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ChallengingReligious

Issues

ISSN 2053-5163Issue 11

Autumn 2017

Supporting A-level Religious Studies. The St Mary’s and St Giles’ Centre

Jeff Astleyon Ian Ramsey on

Religious Language

Samuel Tranteron Protestants and

Natural Law: Rejectionand Retrieval

James Francison The Earliest Easter

Narratives

Emily Pollardon Thomas Aquinas and

Just Cause for War

Challenging Religious IssuesSupporting Religious Studies at A-level and beyond

Issue 11 Autumn 2017

ContentsIan Ramsey on Religious LanguageJeff Astley

Protestants and Natural Law: Rejection and RetrievalSamuel Tranter

The Earliest Easter NarrativesJames Francis

Thomas Aquinas and Just Cause for WarEmily Pollard

EditorProfessor Jeff Astley (University of Warwick)Managing EditorDr Tania ap Siôn (University of Warwick, St Mary’s and St Giles’ Centre)Editorial AdvisorsProfessor Leslie J. Francis (University of Warwick)Dr Ian Jones (St Peter’s Satley Trust)Libby Jones (The St Giles’ Centre, Wrexham)Professor William K. Kay (Chester University)Professor David Lankshear (University of Warwick)Phil Lord (System Leader, GwE)Professor Peter Neil (Bishop Grosseteste University)Professor Stephen Parker (University of Worcester)The Right Revd Dr David Walker (University of Warwick)Design: Phillip VernonChallenging Religious IssuesThe St Mary’s and St Giles’ Centre St Peter’s Saltley TrustLlys Onnen Grays CourtAbergwyngregyn 3 Nursery RoadGwynedd EdgbastonLL33 0LD Birmingham B15 3JXTelephone: 01248 680131 Telephone 0121 427 6800E-mail: [email protected] E- mail: [email protected]: www.st-marys-centre.org.uk Website: www.saltleytrust.org.uk

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Challenging Religious Issues is a free, open access on-line journaldesigned to support teachers and students engaged in A-levelReligious Studies. Challenging Religious Issues is designed to bringrecent and relevant scholarship and research from the Universityinto the A-level classroom. Three issues are published each year,and each issue contains four original articles.

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St Mary’s and St Giles’ CentreISSN 2053-5163

Challenging Religious Issues, Issue 11, Autumn 2017 2

Born and brought up in Bolton,Lancashire, Ian Thomas Ramsey (1915-1972) was a philosopher of religion andliberal Christian theologian who taught atCambridge and Oxford, before serving asBishop of Durham. (He is not to beconfused with Michael Ramsey, who wasalso once Bishop of Durham, andeventually Archbishop of Canterbury;and was not a relative.)

Ramsey’s theory of religiousknowledgeI. T. Ramsey came to describe hischaracteristic philosophy of religion as a‘broader empiricism’, arguing thatreligious belief can only be justified if it isgrounded in some form of religiousexperience. This view provided his

defence of religion and metaphysicsagainst the positivist critique that theywere meaningless because theirstatements were not verifiable by senseexperience.

Moments of religious experience or‘discernment’ (intuitions) are an individual’sresponses to active ‘disclosures’ (non-propositional revelations) on the part ofGod. Ramsey argued that there wereparallel disclosures in practically all otherareas of knowledge – includingmathematics, poetry, morality andordinary human situations.

I use ‘disclosure’ not in relation toinformation, but to refer to situationsabout which various metaphoricalphrases are commonly used. Such

Challenging Religious IssuesIssue 11 Autumn 2017© Jeff Astley

Ian Ramsey on Religious LanguageJeff Astley

This article critically surveys the account of descriptive religious language provided byIan T. Ramsey.

Specification links:WJEC/CBAC/EDUQAS Unit 5: Philosophy of Religion, Theme 3: Religious language(part 1) = Component 2 Philosophy of Religion, Theme 4: Religious language, C.Religious language as non-cognitive and analogical: Proportion and attribution (StThomas Aquinas) and qualifier and disclosure (Ian Ramsey).OCR Philosophy of Religion, 5. Religious Language: Negative, Analogical or Symbolic.AQA 1 Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, A: Philosophy of Religion, Religious Language.Also: All Religious Experience topics.

Challenging Religious Issues, Issue 11, Autumn 2017

Ramsey on Religious Language

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phrases, e.g., are those which speakof situations ‘coming alive’, ‘taking ondepth’, situations in which ‘the pennydrops’, where we ‘see’ but not witheyes of flesh, where something ‘strikesus’, where ‘eye meets eye’ and where‘hearts miss a beat’. (Ramsey, 1972,p. 115)

In such contexts, the ‘ice breaks’ and the‘light dawns’. These are disclosure-situations in which, for example, we may:

Ɣ recognise a pattern (Ramsey refersto a 3D cube discernedthrough thetwo-dimensionallines of a drawing –see figure);

Ɣ grasp an idea (say of the colouryellow, which is more than and otherthan any or all yellow objects);

Ɣ discern a duty; orƔ recognise another person (or

‘another mind’).

We then respond to these disclosureswith an appropriate commitment.

In the religious disclosure-situation, thediscerned object (and active subject) ofthe disclosure is God, mediated mainlythrough nature or history. It is in such a –often ‘cosmic’ (all-inclusive and unlimited)

– disclosure that people respond with theultimate commitment of faith, and alsosupremely ‘come to themselves’.

Ramsey claimed that all disclosuresreveal a transcendent ‘more’ through andbeyond the empirical medium of itsdisclosure.1 This medium is made upeither of objects and events that areknown through sense experience, or ofthe language that describes them. In thecase of disclosures of persons, duty orGod, for example, the media are(respectively) human bodies and theirbehaviour, situations in our personal or

social life, or the whole of the physicalcreation. None of these ‘mores’ can everbe adequately captured in straightforwardlanguage – in the ‘plain, flat descriptivelanguage’ that characterises the mediumthrough which they are disclosed.

In order to speak about these ‘mores’,we therefore need to use words andphrases that will appear to many to berather ‘odd’, by comparison with themore everyday, empirical language thatdescribes their observable media.

Ramsey’s theory of religiouslanguageIn particular, Ramsey claimed thatreligious language is often made up ofmodels drawn from our sense experienceof the world (‘good’, ‘powerful’, ‘Father’,‘rock’, etc.), which are regularly coupledwith qualifiers. These qualifiers areusually adverbs or adjectives whosesignificance it is easy to overlook, such as‘infinitely’, ‘all’, ‘eternal’ and ‘heavenly’.2

As the models themselves areessentially analogies and metaphorsderived from this-worldly language, theirmeaning must change when they areapplied to a God who transcends thisworld and this language. Such models,Ramsey insists, are not ‘picturing models’(Ramsey, 1971a, p. 213).

Qualifiers have no descriptive meaningof their own, any more than a squareroot sign has a numerical value. (If youdoubt this, ask yourself how to solve theVXP��¥��/LNH�WKH�VTXDUH�URRW�VLJQ�qualifiers tell us to do something with thevalue they sit next to. In fact, they tell usto do two things.

1Ramsey argued that, in the end, all disclosures reveal thesame object, for these many disclosed realities are all partof the One Reality of God.2Although the qualifiers are not always explicitly expressed,they are implied. So, when people speak of God simply as‘king’ we (and they) need to remember that God is actuallythe ‘heavenly king’.



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Religious language as representativeFirst, qualifiers help us to represent thetranscendent God (that is, to ‘describe’God, as well as any language abouthumans and nature can). As God isdifferent, our language must show this.Qualified models (‘infinitely good’,‘heavenly Father’, ‘eternal Rock’, etc.) tellus to note the difference betweendescriptive God-talk and our usualdescriptions of this-worldly fathers,goodness, rocks, and so on. But themodel words these phrases contain alsospeak of a likeness, for God is not utterlydifferent.

Technically, Ramsey was a ‘criticalrealist’ who believed that the transcendentGod may be represented but not literallydescribed. One of his catch phrases wasthat we can be ‘sure in religion’, indeed‘sure of God’, but must always be‘tentative in theology’: certain of thereality of the object of our disclosures,but never more than provisional aboutany account of the nature of that reality(Ramsey, 1965, p. 89).

Ramsey strongly maintained that Godis a mystery, and claimed that only oneword – ‘activity’ – can be used of Godwith the same basic sense that it has forus.3 All other language must be heavilyqualified. As we have seen, this may bedone explicitly by adding qualifier words.But it can also be done by means of themutual qualification that happensthrough a jostling together of differentmodels in the ‘riotous mixture of phrases’that is especially evident in the Bible andin hymns (Ramsey, 1957, p. 156). So,when Jesus is spoken of, in JohnNewton’s hymn, not just as a shepherd,but also as a rock, brother, friend,prophet, priest and king, we know that hecannot be regarded as being literally anyone of these (Ramsey, 1963, p. 10).According to Ramsey, heresy results

from fastening onto a single model tounderstand (say) God, the church or theatonement; whereas ‘orthodoxy aimed athaving every possible model’ (Ramsey,1957, p. 170).

Yet Ramsey allows us to express somepreference among religious models.Indeed, that is one of the prime tasks oftheology. ‘A model like person is betterthan, say, shepherd or potter because itcan say all that these other models cansay and more besides; in this way it canabsorb the discourse from two or moremodels’ (Ramsey, 1971a, p. 214).

Religious language as evocativeQualified models not only have acognitive (fact-asserting) function ofrepresenting the nature of God, they alsoserve the non-cognitive function ofevoking a disclosure in which God isknown. Ramsey makes the empiricalclaim that most of our models of God areultimately derived from religiousexperiences, being drawn from themedium of religious disclosures. God hasbeen disclosed to people ‘through’ or‘around’ the being and behaviour(or language about the being andbehaviour) of fathers, mothers, kings orshepherds, and even of rocks, fortresses,fire and wind.4 That is why God may be

3Ramsey believed that he was presenting a form ofanalogical religious language that was independent of theThomist’s metaphysics of an ‘analogy of being’ betweenGod and the created world. He replaced that link by hisown claim that ‘activity’ is a word that is used univocallyabout God and human beings. However, we may arguethat: (a) activity in God cannot possibly have the samemeaning as activity in humans; (b) there are other termsthat may plausibly by regarded as (at least) literallyapplying to God; and (c) it doesn’t really matter if alldescriptive religious language is analogical (or figurative),provided that theology can – as it should – seek to partiallyspecify its meaning, in order to reveal more about theextension or shift in the meaning of its words and phraseswhen they are applied to God.

4God may also become known through a disclosure of thecorrespondence between certain ‘patterns in the Universe’and (say) ‘loving patterns of fatherly conduct’ (Ramsey,1967, p. 266).



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spoken of using such images, providedthat they are suitably qualified – sinceGod is certainly ‘more’ than a rock, oreven a father or king, etc. In fact,Ramsey contends that ‘all words, ifsuitable qualified’ can lead to adisclosure of God (Ramsey, 1957, p. 80);although it sounds rather bizarre ‘tosuggest that any and every part ofcreation can serve as a model for itsmaker’ (Astley, 1984, p. 435; but cf.Ramsey, 1971a, p. 216).

The evocative function of religiouslanguage is Ramsey’s most original, ifproblematic, contribution. He claimedthat religious language can lead toreligious experience, to a discernment ofGod. Religious language-users tellreligious tales or pile up religious imagesuntil the penny drops and the light dawnsas discernment comes, and God – whois beyond all our models – is disclosed(although no disclosure can ever beguaranteed). Ramsey has put his fingerhere on an important feature of religiouslanguage, which is sometimes describedas ‘opening people up’ to religiousinsight or experience, or ‘putting them inthe right position’ to receive God’srevelation. In particular, this appears tobe a significant function of the languageof worship, prayer and meditation.

Unfortunately, Ramsey’s accounts ofthis process often seem rather strained.Thus, he holds that spotting the words‘infinitely’ and ‘heavenly’ before the words‘good’ and ‘Father’ tells us (causes us?)to meditate on a range of people ofincreasing goodness, or of fathers ofvarious kinds. This continues until adisclosure occurs, in which we grasp theconcepts of infinite goodness or eternalFatherhood, through a religiousexperience in which we encounter thedivine object to which this languagerefers.

This account of the mechanics of theprocess is most convincing in theillustrations Ramsey provides frommathematics. For example, he describesa situation in which people who onlyknow about polygons can come tounderstand what a circle is, by being toldthat a circle is a ‘polygon with an infinitenumber of sides’, or by beingencouraged to think about a series ofpolygons. These acts may generate inpeople’s imagination a sequence offigures with increasing numbers of sides

– triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon,etc.; and they may continue thatsequence until they grasp in an intuitiona figure of a different kind altogether(one with no sides) (Ramsey, 1957, pp.69-70; 1971a, pp. 215-16; 1973, pp. 64-5). Thus:

Ramsey claims that, in a similar way,the ‘infinitely good’ God may be disclosedas we survey a series of increasinglygood people (1957, pp. 66-8). Thus: (justgood) A, (very good) B, (intensely good)C, …

In both cases, that which is disclosedis not another term in the series (noteven its last term), for a circle isn’t apolygon and God is not another (onlybetter) person. ‘Infinite polygon’ and‘infinitely good’, however, are reasonableapproximations to what is disclosed –although portrayed in the (ultimatelyinadequate) language of regularpolygons and good people.

But in the first example no real circleappears in the world, or on the page.

Infinitelygood God



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Links http://www.st-marys-

centre.org.uk/resources/challengingreligiousissues/Issue%203_ChallengingReligiousIssues.pdf (Jeff Astley,2013, Describing God, ChallengingReligious Issues)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Ramsey (Wikipedia entry)

http://pracownik.kul.pl/files/10351/public/On_Ramsey_religious_language_1461573.pdf (McClendon andSmith, 1973, Ian Ramsey’s modelof religious language: A qualifiedappreciation)

IntroductionThe debate over NirvanaNirvana is the goal of practice for mostBuddhists – a transcendental havenoutside the cycle of existence (VDPVƗUD)and invulnerable to the marks ofexistence (VDPDxxDODNNKDƼD). For aplace so important to Buddhists, anoutsider might expect that Nirvana wouldbe explained clearly in Buddhism, with adefinition all Buddhists could agree upon.

Unfortunately for students of Buddhism,there are complications that preventsimplification and this mini-overview,rather than claiming clarity where there isnone, seeks to present some of thecomplexities of the debate existingamong Buddhists concerning thecharacteristics of Nirvana. There aresome Buddhist texts that go as far as toclaim that Nirvana doesn’t exist, that it isjust a metaphor for having come to an

Analogical: the use of the samelanguage with a similar meaning.

Analogy of being: similarity betweenGod as creator and God’s creation,especially that which results fromhumans being created in God’simage.

Intuition: direct knowledge of an entityor truth, involving no consciousreasoning process (as, e.g., indirect sense awareness).

Transcendent: that which goesbeyond the limitations of our being,experience and language.

Univocal: the use of the samelanguage with exactly the samemeaning.

Glossary

Only the idea of circularity dawns on us.Is that all that religious language cangive us, as well? Does it only reveal theconcept of Unlimited Goodness, withoutdelivering any real encounter with theOne who is ‘Love Divine, All LovesExcelling’?

And, anyway, does something happento people when they use these religiousphrases, even in prayer, that is at allcomparable to what happens when yourun your eye along a series of polygons?

Does praying ‘Heavenly Father’ takepeople in this way into a moment ofvision, a moment of silence where Goddiscloses Godself, and where in God’spresence they can begin to articulatetheir thoughts about God, usinglanguage about the world and abouthuman relationships? (cf. Ramsey,1971b, p. 21).

http://www.st-marys-centre.org.uk/resources/challengingreligiousissues/Issue%203_ChallengingReligiousIssues.pdf




https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Ramsey

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Ramsey

http://pracownik.kul.pl/files/10351/public/On_Ramsey_religious_language_1461573.pdf





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ReferencesAstley, J. (1984). Ian Ramsey and the

problem of religious knowledge.Journal of Theological Studies, NS35(2), 414–40.

