Australia – whose land? (part 2)

Themes: Ethics

series begins here

The ethics of Indigenous reconciliation, and the ethics of reconciliation in general involves the exploration of the relation between power and subjectivity. What it means to be a ‘good ethical Hearer’, i.e., the recipient of moral exhortation, is inseparable from the recognition of ourselves as Wrong-doers or Wronged with regard to particular moral events. And to be ‘The Wrong-doer’ or ‘The Wronged’ is to find ourselves inextricably entwined in relationships of power and powerlessness. This analysis is focussed on the dynamics of hearing moral exhortation as a Wrong-doer. The simple reason for this is that in hearing moral exhortation regarding Indigenous reconciliation, that is who I am.

Why is it that when you’ve hurt someone very badly, and you know this, you can’t bear to look them in the eye? The sight of the person that you’ve wronged is, in some mysterious way, painful to you, isn’t it? I think it’s because every time you see that person you are unavoidably reminded of the wrong you did, and more than that, you are forced to contemplate a part of your character that has been given concrete expression in the body of that other person. No matter how much remorse you feel, no matter how much recompense you make: you will always be the Person-Who-Did-That-Wrong. That act will be part of your identity, your Name. And the only person who can release you from that prison is the person against whom you did the wrong. In the person of the Wronged you are finally confronted with your own powerlessness: the knowledge that the true knowledge about yourself is the knowledge of you possessed by your enemy. You can never be more than, you can never escape from being other than what they say that you are.

Wronging another creates a particular power relationship that is not merely analytic to mastery by the Wrong-doer over the Wronged. It marks the The Wrong-doer as having a particular character, an identity, and the key to that identity lies utterly within the power of the Wronged. That is why ‘recognition’ is a central ethical concept in situations of conflict and reconciliation. Even when distributive justice has been pursued with regard to other goods, the Wronged will still pursue recognition, indeed they will pursue it even with the sacrifice of other goods. Why? Because extracting recognition is the great moment of reversal in the power relation generated by the wrong. It is the capture of the Wrong-doer by the Wronged through the knowledge that their act of mastery (the wrong) has alienated their ability to self-determine identity. His identity is fixed as ‘The Wrong-doer’ and only the Wronged can ever do anything about that reality.

The Wronged holds the power to release you precisely because they now hold the key to who you will be. The person you have wronged has the power to place your act within a history. That they would choose to do this is inconceivable. Indeed, the act of Wrong-doing is itself an act that seeks to destroy history. In doing wrong you have sought mastery, self-determination in a way that seeks to fix your power over another person and over the forces that have generated your common life. In wrong-doing you have sought to fix a constellation of relationships for your advantage. You have waged war on history, on its dynamic ecology of relationships, on its progressions of identity through interdependence. You have refused to listen to the word spoken from the lips of all the people around you that tells you who you are. And ultimately, you have refused to listen to The Word, who tells you who you are.
Only the person you have wronged has the power to respond to your act in such a way that your history can begin again. They can forgive you. To be forgiven places my act of wrong-doing within a new history whereby is it transfigured and becomes for me a marker of my identity as someone who is loved. The power of the Wronged which has captured me and threatens to fix me in my identity as The Wrong-doer is exercised as a new power of recognition, the gift of a new name: The-Person-Who-Is-Forgiven. It is an utterly free movement of the Wronged. It cannot be given in the absence of recognition, but it is not in any sense constrained by recognition or necessitated by it.

That is why the recognition of yourself as Wrong-doer is so utterly terrifying. It is the surrender of self-determination to another that is a contradiction of myself, and therefore the loss of what we believe to be the most precious performance of human power. It has all the appearances of a suicide, and may in fact turn out to be so. In this light, the withholding of any recognition of wrong-doing may appear infinitely preferable. Is it better to suffer the breaking of our land through the toleration of injustice, and therefore suffer a perversion and impoverishment at the heart of our national life, or to come to a proper recognition of who we are and face the possibility of being fixed in that knowledge forever?
Is it “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav’n”?

