Monotheism & Ethics: Historical and Contemporary Intersections Among Judaism, Christianity and Islam

295 Pages·2011·1.65 MB·English

by  Y. Tzvi Langermann

Monotheism & Ethics
Studies on the Children
of Abraham
Editors
Antti Laato (Abo Akademi University)
David Thomas (Birmingham University)
Camilla Adang (Tel Aviv University)
Advisory Board
Suha Taji Farouki
Edward Kessler
Gerhard Langer
Pekka Lindqvist
Mikko Louhivuori
James Montgomery
Vera B. Moreen
Uri Rubin
Sabine Schmidtke
Martin Tamcke
VOLUME 2
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/STCA
Monotheism & Ethics
Historical and Contemporary
Intersections among Judaism,
Christianity and Islam
Edited by
Y. Tzvi Langermann
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2012
The Dr. Naim Dangoor Program for Universal Monotheism
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Monotheism & ethics : historical and contemporary intersections among Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam / edited by Y. Tzvi Langermann.
  p. cm. — (Studies on the children of Abraham, ISSN 2210-4720 ; v. 2)
 Partially proceedings of a conference held in Dec. 2008 at Bar-Ilan University.
 ISBN 978-90-04-19429-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Religion and ethics. 2. Monotheism.
3. Religious ethics. 4. Abrahamic religions. I. Langermann, Y. Tzvi. II. Title: Monotheism and ethics.
III. Series.
BJ47.M65 2011
205—dc23
2011034808
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters
covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the
humanities. For more information, please see http://www.brill.nl/brill-typeface.
ISSN 2210-4720
ISBN 978 90 04 19429 8
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhofff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV
provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center,
222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
CONTENTS
Introduction. Monotheism and Ethics: A Worthy and Timely
Topic  .............................................................................................................. 1
Y. Tzvi Langermann
Monotheism and Ethics  ................................................................................ 11
Lenn E. Goodman
Approaching Distinctiveness: Some Preliminary Considerations
and Data  ....................................................................................................... 25
William Scott Green
Religion and Morality  .................................................................................... 45
William J. Wainwright
Religious Symbolism and Moral Distinctiveness  .................................. 59
Eugene Garver
Monotheism as a Continuing Ethical Challenge to Jews  ................... 75
Menachem Kellner
Serving God and Moral Life  ......................................................................... 87
Joseph Boyle
The Ethics of Creation: Biblical and Post-Metaphysical Views  ........ 107
Michael Fagenblat
Ibn Miskawayh’s Tartīb al-Saʿādāt (The Order of Happiness)  ......... 141
Roxanne D. Marcotte
Al-Ghazālī’s Ethical Egoism and Divine Will  ......................................... 163
Aladdin M. Yaqub
One Ethic for Three Faiths  .......................................................................... 197
Y. Tzvi Langermann
vi contents
Finding Common Ground among Monotheists in Bioethics  ............ 219
Aaron L. Mackler
Protestant Bioethics and the New Reproductive Technologies  ....... 233
Cynthia B. Cohen
The Ethics of Nazīh Abū ʿAfash, A Self-styled “Christian Atheist”  ... 257
Basilius Bawardi
Common Ground between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam:
An Islamic View of the Monotheistic Path to Morality  ................. 269
Abbas Hamdani
Index  ................................................................................................................... 279
INTRODUCTION
MONOTHEISM AND ETHICS: A WORTHY AND TIMELY TOPIC
Abrahamic faiths is a valid designation that captures much of the essence
of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, especially their shared afffijirmation of a
single God. Outbursts of pugnacious particularism, motivated by political
agendas, often backed by force of arms, cannot nullify this—as indeed,
philosophically inclined monotheists fijirmly believe that the Truth is unas-
sailable, whatever artillery may be leveled against it. The essays in this
volume aim to test the assumption that monotheism is the key factor that
shapes the religion’s ethic; consequentially, religions that are monotheis-
tic will, eo ipso, share common ethical values, guidelines and frameworks.
Monotheism can be philosophically, theologically, historically, and cul-
turally complex, and terminological clarity can be elusive. We may well