Evans, D. (1971). Ian Ramsey on talkabout God. Religious Studies, VII(2),125–40 and VII(3), 213–26. (Arevised version is to be found inEvans (1980). Faith, authenticity andmorality. Toronto: Toronto UniversityPress, ch. 2.)

Gill, J.H. (1976). Ian Ramsey: Tospeak responsibly of God. London:George Allen and Unwin.

Ramsey, I.T. (1957). Religiouslanguage: An empirical placing oftheological phrases. London: SCMPress.

Ramsey, I.T. (1963). Theologicalliteracy. The Chicago TheologicalSeminary Register, 53(5), 1–40(reprinted in Ramsey, 1974).

Ramsey, I.T. (1965). Christian

discourse: Some logicalexplanations, London: OxfordUniversity Press.

Ramsey, I.T. (1967). Models andmystery – A reply. Theoria toTheory, 1(3).

Ramsey, I.T. (1971b). Ourunderstanding of prayer. London:SPCK.

Ramsey, I.T. (1972). Facts anddisclosures. Proceedings of theAristotelian Society, LXXII, 115–33(reprinted in Ramsey, 1974).

Ramsey, I.T. (1973). Models fordivine activity. London: SCMPress, ch. V.

Ramsey, I.T. (1974). Christianempiricism: Studies in philosophyand religion, ed. J.H. Gill. London:Sheldon.

Ramsey, I.T. (ed.). (1971a). Wordsabout God: The philosophy ofreligion, London: SCM Press, ch. 22.

Discussion points1. What are the strengths and

weaknesses of Ramsey’s accountof the rôle of models and qualifiersin religious language?

2. Critically evaluate Ramsey’s claimthat any language, ‘suitablyqualified’, may serve to evoke andrepresent God.

3. What part does the Bible play, ifall religious language arisesthrough disclosure experiences?

4. What do you make of Ramsey’saccount of the mechanism bywhich religious language evokesa disclosure?

The Revd Professor Jeff Astley is Alister Hardy Professor of Religious and SpiritualExperience at the University of Warwick, and an honorary professor at Durham andYork St John Universities. His PhD was on Ian Ramsey’s philosophy of religion(University of Durham, 1978). He is the author of Exploring God-talk: Using languagein religion (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004).



Challenging Religious IssuesIssue 11 Autumn 2017© Samuel Tranter

Protestants and Natural Law: Rejectionand RetrievalSamuel Tranter

This article explores a recent trend in ethics: the turn to natural law by Protestantthinkers. It examines characteristically Protestant anxieties about natural lawapproaches to morality, before investigating some elements of a recent retrieval.

Specification links:WJEC/CBAC/EDUQAS Unit 2: Section A - An Introduction to Religion and Ethics,Theme 2: Aquinas’ Natural Law - a religious approach to ethics; and Unit 4 Religionand Ethics, Theme 2: Deontological Ethics: Knowledge and understanding of religionand belief, A. Synoptic link: how the study of ethics has, over time, influenced andbeen influenced by developments in religious beliefs and practices and the philosophyof religion.OCR Religion and Ethics, 1. Normative Ethical Theories: Religious Approaches,Natural Law.AQA 1 Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, B Ethics and Religion, Normative ethicaltheories.

IntroductionNatural law and Protestantism mightseem an unlikely topic. Certainly, the‘New Natural Law’ school associatedover the last few decades with JohnFinnis and Germain Grisez has attractedno little attention, and plenty of critique.Yet much of this conversation went on inCatholic theology and philosophy, andnatural law tends to be thought of as adistinctly Catholic approach to ethics,even though it aims at universality andsometimes gains traction outside thattradition – for instance, in legal

philosophy. Much ink has been spilleddebating whether natural lawapproaches can commend universalassent, even whether they have ascomprehensive a reach as some recentproponents suggest (e.g. Cunningham,2009). How can natural law beconvincingly argued to be universallyhelpful if it cannot even find a hearingwithin other parts of the Christiantradition?

More recently, however, partly throughinteracting with these new approachesand with St. Thomas directly, Protestant

Protestants and Natural Law


thinkers have begun to consider theirown tradition’s relation to natural law.

Reasons for rejectionAt this point it is necessary to survey afew common Protestant objections tonatural law, to see what this attempt atretrieval is up against.

(1) A first, characteristically Protestant,worry about natural law reasoningconcerns sin and human knowledge, andregards the natural law approach asoverly optimistic. This is essentially anepistemological critique, which contendsthat sin severely damages our humanability to know ourselves well, and toknow the good easily and accurately,without divine help – that is, withoutgrace. The question this puts to naturallaw is something like this: Even if therewere universal features of human naturethat gave us some basic moral content,can we see them clearly and reliablyenough (in our current ‘fallen state’) toact upon them, or for them to form thebasis of a universal ethic?

(2) A related worry is more closely linkedto the general worries people have hadabout natural law, and is probably morephilosophical than theological in form,though some theologians haveexpressed it too – especially StanleyHauerwas, who is widely considered themost prominent figure in recent Christianethics. He has been an outspoken criticof natural law reasoning (e.g. Hauerwas,1983), worrying that natural law posits afalse universalism that is not sustainablein view of what we know about the wayknowledge and morality differ fromcommunity to community, and aretransmitted by particular traditionsthrough particular practices (here herelies on Alasdair MacIntyre’s work: see

MacIntyre, 2007). In addition, Hauerwasobserves that the Christian church andits practice(s) has its own specific basisin, and is governed by, its own narratives.It cannot therefore make recourse to anabstract authority in natural law, which isthe moral reasoning of no community inparticular, let alone one shaped by theauthorities that Christians claim to holdas normative. Thus, teaching about thenaturalness of self-preservation (centralto natural law) cannot be presumed byChristians to be morally neutral and basic.Alongside this, Hauerwas suspects thatthe claims of natural law have oftensponsored violence, since claiming toknow some basic features that everyoneshould know about human nature andmorality, provides a reason to coercethose whose way of life does not accordwith these features. Yet Christian ethicsinvolves commitment to non-violence,though this has often been forgotten.

(3) A third worry concerns the ontologicalimpact of sin, as well as its impact on ourability to perceive the good. SomeProtestants have suggested that theimpact of the fall upon nature in generalis of such a magnitude that appeals tonature as such are misguided. Thisconcern about sin’s reality-shaping effectissues in what is perhaps an evenstronger caution against the natural lawthan the concern about theepistemological effect of sin. Philip G.Ziegler (2011) contends that in Scripturesin, in the first place, and indeed grace,in the second, alter the structures ofcreation so radically that it ismeaningless – in fact, dangerouslymisleading – to talk about a natural lawthat is unchanging.

(4) Another worry relates to the apparentremoteness of the language of natural



law from language about God’s will asthe arbiter of morality. It might seem – atleast in modern natural law theories,including those that are apparentlyCatholic in origin – that morality becomesanthropocentric, and sets up anothermoral authority alongside the commandof God.

For these and other reasons, it hasbecome something of a commonplacethat Protestant theology and natural lawapproaches to ethics are irrevocablyopposed.

Elements of retrievalNonetheless, some recent scholarshiphas suggested that, contrary to thisassumption, it is possible and desirable –even necessary – for Protestants toembrace some kind of conception of thenatural law.

(1) In the first place, there has been anhistorical dimension to this claim, withvarious scholars observing that, far fromthinking it inherently incompatible, untilquite recently Protestant theologians infact assumed a natural law approach.They have identified natural lawreasoning in John Calvin and MartinLuther themselves (e.g. Herdt, 2014;Baker and Ehlke, 2011). Somecontemporary attempts at the retrieval ofnatural law by Protestant (largelyReformed, i.e. Calvinist) scholars havealso made reference to a whole host ofthinkers across the first three centuriesof Protestantism, who have largely beenforgotten since (e.g. Grabill, 2006;Charles, 2008; VanDrunen, 2010).

