christian ethics in the postmodern condition

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Studies in Christian Ethics

DOI: 10.1177/0953946895008001031995; 8; 20Studies in Christian Ethics

Philip GoodchildChristian Ethics in the Postmodern Condition

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CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THEPOSTMODERN CONDITION

Philip Goodchild

n this article I shallattempt toexploresome oftheimplications ofthecultural and intellectual phaseknown as thepostmodern conditionfor moral thought and practice. I shall examine two sources of thiscondition, one theoretical and another practical, before moving on tosurvey briefly some possible ethical responses. The second half ofthearticle will develop a theological foundation for ethics, drawing uponPauline theology and some contemporary ethical responses to thepostmodern condition. The postmodern condition will becharacterized in terms of a loss of transcendence, and a theologicalresponse as an approach that restores transcendence to humancharacter and thoughtby comprehending transcendence as a style ofrelating our explanatory presuppositions about the world to the realand disruptive events which we encounter.

The Postmodern Condition and Its Sources

Thepostmoderncondition is often described as an arena ofconfusion,wherepeopleno longerknowhow to think about, articulate or debatethe values, practices, institutions and goals which mean most tothem. Under such conditions, common endeavour is focused uponends with which most can agree: material wealth, technologicaladvance, increasing comfort along with decreasing responsibility,andmechanisms forensuring a sufficient level of service provided byvarious institutions. Thiscommon goal ofpeace and wealth is theaim

1 For example, seeAlasdair Maclntyre,After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1985);Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso,1991); and Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, (Cambridge: Polity, 1988).

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of a peoplewhich then wishes to use its individualfreedoms to pursueits individual combinations of meanings, values, and practices. Inspite of such an emphasis, personal moral responsibility is oftenreplaced with artificial techniquesandstatisticalknowledgein domainsas diverse as education, health-care and spiritual growth.

Descriptions of the postmodern condition are subject to a paradoxof self-legitimation: we are told that we live amid an irreducibleplurality of meanings and values, butwe are not told how we can becertain of this. If there are no more meta-narratives to legitimate thegrand narratives describing our world and present age, then whatare we to make of the narrative of the postmodern condition?2 This

widelyrecognized and repeated paradox is taken bysome to be a self-contradiction, refuting the case for the postmodern condition and

allowinganuninterrupted exploration ofa philosophicalrealism;by

others,it is taken as an

exampleof an

inescapablevicious circle that is

inherent in all thought, capturing us all the more powerfully withinthe postmodern condition.An approach that resolves such a paradox, to be adopted here, is tohold that our world-views, theories, or narratives are cross-sectionstaken from differing perspectives upon our lives. One canbe arealistin continuing tobelieve that there remains something outside thought- a realm variously comprising bodies, the unconscious, history,culture, language,God - that connects and underlies all the differentcross-sections made

by thought.This real life is

composedof events

of interaction between thoughts and different ways of thinking,amongst other things; it positions perspectives and lays out the

imaginaryworlds they describe. One can alsobe an idealist, however,in suspecting that every perspective produces an imaginary worldthat fails to represent real life as it is. Real life will then manifestitself as a transcendental condition of thought by interrupting ourtheories and imaginary worlds in instances where they no longerwork.3This picture of a plurality of fictional worlds functioning ascross-sections within our lives is also a fiction itself - a refinement of

the postmodern condition, having no definite ontological status.44Some lightmay thereforebe castupon thepostmodern conditionby

the events and crises that led to its being imagined. The metaphysicalspace ofmoralnihilismwas firstportrayedbyNietzsche: hequestionedthevalue ofourhighest values, andsought a revaluationof all values.

2 See Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Manchester: ManchesterU.P., 1984).3 This approach is a broad simplification of the kinds of positions developed by

Gilles Deleuze in Nietzsche and Philosophy (London:Athlone, 1983), andAnti-Oedipus(London:Athlone, 1984).4 I have explored such a philosophical position at some length in my Gilles Deleuzeand the Question of Philosophy (Cranbury:Associated University Presses, forthcoming).5 See Nietzsche, The Will to Power (New York: Vintage, 1968).



