326 - James M. Gustafson's Theocentric Ethics: Interpretations and Assessments

James M. Gustafson's Theocentric Ethics: Interpretations and Assessments

Edited by Harlan R. Beckley and Charles M. Swezey

Macon, Georgia, Mercer University Press, 1988. 254 Pp. $34.95.

"Instead of searching out the positive value and meaning that may lie beneath the inadequate ways of speaking and thinking about God, Gustafson has tried simply to cut them out." Written by Gordon Kaufmann, a theologian not likely to shy away from radical revisions of traditional Christian claims, this assessment is indicative of the strong impact of James Gustafson's Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective. Whatever one's opinion of his project as a whole, this volume, consisting of critical essays, selected transcriptions of discussion, as well as responses and elaborations by Gustafson himself, is a welcome aide to those who seek to understand the distinctive and often controversial theological vision of one of North America's most prominent ethicists. Though the essays can be quite technical, nearly all help to render more evident the ethos, and in no small way the pathos, of Gustafson's project.

The "interpretations and assessments" fall into two broad categories. The first half of the volume addresses Gustafson's theology, which in the spirit of the times means a focus on method. The second half treats ethics, with the concomitant emphasis on epistemology and the role of practical reason. In spite of this formal and methodological emphasis, one that is dictated by the nature of Gustafson's work, the essayists do engage the two core elements of the theocentric project: the critique of anthropocentrism and the radical attenuation of traditional Christian theism. Though the essayists often show a high degree of methodological and epistemological agreement with Gustafson (a feature of this collection that makes it an important corrective to the more deeply confrontational essays on Gustafson's work in the Fall 1985 Journal of Religious Ethics), a critical consensus emerges. With varying degrees of force and emphasis, nearly all the contributors conclude that Gustafson goes too far. He winds up burning the wheat of the Christian tradition in order to destroy the tares of anthropocentrism.

The one essayist who most certainly does not join this consensus is Mary Midgley. Explicating her critique of "reductive humanism,"

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Midgley calls attention to the givenness of life that forces us to acknowledge that we are amidst nature, not at its center. This, she suggests, might be congenial to some species of pantheism, a respect for being that avoids personalistic and monistic fantasies. If anything, for Midgley, though his heart is in the right place, Gustafson is still over-committed to Christianity.

Of the remaining essays, John P. Reeder offers the most sympathetic contribution. He interprets Gustafson as proposing a pragmatist moral epistemology that highlights the holistic and historicist character of practical reason. Against this pragmatic account, Reeder sets Gustafson's emphasis on the order established by God. In order to sort out this conflict, Reeder charts a convergence between Gustafson's epistemology and Richard Bernstein's Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. With tensions thus harmonized, Reeder strongly endorses Gustafson's project as one that "is trying to find a middle way between an Augustinian Thomistic theory of goods or ends grounded in the nature of things and a liberal theory that rests values on preference and denies the notion of essential good."

Robert O. Johann finds tensions unharmonized. He argues that Gustafson develops a model of moral reasoning that emphasizes conscience and yields criteria of "concrete reasonableness." This leads Johann to postulate the achievement of concrete reasonableness as the proper telos of Gustafson's ethics. This very human goal is, however, at odds with Gustafson's adamant rejection of human-centered value. In light of this conflict between the logic of Gustafson's theory of practical reason and his claims about the status of human life, Johann gently wonders whether Gustafson's opposition to anthropocentrism might function as a normative a priori unwarranted by his moral epistemology of concrete reasonableness.

Robert Audi also focuses on Gustafson's understanding of practical reason. Detailing the role of science in Gustafson's work, Audi is deeply sympathetic with his (modified) Troeltschean position: ideas of God cannot be incongruous with scientific data and explanatory principles. Yet, in spite of his general approval of Gustafson's use of science, Audi has some reservations. Just as Johann finds Gustafson forcing a critique of anthropocentrism, Audi suggests that Gustafson overreaches in his critique of Christian claims. He concludes that "certain strands in traditional theism may be more resilient and more easily reconciled with a scientific outlook on the world than many naturalistic thinkers [such as Gustafson] believe."

