Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 67:2 (Fall 2005)
Article: Re-Thinking The Ethics Of Parsimony, Part Two: “Cultivated Deviance” (Or Not Cheating Contingency)
Author: Michael W. Payne

WTJ 67:2 (Fall 2005) p. 323

Re-Thinking The Ethics Of Parsimony, Part Two:
“Cultivated Deviance” (Or Not Cheating Contingency)

Michael W. Payne

Michael Payne is Professor of Theology and Ethics at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Miss. The first part of this aricle appears as “Re-Thinking the Ethics of Parsimony, Part One: On Not Cheating Contingency,” WTJ 67 (2005): 23-49.

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing

—Archilocus

You may know a truth, but if it’s at all complicated you have to be an artist not to utter it as a lie.

—Iris Murdoch, An Accidental Man

I. Introduction

In Part One of this two-part article, we provided an overview of the increasing interest on the part of philosophers in reconstructing the moral-ethical landscape particularly as it relates to the role literature and the imagination might play in the work of ethics. In Part Two I will (1) argue that as Christian ethicists we should take a more hopeful (although not un-critical!) view toward the discoveries represented by both Nussbaum and Rorty. The insights both authors reflect lead us to reassess the role of rules and particularly the impact that “rule-based” or “act-based” ethical approaches have had in obscuring the dramatic quality of moral experience as suggested by scripture itself. The attractiveness of rules and “act-based” ethics is inherently misguided. We will discover that its appeal is based, among other things, on an impoverished understanding of moral reasoning that is predicated on a fallacious view of moral concepts and terms as univocal and literal. I will argue secondly (2) that this misunderstanding leads inevitably to an oversimplification of moral living, one that fails to encompass the full range of interconnected faculties that constitute the believer as a moral agent construed in a way most consistent with scripture. Pursuant to this end, I will examine the suggestive use made by the apostle Paul of the cluster of terms dokimazo, aesthesis, and aestheteria as they illustrate the complex nature of moral judgment and the role of imaginative discernment in Christian living. It is again hoped that this discussion will provide a preliminary attempt to re-think ethics from a more robustly Christian and theological perspective.

WTJ 67:2 (Fall 2005) p. 324

II. Contra “Thin”

Why are we so attracted to “rules” and “act-based” versions of ethics and morality? If we employ the oppositional terms thick/thin, unstable/stable, and imagination/reason, we can perhaps see more easily what the perceived advantages are for rules and acts as sound bases for construing ethics and the moral lif...