Christians merrily skip naked

Michael Wells removes all our defensive dressings and rather than leaving us shivering in the cold, reveals that theological naturalism is the new black via some seriously joyful reflections on Christian identity and consumerism.

Why we must wear neck ties and other links

• Why we must wear neck ties - reflections on fashion, colonialism and pointlessness from Boxologies.
• A picture is worth a thousand words, or $233.95 - an amusing email correspondence. H/T Celia.
• Water and whisky - "And so we must drink water in the way we drink single-malt scotch, and we must drink single-malt scotch in the way we drink water."
• How to prevent any political progress - a cartoon.
• Agriculture as sustained catastrophe - a short history of western civilisation based on the assumption that where we went wrong was putting seeds in the ground.

Studying ethics

What do you think of when you hear the word "ethics"? What are the connotations?

As a postgraduate student who is currently meeting a lot of other postgraduate students, after "where are you from?" (which usually means they spoke before I did. If I speak first, then the first question is "are you from Australia?" (or "are you from Australasia?" for the more cautious ones)), the next question is almost always "what are you studying/researching?"

I have experimented with a variety of answers to this question: Divinity, Theology, Theological Ethics, Christian Ethics, Political Theology, Social Ethics, Moral Theology and more. But the only answer that seems to generate further discussion (and nearly always does so) is when I simply say "Ethics". Perhaps the others are too intimidating or simply incomprehensible, but ethics is something that people have an opinion about. And that opinion is frequently: "Why bother?" The study of ethics is seen as superfluous, with little claim to focused attention as a serious intellectual discipline.

Even putting aside a militant scientism that assumes only the natural sciences are genuine forms of knowledge, there seem to be two assumptions that lie behind this common response. The first is that ethics is simply personal: "Isn't it all just a matter of opinion?" In this case the questioner has swallowed the liberal paradigm in which "values" are a matter of personal preference and as such rational discussion or evaluation of one choice as better or worse than another is either trivial (on a par with criticising a preference for chocolate ice-cream) or even mildly offensive (like disparaging someone's fashion sense). As a long-term student (and occasional teacher) of literature, philosophy and theology, this objection and at least a few strategies to answer it are quite familiar: "It's not just opinion, but whether one's opinions are justified."

However, the second assumption has been a little more surprising (though perhaps it ought not to be). A few interlocutors have been audacious enough to claim or imply (and all this within seconds of meeting me) that ethics is peripheral to life: "I put in my ethics reports for my research, and then I have fulfilled my ethical requirements." Ethics is seen as simply a baseline minimum standard of behaviour, which, once satisfied, can be ignored so that life may proceed. I think this too is a result of liberalism. In a liberal society we conceive of ethical responsibilities through the language of rights. These rights are owned by each individual and some/all of them may be traded, exercised or waived by myself and threatened, broken or defended by others. However, such rights only relate to certain areas of life, leaving the rest of existence as an arena of "freedom" (or, to say what amounts to the same thing in other words: of the market).

In this view, most of our decisions have little or nothing to do with ethics, as long as we're not actively hurting someone else. Most of life is amoral. This also means that most of life is off-limits for rational deliberation. We can't decide which is a better or worse option because each option is simply a matter of personal preference (notice the link here with the first response). For whom are you going to vote? Well that's a private matter. Notice how only some political issues are called "moral issues", and they are ones in which someone's rights are at stake. I have discussed the limited range of this kind of rights-language at more length back here.

But this approach leaves ethics on the margins of our daily lives, only relevant in an emergency, like the fire extinguisher on the wall. Someone has to make sure it still works from time to time, and so ethicists are given a grudging acceptance for this basic maintenance. Or perhaps there is also a peripheral role to play in adjudicating line-ball cases, or areas of life that are particularly complex. The proliferation of ethics committees at hospitals is a symptom of this.

However, by reducing the ethical to observing the rights of others, morality is pushed to the margins, and life is lived in an ethical desert, with only an occasional cactus breaking the surface of a vast and featureless "freedom". In frustration, some attempt to plant more cacti, multiplying rights until they are trivialised into the right to do what I want any old time. By speaking only in a single tone of voice, an unconditional demand that my rights be respected, the rights-discourse is unable to resolve claims between competing rights: my right to bear arms vs your right not to be shot; your right to be born vs my right to avoid the complications a baby brings.

One serious challenge to the liberal consensus comes from natural law ethics, most pressingly represented in recent discussion by various streams of environmental ethics. There are simply ways of living that are against nature, and when you live contrary to nature long enough, nature fights back. This approach has the great advantage of irrigating the desert, bringing the life-giving waters of moral responsibility into every area of life so that all kinds of growth flourish until there is a veritable jungle of obligations. Soon we find that everywhere we step is squashing something.

Without denigrating the place of (a certain qualified form of) natural law ethics, my response in these conversations over the last few weeks has been to reach instead for virtue theory: ethics isn't just "do no harm", "violate no rights", but instead keeps asking questions like "who am I becoming?" In the jungle of life, where am I going and how I am getting there?

Harry Potter and the hallowing of death

Warning: spoilers aplenty
"...there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying." (p. 577)
It seems J. K. Rowling has been reading my blog. She must have been doing so even as far back as Order of the Phoenix, 718, where the idea is also expressed.

As I mentioned before, the final Harry Potter novel is by far the most theological. Not that such themes were absent from the rest of the series, but Deathly Hallows takes them to a new level. In particular, I'd like to reflect a little on death in Harry Potter.

It's been there from the opening chapter of Philosopher's Stone: "The Boy who Lived". Muted at first, Rowling starting popping off characters from the middle of the series: Cedric (Goblet of Fire), Sirius (Order of the Phoenix), Dumbledore (Half-Blood Prince) and the final book is almost Shakespearean in its blood bath: Mad-Eye Moody, Tonks, Remus Lupin, Fred Weasley, Bathilda, Colin Creevy, "and fifty more", plus Severus Snape, Bellatrix, Voldemort himself and, of course, Harry.

Or does he? For all the discussion of a Christ-like death and resurrection, Harry does neither. The much-pondered penultimate chapter "King's Cross" is quite clear that Harry never died: "He failed to kill you with my wand. ... I think we can agree you are not dead" (570); indeed, Harry's blood in Voldemort's veins has kept him alive while the dark lord lives (567). King's Cross is a near-death experience (from which it would be possible to board a train and go "On" as Dumbledore says: 578)) occurring in Harry's head. It is here that wounds are healed and glasses are no longer needed (except for Dumbledore's, confirmed as a fashion accessory: 567). This is Harry's taste of restoration, of 'resurrection'. When he comes back, he is again the scarred, mortal boy who almost died. Except that he has now also become a man: "You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man." (566)

The Resurrection Stone is no such thing. It is a ghost stone, able to bring back shadows of those who once were. Indeed, the very desire to see the dead again is what mislead Dumbledore into attempting to use the stone and so destroyed his hand (and his health). The dead who are 'raised' by this stone at worst make the user himself want to die in order to join them, and at best give some moral encouragement to the living. The dead do not live again, except in life-and-love-sustaining memories.

When Harry and Hermione read the tombstone of his parents, they discover 1 Corinthians 15.26: The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Confused, and thinking it sounds like a Death Eater sentiment, Harry asks "Why is that here?" to which Hermione replies: "'It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry. [...] It means ... you know ... living beyond death. Living after death." I've posted before on life after death, and how that's not what 'resurrection' means in the Bible. Resurrection is life after life after death, as N. T. Wright puts it. It is not life continuing despite death, a transition to another form of existence. It is life again and better.

Harry is no Christ, dying to save those he loves (what about dying for his enemies?) and rising triumphant. Of course, there are parallels and of course this story has been powerfully shaped by Christian archetypes. But if any are tempted to read the Gospel narrative in light of its portrayal of 'death and resurrection', they will be gravely misled.

I'd love to say much more, and perhaps I will continue these thoughts at some stage, but for the moment, I'll end with one final reflection.

Voldemort: his name means 'the flight of death', but I wonder whether it mightn't also mean 'flight from death'. "He fears the dead. He does not love." (577) Here, finally, is an insight more properly called Christian. It is the fear of death that drives Voldemort, that blinds him to love and the more powerful magic: "Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped." (568) Death, though an enemy, is not to be feared. The hope of resurrection liberates us from obsessing about staying alive.
Ten points for the location of the picture.