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The considerations that run throughout Nietzsches texts and havebeen amplified by post-Nietzschean and other contributors to thestory of the postmodern condition, include: the existence of a cultural

plurality of differing values; observations of the historical formationand transformation of values; the role of language in shaping and

articulating values; and the roles that such values play within aneconomyofpower-relations.6Whereformerly a transcendent presencehad legitimated certain sets of values, considerations of pluralism,history, language and power raise questions about historicalconditioning, anddemand that the bondbetween transcendence andourhighestvalues be legitimated. One cannotconsider such questionsif one believes one still has a direct revelation from the absolute; thedeath of God, far from being a result of skeptical inquiry, is itsprecondition.One source of the postmodern condition can therefore

be describedas a

loss oftranscendence:

the messages of revelationfrom the absolute no longer seems to be getting through.As such, thepostmodernconditionmay beregarded as essentiallyanti-monotheist,the reign of the Nietzschean Anti-Christ.The loss of an absolute site ofevaluation causes a change in theway

people think. One might have roughly the same values, but these arenow unfounded. The problem of transcendence becomes one of

theodicy: it is a question ofhowwejustify our transcendent authority,together with whatever imaginary world we might spin out on thebasis ofsuch an

authorityandour

juridicalstatus within such a world,

in the face of revelations of real life that tend to disrupt our worlds:pain, sickness, cruelty, disaster, deprivation, war, famine, disease anddeath. Now, while a life of peace and comfort tends to reinforce any

imagined world, it also removes the need for justification andlegitimation- and hence for a transcendent authority. The presenceof suffering, by contrast, reinforces the need for a transcendent ordersuch as a fictional land not yetpresent inwhichjustice,based upon our

highest values, will finally be restored. Suffering often tends toproduce its own theodicybyreinforcing expectationsofa transcendentorder. Moreextreme forms of suffering maylead to despair

-

but thevictims of this double degradation, who are broken in spirit as well asin body, have little to say and are rarely heard in public discourse.

In recent times, perhaps, a new dynamic has entered the situation.The voices of victims, formerly discounted in virtue of their status asvictims, are also beginning to be heard - even if only very slightly.Where the victims of the countless massacres, slaveries, exploitationsand petty domestic cruelties of history have left almost no voicewithin history, the victims of more recent times have left a stronger

6 These factors have been explored throughout the work of thinkers such as Martin

Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, andJean-FranoisLyotard.7 See Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari,Anti-Oedipus, pp. 106-7.



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tracedFormerly, the absolute certainty of a transcendent order hadmade the voice of its victims inaudible - as, for example, in thecolonial conquests of European powers. When economic progressleads a significant proportion of the population to a position ofcomfort in which it no longer needs to be deafened by the voice of

transcendent authority, the clamour of suffering finally becomesaudible. No longer relying upon authority, modem reason begins tosee its own responsibility forproducingsuch suffering.The victims oftheHolocaust,Hiroshima,and thefamine createdbyglobal Capitalism,tell us of our responsibility in their pain- insofar as we share in themodern reason which has produced such events. Under suchconditions one begins to lose faith in ones comprehension oftranscendence, and the postmodern condition emerges. Sufferingbegins to tear down our theodicywhen it is no longer we who suffer,but another in our

placeand as a result of our worldviews. The

suffering of bodies transcends our fictional worlds, interrupts them,and unmasks their pretensions. The postmodern condition shouldnot merely be understood as the play of free market, mass-mediaculture, but also as a condition of trauma and impotence resultingfrom a shock that dislodges us from former sources of meaning.

Ethical Responses to the Postmodern Condition

These two problems, therefore, can be considered as significantsources (among others) of the postmodern condition: the question ofthe value of values, and vulnerability to the suffering of others. There

appear to be four main ethical responses. The first is to deny the

postmodern condition altogether, and to continue in the modern

project of metaphysical realism which aims at discovering the truenature of the transcendent authority able to legitimate our highestvalues. Here, transcendence is believed to be something which isapproximately approachable and describable by thought. The secondis to oppose the cultural confusion of our age by attempting toreconstruct a tradition and community in which thought and actionwill be given their own intra-specific meaning and value.9 Here,transcendence is believed to be encountered at the source and goal ofa tradition or community.Athird approach is to listen to the voice ofthe victim, and act, at whatever cost to oneself, in order to alleviatetheir suffering. Here, transcendence is encountered in the relation to

8

Jewish reflections on the Holocaust would be a prime example.9

E.g. the recent work of Alasdair MacIntyre, as well as that of Stanley HauerwasandJohn Milbank.10

E.g. those ethical philosophies which follow Emmanuel Levinas, such as EdithWyschogrod, Saints and Postmodernism (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990), andZygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).



