I summarize Christian behavior by: "Please God not man." Perhaps the issue
of Christian Ethics is not all that complicated. The present furor and
emphasis of ethicists, etc. may be a sign of man's disobedience and lack of
knowledge of Who God truly is.
Take care,
Moorad
At 11:02 PM 1/28/98 -0600, Tom Pearson wrote:
>George (and others),
> Your comments on my post from last night were both insightful and
>provocative, and I appreciate your reflection. Several people have
>responded today, both on- and off-list, and I will try to reply to each of
>you, but it may take a day or two. I'm encouraged that so many people have
>devoted some careful thought to the relation between professional ethics and
>professional practice, and to the nature of the connection between
>Christianity and professional conduct; and I'm grateful for this community
>of scholars, among whom I can work through these issues.
> What follows are brief responses to George's comments.
>
>At 07:38 AM 1/28/98 -0500, George Murphy wrote:
>
>> I can't offer much experiential response - theoretical physics
>>doesn't present lots of ethical dilemmas, & as a pastor I'd better have
>>some coherence between my religious & "professional" ethics. But a few
>>general points -
>> 1) I wonder what you mean by "traditional Christian ethics".
>
> Well, now that you mention it, so do I. I suppose I meant something
>like this. What I was taught in seminary as "Christian Ethics," was divided
>into two parts. On the one hand, there was the divine law, expressed as
>norms, rules, principles, guidelines and commandments. It struck me then
>(and still does) as a move to reduce Christianity down to a system of
>ethical practice. Frankly, I find it odd to call that sort of thing,
>"Christianity." But the notion that Christianity essentially embraces a set
>of divine principles for righteous living is apparently attractive to many.
>On the other hand, I was taught that "Christian Ethics" can be summarized in
>the mandate, "Love one another." But "love," no matter what its source, and
>no matter what its object, is not a component of ethics. It is, rather, a
>specific type of psychological motivation. I may be prompted to perform
>some act by love, meaning that I might be motivated by love in any number of
>my activities. But being motivated in this way does not tell me what is
>good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate. There is no
>ethical "content" to love, such that I can make sound moral judgments on the
>basis of being moved by love.
> So, I think that by "traditional Christian ethics," I had in mind
>this sort of reliance on prescriptions derived from divine law, together
>with the injunction to love. When conducting my research, I've treated any
>response that indicates the respondent derives her ethical resources from
>such sources as church, Sunday school, the Bible, doctrine, theology,
>worship or prayer
>as a response grounded in "religious ethics."
>
>>Certainly the type of relatively simple deontological ethics which many
>>Christians learn in Sunday School may not be helpful in many situations
>>of modern science & technology. Perhaps that indicates a need for
>>training in more satisfactory Christian ethics.
>
> Originally, this was own motivation for studying professional
>ethics. I've frequently been struck by the difficulty so many Christians
>who occupy professional roles have in "translating" their commitment to
>Christ into suitable strategies for moral decision-making in the workplace.
>It may be that "simple deontological ethics" is a likely culprit; any system
>that suggests there are universal moral principles (good any time, any
>place) that can be made to fit snugly all varieties of idiosyncratic
>professional contexts is already off to a bad start. I'm not any longer
>persuaded that developing a "more satisfactory Christian ethics" is the
>answer here, but I'd certainly be interested in seeing what that might look
>like.
>
>> 2) Professional codes of ethics may not be connected explicitly
>>with religion, but they need not be incompatible. The requirement of
>>honesty in business dealings is the same whether derived from the 7th
>>Commandment, Confucius, or a purely pragmatic ethic. Of course this is
>>why some notion of natural law seems plausible.
>
> Shrewd observations. There's no need for incompatibility,
>contradiction, or even tension between the two. I confess that, as I seek
>to achieve the highest standards of moral excellence in the profession of
>teaching, I rarely recur back to my Christian faith for *specific* guidance.
>But I certainly exhibit my Christian faith here in a variety of ways.
>There's no incompatibility that I can discern. My faith in Christ doesn't
>tell me how to be a good teacher; the standards of excellence inherent in
>the practice itself can. As for those standards, honesty is certainly a
>primary virtue. Primary, and ubiquitous. I cannot think of any
>professional practice that would not have honesty on its short list of core
>virtues. But there are a large assortment of virtues, and some of them are
>not necessarily relevant in all professions.
>
>> 3) Formulations of explicitly Christian ethics may provide a
>>foundation but not detailed prescriptions for the specific issues of
>>engineering, medicine, &c. Christians in these fields need not try to
>>trace every aspect of the ethical codes of their professions back to
>>explicitly Christian principles. But they should, at some point, try to
>>see if those codes are generally consistent with, e.g., "You shall love
>>your neighbor as yourself."
>
> Allowing some latitude for "generally consistent," I think this is
>exactly right. The crafting of professional ethics is not necessarily
>connected to the "love" motivation (or any specific motivation), but there's
>room for symbiosis.
>
>> 4) There may be professional codes which are _not_ consistent
>>with Christianity. The implicit code of professional ethics for Nazi
>>medical research is an example. (I recognize the danger of appealing to
>>extreme cases, but _reductio ad absurdum_ is a valid form of argument.)
>> Thus a Christian should not simply check his or her religiously based
>>ethics at the door when entering a profession.
>
> Just one quibble: I don't like the "Nazi" example, and here's why.
>It suggests that the ethical offense here is a manifestation of an evil
>belonging to a political system or a culture, and the proper line of
>resistance is a religiously based ethics. But insofar as medical research
>is a professional practice flourishing in Germany, the U.S., Russia and
>South Africa (or anywhere else), then medical research is an international
>community of practice, with standards of ethical conduct appropriate to that
>practice. Any practitioner in that profession could have (and should have)
>risen and declared that what was going on in Nazi Germany was a violation of
>the moral standards upheld by that particular practice. The moral evil here
>was not merely political, it was professional; and the appropriate response
>should have come from within the profession itself. If the individual
>practitioner objecting to the Nazi medical research is *motivated* by, say,
>a love of Christ, that's perfectly natural. But the identification of the
>evil being carried out within the profession, and the summons to
>professional accountability, properly belongs to the professional practice
>itself.
> Hmm. Those really weren't such "brief responses" after all, were they?
>
>Tom Pearson
>____________________________________________________________________________
>____________________________________________________________________________
>
>Thomas D. Pearson
>Department of History & Philosophy
>The University of Texas-Pan American
>Edinburg, Texas
>e-mail: pearson@panam1.panam.edu
>
>