“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.
“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.”
ReplyDeleteI’d like to see your argument to secure the claim that “Lippard assumes” this, “without benefit of argument.” Is it simply that you don’t know his argument? Or do you know for certain that he’s assuming this without an argument?
“This secures the rhetorical effect without the honest labor of a serious argument.”
Sounds like what Christian apologists do. If Lippard is wrong for doing this (supposing he has done it), aren’t Christian apologists (especially those who publish those many books) also wrong as well? Or do they get a Sunday pass?
“Ethical conduct involves a triadic relation between agents, facts, and values.”
I’ve never read this in the bible. Specifically, what is the bible’s conception of “facts” and “values”?
Hi Ted,
ReplyDeleteI don’t need to mount an argument on my part to prove the absence of argument on his part. He made a claim without any supporting argument. That speaks for itself.
Whether he has an argument is beside the point. He gave no argument. That’s the point. I judge him by what he says, and not by what he might have said or should have said.
As to the practice of Christian apologetes, you, too, make an allegation without benefit of argument. Seems to be contagious on the part of unbelievers. Care to document your claim?
As to fact and value in Scripture, I already explicated that matter in the course of my exposition. You seem to be confusing concepts with words.
"As to fact and value in Scripture, I already explicated that matter in the course of my exposition. You seem to be confusing concepts with words."
ReplyDeleteI must have missed it. Can you point to where the bible talks about these things? I saw no bible references in your blog, if that's what you mean by your "exposition."
In my discussion of the elements of the Mosaic law as a covenant with parties, stipulations, and applications.
ReplyDeleteSteve:
ReplyDeleteI don't see that your response actually addresses anything I said--I was commenting on and referring to specific argument threads about slavery on Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog, but your readers wouldn't know this since you didn't even provide a link to what you quoted from:
http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/03/ed-brayton-on-slavery-and-bible.html
And how is it that I'm engaged in "sneak-and-retreat atheology" when I'm open to engaging in argument, while you make a point of not actually linking to what you're commenting on, or responding to comments on your own blog--see my comments on the "tortured logic" issue: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/03/tortured-logic.html
My last comment was written without having read the "Backpedaling" post on this blog (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/03/backpedaling.html), so I retract the end of the second paragraph of the comment and have responded there. I will continue to dispute the "sneak-and-retreat" claim, though--isn't that refuted by my interaction here? A more accurate description would be "initially brief and willing to engage in further argument."
ReplyDelete"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."
ReplyDeleteI'm not assuming that--clearly, any absolute moral principle is going to involve sets of circumstances simply in order for it to applicable at all. Principles about killing are applicable to situations in which killing occurs. Likewise, I think everybody agrees that consequences matter--but for the deontologist, bad consequences are never sufficient to override fundamental rights.
But let's go to the specifics of what I was commenting on--particular Christian arguments in the comments of Ed Brayton's blog that slavery was a justifiable, moral institution in some historical circumstances. Do you buy that? If so, then you must not believe in an inalienable human right of self-ownership (or, an alternate formulation for Christians who believe God owns human beings, an inalienable right not to be owned by other human beings).
At some point, if you water down an absolute principle enough by adding additional qualifications (particularly qualifications that themselves don't seem to have any moral relevance, such as a time index), it becomes indistinguishable from a purely relativistic one.
the good Dr. Lippard seems to be having trouble distinguishing among the "perfect aspirational" with the free will historical empirical and the ameliorative ethical inbetweens. Humanists values are relative,why can't God's be relative as well? contra, God's values may well be quite constant, only having to make firebreak corrections to make manmade evils a bit less evil in their impact.
ReplyDelete