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an other who is in need.Afourth is pragmatic and deconstructive-no appeal is made to transcendence at all, but each action is assessedaccording to its consequences, and all fixed strategies of legitimationare opened up for questioning.&dquo;Aspecifically theologicalapproach to ethicsmust attempt to recover

a sense of transcendence-

and hence move beyond the postmoderncondition itself. Yet here we must proceed with extreme caution, forthe transcendent certainties and authorities of Christianityhave beeninvoked in some of the terrible crimes of history. Insofar as the

postmodernconditionremoves ourcertainties, itmaycleanse theologyof over-reaching pretensions. Each of the above approaches may bedrawn upon, in an eclectic spirit, but only, for thepresentauthor, withsome reservations. Some accounts of postmodernism that celebratethe freeplay of fictions, images, and desires are clearlyexcessive: thereare real conditions that

shapeour

fictions, imagesand

desires,and

real bodies, outside thought, that condition the way we think.Metaphysical realism has value, therefore, but we should hesitatebefore believing thatwe cancreate a discoursethat can approximatelyoverlay and describe such conditions. This is to believe that theempirical canmap the transcendental- thatwe canproceed from theconditioned nature of thought to the conditions of thought. Ourdifficulty may be, however, that we cannot comprehend thetranscendent ifwe do not have the right subjectivepresuppositions -we cannot understand the Good if we are not

goodourselves.A

tradition or community that forms moral character may be a

precondition for any recovery of transcendence. Here there is adanger, however, ofresting contentwithour fictionsor reconstructingidealized traditions- without being able to hear the voices of thosewho are affected by them. The characters formed may not have thebroadest understanding of the Good. We can only gain a deeperunderstanding of that which transcends our fictional worlds ifwe arealso able to hear the voice and respond to the needs of others outsidesuch communities. We must allow ourselves to be shaken and

dispossessed of meaning by the voices from without. The response tothe needs of the other, however, is merely one ethical situation, andshould notbemade an absolute foundation for ethical theory.Anyonewho has worked in the caring professions may observe the danger oftaking too much responsibility for the suffering of others- it violatesthe carer, and may encourage a form of dependency in the needywhich is ultimately unhelpful to them. Moreover, in absolutizing thephysical and emotional needs of another, one implicitly despairs of

working for spiritual needs, both for self and others. In order to avoid

hasty presuppositions about thenature oftranscendence, a pragmatic,

11

E.g. the work of Mark C. Taylor and John D. Caputo.



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nomadic, and deconstructive approach to ethicsmay liberate us fromsubordination to our own, created presuppositions.

A TheologicalApproach

The postmodern condition tells us that the political, ethical and socialtheories which we construct are all doomed to failure - and will

probably be subjected to a searching critique even before beingworked out in practice. For there is a radical difference in naturebetween any theory, fictional world, tradition, community, character,value, practice, experience, orimperativewhichwe canconstruct,andthe real workings and characteristics of life which are concerned withthe encounters and relationsbetween these instances. The messengerof this bad news is

alwaysthe

body,and the

physicalevents which

happen to us and those we influence. Sin may now be considered interms of a displacement between the fictional worlds we construct,together with the moral actions which are possible within them, andthe level of real life and the ambiguous consequences of all actions atthis level. We observe both helpful and harmful consequences, fromdiffering perspectives, ofeveryeventand action. This moralambiguityof all thought and action evident within the postmodern conditioneffectively prevents us from pointing towards transcendence. 12 Theresult is a failure of moral

authorityin our present age

-

we can see,

and the media tends to emphasize, the negative consequences of anyvalue, practice, or institution. Those who are born into the culture ofthis moral vacuum will be bred in an environment of cynicism wheremoral responsibility merely involves criticizing others. The fiction ofthe postmodern condition, therefore, is not something which we canallow to retaindominance incontemporary thought. We must recovera sense of transcendence. Consequently, the redemption of ethicsshould proceed along specifically theological lines, no longer basingitself upon copies of secular reason.&dquo;Atheological approach to Christian ethics may emerge byinterpreting the Christian gospel within the postmodern context.Indeed, perhaps the Christian gospel does not gain meaning until it isconsidered within a specific, worldly, incarnate context. 14 For if we

