Jesus, Kant, Bentham, and the apparent death of love, part one.

I

What is the place of love in contemporary ethical thinking, as it is manifested in the practical deliberations of our day? 

At one level, you might say, love never had it so good. The 1960s social revolution was in many cases a turn from notions like ‘duty’ and ‘honour’ to ‘love’. The individual, subdued by duty and suppressed by honour, expresses him- or her-self in love. The two mid-century wars had, so it seemed, expended (and at points, wasted) all the reserves of duty. Now, the principle of love, not bound by any tradition or greater principle or deity, was to have its way.

We hear this plea in the lyrics of the Beatles (‘All You Need is Love’), but also in ‘high culture’. As he gazed at the scarred and broken statues of a medieval knight and his lady placed on top of their tomb, Philip Larkin, that rather grim agnostic poet of 1960s England, was reflecting something of his age when he wrote of his ‘almost-instinct, almost true’: that ‘what will survive of us is love’.

With no other plausible transcendent principle left, the spirit of eros appeared to fill the vacuum. It was, so it appeared, the triumph of Venus and Cupid. 

However, I wish to argue that this triumph of a certain form of love was a fluffy pink veneer covering over some more persistent and in the end dominant forms of thinking about human moral behaviour. This train of thought was suggested to me by reading social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s fascinating book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided on Politics by Religion. 

Haidt argues that “The two leading theories in Western philosophy were founded by men who were high as could be on systemizing, and were rather low on empathizing”. The two men in question were Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, and Immanuel Kant. Both of these men, Haidt suggests, suffered from something akin to Asperger’s Syndrome. They were not given to empathizing as much as to systematizing – and (more’s the point), it shows in the moral philosophies that they produced. They were both attempting to place moral philosophy on a rational footing – to give it an objective grounding external to human feelings, but without restort to divine commands. 

Bentham the Englishman was born in 1748 and trained in the law. At the heart of his proposal for ethics is the principle of utility – famously: “the principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question”. Bentham then went on to propose a measure of happiness, “hedons”, and even an algorithm, the “felicific calculus”, by which he could come to the final analysis of utility of any given action.

Now, while there was an emotion involved in Bentham’s ethics – “happiness” – it was there by dint of an attempt to objectively quantify it. The weakness of his proposal is that such a measurement is clearly impossible, and even undesirable. Even if we could calculate the happiness of a given action, is happiness a goal or a by-product of human living in the world?

And yet, the influence of Bentham’s curiously bloodless ethic has been profound – especially when the nearest substitute for “hedons” – namely, money – is involved. Given the impossibility of measuring happiness, but the appeal of an ethic in which we can actually measure what is good with actual numbers, money will do. UNSW historian John Gascoigne maps the deep influence that Benthamite utilitarianism had on the formation of Australian culture and politics. Often this was in strange but practical agreement with the Christian churches, it has to be said.

Immanuel Kant, the Prussian, was born in 1724. He was a popular man amongst his peers, although a man of regular, almost obsessive routine, it has to be said. Like Benthan, he wanted to place morality on an objective and universal footing – protecting it from rampant and chaotic subjectivity. Rational creatures surely would come to the same conclusion about the good in every possible time and place. Morality had to have a timeless form. 

Kant’s single rule he called the “categorical imperative”, and here it is: “act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. This was less maths, and more logic than Bentham. There are echoes of course of Jesus in what Kant asserts here: it sounds like a systemisation of the Golden Rule. 

The appeal of the Kantian rule is that it appears to act as a check to our self-interest. I cannot have a contract taken out against my enemy unless I think it is also good and right for him to take out a contract against me or against someone I love. If it is not right for him, it is not right for me either. 

That’s a helpful principle to stop the social order imploding. But it tells us nothing about the meaningful content of our lives. Of course it is massively useful to have even the attempt to ground human moral activity in some principle that transcends the merely subjective. A purely relativistic morality will end up in cannabilism eventually, so barbaric is it. We will tell ourselves we are being true to ourselves just as we chew on the barbecued legs of our neighbours. But if it tells us nothing about our inner experience, and indeed wants to prevent us from the entanglement of our loves and interests, it is surely of dubious value. 

