The Promise of Reformed Catholicity for Christian Ethics

Many of the most pressing challenges facing the church today are ethical in nature. New questions constantly arise in relation to technology, medical ethics, politics, social ethics, sexuality and gender, and much more. In such a situation, there is always a danger that Christian ethics reduces itself to somewhat frantic, anxious, and reactive modes of engagement. Without deep and broad roots, in Scripture and the Christian tradition, theological ethics will lack a coherent and textured account of moral reality and so will lack vigor and purchase on the questions facing Christians today. The recovery of a Reformed catholic moral theology is therefore a matter of the greatest importance.

It is a truism that contemporary Roman Catholic moral theologians and philosophers are generally more sophisticated than their Protestant counterparts. The best of their work has deep roots in classical philosophy, patristic and medieval moral theology (particularly Augustine and Aquinas), and in more recent papal encyclicals. Pope John Paul II was a fine moral philosopher, Pope Benedict XVI an eminent dogmatic and moral theologian, and both devoted sustained ethical attention to Scripture, tradition, and life in the modern world. Roman Catholic moralists can thus draw on a vibrant, living tradition of ethical enquiry.

Within the academy, theological ethics is a highly fragmented discipline. It is commonly assumed that Protestant ethics has always rejected consideration of virtue and happiness and focused exclusively on an ethics of divine command. This reading of the tradition is often influenced by Barth, and academic ethics of a more conservative Protestant type has been somewhat dominated by a flowering of very fine scholarship on Barth’s monumental, but idiosyncratic, moral theology.

Among evangelicals, recent advances in dogmatic theology have not always made their way into treatments of ethical topics. Evangelical ethics has tended towards a somewhat naive biblicism that has sought to derive ethical teaching directly from Scripture, but with little, or only rudimentary, attention to dogmatic categories and historical moral theology. At times – not least in debates about the relationship between male-female relations and the eternal relations of the Father and Son – it can appear that the ethical tail has been wagging the theological dog so vigorously that the poor creature has been left dizzy and confused.

Nevertheless, there are encouraging signs of a rediscovery of a Protestant moral theology that accords more closely with the proposals made in Reformed Catholicity. Working from historically-oriented, catholic-spirited, but resolutely Protestant perspectives, Oliver O’Donovan and John Webster have both produced constructive ethical writings of the highest intellectual and spiritual distinction.^[1] Scholars influenced by the historical method of Richard Muller have begun to devote attention to post-Reformation Reformed ethics. Building on the pioneering work of Stephen Grabill,^[2] there is a burgeoning cottage industry of commentary on and translation of Reformed texts dealing with natural law, especially in the series Studies in Early Modern Economics, Ethics, and Law. Manfred Svensson and David Sytsma are doing important work on early modern Protestant moral philosophy.^[3] Bruce Baugus has written a rich study of the biblical and historical roots of Reformed moral theology.^[4] Increased attention is being given to teaching on virtue in the Reformed tradition, a small example of which can be found in Reformed Catholicity itself, in the section on the infused habit of grace (38-41). Finally, mention must be made of the ongoing translation into English of Petrus van Mastricht’s Theoretical-Practical Theology. Not only will the final volume comprise a summary system of Reformed moral theology, but at every stage Mastricht demonstrates the practical uses of each doctrine in a Reformed system of theology.

There are, then, green shoots and early fruits in the garden of Reformed catholic moral theology. Nevertheless, it remains under-cultivated and overgrown. What might be needed for further work in tending the garden? Here there is space to pursue only one suggestive line of enquiry, which arises directly from the discussion of the rule of faith and biblical interpretation in Reformed Catholicity (108-118).

Allen and Swain note that the rule of faith is classically accompanied by the rule of love (107), but do not develop here an account of the latter. Following their lead, I offer a sketch of how a Reformed understanding of the rule of love relates both to reading Scripture and to deliberation on concrete ethical questions. As with the rule of faith, the rule of love is not an alternative to, or an artificial imposition on, Scripture. Rather, Christ himself teaches that Scripture is the source of the rule (Dt. 6:4-5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:34-40). The twofold love command relates directly to the two tables of the Decalogue, and so summarises the moral law, and shows an outline of that in which a virtuous life consists. However, the summary requires unpacking, first in the precepts of the Decalogue, and then in far greater detail in the moral teaching of the whole Bible.

It is important to emphasise that the rule of love does not operate in isolation from the rule of faith. To be faithful to the scope, sequence, proportions, and systematic coherence of Scripture’s teaching, moral theology must be treated in relation to dogmatic theology, and every Christian doctrine has moral applications (Mastricht is here exemplary). To love God, we need to apprehend the being, attributes, persons and works of the God who has first loved us. To love our neighbors, we must know who and what our neighbor is, and who and what we ourselves are. This requires a grasp of the origin, nature, powers, acts, limits and ends of human creatures in their relation to God, their highest good. It also requires knowledge of the devastating effects of sin on human agency, and how it is restored in Christ and by the grace of the Spirit. This ordered relationship of the rule of faith and the rule of love is exemplified in Reformed moral teaching and preaching of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and not least in the way that historic Reformed catechisms, having treated the articles of faith, proceed to expound how believers are to live, through expositions of the Decalogue.

The foregoing is no more than a gesture, an invitation to further labor in Reformed moral theological ressourcement. There is a great need and opportunity in our day for the ongoing recovery and application of Reformed catholic moral theology, from basic catechesis through to the most advanced theological research. Practical-ethical reason needs to be oriented to reality by dogmatic and moral-theological contemplation. Only then is it ready to deliberate, in the light of all the riches of Scripture’s teaching, on the circumstances, challenges, and opportunities of life today. Moral theology, and the church’s catechetical instruction, cannot predetermine the detailed conclusions of deliberative reason. However, a recovery of well-proportioned Reformed catholic moral theology would give the conceptual categories needed for faithful living amidst the social, ethical and political complexities of our day. Thus, equipped by the church’s teaching ministry, believers could learn to order their lives wisely to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

^[1] Webster’s late essays on moral-theological themes are particularly companionable to the vision set out in Reformed Catholicity. See John Webster, The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012); John Webster, God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology. Volume II: Virtue and Intellect (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).

^[2] Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).

^[3] Most notably Manfred Svensson, Aristotelian Tradition in Early Modern Protestantism: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Commentaries on the Ethics and the Politics, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024).

^[4] Bruce P. Baugus, The Roots of Reformed Moral Theology, Reformed Historical-Theological Studies (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2022).