With essays focusing on theological method, both Gordon D. Kaufman and Edward Farley follow the same pattern: sympathy with Gustafson's critical intentions and reservations about his substantive conclusions. The crux of their divergence from Gustafson is a differing view of the significance of culture and history. They argue that although Gustafson acknowledges this significance, it drops out of his final position. Kaufman locates the problem in Gustafson's Reformed heritage. Far

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ley's more persuasive assessment identifies Gustafson's self- understanding as a social scientist as the culprit. Gustafson uses the language of tradition, but assumes "that tradition itself has little or no cognitive status." Their assessment is that Gustafson is blind to the symbolic power (Kaufman) or mediated truth (Farley) of traditional Christian formulations.

The two essays that diverge from the pattern of overall approval are contributed by Robert Bellah and John H. Yoder. They confront the basic assumptions of Gustafson's revisionist project. Bellah challenges Gustafson's project at its purported moral core. The theocentric proposal and its radical critique of central Christian doctrines is motivated to a large extent by a rejection of modern culture's indulgent and destructive reduction of value to human utility and well-being. This critical passion finds a natural vehicle in the language of science. Modern cosmologies and evolutionary theories vividly illustrate our cosmic insignificance; science yields the perpetual Ash Wednesday, and this suits Gustafson's purposes. Against this use of science, Bellah makes the straightforward observation that the commitments involved in traditional Christian language might be far more counter-cultural than modernity's privileged mode of discourse, science. In Bellah's view, depending on science as a corrective to modernity's perversions is rather like asking the American Medical Association to help reduce the cost of health care. As a result, when confronted with traditional doctrines that seem unpalatable to the modern mind (for example, incarnation), Bellah opts for the first-order religious language.

Yoder's essay is the most critical of the collection. He makes three claims. The first is that Gustafson is not, in fact, in conversation with his Reformed heritage. The global revisionism proposed by Gustafson has only the accident of his birth as a reason for mentioning Calvin or Edwards at all. The second claim is closely related to Bellah's thesis. "From the confessional perspective," writes Yoder, "it is a less anthropocentric procedure when one lets God set the terms of our knowledge of Him than when man the measurer claims for himself the authority to set those terms." Yoder's third and deepest critical claim is that Gustafson's typological approach to theology is flawed: "The attention to varieties of modes and models becomes a new kind of autonomous truth claim, as if the act of having in review the many options, having been fair to them and typologized them, somehow itself validated the momentum with which he then moves on to his own answers." Knowing the territory is not the same as knowing which direction to walk, and Yoder finds little justification for the direction Gustafson has chosen.

The collection of essays concludes with a Response and Afterword by Gustafson, as well as an extensive transcript of discussion. This concluding material exhibits the characteristics of Gustafson's recent work that either excite or exasperate his readers. The scope of his concerns and his ability to provide a synoptic survey of the issues raised by the essays is stimulating. His ongoing effort to pick his way through

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the minefield of labels is dizzying (for example, "I have a naturalistic basis for theology and a naturalistic basis for ethics-though a box called naturalism is not quite right"). But most provocative is his ongoing commitment to the Christian theological conversation. Though appreciative and irenic, he consistently parries attempts by his sympathetic colleagues to draw more of the tradition into his theological project. Yet, at the same time, he reports with some bitterness the theological "loneliness" engendered by the hard things he felt he was required to say about the Christian tradition. He wants to take part in the discussion, but he finds nearly everything discussed misguided. Gustafson recognizes this conflict, but his explanation for this odd combination of passion for the tradition of theology and antipathy for the theological tradition draws a circle of self-reference around his project. When challenged with the question "Why bother with Christianity?" (indeed, "Why bother with theism?"), his response is to turn to autobiography. With such a move on such a central question, one cannot help but wonder about the locution "theocentric ethics."

RUSSELL R. RENO

Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut