Ethics in our time

Christian Century, Sept 27, 2000

HAUERWAS: Robin points out that the social gospelers were concerned about defending the meaning and truth of religious claims in the face of the natural sciences, especially the work of Darwin, and in the face of the mechanistic presuppositions of social science. That's right. And that was central in Niebuhr's work: he never left behind questions of the meaning and truthfulness of religious claims. Interest in those concerns tended to get lost in recent years because social ethics has been shaped by advocacy groups for whom the question of whether Christianity is true or not takes a back seat to the question "Is it useful in the struggle for justice?"

LOVIN: But the question "Is it useful?" reflects a pragmatic notion of truth with which Niebuhr would also be comfortable. And not only Niebuhr. The social gospel leaders whom Niebuhr was reacting against, as well as the liberation theologians of the 1970s and '80s who thought Niebuhr was too closely aligned with the establishment--all these people shared an interest in framing theological truths in light of their social effects. I see significant continuities between these movements. For example, at the conclusion of Niebuhr's 1932 book Moral Man and Immoral Society, he makes clear that he expects social change to come from people who are so oppressed by their situations that they grab hold of the eschatological hope in Christianity and take action. That sounds a lot like liberation theology.

An important difference, though, is that Niebuhr would say that movements of liberation can't be trusted any more than their oppressors can be.

HAUERWAS: Right. It's not clear that liberation theologians have that kind of mistrust. They certainly do not want to acknowledge the reality of sin in Niebuhrian fashion.

The larger problem here--and this is a problem with the social gospel as well as with some kinds of liberation theology--is the notion that you can leave theological claims behind in the interest of getting on with the work of social justice. This strikes me as a conceptual and theological mistake.

Let me give an example: For some reason, people think that when you use the term justice you are talking about social ethics, but when you use the term creation you are talking about theology, not ethics. But creation is an extraordinary term that calls for rethinking not only the world but our actions in the world. Augustine said that any society that isn't based on the right worship of the true God cannot be just, because justice derives from our fundamental obligation to pay our due to God, which is worship. He was thereby offering a vision of justice based on an understanding of creation. And we need to remember that creation is an eschatological reality.

LOVIN: As we lose confidence both in the social order and in our ability to understand it and control it, then we do have to pay more attention to the theological grounding of our convictions--to themes of creation, fall, resurrection and kingdom.

HAUERWAS: And Jesus.