a
theological attempt to make sense of Walzer's notion that
different thick moralities may share thin precepts, there being
common moral ground in the absence of common moral
theory.
It is, of course, possible for a tough-minded theologian to
maintain this ontological realism with a more radical form of
epistemological relativism, and thus to eschew the strategy of
identifying common moral ground. In MacIntyrean terms, one
might construe this position by claiming that the genealogist
rather than the Aristotelian is the most appropriate philosophi-
cal partner for theology. This position strikes me as implausible
for a range of reasons. It ignores the extent to which any moral
community must be governed by some precepts concerning the
telling of truth and the keeping of promises. More speci®cally, it
cannot make much sense of the type of moral consensus that
Stout identi®es as platitudinous in liberal societies.1 Further-
more, it ignores the typical claim of the Christian tradition that
God does not abandon the creation to the consequences of its
worst excesses but is present, active, and faithful to creatures
beyond the domain of the church. Without some such claim, it
becomes dif®cult to understand how or why common cause
 Conclusion 163
might be made with other forces, agencies, and communities. It
is hard to see also how, if the arguments of the genealogists are
accepted as valid, the terms used in Christian moral discourse
can suddenly become exempt from deconstruction.2
In maintaining the criticisms levelled against post-
Enlightenment moral philosophy, I have sought to defend the
signi®cance of the ecclesial community in theological ethics, yet
without jettisoning realism. This works in several ways. The
Kantian claim that there are moral principles perspicuous to all
rational persons irrespective of particular ends, desires, or
practices can be called into question in different respects. Are
these principles not more likely to seem perspicuous to someone
schooled in a particular tradition such as Lutheranism?3 The
stress upon the constitutive principle of respect for persons
assumes substantive convictions about the sanctity of human
life. These are dif®cult to make sense of except in theistic terms.
The detachment of moral principles from all hypothetical
imperatives is also problematic. Can an understanding of what
is right be so ®rmly divorced from our understanding of what is
good, of how human nature can be ful®lled, of the sorts of
people we should become, and of the goals of human life? The
formal and thin moralities which modernity has spawned can
neither be made sense of nor command our allegiance in the
absence of many of these background assumptions. Without
attention to the thicker language of virtue, narrative, commun-
ity, and tradition the categorical imperative lacks both form and
content.
As a protest against the inherent dif®culties of post-
Enlightenment thought, the arguments of MacIntyre,
Hauerwas et al. are well made. The setting of moral theory in
historical context has brought much of the discussion into
sharper relief, and has given a more adequate account of the
actual processes by which moral formation takes place. Beyond
this, their work has enabled Christian ethics to af®rm the
distinctiveness of ecclesial convictions about the purposes of
life, human nature, society, and the centrality of the story of the
life, passion, and resurrection of Christ. This recovery of
distinctiveness meshes with claims found in Lindbeck's post-
164 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
liberal model of religion which asserts the formative signi®cance
of biblical narratives in relation to communal speech, action,
and experience. It is part of the attraction of this approach that
it enables greater Christian authenticity in more secular and
pluralist societies. The social witness of the church is here more
closely tied to its worship, fellowship, and theology than in
other paradigms.
Yet the commitment to realism remains central to most
writers who emphasise the formative role of community. A
central claim of Hauerwas is that it is not community in general
which is morally signi®cant, but the church in particular which
bears witness to the being and action of God as these give a
particular shape to Christian character. This view is held
together, albeit in some tension, with claims that there is
genuine moral perception outwith the church. The church,
moreover, may have much to learn about its own distinctive
themes from such extra-ecclesial insight. When coupled with
MacIntyre's insistence upon the development of traditions in
conversation and disagreement with one another, the position
becomes more ¯uid. A measure of translation and commensur-
ability is required for conversation to take place across tradi-
tions. In MacIntyre's more recent writings, this is supplemented
by a commitment to a version of natural law theory. According
to this, any moral pursuit requires the observance of some
minimal rules requiring truthfulness and justice from all partici-
pants. Although this is insuf®cient for the moral foundations of
a pluralist society, it none the less implies a universal commit-
ment to the basic norms of practical reason.
In emphasising the possibilities of genuine moral perception
outwith the church and conversation across moral traditions, I
have sought to articulate the incipient liberalism in much of this
literature. Values of tolerance, respect, equality, and freedom
are part of the Christian moral tradition and can be given
theological legitimation. There is a sense, therefore, in which
the church has a stake in the maintenance of the pluralist
societies to which liberals are so committed. Attention to the
signi®cance of relative state neutrality as the background to
Enlightenment epistemological projects in moral theory should
 Conclusion 165
remind us of the importance of ensuring that disagreements are
conducted with civility.4
There is an important theological task facing any attempt to
square this incipient liberalism with an ecclesial ethic which
claims that moral standards are embedded within particular
convictions, narratives, and forms of life. In the past, concepts
of natural law, the orders of creation, and common grace were
employed by Catholic and Protestant theologians to explain the
common moral ground between Christian and non-Christian.
Moral perception and action, although clouded by sin and
error, were possible outside the province of the church. A range
of moral precepts, perhaps those contained in the Decalogue,
were available to all rational persons who could thus be held
accountable for their actions. These precepts provided a basis
upon which the civil state could legitimately rule, where neces-
sary through the exercise of force.
Yet the arguments that have been rehearsed against liberal
projects to establish the validity of moral principles indepen-
dently of any particular tradition will tend also to destroy the
more substantive and free-standing formulations of natural law
theory or the doctrine of the orders of creation. The way in
which moral claims are situated within the context of theories
of human nature, forms of life, and con®gurations of the virtues
tells against ecclesial attempts to maintain a realm of moral life
which is independent of substantive theological convictions.
One resolution of this problem is to provide a theological
rationale for Michael Walzer's distinction between thick and
thin moralities. According to this, each thick morality with its
substantive claims also tends to yield a thin morality which it
judges to be required of all rational persons irrespective of
whether they are committed to this particular thick account. It
is not possible to articulate the contents of this thin morality
except in the most general of terms, yet we can ®nd global
examples of different thick moralities converging upon thin
considerations. Walzer uses this distinction to explain why it is
possible for persons of different moral outlooks to rejoice
collectively over the destruction of the Iron Curtain in Eastern
Europe or the abolition of apartheid in South Africa. The
166 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
measure of moral agreement is limited but is none the less
signi®cant. Even allowing for elements of sentiment, detach-
ment, and hypocrisy in our reaction to international events, one
can discern some common moral elements in widespread
international reaction to contemporary events. Walzer argues
that, although every minimal morality is grounded and leads
inevitably to a thicker and more local morality, we can desig-
nate its likely content.
There is no neutral (unexpressive) moral language. Still, we can pick
out from among our values and commitments those that make it
possible for us to march vicariously with the people in Prague. We can
make a list of similar occasions (at home, too) and catalogue our
responses and try to ®gure out what the occasions and the responses
have in common. Perhaps the end product of this effort will be a set of
standards to which all societies can be held ± negative injunctions,
most likely, rules against murder, deceit, torture, oppression, and
tyranny.5
Walzer's distinction suggests a way in which there can be
common moral ground without common moral theory. Each
particular theory has its own account of why there is common
ground and where it is to be located. What is needed in
Christian theology, therefore, is a theological explanation of
why there might be common ground in the absence of common
theory. This explanation will itself be context-dependent. None
the less, from within one tradition it will seek to account for a
measure of moral agreement across traditions. While there may
be no free-standing natural theology governed by presupposi-
tions to which all rational inquirers can in principle give their
assent, it remains possible to offer a theology of nature which
explains why moral perception and agreement can be found
across traditions, cultures, and communities.
Drawing upon the ethics of Barth, I suggested earlier that
one might seek to provide theological explanation for moral
discernment outside the circle of faith in terms of all three
articles. The character of the world as created and redeemed by
God in Jesus Christ, as the arena for the action of the Holy
Spirit, and as moving towards an eschatological identity already
revealed, provides a basis for explaining moral activity every-
 Conclusion 167
where. What we have here is a critical standard ± Jesus Christ
as attested in Scripture ± by which all such activity is measured.
This may include a partial criticism of all ecclesial activity and
selected af®rmation of much non-ecclesial activity, yet without
implying a moral theory which is independent of, and undeter-
mined, by positive theological claims. A theology which empha-
sises the action of the triune God in creation, history, and the
eschaton can seek to understand moral perception and practice
critically yet positively. By appeal to how we are made, what
God has done for us, and the destiny that awaits us we can
measure extra-ecclesial activity by the standards of Christ. This
might be viewed as a theological expression of the commitment
to ontological realism and epistemological contextualism that
was earlier outlined. By emphasising the universal signi®cance
of God's action in Christ from which the polity of the church
derives, ecclesial isolationism may be avoided.
There are two broad issues which emerge from this discus-
sion which must at least be registered. Although fuller discus-
sion is impossible, several comments may be ventured. One
unavoidable problem is the legitimacy of the language of
human rights. In MacIntyre's philosophy, human rights dis-
course is too closely bound up with the inadequate claims of
liberalism to be of much use as a common moral language in a
pluralist society. It lacks grounding in any theory of the good,
and is incapable of resolving signi®cant moral disagreements.
As it becomes increasingly debased, it functions as a means of
asserting the interests of particular groups of individuals. The
proliferation of rights language con®rms this. A similar critique
is made from a theological perspective by Joan Lockwood
O'Donovan.6 In patristic and medieval traditions, she argues,
one ®nds the notion of right located in God's establishing of a
natural and moral order. Deriving from this order are notions
of the common good, political authority, justice, and obliga-
tions. By contrast, in the more recent tradition stemming from
late-medieval nominalism, God establishes discrete rights
which are possessed primarily by individuals and only deriva-
tively by communities. With the gradual divorce of rights
language from these theological roots, there emerged the notion
168 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
of the individual subject possessing rights over body and prop-
erty, and with the right to exercise his or her freedom except
where there is clear justi®cation for its curtailment. In contrac-
tualist theories of rights, as opposed to theories of natural rights,
the role of civil government is understood only in terms of
supplying those services and commodities for which contracting
citizens have taken on social obligations. Elsewhere the sover-
eignty of market forces is permitted. O'Donovan counsels
against any facile theological appropriation of this mode of
discourse through glib appeals to innate human dignity or
human life as created in the image of God. The modern
rhetoric of human rights is too closely thirled to a philosophy of
liberal individualism to be of much use to Christian theology.
We should have the courage to abandon it, and to attempt to
rehabilitate an older discourse about the divine order, the
covenant, the nature of community, the common good, and
principles of justice and charity apprehended through God's
law.
This criticism of rights language coheres with the earlier
criticism of liberalism, and yet it is not clear that the concept of
human rights is necessarily tethered to the assumptions of
liberal individualism. One might attempt to appropriate rights
language while stressing its limitations and the need to root it in
some substantial moral theory. There are good reasons for
doing this. The language of human rights is the only plausible
candidate for a global moral language. It is the fundamental
concept in the United Nations Declaration (1948); it is used by
international courts such as the European Court for Human
Rights; and it is increasingly a language employed in interfaith
dialogue. To abandon it because of its inadequacies is to make
the perfect the enemy of the good. The language of rights has
an important function in articulating a moral consensus against
some of the most ¯agrant abuses in our time. The work of
Amnesty International illustrates this. It uses a vocabulary of
human rights to advocate the cause of (non-violent) political
prisoners, to repudiate torture, and to oppose detention without
a fair trial. It draws support from a wide cross-section of
populations, many of whom would use different thick discourses
 Conclusion 169
and many of whom would have dif®culty articulating in any
way the reason for their commitment to the principles of
Amnesty.7 If it is possible to recognise common moral ground in
the absence of common moral theory, it ought to be possible for
Christian theology to appropriate for speci®c tasks the language
of human rights.
A commitment to human rights can be articulated in terms
of the minimum conditions necessary for membership of a
moral community. Here one can derive a notion of rights that
are owed to persons on the basis of a substantive notion of the
common good. If the goods required by persons are irreducibly
social, human well-being requires as its necessary condition full
participation in a community. Rights language can specify some
of the general demands of social justice in this context.8 The
minima for full membership of a community in which one's
personal good is realised include the right not to be tortured or
murdered, the right to a fair trial, to freedom of speech, to a
share in the material prosperity of one's society, and partici-
pation in its economic life. These rights, derived from the
notion of membership of a community, include both negative
immunities and positive empowerments. Despite MacIntyre's
hostility to rights discourse, this construal is consonant with his
recent description of what is involved in natural law theory. The
natural law concerns those fundamental rules which must
govern any genuine moral community. Only therein can human
well-being be achieved. The notion of `rights' might be utilised
in this context to specify what it is that citizens owe to one
another by virtue of belonging to the same community. This,
however, does not signal a return to a free-standing natural law
theory since its assumptions are based upon convictions about
the nature and ends of the human person in relation to social
goods.
A second issue which lurks behind the discussion of much of
this book concerns the relationship of church to civil society.
Recent ecclesial ethics is in danger of silencing the voice of the
church in public debate. This is one of its paradoxes given its
insistence on the church speaking with a distinctive voice. If
Christian action only makes sense on the basis of commitment
170 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
to a particular community with its shared practices and narra-
tives, it is hard to see on what basis any moral appeal can be
made to those who choose not to belong to that community.
The church's social teaching here makes sense only where the
members of a society are collectively committed to the establish-
ment of one religion. Prior to such commitment, social witness
is meaningless except in the forms of proclamation and evangel-
ism. These, of course, are central tasks of the church, but is
there not also a further calling to contribute to public debate in
such a way as to in¯uence its outcomes even where there is no
collective conversion to the Christian faith? Is there not a
prophetic witness which presupposes the ability of those
outwith the faith to hear and to be in¯uenced by the voice of
the church?9 The making of common cause on a range of issues
works on the assumption that there is a more widespread moral
recognition which can be con®rmed and supported.
Where society requires the practice of civic virtue on the part
of its members, it remains likely that religion will continue to
play a role in the formation of citizens and the meaning of such
civic virtue. Here it is beset by the dangers of capitulation to
nationalist sentiment or domestication by political strategies.
For these reasons, as well as to prevent exclusion of those
belonging to other or no faiths, too close an alignment of
church and civil society needs to be avoided. On the other
hand, the total abandonment of the historic roles of shaping,
promoting, and advocating the common good within society is
unlikely to be of bene®t to either the church or the civil
community. The former will fail in the task of serving the world,
not least through failing to equip and inspire its members to
lead decent lives within the secular world. The latter will be
denuded of the social capital that arises from a religious
community which is concerned with the well-being of its host
society and advocates its moral improvement.
There is clearly an uneasy and ambivalent relationship
between church and state both in contemporary Britain and the
USA. Although the interpretation of the First Amendment is
often judged to have created a rigid wall of separation between
church and state, the matter is both historically and practically
 Conclusion 171
more complex. The original intention behind the First Amend-
ment was not so much a divorce of religion from the organisa-
tion of the civil state, as a refusal to allow any single confession
an established status. Appealing to freedom of conscience,
Madison insisted that the State should not in any way seek to
coerce or in¯uence the religious af®liation of its citizens. Yet
Christianity remained the majority religion and consequently
shaped the civic culture of the nation. As Thiemann points out,
`while Madison and others address the question of the legal
establishment of Christianity, they neglected to ponder fully the
consequence of Christianity's cultural establishment as the ma-
jority religion of the republic'.10 Accordingly, there are signi®-
cant signs of a Christian dimension to civic life. The
Declaration of Independence uses theistic (perhaps deistic)
language; cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollar bills assert
that it is `in God we trust'; chaplains are appointed to Congress;
presidents make annual thanksgiving proclamations. Mean-
while, the political rhetoric of American culture has in times of
crisis regularly employed the symbolism of divine providence.
What we have is a curiously ambivalent scenario in which the
constitution prevents any formal mixing of religion and civil
law, while fragments of popular religious culture maintain the
historical role that Christian belief and practice have in shaping
the American identity. These tensions have increased with the
expanding pluralism of American society and concerted at-
tempts in schools and elsewhere to eliminate any sense of the
Christian religion as culturally normative. In light of this deep
ambivalence, Taylor suggests that it is dif®cult to envisage
either total separation or much greater integration in the
foreseeable future.
[I]n a political system founded on common values, which had more-
over their earlier canonical expression in religious terms, it is very
hard just to take the road of privatization and declare religion
altogether outside the public domain. If it should come to a Kultur-
kampf, it is clear that neither side could win. Nor would either side
unequivocally deserve to.11
In Britain, the historical situation is strikingly different yet it
yields a contemporary situation that is at least as ambivalent.
172 Community, liberalism and Christian ethics
Britain has established churches north and south of the Scottish
border. These are Presbyterian and Episcopalian respectively.
Although they are established in different ways ± a point some-
times missed by English political commentators ± they function
as national churches in terms of their territorial ministries,
mission, and witness. On the other hand, there are probably
more Roman Catholics, than Anglicans and Scottish Presbyter-
ians combined, worshipping on any one Sunday in the UK.
Declining levels of commitment to the established churches,
coupled with the rise in the number of adherents to other
religions (most notably Islam) deepens the complexity of this
situation. There is increasing pluralism, yet a strong Christian
input to most civic ceremonial events. The comments of
bishops and other church leaders are reported by the media
often with approval. Arguments for universal health care and
the conserving of the nhs may be based on particular theo-
logical assumptions, but these are likely to resonate with the
fragments and theories of other moral perspectives.12 Services
of worship not only mark royal weddings13 and other celebra-
tions, but also provide the focal point for national mourning
following the tragedies at Hillsborough, Lockerbie, and Dun-
blane, and the death of the Princess of Wales.14 To fan the
embers of a dying Christian culture may seem a poor strategy
for ecclesial revitalisation in the coming century. Yet the fore-
seeable future seems to offer our churches an enigmatic social
situation which is neither establishment nor marginalisation,
and which is beset with promise and danger in almost equal
measure.
The strangeness of this scenario is consonant with the argu-
ment of this book which has sought to defend many of the
criticisms and insights of theological communitarianism, while
yet maintaining a commitment to a residual liberalism. The
practical orientation that this prescribes is one whereby the
church should seek to maintain its homogeneity as a moral
community while acknowledging its stake in the peaceful main-
tenance of a pluralist society. It should expect to meet both the
hostility and hospitality of alternative moral arguments since it
offers a distinctive vision but one which is not lacking in
 Conclusion 173
connection with other convictions and aspirations. If there is a
®tting epigram with which to conclude, it is an early comment
of Karl Barth that the Christian task is `to uphold God's cause
in the world and yet not wage war on it'.15
 Notes

1 introduction
1 Cf. Steve Bruce, Religion in the Modern World: Cathedrals to Cults
(Oxford University Press, 1996).
2 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Random
House, 1985), Book 2, chapter 5, 407±8.
3 Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann
Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985), 282.
4 After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), 259.
5 This is a common theme in recent sociological studies of religion.
For example, Steve Bruce summarises his argument in the follow-
ing way. `[E]clecticism is the characteristic form of religion in the
late modern period. It may not yet be the most common, but it
represents in religious culture the dominant ethos of late capital-
ism: the world of options, lifestyles, and preferences.' Religion in the
Modern World, 233.
6 Cf. James McClendon's study of the role of Martin Luther King
and others in the shaping of our moral consciousness, Biography as
Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974).
7 `Community is one of those buzz words (like ``meaning'' or
``relevance'') that we should be wary of using. Study after study
suggests that people in our society are searching for community.
The need for ``belonging'' has come to be identi®ed as one of the
primary functions that religious institutions can ful®l. Members of
the clergy preach sermon upon sermon, admonishing believers to
®nd community within the church. But what does it all mean?
Where will it lead in the years ahead?' Robert Wuthnow, Chris-
tianity in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 1993), 6.
8 This is explored most effectively by Arne Rasmusson, The Church
as Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as Exempli®ed by

174
 Notes to pages 10±15 175
JuÈrgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas (University of Notre Dame
Press, 1996).
9 `The Everlasting Gospel', from The Complete Writings of William
Blake, Geoffrey Keynes (ed.) (London: Nonesuch Press, 1957), 758.
10 E.g. The First Urban Christians (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1983); The Moral World of the First Christians (London: SPCK, 1986);
The Origins of Christian Morality (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1993).
11 Meeks, The Moral World of the First Christians, 114.
12 This is explored in detail by Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of
Pauline Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), 145±74.
13 `The Didache' 9.4, The Apostolic Fathers, J. B. Lightfoot & J. R.
Harmer, (eds.), second edition, (Grand Rapids, Baker Book
House, 1992), 261. Cited by Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality,
97.
14 The Moral World of the First Christians, 96.
15 The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to
New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996), 308.
16 Cf. Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality, 104.
17 Ibid., 108.
18 The Origins of Christian Morality, 68.
19 Cf. Robert Grant, `The Christian Population of the Roman
Empire', Early Christianity and Society (San Francisco: Harper and
Row, 1978), 1±12.
20 I am following here a line of argument set out by Henry Chad-
wick, The Originality of Early Christian Ethics (Oxford: Somerville
College, 1990). I am also indebted to the short case studies
presented in George Forrell's History of Christian Ethics, vol 1,
(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1979).
21 Homily xxii on Ephesians, citation from Nicene and Post Nicene
Fathers, ed. P. Schaff (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), First Series,
vol. 13, 159. `A number of passages show the same awareness as we
®nd in Augustine, that a slave in a reasonable household was far
better housed, clothed and fed than a free wage labourer whose
plight might be desperate', Chadwick, ibid., 4.
22 `Meeks correctly observes that the commands of others are those
most frequently quoted by the Apologists. But are we to believe
that these surfaced only gradually during the ®rst Christian
century? Do they tell us nothing about the ``origins of Christian
morality''?' A. E. Harvey, `Review of Meeks', The Origins of
Christian Morality, Journal of Theological Studies, 46 (1995), 301.
23 Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments
(London: SCM, 1992), 667.
176 Notes to pages 16±21
24 This tension between `normal moral virtues' and the `judgment of
absolute demands' is seen as the setting for New Testament ethics
by W. D. Davies, `The Relevance of the Moral Teaching of the
Early Church', in Neotestamentica et Semitica, E. E. Ellis and
M. Wilcox (eds.) (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1969), 30±49. For a
discussion of Davies' approach see J. I. H. McDonald, Biblical
Interpretation and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1993),
144ff.
25 The Body in Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988),
44.
26 Cf. W. D. Davies, `The Relevance of the Moral Teaching of the
Early Church', 44±5. The way in which the church both sup-
ported and criticised the secular state is explored by Oscar
Cullmann in The State in the New Testament (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1956).
27 Cf. The discussion of appeals to natural law in Eric Osborn,
Ethical Patterns in Early Christian Thought (Cambridge University
Press, 1976).
28 E.g. W. D. Davies, `The Relevance of the Moral Teaching of the
Early Church', 36.
29 Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapter 7. Cf. Morality and Ethics in Early
Christianity, Jan L. Womer (ed.) (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).
For further discussion see John Mahoney, The Making of Moral
Theology (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987), chapter 3.
30 Rowan Greer, Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and Common
Life in the Early Church (University Park: Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity Press, 1986), 141ff. In what follows I am indebted to Greer.
31 `Epistle to Diognetus', chapter 5. Citation from Ante-Nicene Fathers,
Philip Schaff (ed.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), vol. 1, 26±7.
32 Greer, Broken Lights and Mended Lives, 156. See also the account of
the relationship between church and state in Augustine in R. A.
Markus, Sacred and Secular (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994), chapter 4,
`Refusing to Bless the State: Prophetic Church and Secular State',
372±9.
33 City of God, Book xix, 13. Citation from Marcus Dods' translation
(New York: Random House, 1950), 691.
34 E.g. `The Morals of the Catholic Church', chapters 15ff., in Basic
Writings of Augustine, Whitney J. Oates (ed.) (New York: Random
House, 1948), vol. 1, 331ff.
35 E.g. `The Morals of the Catholic Church', chapter 30, ibid., 348.
36 City of God, Book xix, 17, 696.
37 Cf. John Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora from Alexander to
Trajan (323 bce ± 117 ce) (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996).
 Notes to pages 22±26 177

2 christian ethical distinctiveness

1 Karl Barth, Ethics (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), ed. Dietrich
Braun, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley.
2 Church Dogmatics ii/2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), 510.
3 Barth, Ethics, 13.
4 Church Dogmatics ii/2, 632f.
5 In his recent study of the fragmentary materials of Church Dogmatics
iv/4, John Webster examines the ways in which human ethical
action can be viewed as corresponding to God's prior action. This
notion of correspondence is devoid of any trace of repetition or
substitution. Barth's Ethics of Reconciliation (Cambridge University
Press, 1995), esp. chapter 3.
6 The Christian Life (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981), 265.
7 This criticism is developed by Robert Willis, The Ethics of Karl Barth
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971), 170ff.
8 This handling of the ethical norms found in Scripture is already
present in Barth's The Epistle to the Romans (London: Oxford
University Press, 1933), 461. For discussion of this section see
Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology
(Oxford University Press, 1995), 274±80.
9 George Hunsinger has described `actualism' as one of the domi-
nant motifs of Barth's theology. `Barth's theology of active rela-
tions is therefore a theology which stresses the sovereignty of
grace, the incapacity of the creature, and the miraculous history
whereby grace grants what the creature lacks for the sake of love
and freedom,' How to Read Karl Barth (Oxford University Press,
1991), 30ff.
10 Church Dogmatics ii/2, 678.
11 William Werpehowski has argued against critics of Barth that his
ethics can avoid criticisms of `intuitionism' and `occasionalism' by
stressing the way in which agents take their place in a history of
relationship with God. `Command and History in the Ethics of
Karl Barth', Journal of Religious Ethics, 9 (1981), 298±320.
12 Church Dogmatics iii/4, 7ff. Nigel Biggar argues that this is a
misconception of casuistry and shows how Barth's own method of
ethical deliberation contains many features of casuistry properly
understood. The Hastening that Waits (Oxford: Clarendon, Press,
1993), esp. 40ff.
13 Church Dogmatics ii/2, 585ff.
14 Ibid., 709.
15 Ibid., 527.
16 Ibid., 530f.
178 Notes to pages 27±31
17 Barth's Ethics of Reconciliation, 100.
18 This aspect of Barth's ethics is analysed by William Werpehowski
in `Narrative and Ethics in Barth', Theology Today, 43 (1986/7),
334±53. For the criticism that Barth's treatment of character
suffers because of his preoccupation with command and decision,
see Stanley Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life (San Antonio,
Trinity University Press, 1975), 176. `By describing the Christian
life primarily in terms of command and decision, Barth cannot
fully account for the kind of growth and deepening that he thinks
is essential to the Christian's existence.'
19 Church Dogmatics ii/2, 524ff. Cf. the similar treatment of this theme
in Ethics, 27ff.
20 E.g. Church Dogmatics ii/2, 522.
21 Church Dogmatics iv/3, 493ff. This is explored in greater depth by
Nigel Biggar, The Hastening that Waits, 146ff.
22 E.g. Christian Life, 20ff.
23 Church Dogmatics iv/3, 38±165.
24 Church Dogmatics ii/2, 569.
25 Ibid., 542.
26 Church Dogmatics iii/1, 43. The relationship between creation and
covenant in Barth is discussed by Webster, Barth's Ethics of Reconci-
liation, 59ff.
27 Ethics, 215.
28 Cf. the preface to Ethics.
29 For a discussion of Luther's understanding of the orders see Paul
Althaus, The Ethics of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972),
36±42.
30 For a recent defence of this Lutheran doctrine see Carl Braaten,
`God in Public Life: Rehabilitating the ``Orders of Creation'' ',
First Things, 8 (1990), 32±8.
31 Barth's discussion of the relationship between law and gospel can
be found in `Gospel and Law', Community, State and Church (New
York: Anchor Books, 1960), 71±100. For an acute analysis of Barth
vis-aÁ-vis Lutheranism see Eberhard JuÈngel, `Gospel and Law: The
Relationship of Dogmatics to Ethics', Karl Barth, A Theological
Legacy (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986), 104±26.
32 Church Dogmatics iii/4, 19ff. Barth's criticism of Brunner and
Bonhoeffer is explored by Robin Lovin, Christian Faith and Public
Choices (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), esp. 37ff.
33 Church Dogmatics iii/4, 23.
34 Ibid., 30.
35 Church Dogmatics iii/2, 208ff.
36 Ibid., 277.
 Notes to pages 32±37 179
37 E.g. Nico Horn, `From Barmen to Balhar and Kairos', in Charles
Villa-Vicencio (ed.), On Reading Karl Barth in South Africa (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 105±20.
38 George Hunsinger, `Barth, Barmen and the Confessing Church
Today', in Barth, Barmen and the Confessing Church Today, James Y.
Holloway (ed.) (Lampeter, Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), 36. This
publication also contains the German original and English trans-
lation of the Barmen Declaration. It is one of the strengths of
Barmen that it is capable of providing a point of theological
reference in very different social contexts. For an impressive
British example of the counter-cultural force of Barthian theology
see Michael Banner, Turning the World Upside Down (and Some other
Tasks for Dogmatic Christian Ethics), Inaugural lecture, King's
College, London, 1996.
39 Hunsinger, `Barth, Barmen and the Confessing Church Today',
292.
40 For a useful overview of post-liberalism see William Placher, `Post-
liberalism' in The Modern Theologians, David Ford (ed.) (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1997), 343±56, and his more extensive Unapologetic
Theology (Louisville, Westminster/John Knox, 1989).
41 The Nature of Doctrine (London: SPCK, 1984), 18.
42 His re¯ections on ten years of debate can be found in the new
foreword to the German translation of his work, Christliche Lehre als
Grammatik des Glaubens (GuÈterloh: Chr. Kaiser, 1994), 16±22. This
translation also contains a useful bibliography of Lindbeck's
published work.
43 `Epilogue: George Lindbeck and The Nature of Doctrine', Theology
and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck, Bruce D.
Marshall (ed.) (Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 1990),
276.
44 Lindbeck notes the way in which the cultural±linguistic theory can
be judged `methodologically atheistic'. The Nature of Doctrine, 20.
This is reiterated in the new foreword to the German translation.
45 `Lindbeck's New Program for Theology: A Re¯ection', Thomist, 49
(1985), 465.
46 The Nature of Doctrine, 121. Cf. Hans Frei, `Theological Re¯ections
on the Accounts of Jesus' Death and Resurrection', Theology and
Narrative: Selected Essays (Oxford University Press, 1993), 45±93.
47 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 132. Lindbeck's theological inten-
tions are re¯ected in a range of essays prior to The Nature of Doctrine.
E.g. `The Sectarian Future of the Church', The God Experience, J. P.
Whelan (ed.) (New York: Newman, 1971), 226±43.
48 The Nature of Doctrine, 64.
180 Notes to pages 37±40
49 For an earlier version of this criticism see my `Meaning, Truth and
Realism in Bultmann and Lindbeck', Religious Studies, 26 (1990),
183±98.
50 The Nature of Doctrine, 65.
51 Ibid., 67.
52 `The Story-Shaped Church: Critical Exegesis and Theological
Interpretation', in Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation,
Garret Green (ed.) (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 164.
53 Cf. The Nature of Doctrine, chapter 3; `Fides ex Auditu and the
Salvation of Non-Christians: Contemporary Catholic and Prot-
estant Positions', The Gospel and the Ambiguity of the Church, Vilmos
Vajta (ed.) (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), 92±123.
54 Bruce Marshall, `Aquinas as Post-liberal Theologian', Thomist, 53
(1989), 353±402; George Lindbeck, `Response to Bruce Marshall',
ibid., 403±6. For a further discussion which contrasts Barth's
understanding of the priority of divine action in constituting
theological truth with Lindbeck's account see George Hunsinger,
`Truth as Self-Involving: Barth and Lindbeck on the Cognitive
and Performative Aspects of Truth in Theological Discourse',
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 61 (1993), 41±55.
55 George Lindbeck, `Response to Bruce Marshall', 403.
56 The Nature of Doctrine, 94.
57 Cf. the comment of Geoffrey Wainwright that, `A subsistent
trinitarian relation is being declared by Nicea and by Athanasius.
It is with this substantive content that the conciliar declaration is
intended to give guidance to Christian language concerning God
and Jesus Christ', `Ecumenical Dimensions of Lindbeck's Nature of
Doctrine', Modern Theology, 4 (1987/8), 126.
58 The Nature of Doctrine, 106. This analogy itself is misleading. It fails
to recognise that almost all scientists engaged in such disputes
assume that they are thereby contesting `the ways things really
are'. At this point, one suspects again that the secular in¯uences
behind the cultural±linguistic theory of religion carry a bias
towards a regulative account of theological truth.
59 Frei himself expresses some anxieties about the rule theory of
doctrine. `Epilogue: George Lindbeck and The Nature of Doctrine',
279. His own understanding of doctrine seems to be expressed in
the following exposition of Barth. `[ J]usti®cation by faith is a
doctrine that functions as a rule in, let us say, orthodox Christian
discourse. Not only does it function as a rule but it looks as though
it were asserting something about how God deals with human
beings, and to that extent it is a statement that holds true
regardless of the attitude of the person or persons articulating it',
 Notes to pages 40±43 181
Types of Modern Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992),
42.
60 Revelation and Theology (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press,
1985), 150±1. Thiemann criticises Lindbeck for devoting insuf®-
cient attention, contra Barth, to the way in which intratextuality
derives its force only from particular assumptions about revela-
tion. `Response to George Lindbeck', Theology Today, 43 (1986/7),
377±82.
61 Mark Corner, `Review of The Nature of Doctrine', Modern Theology, 3
(1986), 112.
62 `Lindbeck's New Program for Theology', 470.
63 This point is developed skilfully by David Kelsey, `Church Dis-
course and Public Realm', in Theology and Dialogue: Essays in
Conversation with George Lindbeck, Bruce D. Marshall (ed.), 7±34.
64 The Nature of Doctrine, 82.
65 `Absorbing the World: Christianity and the Universe of Truths',
Theology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck, ibid.,
85. Ingolf Dalferth perceives a similar theological rationality in
Barth. `Karl Barth's Eschatological Realism', Studies in Karl Barth:
Centenary Essays, S. W. Sykes (ed.) (Cambridge University Press,
1989), 14±45.
66 The Nature of Doctrine, 131. Lindbeck makes explicit appeal to the
procedure defended by Basil Mitchell in The Justi®cation of Reli-
gious Belief (London: Macmillan, 1973). This also explains why, for
Lindbeck, the Christian theologian may properly belong both to
church and academy though his or her place in the former
remains prior. This is noted by Hans Frei, `Both vocations are
best served when theology is seen to be in service to the church
®rst, to the academy second. Academic theology is that second-
order re¯ection which is an appropriate, albeit very modest
instrument in aid of the critical description and self-description
of speci®c, religious±cultural communities, in our case the Chris-
tian church', `Epilogue: George Lindbeck and The Nature of
Doctrine', in Theology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George
Lindbeck, 278.
67 The Nature of Doctrine, 131±2.
68 Ibid., 128.
69 Originally coined by Gilbert Ryle, the term `thick description' is
used by Clifford Geertz for the interpretation and explanation of
social life. `Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture', The
Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3±32.
70 This may explain the enthusiastic reception of various Protestant
commentators. E.g. Robin Gill, Review in Church Times (12
182 Notes to pages 43±46
November 93); Oliver O'Donovan, `A Summons to Reality', in
Understanding Veritatis Splendor, John Wilkins (ed.) (London: SPCK,
1994), 41±5; Stanley Hauerwas, Commonweal (22 October 93),
16±18.
71 Church Dogmatics ii/2, 613ff.
72 Veritatis Splendor, 10.
73 Catechism of the Catholic Church (Washington DC: United States
Catholic Conference, 1994). Bernard HaÈring has remarked, `The
renewal of moral theology is also evident in the decision to treat
sacramental life before the treatise on moral theology. I would
remind the reader that most of the manuals of moral theology
after the Council of Trent treated the sacraments after the
commandments as a means to, and providing strength for,
heeding all the commandments and laws of the Church. In the
new Catechism there appears of the joy of faith and of celebration
of the Christian mystery', `More than Law and Precept: Com-
mandments 1 to 3', in Commentary on the Catechism of the Catholic
Church, Michael J Walsh (ed.) (London, Geoffrey Chapman,
1994), 357.
74 Veritatis Splendor, 19.
75 Ibid., 28.
76 Ibid., 58.
77 Ibid., 44.
78 Ibid., 64. This rather solitary reference to the signi®cance of the
virtues is seen as a weakness of the encyclical and a sign of its
captivity by the language of law. Cf. Herbert McCabe, `Manuals
and Rule Books', Understanding Veritatis Splendor, John Wilkins (ed.),
67±8.
79 Veritatis Splendor, 41.
80 Ibid., 89.
81 E.g. the essays by Bernhard HaÈring, Richard McCormick, and
Nicholas Lash in Understanding Veritatis Splendor.
82 E.g. Walter Moberly, `The Use of Scripture', Veritatis Splendor: A
Response, Charles Yeats (ed.) (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1994),
8±24.
83 In one of the most measured discussions of the recent encyclicals,
Jean Porter has argued that the pope fails to take into account
both the dif®culties involved in making certain types of moral
judgment and the need for civil moral disagreement in our
communities. These failures may be related. `Moral Reasoning,
Authority and Community in Veritatis Splendor', Annual of the Society
of Christian Ethics (1995), 201±19.
84 Veritatis Splendor, 158.
 Notes to pages 46±49 183
85 John Paul II, The Gospel of Life: Evangelium Vitae: On the Value and
Inviolability of Human Life (Washington DC: United States Catholic
Conference, 1995), 20.
86 Ibid., 151
87 Oliver O'Donovan, `A Summons to Reality', 45. Russell Hittinger,
in his excellent analysis of the encyclical, points to the similarity
with Karl Barth's theonomous ethics. `Natural Law and Catholic
Moral Theology', A Preserving Grace, Michael Cromartie (ed.)
(Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1997), 26.
88 I am indebted here to the account of Aquinas' moral theory set
out by Jean Porter, The Recovery of Virtue (Philadelphia: Westmin-
ster/John Knox, 1990).
89 Summa Theologiae iiaiiae, 47.13.
90 Ibid., 23.2.
91 For an account of Catholic moral theology since Vatican II, see
John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman
Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 302±47.

