Reconstructing Christian Ethics 01: Biblical Virtues

I'm not a student of ethical philosophy, but according to Dr. Chidi Anagonye, there are three basic kinds of ethical frameworks:

1. Rule-based. The right thing to do is follow the rules. [Insert rules here.]
   
2. Virtue-based. The right thing to do is the virtuous thing, the thing that builds the virtues in you and makes you a better person. [Insert virtues here.]
   
3. Consequentialist. The right thing to do is the action with the best outcome. [Insert spice melange here.]
   

The Jewish covenant of the Old Testament is often described as a rule-based ethical framework. (I suspect this description is deeply in error, and I make no comment at all about modern rabbinic Judaism.) Christians reject that covenant as not binding on Christians, and (evangelicals at least) strongly reject the entire concept of legalism. Christianity would be a virtue-based ethical framework.

But I think many of us would find a totally different lived experience of being in the Church. There are all sorts of rules to being a Christian, aren't there? Evangelicals in particular often simultaneously decry legalism, while having more actual (spoken and unspoken) rules than almost anyone else out there. When addressing the idea that "all things are permissible," Paul's response is that not all things are beneficial or profitable, and that some things have the potential to master us. We need to spend much more of our focus on what is beneficial and and profitable, and on what things can master us. That's what virtues are all about.

I would say there's a difference between morality and church order, with rules in the latter being perfectly reasonable. But that's a distinction we often fail to draw as well. Right now I'm not looking at church order at all, and only focusing on morality and ethics. In that sphere, Christians might have rules, but only those that are clearly a specific contextual implementation of a virtue. Rules can never stand alone as a binding command deriving from some new legalism.

So what are the virtues, then? In an attempt to make sense of things, I started trying to organize New Testament lists of virtues and vices. I don't usually hold with reading across scripture for hidden meanings spread through multiple books; that's how the teachings of man get elevated above where they should be. But in this case, the results were pretty striking. You can see my (ongoing) work here.

To start, look at the Beatitudes, in Matthew/Luke; the fruits of the Spirit in Paul's letter to the Galatians; and the Love is section of 1 Corinthians. Do you know what's interesting? The language is a little different, but there is a ton of overlap among these lists. Overall I came up with over a dozen virtue lists, including one from the Old Testament, with over 140 distinct entries. But they very easily condensed into ten clusters. I'm sure they could be combined or sliced a little differently without harm, but here is my particular list, with my brief attempt at a description:

• Humility before God: Serve God, and see that his ways are higher than your ways
• Drive for righteousness and restorative justice: Make your life and the world more in line with God's will; mourn sin and repent
• Embrace of knowledge, wisdom, and truth: Learn true things, reject false things, and spread that learning
• Love and respect: Place others before yourself
• Joy, satisfaction, contentment, gratitude: Recognize the good God has given you
• Forgive and build peace, covenant, and relationship: Give up revenge, and encourage reconciliation
• Patience and hope: Remember that God will act, and that He rules all things
  
• Kindness, mercy, and generosity: Do good for people, especially those in need
• Integrity and self-control: Be one thing, all the time; subdue bodily impulses
• Faithfulness and endurance: Keep your covenants, carry on in the face of all adversity
  

Consider this list and compare it to the properties of God Almighty. God has all of them, infinitely. 

• Humility before God: Jesus is perfectly submissive to the Father
• Drive for righteousness and restorative justice: God is the standard for righteousness and justice, and demands the same of his creation; God seeks restoration of relationship with all sinners
  
• Embrace of knowledge, wisdom, and truth: God possesses all knowledge, wisdom and truth
• Love and respect: God is love, and so loved the world that He gave his only Son
  
• Joy, satisfaction, contentment, gratitude: God possesses all things, implying perfect satisfaction with what He has
• Forgive and build peace, covenant, and relationship: God is infinitely forgiving, and Christ died to establish relationship and covenant with us
• Patience and hope: God's patience is tremendous, and he knows that all will be well in the end, because he makes it that way
• Kindness, mercy, and generosity: God's mercy and kindness to us are infinite
• Integrity and self-control: God is always consistent between what he says he should do and what he actually does
• Faithfulness and endurance: God's faithfulness is perfect and unbroken and will remain so for eternity
  

If we have all these qualities, we are in accord with the teachings of Christ, as expounded upon by Paul. We have been formed to be like Christ by the Holy Spirit. This list describes the kind of person Christians are all trying to grow into.

There are also a lot of "sin lists" in the New Testament. If you've read the New Testament, you know what I mean. Paul almost can't write a letter without listing all the horrible things people do, and there are a few that aren't from Paul as well. Like the virtues, there are over a dozen of these lists, with a lot of overlap. Sometimes the language is unclear (just what is sorcery anyway?), but by making some reasonable assumptions, we again find that there are several distinct clusters. Each represents the absence of one or more of the virtues above.

• Murder and Harm lacks Love and respect, Kindness and mercy
• Deceit lacks Embrace of knowledge and truth
• Idolatry lacks Humility before God
• Greed lacks Joy, satisfaction, contentment, gratitude
• Impurity lacks Integrity and self-control
• Discord and strife lacks Forgive and build peace, covenant, and relationship
• Faithlessness lacks Faithfulness and endurance
  
• Drunkenness lacks Integrity and self-control
• Self-centeredness lacks Humility before God, Love and respect, Kindness and mercy
• Theft lacks Kindness and mercy
• Dissatisfaction lacks Joy, satisfaction, contentment, gratitude
• Bodily sin lacks Integrity and self-control; Joy, satisfaction, contentment, gratitude; Humility before God
• Bad speech lacks Integrity and self-control, Kindness and mercy
• Unrighteousness lacks Drive for righteousness and restorative justice
• Disobedience lacks Humility before God

Now, we can't take this list above and say "Look, a list of things to avoid! Now I know how to be a Christian!" In virtue ethics, a given action isn't right or wrong based on whether it violates a list of rules! Instead of asking if an action is permissible, we should be asking if it builds up. An action is evaluated by whether it builds virtues, damages those virtues, or is neutral. The right choice is usually the one that maximizes the virtue-building within us. We want to be a Christ-shaped person.

Now, someone's going to say "Look, he's saying there's no such thing as sin!" That's obviously not what I'm saying, so don't listen to that person. I'm saying we have misunderstood sin. Sin is not just breaking the rules; if sin is just breaking the rules, you're living in legalism, not discipleship. A disciple wants to be as much like the master as possible. A disciple doesn't ask "what's the minimum I can do and still get by?" But that's what legalism encourages.

In a virtue system, a sinful action is one that doesn't optimize your virtue-building. That means there's a lot of subjectivity, there's a lot of worrying about context and details, there's a lot of gray. This should surprise nobody who's lived in the real world. Like rabbinic Judaism, virtue ethics results in a lot of conversations and debates, and relatively few hard and universal answers. That's okay. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Wrestle with God. It's fantastic exercise.

I'm going to spend some time on a lot of different subjects in this framework. But one I want to focus on particularly is sex.

I evaluated over a dozen sin lists in the New Testament. There's a lot of overlap, and a lot of differences, but almost all include sexual immorality, usually as the Greek word porneia. Porneia is clearly something super-important to understand. Huge amounts of our evangelical Christian legalism is built around our understanding of this one word. And despite what we've been told our whole lives, understanding it is not nearly as simple as it seems.