A "Higher" Christian Morality?

A colleague expressed incredulity at my assertion that Christian practice does not amount to a “higher morality.” So I shall expiate.

First, an important assumption: I take it that there are two different things people can have in mind by “morality” (or “ethics”). On what we might call the narrow view, morality has centrally to do with a particular kind of reason for action, viz., those pertaining to how persons treat persons. On a broad view, moral reasons are whatever reasons are decisive; moral concerns are by definition those that trump all other considerations, irrespective of what they are about. These are not mutually exclusive; one could believe that moral considerations have essentially to do with the treatment of other persons and that because these concerns make up the content of morality, that they are by definition decisive in decisions about what to do. But one might—as I do—think that moral considerations have essentially to do with the treatment of other persons but that moral considerations, while very important, are not necessarily decisive. A person can reasonably think he has best reasons to act in a way morality proscribes. (My reason for thinking this lies mainly in my understanding of the nature of moral truth: our moral judgments are a product of natural selection for social life. They don’t track “deeply” objective features of the world but instead “project” moral properties upon the world. And this evolved capacity for moral judgment is shaped ultimately by reproductive success in the ancestral population, not by what’s best for human beings, i.e., not by what God most cares about.) If this is right, then moral considerations have relatively little to do with such questions as, “What sort of person should I try to be?” or “What sort of life is worth living?” Instead, ethical concerns typically function as constraints on my practical reasoning; they don’t contribute much to its content. And, while these constraints have a strong prima facie presumption in their favor, it is not impossible for one reasonably to decide that, all things considered, a particular moral demand should be overridden in a particular circumstance. (This is how I conceive the claims of Christian pacifists: they advocate doing morally wrong things, like letting evil dictators torture and kill the innocent when they could stop this by killing the dictator, on the ground that they best cohere with the Gospel. I realize this is not how Christian pacifists see themselves.)

With these suppositions in view, I want to say that the facts about the God who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself give us reasons to do some things and to avoid doing others. Indeed, anyone who subscribes to the Christian faith, ipso facto sees in it decisive reasons for action. Often, these reasons coincide with what morality gives us reason to do. This is no surprise: God passionately cares about human individuals and morality is a set of evolved constraints that by and large motivate us to treat other persons with minimal decency. What God wants us to do and our moral duty very often overlap. (I regard morality as akin to religion: a “human thing” to which for our sake God condescends, but ultimately always standing under the “crisis” of divine judgment because it can get in the way of what God wants.) Some actions are not morally obligatory, but supererogatory, i.e., “beyond the call of duty.” Some of the things the Gospel gives us good reason to do are supererogatory and this, I assume, is what might lead someone to say that there is a “higher morality” for Christians. But this is misleading, given that Christian faith also sometimes calls us to do things that are morally offensive, i.e., not contrary to moral duty but still morally bad, e.g., various instances of “turning the other cheek.” And it might call us to do what’s simply morally wrong, though the claim that the Gospel calls us to do what’s morally wrong needs strong arguments to back it up; the default view should be that God wants us to do what’s morally right. But much of what it makes sense to do in light of the Gospel are simply matters of moral indifference.

However, Christians who have the broad conception of morality seem to me to be pulled toward a moralistic understanding of Christian practice: “What God wants us to do is decisive. Morality is decisive. Therefore, what God wants us to do and what morality calls for are the same thing.” But because much of what it makes sense to do as a Christian is plainly not morally obligatory, they’re forced to try to conceive of Christianity as involving a “higher” morality.) Yet the Gospel as such doesn’t call us uncritically to any sort of morality, “higher” or “lower,” though of course it decisively shapes our practical rationality.

Finally, there is a practical reason for avoiding talk of a Christian morality. The most fundamental moral concept is justice, understood as each person getting whatever she or he deserves, good or bad.