3 ecclesial ethics -- stanley hauerwas

1 The term `ecclesial ethics' is employed by Reinhold HuÈtter in
`Ecclesial Ethics, the Church's Vocation, and Paraclesis', Pro
Ecclesia, 2 (1993), 433±50. I use it here in preference to `commu-
nitarian' since Hauerwas does not wish his ethics to be sustained
by the philosophical arguments for communitarianism, but rather
by more exclusive theological considerations. For a more popular
and wide-ranging exposition of ecclesial ethics see Robert E.
Webber and Rodney Clapp, People of the Truth (San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1988).
2 In what follows I have drawn upon material previously published
in `Another Way of Reading Stanley Hauerwas?', Scottish Journal of
Theology, 50 (1997), 242±9.
3 Hauerwas' criticism of liberalism can be found in `The Church
and Liberal Democracy: The Moral Limits of a Secular Polity', A
Community of Character (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981),
72±86, and in several of the essays contained in Christian Existence
Today (Durham: Labyrinth Press, 1988).
4 Cf. After Christendom (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), 66ff.
5 Cf. Edmund Pincoffs `Quandary Ethics', Revisions, Alasdair Mac-
Intyre and Stanley Hauerwas (eds.) (University of Notre Dame
Press, 1983), 92±112.
6 S. Hauerwas and D. Burrell, `From System to Story: An Alter-
native Pattern for Rationality in Ethics', in Why Narrative? Stanley
184 Notes to pages 49±54
Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones (eds.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1989), 169.
7 Ibid.
8 Hauerwas' survey of recent work in Christian ethics is written with
this conclusion in view. `On Keeping Ethics Theological', in
Revisions, 16±42. This is reproduced in Against the Nations (Univer-
sity of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 23±50.
9 John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1972), 15ff.
10 Cf. the introduction to Against the Nations.
11 In his response to Gloria Albrecht, he claims that `when Albrecht
. . . suggests that I resist the full implications of my epistemology
for my ecclesiology, I can only say that ecclesiology is all I have',
`Failure of Communication or A Case of Uncomprehending
Feminism', Scottish Journal of Theology, 50 (1997), 230.
12 Character and the Christian Life (San Antonio, Trinity University
Press, 1975), 20±1. The signi®cance of character for ethical theory
is also argued by James McClendon, Biography as Theology (Nash-
ville: Abingdon Press, 1974), 13±38. For a recent exploration of the
centrality of character to the Old Testament Wisdom literature,
see William P. Brown, Character in Crisis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1996).
13 A Community of Character, 114. Cf. Alasdair MacIntyre, `Why is the
Search for the Foundation of Ethics so Frustrating?' Hastings Center
Report 9/4 (1979), 21±2, (cited in A Community of Character, 257).
14 This shift is acknowledged by Hauerwas himself in the intro-
duction to the 1985 reissue of Character and the Christian Life.
`Though I had stressed the relational character of the self, this is
not suf®cient to indicate the centrality of a particular community
called the church for the development of the kind of character
required of Christians', xxxi.
15 Community of Character, 117.
16 `On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological', 33±4.
17 A Community of Character, 37.
18 A Community of Character, 95.
19 Character and the Christian Life, xxix. Robert Jenson comments on
the Catholic assumptions underlying Hauerwas' epistemology in
`The Hauerwas Project', Modern Theology, 8 (1992), 289ff.
20 E.g. A Community of Character, 90.
21 `Rather the truthfulness of Christian convictions resides in their
power to form a people suf®cient to acknowledge the divided
character of the world and thus necessarily ready to offer hospi-
tality to the stranger', ibid., 90.
 Notes to pages 54±59 185
22 E.g. In Good Company (University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 62.
In light of this dispute concerning the reception of the Reforma-
tion, it is surprising that Hauerwas and Willimon, in surveying the
responses of most of the mainstream denominations to their work,
fail to mention Lutheranism.
23 Julian Hartt, `Theological Investments in Story: Some Comments
on Recent Developments and Some Proposals', Why Narrative?
Stanley Hauerwas and Gregory Jones (eds.) (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1989), 286±92.
24 `Why the Truth Demands Truthfulness: An Imperious Engage-
ment with Hartt', ibid., 303±10.
25 In this respect, Hauerwas eschews the sharp distinction of Thie-
mann, Frei and others between narrative as a general hermeneu-
tical category and narrative as the form in which the Christian
gospel is given by God. Cf. William Werpehowski, `Narrative and
Ethics in Barth', Theology Today, 43 (1987), 350.
26 Stanley Hauerwas and David Burrell, `From System to Story: An
Alternative Pattern for Rationality in Ethics', 177.
27 `What sets the context for one's moral judgment is rather the
stories we hold about the place of children in our lives, or the
connection one deems ought or ought not to hold between
sexuality and procreation, or some other such account', ibid., 169.
28 Ibid., 185.
29 The dominant in¯uence at this juncture appears to be Hans Frei
(and thus Karl Barth). See the frequent references to The Identity of
Jesus Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975) in A Community of
Character, chapter 2.
30 A Community of Character, 45.
31 The Politics of Jesus, 100.
32 Ibid., 222ff. Yoder cites Markus Barth's comment that `Justi®cation
in Christ is thus not an individual miracle happening to this
person or that person, which each may seek or possess for himself.
Rather justi®cation by grace is a joining together of this person
and that person, of the near and far; . . . it is a social event', 225.
33 The Peaceable Kingdom, 91.
34 Christian Existence Today, 95.
35 John Howard Yoder, `What Would You Do If ?', Journal of Religious
Ethics, 2 (1974), 90, quoted by Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, 125.
36 `It is my contention that Christian opposition to abortion on
demand has failed because, by attempting to meet the moral
challenge within the limits of public polity, we have failed to
exhibit our deepest convictions that make our rejection of abor-
tion intelligible', A Community of Character, 212.
186 Notes to pages 59±65
37 Ibid., 226.
38 Ibid., 225.
39 Ibid., 191.
40 Against the Nations, 166.
41 Ibid.
42 Suffering Presence: Theological Re¯ections on Medicine, the Mentally
Handicapped, and the Church (University of Notre Dame Press, 1986),
186.
43 Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nash-
ville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 146.
44 This is a central theme in Hauerwas' reading of the recent history
of theological ethics in America. Cf. `On Keeping Ethics Theo-
logical', in Against the Nations, 23±50.
45 Resident Aliens, 74.
46 `Why Resident Aliens Struck a Chord', In Good Company, 58.
Hauerwas and Willimon make the further point that their work
elicits most enthusiasm in clergy under the age of forty-®ve.
47 Ibid., 45. Cf. John Howard Yoder, `A People in the World:
Theological Interpretation', in The Concept of the Believer's Church,
James Leo Garrett, Jr. (ed.) (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1969),
252±83.
48 Resident Aliens, 160.
49 After Christendom (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), 100.
50 Ibid., 151.
51 `Christian vegetarianism might be understood as a witness to the
world that God's creation is not meant to be at war with itself.
Such a witness does not entail romantic conceptions of nature
and/or our fallen creation but is an eschatological act, signifying
that our lives are not captured by the old order', In Good Company,
196±7.
52 Resident Aliens, 171.
53 `The Sectarian Temptation', Proceedings of the Catholic Theological
Society of America, 40 (1985), 84±5.
54 Cf. Wilson Miscamble, `Sectarian Passivism?', Theology Today
(1987/8), 69±77. Ronald Thiemann in his recent study labels
Hauerwas' approach as `sectarian communitarianism'. Religion in
Public Life: A Dilemma for Democracy (Washington DC: Georgetown
University Press, 1996), 99ff.
55 Oliver O'Donovan has rightly repudiated the charge of sectar-
ianism levelled against Hauerwas. The Desire of the Nations: Redis-
covering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge University Press,
1996), 216.
56 I suspect that Hauerwas must eschew the fascinating construction
 Notes to pages 65±68 187
of his position suggested by Robert Jenson in `The Hauerwas
Project', Modern Theology, 8.3 (1992), 285±96. Jenson claims that
Hauerwas is committed to something like the view that the world
exists to be included in the church's story. This is an ecclesial
analogue of Barth's view that `creation is the external basis of the
covenant'. This absorption of the world into the story of the
church tends to reverse Hauerwas' (and, pace Jenson, Barth's)
continual stress upon the mission of the church in and to the
world. Barth's doctrine of election renders such a co-ordination of
church and world impossible.
57 H. R. Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1956),
81.
58 James Wm. McClendon Jr., Systematic Theology: Ethics (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1986), 233. A comprehensive discussion of the
sectarian charge can be found in Arne Rasmusson, The Church as
Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as Exempli®ed by
JuÈrgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas (University of Notre Dame
Press, 1996), 231±47. Hauerwas and Willimon have remarked,
`We do not want to call Methodists out of Congress; we just want
them to be there as Methodists, for heavens' sake', In Good
Company, 60.
59 The Church as Polis.
60 Systematic Theology: Ethics, 35.
61 A Community of Character, 6.
62 E.g. `On Keeping Theological Ethics Imaginative', Against the
Nations, 59.
63 In Good Company, 57.
64 Biography as Theology, 37.
65 Article review of Stanley Hauerwas' In Good Company; The Church as
Polis, Scottish Journal of Theology, 50 (1997), 225.
66 This is worked out in The Character of our Communities (Nashville,
Abingdon Press, 1995).
67 This is accommodated in Robin Gill's formulation of the church
as the `harbinger' rather than the `exemplar' of moral values,
Christian Ethics in Secular Worlds (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991),
17.
68 E.g. the criticism of Gerhard Ebeling's treatment of the sola
scriptura principle in Unleashing the Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1993), 27.
69 `Even though I do not share the liberal rejection of the classical
christological formulas, the liberal concern to recover the cen-
trality of Jesus' life strikes me as right', A Community of Character, 40.
70 E.g. The Peaceable Kingdom, 72ff.
188 Notes to pages 68±71
71 I am thinking here especially of The Peaceable Kingdom, chapter 5,
and A Community of Character, chapter 2.
72 Hans Frei's Barthian construction of the uniqueness and unsub-
stitutability of the story of Jesus become strangely attenuated in
Hauerwas, other similarities notwithstanding.
73 The Peaceable Kingdom, 94. It is perhaps signi®cant that one encoun-
ters a similar criticism of Anabaptist theology in Article xii of the
Lutheran Formula of Concord. The third error condemned is `that
our righteousness before God does not consist wholly in the
unique merit of Christ, but in renewal and in our own pious
behaviour. For the most part this piety is built on one's own
individual self-chosen spirituality, which in fact is nothing else but
a new kind of monkery.' I owe this comparison to George Hun-
singer.
74 Thus Bonhoeffer in Life Together (New York: Harper, 1954), argues
that it is only in Christ that we relate to God and to others. This is
understood in terms of union, justi®cation, forgiveness, renewal,
service, worship, prayer, etc. Christian ethics is here closely
associated with Christian piety.
75 I am aware that I am placing a construction upon his writings
which Hauerwas would eschew. None the less, there seem to be
grounds at least for further clari®cation of his position on these
issues.
76 Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (San Francisco:
HarperCollins, 1996), 253ff.
77 E.g. A Community of Character, 70±1. One might anticipate a
response, though not from Hauerwas, along the following lines.
Cosmic Christologies and objective theories of the atonement do
not make much sense. We should take as our standard the word
and example of the historical Jesus as these can be discerned from
the Synoptic Gospels. This rejoinder should not be under-
estimated, yet its dif®culty is that it selects the moral teaching of
Jesus while abandoning large tracts of the New Testament. The
principle by which this selection is made is presumably its moral
adequacy. This assumes some prior access to moral knowledge
and thus reduces the ethical distinctiveness of Christian faith. It is
thus a rehabilitation of the type of liberal Protestantism to which
Hauerwas is implacably opposed.
78 Church Dogmatics i/1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), section 4.
This Barthian criticism can also be detected in Child's comment
that `because Hauerwas has accepted a functional description of
the Bible which denies any special properties in the text, his actual
use of the story increasingly turns out to be an abstraction without
 Notes to pages 71±76 189
speci®c biblical content', Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testa-
ments (London: SCM, 1992), 665.
79 At its best, the doctrine of election has functioned in this way in
the Christian life. As far as I am aware, this plays no part in
Hauerwas' theology.
80 Hauerwas himself presupposes this in his remark that `we believe
that history has already come out right and just because it has we
can take the time in a world threatened by its own pretensions of
control to seek patiently a truthful peace', Against the Nations, 166.
81 `Ecclesial Ethics, The Church's Vocation and Paraclesis', Pro
Ecclesia, 2 (1993), 433±50; citation is from 448. It seems to me,
however, that HuÈtter's critique has identi®ed not so much a
defective pneumatology in ecclesial ethics as a defective Chris-
tology and soteriology.
82 For Barth's criticism of Bultmann, see `Rudolf Bultmann: An
Attempt to Understand Him', Kerygma and Myth, ii, H. W. Bartsch
(ed.) (London: SPCK, 1964), 83±132; Church Dogmatics iv/1 (Edin-
burgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), 767ff.
83 A Community of Character, 228.
84 Ibid., 106.
85 Hauerwas is correct to point out that there is no necessary
connection between the uniqueness of Christ and liberalism's
penchant for ®nding common moral ground everywhere. My
claim here is simply that, by stressing to a greater extent the
uniqueness of the work of Christ over against the polity of the
church, one has greater scope for af®rming the action of the Spirit
beyond the church.
86 Church Dogmatics iv/3 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961), 38ff. Iain
Torrance has argued that Hauerwas' ecclesiology reveals some
interesting similarities to Donatist exclusivism over against Augus-
tinian catholicity. `They Speak to Us across the Centuries:
Cyprian', Expository Times, 108.12 (1997), 356±9.
87 Ibid., 115±16.
88 Ethics After Babel (Cambridge: Clarke, 1988), 214.
89 E.g. Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (University of
Notre Dame Press, 1994).
90 Cf. The strangely undeveloped comment: `What allows us to look
expectantly for agreement among those who do not worship God
is not that we have a common morality based on autonomous
knowledge of autonomous nature, but that God's kingdom is
wider than the church', Christian Existence Today, 17. Similar ob-
servations elsewhere are generally not integrated into his overall
argument. `Unity comes not from the assumption that all people
190 Notes to pages 76±85
share the same nature, but that we share the same Lord. Though
certainly the fact that we have a common creator provides a basis
for some common experience and appeals', A Community of Char-
acter, 106.
91 Hauerwas is roundly attacked for his wide-ranging assault on
liberalism by Max Stackhouse, `Liberalism dispatched vs. Liber-
alism engaged', Christian Century, 18, (October 1995), 962±7.
92 Hauerwas, borrowing from Stanley Fish, points to the anti-
Catholicism concealed in Milton's `Areopagitica'. In Good Company,
203.
93 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New
York: Free Press, 1990), 104.
94 The Nature of Doctrine, 128.
95 Ibid., 131.
96 `Hauerwas Examined', First Things, 25 (1992), 51.

