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I think that it is significant that the Gospels present Jesus as one who "commands" (something you and I discussed a bit while I was there) love and not one who "inspires" it. That is to say that the command to love does not involve simple sentimental affection.

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Modes


I think that this is a huge stretch. Recall:
Let the dead bury their own dead (spoken to a son regarding his father)
Who is my mother and brothers? (Jesus to his mother and brothers)
I have not come to bring peace but a sword…to separate father from son, mother from daughter, etc….
Leave your family behind and follow me…

These clearly go against the very strong language about covenant faithfulness to one’s family and respect of ones parents. I really don’t think many people would be interested in seeing family redefined along these lines….

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To me there is clearly a problem with this proposal. There is only one Absolute. That is the nature of what it means to be speak of an Absolute. By virtue of admitting a "higher ethical norm", one is also admitting that the lower is not really absolute, but actually relative, though surely still relatively more important that many other norms, perhaps. If one refers to a specifically Christian category, like Christ requires that we show mercy, then perhaps it can be shown to be higher than the ethical norm having to do with lying. But this is objectively ambiguous. Showing mercy is a sacrificial act that the individual must take responsibility for. It cannot become an ethical norm (objectively verifiable and enforcable). We cannot require others to "sacrifice themselves mercifully". We might be able to require a certain behavior that seems merciful to us, but only God knows if it was indeed mercy that motivated the behavior.

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If I am “admitting a ‘higher ethical norm,’ (mercy) then I am also admitting that the lower (do not lie) is not really absolute, but actually relative, though surely still relatively more important that many other norms, perhaps.”

I just want to ask you then, would mercy in the above paragraph be an ethical norm though it is objectively ambiguous as you say?

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Very good question! Actually your asking it in that way helped me get clear that no, this means that mercy is not actually an ethical category at all. The reason being that (in my way of thinking--and SK as I read him) ethics requires two features: universal applicability for the sake of coherence (the law applies both to you and to me) and objectivity (externally verifiable, that is, directly communicable). We have to be able to be certain that the ethical command was indeed obeyed. The person either did or did not lie. But why they did or did not do this is subjective. The person can tell you, but you don't have a way to check the heart. I'll catch up with more later...thanks for your great and clarifying question!

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Hey! You are quite welcome my main Modes man! Aaaalright. First, above you said that mercy was not an ethical category because as LAW, (the law applies both to you and to me) it has to have "universal applicability for the sake of coherence." I'm not sure what you mean by "universal applicability for the sake of coherence." We may end up talking past each other if we don't look at some of our presuppositions (the post that I'm putting together AS A WHOLE attempts to explain this). For example, I can understand how mercy CAN BE universal. What may NOT be universal is how it is applied to different contexts. This, to me, is what most people flip about. When I think of "law" I'm thinking of HOW something is applied. Also, mercy would seem to me to have to do with ethics because it deals with what we "OUGHT" to do.

Either way, I'm not to sure that I'm concerned about why someone did a specific act (in the way that you are using it here). You are correct that we can know that a person did or did not lie, and that we may not necessarily understand WHY they did something. The only thing I can go off of is what that other person tells me (feedback) and what I percieve to be the situation of the matter, i.e. hiding Jews from Nazi guards is obviously not for the good of Corrie ten Boom's health!



Brandon
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.--Isa 49:15-16

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Sorry, forgot something. As far as motives are concerned? ULTIMATELY, it would seem to me (even though the "significant other" [Victor Furnish], gives me feed back and what I percieve to be the situation) motives are between people and their God.

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Our pietistic ideas about sanctity as -improvement in character" are shocked and rendered powerless when set side-by-side with the holy experience of our saints, who received Christ in their hearts .. as light, in a real and substantial way; seen invisibly and comprehended incomprehensibly, with formless form and appearance beyond appearance."

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The difficulty is not in understanding the meaning of these:
seek first the Kingdom; serve one master; sacrifice yourself for the neighbor; obey God; do not be angry with your neighbor

The difficulty is in the doing of them.

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The words themselves are sensical, I understand their bald meaning. However, I don't "understand" commands like that until I know how to apply them and incorporate them in to my life.

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Showing mercy is a sacrificial act that the individual must take responsibility for. It cannot become an ethical norm (objectively verifiable and enforcable).

and

Which is precisely why motives, like the desire to be merciful, cannot be considered ethical categories, but rather are religious in nature. We agree again. When I say ethics must be in principle universally applicable", I am stating the implication of what you just said here. Since motives have to do with our subjectivity, and thereby are to be judged by God, not other human beings, then we can only enforce objective results.

and

We have to be able to be certain that the ethical command was indeed obeyed. The person either did or did not lie. But why they did or did not do this is subjective. The person can tell you, but you don't have a way to check the heart. I'll catch up with more later...thanks for your great and clarifying question!

