{"id":398,"date":"2012-03-30T16:07:23","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T20:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=398"},"modified":"2012-03-30T16:07:23","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T20:07:23","slug":"morality-versus-godliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html","title":{"rendered":"Morality versus Godliness"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is much talk these days about something called \u201cJudaeo-Christian values<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 This is the name that is invariably assigned to the morality <\/em>to which America is supposed to have traditionally subscribed.\u00a0 America, we are told, is a \u201cJudaeo-Christian\u201d nation, a nation \u201cfounded\u201d upon \u201cJudaeo-Christian principles<\/em>\u201d or \u201cideals.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, it is, of course, true that there is an especially close relationship between Judaism and Christianity.\u00a0 The latter spun out of the former.\u00a0 The first Christians were Jews, and the Man who the Christian world\u2014approximately one-third of the planet\u2019s population\u2014recognizes as God Almighty was a Jew.\u00a0 <\/em>To those writings that Jews regard as sacred Christians attach the same importance. In fact, though he doesn\u2019t often think of himself in exactly these terms, if pushed, the Christian would be the first to acknowledge that he is indeed a Jew, but a perfected <\/em>Jew, a Jew who lived to witness the coming of the Messiah\u2014the Christ<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Yet for all of these similarities, the expression \u201cJudeao-Christian morality\u201d is, ultimately, a fiction that does an injustice to both Judaism and Christianity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The \u201cvalues,\u201d \u201cprinciples,\u201d or \u201cideals\u201d encompassed by \u201cJudaeo-Christian morality\u201d are to the traditions from which they have been abstracted what a portrait is to the whole life of the person of whom it is a depiction.\u00a0 The values, principles, and ideals of \u201cJudeao-Christian morality\u201d stand in relation to the faiths from which they\u2019ve been distilled as the principles of a grammar stand in relation to the living language to which they belong.\u00a0 Just as a portrait and a grammar derive their value from their usefulness in summarizing the vastly more intricate phenomena to which they owe their being, so too are \u201cthe principles\u201d of any morality nothing more or less than bloodless, lifeless abstractions, static abridgements of the living tradition of which they are cliff notes.<\/p>\n

Strictly speaking, neither Judaism nor Christianity is a \u201cmorality\u201d at all.\u00a0 Both are religions.\u00a0 <\/em>It is true that from these religions we can extract principles, values, and ideals. It is even true that we can, with some justice, gather them up and label them \u201cmorality.\u201d\u00a0 But what we cannot <\/em>do is think of them solely<\/em> in terms of morality, or think that this label is anything other than a term of convenience, a term with all of the short-hand value and literal truth as the expression, \u201cthe sun rises.\u201d\u00a0 The sun does not literally rise.\u00a0 Nor can it literally be said that Judaism and Christianity are \u201csystems\u201d of morality.<\/p>\n

The principles, ideals, and values of Judaism and Christianity are intelligible only because of the unmistakably theological <\/em>context within which they take their place. In short, if we insist on speaking of Judaism and Christianity as \u201csystems\u201d at all, we should be clear that they are systems, not of morality, but of religion.\u00a0 Their principles assume meaning only because they are carefully situated within a narrative of which no less a being than God Himself is at the center.\u00a0 It is for the purpose of shaping themselves into the kind of person who will love self, neighbor, and God for God\u2019s sake <\/em>that their adherents are expected to observe \u201cthe principles,\u201d affirm \u201cthe values,\u201d and pursue \u201cthe ideals\u201d of these two great religious traditions.<\/p>\n

Once these principles, ideals, and values become disembodied, as it were, once they are boiled down into a doctrine of \u201cnatural rights,\u201d say, or some fixed set of principles alleged to be \u201cself-evident\u201d or \u201cinnate\u201d or demanded by \u201chuman nature\u201d or \u201cReason,\u201d they lose their identity and, with it, their power to inspire and motivate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, the concept of \u201cJudaeo-Christian\u201d morality is even more of a distortion than the concepts of \u201cJewish morality<\/em>\u201d and \u201cChristian morality<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 Judaism and Christianity are both religious traditions, but there is a very real respect in which we can say that they affirm different deities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With a few exceptions here and there, Christians the world over essentially agree on the triune <\/em>nature of God.\u00a0 That is, in stark contrast to Jews, Christians believe that God is Three Divine Persons\u2014God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 To Jewish ears, this doctrine of the Blessed Trinity can only smack of the worst of sins, the sin of idolatry, <\/em>for to non-Christians of all faiths it appears to be an affirmation of polytheism.\u00a0 <\/em>And Judaism is noted for nothing if not its fierce monotheism.<\/p>\n

Christianity, of course, is not <\/em>a version of polytheism. It is as monotheistic as Judaism.\u00a0 But Christians have arrived at their peculiar conception of God because of another that they embrace, one in the absence of which Christianity would not be the religion that it is.\u00a0 From this doctrine Jews and other theists recoil in sheer horror.\u00a0 It is called the Incarnation.\u00a0 Inasmuch as it embodies the conviction that, not this <\/em>or that <\/em>\u201cgod,\u201d but the one and only God <\/em>of all that is, from sheer love, chose to became a human being,<\/em> it is truly unique.<\/p>\n