12 For example, every action or inaction of participants in and observers of theBosnian war may be considered culpable from a differing perspective: no one seemsable to divine the right response in the right place at the right time. Baumanemphasizes the moral ambiguity of all action as one of the principal characteristicsofpostmodernity. Postmodern Ethics, pp. 9-15, 32-4, 94-8.13Asimilar

point is arguedon

historical groundsbyJohn Milbankinhis Theology andSocial Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).14 Such considerations are of particular importance in feminist theology. See, forexample, Isabel Carter Heyward, The Redemption of God (London: Univ. Press of

America, 1982), p. 7.



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postpone the juridical meanings of salvation, justification, andsanctification until the eschaton, we repeat a kind of Docetic heresyby disincarnating the divine realm from this one. These theologicalconcepts should primarily have meaning for our moral status in thislife, if they are to bemeaningful at all. In this context, repentance doesnot

merely involve acceptingthe

fallibilityof ourown

juridical statuswithin our fictional worlds, but also of the theories, values and

practices legitimated within such worlds. Repentance is not merely tobeattained at the level of ego,self-image or self-will, but must alsobeapplied at the level oftheworld whichwe constructwe must alsorepent of our view about life as a whole, including the values andpractices whichwe admire, and the forms of transcendence whichweelevate. We must cease pretending to ourselves that we alreadyunderstand the meaning of transcendence, or know what we shoulddo. In this

respect, repentancecan coincide with the

postmoderncondition. Oncewe acknowledgeour practical reason to becomposedof fictions, however, we begin to distance ourselves from it - andaccept that our lives are governed by unknowable conditions.

This repenting ofour fictional worlds, togetherwith their practicesand values, changes the nature of theodicy: we can no longer attemptto justify the existence and character ofGod on the basis of our own

conceptions of morality. IfGod is good, it will notbe in thewaywhichwe imagine. The Pauline gospel has a different kind of theodicy: Godhas now revealed his righteousness apart from the law ... it was to

prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that hejustifies him who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:21, 26). The value of ourvalues is put into questionbythe revelation of a new site ofevaluation

- revealing transcendentrighteousnessandallowingus to participatein it, to be justified. Here we come to the strangest part: we arejustified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is inChrist Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, tobe received by faith (Rom. 3:24, 25). We await the Good, but we areoffered a death.

Having given up our understandings of law, morality, value, andpractice, we can no longer interpret the death of Christ according tothemagic of sacrifice, the legality ofpenal substitution,or theexampleof self-sacrifice. The blood of Christ does not tell us of any particulartranscendent value - it only speaks to us of a suffering body. Thehumour of the Incarnation is that the two forms of transcendence-

the site of evaluation which sets the value of our highest values, andthe suffering and death of the body which questions the value of ourhighest values- arenow linked. We do not find the righteousness of

God, the meaning of transcendence, in any supreme value, law,practice or fictional world revealed directly in the teaching and actionof some divine messenger, but we encounter it in the blood of Christ.

The Incarnation canbe taken to mean that any image of transcendent



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righteousness is replaced by real suffering within history. TheIncarnation tells us to seek the highest in the basest: Christ was bornthe illegitimate son of a Jewish carpenter; he ate with tax-collectorsand sinners;he iswelcomedbywelcomingchildren;he isencounteredin the prisoner, thehungry, the stranger, thehomeless, thewidow and

the orphan; we enter the riches of the Kingdom by abandoningour

possessions; and as a Messiah, he is crucified.Agreater paradox than any abstract conjunction of divine andhuman natures is a conjunction between the source of all values andthebody and blood of Jesus. Thebody of Christ, in which the believer

participates eucharistically, means the banal and physical reality ofsuffering.Theonlyopportunitieswe have to encounter transcendencewill be through the real crises that disrupt our theodicy and security:through the Holocaust, through Hiroshima,through mass starvation,and

throughthe insoluble conflict of the Bosnian war - as well as all

kinds of minor shocks and deaths which render our thoughts andactions ambiguous.&dquo; The postmodern condition may also become arevelation of Christ. We only learn about righteousness by facing upto our real, lived histories where they diverge from the fictionalworlds which we prefer to inhabit. Repentance, then, becomes an actof turning away from fictional lands - not towards some abstracttranscendence - but back to the signs of real life and history that

escape explanation and interpretation.Weneed to beborn again intothe real world, outside of our fictions.Theblood of Christ, his life-principle or mode of existence, means

less a particular way of living than a particular way of dying, asacrifice. One learns to participate in Christby learning how to die

