More Thoughts on Morality

Awhile ago, I wrote something on how an argument from morality doesn't give a Christian, or anyone else, a free pass to say that moral principles are ontologically grounded. I want to expand on some of the thoughts I have on the issue of morality, because I think Christianity has an important role to play in it, even if it is a little bit different than what is often put forth by other Christians.

In reflecting on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, I began to think about the moral impact that Christianity has left in its wake. In this work, Nietzshe provides a searing indictment of Christian morality as "slave morality" that sought to enshrine its own powerlessness and impotence through a redefinition of "good" and "bad" to make signs of powerlessness moral goods (like "humility," "forgiveness," "submission,", turning the other cheek, etc.). He criticizes those who seek to locate the source of these values as being simply evolutionarily advantageous, arguing that this view is merely seeking a justification for holding to principles of Christian morality that are now untenable in the wake of the death of God. What struck me during this particular reflection on the Genealogy was the way that Nietzsche asserts that Christianity has pulled off a moral coup, redefining moral concepts along new lines and replacing an older model.

The reason I find this to be so interesting is that so often it is assumed that moral principles that have been enshrined in Western Europe/Anglophone world are somehow moral universals for all humans, when in fact they reflect a particular cultural moral legacy, a cultural moral legacy that has been profoundly influenced by Christianity. Even if these values are no longer necessarily seen as originating in Christianity, it does not change the way in which the Christian Church has dramatically shaped the moral world of the West. To paraphrase Lesslie Newbigin, you cannot live with the Christian God for a thousand years and then simply cut ties. The influence still remains.

This is not to say that terrible things have never been done under the banner of Christianity, or that no other religion has expounded powerful moral principles. This does not "prove" that Christian moral principles are derived from divine authority or that no one other than Christians has any access to these kind of moral thoughts. I'm not making any such claim. What I am saying is that it is interesting how many moral principles that we treat as "obvious" are not at all obvious in the light of history or in the light of the experiences of the vast majority of people throughout the world. To say that moral principles are good because they reflect a basically human feature that makes us beings who want to show compassion and who empathize with the sufferings of others is a nice sentiment (and one that I encountered in one particular book on atheism) , but it does not sit well at all with most of human experience.

While the moral teachings of Christianity have not been employed perfectly and many who claim the name of Jesus still do terrible things in his name (something that I attribute to what Paul Hiebert calls "Christo-paganism"), it is interesting to see how moral principles that are derived in many ways from the Western worlds encounter with the God of Christianity are assumed to be universal and derivable from nature or sociology or history, when it is not at all clear and it appears that very different views of morality are possible and still exist. We're still living in the wake of the moral redefinition that Nietzsche saw, and it raises many interesting things to reflect upon about the nature of morality if we reject the source, not in the sense of not being able to have moral principles at all, but in the intellectual consistency of holding on to moral principles based on a belief that is rejected. Just a little food for thought. We'll see what I think in another couple of months:-)