Forelesning holdt på Angelicum i Roma, 9. oktober 2008.

LECTIO CORAM: ”CHRISTIAN ETHICS: ETHICS OF DISCIPLESHIP OR UNIVERSAL ETHICS?”

Reverend Fathers!

Let me state immediately that the title ”Christian Ethics” might as well have been: ”Catholic Ethics” – to me, those two words – ’Christian’ and ’Catholic’ – are synonyms. I just want to say that I have no confessional points to make; I simply want to underline the general theological contents of the subject.

Moreover: The expression: ”universal Ethics”, of course, comes close to the more traditional: ”Natural Ethics” – indicating in both cases the ”common ground” of human ethics.

In Modernity, ethics have been more focused and more controversial than dogmatics, morals more discussed in the broader public than faith. Probably because faith has been cosidered as ”finished”, out of question for serious people and in the public shere. Faith is a matter of subjecitive ’taste’ –ethics and morals concern everybody. Such has been the overall perspective.

This has been a policy of religion handed down to us as part of the Enlightenment heritage: There has been an effort to establish universal values – aesthetically, politically –and ethically – based on non-religious principles; a kind of purely rational univeralism, freed from theological and metaphysical references. Ethics have become a question of moral philosohy; ethics have become a kind of ”substitute religion”. Ethics – existing all by itself, as it were.

I think that by now it is opportune and necessary to underline the theological (and spiritual) substance and grounding of Christian Ethics. Lest we shall end up with a totally impersonal and theoretical understanding of morality. A kind of dry philosophy, a ”world view” or something similar.

The first point I want to state is:

1. Christian Ethics – The Rule of Life for the Covenant People.

The background for Christian morality and ethics is obviously to find in the Old Testament tradition; in the history and institutions of Israel (”Israel – kata sarka”, ’ according to the flesh); Israel as the people of God.

To Israel is entrusted the Decalogue and its further development and fullness in the entire Torah. This handing over of the Law to the chosen people is part of a full and deep religious experience (). Israel had been ’baptized’ and reedemed through the passage through the (Red-) Sea; the people had experienced the liberating act of JHVH (the Lord, as I prefer to say henceforth…), and was gathered around the holy mountain (mount Sinai in the desert, in order ”to worship” The God of Israel (). The liberation of Israel had from the beginning a cultic destination, a cultic mission, so to say.

When the Decalogue is handed over to Moses – and through Moses to the people – it happens in a context of religious experience; an experience of awfull holiness (’stay away from the burning mountain”), an experience of a mystical encounter with God (the face of Moses shining out with the Glory, the Doxa, the Shekinah of the Lord, from their meeting on the mountain); and the Covenant is sealed with a sacrifice; the sacrificial blood sprinkled on the people, as to include the people in the covenant, to take it in to community with God, to sanctify it.

The fundmental Law, given in the Decalogue, is developed and broadened in the later Mosaic tradition, as it is fixed particularily in the textual ’corpus’ of The Pentateuke. The rich pattern of moral and cultic prescriptions and practices are aiming on the maintainace of the Covenant–fidelity. Faith, love and confidence is always there – not only legalistic observations.

And this is exactly the message and mission of the Prophets: A constant an intensive remembrance, an ’anamnesis,’ of the Covenant; calling the Covenant People back to the faithful relation to the Covenant God. This whole process or history, demonstrates the personal dimension in the relationship between God and his people: Love, frustration, anger, jealousy, patience, impatience, strenght, weakness. Living the Law is a love affair! ()

(Psalm 119; also the Law as adherence to God…)

2. Christian Ethics – Following the Messiah (Sequella Christi)

The Law is ’personalized’ in the figure of the Servant of the Lord; he is the living expression and demonstration of the Law; the Law as free obedience to the Law-giver, to God. The Servant can be interpreted as the people of Israel, a collective personality, but the individual aspect can also be emphasized – as it has been in the Christian and New Testament interpretation.

The Messianic Servant is presented as the obedient, even suffering, disciple: ”Morning by morning he [namely: the Lord] awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious…”(Isaiah 50, 4-5). Messianic discipleship means active, attentive, total, existencial listenening.. In the Bible, listening/hearing and doing is one and the same thing, a unity. Furthermore, the messianic discipleship implies a possible selfsacrifice, a holocaust, a surrender which transcends the reasonable, the purley rational, the purley ”human”. From the NT-context we remember Jesus resisting the messianic temptation: to avoid suffering; when he was tempted in the desert, and when the demon tempted him in the person of Peter: ”Get behind me Satan, you are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men” (Matthew 17, 23).