Many of these studies in retrieval havesuggested that Karl Barth (perhaps themajor theologian of the twentieth century,of any tradition) made a mistake inrejecting natural law, or at least in doingso as unequivocally and forcefully as hedid. This is a very complex matter, not

least because Barth’s reasons forrejecting natural theology and natural lawwere so urgent and serious in his owncontext (when natural-law-typearguments were made in support of theNazis). The gist of the claim made bythose who take Barth seriously but stillwant to retrieve natural law has beenthat his criticisms of natural law theory,though in many ways still sharp, were infact directed at a particular version of it,and do not implicate all natural lawreasoning.

Among those who take this position,various hybrid models of ethics havebegun to appear that recognise, mitigateor circumvent the kinds of worries aboutnatural law outlined above. Somecombine certain distinctive Protestantemphases with, for example, a retrievalof St. Augustine’s thought. More relevantstill has been the emergence of so-called‘Protestant Thomism’ (John Bowlin’sterm) or ‘Barthian Thomism’ (e.g. Biggar,2011 and Reed, 2013). Bowlin, inparticular, has been keen to distinguishbetween these integrative approachesand some other (more politicallyconservative) retrievals of natural law.He suggests that contemporaryProtestant Thomists like himself, thoughthey ‘do not doubt that practical reasonhas first principles [a core assertion ofnatural law theory, which builds moralityon these first principles of practicalreason], do resist the notion that reason’sfirst principles can, by themselves,generate concrete moral agreementamong human communities sharplydivided by time and place, culture andconvention’ (accepting something likeHauerwas’s worry). Although firstprinciples ‘set the terms of all humanmoral conversation and deliberation …they do not specify the outcome of either’(Bowlin, 2002, p. 250). To appeal to the



natural law, in this view, though legitimatewithin Protestant ethics, does not short-circuit the operation of moral deliberationor avoid moral perplexity. Indeed, Bowlincharacterises some other kinds ofretrieval of natural law very negatively,observing that they are using natural lawreasoning for nostalgic ‘culture-wars’reasons (p. 251).

(2) A second element in therehabilitation of natural law is morephilosophical. Protestant ethics has oftenbeen thought to focus on divinecommand. In recent philosophicaltheology and ethics, however, a divinecommand approach has come in forfierce criticism on account of its apparentfeatures of: (a) the arbitrariness it seemsto locate at the centre of morality; (b) itspicture of God as a capricious tyrant; (c)its prioritising of the right over the good;(d) the associated voluntaristicprioritising of God’s will over God’sreason, and of our will over our reason;and (e) its lack of concern for theflourishing of humankind, which other(broadly eudaimonistic) ethical systemsforeground. (Human flourishing hasincreasingly become a topic ofProtestant theologising, rather than theobject of its suspicion, though rumours ofearlier Protestant misanthropy have oftenbeen exaggerated – Protestantism hasbeen from the beginning, in its own way,a humanistic tradition.)

Among Protestant philosophicaltheologians and ethicists, Robert M.Adams, Nicholas Wolterstorff and JohnHare (perhaps the contemporaryphilosopher of divine command) have allsought in some way to register theseconcerns and modify their accounts,even if they would not advocate athoroughgoing return to natural law (see,e.g. Hare, 2015). Protestant theologians,however, have tempered this kind of

recognition with a tendency to avoid thevocabulary of natural law, mindful of theBarthian disavowal and potential a-theological abstraction of the term; andhave sought to make much of thedoctrine of creation when talking aboutnatural moral goods (see O’Donovan,1994; Barth himself also developed atheological ethics of creation).

These approaches, like the historicalones, stress that Protestantism hastaught an extensive rather than anintensive notion of sin, arguing that thedamage caused by sin extends to everynatural and human capacity (and so hasboth epistemological and ontologicaleffects) but does not destroy them –allowing room for natural law (see Arner,2016).

ConclusionI have focused here on Protestantthinkers. But it is also worth noting thatthe direction of travel between theCatholic and Protestant moral traditionshas, in recent times, been two-way.There have been sustained efforts byCatholic thinkers, following in thefootsteps of Servais Pinckaers, toelaborate upon the biblical reasoning inThomas’ account of morality in general,and natural law in particular (seeLevering, 2008). Other Catholic moraltheologians have also drawn deeply fromthe wells of Barth. By no means allCatholic thinkers appeal to natural law,either, and many of those who do areaware of its serious challenges.

All these conversations about naturallaw are to a certain extent stillunresolved. Just as the wider jury maystill be out on the validity and helpfulnessof natural law arguments, the jury ofProtestant thought is still deliberatingabout them, too.



Linkshttp://www.newadvent.org/cathen/0907

6a.htm (Kevin Knight, 2012, CatholicEncyclopedia)

https://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/01/002-protestants-and-natural-law1992, Protestants and Natural Law)

https://hughmccarthylawscienceasc.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/a-summary-of-john-finniss-theory-of-natural-law/(Hugh McCarthy, 2015, A Summaryof John Finnis’s Theory of NaturalLaw)

http://www.nlnrac.org/contemporary/new-natural-law-theory/primary-source-documents/Natural-Law-God-Religion-and-Human-Fulfillment (Grisez, Germain, 2001,Natural law, God, religion, andhuman fulfillment. The AmericanJournal of Jurisprudence, 46(1))

Anthropocentric means focusing onhumankind as central; often used offocusing on humankind to theexclusion of our focus upon God oron other animals.

Divine command theory: meta-ethicaltheory which claims that whatmakes an action good is that it iscommanded by God.

Epistemological: related to ways ofknowing and their validity.

Eudaimonism: moral philosophy thatlinks right action to well-being,ultimately to happiness or beatitude.

Fall, the: the Christian teaching thathumankind finds itself in a state ofguilty disobedience before God. Itsometimes refers specifically to thestory of Adam and Eve and theirdisobedience in the Garden ofEden (though this may beunderstood literally or figuratively).

Natural law: in traditionalunderstanding, the rule of conductwhich is prescribed to us by thecreator in the constitution of thenature which we are given.

Ontological: relating to being.Voluntarism: in philosophy and

theology proper, the notion thatGod’s will is the dominant factor inethics. In terms of philosophical ortheological anthropology, the notionthat our will is the dominant featureof our nature, especially our moralnature. (It is often suggested thatthese (deficient) pictures of Godand humankind are strongly linked.)

Glossary

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm

https://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/01/002-protestants-and-natural-law



https://hughmccarthylawscienceasc.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/a-summary-of-john-finniss-theory-of-natural-law/



http://www.nlnrac.org/contemporary/new-natural-law-theory/primary-source-documents/Natural-Law-God-Religion-and-Human-Fulfillment







1. Given what you know of Protestanttheology, do you think it can becompatible with a natural lawapproach to ethics?

2. Do you find the attempt by thosewho claim that natural law gives auniversal basis for moralityconvincing? What do you thinkthey are trying to achieve? Doyou find it helpful?

3. Do you think natural lawapproaches can surmountcriticisms coming from withinChristian theology?

4. Can natural law and divinecommand approaches to ethicsbe integrated?

Discussion points

References and further readingArner, N. (2016). Precedents and

prospects for incorporating naturallaw in Protestant ethics. ScottishJournal of Theology, 69(4), 375-388.

Baker, R., & Ehlke, R. (Eds.). (2011).Natural law: A Lutheran reappraisal.St. Louis, Missouri: Concord.

Biggar, N. (2011). Behaving in public:How to do Christian ethics. GrandRapids, Michigan: Eerdmans.

Bowlin, J. (2002). ContemporaryProtestant Thomism. In Aquinas asauthority (pp. 235-51). Eds. P. vanGeest, H. Goris, & C. Leget,Leuven: Peeters.

Charles, J.D. (2008). Retrieving thenatural law: A return to moral firstthings. Grand Rapids, Michigan:Eerdmans.

