{"id":1419,"date":"2004-10-05T09:25:04","date_gmt":"2004-10-05T13:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1419"},"modified":"2004-10-05T09:25:26","modified_gmt":"2004-10-05T13:25:26","slug":"the-telos-of-charity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2004\/10\/the-telos-of-charity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Telos of Charity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having a Greek word in the title is designed to give this post an auro of intelligence that it doesn’t deserve, but it also points toward an interesting question: Why do we care for the poor? Over at Aurochs and Angels<\/a> (by the way, what is an auroch?), AA suggests that the alms giving is not simply about helping the poor, but also about helping the rich. Hence, he quotes with approval a statement suggesting that the poor in America have a duty to help those that are less economically fortunate than themselves, a group that includes the vast majority of humanity. He goes on to write:<\/p>\n

That’s one reason I’m deeply ambivalent toward the modern welfare state: by bureaucratizing charity, we disconnect ourselves from it and make it somebody else’s job. I very much doubt that we get any of the spiritual fruit that accompanies almsgiving from those automatic IRS deductions that come out of our paychecks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My problem with this argument is that it seems just a bit too neat as a reason for a middle-class or upper middle-class Christian to assuage any pangs of conscience about voting for tax cuts or reductions in government assistance to the poor. (For the record: I am generally in favor of lower taxes and am skeptical of most government assistance programs to the poor, but almost entirely for insturmentalist reasons.) The argument, however, is problemtic for a much deeper reason, a reason that has to do with the issue of meta-ethics and the Gospel. The question is does the Gospel commit us not only to particular ethical positions (eg “One should help the poor”) but also particular ethical methodologies (eg “The Gospel is inconsistent with utilitarianism”).<\/p>\n

I think that the root cause of AA’s ambivalence is actually not some sort of conservative self-justification. Rather, I think that below it lurks the assumption that the Gospel commits us to an aretaic ethics. Aretaic ethics assumes that ethical questions should be resolved by reference to virtues and character. Ethics consists, on this view, in the perfection of the human character, the achievement of some human excellence. The theoretical progenitor of aretaic ethics, of course, is Aristotle, and give the fact that AA seems to be an ethusiastic Thomist his aretaic turn is understandable.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, elements of Mormon theology that point strongly toward an aretaic stance. Most powerfully, the notion of eternal progression and exaltation suggests an incredibly powerful and expansive belief in human perfectability and a strong notion of human excellence.<\/p>\n

There are other strands that we should consider, however. The concept of Zion suggests that our ethics should be communitarian. If salvation consists of a certain kind of community, then one might naturally suppose that ethics is a matter of identifying those behaviors that maintain and perfect that community.<\/p>\n

Finally, Mormon articulations of the atonement in particular suggest a powerful notion of justice. Generally, justice gets conceptualized in largely negative and punitive terms. It is something from which Christ’s sacrifice saves us. However, within this narrative there is also a positive view of justice. It seems possible that this concern with justice could be expanded beyond simply retributive notions to include distributive and restoritive notions as well.<\/p>\n

As should be clear, communitarianism and distributive justice provide alternative justifications for alms giving beyond the aretaic ones at the heart of AA’s discomfort. I don’t want to suggest that one can move in some simple and easy way from a Christian (and specifically Mormon) version of communitarianism or distributive justice to the modern welfare state. One the other hand, both of these approaches down play the aretaic objection to state largess. More interesting to me, they suggest the importance of working out the relationship of one’s religious commitments to issues of metaethics, and suggest an interesting conversation that Mormons have yet to fully engage in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having a Greek word in the title is designed to give this post an auro of intelligence that it doesn’t deserve, but it also points toward an interesting question: Why do we care for the poor? Over at Aurochs and Angels (by the way, what is an auroch?), AA suggests that the alms giving is not simply about helping the poor, but also about helping the rich. Hence, he quotes with approval a statement suggesting that the poor in America have a duty to help those that are less economically fortunate than themselves, a group that includes the vast majority of humanity. He goes on to write:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}