Those are the stakes at play in hearing moral exhortation regarding Indigenous reconciliation. There is nothing more terrifying to the human soul than to be without power. It is a contradiction of our assumed divinity – the contradiction of our ability to judge rightly, to determine good and evil. The almost irresistable temptation in the face of this experience is to seek a new form of mastery: usually violence or asceticism. And, at their core, these forms of mastery underpin the two ‘civilised’ reactions of critique or confession that I described in the previous post.

photo by Shyald

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Review: Australia – whose land? (part 1)

Themes: Ethics

Last Monday night (10th August) Dr Peter Adam delivered the Second Annual John Saunders Lecture in the Chapel of Morling College. His topic was Australia – whose land? The following day a very brief report of the lecture appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald website and in the week following various references to the event have continued to bubble up on websites around the world. An article even appeared in the Church of England Newspaper (UK) replete with opinions from Keith Windschuttle: “the politics of Aboriginal romanticism that Rev Adam endorses have little basis in reality”. The ‘History Wars’ have now come to the Anglican Communion (as if they didn’t have enough other things to argue about).

The level of reportage has generally been very poor, virtually every account has focussed on the series of recommendations that Dr Adam put forward at the end of his address. Particular attention has been given to Dr Adam’s call for the descendants of those who have arrived since British colonisation to make recompense, including asking the traditional owners of this country whether they would like the later immigrants to leave. Unfortunately, the radical nature of Dr Adam’s suggestions has overshadowed the substance of his lecture, particularly the theological, ethical, and social assumptions upon which it rests.

Dr Adam delivered a powerful lecture with gravity and sensitivity. The entire address was a stunning example of disciplined Christian ethical argument. The great shame of the evening was that there were only about 50 people there to hear it. The full text of the lecture was made available on the night and is also available electronically from the Ridley College website. I strongly encourage people to read it.

It is never easy to give an academic lecture on guilt to a room full of guilty people. There are two quite predictable reactions from the audience: either, a civilised denial expressed through detailed lines of questioning designed perhaps to probe for loopholes in the argument under the guise of academic rigour, or at least to elevate the discussion from the concrete (my guilt), to the less confrontational and abstract (‘Guilt’). Alternatively, hearers engage in a detailed self-examination that quickly becomes self-flagellation, designed, I think, as a public confession and work of penance but concealing within it a ‘self’-re-gathering/reinforcing act of judgement against those who cannot bring themselves to make a similar act of contrition. It’s much easier to say ‘sorry’ to a room full of civilised, academic (white) people against whom you’ve done nothing, and moreover, it gives you a certain gratifying moral power.

My natural reactions tend toward the former. After hearing Dr Adam speak I had a mind full of questions and exceptions. It was hard work just to sit still and consider his argument. I think that this was a good discipline for me to practice. However, I think we do need to go further. And that requires us to think a little bit further about the dynamics of moral discourse.

Our thinking about the processes of moral reasoning often focus on the active dimension of the task (what are the marks of a sound moral argument? what are the virtues of a good moral reasoner?). However, our participation in moral reasoning does not only occur from this ‘active’ direction. Sometimes (often?) our engagement with moral reasoning comes when we are the focus of moral exhortation: when, for example, we are called upon to do justice or make recompense. How do we engage with moral reasoning from this direction? What are virtues of a good moral Hearer?

Lest, you think that this takes us a long way away from the ethics of Indigenous Reconciliation, I think we will find that the central ethical difficulty in our practice of ‘Ethical Hearing’ is also the central problem for our discussion of the ethics of reconciliation.

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Ethical Ladders and Idolatry

Themes: Ethics

How do you apply acid to a moral system or teacher of morality? How do you work out whether this or that particular claimant to moral insight really has guidance for us all?
I wonder if it has something to do with moral prioritisation.
Here’s the thought:
1. Ultimately all ethical systems are systems of prioritisation

[The debates in ethics are over what is being structured. Are we dealing with an ontological hierarchy or an epistemological one? Does the system of priorities exist external to ourselves, or is it generated from within (whatever either of those concepts might mean)?]

2. We can detect this feature when we note that mature ethical reflection cannot avoid the conclusion that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are terms in binary opposition, inter-defined, such that ‘bad’ only functions when there are things higher in the ethical hierarchy, ‘good’ only functions when there are things relatively lower. Everything prioritised in any ethical system is capable of being viewed as either more or less ‘good’ or ‘bad’ other than absolute being and absolute negation.