4 moral realism in recent philosophy

1 Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth, 1978), 146.
2 Cf. Crispin Wright, `Truth Conditions and Criteria', Aristotelian
Society Supplementary Volume, 50 (1976), 224. For a realist counter-
blast, see P. F. Strawson, `Scruton and Wright on Anti-Realism
Etc.', Aristotelian Society Proceedings, 77 (1976/7), 15±21.
3 `What is a Theory of Meaning II?', in Truth and Meaning, G. Evans
and J. McDowell (eds.) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 71.
4 Truth and Other Enigmas, 362.
5 Ibid., 18.
6 Criticism of Dummett can be found in Colin McGinn, `Truth and
Use', Reference, Truth and Reality, M. Platts (ed.) (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1980), 19±40; Edward Craig, `Meaning, Use and
Privacy', Mind, 91 (1982), 541±64. For robust defences of global
realism see Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth (Oxford: Blackwell,
1984), and William P. Alston, A Realist Conception of Truth (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1996).
7 This description of a realist philosophy of science is in part derived
from W. H. Newton-Smith's four ingredients of realism, The
Rationality of Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 43.
8 Language, Truth and Logic (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 199.
9 Cf. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science, 25.
10 The Structure of Scienti®c Revolutions (University of Chicago Press,
1970), 150.
11 This parallel is drawn by Devitt, Realism and Truth, chapter 9.
12 `Realism and Reference', Monist, 59 (1976), 321.
 Notes to pages 86±94 191
13 Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1978).
14 Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth, 63. For a physicist's defence of
realism see John Polkinghorne, One World (London: SPCK, 1986),
6±25.
15 `Does Moral Philosophy rest on a Mistake?', Moral Obligation
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 16.
16 This problem is set out in Jonathan Dancy's `Intuitionism', A
Companion to Ethics, Peter Singer (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991),
414ff.
17 The lack of clarity amongst the intuitionists regarding self-
evident principles is illustrated by D. D. Raphael's inventory of
intuitionist examples, Moral Philosophy (Oxford University Press,
1981), 44.
18 Cf. Mary Warnock, Ethics Since 1900 (Oxford University Press,
1960), 77±8.
19 Language, Truth and Logic, 142.
20 Facts and Values (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), 18.
21 Ibid., 24.
22 Ibid., 30±1.
23 Moral Philosophy, 26ff.
24 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), 20.
25 In much of what follows I am indebted to the discussion of these
issues in David McNaughton's Moral Vision (Oxford: Blackwell,
1988).
26 John McDowell, `Aesthetic value, objectivity, and the fabric of the
world', Pleasure, Preference and Value, Eva Schaper (ed.) (Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 3.
27 For another defence of moral realism in the same vein see Sabina
Lovibond, Realism and Imagination in Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell,
1983).
28 Cf. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1970).
29 `Virtue and Reason', Monist, 62 (1979), 331.
30 Ibid., 344.
31 Ibid., 345.
32 Ibid., 346.
33 McDowell's theory has some dif®culty at this juncture in coping
with the phenomenon of weakness of the will. This has led to a
modi®cation of his theory of moral action in Jonathan Dancy's
Moral Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 53ff.
34 `Virtue and Reason', 347.
35 `Values and Secondary Qualities', in Morality and Objectivity,
192 Notes to pages 94±103
T. Honderich (ed.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985),
111±12.
36 Ibid., 120.
37 Ibid., 121.
38 John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1994), 84.
39 Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977),
33.
40 Ibid., 37.
41 For a signi®cant response to the Humean problem of superveni-
ence, see Dancy, Moral Reason, 77ff. Dancy argues that the ap-
parent mysteriousness of supervenience can be removed by
recognising the way in which the moral features of an action result
from natural ones. The notion of a resultant property is itself a
commonplace of sensory perception.
42 Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1977), 6±9; for realist responses to Harman see
McNaughton, Moral Vision, 101ff. and Jeffrey Stout, Ethics After
Babel, 37ff. Stout argues that the moral features of a situation may
explain why moral beliefs are held in a way that is not disanala-
gous to empirical realism.
43 Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 10±11.
44 Cf. David Wiggins' discussion of the marks of truth in moral
discourse. Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 146ff.
45 Spreading the Word (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 182ff.
46 Ibid., 186.
47 Ibid., 180.
48 `Errors and the Phenomenology of Value', in Morality and Objec-
tivity, T. Honderich (ed.), 11.
49 I have drawn here from David MacNaugton, Moral Vision, 92ff.
50 Jeffrey Stout, Ethics After Babel, 39ff.
51 Simon Blackburn, `Errors and the Phenomenology of Value',
11.
52 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 59.
53 It is one of the strengths of Stout's defence of moral realism in
Ethics After Babel that it pays close attention to the diversity of
moral languages.
54 Consequences of Pragmatism (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982), xvii.
For Rorty's fuller attempt to read the history of philosophy in this
way see his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell,
1981).
55 I am following here Rorty's description of pragmatism in `Pragma-
 Notes to pages 104±109 193
tism, Relativism and Irrationalism' in Consequences of Pragmatism,
160±75.
56 Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge University Press, 1989),
51±2.
57 Cited by Charles Guignon and David Hiley, `Biting the Bullet:
Rorty on Private and Public Morality', in Reading Rorty, Alan R.
Malachowski (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
58 `Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality', in On Human
Rights, Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley (eds.) (New York: Basic
Books, 1993), 133±4.
59 Cf. Alston, A Realist Conception of Truth.
60 `Philosophy, the ``Other'' Disciplines, and Their Histories: A
Rejoinder to Richard Rorty', Soundings, 65 (1982), 138. A similar
criticism is made by Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of
Philosophy (London: Collins, 1985), 137.
61 This strategy is employed by Devitt in Realism and Truth.
62 John Polkinghorne, One World (London: SPCK, 1986), 21.
63 Ethics After Babel, 21ff.
64 `Auto-da-FeÂ: Consequences of Pragmatism', Reading Rorty, 30.
65 Ibid., 31.
66 Reading Rorty, 356.