Once again: Moral conduct, ethical behaviour, practising the Law is a question of a deep relationship, of communion. The Servant, having overcome all disobedience, is witnessing: ”Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God” (Isaiah 50, 10).

Jesus is taking on the role both as the ”new Moses” (Hebrews, chapter 3) and as the true Messiah; not least in his preaching, in his prophetic office. As Moses preached to the covenant people and admonished them on the plains of Moab; ”beyond the Jordan in the wildernes (Deuteronomy 1), Jesus led the crowds – a typology on the new pilgrim people – in to the mountain areas of Galilee. He sat dow, in a teaching position, as a Rabbi (’rabbai’), adressing his disciples, the core of the messianic people. And he preaches, solemnly, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5- 7).

The Mount can here be seen as the mount Sinai or Horeb of the New Covenant, and Jesus, the new Moses, declares and proclaims the Covenant Law, the Rule of Life for the new Israel. It is not difficult to recognize the main ethical ideas from the Decalogue; in fact, the Sermon on the Mount can be understood as an exegesis, as a wider application and out-deepening of the Decalogue, indeed of the Torah – with its focus on total and radical love of God and of the neighbour. Only that the concept of ”neighbour” is drastically enlarged to embrace even ”the enemy”. The ’enemy’ of the faithful as we know it from the Psalms – but, I think, also the ’enemy’ as the foreigner, as ’the Nations’, the ’Gentiles’. In the later New Testament material we hear about Christ as the reconciler, who reconciles both Jews and the Gentiles to God ”in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (Ephesians 2, 14 and ff).

This shows us the universal and eschatological ”widening out” of God’s covenant will. In this light we shall even understand Jesus’ teaching on marriage and celibacy, and on radical poverty.

Christian ethics as we meet them here are ethics of discipleship, ethics of the Covenant people; eschatological ethics! This ethical life can only be lived in companionship and in union with the Messiah, with Jesus: You follow this Rule to ”the bitter end”, even unto persecution and rejection ”for the sake of Righteousness”, that is, says Jesus: ”on my account” (Matthew 5, 10 and 11). Ethics are fellowship, communion, deep friendship, shared life, total solidarity and identification. To ”take up the Cross” and follow the Crucified.

Through obedience to the Messiah, the messianic disciple is entering into the relationship between the messianic Son and the Father. ”All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labour and are heavenly loaden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mathew 11, 27ff).

This passage from St Matthew has, as we can all hear, a Johannine ”ring” or atmosphere. If anywhere the moral life of the fatihful is described as a deep life, it is in the Johannine texts in the NT. The disciple is the ”friend” of the Lord, he is a branch in the True Vine, his life is fruit-bearing, his feet are washed by the Lord, as a sign of deep sharing, he abides in his Master, he keeps his commandments. The overall impression is the impression if an ethical life that can only be described as a mystical life. A life of love (John, 13 -16)

3. Christian Ethics – Sacramental ethics.

The ethical mysticism of St John builds a bridge to the teachings of St Paul. To him, the Christian life as completely steeped in his teachings on- and his experience of the sacrificed and risen Christ: ”To me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Pilippians chapter 1, 20); or: ”I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 1, 20).

To Paul this mystical identification and unity with Christ is experienced and transfered through the Sacraments. First and foremost and in a fundamental way through Baptism. In Romans , chapter 6, the Apostle is talking about Baptism as dying and rising with Christ (Romans 6, 1ff). And he uses this ’common knowledge’, this well known tradition of the sacramental death and resurrection, to motivate his ethical ’parenesis’, his ethical teachings, his exortations. A holy life – which is the vocation of the holy people, the covenant people – is to be a life of freedom, freedom understood as ”slavery” to Christ, and not to sin.

We shall find the same way of thinking and teaching in his letter to the Galatians: ”For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ”. The baptized is a new – we migt say: eschatologically new – man: neither Jew, nor Greek, neither male nor female, in a certain sense; but a new cretion, a new humanity. And it is this ”new humanity” that is lived out in the ethical life, a life ”in the Spirit”, a charismatic/pneaumatic life – as both Jermíah and Ezekiel prophezised about it in their prophecies on ”the New Covenant” (Jermiah 29 and 32; Ezek 37,26ff ).