-

attempting to make the event ofdying into a transcendental principlefromwhich the value of all values will derive. In literal terms, this will

be impossible, for there is no comparison between real, physicaldeath, the fallibility of imaginary worlds, and internal structures ofconsciousness. Dying, as a process, however, has a particular temporalstructure, and this may be repeated as a mode of existence.At the

physical level, to die is foronesbody to lose autonomy and coherence,so that its self-organizing and self-directing capacities are overtaken

by exterior forces, whether of disease, accident, or violence.At themental level, to die is for ones past to gradually lose its determiningpower over future actions, projects, and hopes. For the meaning ofwhat has been is significant insofar as it relates to a present and a

possible future; in death, the present collapses towards uniformity,and the future vanishes altogether. To die, as a process, involves

facing meaninglessness.

15 Rowan Williams has interpreted the spiritual basis of the theological tradition as

implying that the knowledge of God is attained through experience of daily andinsignificant trials. See Williams, The Wound of Knowledge (London: DLT, 1979).



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A Return to Transcendence

The scandalous hope of Christian belief is that the transcendencewhich we may be granted is a transcendence over death- both thedeath which limits our fictional worlds ofmeaning, and real, physical

death. The shocking consequences of a belief in resurrection haverarelybeen appropriated in Christian thought, which has preferred tocling to its traditional structures of meaning.All our values andpractices in the Western tradition are derived from a response to lifein its apparent finitude: death stands over all our fictional lands as anabsoluteandnegativeboundary. Ethics are characteristically concernedwith theprosperityand enhancement ofthe community or individualin its resistance to an inevitable finitude. Death appears to be our

single remaining universal absolute, governing the thought of themost committed relativist. Yet if death is relativized or

transcended,allourvalues, beliefs and practices start to fall apart. Theconsequencesof any religious appeal to an absolute that transcends death areextremely shocking: any destruction is permitted in the name of suchan absolute. This factor has frequently been present in religious wars- and it exemplifies how any theological approach to ethics can beperilous.The transcendence over deathwhichwe are exploring here,however,

requires no such cavalier treatment of issues of life and death. Death isnot

simplyan enemy to be

opposed,defeated, overcome, or

forgotten-

for any claim to know the absolute that legitimates such an attitudeclaims an infinite power for itself, creating a fictional world which isable to impose its own interpretation upon all events without meetingany possible opposition, even if it includes an ascetic degradation ofones own self-image and status within ones fictional world. Such anattitude has often been regarded as true religious devotion, withcatastrophic consequences for the believer, if not also for others. Bycontrast, a Christ-likeattitude towards death is one ofimpotence beforedeath and its messengers

- and a respect and valuing of death insofaras it is able to dispossess us of our fictions, and restore us to real life.When death is forgotten, the only possible relations between personsare mediated by the meanings given to them within fictional worlds.Death gives us the opportunity of real life- a life of direct interaction,action and passion, rather than the staging of a shared fantasy.The meaninglessness of the process of dying can be considered as

a particular temporal structure. For, as Heidegger demonstrated, themeaning of Being, and therefore the ground of all meaning, is givenby a particular modality of temporality which he called authentic

care: the past is recovered by being repeated in the future.6 Time

16 In the ontological inquiry of Dasein, the future is anticipated as that which makesthe present by repeating the Being of Dasein as it has been. See Being and Time (Oxford:



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constructs its continuity by theway in which the past is carried overinto the future. In livingout death, however, asopposed to Heideggersbeing-towards-death, death does not merely signify finitude, butimpotence: death becomes authentically futural when it emergesfrom outside the imaginaryworld of the subject. Instead ofcontinuity,

time proceeds by discontinuity. 17 One hasno

responsibility for theway in which the future follows the present. The future no longerfollows naturally from the past, whether constrained to do so bymechanical causality, the free causality of a self-positing ego, socialand cultural conditioning, or ontological necessity. Variousalternativekinds of constraint or necessity have been suggested for the way inwhich the future may proceed in discontinuity from the present:artistic inspiration, power-relations, desire,chaos,andethical necessity,for example. 18 Each indicates some domain outside or transcending

thoughtthat

givesrise to

thoughtand action.9

This outside of thought, or discontinuity in time, suggests a newdirection in which to look for transcendence. Previous varieties of

such philosophies of difference have tended to emphasize the

discontinuity between selfand other, inside and outside, present andfuture, imaginary world and transcendent reality, or whatever termsbetween which the boundary is drawn.Aspecifically Christian andincarnational approach should emphasize the gratuitous overcomingof transcendence on behalf of transcendence itself. The way in which

the future will

proceedfrom the

present

is then no

longera matter of

necessity, butgratuity or suchness. This isnot to say that the past willhave no relation to the future, as itwould in the case ofultimate death;it is merely to say that any relation between past and future is givenby the future, oronlyrevealedafter the event. Time gains a continuity,and meaning can again be constructed, no longer according to theHeideggerean scheme of question and answer, but according to aprophetic scheme of promise and fulfilment, where the fulfilmentalways contains an element of surprise, revealing potentialities in thepromise that were not present until the time of fulfilment. For the

meaning of any event or action is not solely determined by whathappens - there are a variety of perspectives from which one can

Blackwell, 1962), pp. 374-378. In Heideggers later work, the subjective structure ofcare is replaced by an epochal Event ofAppropriation that constrains Being to be

thought in terms of presence, that is, as lasting and hence stillcontinuous. See Tune and

Being (New York: Harper Colophon, 1977).17 This analysis of time was given by two of Heideggers close readers and critics:Maurice Blanchot, inThe Space of Literature(Lincoln: Nebraska U.P., 1982), and Emmanuel

Levinas,in Time and the

Other,The

LevinasReader(Oxford, Blackwell, 1989).18 These form the principal determinants of the philosophies of Blanchot, Foucault,Deleuze, Guattari, and Levinas, respectively.19 See, in particular, Foucault/Blanchot (New York: Zone, 1987), and Deleuze, Foucault

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).



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view and interpret what has happened. The perspectivecan be givenafter the event: the purely gratuitous passage of time involves thecreation of a new perspective by establishing bonds of meaningbetween the past and present that had not previously existed.According to this model of gratuity of time, an acceptance of death,

meaninglessness, and impotence is the precondition for life, thoughtand moral action. Thinking no longer proceeds by contemplation,reflection, representation, legislation, interpretation, orcommunication, but by revelation. The Good is not recollected, but

anticipated. Of course, it is all too easy to turn newly established

meanings into authoritative imaginary worlds. For this reason, themoment of faith in death can never be left behind, so that we are

always carrying in thebody the death of Jesus, so that the life ofJesusmay also be manifested in our bodies (2 Cor. 4:10). Even subsequent

tothe revelation ofnew

meaningsand bondsbetween the

presentand

the past, such newly created meanings still give rise to imaginaryworlds, and differ from real life by virtue of being limited cross-sections, unable to grasp the sophistications and subtleties of life. Inthesameway that a quantum wave-functioncollapses, being resolvedinto mutually exclusive alternatives depending upon the kind ofmeasurement taken, reality may be resolved into mutually exclusivealternatives dependingupon the perspective taken, leading to moral

ambiguity. Hence the Christian life is less a once for all dialecticbetween death and truth than a

pilgrimagethat tries to embracemore

deeply the experience of death and the complexity of truth, a life of

eschatological tension.Of far greater significance than any apparent finalities of meaning

revealed in the present, with their absolute values and imaginaryworlds, is something that may be called the resurrection of the bodyor the life of the spirit. This is themode ofexistence that increasinglyparticipates in Christs body and blood, the life of faith that acts as atranscendental condition of thought and action, making a pilgrimagethrough a history ofdeaths and gratuitous resurrections. It is a way of

living and dying, irreducible to a fictional land or dying body.Although thismode ofexistence is general in the sense that it respondsto life and death as a whole, it is particular in the sense that it forms a

specific character. More precisely, it is singular in the sense that it

develops in a real life that lives out its own history. Generalcharacteristics involve an acceptance of death and suffering insofar asthese restore it to real life and relation - it loves a life which is

inseparably linked to death as two sides of the same transcendent

reality, a reality in which it participates. This acceptance of a greaterlife, including death, is a profound forgiveness of life as a whole,including ones own life and ones own mode of existence. One no

longer finds a distinction held between ones own mode of existence,with the fictional lands it creates, and the events of transcendent life