Cunningham, L.S. (2009). Intractabledisputes about the natural law:Alasdair MacIntyre and critics.

Notre Dame, Indiana: University ofNotre Dame Press.

Grabill, S.J. (2006). Rediscoveringthe natural law in Reformedtheological ethics. Grand Rapids,Michigan: Eerdmans.

Hare, J. (2015). God’s command.New York: Oxford University Press.

Hauerwas, S. (1983). The peaceablekingdom. Notre Dame, Indiana:University of Notre Dame Press.

Herdt, J. (2014) Calvin’s legacy forcontemporary Reformed naturallaw. Scottish Journal of Theology,67(4), 414-435.

Hittinger, R. (1988). A critique of thenew natural law theory. NotreDame, Indiana: University of NotreDame Press.

Levering, M. (2008). Biblical naturallaw: A theocentric and teleologicalapproach. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.



Samuel Tranter is completing a PhD in theology and ethics at Durham University. Heis an associate tutor for the Lindisfarne Regional Training Partnership, and haspresented and published papers on topics including the relationship between hope andmoral theology, the ethics of everyday life and the theme of consolation incontemporary theology.

MacIntyre, A. (2007, 3rd ed.). Aftervirtue: A study in moral theory.Notre Dame, Indiana: University ofNotre Dame Press.

O’Donovan, O. (1994, 2nd ed.).Resurrection and moral order: Anoutline for evangelical ethics.Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans.

Porter, J. (1999). Natural and divinelaw: Reclaiming the tradition forChristian ethics. Ottawa: Novalis.

Porter, J. (2005). Nature as reason: aThomistic theory of the natural law.Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans.

Reed, E. (2013). Theology forinternational law. London: T & TClark.

VanDrunen, D. (2010). Natural lawand the two kingdoms: A study inthe development of Reformedsocial thought. Grand Rapids,Michigan: Eerdmans.

Ziegler, P.G. (2011). The fate ofnatural law at the turning of theages: Some reflections on a trendin contemporary theological ethicsin view of the work of J. LouisMartyn. Theology Today, 67(4),419-429.



If one were asked what is the centralmessage of the New Testament it wouldbe the Resurrection, which is more orless presupposed on all its pages. Itaffirms in various ways the End-encompassing destiny of all things inGod through Christ. While explanationssuch as Jesus’ physical revival, thestealing of his body (by the Jewishauthorities or by his own disciples) or thehysteria of women going to the wrongtomb can all be critiqued to the point ofshowing them to be scarcely credible,the Resurrection itself cannot be proved.

When we look at the NT Easter stories,the evidence is rather different from thatfor the Passion narratives. With the latter,there is a basic framework of commontraditions, whereas here the traditionsare varied: Jesus appears to a person

and to a group; he appears in Jerusalemand in Galilee. The appearances musthave been over a length of time if weinclude (as we should) Paul’s DamascusRoad experience.

The Resurrection traditionWe may note certain tendencies in thetradition.(1) An expansion of words and speech.In the light of Acts 1:1ff, we can see howthe development of gnostic secretteachings given by Jesus before hisascension could come about.(2) An apologetic motive, as in Matt.27:62ff; 28:11, where watchers guard thetomb in face of claims that the body hadbeen stolen. This also lies behind atendency to emphasise the physicalnature of the risen Christ (Luke 24:39-43;

Challenging Religious IssuesIssue 11 Autumn 2017© James Francis

The Earliest Easter NarrativesJames Francis

Following a brief contextual overview, this article explores some key insights from thetwo earliest New Testament perspectives on the Resurrection by Paul and Mark.

Specification links:WJEC/CBAC/EDUQAS Unit 1: Option A – An Introduction to the Study of Christianity,Theme 1: Religious figures and sacred texts (part 1) Knowledge and understanding ofreligion and belief, B. Jesus – his resurrection.EDEXCEL Paper 3 New Testament Studies.OCR 2. Foundations The origins and development of Christianity, and the sources ofwisdom on which it is based, The Person of Jesus Christ.

The Earliest Easter Narratives


John 20:20) over against the counterclaims of Gnostics who had little interestin the body generally, or claims that thedisciples had suffered hallucinations.(3) Making the appearances fit with thechurch calendar as at John 20:26, orchurch endeavour as at Matt. 28:16ff;Acts 1:4-8.

In terms of testimony, we are on thestrongest ground with the traditionquoted by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:3ff, writtencirca AD 54 and therefore earlier thanthe Gospels (unless John is dated early),but quoting a much earlier tradition. Pauluses the formal language of tradition as‘received’ and ‘delivered’. Here the firstappearance is to Peter, whereas theGospels never portray this as the firstappearance. One wonders, however,whether the summary has filtered out thetestimony of the women as aconsequence of patriarchal motives.Equally, it may be more a summary thatcentres on the main points and theauthority of the apostolic witness. It issignificant that Paul includes his ownvision, and so perhaps the original mayhave been similar to this kind ofexperience as well. There is strongevidence to suggest that the appearanceto ‘more than five hundred’ approximatesto the Pentecost experience (cf. John20:22, where the appearance of Jesusand the giving of the Spirit are linked).

Background(1) The background to the Resurrectionis pre-Christian and is found in PharisaicJudaism in particular (see the discussionon Levirate marriage in Matt. 22:24-33; cf.Deut. 25:5-10; Gen. 38:8ff).

In part, this may stem from a hope thatthe Maccabean martyrs had not giventheir lives in vain but were vindicated byGod. At any rate, it is primarily atheological idea: i.e. it is about the

purposing of God rather than a storygenre of a shadowy life beyond thegrave (akin to other cultures, as inHomer or the Epic of Gilgamesh). ThePharisees held out the hope andreminder that all would be brought at thelast before God’s judgement seat (cf.Daniel 12:2). In this way, it would bepossible to address the problem of theoppression of the righteous who passedaway without redress in this life. We findechoes of this in the NT. Significantly,Matt. 27:52 and the strange story aboutthe saints coming out of their tombs islinked to Jesus’ death (rather than hisResurrection) as the eschatological (i.e.End-time) moment of truth andjudgement. And we might also note 1Peter 2:23b, ‘He trusted in Him whojudges justly’, as a commentary on Jesus’self-giving in his hope of God’s justoutcome.

Pharisaic Judaism foundencouragement in the sovereign powerof God even over death. In its Scriptureswere stories of people who had beenresurrected/revived (e.g. Elijah’sprophetic healing, Elijah himself beingcaught up to heaven and Ezekiel’s visionof Israel’s dry bones). We might also findthis trajectory of hope in the NT, whereJesus’ own healing miracles are seen as‘resurrections’ in the power of thekingdom. God’s rule as king is overdeath as well as life (so Lazarus, in John11:1-44).

Thus, Resurrection is primarilyspeaking of the action of God. The NTtends to speak far more of God raisingJesus from the dead than of Jesus risingfrom the dead. According to N. T. Wright,this indicates that resurrection is not(primarily) about ‘an after life to this life’(what happens when we die), but Life inGod as the basis of the transformation ofthe world (Wright, 2011).



(2) Resurrection and exaltation werealternative affirmations in the earliesttradition – Jesus dies and is resurrected,or Jesus dies and is exalted. Hence thelanguage of light and height attendequally as descriptors of the experience.(3) The empty tomb tradition originallycirculated independently of theResurrection narratives and is then builtinto the latter. This is especially so inMark and Matthew. Perhaps the emptytomb narrative represents the lasthistorical word on what is essentially ana-historical experience. The attachmentof the empty tomb narrative gives somehistorical counterpoint to a claim of faith.

Points of interpretation(1) For the NT, (a) Resurrection is notsimply that which is added to Jesus’ lifeas if it were a new thing on a differentplane, but has to do with the historicalmeaning of his own existence which isbrought to fulfilment; and (b) theResurrection cannot be separated fromJesus’ mission and message (cf. John20:29).(2) Resurrection as experience leads tothe forging of community – in Paulinelanguage, Christ as ‘first fruits’ from thedead is associated with the work of theSpirit described as ‘fruit’. (Note that Pauldoes not speak of ‘the fruits of the Spirit’but ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ as a corporatesingular.)(3) Jesus’ message of the kingdom ofGod is characterised by a sense ofGod’s fulfilment breaking in upon thepresent. The church’s belief inResurrection continues this idea of thecosmic significance of Christ for all thingsrealising itself in the life of the world.