Haidt claims that “As Western societies became more educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic, the minds of its intellectuals changed. They became more analytic and less holistic”.  For Haidt, this is not because reason has no place; it is rather that we ought to recognise that we simply do not make our moral decisions in a primarily analytical way, and we therefore are limited in the ability to persuade. There is an anthropological lacuna at the heart of Kant’s ethic, which is that we are creatures who have commitments, and loves; and furthermore, that we fail to do our best moral reasoning when we simply set these aside. 

What of the 1960s turn to Eros? Well even that had its roots in Bentham, and in Kant, but spoken in the name of love. Love was code for “express yourself as long as you do no harm” – that is, maximize your own pleasure with freedom so long as you don’t in your taking of your pleasure harm others. It asks you to make a calculation about harm, and to universalise in an apparently objective way.  The vagueness about love as a virtue was entirely deliberate: ‘love’, a concept for which English has only one very malleable word where Greek has four, is used as a cipher for freedom of self-expression and preference. Though the word ‘love’ implies a something that transcends the self, under this usage it is not framed by any considerations of nature or by reference to any transcendent other, since it emerges from me as a pure expression of my inward self. Ironically, the attempt to provide an objective ground for morality bequeathed to us an almost untrammeled subjectivism.

The St Mark's Lecture for Faith in the Contemporary World

Good evening ladies and gentleman. My name is Michael Jensen and I am the rector at St Mark’s. It is my very great pleasure to welcome you here to the Inaugural St Mark’s Lecture for Faith in the Contemporary World.

Why? 

Why have such a thing, and why have it at St Mark’s Darling Point in 2014?

First: the place of faith in the contemporary world is certainly under question. I was recently on a panel which included a lapsed or lapsing Catholic, a convinced atheist, and a man who would describe himself as ‘spiritual, but not religious’, and who gave one of the best defences of the existence of a transcendent God that I have heard, while the same time bagging out ‘the church’. Clearly, I was there as the religious nutter. 

This make-up of this panel intrigued me as being representative of the state of faith in contemporary Sydney. The rumours of the demise of faith have clearly been exaggerated by the New Atheists, who are after all more than a little prone to exaggeration.

But faith is a more complex thing for contemporary people than it used to be. Believing takes place under somewhat different conditions than it did even a generation or two ago. 

It is no longer a given that religious faith in general and Christian faith in particular have a role in contemporary society, and in the lives of contemporary people. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor argues that like our exercise regimes, our careers and our iPod playlists, religious faith has become another option which we may choose: another avenue for expressing my inner self.  

The contemporary person may say ‘I am not religious’ as a simple way of saying ‘I don’t identify myself with any particular church group’ - ‘it is simply not part of my self-understanding to say ‘I believe’. Yet that doesn’t mean that they are simply an atheistic materialist – far from it. While some certainly are, many are not. What they have rejected is the institutional church, as they perceive it – and they have chosen to relate to the spiritual, or the transcendent, on their own terms. 

And let’s face it, in many instances, the institutional churches have failed. We have failed to preach its message in a way that captures the imagination of many people; and it has, despite the massive amount of good work that church groups do providing an indispensable social capital, we have lost the trust of the community because we have not been attentive to a heinous evil in our midst. They have – we have – taken our privileged position as the spiritual guides of the community for granted. We have failed to persuade in word and in deed.

If there is a loss of faith, then, it is a loss of faith in the churches, rather than in the idea of a divine being, or even necessarily in the Christian message itself. Certainly, Jesus himself remains popular; his followers not so much.

But what the churches have Sydney cannot afford to lose. Inventing a language with which to speak about God and a way to think about him is harder work than we imagine. The churches have words with which to speak about God, and to God. And more than that: the churches are the creatures and the custodians of a Word from God himself. 

And without that language, there is a vacuum. That is why we still hear the echoes of the Bible resound throughout our culture – on the lips of politicians and sports commentators, in the practice of law and medicine and education, in the playground and in the pub, though many of us think we are quoting Shakespeare or Nelson Mandela or something. There’s a kind of nostalgia for the old book that is hard to shake.