5 virtue, tradition and god ± alasdair macintyre

1 `What distinguishes Professor MacIntyre is not the number of
beliefs he has doubted, but the number of beliefs he has embraced.
His capacity for doubt we share or surpass; it is his capacity for
faith which is distinctive and perhaps unrivalled', Ernest Gellner,
The Devil in Modern Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1974), 193, cited by John Horton and Susan Mendus (eds.), After
MacIntyre (Oxford: Polity Press, 1994), 1.
2 This approach to the discipline has evoked the criticism that the
history of ideas is being con¯ated with moral philosophy. Cf.
William K Frankena's review of After Virtue, Ethics, 93 (1983),
579±87.
3 Marxism: An Interpretation (London: SCM 1953), 62. In a recent
interview, MacIntyre has commented on his indebtedness to
Marx. `There are two points in which I remain very much at one
with the Marxist tradition of thought. The ®rst of these is in
general wanting to understand reasoning, especially practical
reasoning, as giving expression to forms of social practice . . .
Secondly, I think that Marxists have much that was relevant to say
about the nature and the function of the nation-state, and the
194 Notes to pages 110±114
Marxist critique of the modern nation-state as a form of govern-
ment is one which I accept, though in fact I have (sic) to think that
the Marxist critique is insuf®ciently radical', Thomas D Pearson,
`Interview with Alasdair MacIntyre', Kinesis, 20.2 (1994), 35.
4 His criticism of the narrow focus of the analytic tradition would
probably apply to much of the debate between McDowell and his
critics. `Analytic philosophy's strengths and weaknesses both
derive from its exclusive focus on a rigorous treatment of detail,
one that results in a piecemeal approach to philosophy, isolable
problem by isolable problem. Its literary genres are the pro-
fessional journal article and the short monograph', `Nietzsche or
Aristotle', The American Philosopher, Giovanna Borrodori (ed.) (Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1994), 144.
5 The explicit conclusion of After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981)
reveals a strong af®nity with earlier positions. `My own conclusion
is very clear. It is that on the one hand we still, in spite of the
efforts of three centuries of moral philosophy, and one of sociology,
lack any coherent rationally defensible statement of a liberal
individualist point of view, and that, on the other hand, the
Aristotelian tradition can be restated in a way that restores
intelligibility and rationality to our moral and social attitudes and
commitments', 259.
6 Philosophy, 33 (1958), 1±19, reprinted in Ethics, Religion and Politics:
Collected Philosophical Papers, vol. 3 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981),
26±42. MacIntyre's af®nity with Anscombe is already apparent in
a 1959 essay on Hume reprinted in Against the Self Images of the Age
(London: Duckworth, 1971), 109±24.
7 After Virtue, 110±11.
8 Basil Mitchell, Morality: Religious and Secular (Oxford: Clarendon,
1984), 63.
9 Ibid., 95.
10 For MacIntyre's summary of Aristotelian ethics see After Virtue,
146±64.
11 Ibid., 184.
12 `An Aristotle whose Ethics is read for the most part apart from his
Politics, and both as though his theology did not exist, is much
more unlike Aquinas than Aristotle in fact was', Whose Justice?
Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988) 166.
13 After Virtue, 187ff.
14 Ibid., 216.
15 Ibid., 222f.
16 Ibid., 263.
17 MacIntyre states that his early work was marked by insuf®cient
 Notes to pages 115±123 195
attention to the points of discontinuity in the chronological
transition from one line of thought to another. `The fundamental
shifts in central concepts and in basic principles are reported, but
they appear as pure facts, unscrutinized and not at all understood',
`Nietzsche or Aristotle', 144.
18 Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 8ff.
19 Ibid., 8.
20 Cf. `Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtue and
Goods', American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 56 (1992), 1±19.
21 Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 154. That this is now MacIntyre's
own position is con®rmed by his remarks about the emergence of
a theological conception of justice in the move from Aristotle to
Aquinas in `Which God Ought We To Obey and Why?', Faith and
Philosophy, 3.4 (1986), 369.
22 The `Unresolved Tension between the Purported Goals' of Whose
Justice? Which Rationality? is commented upon by Thomas S. Hibbs,
`MacIntyre, Tradition and the Christian Philosopher', The Modern
Schoolman, 68 (1991), 211±23.
23 Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 172.
24 Ibid., 174±5.
25 The lack of explanation here is described as `one of the most
egregious gaps in MacIntyre's reading of Thomas' by Hibbs,
`MacIntyre, Tradition and the Christian Philosopher', 221.
26 Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 171±2.
27 Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (London: Duckworth, 1990),
68.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 65ff.
30 Aeterni Patris, Para. 9, in Claudia Carlen (ed.), The Papal Encyclicals
(Raleigh: McGrath, 1981), 20.
31 This is discussed by MacIntyre in Three Rival Versions of Moral
Enquiry, 176ff.
32 Ibid., 189.
33 Ibid., 39.
34 Ibid., 207ff.
35 Ibid., 210.
36 `Epistemological Crises, Narrative and Philosophy of Science,'
Why Narrative? , Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregor Jones (eds.)
(Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1989), 145.
37 This appears to be the gist of MacIntyre's response to John
Haldane in `A Partial Response to my Critics', in After MacIntyre,
John Horton and Susan Mendus (eds.) (Polity Press, Oxford,
1994), 295±6.
196 Notes to pages 123±127
38 Cf. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 351.
39 `Incommensurability, Truth and the Conversation between Con-
fucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues', in Culture and Moder-
nity: East±West Philosophic Perspectives, Eliot Deutsch (ed.) (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1991), 109.
40 Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, 231±2.
41 Ethics After Babel (Cambridge: Clarke, 1988), 60ff. Cf. the useful
discussion of this problem by Stephen Fowl in `Could Horace talk
with the Hebrews? Translatability and Moral Disagreement in
MacIntyre and Stout', Journal of Religious Ethics, 19 (1991), 1±20.
For a discussion which af®rms a greater measure of incommensur-
ability, see John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Black-
well, 1990), chapter 11.
42 JuÈrgen Habermas, Justi®cation and Application: Remarks on Discourse
Ethics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 103±4.
43 Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 363.
44 `Incommensurability, Truth and the Conversation between Con-
fucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues', 113.
45 Martha Nussbaum, `Recoiling from Reason', New York Review of
Books, 19 (1989), 36±41. A similar charge of oppressiveness is
levelled against MacIntyre by Ian Markham, `Faith and Reason:
Re¯ections on MacIntyre's Tradition-Constituted Enquiry', Reli-
gious Studies, 27 (1991), 259±67.
46 John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1960), 189. I owe
this reference to David Hollenbach, `A Communitarian Recon-
struction of Human Rights: Contributions from Catholic Tradi-
tion', in Catholicism and Liberalism: Contributions to American Public
Philosophy, David Hollenbach and R. Bruce Douglas (eds.) (Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994), 143.
47 Jeffrey Stout comments, `When MacIntyre complains that one of
the ``most striking facts'' about our society is its lack of ``institu-
tionalized forums within which . . . fundamental disagreement
can be systematically explored and charted'', I have trouble
squaring his complaint with the facts of his career or the
existence of this journal', `Homeward Bound: MacIntyre on
Liberal Society and the History of Ethics', The Journal of Religion,
69 (1989), 232.
48 Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, 233. The practicality of this
view is questioned by Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches,
Christians Among the Virtues : Theological Conversations with Ancient and
Modern Ethics (University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 191±2.
49 `Openness and Constraint: Moral Re¯ection as Tradition-guided
 Notes to pages 127±130 197
Inquiry in Alasdair MacIntyre's Recent Works', Journal of Religion,
73 (1993), 523.
50 Thomas D. Pearson, `Interview with Alasdair MacIntyre', Kinesis,
20.2 (1994), 36.
51 Ibid., 42.
52 Brian Barry, `The Light That Failed', Ethics, 100 (1989), 160±8.
53 Ronald Dworkin, `Liberalism' in Public and Private Morality, Stuart
Hampshire (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1978), 113±43.
54 The leading exponent of this notion is probably Isaiah Berlin. Cf.
Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). For
a theological application of Berlin's ideas see George Newlands,
Generosity and the Christian Future (London: SPCK, 1997), chapter 10.
55 Cf. `Community, Law and the Idiom and Rhetoric of Rights',
Listening, 26 (1991), 96±110.
56 Cf. Max Stackhouse's complaint that in MacIntyre `there is not a
single reference to Moses, the Torah, the Old Testament, the Ten
Commandments, or any prophetic standards of judgment in this
entire corpus of work on Ethics in the West (let alone any
treatment of Solon, Justinian, Manu, Confucius, Muhammad,
etc.)! It is as if the idea of a universal moral law, present in the
mind of God, established over all creation, and written on the
hearts of all people had never been discussed, except as an absurd
speculation.' `Alasdair MacIntyre: An Overview and Evaluation',
Religious Studies Review, 18 (1992), 207.
57 After Virtue, 191.
58 Ibid., 192.
59 `Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtues and Goods',
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 66 (1992), 10. In another
context MacIntyre appears to concede a way in which an Aris-
totelian could recognise the language of human rights as `enabling
provisions, whereby individuals could claim a place within the life
of some particular community', `The Return to Virtue Ethics', The
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Vatican II, Russell E. Smith (ed.) (Brain-
tree: The Pope John Centre, 1990), 247.
60 This is most apparent in `How can we Learn what Veritatis Splendor
has to Teach', The Thomist, 58 (1994), 171±95. It can be argued that
the defence offered here of the exceptionless negative precepts
fails to deal adequately with cases of moral con¯ict and regret.
This criticism is developed by Fergus Kerr, who contrasts the
modernity of After Virtue with MacIntyre's later work. `Moral
Theology After MacIntyre: Modern Ethics, Tragedy and
Thomism', Studies in Christian Ethics, 8 (1995), 33±44.
61 Alasdair MacIntyre and Hans Fink, Introduction to Knud Ejler
198 Notes to pages 131±133
Lùgstrup, The Ethical Demand (University of Notre Dame Press,
1997), xv±xxxviii.
62 This also emerges in Lindbeck's review of Stout's After Babel.
`Liberal pluralism is anything but a utopian social order. It
constitutes a fragile and messy environment within which wheat
and tares both grow. Its advantage is that it is more open than any
other kind of polity to criticism and correction from within',
Theology Today, 46 (1989), 60.
63 The Nature of Doctrine (London: SPCK, 1984), 125.
64 Ibid., 131.
65 `Recoiling from Reason', 40. John Haldane, addressing a similar
problem, remarks that MacIntyre's recent trilogy requires to
become a tetralogy including a study on `The Truth in Thomism'.
`MacIntyre's Thomist Revival: What Next?', After MacIntyre, 92.
This lacuna in MacIntyre's philosophy is reinforced by the claims
of Bernard Williams and Simon Blackburn inter alios that the
initial implausibility of theistic assumptions necessitates the devel-
opment of entirely different positions.
66 Milbank's analysis of MacIntyre is discussed and generally en-
dorsed by Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches, Christians Among
the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics
(University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 61ff.
67 Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 346. The
`interruptive' nature of the Christian life is further emphasised in
Milbank's recent collection, The Word Made Strange: Theology,
Language, Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). A similar criticism of
MacIntyre is advanced by Michael Banner, Turning the World
Upside Down (and Some other Tasks for Dogmatic Christian Ethics),
Inaugural lecture (King's College, London, 1996), 66. Yet, in
suggesting that MacIntyre's rational ethics requires a `secure
bridgehead from which knowledge of good and evil can
advance', his criticism appears to construe MacIntyre as a quasi-
foundationalist. `Dogmatic ethics . . . does not need to live in a
world where there is a knowledge of the good and the right on
which it can build, or to which it can appeal', ibid. In a similar
vein, Hauerwas and Pinches seem to suggest that MacIntyre's
dialectical method commits him to the view that truth can be
attained by methods of philosophical reasoning which are uni-
versally accessible, Christians Among the Virtues, 61±2. This is hardly
fair, especially if one is happy to enlist MacIntyre's arguments
against post-Enlightenment liberalism in support of one's own
theological position.
68 `Moral Relativism, Truth and Justi®cation', Moral Truth and Moral
 Notes to pages 134±140 199
Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe, Luke
Gormally (ed.) (Dublin: Four Court Press, 1994), 24.
69 These connections are perhaps most apparent in `Moral Relati-
vism, Truth and Justi®cation', ibid.
70 Ian Markham uses something like this argument to criticise
Milbank for deploying arguments relating to the history of
sociology, the force of which cannot easily be explained by his
account of rationality. Plurality and Christian Ethics (Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 146. On the other hand, Markham's
attempt to argue on the basis of natural theology ± especially the
cosmological argument ± that only theology can save critical
realism from collapsing into nihilism, thus protecting the liberal
discourse of tolerance, is problematic. Is the apologetic force of
the cosmological argument not itself relative to theistic traditions
con®gured by the doctrine of creation? Is a critical realist likely to
convert to nihilism on account of doubts about Leibniz's principle
of suf®cient reason?
71 Theology and Social Theory, 341.
72 Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, 140.
73 `Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtues and Goods',
19.
74 First Principles, Final Ends and Contemporary Philosophical Issues (Mil-
waukee: Marquette University Press, 1990), 58.
75 Milbank argues that Christian (as opposed to Aristotelian) virtue
has the character of divine gift'. Cf. `Can Morality be Christian?',
The Word Made Strange, 227.
76 `How can we Learn what Veritatis Splendor has to Teach?', 175 and
190.