Equally we shall find this line of thought in the Apostle’s letter to the Colossians. To be baptized is to be set free from the evil spirits, from empty ’philosophies’ and ’deceit’; and thus no longer be bound to live according to the lifestyle of the surrounding, heathen society: ”in sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire..”; but in stead to be able to put on ”kindness, humility, meekness and patience” (Colossians 2 and 3).

(The Eucharistic dimension, 1 Chorintians 11; the ecclesial body of Christ and the Sacramental body of Christ – can only be understood in relation to each other. Without justice, solidarity, unity and love, there can be no true/valid (v. 20) celebration of the Eucharist (1 Chor 11, 17ff).

3. Christian ethics – universal ethics, fully realized through discipleship.

It should be fairly clear on the background of this brief exposition that morals and etichs in Biblical religion, both Old- and New Testament, is part of the totality of religious life. If we go to the first periode after the Apostles, after the New Testament witness, to the Apostolic Fathers; to the letters of St Ignatius of Antioche, of St Polycarp, the letter to Diognet, to Hermas, in the Didache; we will have this picture confirmed. The Christian life and conduct is a spiritual life, a sacramental life, an ecclesial life – lived in the midst of a non-Christian and often hostile setting. We are talking about Christian Ethics as a kind of ’counter culture’.

Anyhow; in the self-understanding of Israel and later of the young Church, in their relation to the surrounding world, the Law of God is seen as God’s will for all people, and it is obvious that Biblical religion is thinking of the human moral consciousness as informed by the will of God; God has inscribed his law in the hearts of men. Although in a rudimentary, elementary way. ”For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them…” ”They know God’s decree..”, says St Paul (Romans 1, 19ff). Even though, through disobedience, the moral insight and judgment has been darkened and weakened; it is still there, sufficient to make men morally responsible. Paul mentions also the common ethical and aesthecical standards of his era, of his non–Christian, Hellenistic and Roman contemporaries, when he says: ”Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 48ff).

On the other hand; he is immediately adding: ”What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me – practise these things, and the God of peace will be with you” (v. 9).

In other words: The general, ethical standard, witnessed in the consciousness of men and in human culture as such, needs the particular Revelation through Israel and the apostolic Church to be fully understood, received and lived.

Morality needs a complexe, ”thick” culture in order to be a living Tradition, a functioning pedagogical pattern. Morals and ethics need Community, history, interpretation, development, constant application and adaption to changing circumstances.

Now – the Church is such a complexe ”value system”, a ”value community”. To the first Christians, the Church was the true ’polis’, the ’civitas’, the training ground for moral behaviour. The relation to the wider, non-Christian society, was based on respect, decency, discration – and the courage to be a confessor or oven a martyr if necessary: ”Be subject for the Lord’ sake to every human institiution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freeom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honour everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the emperor” (1 Peter 2, 13-17). In this ethos there is an ’empire’ and there is a ’brotherhood’ – and I think that the main reference for Christian ethics is ’the brotherhood’! This, again, confirms the eschatological character of Christian ethics. The empire passes, the brotherhood/the Church remains, the Church prevails…

This escathological dimension was, in a way, forgotten or subdued, in the Constantine era of Christianity. The medieval Unity Culture, tended to identify the Church and the wider socity, to neglect the difference between Christian Ethics in the full sense of the word and more general ethics. In our days, in the post-Constantine era – we will have the oppurtunity to rediscover Christian ethics as eschatological, ecclesial, sacramental ethics; as ethics of discipleship. This is an advantage even from an apologetical point of view. To day it is no longer possible – or at least it is difficult – to present an ethical system as based on objective, metahysical principles. Today man has rediscovered his subjetivity. Even the sense of universal values has to be accepted from within, so to say; in a free descision. ”The universal” is no longer an objective category – all convincing, self evident. The Universe/the World can be seen only from ”within”, from ”below”.

What is Catholic is rooted in the ”particular”, in the ”local”. In a contexte.

The Kingdom of God is universal and eternal. But it can only be entered in an act of free obedience. Christian ethics cannot be re-enforced on the secular society. A moral life, based on Christian standards, can only be received as a vocation. I think we are blessed, and should be happy, as a Church to day, to have the opportunity to rediscover true discipleship. Christ, the Creator, the universal Law-giver, the ’Pantokrator’ (the All-powerful) is offering to each and everyone a personal invitation: -

Follow me!