Ethics and Christianity

An Essay

Ethics are External Expressions of an Internal Life

Ethos is not an internal condition of the soul. A person cannot be ethically virtuous, nor can virtue be created in him through ethical conditioning. Rather, ethics are the internal life of the individual as externalized; as expressed in relation to others. Ethics could be defined as internal moral virtue applied to a person’s relationships and dealings with other persons. Thus, ethics, as opposed to virtues, become instantiated precisely at the moment that a person reaches out to another person.

Ethical Systems Define Communities

An ethical system practically defines the boundaries of human interaction in a given community. Ethically speaking, a community comprises many persons living together in the same ethical space. This is one characteristic of a community: there may be geographical and historical parameters to consider as well.

But of course the question immediately presents itself: Who or what sets the ethical rules within a community?

Different communities approach this task in different ways. The exact forms of ethical behavior vary from community to community, as well as the way they are set. This has a lot to do with how, and for what purpose, the community is constituted. Although an ethical system defines the ethical space of a community, the ethical system itself is given its dimensions by the self-existing character of the community, in the same way that personal ethics are interpersonal instantiations of personal virtues. As communities change, their ethical norms change as well.

Jesus Christ Creates Christian Ethics

Now for the community known as the Church, one would expect that the Person by whom it has been created, and for whom it exists, would have something to do with creating its ethical space. And this is precisely what we discover in the ethical teachings of Jesus Christ–the Sermon on the Mount being possibly the keystone of his ethical teachings. The Gospels are brimming with Christ’s ethical instructions and His endorsements and interpretations of the Law of Moses.

But being a member of Christ’s Body does not depend on adherence to ethical rules.

Christianity is Not Defined by an Ethical System

Christ’s ethical teachings can only apply to those who are actually members of the true Christian community, those who are truly within the fellowship of His Kingdom. And one cannot insinuate himself into the Kingdom by means of works and moral behavior. Christ said of these:

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matt. 7.21-23)

This is a terrible warning to those who are content to behave as Christians outwardly without true devotion to God.

In a similar passage, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats from Matt. 25, Jesus reproves those who observe religious piety without showing His love to those around them. These hypocrites reverence the idea of Christ, and even derive earthly comfort and assurance from it, but have none of His Spirit dwelling inside them. Christ demands obedience, but given as from His children, not His vassals.

Knowledge of Christ Comes Through Faith Only

It is not through membership in a church or participation in religious activities, nor through initiation into religious mysteries and theology, that Christ is truly known. He can be known only by those to whom He has made Himself known. This knowledge of God comes through faith, which is the sole means of achieving a true knowledge of the Holy—and this gift of faith is acquired and exercised in secret and in silence.

Christian Ethics Come From Knowledge of Christ

This is not to say that the person with true faith is unknown to others. On the contrary, it is impossible for such a true faith to remain silent or without good works. Public religious expression and good works flow from faith as naturally as breathing. But faith comes first. And well it should, because if ethical behavior is the external expression of an internal life, Christian ethics proceed from a heart that has become one with Christ—become actually a member of His mystical body, which, of course, is the true Church.

No Individual Lives Outside of a Community

But the discerning reader has already noticed a problem with the definitions given at the beginning. If ethics are the outward expression of something internal and inherent to an individual, yet ethics are particular expressions of specific communities, then there must be a characteristic of the human person that cannot be separated from a particular community of place and time.

Absolute ‘ethical independence’ is shown to be an illusion, as personal ethics, whatever they are, are defined by something inherent to a person that connects him to something outside of himself. It may be a family or a local community or a religion. For a Christian, it is Christ and His Body. Ethics are a phenomenon of something else that comes before them. They do not exist independently.

Christians are Dead to Communities of Place and Time

Christ often warns that those who join His body will become alienated from other communities. “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Matt. 8.22). “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother . . . And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matt. 10.35-36), are two of many instances in the Gospel of Matthew alone. The one who follows Christ is, in fact, “dead.” He has ceased to be a member of the communities that previously required his ethical allegiance. Those who live to God are dead to the world. And this poses a difficult ethical problem, if the Christian is (to the world) a dead person who for some reason is still living among us, so to speak. Martin Luther was right to shift the focus of Christian ethical behavior away from Law and rest it solely on Love; for, if he is actually dead, the Christian is certainly not bound by the human laws of his time and place. Christians act toward others and obey man’s laws because they are guided by the law of Love. This love and obedience does not legitimate ethics and law-abiding as things that are good in themselves, but only in so far as these actions are in accord with the ethical teachings of Christ.

Persecution is Ethical

If we view Christianity in this way, as a religion that actually rejects and replaces the ethics of the communities in which it appears, we begin to understand why pagan societies feel so threatened by the Christian faith, and why they resort to vicious persecutions in a vain attempt to bring reform to their threatened ethical systems and save the fabric of their civilizations. Ethical systems demand that what opposes them be suppressed. But neither ethics nor society, nor persecution and sword, nor pleasure, nor pain, nor life, nor death, can ever separate us from the love of Christ.

Abraham’s actions in making ready to sacrifice Isaac were not in harmony with modern ethics—or even, it is likely, with his own ethical inclinations—but they were carried out by a love and faith that overcame even parental affection and the patriarch’s hopes of a great cultural legacy.

Ethical Systems Contain Nothing of Christianity

No community exists because of its ethics. A community exists first, and its ethics emerge as a phenomenon of its particular existence. So too with Christianity. The ethical structures that are called “Christian Moral Values” or “A Christian Nation” or “Christian Conservatism” or “Christian Socialism” are different things entirely from Christianity; they do not even share a boundary line with it. All they have in common is the reflection of some outward characteristic—an ethic—that Christianity produces, yet they are entirely based on this ethic itself as a first principle and so they depart entirely from what it actually means to be “Christian.”

It is vain for a person who is not “In Christ” to attempt to live within the Christian community by mimicking Christian ethics, and it is murderous to a church to allow it to be constituted around ethics, instead of around the Person and saving work of Christ Himself. It is murderous because it does not “discern the Body,” destroying and replacing it with an inferior construct.