It is into the vacuum into which the St Mark’s lecture is addressed, with the firm conviction that the Christian gospel is as relevant as it always was, but that that the churches need to find new ways of speaking it. We need to find perhaps not new words, but a new tone of voice: for the old way of speaking now sounds smug, slightly bossy and more than a little entitled. A new tone of voice must be found which is at once gracious and provocative, humble and courageous, and forthright and winsome; a voice which, as it turns out, matches the tone of the Saviour himself.

St Mark’s has had a historic role in shaping the Christian perspectives of many of the greatest servants of our city over its 150 year history. It has declared the same message and worshipped the same Lord for all that time. 

Its home is in the Eastern Suburbs, but its outlook is the city. Our calling is surely not just to provide a chaplaincy to the harbourside suburbs, but proclaim the rule of Christ over the city itself. It is my prayer that the series of lectures will both carry out and represent the mission which St Mark’s Darling Point serves, and be a gift from us to our sister churches in the city and indeed to the whole community. 

I am very pleased that Dr John Dickson has agreed to be our inaugural lecturer in the midst of a very busy schedule indeed. John has long been one of Australia’s best known Christian intellectuals. He has a PhD in history from Sydney’s Macquarie University, where he is an Honorary Fellow of the Department of Ancient History. He teaches a course on the Historical Jesus at Sydney University. John is the author of many books, including Simply Christianity, The Christ Files, and Humilitas: a Lost Key to Life, Love and Leadership.  He is currently the rector of St Andrew’s Anglican Church Roseville and also Director of the Centre for Public Christianity. He has written many articles for the print and online media, and has appeared on the ABC’s QandA in debate with Professor Laurence Krauss. I have personally known John for more than two decades, and I have long admired his rigour, disciplined research, and his commitment to communication. Will you please welcome him. 

Freedom of the will

The puzzle of the freedom of the human will has been and continues to be one of the most perplexing and debated matters in theology and philosophy. In the twentieth century, psychology and neuroscience began to make their own contributions to the debate. On the one side of the equation, the notion of free will seems to be necessary if there is to be any conception of morality. How can individuals be called upon to act in a moral way if they are not in some sense free to do so? How can they be held responsible for their intentions and their actions if they are not made freely? If a person is compelled to act by factors extrinsic to them, then they cannot be held liable for any consequence that results. Moral judgment becomes impossible. Given that, like almost all theological systems, the Christian Bible posits a moral universe in which human beings are agents who called to act in the light of the divine character and in accordance with the divine judgment, it naturally follows that Christian theologians have been attracted to the notion of human free will and have sought to expound it at great depth. Psychologist N. Rose echoes this tradition of thought when he writes:

We are not merely ‘free to choose’, but obliged to be free, to understand and enact our lives in terms of choice under conditions that systematically limit the capacities of so many to shape their own destiny.[1]

Human freedom is not simply then a fact in the world but actually something that humans must rise to in opposition to all that threatens it, as a means to human flourishing.

On the other side, there are two kinds of difficulty. One is the rational puzzle caused by the embeddedness of the human person in a world of cause and effect. When the will is shaped so deeply by the forces that swirl around it – genes, parents, culture and even advertising – then in what sense is there any real ‘freedom’ of the will? Indeed: can we even explain the mental processes involved in making decisions in terms of the word ‘freedom’ with any credibility? The brain is itself a complex entanglement of subconscious and conscious thoughts, and it is by no means evident that conscious thought precedes or in some way governs the subconscious. In fact, there’s good reason to think of the process happening the other way around.

The second problem is theological and moral, and is most vehemently expressed by Martin Luther in his debate with Erasmus. Human beings cannot resist sin, and indeed, there are none that avoid sin. In Pauline terms we are possessed of a fallen sarx – ‘flesh’ – by which he means that there is something unavoidable about our lapse into sinful behaviour because of something about us. We are imprisoned by our epithumia, or ‘sinful desire’. The metaphor of slave-bondage or death, chosen by Paul and revisited by Augustine and later Luther, reflects the profound corruption of the human will to the degree that no simple and unaided decision of the human will can overcome it. This point remains controversial: even in the midst of his controversy with Pelagius, Augustine was loathe to reject the term ‘free will’, and wanted rather to say that even though the will is free, men and women freely but inevitably choose to sin. Others would say that humankind was created with free will, but that free will was either lost of restricted because of the fall. That the individual sins is still his or her fault, for which they are still blameworthy. The theological conundrum was lessened because it was refracted through the medieval theology of purgatory. Original sin could be absolved by baptism, but individual acts could still be judged on the assumption of a free decision to do them.

