Hit-n-run atheology

“It's interesting to me how many members of the religious right, while usually trying to take the moral high ground and arguing positions on the basis of absolute moral values, suddenly shift to more relativistic, situational, and utilitarian positions on subjects like slavery, torture, war, executive power, and deception by national leaders.”

http://lippard.blogspot.com/

And it’s interesting to me how Lippard assumes, without benefit of argument, that belief in moral absolutes is incompatible with circumstantial or teleological considerations.

This is yet another illustration of Lippard’s sneak-and-retreat atheology. Instead of making a rational case for his own position, or reasoning against the Christian position, he prefers to stage a guerrilla attack.

Atheology by innuendo rather than argument.

This secures the rhetorical effect without the honest labor of a serious argument.

But there is more to ethics than a set of abstract norms. Ethical conduct involves a triadic relation between agents, facts, and values.

i) You have a standard. General norms. Moral absolutes.

But these don’t remain under glass. They must be applied.

ii) You have an agent. The agent is the subject of the standard.

This is why motives are a necessary (but insufficient) element of moral valuation.

iii) You have a concrete course of action. What to do. What to choose. Options and opportunities. This is the object of the standard.

Your immediate and individual circumstances both supply and constrain your range of available alternatives.

All three interrelated elements figure in Biblical ethics.

For example, OT ethics is covenantal, which is a form of contract law involving general norms and case law, as well as the divine and human parties to the contract.

i) Apodictic law.

The Decalogue is a set of general norms. Prescriptions and proscriptions.

There are also priority structures in Scripture, where a higher duty supersedes a lower duty in case of conflict.

ii) Casuistic law.

The norms (Ten Commandments) are not self-referential. They’re about something else, having reference to subjects (agents) and objects (other people, property).

That's spelled out in OT case-law, which applies the categorical norms to a variety of hypothetical cases.

This represents the how-to dimension, involving an end-means relation between an abstract norm and its concrete instrumentality.

iii) The parties.

God is both the origin and the primary object of moral norms. His people have a duty to their Creator, Redeemer, and Judge.

They also have duties to one another.

This is where the personal elements of intent, incentive, and emotion have a role to play.

It would behoove Mr. Lippard to avoid simple-minded caricatures of the Christian position. For we will call his hand.