Christian Ethics and the Church

Ecclesial Foundations for Moral Thought and Practice

Turner, Philip

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781441223203
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This book introduces Christian ethics from a theological perspective. Philip Turner, widely recognized as a leading expert in the field, explores the intersection of moral theology and ecclesiology, arguing that the focus of Christian ethics should not be personal holiness or social reform but the common life of the church. A theology of moral thought and practice must take its cues from the notion that human beings, upon salvation, are redeemed and called into a life oriented around the community of the church. This book distills a senior scholar's life work and will be valued by students of Christian ethics, theology, and ecclesiology.

1
John Cassian’s Ethic of Individual Sanctification

Introduction

John Cassian was one of the founders of Western monasticism. He was born circa 360 CE. His parents were wealthy Christians who provided him with a fine education that rendered him fluent in both Greek and Latin. His theological perspective was shaped by both Evagrius Ponticus and Origen. John Chrysostom ordained him circa 399. Prior to that, sometime between 378 and 380, with his friend Germanus, he entered a monastery near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Soon, he and his friend left for the Egyptian desert to learn from the desert fathers. There, he collected the wisdom of these spiritual guides and later presented their views, along with his own, in two works, The Conferences1 and The Institutes.2 Together these works contain Cassian’s moral theology along with an account of the exercises he believed necessary for spiritual progress. Both concern that form of life known in the ancient world as philosophia. The parallels between these two works and other renditions of spiritual practice common to the period are marked.

Pierre Hadot has argued rightly that, in contrast to modern notions, ancient philosophy was before all else a way of life.3 Spiritual exercises lay at the heart of the practice of philosophy, and their goal was self-improvement that moved the practitioner toward the perfection of human nature and eudaimonia, a form of well-being in which “unhappy disquiet” is overcome and a whole new way of life undertaken. People often overlook the fact that Christian theologians like Cassian, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Origen thought of the way in which they lived in Christ as philosophia. By this term they meant more than philosophical argument and speculation. They had in mind a way of life in which thought and spiritual practice are part of a single enterprise, the end of which is knowledge of God and human fulfillment.

The extraordinary parallels between the accounts these men gave of life in Christ and the prescriptions for living espoused by the various philosophical schools are often overlooked. Nevertheless, these parallels, once mentioned, are apparent. The goal of philosophia was escape from what Pierre Hadot has nicely termed “a state of unhappy disquiet” in which one is overwhelmed by worry and torn by passions that lead to a way of life that, in the end, proves contrary to both reason and human nature.4 The goal of philosophia also was to learn a new form of life that conforms not to human prejudices and social conventions (which are in fact products of the passions) but to the demands of reason and the basic nature of humankind. All schools believed in the power of reason and the will to overcome ignorance and the power of the passions to distort one’s view of life.

The practices advocated by the philosophical schools all have their parallels in the writings of Cassian and other church fathers. Like the philosophers of the schools, the early fathers saw life in Christ as a form of exercise analogous to the physical exercises of athletes. Like the exercises of the philosophers, those advocated by the church fathers involved constant meditation, close attention to oneself, and triumph over the passions with a view to living life as nature intends or as God wills.

Into these exercises, however, Cassian and others introduced certain particularly Christian elements. In this respect, what the fathers had to say about what is now called “sexuality” is of particular importance. Peter Brown has noted that in their presentation of ascetical practices, the early fathers of the church gave considerable attention to the renunciation of sexual activity.5 Control of sexual desire was also a concern of the schools, but for reasons other than those that concerned the fathers of the church. In contrast to the thought and practice of the schools, the issue for the fathers was not a balanced life in which the appetites are controlled and moderated by reason. Their concern was rather purity of heart and body that signaled the fact that Christians belong entirely to another realm of being. Sexual purity was in fact a trope for an utterly different form of life. Thus, Christian ascesis did not seek the successful control of daily social life. Rather, it sought to transfer the practitioner into a heavenly world and, in so doing, cut altogether his or her ties with the normal mechanisms of daily living.

Another important difference between the fathers and the schools appears in the common admonition to imitate a paradigmatic life. All the schools of philosophy emphasized imitation of figures who had gone before. One finds the same focus in the writings of the fathers. Christians are urged to take Christ as their model. Nevertheless, in undertaking to imitate Christ, a significant difference between the thought and practice of the fathers and that of the schools appears. According to the fathers, will and intellect alone are inadequate to the imitative task. Successful imitation is dependent to one degree or another upon grace; because of this dependence, humility, patience, and obedience are essential companions of self-knowledge and self-control. The significance attached to human weakness and the consequent valorization of the virtues of humility and patience give a distinctive profile to the accounts of philosophia advocated by the fathers and John Cassian.

The Goal and Basis of Life in Christ according to John Cassian

The Goal of Life Together in Christ

The best way to identify the focus of any account of life in Christ is to ask first of all how the goal of that life is construed. How, in his philosophia, does John Cassian portray that goal? In the first book of The Conferences, Abba Moses remarks: “All the arts and disciplines have a certain scopos or goal, and a telos, which is the end that is proper to them, on which the lover of any art sets his gaze and for which he calmly and gladly endures every labor and danger and expense.”6 He then goes on to say: “The end or telos of our profession . . . is the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven; but the goal or scopos is purity of heart, without which it is impossible for anyone to reach that end.”7

Though Aristotle used the terms telos and scopos interchangeably, the Stoics made a distinction between the two that one sees present in the remarks of Abba Moses. According to the Stoics, the telos refers to an agent doing or obtaining something and it is expressed by verbs. On the other hand, scopos refers to the thing done or obtained, and is expressed by nouns. The Stoic Arius distinguished the difference in this way: “A scopos is the target to be hit, like a shield for archers; a telos is the hitting of the target.”8 Put another way, the scopos is the end aimed at and the telos is the act of obtaining that particular end.

For Cassian the end to be aimed at (scopos) is purity of heart or “perfection.”9 Perfection is (negatively) a state in which one is free from the distorting thoughts that take the mind and heart away from God and (positively) a state in which one’s mind and heart are focused without interruption upon God. This is the target at which one is to aim and to which one is to direct all attention and effort. The telos, that which is obtained when the target is hit, is living in the kingdom of God, or enjoying eternal life.10 The point Cassian wishes to make is that by fixing one’s eyes upon the proper scopos, one reaches the telos of a practice in the quickest way. Thus, all one’s effort is to be directed to obtaining purity of heart that will, in turn, allow one to contemplate and enjoy God without interruption.

It is this scopos and this telos that are to claim all one’s attention and energy. In a word, they are to “trump” any other concerns or obligations. Good works, for example, are of secondary importance to “theoria,” or divine contemplation.11 The story of Mary and Martha shows “that the Lord considered the chief good to reside in theoria alone—that is in divine contemplation.”12 All other virtues, though necessary and good, are secondary. Even good works, necessary though they may be, are so only because people have taken for their own what God meant to be shared by all. There are poor people in the world because of the presence of avarice, but one day God will rid the world of both vice and poverty. Thus, in the kingdom of heaven, good works will no longer be needed. Only contemplation will remain.13

The monk thus seeks to take heaven by storm. For those who search for knowledge, good deeds are but necessary interruptions in a more interior task. The overwhelming pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: The Focus of Christian Ethics
• Part Two: A Prismatic Case
• Part Three: Possible Exceptions
• Part Four: The Shape of an Ecclesial Ethic
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover