Friday, October 29, 2010

What are the sources of obligation?

In a discussion on Milan's blog, I was asked, "what are the sources of moral obligation to the state and/or parents, aside from consent?" I thought I would post my answer (slightly edited).

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What are the sources of obligation? Many and varied, though I would even want to question the language of “obligation” as a primary way of speaking about morality. I’d prefer to refer to concepts such as our freedom to love within moral community.

Opportunities to nourish the good and redeem what is evil are granted by God as gifts. They are occasions to reflect something of divine generosity and faithfulness and so to express our true humanity and creatureliness. Put in slightly less theological language, moral virtues are excellences in character that belong to what is properly humane and their development constitutes part of the gift and privilege of becoming more human, more ourselves.

A crucial aspect of human existence is our identity being formed in community, being received from those around us (not in a deterministic way, since the reception is not purely passive but can be creative). And so relationships of trust and mutual care are at the heart of ethical deliberation. We are therefore to honour the relationships into which we are born precisely as a reminder that our existence and identity are received, not self-forged.

These relationships may begin with a family circle (“honour your father and mother”) and move out from there. At higher levels of abstraction, such as a nation, then the appropriate honour may be quite limited. For a modern nation-state, as an invention of modernity, the appropriate form of honour may be quite minimal indeed. Established political authorities are part of the network of relationships into which we are born and which we are to receive with thanksgiving, though not without critical and creative receptivity to possibilities of growth and reform. And the necessity of such critical and creative work regarding the contemporary nation-state is evident in all kinds of ways, not least the ways in which most contemporary governments fail miserably in their appointed task of minimising evil in the ecological sphere, and so collude (with corporate power amongst other things) in the undermining of the conditions under which human society can flourish.

Such are some thoughts off the top of my head. Sorry if they are a little shorthand at points. Hopefully, they give you a little bit more of a taste of where I’m coming from. I began by noting the sources of moral obligation to be varied, and moved on to speak of our identity as humans (and as creatures: our moral community extends beyond the boundaries of homo sapiens). I could equally have spoken about becoming more like Jesus, the true human, or of living in light of God’s promised future, or living in line with the realities of the created order, or of the imitation of God’s gracious care, or of responsiveness to God's summons. Each of these require more unpacking. I guess my point is that I see morality as a web of sources and resources for growing in faith, hope and love. Consent takes its place amongst these resources as an aspect of human will expressed in relationships. Consent creates and requires trust (in some measure) and so forms part of faith (which is more or less another word for trust, in my book). Consent therefore has an important place in moral discussion, but not an exhaustive one (as is often assumed or claimed by many political liberals – using the word in the technical, rather than partisan sense, to refer to a worldview based on voluntarism and so placing consent at the core of interpersonal and political morality).

9 comments:

Roland and Laura said...

Byron,
I like your approach here a lot. Time permitting, I'd love it if you could elaborate on a couple of those points. Specifically: to what extent do you see the moral communities of family and nation-state as soteriological (communities in and through which we are saved) and eschatological (pale imitations of a future promise)? And then, how do the communities of the visible church fit into this picture? Is the church simply another community alongside the family and the nation-state, or do we owe it a different sort of obligation? And is your response to that last question valid for universal Christianity, or would you distinguish between our most immediate Christian communities (Anglicanism) and other Christian confessions which we might have less sympathy with?

byron smith said...

Great questions. Not sure I can give good (or short) answers to all of them.

Family and nation-state are non-soteriological. I think I'm pretty clear on that. Christ called people to hate mother and father and warned against the dangers of assuming that being a child of Abraham comes automatically. Are they eschatological? Not directly, no. They are part of the present order that is passing away and which can only be included in the eschaton through death and resurrection.

How do ecclesial communities fit into this picture? That is where I don't think I have a short answer. The church is not simply another community. It is one's primary community, and I think that properly understood, extra ecclesiam nulla sallusis is true (though laying the what a proper understanding involves may take a little time).

As for the relationship between one's local congregation/parish, denominational bodies* and the one holy catholic church, that is perhaps even more complex. I think one's loyalty is to Christ and so to his church wherever it is found. This is expressed first and foremost in one's local Christian gathering (a form of loving neighbour, where proximity is not morally irrelevant), but this does not exhaust such loyalty, being merely its most immediate and concrete form.

Much more could be said about each of these questions, but there are a few thoughts off the topic of head indicating the kinds of directions I think I would take them. What are your own hunches or convictions on these matters?

*NB I would not say that denominations are the most immediate Christian communities; they are intermediate ones. There are other kinds of intermediate Christian communities as well, e.g. evangelicalism, pentecostalism, and so on, which are not denominations, but could perhaps be called movements or flavours or something.

byron smith said...

"off the topic of head" = "off the top of my head"
No idea how that happened!

Roland and Laura said...

Sorry this is a belated response, I've been on the road for the past few days. Some hunches (not convictions):
I am inclined to agree that family and nation are neither soteriological nor eschatological, with the caveat that the gospel is communicated to us person-to-person. This happened most profoundly in the incarnation of Christ, but more mundanely in the personal contact that we have with Christians who are often part of our families or nations. I wouldn't want to give too much weight to that point though, because it leads to abandoning global mission and assuming that each nation-state should evangelize itself.

While giving full importance to the centrality of the church for salvation, I would lean towards a eucharistic ecclesiology that values the mystical body of Christ and sees institutional and local churches as but pale reflections of the true church. Our obligation to them is an obedience that sanctifies us in the way that submitting to a spiritual father in a monastery helps monks wrestle with their egoism. Our loyalty to the visible church is not a loyalty to Christ (because I would not want to confuse the two), but our love for Christ can lead us to love our churches too.

This is all stuff that is important but over my head. :) Mostly, I was interested in whether your study of the importance of valuing the physical creation through environmentalism had extended to valuing what might be called the social creation of families and nations. But of course that question is wrong-headed, because the physical creation is also passing away...

byron smith said...

Our loyalty to the visible church is not a loyalty to Christ (because I would not want to confuse the two), but our love for Christ can lead us to love our churches too.
Yes, I agree with this line, and my comment about loyalty was probably a little hasty. Yet I suspect we might still have some differences in how we conceive loyalties to local vs denominational bodies.

Mostly, I was interested in whether your study of the importance of valuing the physical creation through environmentalism had extended to valuing what might be called the social creation of families and nations. But of course that question is wrong-headed, because the physical creation is also passing away...
Families and "natural" societies (though I wouldn't include modern nation-states in that category without further qualification) are of some, but not ultimate, importance. They are both aspects of good creation bearing the hope of an eschatological future that involves both continuity (and so affirmation) and discontinuity (and so judgement).

Roland and Laura said...

"We might still have some differences in how we conceive loyalties to local vs denominational bodies."
I suspect you might be right. I cherish local churches dearly, but have little time for denominational identities. I would put the latter in a similar category to nation-states: ephemeral, historically contingent, belligerent, proud, but nonetheless very difficult to avoid in our day and age. I would agree that the creeds and statements of faith that denominations use are valuable, but ideas and sociological realities are two very different things...

byron smith said...

Perhaps we are considerably closer than I first thought! I would echo your comments, though would add that both nation-states and denominations do deserve a small measure of loyalty. They are not to be entirely despised, even if they stand in serious need of critique and reform.

byron smith said...

Bright Green: Why is incest illegal? Rather than the article itself, I'd like to highlight the discussion in the comments, which includes some good critiques of treating consent in a simplistic or reductionist manner.

byron smith said...

Giles Fraser: Liberalism can't understand identity or morality that arises from something other than choice.