3. An interesting question arises as to whether there is a point that divides the hierarchy between greater and lesser degrees of ‘good’ and greater and lesser degrees of ‘bad’. I.e., is there a point at which the totality of priorities above can be viewed as ‘good’ in relation to the totality of priorities below.
Well, no, surely any point can be viewed that way.
But if so, there must exist another ‘total’, i.e., non-relative conception of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to which differing parts of the ethical hierarchy correspond.

4. Interestingly, we do speak of certain types of things as ‘greater and lesser goods’ and ‘greater and lesser bads/evils’. In doing so we seem to assume an absolute point within the hierarchy.

5. If we accept (4) as a valid intuition then in Ethics we have to deal with two types of reasoning: first, a system of prioritisation; second, a system of recognition. An ‘Ethics’ needs to deal adequately with both types of reasoning.

6. The above thought leads to something far more interesting: two ‘goods’ (two things that belong within the totality of the ‘Good’) still may require prioritisation with regard to each other. I.e., there may be situations in which both ‘goods’ are mutually exclusive. This is the essence of the ‘hard case’ in ethics.

Now we flip everything on its head:
Assuming that (6) is a feature of any mature ethical system, then prima facie, there may be cases where the ‘love of god’ and the ‘love of neighbour’ are mutually exclusive.

The ultimate test of a conception of god (i.e., a theology broadly defined so that it may even include non-religious ‘gods’) is whether these two cases are, in fact, mutually exclusive.

Idolatry always leads these two ‘goods’ being placed in tension or competition.

[NB, we have taken formal features of moral reasoning, and are now using them assess theological reasoning.
Wild, dangerous, irresponsible, unworkable?]

When the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they came together in the same place. And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test Him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34-40 HCSB)

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Thoughts on Suffering and Hope

Themes: Ethics, The Cross

1. Christians are saved into suffering – to be Christian is to put on Christ – to join with him in suffering.

The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—seeing that we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. (Romans 8:16-17 HCSB)

2. Christians are saved into hope – described as the hope of glory (v18), freedom of God’s children (v21), adoption, the redemption of our bodies (v23) – ultimately a compound description of the hope of resurrection.

This hope connects us more fervently than ever with the creation around us – when a mother goes into labour and confronts the long night of pain in the hope and joy of delivering a new life into being, she is acting out, she is connected into, the experience of this whole created world – the groaning, the pains and convulsions, as the creation waits to bring forth new children, the new children of God. There is a proper, Christian, love of this world – she is wracked with pain, sweating, struggling, crying out, but her hard labour by God, who has appointed her to nurture us, to sustain us. It is from the pain and struggle of this world, this creation, that God will deliver his new life. This is the non-idolatrous sense in which Christians may speak of ‘Mother Earth’. And any child of God who does not love and care for this world, even in her broken and pain-wracked state, is an ungrateful, unworthy child.

3. Christian Hope is not without foundation because we have been saved into suffering. In fact our sufferings are witnesses that we have been caught up into the plan of God – we have begun to follow Jesus on the path of pain that leads to resurrection. And further, God has given us his Spirit (vv26-27), a glimpse of the future, who shows us what it is to be adopted as a child of God – to have access, to be known and heard – and though our feet now tread the path of the cross, daily dying with Jesus, our groans, sighs, tears are not unheard or ignored – rather they are amplified, shouted right into the heart of the Father God who loves us, who loves this broken world – and who will not fail to answer his children. When the New Creation comes it will be God’s answer to the prayers of his children.

4. Why then does he wait – why does he not answer us now?
Because it is his will to conform us to the image of his Son – to train our humanity to its true shape.

For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30 HCSB)

These verses should be read in the light of the surrounding discussion, they should be read in the light of the Cross. To be conformed to the image of Christ is not to participate in some amorphous divine nature, or to merely share his moral excellence, it is to be conformed to The Cruciform. “Those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of” …a Broken Man on a Cross.
It is from the Cross that we are then called, justified, and glorified.
We follow the steps of the Crucified, Justified, Risen and Ascended (Glorified), Christ.
Read vv 16-17 again:

The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—seeing that we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. (Romans 8:16-17 HCSB)

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Review: Resurrection and Moral Order

Themes: Ethics, Reviews

A review for WebSalt:

Resurrection and Moral Order: an Outline of Evangelical Ethics by Oliver O’Donovan

When it comes to books, I’m a chronic margin-scribbler. Sometimes though, it only takes me until I finish the book before I go back to discover that my earlier interaction with it was completely unhinged. Actually, maybe that’s a measure of a really good book: the number of marks you’ve made in the margin, and how wildly wrong you think they are when you’ve finished. A good book changes the way you think, certainly that’s been my experience with Resurrection and Moral Order. I’m now on my second reading, I’ve got multiple layers of marginal notes, some of which are completely contradictory, and I’ve underlined so much of the text that I’m suspicious about the non-underlined sections. Maybe I should underline them just in case I’m missing the point?

