553 - The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the Foundation of Ethics

The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the Foundation of Ethics
By C. Stephen Layman
Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. 239 pp. $28.95.

In this book, Layman uses Christian theological claims to remedy philosophical ills. The malady visited upon philosophy is its inability to provide a convincing foundation for ethics. Thus, both popular and academic accounts of morality slip into relativism and subjectivism. These two options render morality itself innocuous. In one sense, Layman's book is a sustained attack upon the loss of morality to relativism and subjectivism. Yet, this is coupled with a constructive option that defends morality by linking together God and ethics.

How do God and ethics relate together? Three views are rejected: the divine motivator view, divine command theory, and the modal view (or nominalism). The divine motivator view is rejected because it makes God immoral by suggesting that God uses merit or punishment to goad people to be good. Both the divine command theory and the modal view are rejected because they make morality purely dependent upon God's willing an action to be good, and that position comes painfully close to the relativism and subjectivism that currently plagues us; no objective standard for ethics is possible. Against these three views, Layman relates God and ethics through the Christian teleological view-"An act is right if and only if it promotes the Kingdom of God."

556 - The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the Foundation of Ethics

One obvious caveat arises at this point. Layman seeks to develop ethical standards that are justifiable independent of the basis that God wills them. Yet if ethical standards are developed independently of God's will, this could relinquish any role for God in the moral life. The Christian teleological view attempts to avoid making God superfluous to the moral life by defining right action in terms of promoting the Kingdom. But this raises the question-how does promoting the Kingdom of God actually provide ethical standards independent of God's willing them? How is the Christian teleological view different from the modal view where an act is right if and only if God wills it? Is not the kingdom of God dependent upon God's will to create? In answering these questions, Layman's book is at its best. He argues that God as Trinity was prior to creation, and as Trinity God is a community within God's self. Thus, the goodness of an act is not dependent upon God's will in creation, but is an expression of God's life as Trinity.

Unfortunately, when Layman explains more fully how promoting the kingdom works, he tells us that it consists in enhancing the quality of relationships among people where the individual is not sacrificed for the community but fulfilled by participation in harmonious group relations. This begins to look quite similar to Kant's kingdom of ends, and Kant did not need the Trinity to generate it. Thus, one important question is what does Layman's invocation of God actually add to ethical thought?

The remainder of Layman's book goes through various consequentialist and deontological ethics in an effort to demonstrate the superiority of the Christian teleological view, and he concludes with a discussion on justice and human rights as a concrete way of showing us how the Christian teleological view works.

Readers looking for a clear and systematic account of various ethical theories and an interesting twist in relating God positively and negatively to those theories will not be disappointed with The Shape of the Good. Neither will they be disappointed if they are looking for an implicit defense of proportionalism from a philosophical rather than theological framework. However, readers will find the book disappointing if they are looking for a theological ethics where God matters for ethics in ways other than providing a solution to philosophical quandaries.

For Layman, God is necessary to provide us with powers of reasoning and observation that allow moral judgments made solely on the basis of "general revelation." These powers are sufficient to develop an ethical theory. In fact, he describes the problem behind wicked deeds as lack of "clear thinking" within the Christian teleological view. Thus, despite Layman's insight into the Trinity as a community of persons that shapes the good, God is finally reduced to a bit part by simply providing us with the capacity for clear thought.

The author's clear and coherent account of morality betrays the

557 - The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the Foundation of Ethics

uselessness of speaking of "God and ethics" when he argues that creatures have rights against their Creator. Who enforces such rights? Why are such rights needed if God can be trusted? If God cannot be trusted why should we continue to speak of "God and ethics"?

Layman's argument is useful in demonstrating clearly and systematically that God and ethics do not mix. Philosophical ethicists who seek to be rid of God for moral thinking will find in the book a useful foil, as will theologians who seek to rid Christianity of ethics. Those who wish to maintain the connection between God and ethics will need to explain where and how Layman's argument fails and to provide us with one more compelling.

D. Stephen Long
Duke Divinity School
Durham, NC