Ethics and Moral Reasoning: A Student's Guide

by C. Ben Mitchell, David S. Dockery (Editor)

Overview

Gay marriage. Embryonic stem cell research. Abortion. Such generation-defining issues loom large in our society and demand a thoughtful response. Helping Christians to interact with our morally confused world, Ben Mitchell challenges the relativism so rampant in the West today. In addition to examining the history of ethical reflection from Moses to Immanuel Kant, Mitchell also incorporates the voices of current Christian ethicists such as Stanley Hauerwas and N. T. Wright, proposing a holistic approach to ethics—one based on biblical principles, historical views, today's leaders, and Christian virtues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433537707
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	11/30/2013
Series:	Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

C. Ben Mitchell (PhD, University of Tennessee) is the provost and vice president for academic affairs and holds the Graves Chair of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He also serves as the editor of Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics. He is a senior fellow in the Academy of Fellows of the Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity and previously served as its executive director. Additionally, for more than ten years he served as a faculty member at Trinity International University.

C. Ben Mitchell (PhD, University of Tennessee) is the provost and vice president for academic affairs and holds the Graves Chair of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He also serves as the editor of Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics. He is a senior fellow in the Academy of Fellows of the Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity and previously served as its executive director. Additionally, for more than ten years he served as a faculty member at Trinity International University.

David S. Dockery (PhD, University of Texas System) serves as president of the International Alliance for Christian Education as well as president and distinguished professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Previously, he served as president of Union University and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is a much-sought-after speaker and lecturer, a former consulting editor for Christianity Today, and the author or editor of more than forty books. Dockery and his wife, Lanese, have three married sons and seven grandchildren.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

THE CHALLENGES OF A RELATIVIST WORLD

"Well, that might be right for you, but not for me."

"You can't judge one culture by another."

"Who's to say what's right or wrong?"

Most of us have heard comments like those while talking with someone over coffee or at a dinner party. The idea that morality is personal, subjective, and relative is in the air we breathe. It's part of the Zeitgeist (the spirit of the times). In a widely used introductory ethics text, J. L. Mackie confidently exclaimed, "There are no objective values." Notably, the subtitle of Mackie's volume is "Inventing Right and Wrong." According to Mackie, moral values are human inventions. This is a remarkable claim indeed, but one that seems a commonplace today.

Similarly, in her often reprinted essay "In Defense of Moral Relativism," American anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote,

We recognize that morality differs in every society, and it is a convenient term for socially approved habits. Mankind has always preferred to say, "It is morally good," rather than "It is habitual," and the fact of this preference is enough for a critical science of ethics. But historically the two phrases are synonymous.

For Benedict, ethical behavior is just the habits we call "good." There are no objective, universal ethical norms; there are only the habits we call our ethics. Those habits are relative; they differ in every society.

Benedict was right about one thing — we live in a morally relativistic world. What does that mean? First, it means that if relativism is true, then the study of ethics and moral reasoning is merely a quaint search for dusty, old ideas that no one really believes any longer, a little like hunting for antiques. If relativism is true, it also means that the search for enduring, universal moral norms is futile. But the fact that we live in a relativistic world also means that if relativism is not true, we need to know how to respond to a view that is so pervasive in our culture. And it is not only pervasive; relativism is morally crippling because it relegates ethical discussions to the personal, private, and subjective, and to the realm of mere preference.

What we need to realize is that relativism is not merely an assertion. Oh, some people do assert it, but it is in fact an argument for a particular way of understanding morality. Only by understanding the argument will we be better prepared to respond to the claims relativists make.

The argument for what we might call "normative ethical relativism" has two premises and a conclusion. It is "normative" in that it maintains it is the way things should be. It is relativistic because it claims that notions of right and wrong or good and bad should not be the same for everyone, everywhere, at all times.

Louis Pojman, the late philosopher who taught for many years at the United States Military Academy, calls the two premises of normative ethical relativism the diversity thesis and the dependency thesis.

THE DIVERSITY THESIS

The diversity thesis is that notions of right and wrong differ from person to person and culture to culture. This premise of the argument seems patently true if we understand it merely as a description of the diversity of cultural norms and mores. For instance, in most Arabic cultures, displaying the bottom of the foot is disrespectful. In some African cultures, giving a gift with the left hand is an insult. Neither of those practices is insulting in American culture. So it is true that ideas about what is right or wrong differ from one culture to another and sometimes from one person or family to another. As Benedict said, "We recognize that morality differs in every society." But that is merely a description of the way things are. This premise does not by itself make the moral claim that that is the way it ought to be.

THE DEPENDENCY THESIS

The second premise of the argument for normative ethical relativism is the dependency thesis, which holds that morality depends on human nature, the human condition, or specific sociocultural circumstances, or a combination of all three.

The word depends here implies that one's views of right and wrong rest solely on one or more of the contingencies just mentioned. So the claim is, first, that what is right or wrong might depend upon human nature. For instance, some people believe that right and wrong are determined by the ability of human beings and other animals to experience conscious pleasure or pain. This view is known as "ethical hedonism." The ethical hedonist believes that it is always wrong to cause pain and always right to cause pleasure or at least to minimize pain. One person who holds this view is Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher who teaches at Princeton University. Because Singer holds that it is wrong to do anything that causes pain to conscious beings, he has become an outspoken opponent of capital punishment and outspoken proponent of vegetarianism. Not only is it always wrong, he argues, to cause pain to other human beings, but because he considers animals to be conscious beings, it is also wrong to cause unnecessary pain to other animals. Because humans do not need to eat animals to survive, causing pain by killing them for food or clothing is immoral. Hence, what is right or wrong for Singer depends on the ability for a creature to experience pleasure or pain.

A relativist might also maintain that what's right and wrong depends upon the human condition, such as that humans are mortal. Much of our behavior as a species does seem to be aimed at survival. Our mortality — the fact that we can and do die — leads us to avoid certain behaviors and even to ban those behaviors by law. If human beings were like some of the characters, say, in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator movies, we might not have laws against certain forms of physical harm. What would be the harm, for instance, in blasting off someone's arm with a weapon if the arm would regenerate in a matter of seconds? Or what would be the harm in killing people if they could somehow recombine or reconstitute? Because humans are mortal, we tend to be more or less risk averse. Morality, the relativist might say, is just a response to our risk-averse tendencies.

Or, perhaps, our moral notions are the result of our familial or social upbringing. Maybe our society dictates what we think is right and wrong. We sometimes call this view "cultural relativism," but it is a species of the same argument that we have been discussing. Since each culture has its own moral code, the most we can claim, says the relativist, is that morality depends upon one's social conditioning. As Benedict claimed, "It is habitual," and that is identical to saying, "It is morally good."

Finally, an ethical relativist might want to argue that our morality — our notions of right and wrong or good and bad — depends on some combination of all three inputs: human nature, the human condition, and human culture. Since every culture has its own views of what constitutes right or wrong conduct, since every culture has its own expression of risk aversion, and since every culture has its own social standards and practices, the following conclusion is warranted, says the relativist: Morality — notions of right and wrong, good and bad, obligation and non-obligation — should differ from culture to culture. Note the inclusion of the word that implies moral obligation: should. This is the way that it should be. It should be the case that morality differs from person to person and culture to culture. The normative ethical relativist claims that ethical pluralism is the best we can achieve, so that the notion that one's ethical views could be right — everywhere, for everyone, at all times — is mistaken at best and fascist at worst. Moreover, to critique another person's or culture's morality is a lack of hospitality at best and a moral assault at worst.

This is the moral world in which we live today. Sociologist Christian Smith, director of the study of religion and society at Notre Dame University, has spent much of his career analyzing the spiritual lives of teenagers and emerging adults. In his 2011 study, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood, Professor Smith found that 30 percent of the emerging adults he interviewed professed a belief in strong moral relativism, compared with a national survey showing as many as 47 percent of American emerging adults agreeing with this statement: "Morals are relative, there are not definite rights and wrongs for everybody."

How do we respond to normative ethical relativism? Well, not with a mere assertion. That is, we should not respond by saying only, "No, that's wrong." That would be to respond to an argument with an assertion. Because relativism is an argument, a counter argument is needed. To construct a counter argument, one must either respond to the premises or show that the argument is invalid, or both.