At Uni, studying Philosophy and Ethics, I was fed a steady diet of scepticism and anti-realist epistemology. Consequently, any appeal to an idea of ‘how things are’ as a basis for right and wrong has tended to strike me as naïve, not a little oppressive, and seriously unhip. For me then, reading O’Donovan was like watching someone take a blow-torch to my house of cards.

O’Donovan writes from the clear conviction that what God has done in Christ very clearly declares how things are in the world, and how they will be. And this declaration of how things are in Christ has an inescapable implication for what we must do: the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ calls us to repentance and the obedience of faith. You cannot seriously claim to be talking about ethics as a Christian without confronting the truth that this ‘is’ entails a very particular ‘ought’. With this insight, O’Donovan strides out to bat. This is not a book that sets out to give guidance on appropriate Christian behaviour, or how Christians should deal with hard ethical cases. Rather, this is an exercise in what is generally known as ‘meta-ethics’ what O’Donovan calls ‘Christian moral concepts’. That is, the types of things that Christians are committed to believing about the world, and particularly about the ethical aspect of the world, in the light of what God has declared to be the case in Christ. As such, it is an exercise in elucidation, not a new framework for ethics, but making clear the framework presupposed by the gospel. The great value of this project lies with the recognition that Christian ethics will inevitably be crippled when we seek to build it upon underlying structures of epistemology and ontology that have no space for Christian claims about the world, i.e., the kinds of things we are taught in Philosophy courses at Uni.

O’Donovan’s moral realism is a breath of fresh air – here is someone willing to take seriously the epistemological and ontological implications of the gospel, to reason powerfully from these commitments to a coherent framework of moral concepts, and to argue for their universal validity and applicability. Not many people have the guts to talk like him.
If you’re a philosophy student, or doing a course in ethics, try reading his brief excursus into the relation between deontological and consequentialist ethics (pp. 137-139). Here O’Donovan comes closest to engaging with some of classic problems of modern moral philosophy and it’s at moments like this that you can catch a glimpse of the incredible philosophical depth behind this ‘outline’.

Resurrection and Moral Order is certainly not a book for every reader, but if you’re studying anything at Uni that touches on philosophy or ethics, do yourself a favour: make sure you read this book before you graduate. Then go back and read your margin notes – see how much you change.

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Politics and the Pulpit

Themes: Ethics

Politics and the Pulpit (Once Again) – Stanley Fish Blog – NYTimes.com

Stanley Fish wrote an interesting article last week on a developing debate in the US over the right of Preachers to advocate for particular presidential candidates from the pulpit. Under legislation introduced by Lyndon Johnson in 1954, any Pastor who endorses a particular candidate during a sermon potentially jeopardizes the ‘tax exempt’ status of their church.

“Now, in the middle of the 2008 election, several dozen pastors are challenging the amendment by speaking out in the pulpit in favor of a candidate (usually John McCain) and by sending the I.R.S. copies of the sermons in which they openly cross the line the law has drawn since 1954. At the same time, a bill (H.R. 2275) repealing the Johnson amendment has been introduced by Walter Jones, Republican of North Carolina. The bill has been referred to the House Ways and Means Committee where it awaits action.”

The issue ultimately revolves around the separation of Church and State. The difficulty, according to Fish, is that the issue cannot be resolved by debate – each side works from a completely different conception of what the separation means. The only possible resolution is political – one party will overrule the other. If this happens through a process to which both sides share a higher-level commitment then the resolution will be relatively peaceful.

I wonder if a lot of the debates that Christians have with each other aren’t a lot like this? Lately I’ve been watching guys at College debating six day creationism and the roles of women in ministry. In my context, people agree that Christians can disagree on these questions and this suspends the need to find a resolution. However, if resolution was required then I have to think that the only means to achieve it would be straightforwardly political.
What process would you commit to, such that you would be willing to accept a ruling against you on one of these matters? Or would you aim for separation so that each side could maintain its position?

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