The New Testament and Gay Sex: Response #1

This is a critique of philosopher Jeff Cook's opening statement  over at Preston Sprinkle's blog wherein he argues that Christian belief is compatible with the belief that gay sex is not morally wrong.  I have decided to break this down into at least two posts.  This first post will focus on the more philosophical parts of Cook's opening statement.

I will start by looking at some of his remarks which set up the basic framework for his assessment.

[B]oth sides of the [homosex] debate seem to misunderstand how the New Testament writers do ethics. Christians commonly trade the New Testament focus on character, the fruit of the Spirit, and a healthy inner life for an ethic focused on rule-following.(To be technical, apologists from both sides assume “deontology” as the Biblical normative ethic. Deontology judges how moral a person is by how closely his or her actions follow a set of rules. For deontologists rules, and rules alone, tell us what is right and wrong. Because Christians often assume that rules are the way God displays his will for human life, they argue about monogamous same-sex relationships almost exclusively with those six passages in mind.)

This is a huge mistake...
...So, why think Jesus and the New Testament writers affirm a virtue ethic?

Let me start with deontology.  There is probably no non-controversial definition of "deontology," but part of the Wikipedia entry referenced by Cook is quite problematic.

Deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules. It is sometimes described as "duty-" or "obligation-" or "rule-" based ethics, because rules "bind you to your duty." Deontological ethics is commonly contrasted to consequentialism,^[3] virtue ethics, and pragmatic ethics. 

Beginning with the last sentence first, it is correct that deontological ethics is often contrasted with consequentialism, virtue ethics, and pragmatic ethics.  Nonetheless, these distinctions are fairly loose because these labels are rather vague (and recognized widely among philosophers as vague).  Thomas Aquinas, for instance, is sometimes referred to as a virtue ethicist as well as a deontologist and natural law theorist, because he shares things in common with others who focus on ethics, virtues, teleology, and the like.

But the first sentence above is problematic.  For starters, people--not positions--judge.  So it is hard to make sense of the first sentence.  Second, utilitarianism offers rules and a general principle upon which to base one's actions, and it emphasizes doing one's duty.  But hardly anyone thinks of utilitarianism as a species of deontology (I know of no one who does; deontology is often contrasted with consequentialism and utilitarianism is a species of consequentialism).  The second sentence is also problematic.  Kant is a deontologist by most everyone's reckoning, but it is not a rule (the Categorical Imperative) that binds one to one's duties; rather it is the worth of autonomy recognized by a rational being that grounds one's duties, ultimately in terms of respect for the worth of rationality.

I suggest that a better way to think of deontological theories is that they hold (a) that some actions are intrinsically wrong--that is, by their nature they are wrong and (b) they are wrong irrespective of their consequences or what they reveal about a person's character.  I think this captures what most so-called deontological theories hold in common, but, at any rate, I offer this as my stipulative definition.

Nonetheless, character matters for many (most?) deontologists and, as such, so does virtue.  Kant--a paradigmatic deontologist--has plenty to say about virtue.  The highest good--the ultimate state of affairs--is happiness in proportion to one's virtue.  That is, in a perfect world, people are virtuous and happy to the extent that they are virtuous.  (I am not, here, defending Kant's view, I am merely noting that deontologists think that virtue matters).

At any rate, given the vagueness of deontology, virtue ethics, and the like, and given that some ethicists fall under more than one category in the philosophical literature, I think it is a mistake to try to drive a sharp wedge--as Cook tries to do--between deontology and virtue ethics to provide a framework for evaluating what Jesus, the New Testament writers, and (for that matter) Christians in the 2000+ years of tradition have (and have not) held with respect to ethics.

Divine commands focused on action can be important, but they are always a means, not an end. 

This is confused.  Divine commands are neither means nor ends for humans.  (How could they be a means or an end?  How could a human have a divine command as either a means of accomplishing something or as an end to be pursued?  What would this mean?)  An end is a goal, and a means a way of accomplishing a goal.  Divine commands are speech acts by God which prescribe or prohibit certain types of behavior and limit what one's goals should be, the means to reach goals, and how one should or should not be.  The command not to worship idols forbids one to worship idols, and presumably having idol worship as an end.  The command not to covet prohibits dwelling on a desire to possess a neighbor's ass.  If gaining money is a goal, the command not to murder prohibits one from killing one's neighbor as a means to take his money, and the command not to steal forbids that I take what is not mine.  (Here I am not assuming or denying Divine Command Theory. It could be that murder is instrinsically wrong and God's command gives one a further obligation not to murder as well as further reason to think murder is wrong).

Over and again, the moral life the New Testament prescribes does not target what you do; the early Christians cared first and foremost about who you are. Why? Because there is not one immoral deed we can name that could emerge from someone fully living out the Christian virtues (Mt 7).

 The first half is more or less correct.  The New Testament is not concerned only with what one does.  What is in one's heart and mind also matters.  Still, the New Testament is chock full of admonitions to care for the poor, widows, and orphans, to performs acts of love, and so forth; it is full of plenty of prohibitions as well. Why, though, is the focus in the New Testament on who you are--on one's interior life--rather than on the exterior acts? The reason is not because "there is not one immoral deed we can name...," rather the reason, in part, is because the moral life--the life devoted to God--proceeds from the heart and the mind.  External acts, which on their surface are not bad (e.g. giving money to a homeless man), but proceed from, say, selfish motives have no moral worth.  One's external acts of worship are virtually worthless if one does not truly have hope and faith in, and love towards God.

A deontologist--and for that matter a Divine Command Theorist--can agree with all of this.  As well, she can maintain that the following rules are right: "One should not hate God; one should love God."  Hatred is a vice; its opposite virtue is love.  Hatred can never be a virtue because no act of hatred towards God can be good.  God is supremely good, loving, and just.  As such God is worthy of love and esteem.  Moreover, nothing God does is inconsistent with love or justice.  No actions he performs could ever be worthy of hatred.  Hating God is an intrinsically disordered attitude and activity.  One should thus cultivate or maintain a virtue of love for God and all that he does.  All of this is consistent with deontology as I have defined it above.

So one can accept many of the remarks Cook makes about Christianity focusing on character and the possession of virtues while still being a deontologist who holds that some actions (e.g. homosex) are instrinsically wrong or wrong because they are forbidden by God such that no perfectly virtuous person would perform them.