Yet this isn\u2019t all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just that God became a man.\u00a0 According to the story of the Incarnation, God became a man who, for the sake of the human race, both bore unimaginable suffering <\/em>as well as the most humiliating of deaths.\u00a0 <\/em>To put it mildly, the God of Christianity strikes non-Christians as insufficiently transcendental.\u00a0 To put it more bluntly, such a God comes across as scandalously immanent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the God of Christianity is <\/em>the Person of Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n

The God that Christians worship entered human history and, as the prologue to John\u2019s Gospel states, \u201cdwelt among us.\u201d\u00a0 Like that of any other human being, Jesus\u2019 identity was the product of the historical and cultural circumstances in which He lived.\u00a0 This He appears to have known better than anyone, for in order to thrust His significance upon His contemporaries, Jesus carefully\u2014masterfully\u2014weaved His image from the various threads of His own Jewish tradition.\u00a0 Unlike, say, Muhammad, who gathered together a series of allegedly divinely inspired orders and commands devoid of any narrative framework, Jesus saw to it that His life, or at least His public ministry, was nothing less than a dramatic reenactment of the collective self-understanding of His (Jewish) people.\u00a0 Yet it was also something more than this, for in reenacting the past, <\/em>He also revised <\/em>popular conceptions of it.\u00a0 And in doing the latter, there is a real sense in which He recreated the present <\/em>and re-envisioned possibilities for the future. <\/em><\/p>\n

Jesus is what in another idiom we may describe as a \u201cmoral exemplar.\u201d For Christians, it would be said that he is a moral exemplar par excellence.\u00a0 <\/em>Here is a man who immersed<\/em> Himself in the tradition within which He was born and reared.\u00a0 Jesus wasn\u2019t content in achieving mere fluency <\/em>in His tradition; He successfully sought connoisseurship <\/em>in it.\u00a0 Jesus made no ringing affirmations of such abstract notions as \u201chuman dignity,\u201d \u201crational nature,\u201d \u201cpersonhood,\u201d and \u201chuman nature,\u201d much less \u201cself-evident\u201d \u201chuman rights.\u201d\u00a0 He knew that human flourishing could occur only within the concrete context of tradition\u2014His tradition, the theological <\/em>tradition of Judaism.\u00a0 It was this tradition that Jesus sought to reshape and fulfill in His own Person, but ultimately in His passion, death, and resurrection from the dead.<\/p>\n

For Christians, then, \u201cmorality\u201d is not essentially, or even primarily, a matter of observing \u201cprinciples,\u201d pursuing abstract ideals (like Equality or Justice), or following rules and commands.\u00a0 \u201cMorality\u201d consists in the emulation of a person, or a Person. Jesus is indeed the<\/em> exemplar of stellar conduct for Christians. But the conduct in question is not, strictly speaking, moral conduct; it is godly <\/em>conduct. <\/em>\u00a0Christians (and Jews) aspire toward godliness.\u00a0 The religious are concerned with religiosity, <\/em>not \u201cmorality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMorality,\u201d especially when it is a morality of abstract universal \u201cprinciples\u201d and \u201cideals,\u201d is \u201cthe desiccated relic,\u201d as one philosopher once put it, the residual fragments, of a tradition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More specifically, it is, at least in the West, the traces of a religious tradition.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

originally published at The New American\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is much talk these days about something called \u201cJudaeo-Christian values.\u201d\u00a0 This is the name that is invariably assigned to the morality to which America is supposed to have traditionally subscribed.\u00a0 America, we are told, is a \u201cJudaeo-Christian\u201d nation, a nation \u201cfounded\u201d upon \u201cJudaeo-Christian principles\u201d or \u201cideals.\u201d\u00a0 Now, it is, of course, true that there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMorality versus Godliness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Morality versus Godliness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is much talk these days about something called \u201cJudaeo-Christian values.\u201d\u00a0 This is the name that is invariably assigned to the morality to which America is supposed to have traditionally subscribed.\u00a0 America, we are told, is a \u201cJudaeo-Christian\u201d nation, a nation \u201cfounded\u201d upon \u201cJudaeo-Christian principles\u201d or \u201cideals.\u201d\u00a0 Now, it is, of course, true that there…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-03-30T20:07:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Morality versus Godliness","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Morality versus Godliness","og_description":"There is much talk these days about something called \u201cJudaeo-Christian values.\u201d\u00a0 This is the name that is invariably assigned to the morality to which America is supposed to have traditionally subscribed.\u00a0 America, we are told, is a \u201cJudaeo-Christian\u201d nation, a nation \u201cfounded\u201d upon \u201cJudaeo-Christian principles\u201d or \u201cideals.\u201d\u00a0 Now, it is, of course, true that there…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2012-03-30T20:07:23+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html","name":"Morality versus Godliness","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-03-30T20:07:23+00:00","dateModified":"2012-03-30T20:07:23+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/morality-versus-godliness.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Morality versus Godliness"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Jack Kerwick","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5","name":"Jack Kerwick","description":"I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master's degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jackkerwick.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/author\/jkerwick"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}