New book from N.T. Wright

The hard-working Bishop of Durham is at it again.

This third (and likely last) book in the latest trilogy extends the Bishops insightful argument into ethics.

In a recent interview, he laid out a few of the basic ideas (ideals?) behind the book:

The book’s main target is not the other major moral theories of deontology and consequentialism, but the ideas of “spontaneity” and “authenticity” which have a grain of truth (Christians really should act “from the heart”), but which screen out the reality of moral formation, of chosen and worked-at habit-forming prayer and moral reflection and action, which gradually over time form the Christian character in which “authentic” behavior is also truly Christian behavior, not simply “me living out my prejudices and random desires”.

The point about “virtue”, then, is that it flags up something which is central in the New Testament but marginal in much western Christian reflection, namely the fact that

1. Behaviour is habit-forming,
2. Christian behavior is supposed to be habit-forming and hence character-forming,
3. There is a long and wise tradition of reflection on all this which most modern Protestants in particular simply don’t know,
4. It isn’t, as has often been thought, a danger to the gospel of God’s free grace and love,
5. It is therefore time for the whole notion of virtue, as the habit-forming strength of character, to be “reborn”,
6. and that all this is what you need to grasp “after you believe”, to answer the big question of “what now”?


Over the last couple years I've found myself deeply shaped by the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and others (all through the help of a certain Jonathan R. Wilson) who revive the language of virtue and character to help lead us back to faithful Christian witness. I've had my suspicions that Wright makes similar use of the Aristotelian scheme (especially since Surprised By Hope, but now the jury has returned.

As I read through this list I find myself nodding in excited agreement. The one big problem, it seems, is #4, which the sort of hyper-Protestant mind always seems to fear. "Virtue... Character... Works?... This smells of works-righteousness." But does it, for crying out loud?

This instant knee-jerk response has come up so many times now in my conversations that it is exasperating. The idea that the Gospel might require anything of us is continually granted with one hand and ripped away with the other. The distance between cheap grace and painful legalism is often more determined by our mood of the day than by any sustained theological reflection. It is into this conundrum that the language and practice of virtue gives real purchase.

Rather than viewing our sin as isolated incidents or actions, virtue ethics hones in on the character or heart of the sinner and the accompanying patterns of action. Rather than hit the believe over the head with guilt and a waving finger "Now that you know Jesus died, don't go on doing this little Johnny!", the virtue approach asks the deeper and more vital questions about which habits or practices promote certain actions and deter others. Sensitivity to the Spirit can also render grace continually as the believer finds the strength to walk a new walk and talk a new talk comes not from pulling up one's spiritual bootstraps but rather from leaning ever more on the God of grace - and, I dare say, accepting some forms of discipline as a part of spiritual growth. Rather than viewing accountability partners with shame and suspicion, an ethic of character welcomes the openness, honesty, and transparency which is an essential part to the training of our faculties.

This point strikes very deeply to the laissez faire morality of our day, which Christians have largely adopted with some half-hearted biblical gloss about 'love' and 'grace'. But the formation of character requires something, and it requires something of US. The Bishop makes this point beautifully,

"First, the point about “vice”, the opposite of “virtue”, is that, whereas virtue requires moral effort, all that has to happen for vice to take hold is for people to coast along in neutral: moral laziness leads directly to moral deformation (hence the insidious power of TV which constantly encourages effortless going-with-the-flow). The thing about virtue is that it requires Thought and Effort . . ."

That might strike those of us raised on cheap grace as outrageous, but it is more our laziness (undoubtedly bred by the insidious TV which Wright mentions) that betrays us than our half-hearted desires to seek after Christ. But the point about Virtue, says Wright is that "to become part of God’s people is to become a genuinely human being." Being formed in the likeness of Christ renews the image of God in us. Our efforts to shape our behaviors and dispositions after His is an essential part to our transformation, even when it is difficult and costly.

Methinks we have much to learn from Bonhoeffer on this point as well, but that must wait for a future post.

The full interview with Bishop Wright can be found here.

Friedman, Marx, and the conservative(s)

At risk of being written off as a 'damn communist/socialist', I offer a brief excerpt from Marx's Manifesto. My only defense is that i ran across it in a book of a very different era and kind - Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat (2005). Friedman has been a senior Foreign Affairs correspondent for the New York Times. This book represents his lengthy reflections upon Globalization after the turn of the millenium. (More to come on Friedman, as his latest book represents a major shift in tone - this Hot, Flat, and Crowded finds the great challenges facing us as a planet and, in contrast to the previous work, doesn't believe that global expansion and deregulation will solve things.)

Recall that Marx penned these words in 1848...


All fixed, fast, frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe.

In the place of old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves.

In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

Friedman then provides some commentary on this passage, noting in particular the resemblance between a world which had begun to see the Industrial Revolution, and one which now faces the Global Flattening Revolution. He quotes a conversation with Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel,

"...a flat, frictionless world is a mixed blessing. It may, as you suggest, be good for global business. Or it may, as Marx believed, augur well for a proletarian revolution. But it may also pose a threat to the distinctive places and communities that give us our bearings, that locate us in the world. From the first stirrings of capitalism, people have imagined the possibility of the world as a perfect market - unimpeded by protectionist pressures, disparate legal systems, cultural and linguistic differences, or ideological disagreement. But this vision has always bumped up against the world as it actually is - full of sources of friction and inefficiency. Some obstacles to a frictionless global market are truly sources of waste and lost opportunities. But some of these inefficiencies are institutions, habits, cultures, and traditions that people cherish precisely because they reflect nonmarket values like social cohesion, religious faith, and national pride. If global markets and new communications technologies flatten these differences, we may lost something important. That is why the debate about capitalism has been, from the very beginning, about which frictions, barriers, and boundaries are mere sources of waste and inefficiency, and which are sources of identity and belonging that we should try to protect." (pg. 204)

It strikes me that this debate also draws out a range of responses - the scale of which is broader than simply 'liberal' and 'conservative'. (The caricature being that the liberals want to sit and sip coffee while the governments hand out checks to everyone, while the conservatives want governments to get out of the way so that we can all compete.) While there are echoes of truth in these caricatures and we need to think about them very carefully, I have become increasingly convinced that there are (at least) two kinds of conservatives.

The first is concerned to protect the small community which he is rooted in - the health of its people and land, the sense of trust neighbors have with one another, the ease with which children grow up free to roam and play. They don't particularly like politics, but care very much about which people are running their town hall meetings! The second is concerned with his or her own freedom to do as they please and with the need for governments to get out of the way. Though they also live in a relatively small community, they regard high property values and low taxes as the main reason for their being there. They see no reason why jobs shouldn't be outsourced, for it could mean - in the big picture - that we make more money at home.

This is a perplexing constrast. Friedman seems to be in the second category at least when it regards economics. He is largely positive towards the 'flattening' of the world (even if it entails the removal of the sort of boundaries that Sandel points to), believes that the less we restrict individual liberty and creativity the better it will be for all of us. And yet, 3 years later he writes a book which claims, "America has a problem and the world has a problem... it's getting Hot, Flat, and Crowded." Furthermore, our businesses haven't creatively anticipated these problems and our governments haven't shaped policy which could help businesses to move in this direction either. Individuals bicker about the demands of change in lifestyle. So where do we go from here? Well, one option is to return to an older form of conservatism which conserves the local embodied community and the virtues thereof.

I intend to blog further on Friedman as I continue reading. Feel free to join the discussion.

UNEP "Environmental Food Crises" - an important report

At a meeting last week of the UNEP Governing Council and Global Ministerial Environment Forum (yes thats a mouthful) in Nairobi, Kenya, an important and powerful document was released entitled "The Environmental Food Crisis". The report can be found electronically here. Or you can also download the 104-page report in its entirety as a pdf file.

The focus of this report has been in the news for the last year or two as a number of factors (the report names "speculation in food stocks, extreme weather events, low cereal stocks, growth in biofuels competing for cropland and high oil prices" along with the loss of agricultural lands due to development pg. 6) have collapsed the global food status quo and drive more than 110 million people (in 2008 alone) into poverty, while leaving an additional 44 million undernourished. (pg. 13) (In case you weren't aware the 'extreme poverty' threshold has been valued at US $1.25 a day - about 50 cents less than my cup of coffee.)

Reports like this threaten our humanity and livelihood. They also threaten the common notion that caring for the environment is different from caring for the poor. When I consider how my own food choices implicate me in such systems of injustice, I am reminded of passages such as this one from the Prophets. Truly "The earth mourns" and "lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant."

For more news about this UN report try here and here. What these reports claim is that the changes which most make sense for the earth - smaller-scale organic operations, less waste of water and loss of topsoil - make the most sense for its inhabitants. The first report is of particular interest to me as I recall this same picture almost daily at my own University.

MacIntyre and intelligent action (and reading too)

Chris Tilling, over at Chrisendom has recently commented on a brilliant piece of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. He relates this post to the John Piper-Tom Wright debate over justification. It is a great thought and the post can be found here.

Here is the quote in full:

"I am standing waiting for a bus and the young man standing next to me suddenly says: 'The name of the common wild duck is Histrionicus histrionicus histrionicus.' There is no problem as to the meaning of the sentence he uttered: the problem is, how to answer the question, what was he doing in uttering it? Suppose he just uttered such sentences at random intervals; this would be one possible form of madness. We would render his action of utterance intelligible if one of the following turned out to be true. He has mistaken me for someone who yesterday had approached him in the library and asked: 'Do you by any chance know the Latin name of the common wild duck?' Or he has just come from a session with his psychotherapist who has urged him to break down his shyness by talking to strangers. Or he is a Soviet spy waiting at a prearranged rendez-vous and uttering the ill-chosen code sentence which will identify him to his contact. In each case the act of utterance become intelligible by finding its place in a narrative." (p. 210) (italics mine)

What MacIntyre so beautifully articulates is the role of context in shaping the intelligibility of action. While I think there is some fruit to be found in deconstruction and the sort of postmodern linguistic turn, what it fails wholly to grasp is the embedded nature of language and action. We are not completely adrift in a sea of language, no matter how much it may appear the case. Neither are we completely adrift in embodied action. The great gift of MacIntyre (and the whole theological school of Hauerwas et al. that followed him) is the realization that narrative plays a vital role in discourse.

Much of our misunderstanding, therefore, (and thanks to Tilling in naming this to be the case with Wright and Piper) is not over words themselves, but over the narrative context within which those words are given meaning. After all, we can read it as plain as can be "the righteousness of God". But as soon as we ponder what these words might mean within the context of Paul's letter to the Romans, or that of First Century Judaism and Christianity, we are onto a whole different topic. The same emerges in our readings of Genesis and Revelation. What are we to make of such potent imagery? Can we read these as simply as we can pick up a newspaper or must we immerse ourselves in another world of thought and metaphor to make sense of things?

I think this is why Wright is such essential reading, for he navigates these challenges as deftly as anyone. (If you haven't yet, stop now and go read his New Testament and the People of God parts one and two!) The task of faithful exegesis must begin from this point - the thought world of the Biblical writers and original readers - and ask these sorts of questions or else it does become adrift. It must be willing to listen and to wait and to press further into a narrative that is not, in the first instance, simply our own. Only from this point can we begin to grasp 'the way' and follow it.