6 communitarianism and its critics

1 In this chapter I draw on material previously published as `Com-
munitarianism and Liberalism: Towards a Convergence?', Studies
in Christian Ethics, 10 (1997), 32±48.
2 For a clear overview of the differences between liberalism and
communitarianism see David Hollenbach, `Liberalism, Commu-
nitarianism, and the Bishops' Pastoral Letter on the Economy',
The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (1987), 19±40.
3 `Cross-Purposes: The Liberal±Communitarian Debate', in Liber-
alism and the Moral Life, Nancy L. Rosenblum (ed.) (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 159±82.
4 Ibid., 160.
5 E.g. Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift, Liberals and Communitarians;
200 Notes to pages 140±145
Daniel Shapiro, `Liberalism and Communitarianism', Philosophical
Books, 36.3 (1995), 145.
6 Michael Sandel, `The Procedural Republic and the Unencum-
bered Self ', in Communitarianism and Individualism, Shlomo Avineri
and Avner De-Shalit (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 1992), 19.
7 Charles Taylor, `Cross-Purposes: The Liberal±Communitarian
Debate', 167±8.
8 Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann
Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and
Commitment in American Life (Updated edition, Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1996), x.
9 Ibid., 333ff.
10 Robert D. Putnam, `Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disap-
pearance of Social Capital in America', Political Science (1995),
664±5.
11 Ibid., 679.
12 Jonathan Sacks, The Persistence of Faith (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1991), 55.
13 Faith in the Future (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1995), 27.
14 Norman Dennis and George Erdos, Families Without Fatherhood
(London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 1992), 36.
15 Ibid., 70.
16 Ibid., xii.
17 Cf. Lawrence Stone's study of marriage in England in the
eighteenth century, Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England
1660±1857 (Oxford University Press, 1993). `The most striking
feature of married life in eighteenth-century England was the
theoretical, legal, and practical subordination of wives to their
husbands, epitomized in the concept of patriarchy . . . Even worse
than the condition of the unhappily married, however, was the lot
of those women who were separated or divorced', 26.
18 Alasdair MacIntyre, `Part of the Answer but not enough for a
Cure: Review of Jonathan Sacks' `The Politics of Hope', Tablet (26
April 1997), 540±1.
19 Derek Philips, Looking Backward: A Critical Appraisal of Communitarian
Thought (Princeton University Press, 1993), 165.
20 Cf. Iris Marion Young, `The Ideals of Community and the Politics
of Difference', in Feminism and Postmodernism, Linda J. Nicholson
(ed.) (London: Routledge, 1990), 300±23.
21 I am expounding here the position Habermas sets out in `Dis-
course Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justi®cation',
Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1990), 43±115.
 Notes to pages 145±152 201
22 Ibid., 63.
23 Ibid., 103.
24 Cf. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1989), 88.
25 E.g. `Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical', Philosophy and
Public Affairs, 14 (1985), 246. This article is reproduced in Commu-
nitarianism and Individualism, Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shaht
(eds.) (Oxford University Press, 1992), 186±204.
26 Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993),
158.
27 Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford University
Press, 1989), 54.
28 Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmo-
dernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992), 74.
29 Ibid., 76ff.
30 Daniel Bell, Communitarianism and its Critics (Oxford Clarendon
Press, 1993), 8.
31 This is the thrust of Kymlicka's rejoinder to Bell. Ibid., Appendix
i, `Some Questions about Justice and Community', 208±21.
32 E.g. Marilyn Friedman, `Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dis-
locating the Community', Ethics (1989), 286ff.
33 It is reprinted in Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community: Rights,
Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda (London: Fontana, 1995)
251ff.
34 Ibid., 254.
35 Ibid., 256.
36 Ibid., xii.
37 Ibid., 258±9.
38 `A Partial Response to my Critics', After MacIntyre, John Horton
and Susan Mendus (eds.) (Oxford: Polity Press, 1994), 303.
39 Cf. Thomas D. Pearson, `Interview with Alasdair MacIntyre',
Kinesis, 20.2 (1994), 36. In his open letter to The Responsive Community
(Summer, 1991), 91, MacIntyre writes, `In spite of rumours to the
contrary, I am not and never have been a communitarian. For my
judgement is that the political, economic and moral structures of
advanced modernity in this country, as elsewhere, exclude the
possibility of realising any of the worthwhile types of political
community which at various times in the past have been achieved,
even if always in imperfect forms. And I also believe that attempt
to remake modern societies in systematically communitarian ways
will always be either ineffective or disastrous.' Cited by Daniel
Bell, Communitarianism and Its Critics, 17.
40 Cf. The introduction to the updated edition of Habits of the Heart.
202 Notes to pages 153±157
For a full discussion of Bellah's communitarianism see Bruce
Frohnen, The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism
(Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1996).
41 Habits of the Heart, xii.
42 The ways in which the market economy now tyrannises indi-
viduals rather than serving their needs is explored in Robert N.
Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and
Steven M. Tipton, The Good Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1991), 82±110.
43 E.g. `Communitarians and Medical Ethicists: Or Why I am None
of the Above', Dispatches from the Front (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1994), 158.
44 E.g. Where Do Resident Aliens Live? (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1996), 35.
45 This is the burden of Hauerwas' criticism of Bellah. Cf. `A
Christian Critique of Christian America', in Community in America:
The Challenge of Habits of the Heart, Charles H. Reynolds and Ralph
V. Norman (eds.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988),
250±65.
46 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 509.
47 I owe this criticism of Rawls to John Haldane, `The Individual,
the State and the Common Good', in The Communitarian Challenge
to Liberalism, Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey
Paul (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 59±79. Haldane
shows how Rawls' own description of what is practically reason-
able is loaded with assumptions that are far from uncontentious.
48 Kairos: Three Prophetic Challenges to the Church, Robert McAfee Brown
(ed.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 45. For a discussion of
Kairos with reference to the relationship between church and civil
society see Duncan Forrester, Beliefs, Values, Policies (Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1989), 50±64.
49 John Courteny Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Re¯ections on
the American Proposition (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960), 13.
50 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 397.
51 Eberhard JuÈngel, `The Gospel and the Protestant Churches of
Europe: Christian Responsibility for Europe from a Protestant
Perspective', Religion, State and Society, 21 (1993), 141±2.
52 Cf. Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority, Harro HoÈpp¯ (ed.) (Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991). One might have to qualify this
description by pointing to the way in which the scope of the
jurisdiction of church and state tends to converge in Calvin's
writings.
53 The Desire of the Nations (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 146.
 Notes to pages 151±163 203
54 For a striking defence of theological arguments for tolerance,
openness, and generosity, see George Newlands', Generosity and the
Christian Future (London: SPCK, 1997).
55 J. Courteny Murray, We Hold These Truths, 74.
56 This is particularly apparent in Roman Catholic social teaching.
For the argument that there is a theological basis for some
convergence of liberal and communitarian themes, see David
Hollenbach, `Liberalism, Communitarianism, and the Bishops'
Pastoral Letter on the Economy'.
57 A similar appreciation of liberal society is advanced by Oliver
O'Donovan in ways that are distinctively theological. The church
may thus have a stake in a liberal polity if not in standard liberal
political theory, The Desire of the Nations, 252ff.
58 `To be a person is to be a member of society, active within it in many
ways through numerous sets of relationships. The key contribution
that the bishops' letter makes to the liberal/communitarian
debate lies in conceptualizing justice in terms of this link between
personhood and the basic prerequisites of social participation',
ibid., 34.
59 This may well be consistent with MacIntyre's proposal that the
most adequate response for the moment is at the level of remaking
local co-operative institutions such as schools, clinics, and work-
places. `Community, Law and Rhetoric of Rights', Listening, 26
(1991), 110.
60 Karl Barth, `The Christian Community and the Civil Commun-
ity', Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings, 1946±52 (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1954), 32±3.