The earliest accounts1 Cor. 15:3-8 and Mark 16:1-8 are theearliest records, in that order.

1 Cor. 15:3-8Paul is countering here a claim that theResurrection is already past (cf. 4:11-13and 2 Tim. 2:18), and thereforereminding the church of future fulfilmentand God’s judgement upon Christian lifeand witness. The chapter also contains anote of consolation for those who doubtthe Resurrection, in the light of believerswho have already passed away. In thetradition that Paul transmits, the phrase‘according to the Scriptures’ in verses 3and 4 seems to be an interpretativeaddition by the church transmissionprocess. The phrase ‘was buried’ is theconfirmation of the fact of Jesus’ death,and ‘was seen’ is the confirmation of hisbeing raised. We may note the way inwhich the experience of the Resurrectionforces a shift in grammar – ‘Christ died /Christ was buried’ are in the pastcomplete tense (called the aorist inGreek); but ‘Christ has been raised’ is atrue perfect tense (i.e. an event whosesignificance is not past completed butwhich continues). The grammar is beingconstrained by the experience. Itemphasises that ‘Christ has been raisedand is alive now’.

‘He appeared’ in verses 8 and 9.1raises questions about what kind ofseeing and what was seen.

(a) What kind of seeing?Here the verbs (Greek: heoraka /ôphthê) can cover a wide range frommental to physical perception. If weproceed by elimination, one could saythe following.(i) It means ‘mental perception’. So‘seeing’ Jesus is the same as Gal. 1:15ff,‘God revealed his son in me’.Resurrection is the dawning of truth inPaul’s own calling, i.e. something like arealisation of a vocation. Yet these verbsin biblical Greek always imply some



vision, i.e. something that a personbelieves he/she is actually seeing.(ii) So, one might say it is a physicalperception, and yet for Paul it also doesentail an inward experience (Gal. 1:16).Equally, the different accounts of Paul’sDamascus Road experience (Acts 9:3ff;22:6ff; 26:12ff) suggest Paul’s ownpersonal encounter – what he sees,which is not available to others aroundhim.(iii) This leaves a visionary experience –whether it was something wholly internalor involved something ‘out there’ wecannot be sure. But the evidence seemsto be that it caught Paul completelyunawares and that he was convincedthat it was something/someone he saw.It was not an event he caused, but whichhappened to him wholly unexpectedly,and which changed his life.

We can reinforce this by reference tothe following:(i) There was nothing in Paul’s mind toprepare him – cf. 15:8 where he refers tohimself as ‘one untimely born’ (in theGreek: ektrôma) which implies asudden/lack of gestation. This is an oddmetaphor for Paul to use. The problem isnot that Paul arrived too early but too late,so to speak. Some scholars think thatPaul is referring here to a gibe thatothers have made against him, perhapswith reference to his physicalappearance (cf. 2 Cor. 10:10) or morewidely as an ‘incomer’ – not one of thosewho were part of the company of Jesus.Perhaps some referred to Paul as a‘freak’? But the metaphor has this edge,that Paul’s experience of Jesus wasunexpected. As a Pharisee, he wouldhave believed beforehand in the idea ofa general Resurrection, and he was nodoubt aware that the early church spokeof Christ resurrected. But this was notwhat he was anticipating.

(ii) The Greek verb ôphthê is passive,and indicates that the initiative lies withwhat is seen and not with the seer. ‘Heappeared’ really means ‘he showedhimself’ rather than ‘he was seen by’ (cf.Gal. 1:12 ‘revelation of Jesus Christ’ =revelation of/by Jesus himself, as asubjective genitive rather than anobjective genitive: i.e. Jesus’ ownrevelation, rather than Jesus as thecontent of revelation/revelation ‘abouthim’).(iii) Paul distinguishes between this andother spiritual experiences. He attachesit quite unselfconsciously to the list ofResurrection appearances and he knowsof no other appearances after this. Hisclaim, ‘I have seen’ (heoraka is theperfect tense in Greek), signifies an initialexperience that defines his apostleshipand shapes the subsequent course of hislife.

(b) What was seen?For Paul it was quite simply Jesus(glorified), and he nowhere goes on todescribe him (contrast Rev. 1:12ff). Wehave to assume that Paul knew it wasJesus – something in the experienceidentified Jesus, whether Paul hadactually previously seen Jesus or not.What Paul encountered was asimultaneous blinding light andperception, according to Acts (cf. 2 Cor.4:6), and in Jewish perspective thisdescribed a manifestation of God (2 Cor.3:18; 4:4; cf. Phil. 3:21 ‘his body of glory’).Paul’s reticence might arise from therebeing no further detail available(compare the Transfiguration stories inthe Synoptic Gospels), or because iteluded description as eschatologicalreality. Paul was convinced he had seen‘the glory of God in the face of Christ’ (2Cor. 4:6), noting how the two (God andChrist) are inextricably bound up together,



and that it was an experience withoutcomparison in his subsequent life.

Mark 16:1-8This ending (which is likely the originalending of Mark) is difficult, not least inthat the commandment in v.7 is notfulfilled by the women, though it recalls14:28. Perhaps the best meaning of thewords ‘And they went away and saidnothing to anyone’ is, quite simply, ‘Andthey spoke to no one on the road back’.It could also have a metaphoricalreference to the great awe which fallsupon witnesses who have come acrossthe End of all things, the eschatologicalreality that stuns into silence. After all, itis the fear of God which is the beginningof all wisdom.

Notably, the story of the tomb is notabout proving the Resurrection; itproduces only puzzlement, and aconnection has to be drawn by the angel(cf. John 20:1ff, where Mary goes only tolament and runs away in bewildermenton discovering the tomb to be empty). Itsdiscovery does not lead to faith in and ofitself.

The empty tomb narrative liesalongside that of the Resurrection.(There is in fact no Resurrectionappearance but only an allusion to apromise, as in 14:28.) Luke 24:34 alsohas a Christophany aspect, independentof the tomb narrative. The viability of thetomb narrative rests to some extent onan understanding that if Jesus is raised,the tomb must have been empty. But theearliest Christology summons us back toJesus’ vindication after rejection. It maybe that the developing message(kerygma) of the church drew into it theempty tomb tradition as a didacticsupport, though that is not to pass anycomment itself on the historical reliabilityof the tomb narrative.

It is difficult to say that no one wentback to have a look at the tomb (cf. John11:39 – Jesus was buried for less thanfour days). Of course, the absence of abody does not prove a Resurrection.This takes us to a discussion of thenature of Resurrection. The NT speaksof the resurrection of body rather thanthe ‘flesh’ (cf. Paul’s extended discussionin 1 Cor. 15:12ff). But it is possible thatthe empty tomb tradition is itself early, aResurrection tradition unit that circulatedin parallel to the Resurrection narratives,and later became joined to them.

The location of the Resurrectionappearances is problematic. Mark andMatthew emphasise Galilee, while Lukeand John focus on Jerusalem. Somehave attempted a resolution on the basisof pilgrim festivals: i.e. the disciples leaveat the end of Passover and return atPentecost. But it may be that the accountscannot be harmonised. Instead, theyreflect the special interests of the Gospelsor of their underlying communities.Accordingly, they weave the experienceof Resurrection into their own particularcontexts.

ConclusionThe dynamic of Resurrection affirmed forthe church the eschatological presenceof God in Christ, and linked thisintimately and indissolubly to the work ofthe Spirit in worship, witness and service.

Accordingly, it did not necessarilydistinguish between historical andrevelatory sayings. Paul and the otherapostles believed that they were speakingwith the authority of the present Christ,and therefore sayings, ethical teachings,prophetic exhortations and warningscould become harmonised as ‘inspiredutterance’ within and for the church.Luke 24:44, ‘while I was still with you’,reflects a certain awareness of the paradox.