The Reformation insistence on grace alone sharpened the contrast once more. For Luther, and for the Reformed, if grace was to be truly alone in soteriology, then the state of human bondage had to be absolute. The human will could not be described as ‘free’, since it was bound and corrupted by its own habitual sinfulness. It is not simply a matter of coaxing the human individual to choose differently; a wholesale renovation of the human person by grace was necessary.

Nevertheless, the issue of human free will is not simply determined on denominational lines. In the seventeenth century, Jacob Arminius, a Dutch theologian who had a lasting impact on Anglican theology and eventually, through John Wesley, on Protestantism in general, restated the older, more optimistic position on human free will. Arminius and Wesley would claim that they could reconcile this with a Protestant soteriology, with its emphasis on divine grace. Eastern Orthodox theology likewise still prefers to speak of a human free will which is not inimical to its dependence on grace.

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[1] N. Rose, Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power and Personhood

Bernd Wannenwetsch on Bonhoeffer's poetry

Interested in Bonhoeffer's Poetry? Here's a great book on the poems, edited by Bernd Wannenwetsch:

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Bonhoeffers-Theology-through-Poetry/dp/0567067831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391030702&sr=8-1&keywords=wannenwetsch+who+am+i

Written in the stars

All the signs pointed in one direction:

the words of the prophets of old,

the genealogical records,

the dream of Joseph,

the voices of the angels from heaven,

the paranoia of a puppet ruler,

and even the stars themselves,

sang together in a glorious symphony of the baby born to be King – the one called Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

In the ancient world, it was not unusual to think that occurrences in the natural world were telling us about the lives of human beings.

If you were going on a journey, or embarking on a business venture, then it was vital to read the signs.

You might get a soothsayer to say some sooth – to perhaps slaughter an animal and make a reading from its entrails ; or to watch in the sky for the flight patterns of geese.

But what happened on the black canvas of the heavens held particular fascination for ancient people.

And heavenly events were associated with Kings and rulers.

When Julius Caesar was backstabbed by Brutus and the boys in 44BC, the ancient writer Suetonius said that “a comet shone for seven successive days... and was believed to be the soul of Caesar”.

It became known in Rome as “Caesar’s star”.

At Christmas we recall an even more famous star : the star not of vast Rome and mighty Caesar, but of tiny Bethlehem and its baby in a manger.

Matthew tells us that

“in the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking

“Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage”.

Who were these most unexpected visitors intruding into this thoroughly Jewish scene?

We call them ‘wise men’, but the word the text uses is ‘Magi’, which is word we get ‘magic’ from.

These were the star-gazers : the astrologers. Perhaps they’d come from as far away as Persia, or Babylon, places well known for their star-gazers.

How many were there? Matthew doesn’t tell us – we always picture three because there are three gifts, but they must have had an entourage to be able to travel safely with such treasures.

Reading the heavens like an ancient sat-nav, they made their way to the court of King Herod in Jerusalem.

I say they are unexpected visitors, because the Bible is for the most part quite critical of astrologers and astrology.

In the Old Testament, the wise men of Egypt and of Babylon are shown to be incompetent at best and in league with evil at worst.

In the book of Daniel, we are supposed to laugh at their foolish efforts to interpret dreams and tell the future.

The Bible gives us no hint that their methods of interpreting the stars, or dreams, or other portents are anything but empty. They simply don’t work.

This fits with our modern view: that the appearance of omens in the skies are not omens, but merely coincidences. Caesar’s star was nothing but a beautiful collision of history and astronomy.

But in this case, the foreign star-gazers of the East with all their elaborate but fanciful astrological calculations appear to have found – or maybe stumbled across - the truth :       

that a king is to be born of the Jews.