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you won't know how to apply them until you are in the situation, factoring in as much as possible the "whole picture."

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Brandon,

My apologies. This is only half baked and so needs another hour in the oven to be DONE. However, I didn't want my incoherence and busy schedule to delay the conversation.

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OK. While you have it out of the oven, maybe I can add a couple of ingredients. Then you can put it back in, we’ll bake it and see how it turns out! Got your 100 watt light bulb for the “Holly Hobbie, Easy-Bake Oven” on?

For the most part I agree with you especially concerning the ethic of “being” as opposed to “doing” (though you were not contrasting those distinctions). But when you say:

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Overall, I think we're tracking. Modes said (echoing SK) that the commands aren't difficult to understand, but difficult to do. I replied that the literal meaning is not difficult, but we face difficulty in knowing how to apply the commands, in addition to the difficulty of motivating ourselves to "just do it" once we believe a certain action is more "kingdom seeking".

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It is the highlighted parts that many Christian ethicists have a problem with from what I've read. First, the problem is a question of revelation. The question is, “What form does revelation take?” and the next question is, “How do we move from the Bible to the practicalities of life?” And it is here where heteronominists disagree. It should be noted that this basic heteronomous (command) approach to doing ethics is an oversimplification of how the Bible interfaces with life.

But basically, there are two different approaches, one is the "command" and the other is principle or “principle nominism.” The command approach has some very debilitating problems to it. “How do we respond to the great variety of situations people face today that the Bible does not address?” In other words, this “legalistic” method leaves us with a truncated ethic that cannot speak to many of the social realities of contemporary life. As a matter of fact, nearly all biblical scholars agree that many commandments inscripturated in the Bible are NOT universal. Therefore, we cannot simply lift every biblical injunction out of its historical setting and apply it to today i.e. Paul’s words concerning church leaders in Timothy.

So then, what some ethicists do is go for principles. Apparently, there MUST be some deeper principle at work providing the criterion by means of which to differentiate between the universally applicable and the situationally conditioned laws of scripture. The laws are important to Christian principlists, but this is because of their status as expressions in certain contexts of a deeper universal moral axiom. It should be noted that the principles of scripture are not limited to biblical legislation, for, according to this view, they emerge in other genres of scripture. All one need to do is discern the principles and apply them to parallel situations. If you have the time, you may want to pick up William Webb’s book, “Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis” to see some of the problems of doing ethics with parallel situations.

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0830815619/ref=lib_dp_TFCV/102-5015037-3141762?v=glance&s=books&vi=reader#reader-link

Regardless, the basic problem of all heteronomous approaches is that they all see divine revelation as “out there”—specifically in the pages of the Bible and that this revelation is waiting to be discovered and appropriated for ethical living. Accordingly, all one needs to do is use the proper method which will “excavate” the meaning of the Bible and apply it to the appropriate situations today.

However, endemic to the heteronomous approach is that it draws from a truncated understanding of the nature of revelation and the mistaken understanding of the significance of biblical commandments. That is, it misses the true intention of God’s self-disclosure and hence scripture itself. That is to say, that the ultimate purpose of God’s self-disclosure is to bring us into relationship with HIMSELF, NOT with moral axioms. One can see from this approach that it leads us to assume that God desires our obedience to externally imposed rules or PRINCIPLES of conduct. And, as Modes has said, this can be very elusive. For example, if we live by the “principle of life” (Semeia) where we think that human life is absolute, what does one say to the graded absolutist who him/herself adheres to what they see as the biblical principle that not all laws are of equal weight and therefore concludes that even in some situations it is better to terminate a pregnancy?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that we cannot use principles for ethical reflection, but it involves so much more than that. I mean we can appreciate how biblical norms can be applied to changing situations, but the problems with such an approach are numerous—more than what I’ve mentioned here.

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But I think this might be said a bit too strongly:

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you won't know how to apply them until you are in the situation, factoring in as much as possible the "whole picture."

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You are correct here sir. I HAVE spoke too strong here, for there are problems with this understanding as well. Namely, that it seems to “free the Christian for authentic ethical living before God in both the personal and the societal areas of life. Yet many have backed off…believing that in its renunciation of propositional revelation it makes Christian theology too subjective, and in its disavowal of laws and principles it makes Christian ethics too individualistic.” (Longenecker) Emil Brunner was an advocate of this position. He laid down the basis of his thinking in his, “The Divine Imperative.” No. We definitely need the Spirit of God to encounter individuals through the Scriptures for authentic Christian conversion, theology and the Christian life.



Brandon
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.--Isa 49:15-16