For Neal

The Post Modern Fundamentalist

I think the fundamentalism of the current seminary student at Southeastern shares much in common with the basic approach of Stanley Hauerwas (though without the profanity).

Herbert McCabe provides an understanding of what might loosely be described as a “Post-Modern” ethics. McCabe proposes that ethics is language. McCabe argues that human beings are distinct among animals because of their linguistic ability. Animals (non-humans) are genetically preconditioned to recognize what is good or bad. By contrast linguistic beings are able to create the significance of their shared life. Beyond simply communicating, language creates the meaning.

Three complimentary components shape language, nature, history, and biography. The first component of nature is the physiological properties that function to enable a human being to communicate. Humans have certain genetic features that make it possible for them to be linguistic beings. But this genetic precondition is only a part. Each person is born into a linguistic community for example McCabe was born into a place where English was the language. This language had a long history that he was born into. This history shaped the way that he as a genetically preconditioned possibility became actualized. This historical development is a component of his linguistic ability. The third element to the formation of linguistic communication is a person’s biography. By this McCabe introduces how a language can expand. As poet uses language to express meaning in new ways, so a person’s biography can form new meanings for words.

McCabe’s understanding of the linguistic uniqueness of human beings provides the theme for his proposal of ethics as language. He proposes that ethics is the study of human behavior as communication. Actions do not simply get something done, rather they communicate something. McCabe argues that ethics is concern with why actions are meaningful. He proposes that ethics is similar to literary criticism. The literary critic does not simply identify good or bad poetry, but rather helps one to enter into the poem’s significance. Ethics as language provides the best approach to ethics because it is the quest for the ultimate meaning of human communication which McCabe argues the linguistic ability of human beings is what constitutes their being in created in the image of God.

This idea of McCabe’s may be seen as the touchstone for why Hauerwas thinks modern theology has confused ethics. It is commonly held (according to Hauerwas) that theology is where one develops a metaphysics, and then subsequently one may if so inclined speculate on the practical implications. Seminary curriculum are designed in such a way that reinforce this distinction one first studies Biblical Studies, and Systematic Theology and then one will be introduced to ethics. According to Hauerwas the development of Christian ethics as a distinctive discipline is a recent development that has emerged from two major concerns one pastoral and one philosophical.

The philosophical influence can be identified by looking at the thought of two major figures John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant. Let us first look to Kant. Presumably, in an effort to articulate an ethic separate from the religious conviction that had fueled the post Reformation wars in Europe, Kant proposed an account of moral obligation based on reason alone. For Kant morality stood as the center of religious albeit secondarily to any positive religious conviction. For Kant foundational to any morally responsible action was the need for individuals to make autonomous decisions. Hauerwas describes this as you should have no story except the story you had when you had no story. The individual who is truly liberated will think for him or her self. In this self liberating commitment one’s moral decisions should not be based on religious formation, but what Kant called the categorical imperative. This categorical imperative conveyed the maxim that one should act only according to that by which you would act if it were to become a universal law. This philosophical idea that morals should be self-evident apart from any religious teaching both influenced the west as well as found great resonance in the pluralistic communities of the second half of the twentieth century. The categorical imperative seemed to provide a moral ethic that could both be Christian and anything else. A second philosophical influence on Christian ethics came from John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. This philosophical commitment proposes that one should do what is best for the most number of people. Whether one finds Kant’s approach more appealing or Mill’s the result is the same. As with Kant’s categorical imperative the major importance is that these approaches to ethics separate morality from a specifically Christian story.

Kant and Mill represent examples of the philosophical convictions that shaped the separation of Christian ethics from the Christian story (I am using story as an abbreviation for the historical claims of Christianity…and reader beware I am not sure H would approve). The second stream of thought that influenced this distinctive field of Christian ethics came from protestant pastors at the turn of the twentieth century. These leaders responding to the poverty and social dislocation resulting from the industrial revolution tried to Christianize the social order. The message began as a call for society to embody the principles associated with Jesus’ ministry, as well as the biblical witness of the ancient prophets message of justice for the poor. In time this call for social change became connected with the social sciences. As the philosophers led Christians to separate metaphysics from ethics, in time the social sciences accomplished the same thing by identifying fundamental underlying reasons for ethics apart from the Christian story. Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Neibuhr, H.R. Neibuhr all contributed significantly to this development. While their concern came from a pastoral desire to call Christians to serve the poor, their description of the problem came to separate ethics from the Christian story.

Herbert McCabe’s approach to ethics as language provides an alternative. Hauerwas’ concern with both the ethical approaches that have come from philosophical concerns and those that have come from pastoral concerns is that they both have functionally resulted in a similar effect on the Christian ethicist to separate the model for ethics from the story of the church. This is acutely seen for Hauerwas in the separating of ethics from worship as if the two are distinct disciplines. Liturgy and Ethics are the same there should be no need for the conjunction and. Ethics is worship. Or I think he would actually prefer worship is ethics. Hauerwas prefers McCabe’s proposal because his discussion of language makes intelligible the demand that the story of the church form the central unity for ethics. Hauerwas proposes that all ethics is description, and it is in worship that Christians learn to speak truthfully; thus worship is a precondition for living faithfully. For McCabe the moral life is predicated on the linguistic communities ascription of meaning to the culture. McCabe disagrees with the idea that language is the communication of private thoughts. People certainly have private thoughts, but they are thinking using language. The language that is formed by their nature, history, and biography. Fundamentally at the basic level of private thoughts the individual is acting as a part of the community. For Hauerwas this basic understanding provides a strong support for the idea that ethics is about the formation of language. The practices of worship form this new history and biography to shape the linguistic community.

And this is why I think there is a great similarity between fundamentalists and Stanley Hauerwas. For the fundamentalist they would I think substitute the Bible in place of worship but the practical effect is the same. One comes to ascribe meaning through the Bible. Apart from the Bible humans cannot ascribe meaning truthfully.