Linkshttp://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcante

rbury.org/articles.php/1380/risen-indeed-the-resurrection-in-the-gospels (Rowan Williams, 2008,‘Risen Indeed’: The Resurrection inthe Gospels)

http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/000556.html (RowanWilliams, 2004, Easter Sermon)

1. How do you think the early churchcame to understand the meaning ofresurrection to include not justhumanity but the whole createdorder (Romans 8:19-24; Colossians1:15-20; cf. Proverbs 8:22-36)?

2. Compare and contrast the Christianbelief in resurrection with the ideaof fulfilment expressed in otherworld religions.

3. Paul speaks of the resurrection ofthe body as distinct from theresurrection of the flesh (Romans8:9-11; 1 Corinthians 15:35-58).How do you understand thisdistinction?

Discussion points

Apologetics: the working out of theexplanation and defence of aparticular belief or doctrine.

Christology: the doctrine or study ofthe person of Christ.

Gnostic / Gnostics: from the Greekgignõskõ meaning ‘know/get toknow’; a belief in a special oresoteric knowledge that bringssalvation.

Eschatological: from the Greekeschatos meaning ‘last’, that whichhas to do with the conceived End(of ordinary reality).

Glossary

Mark 9:38ff suggests that some awarenessof Jesus’ exaltation is in the backgroundin the invocation to overcome evil spirits.In the tradition transmission process, thetime of the church is not necessarilydistinguished from the time of Jesus (Matt.

7:21/Luke 6:46; Matt. 18:20), andconsequently we can detect debates anddiscussions of the church within thenarrative of Jesus’ teachings and actionsacross the Gospels (e.g. in some of theparables and their outcomes).

http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/000556.html

http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/000556.html



Dunn, J.D.G. (2003). Jesusremembered. Grand Rapids,Michigan: Eerdmans, pp. 821-879.

Kretzer, L.J. (1993). Resurrection. InDictionary of Paul and his letters(pp. 805-812). Eds. G.F.Hawthorne, R.P. Martin & D.G.Reid, Leicester: IVP.

Osbourne, G.R. (1992). Resurrection.In Dictionary of Jesus and theGospels (pp. 673-688). Eds. J.B.Green, S. McNight & I.H. Marshall,Leicester: IVP.

Travis, S.H. (1997). Resurrection. InThe Dictionary of the Later NewTestament and its developments(pp. 1015-1020). Eds. R.P. Martin& P.H. Davids, Leicester: IVP.

Wright, N.T. (2011). Surprised byhope: Rethinking heaven, theresurrection, and the mission of thechurch. London: SPCK.

References

The Revd Dr. James Francis is a non-residentiary canon of Durham Cathedral andvisiting fellow of St. John’s College, Durham. He was senior lecturer in New TestamentStudies at Sunderland University, and latterly Principal of the Durham Diocese’sOrdained Local Ministry Course. His publications include editorship of the book seriesReligions and Discourse (Peter Lang), a book on childhood in the ancient world, areader on self-supporting ministry, and contributions to Bible dictionaries.



Challenging Religious IssuesIssue 11 Autumn 2017© Emily Pollard

Thomas Aquinas and Just Cause for WarEmily Pollard

This article discusses Thomas Aquinas’ definition of a just cause for war, and offerscriticisms of his argument.

Specification links:EDEXCEL Unit 1 Foundations, Area B Ethics, 2 A study of ethical dilemmas, Issues ofwar and peace.AQA 2B Christianity, Good conduct and key moral principle.

According to just war theory, in order fora war to be considered just one of themost important requirements is a justcause. Many just war theorists explainwhat a just cause is by listing examplesof possible just causes. Some of thesederive from the definitions and examplesgiven by early just war theorists such asSt. Augustine, who argued that ‘just warsare defined as those which avenge inju-ries ... or to return something that waswrongfully taken’ (Augustine, 1983, p.135).

Thomas Aquinas also defined a justcause as one of these two reasons, butadded an explanation for why thesereasons justify war – it is because, heargues, the ‘wrongs inflicted’ or the factthat something (territory or assets,perhaps) has been ‘seized unjustly’means that ‘those who are attacked,should be attacked because theydeserve it’ (Aquinas, 1947, p. 1360). It isthis explanation I intend to analyse in thisarticle.

Aquinas’ account of just causeThus, Aquinas’ account of just causestates that one has a just cause if theenemy ‘deserve it on account of somefault’ (1947, p. 1360). In other words, thejustification for war that a just causeprovides is based not on the moralposition of the country that is consideringwhether they have just cause for war, buton the moral position of the country theyare contemplating fighting. If the latter‘deserves’ to be fought, then one has justcause to fight them.

It seems that the justification for warprovided by a just cause is, according tothis account, based on the latter group’sdeserving to be fought in order to bepunished for their misdeeds or correctedin their errors. According to thisinterpretation, then, Countries A, B andso on do not have a specific just causeto make war on Country C; the point is,rather, that it is just that Country C bemade war upon. To put it another way,there exists a subject-independent just

Thomas Aquinas and Just Cause for War

Challenging Religious Issues, Issue 11, Autumn, 2017 23

cause to wage war against Country C ‘onaccount of some fault’.

Aquinas’ answer to the question ofwhat ‘fault’ can make a country ‘deserve’armed attack is to refer to the just causeslisted by Augustine. Augustine suggest-ed such causes as: a war to ‘returnsomething that was wrongfully taken’, to‘avenge injuries’ and to ‘punish a wrongcommitted by [the enemy country’s] citi-zens’, if the leaders or government ofthat country have ‘neglected’ to do sothemselves (Augustine, 1983, p. 135).From these proposed just causes, wecan see that Aquinas’ definitions of a‘fault’ that would make a country ‘deserve’attack (1947, p. 1360) would include:(1) ‘injuries’ against other countries, suchas an unprovoked aggressive attack, orthe invasion of the injured country by theinjurer;(2) ‘unjustly seizing’ something that be-longs to another country or people – forinstance territory, or citizens’ lives, libertyor means of subsistence; and(3) the ‘punishment’ of wrongs that it isthe injuring country’s responsibility topunish or prevent, but has failed to do so

– perhaps because it (or its leaders) wereperforming or profiting from the ‘wrong’.

War as punishment of a wrongThe third ‘fault’ that Aquinas recognises,that of a ‘wrong inflicted’ by the citizensof a country which the country inquestion has failed to punish, requiresfurther definition. Obvious examples,which have been accepted by many justwar theorists besides Augustine andAquinas, include unprovoked aggressionagainst or invasion of a fellow nation andthe subjugation, ill treatment or massacreof other groups within that nation, eitherstate-sponsored or ignored by the state.

But there is another category of ‘wrong’that Augustine appears to endorse: thatof ‘religious wrong’. He writes, for

instance, that ‘it is not permissible todoubt that it is right to undertake a warwhich men undertake to wage underGod’s authority either to strike terror into,wear down, or subdue the pride ofmortals’ (Augustine, 2007, p. 352).

The ‘wrongs’ in the first category, suchas aggression or subjugation, arewrongs against people which can clearlybe seen as ‘wrong’. The secondpossibility, however, which includes warsundertaken ‘under God’s authority’ to‘subdue the pride of mortals’, seems tosuggest a war fought to punish somedeviation from God’s plans orcommandments, such as voluntary moral‘corruption’ amongst the citizens of acountry (an echo of the biblical story ofSodom and Gomorrah), which might, inAugustine’s words, ‘help them inpracticing patience and in humbling thesoul’ (2007, p. 352). Thus, the ‘wrongs’that Augustine argues we are justified inwaging war to ‘punish’ and ‘correct’ (anargument that Aquinas continues,elaborating upon but not substantiallyaltering) are both actions which aremorally wrong for consequentialistreasons (such as aggression), andactions which, he argues, are morallywrong because they contravene the‘divine law’.