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as a whole. The displacement of sin isremoved or expiated throughthis participation in Christs mode of existence, his spiritual principleor style and force of life - his blood. One accepts ones own

forgiveness by the greater life which includes death.The life ofspirit may also beunderstoodaccording to thefollowing

particularcharacteristics: a

capacityto live as a

suffering body;a

capacityto laugh at, let go of, and forgive oneself; a capacity to discloseoneself and be vulnerable to others; a capacity to hope for newrevelations; and a capacity to carry around fragments of heaven andhell within oneself.

In addition, the righteousness and transcendence of the life of spiritare inseparable from a real history, a singular biography of courageand suffering. One learns how to love by responding to personal,socialandglobal events. Suchsingularbiographies are notconstituted

bya linear, nomadic progress of

imaginaryworlds

throughtime, but

only through events conditioned by personal, social, economic, andecological relations. The considerations which we applied to thebonds between moments of time apply with equal force to the bondsof ethical relations. Death is just as much a social event as it is a

physical or temporal event: itinvolves thebreaking of social relations,leaving others with unpaid debts, unfulfilledexpectations, unsatisfiedneeds, betrayed trusts, and unsupported dependencies. The life ofChristian discipleship involves failing to fulfil all the normal dutiesand expectations that constitute human community (see Lk 9:57-62).Such a scandalous dereliction ofdutyneed notberegarded as leadingto the end of human relationship. Instead, ethical relations are no

longer conducted on the basis of pre-existing values and traditions.The Good is not something that we can know or do, but somethingthat happens to us, by grace through faith. Ethical relation isno longerconceived according to paradigms ofcommand and obedience, dutyand fulfilment, debtand repayment,need andprovision, orexpectationand satisfaction. Instead, it attains the level of gratuity and surprise:all moral action becomes supererogatory. Care of others must be

directed primarily towards the spirit. To this end, it involves somedegree of disruption ofthe imaginaryworlds and lack of fulfilment of

bodily needs of others- one of the scandalous consequences of theChristian hope of overcoming death.

Conclusion

These theological reflections may seem an unusual basis for ethics.

They set outno

guidelines forvalues, laws, practices, communities, orinstitutions. The moral realm transcends all these,and allourthoughtsandactions will remain morallyambiguous. Instead, these theologicalreflections are guidelines for the construction of thehuman spirit. The



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life of faith exhibits a form of moral realism, believing in a truespiritual and moral realm transcending our conventional thoughtabout morality. One gains access to such a realm through events ofsuffering and breakdown ofhuman relationship. These occur all toofrequently in life to require artificialreproduction;instead, the Christian

emphasis ison

the redemption of suchmoments

of breakdown. Thewaywe respond to suffering in life is themeasure of,and opportunityfor us to build, moral character. There is only an opportunity forcompassion and intimacy when we break through the establishedhabits and rolesbywhichwe relate to one another, andenter intomore

profound relations of mutual forgiveness and sharing each otherssuffering. TheGood is not a product ofour action,but a product ofourfaith which allows the working of providence. It does not take theform of the alleviation of suffering, but the redemption of suffering

througha

changein

meaningof

pastevents and broken relations

bymeans of the greater degree of intimacy, forgiveness, opportunity,and affirmation of life, death and each other which they enable.Perhaps this emphasis upon death, however, is something that

must be transcended. For the death of Christ, when lived out in

practice, is merely an antidote to the pretensions of moral absolutesand imaginary worlds- death is a consequence of sin. Tolive the lifeof spirit involves a condition of moral ambiguity and unresolvedparadox, holding together incompatible cross-sections andperspectives in order to relativize them. Spirit is communicated less

by negation or dereliction of duty, than by humour - one holdstogether incompatible fictional worlds, and lives according to

competing values, in order to draw attention to the distance betweenthem. One shows a self in perpetual flux, transforming the fictionswith which one lives. One holds heterogeneous sources of meaningtogether to illuminate each other- such as theGood and death, or the

postmodern condition and Pauline theology.

by Oscar Amat on November 20, 2007http://sce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

christian ethics in the postmodern condition

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