There do appear to be records of extraordinary astronomical events that the Wise Men could easily have read as heralding a King of the Jews.

The recent work of Dr Michael Molnar, an astronomer of Rutgers University in New Jersey, provides some fascinating background. Using astronomical calculations and historical accounts, Molnar shows that in the year 6BC the planet Jupiter – which appears like a star to the naked eye – appeared in the constellation of Aries. Jupiter was the planet associated with kings, and Aries was linked to the Jews. On April 17^th of 6BC, Jupiter was eclipsed by the moon in Aries. Later that year in August, it appeared to change direction and move: before becoming stationary on December 19^th. This pattern seems to match very well what we read in Matthew’s account: that the star rose, and then, after their interview with King Herod, went ‘ahead of them’, “until it stopped over the place where the child was”.

There seems then, good reason to think that on this occasion, extra-terrestrial events pointed to terrestrial ones.

The birth of the Messiah was announced to those who were listening to the old prophecies : but it was also announced to those who were peering into the heavens.

And should perhaps not be as surprising to us as it is. Should we not expect that, in this one instant around which the whole universe turns, the creator of all that is, seen and unseen, could arrange the massive rotating wheels of space and matter and time to reveal his purposes to those on earth who happened to be watching?

And so the Magi came to see a King, and pay him homage.

The word is perhaps even stronger than that : they came to worship him – they ‘knelt down’ before him, and they gave him precious gifts, the gifts due to a ruler and a deity.

This year has seen the birth of another future king – England’s Prince George.

And he was given some gifts, too : apparently the Northern Territory gave him a crocodile named after him.

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian gifted him some little hoodies and skinny jeans.

The Samburu community of Kenya present George with a black bull and a goat.

He was also given a monogrammed mini-motorbike.

The wise men, however, weren’t giving their gifts to a recognised prince, whose baby photos were in all the papers.

They were giving their royal gifts to the baby who was born in a manger : gold, frankincense, and myrrh, the gifts you give to a king in order show that you recognise that they are the king – or to a divine being, in order show that you recognise that they are God.

The stars do not ordinarily point to anything. But in this case, they pointed to the appearance of God as man with man to dwell.

Even these pagans – these outsiders - could see it.

We shouldn’t fail to notice the contrast that they make with King Herod – a man notorious for murdering members of his own family because of his fear that they were plotting against him.

Of all people, he should have been prepared for the coming of the true King. He had the chief priests and teachers of the law come and tell him that the Messiah of Israel was to be born in Bethlehem.

He had all the insider knowledge he could want.

At this news, he should have been rejoicing, and adding his adoration to that of the wise men.

But how does he react?

First, he is greatly frightened when he hears about the birth of the Messiah.

And secondly: he tricks the wise men into becoming his agents on the pretext that he intends, like them, to ‘pay him homage’.

Really, as we later discover, he means to add another murder to his tally. He does not want to bend the knee to another, not even the one sent from above to be the true King of Israel. He does all he can to destroy him.

All the signs still point in one direction.

They point to Bethlehem, and they say: here was the one human being in whom God was pleased to live.

Here was the one born to be the true King not just of Israel, but of the whole world.

Here is the one who will save his people from their sin, by his death on the cross.

Here is the one who will triumph over the grave.

Here was born the one who now reigns over all, and to whom every knee should bow.

How will you respond to the signs?

It is easy to paint Herod as a sideshow villain : but his refusal to see the signs can be our refusal, too.

His determination not to submit to another King can be ours, as we cling to our own independence.

We all know that Herod cannot succeed in terminating the Son of God : even he knows it, really, you suspect.

Yet his self-defeat can also be our self-defeat, if we refuse the true King.

But the wise thing to do is to do what the wise men from the East did: to worship him : to give to him the things that are his due.

To offer to him not simply gold, frankincense and myrrh, but the sweet-smelling sacrifice of our whole selves.

The invitation then comes to you and me today to gather with these wise men not merely around the cradle at Bethlehem, but around the heavenly throne on which Jesus, one born King of the Jews now sits, and whose glory the whole universe itself declares.