Normative ethical relativism faces some significant challenges. One classic response to normative ethical relativism was offered by John Hospers, who was for many years chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Southern California. Hospers suggested that one problem with relativism is its claim that what is right in one group is wrong in another. As it turns out, observed Hospers, we are part of multiple groups. For instance, we share membership in the species Homo sapiens; we also are members of families, churches, geographical communities, interest groups (clubs and athletic teams), etc. Which groups form our moral community, the community that shapes our ethics? Why that group and not another? And just because the majority of any particular group thinks something is right does not make it right. It would be very easy to say, "Cannibalism is right in a cannibalistic culture, and if most of the people in the United States became cannibals, then cannibalism would be right for us." But is there any reason to believe that just because the majority practices cannibalism, it is therefore right? Is the habit of cannibalism the same as approving an ethic of cannibalism? Majorities can be — and historically have been — wrong. Is the relativist really prepared to argue that if a majority of Americans approved of slavery, slavery would be right?

Another problem with the relativist argument is that moral error is not possible if relativism is true. The relativist, at least a consistent one, cannot say that someone made an ethical mistake. The relativist could break a law, commit a mistake of etiquette, or violate community standards, but she could not commit a moral wrong, since right and wrong are in the eyes of the beholder. Is it really possible that having sex with a child is only a violation of community standards? It seems perfectly reasonable, indeed necessary, to say that child sexual abuse is a moral wrong, everywhere and at all times.

A third problem is that there is no place for moral reformers in relativism. If a community holds that apartheid is morally right, then according to the relativist argument, who is Nelson Mandela to claim that racial segregation is wrong? If relativism is true, Abraham Lincoln was wrong to challenge American chattel slavery, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was wrong to call for an end to racial discrimination.

Fourth, relativism suffers from a fundamental philosophical problem. Remember that the relativist argument begins with a descriptive premise claiming that morality differs from person to person and culture to culture. The argument then claims that this is the way it ought to be. An "ought" claim cannot be derived from an "is" claim. In other words, just because this is the way things are does not mean this is the way things ought to be. Just because some Brahmans in India practiced suttee — the ritual practice of burning widows to death — does not mean that is how the culture ought to function. Just because some Islamist and African cultures practice female genital mutilation does not thereby make the practice correct or morally defensible.

Finally, relativism fails to distinguish between moral practices and the values that underwrite them. For instance, in one culture, exposing the bottom of one's feet may well be a serious moral insult. In another culture, it may be considered wrong to make a certain hand gesture while driving if someone cuts you off at an intersection. What both cultures seem to value in calling those behaviors wrong is respect for others. It is out of respect for others that one avoids showing the bottom of one's feet in Arab cultures, and it is out of respect for others that one avoids certain hand gestures while driving. Every culture seems to value respect, even though the reasons for doing so or the persons seen to be deserving of respect may differ.

Likewise, while living on the North Shore of Chicago, I observed that public relations entrepreneurs in that community thought it was proper to retaliate legally if someone stole their brand name or brand logo. At the same time, gang members in the inner city thought it was proper to retaliate violently if a rival gang killed one of their gang members. In both cases, the underlying value that dictated behavior was a form of justice or fairness. The grounds and objects of justice were different, to be sure, but some notion of fairness informed the attitude and behavior of both the Windy City entrepreneur and the gang member.

In his interesting volume The Moral Sense, political scientist James Q. Wilson argued that every culture shares the values of sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty, among others. These values reflect the moral intuitions of a common humanity. So, although on the surface moral practices and beliefs may indeed differ, in fact, human beings share an amazingly robust set of ethical ideals across cultures. Therefore, relativism is wrong. The moral sense — those foundational values — does not differ from person to person and culture to culture. Though none of these critiques alone may convince a person that relativism's foundation is suspect, together they provide substantial evidence that relativism is unsound. "Most of us have a moral sense," Wilson maintained, "but some of us have tried to talk ourselves out of it. It is as if a person born to appreciate a golden sunset or lovely song had persuaded himself and others that a greasy smear or clanging gong ought to be enjoyed as much as true beauty."

Although relativism is unjustifiable morally, that does not answer the questions, What's right, what's wrong, and how do you know? Those questions take us back to the beginning.

CHAPTER 2

THE HISTORY OF MORAL REASONING, PART 1

Western civilization is indebted to the Judeo-Christian tradition for its notions of human dignity and human rights, its innovation in science and medicine, its habits of humanitarian charity and universal education, and its rich contribution to the arts. "Religion has written much of the history of the West," observes Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner. Roger Scruton, the British polymath, has put it this way:

Throughout its most flourishing periods, Western civilization has produced a culture which happily absorbs and adapts the cultures of other places, other faiths, and other times. Its basic fund of stories, its moral precepts, and its religious imagery come from the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament.

Even the notorious atheist Christopher Hitchens agreed that Western culture makes little sense without attending to the contribution of biblical religion: "You are not educated," he maintained, "if you don't know the Bible. You can't read Shakespeare or Milton without it." So it is right and good to begin at the beginning with the Old Testament.

OLD TESTAMENT ETHICS

We are barely into the biblical text before the vocabulary of value is used:

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. (Gen. 1:3–4)

The refrain "God saw that it was good" is repeated in verses 10, 12, 18, 21, and 25, and in verse 31 we read, "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." The meaning of the Hebrew word for good (tobh) is quite fluid in the Old Testament. According to Old Testament professor Kenneth Matthews the word can mean "happy, beneficial, aesthetically beautiful, morally righteous, preferable, of superior quality, or of ultimate value."

Notice the chain of divine agency: the holy God said, "Let there be ..." And it was so. And it was good. "Good" in this case seems to point to conformity to the will and purpose of God, in whom we see the true, the good, and the beautiful. "It is good" was not a statement made relative to any other created thing. God's only comparison was with his own purpose and will. God is good, and all that he made is good.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

God said it was very good that he made humanity, male and female, in his own image and likeness, to multiply and steward the earth and its plants and animals. From the beginning, humans were created to procreate. And we are told in Genesis 2:23–24 that they were to exercise their procreative gifts in the context of a "one flesh" kind of relationship — marriage. One-flesh unity includes the sexual, procreative aspect and much more. Through married procreation, offspring are born as a token of God's blessing. So the psalmist declared, "Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward" (Ps. 127:3).

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Series Preface,
Author's Preface,
Acknowledgments,
1 The Challenges of a Relativist World,
2 The History of Moral Reasoning, Part 1,
3 The History of Moral Reasoning, Part 2,
4 Enlightenment Ethics,
5 Evangelical Ethics,
6 Using the Bible in Moral Decision Making,
Conclusion,
Appendix,
Questions for Reflection,
Timeline,
Glossary,
Resources for Further Study,

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“I cannot think of a subject more important to this generation than ethics; and no person better to treat it than C. Ben Mitchell. I’m very happy to recommend this welcome and important volume.”
—Eric Metaxas, New York Times bestselling author, Miracles and Bonhoeffer

“In a world filled with test tube babies, living wills, and drone warfare, Christian ethics can seem like quicksilver, with positions irrelevant almost as soon as they are articulated due to fast-changing circumstances. This book demonstrates why and how every believer is called to Christ-conformed ethical reasoning. C. Ben Mitchell, one of the most significant Christian ethicists of our age, shares C. S. Lewis’s gift for communicating complex issues in easily understood terms. This book brims with insight that transcends the ethical squabbles of any given moment. Most importantly, this book shows us how to be moral without surrendering to mere moralism by rooting and grounding our ethics in the gospel that saves.”
—Russell Moore, Editor in Chief, Christianity Today

“C. Ben Mitchell has written what a volume appearing in a student’s guide series should be. Both concise and precise, his guide to ethics and moral reasoning within the Christian tradition will give readers a sense of the questions they should explore and the resources to use in that exploration. For students whose cultural context leaves them adrift in a sea of conflicting moral claims, Mitchell is a seasoned, reliable navigator.”
—Gilbert Meilaender, Duesenberg Professor in Christian Ethics, Valparaiso University

“C. Ben Mitchell has written a concise surefooted guide to ethics and moral reasoning from an evangelical perspective that takes both the Scriptures and the history of ethical discussion seriously. The text is written with admirable clarity and scholarly competence. For Mitchell, the triune God’s divine design for human life is our flourishing as persons who are members of a moral community. This short book contributes to that flourishing, and I commend it enthusiastically.”
—Graham A. Cole, Emeritus Dean and Emeritus Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; author, He Who Gives Life and Faithful Theology

“Every beginning student of ethics should rejoice at the publication of this book. Mitchell excels at describing our complicated ethical landscape without sacrificing depth or accuracy. I wish this introduction had been available when I was an undergraduate!”
—Christina Bieber Lake, Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English, Wheaton College