The problem with this second ‘fault’ isthe most obvious (to twenty-first centuryeyes, at least); and I shall thereforeexplain it very briefly. Religion is, in manyways, an unsuitable moral standard toapply universally. Aquinas (andAugustine) believed that the Christianway of life is ‘divinely appointed’, set outby God as the only right way for all menand women (not just Christians) to live.This belief that God’s rules andcommandments constitute a ‘divine law’that it is morally wrong to break, leadsthem to treat this ‘fault’ as though it werean unquestionably absolute moral



standard. Not only is this doubtful, but itis a dangerously slippery slope towardsabsolute religious war.

What does it mean to ‘deserve’ to bewarred against?Even if transgressions against whatAquinas saw as the one ‘true’ religion areexcluded from the list of ‘faults’, however,his argument is still problematic, as A. J.Coates pointed out. Coates wrote acritique of traditional just war theory’s‘one-sided and exaggerated emphasis onjust cause’ (Coates, 1997, p. 146), but Ibelieve this criticism is applicable as anobjection to the argument that just warsare just because the country beingfought ‘deserves’ to be punished for itsfaults by means of military attack. Coateswrote of the danger of governments orcountries succumbing to ‘a moraltriumphalism and a moral enthusiasm forwar that transform a “just” war into a

“holy” or a crusading war, and that havemore in common with the militaristtradition than they have with the just wartradition’. Coates argues that such atendency can be generated by anemphasis upon just cause to theexclusion of all other jus ad bellumcriteria, because the ‘absolute convictionthat their cause is just’ can lead peopleinto this dangerous attitude (1997, p.146).

I believe, however, that fighting a warsolely because of the ‘conviction’ that theenemy, collectively speaking, are guiltyof various crimes or ‘faults’ may generatesimilar ‘triumphalist’ views. This is thecase whether these ‘faults’ are religiousor moral (such as greed, in stealing theland or resources of another country);‘pride’ that needs ‘subduing’; a culturaltendency towards aggressive behaviour;or customs that one’s own moralstandards find repugnant (enforced

marriage, for instance). For when it isclaimed that a war is justified becausethe enemy deserves to be attacked,since there is something wrong withthem and their actions that must be‘punished’ by morally superior countries,it is just as easy to slip into the ‘absoluteconviction’ that a war for such a cause isnot merely ‘justified’ but ‘holy’ – as it is awar against people who ‘deserve it’, thetransgressors, the ‘evildoers’, those whoare ‘the consummation of evil’ (Coates,1997, p. 146).

One possible illustration of the dangerof such a conviction might be NaziGermany, as it could be argued thatHitler’s campaign against the Jews hadmany similar elements to a war. JeffreyHerf, for instance, argued that ‘the waragainst the Jews was in their [the Nazis’]mind synonymous with World War II’(Herf, 2006, p. 264). Hitler and hisfollowers were similarly convinced thatthe Jews deserved to be ‘fought’, andthis conviction was soon accompaniedby another conviction, equally strong,that they were somehow inherently evil.

The slippery slope problemIn this example, wars (or non-militarycampaigns of hatred) were driven pastthe point where they might otherwisehave stopped, largely by the notion thatthe enemy deserved what they were get-ting. Whatever defensive motives mighthave played a part were twisted out ofshape by this notion, in that (in the exam-ple of the Nazis, for instance) without thebelief that the enemy were in some way‘evil’ there might have been less, or evenno fear that they posed a danger.

Coates succinctly defines the reasonwhy such attitudes as ‘moral trium-phalism and moral enthusiasm for war’are undesirable. Such attitudes, he ar-gues, ‘encourage combatants to override



the moral limits of war or to neglect otherequally weighty moral considerations,such as the costs of war or the sheddingof innocent blood’. This is because theidea, encouraged by this definition of justcause (that the ‘adversary’ one is facingin battle is ‘the consummation of evil’),can lead combatants to believe that, ifdefeating an enemy so evil necessitatesbreaking one or two rules of just militaryconduct, then doing so for the greatergood may be acceptable.

This is because the definition of justcause as the fact that the enemy‘deserves’ to be attacked ‘on account ofsome fault’ (Aquinas) also means thatthe enemy ‘deserves’ to be defeated bythat attack, since if one’s opponentdeserves to be the target of militaryattack then one’s opponent must deserveto lose the ensuing war. The idea of hisculpability, his ‘deserving’ to be foughtand defeated, can lead to what Coatesdescribes as ‘the absolute conviction that... the adversary against whom [one]fight[s] is the consummation of evil’; and,therefore, to the conviction that thisadversary must be defeated at all costs:that the rules of just conduct in war canbe overridden by the necessity ofdefeating such an enemy, an enemywhom, if one’s cause is just, deserves itsdefeat.

The problem inherent in a definition ofjust cause that leads to governments and

combatants sometimes justifying theoverriding of jus in bello constraints,whenever it becomes necessary to win awar with such a just cause, is clear. Thejus in bello rules were established toshow that there are certain kinds ofbehaviour that are morally unacceptablein any war, just or unjust. If Aquinas’definition of just cause were accepted,then the grounding of the justifiability ofwar upon the evil deeds or nature of theenemy, and the fact that the naturalconclusion of this basis for justification isthat the defeat of such an enemy is aparamount goal, are in danger of givingany who accept this view the idea thatjust cause has overriding priority overother moral considerations such as thejust conduct of war. This is a dangerousslippery slope, which means that ‘just’wars are likely to degenerate into thebloodiest and most violent of wars.

Thus, it seems clear that the idealdefinition of just cause is that of a causewhich justifies recourse to war as ameans of achieving it, but does not justifyresorting to any means of warfare inorder to do so; a cause, in short, whichcan be overridden by jus in bello ratherthan the other way around. It is also clearthat Aquinas’ definition of just cause isnot such a definition.



https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/ (Ralph McInerny, 2014, SaintThomas Aquinas, StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas-moral-political/ (John Finnis,2017, Aquinas’ Moral, Political, andLegal Philosophy, StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy)

http://www.iep.utm.edu/aquinas/(Thomas Aquinas, InternetEncyclopedia of Philosophy)

Links

GlossaryConsequentialist: an advocate of the

ethical theory of consequentialism,which states that the morality ofany action depends entirely uponthe value of its consequences.

Jus ad bellum: A set of criteria that,according to just war theory, mustbe fulfilled for anybody to be justifiedin declaring war – including just

cause, legitimate authority andreasonable chance of success.

Jus in bello: Moral rules that constrainthe military actions and tactics thatare ethically permissible in war.

1. What do you think of the list of‘faults’ that Aquinas argued wouldjustify war against the country thatcommitted them? Would youdisagree with any of them?

2. On what grounds might you arguethat a military response could bejustified to halt and correct anothercountry’s ‘faults’?

3. Do you agree that a slippery sloperesults from the assertion that oneonly has a just cause for war if theenemy deserves to be fought?Why?

Discussion points

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas-moral-political/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas-moral-political/

http://www.iep.utm.edu/aquinas/



Aquinas, Thomas. (1947). SummaTheologica, Trans. Fathers of theEnglish Dominican Province. NewYork: Benziger Bros.

Augustine, St. (1983). Questions onthe Heptateuch (part X, book VI). InThe early fathers on war andmilitary service. Ed. and trans.Louis J. Swift. Wilmington,Delaware: Michael Glazier.

Augustine, St. (2007). Answer toFaustus, a Manichean, Trans.Roland Teske, Ed. BonifaceRamsey. New York: New CityPress.

Coates, A.J. (1997). The ethics of war.Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress.

Herf, Jeffrey. (2006). The Jewishenemy: Nazi propaganda duringWorld War II and the Holocaust.Cambridge, Massachusetts;London: Bellknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press.

References

Emily Pollard, PhD, is a researcher and tutor based at Durham University. Her field isthe ethics of war, focusing specifically on just war theory. She has published papers inPhilosophical Writings and The Routledge handbook of ethics and war (Eds. FritzAlhoff, Nicholas Evans and Adam Henschke).

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