Heroic Morality – Islander #5 Review (I)
Carl Benjamin’s article is a good start
So, let’s start with a disclosure: I’m only part of the way through Islander #5. It’s not a quick read, requiring both analysis as you go and some time to digest. Thus far, the magazine is a bit of a mixed bag: beautiful, with an article or two most excellent, an article or two I’ve strong disagreements with (but which were interesting to disagree with), and one article so far that I found relatively banal (we’ll get to that eventually- it may be as much the audience’s problem as the magazine’s). My goal here is not to say ‘Should you buy it’ (because you almost certainly can’t, at this point) but to respond to the various parts I found interesting, in hopes you’ll benefit from the agreement and disagreement.
The first true article, after introductory material, is written by Carl Benjamin, a man I’ve followed for quite some time, and so far it’s the best article here. That’s not to say I agree with it. I agree strongly with some parts and disagree strongly with others. In general, I find it stands about where Benjamin usually stands: 75% of the way to the right answers, and a few steps to the side.
Benjamin creates in the reader’s view a dichotomy between two theories of morality: heroic morality (relational, particular, subjective, and local) versus liberal morality (propositional, universal, rational, objective). He strikes here upon a reality, certainly, but he does not strike full-true.
We’ll start with the half of the dichotomy which is more accurate to life: his portrayal of ‘liberal morality.’ Liberal morality, Benjamin asserts, bases itself on a ‘rational’ assessment of the universe, extrinsic to society and even to persons, as seen in Kant’s categorical imperatives.’ Its structure “rests on impersonal proceduralism and abstract criteria. The Rule of Honor becomes the Rule of Law.” While I dislike the phraseology (intellectually, not aesthetically), Benjamin observes a reality here. There is a system of morality which is “extrinsic to society,” wherein “The rules are good in themselves,” without relationship to any person or moral agent (9).
My agreement with Benjamin here is hard to articulate without simultaneously articulating my disagreement with his positions, and so I won’t try to. I’ll simply give another quote worth remembering about this system: “Not violating the rules is enough to be considered good. No mention need be made of virtue or vice, propriety or impropriety, or the maintenance of sentimental relationships” (9).
The other half of Benjamin’s dichotomy is the ‘heroic morality’ based on relationship. Now, at the start we have an agreement. Morality is basically personal and relational. Where we differ it, well, the next bit. So far as I can tell, Benjamin views morality as a social structure emerging from within its necessities and desires, as a complex of relationships between different members of the society, so that morality is not only emergent from individuals but properly speaking exists only as their relationships with others (8). To my eyes, this reality is only a fraction of morality, an outworking of its true nature: authority.
I am a Christian, first and foremost. The nature of morality, as revealed in Scripture, is that morality, right-and-wrong, is God’s nature as He commands us to imitate it, in our creaturely way (Rom. 1:18-25; Eph. 5:1). Morality is authority, God saying ‘You shall’ and ‘You shall not.’ Authority creates duty, responsibility; authority creates positive and negative commands. Thus, rather than renouncing liberal morality’s anodyne happiness with omission of vice in favor of mere instinctive vigor, as seems too close to the reality of Benjamin’s position, God’s law offers us a course simultaneously completely personal, being of His character (which is the origin of our own (Gen. 1:28)), and concretely delineated, being given to us by Him who made all things, including all our circumstances, so that no specific escapes the reach of His command.
Moreover, rather than renouncing the liberal morality’s impersonal rationalism in favor of experiential appeal, the effectively aesthetic argument made by Benjamin’s article, I renounce it on a firm knowledge that rationality is basically Personal, being another reflection of God, and that therefore morality and rationality are not foes, are not father and child, are not never-the-twain-shall-meet. They are instead two parts of our imitation of Him which therefore have perfect accord with each other, which ought to rule us in different ways: morality for our choices; rationality for our understanding. Rationality cannot produce morality, though morality is perfectly rational. Instead, both unite into one Being, God, the basis of human rationality and human morality.
Benjamin therefore speaks of ‘relational,’ ‘heroic’ morality. Where he founds that relationship in man-to-man, however, in the incidents and events of life, Scripture founds it in a relationship by every man to his Creator, a relationship which then rules each man’s relationship to other men and to the world God gives us to steward (Gen. 1:28, 9:1). Benjamin’s morality is thus subsequent to humans and indeed subsequent to each sustained collection of humans, each true community (the reason, I think, he can justly call it ‘subjective’). Therefore it lacks authority beyond the human; it is not ‘the way things ought to be done,’ in reality. It is merely the ‘way things are done.’ It does not transcend and therefore falls short of the full glory, the full weight, the full truth of God’s righteousness.
Now, at the end of all this short stab at a topic worth books, I’d like to coin, without true originality, a name for this view of morality found in Scripture: ‘covenantal morality.’ ‘Covenant’ is the structure of relationship, at the core: a requirement of faithfulness; curses (punishments) for unfaithfulness; blessings (rewards) for faithfulness. In the highest form of covenant, moreover, these curses and blessings are not motivation; the weight of it lies in that duty of faithfulness, in the relationship which is that faithfulness. Thus, for instance, in Genesis 15 and 17 we see stated the half-hidden form of the salvation covenant, a covenant which God made so that He alone could break or fulfill it, though its blessings would rest upon His people. Thus, ‘covenantal morality’ is an improvement upon ‘relational morality’ (though the term ‘heroic’ morality has a weight of its own which deserves respect).
(I’ve left out much commendation I could give the article,1 but I’ll just list three prominent points: its emphasis on story as essential to humanity (though I see it a little differently); its centralization of the heroic narrative; and its assault upon the bastardization of language, an insight I’m glad to incorporate into my own thought.)
God bless.
P.S. A good way to distinguish between the covenantal morality I propose and the heroic morality pressed by Benjamin is the presence of a centre.2 Benjamin’s morality exists attached to a ‘community,’ or rather as an outworking of that community’s process. It has no true center, no point about which it is arranged. In part to this can be attributed its malleability (or, if we look from another angle, its centerlessness is a product of its malleability (subjectivity)). If it has any center, it is man, and no specific man but the fuzzy-bordered thing called ‘a society.’ In contrast, the morality I point to, found in Scripture, is centered around God; all else stretches out from that, and the fundamental relationship is God’s with Himself, followed by (imitated by) man’s with God, of which man’s with man and with His creation are tributaries (both in the geographical and in the political sense).
God bless.