7 conclusion
1 I am indebted here also to Basil Mitchell, `Is There a Distinctive
Christian Ethic?', How to Play Theological Ping-Pong: And Other Essays
on Faith and Reason (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1990), 42±56.
2 Michael Banner has sought to enlist the support of the genealogists
to point to the radical insecurity of human knowledge outwith the
apprehension of divine revelation. This, however, is in some
tension with his highly impressive argument for an apologetic and
public role for dogmatic Christian ethics. Can one deploy, as I
would wish, his `rich range of argumentative strategies and
objectives' in public debate if one perceives that arena in
Nietzschean terms? Cf. Turning the World Upside Down (and Some
other Tasks for Dogmatic Christian ethics), Inaugural lecture, King's
College, London, 1996, 54ff.
204 Notes to pages 163±171
3 Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1967), 196.
4 Jean Porter has drawn attention to the danger of a lack of civility
in recent ecclesial ethics. `Moral Reasoning, Authority and Com-
munity in Veritatis Splendor', Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics
(1995), 201±19.
5 Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad (University of
Notre Dame Press, 1994), 9±10. Walzer makes the further point
that in moral discourse `thinness and intensity go together,
whereas with thickness comes quali®cation, compromise, com-
plexity, and disagreement', 6.
6 E.g. `The Concept of Rights in Christian Moral Discourse', in A
Preserving Grace: Protestants, Catholics and Natural Law, Michael Cro-
martie (ed.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 143±56; `Historical
Prolegomena to a Theological Review of ``Human Rights'' ',
Studies in Christian Ethics, 9.2 (1996), 52±65.
7 It is this inarticulate consensus which gives some plausibility to
Richard Rorty's comment that the question whether human
beings really have their rights enumerated in the Helsinki Declara-
tion is not worth raising. `Human Rights, Rationality and Senti-
mentality', in On Human Rights, Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley
(eds.), 116. Walzer appeals to the example of Amnesty Inter-
national as an example of a group deliberately restricting its aims
to elements of a thin morality which can command widespread
support. Thick and Thin, 49.
8 I am indebted here to David Hollenbach's `A Communitarian
Reconstruction of Human Rights: Contributions from Catholic
tradition', in Catholicism and Liberalism: Contributions to American
Public Philosophy, R. Bruce Douglas and David Hollenbach (eds.)
(Cambridge University Press, 1994), 127±50.
9 The differences between the tasks of evangelism and social criti-
cism are captured by JuÈrgen Moltmann's distinction between the
qualitative and quantitative missions of the church, The Church in
the Power of the Spirit (London: SCM, 1977), 150ff.
10 Ronald Thiemann, Religion in Public Life: A Dilemma for Democracy
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1996), 28. For a
British perspective on the relationship between religion and civil
society in the USA, see Ian Markham, Plurality and Christian Ethics
(Cambridge University Press, 1994), 83±106.
11 Charles Taylor, `Religion in a Free Society', in Articles of Faith,
Articles of Peace, J. D. Hunter and O. Guinness (eds.) (Washington:
Brookings Institution, 1990), 108.
 Notes to pages 172±173 205
12 This example is developed in an American context by Thiemann,
Religion in Public Life, 157ff.
13 Ironically, the prospect of the heir to the throne remarrying has
recently triggered a public debate on the desirability of (dis)establ-
ishment.
14 Following the Lockerbie memorial service, the Times reproduced
on its front page the complete text of the sermon preached by the
Moderator of the General Assembly, James Whyte. The sermon
re¯ected upon suffering based upon the grief of Jesus at the tomb
of Lazarus. It is reprinted in James Whyte, Laughter and Tears
(Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1993), 92±5.
15 `Gottes Sache in der Welt vertreten and doch nicht gegen die Welt
Krieg fuÈhren.' Cited by Georg Merz, Priesterlicher Dienst in kirchli-
chen Handeln (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1952), 13.
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 Index

abortion 49, 55, 59 Brunner, Emil 30, 178n

Aeterni Patris 119, 195n Bultmann, Rudolf 72, 189n
Albrecht, Gloria 67, 184n Burrell, David 183n, 185n
Alston, William 190n, 193n
Althaus, Paul 178n Calvin, John 156
Ambrose 17 Chadwick, Henry 175n
Anscombe, Elizabeth 110, 195n Childs, Brevard 175n, 188n
apologists 13, 18 Christology 5, 35f., 56f., 68ff.
Aquinas, Thomas 26, 37, 39, 46f., 111, Chrysostom, John 14f., 17
116ff., 132, 135, 136, 194n church xi, 5f., 9f., 18f., 66f., 74f, 156f., 159,
Aristotle 14, 95, 110, 111ff., 194n 162
Athanasius 39 Cicero 17
Augustine 17±20, 115, 176n Clapp, Rodney 183n
Ayer, A. J. 83, 88 Clement 17
communitarianism ixf., 1ff., 6ff., 125ff.,
Banner, Michael 135, 198n, 203n 138±160, 172
Barclay, John 176n community 2, 8, 52, 141, 159, 164, 174
Barmen Declaration 32, 63 Corner, Mark 181n
Barry, Brian 128, 197n Craig, Edward 190n
Barth, Karl 2, 22±33, 35, 43, 71, 72, 74, Cullmann, Oscar 176n
159, 166, 173, 177n, 178n, 180n, 187n,
189n, 203n, 205n Dalferth, Ingolf 181n
Barth, Markus 185n Dancy, Jonathan 191n, 192n
Basil of Caesarea 17 Davies, W. D. 176n
Bell, David 201n Dennis, Norman 143, 200n
Bellah, Robert 4, 141, 149, 152f., 154, 174, Descartes 77, 117, 119
200n, 202n Devitt, Michael 190n, 191n, 193n
Benhabib, Seyla 148, 201n Diognetus, Epistle to 18f.
Berlin, Isaiah 197n Dummett, Michael 81ff., 190n
Biggar, Nigel 177n, 178n Dworkin, Ronald 128, 197n
Blackburn, Simon 94, 98ff., 192n, 198n
Blake, William 175n Ebeling, Gerhard 187n
Bonaventure 44 emotivism 86f.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 30, 178n, 188n Erdos, George 143, 200n
Braaten, Carl 178n eschatology 17, 63, 158
Brown, Peter 16 Etzioni, Amitai 150f., 201n
Brown, William P. 184 eucharist 5, 69±70
Bruce, Steve 174 Evangelium Vitae 45

217
218 Index
feminism 149 Kuhn, Thomas 34, 39, 84f.
Formula of Concord 188n Kymlicka, Will 147, 201n
Forrell, George 175n
Forrester, Duncan 64, 202n Lash, Nicholas 182n
Fowl, Stephen 196n Leibniz, G. W. 77
Frankena, William 193n Levinas, Emmanuel 130
Frei, Hans 33, 35, 40, 179n, 180n, 181n, liberalism ixf., 48ff., 7f, 104f., 110f., 126,
185n, 188n 128, 131, 138ff., 149ff., 156ff., 164f.
Friedman, Marilyn 201n Lindbeck, George ix, 33±44, 53, 70, 77,
Frohnen, Bruce 202n 131ff., 163, 172, 179n, 180n, 198n
Lùgstrup, Knud 130, 198n
Geertz, Clifford 34, 35, 38, 181n Lovibond, Sabina 191n
Gellner, Ernest 193n Lovin, Robin 178n
Gill, Robin xi, 181n, 187n Luther, Martin 156
Grant, Robert 175n
Greer, Rowan 18f., 176n MacIntyre, Alasdair ix, 4f., 51, 61, 77, 95,
Guignon, Charles 108, 193n 105f., 109±37, 138, 140, 144, 145, 152,
Gustafson, James 64 154, 160, 162, 163f., 167, 169, 184n,
191n, 193n, 194n-199n, 200n, 201n,
Habermas, JuÈrgen 124, 145, 148, 158, 196n 203n, 204n
Haldane, John 195n, 198n, 202n Mackie, J. L. 95ff., 192n
Halsey, A. H. 143 Madison, James 171
HaÈring, Bernard 182n Mahoney, John 176n, 183n
Harman, Gilbert 96ff., 192n Marcion 17
Hartt, Julian, 54, 185n Markham, Ian 196n, 199n, 204n
Harvey, A. E. 175n Markus, R. A. 176n
Hauerwas, Stanley ix, xii, 5f., 48±79, 153, marriage 60, 73, 111, 142ff., 144
160, 178n, 181n, 184n, 185n, 186n, 189n, Marshall, Bruce 38f., 42, 180n
190n, 198, 292n Marx, Karl 109, 193n
Hays, Richard 12, 70, 188n McCabe, Herbert 182n
Hibbs, Thomas S. 195n McClendon, James 48, 65ff., 174n, 184n
Hiley, David 108, 193n McCormack, Bruce 177n
Hittinger, Russell 183n McCormick, Richard 182n
Hollenbach, David 196n, 199n, 203n, McDonald, J. I. H. 176n
204n McDowell, John 92ff., 191n, 192n, 194n
Horn, Nico 179n McGinn, Colin 190n
Hume, David 95ff., 117, 194n McNaughton, David 191n, 192n
Hunsinger, George 32f., 177n, 179n, 188n Meeks, Wayne 9ff., 15, 175n
HuÈtter, Reinhold 72, 183n, 189n Milbank, John ix, 132f., 135, 198n
Miscamble, Wilson 186n
intuitionism 86f Mitchell, Basil 110, 181n, 194n, 203n
Moberly, Walter 182n
Jenson, Robert 78, 184n, 187n Moltmann, JuÈrgen 204n
JuÈngel, Eberhard 156, 178n, 202n Mulhall, Stephen 199n
Justin Martyr 18 Murdoch, Iris 92, 191n
Murray, John Courtney 155, 158, 202n,
Kairos document 155, 202n 203n
Kant, Immanuel 25, 50, 61, 85, 91, 110,
117, 145f. narrative 54ff., 113f.
Kelsey, David 181n natural law 7, 119, 129f., 164, 165
Kerr, Fergus 197n Newlands, George 197n, 203n
Kleugten 119 Newman, John Henry 126, 196n
 Index 219
Newton-Smith, W. H. 190n Stevenson, C. L. 89f.
Niebuhr, H. Richard 65, 187n Stone, Lawrence 200n
Niebuhr, Reinhold 64 Stout, Jeffrey 75, 101, 106f., 123, 159, 192n,
Nietzsche, Friedrich 120 196n
Nussbaum, Martha 112, 126, 132, 196n Strawson, P. F. 190n
Suarez 119
O'Donovan, Joan Lockwood 167f. Swift, Adam 199n
O'Donovan, Oliver 157, 181n, 183n,
186n Taylor, Charles 4, 102, 139, 140, 146, 154,
orders of creation 7, 29f. 156, 192n, 200n, 201n, 204n
Osborn, Eric 176n Tertullian 19
Theissen, Gerd 175n
paci®cism 57f., 73 Thiemann, Ronald 40, 171, 181n, 185n,
Pearson, Thomas 194n, 197n, 201n 186n, 204n, 205n
Philips, Derek 144, 200n Tocqueville, Alexis de 3, 4, 174n
Pinches, Charles 196n, 198n Torrance, Iain xi, 189n
Pincoffs, Edmund 183n Toulmin, Stephen 76, 190n
Placher, William 179n Tracy, David 41
Polkinghorne, John 106, 191n tradition 53, 114ff., 123, 133, 164, 166
Porter, Jean 126f., 182n, 183n, 204n translation 122ff., 132f.
post-liberalism ix, 33±43, 70 truth, concept of 36ff., 53ff., 117f., 121,
pragmatism 102ff. 124f., 133f., 162f.
Prichard, H. A. 87
Putnam, Hilary 86 Veritatis Splendor 43±7, 136
Putnam, Robert 141, 200n virtue 51ff., 111ff.

Raphael, D. D. 90, 191n Wainwright, Geoffrey 180n

Rasmusson, Arne 66, 174n Walzer, Michael 75, 140, 162, 165, 204n
Rawls, John 140, 147, 154 Warnock, Mary 191n
realism 7, 37f., 80±108, 120, 133, 161f. Webber, Robert E. 183n
rights, 9, 78, 129, 167ff. Webster, John 27, 177n, 178n
Rorty, Richard 85n, 102ff., 192n, 193n, Werpehowski, William 177n, 178n, 185n
204n Whyte, James 205n
Ryle, Gilbert 181n Williams, Bernard 98, 107, 193n, 198n
Willimon, William 62, 185n, 186n
Sacks, Jonathan 142f., 144, 200n Willis, Robert 177n
sacraments 5, 11, 34, 44, 136 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 34, 35, 39
Sandel, Michael 4, 140, 200n Wright, Crispin 190n
Scripture 2, 25, 35, 43f., 68, 71f. Wuthnow, Robert 174
sectarianism 36, 64ff
Shapiro, Daniel 200n Yoder, John Howard 48, 50, 57, 58, 62,
Sidgwick, Henry 119 184n, 185n, 186n
Stackhouse, Max 190n, 197n Young, Iris Marion 200n
 new studies in christian ethics

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1. Rights and Christian Ethics

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2. Biblical Interpretation and Christian Ethics
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3. Power and Christian Ethics
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4. Plurality and Christian Ethics
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5. Moral Action and Christian Ethics
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6. Responsibility and Christian Ethics
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7. Justice and Christian Ethics
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8. Feminism and Christian Ethics
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9. Sex, Gender and Christian Ethics
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10. The Environment and Christian Ethics
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11. Concepts of Person and Christian Ethics
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12. Priorities and Christian Ethics
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13. Community, Liberalism and Christian Ethics
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