wonder if we will be able to get our project offf of the ground.
On the other hand, there are manifest theoretical and historical grounds
for maintaining that a monotheistic ethic exists. Most, but not all, of the
papers that make up this volume, widely diverse as they are with regard
to topic and approach, argue that such an ethic does exist, and attempt to
get a handle on it. Narrowing our focus to the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam—makes the case stronger; the long-term histori-
cal interactions between these faith communities, as well as the signifiji-
cant body of shared revelation (however diffferently interpreted) that is
foundational to all three, ought to facilitate—in practice, it did and does
facilitate—the articulation of a common ethic. Nonetheless, the Abraha-
mic faiths absorb ethical principles from without. Indeed, the philosophi-
cal underpinning of the ethicists in these traditions is drawn mostly from
Hellenistic thinkers, especially Plato and Aristotle, two names that feature
prominently in many of the essays in this book.
Signifijicantly, those two luminaries are now often labeled pagan mono-
theists; a neologism, to be sure, but one which, I aver, would have been
recognizable and acceptable to al-Fārābī, Maimonides, or Thomas Aqui-
nas. Moreover, all three faiths had some signifijicant interaction with Zoro-
astrianism, a religion which reifijied good and evil in a manner that led to
a dualism soundly rejected by the Abrahamic faiths, but which may none-
theless be dubbed monotheistic (or perhaps henotheistic) insofar as only
2 y. tzvi langermann
the Good force is deifijied. Useful comparisons can be made with India as
well, though in that case the actual historical interaction was minimal.
Not a few people would smirk at the very attempt to explore so deeply
the connections between monotheism and ethics. Lenn Goodman opens
the volume with a vigorous justifijication for the enterprise, despite the
many obstacles at arriving at a consensus. Moral insights are enriched by
spiritual intuitions, and the teachings of religion are aided by the reason-
ing of ethicists. Monotheism and ethics require each other, neither can be
reduced to the other, nor is the one hostile to the other. Their relationship
is best characterized by the Platonic concept of the unity of virtues—the
virtues reinforce each other, but each remains distinct.
Goodman’s argument rests on the idea of God as paramount value con-
cept. Monotheism is not just the belief in a single God, but rather the deci-
sion to see “in God’s unity the unity of all that is afffijirmative—beauty and
truth, life and creativity”. The ethical imperative of monotheism is thus
the boundless command for all of us, humans though we are, to pursue
God’s perfection, and to bring out in ourselves all the good, and all the
holiness, that we can.
So let us proceed. In order to carry out this project, we perhaps ought
fijirst to defijine monotheism in theory and then examine how it shapes,
informs, motivates, and characterizes ethical attitudes and practices in
discrete traditions and communities. William Scott Green reviews the
issues and answers clearly and thoroughly, negotiating between the phil-
osophical analysis that fijinds it difffijicult if not impossible to identify any
intrinsic, organic connection between monotheism and a particular ethic,
and the sense of the actors—the millions of adherents to the Abrahamic
religions, including many intellectuals and communal leaders—that such
a connection exists, that it is fijirm, that it is the prime motivating force
behind their effforts to lead an ethical life, and, most importantly for this
book, that this ethic, in its basic principles and in many details as well, is
shared by other Abrahamic traditions—all the while maintaining a theo-
logical and votive distance from those faiths.
However, experts in both monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions
have argued, each on the basis of appropriate sources, that they all reward
behavior that is benefijicial to others. Therefore, altruism, one of the most
esteemed ethical traits, is a secular rather than a religious value. Studies
on reciprocity (the “Golden Rule”) lead to similar conclusions. Green cau-
tions that theological convictions and theistic constructions may well be
secondary causes for the development of a religion’s ethic and that evolu-
tionary, cognitive, and social factors may provide a more comprehensive
introduction: monotheism and ethics 3
explanation for the pro-social aspects of world religions. All of the above
considerations—which are selective and speculative more than compre-
hensive—show that approaching the “distinctiveness of a monotheistic
ethic” is a daunting, complex, and demanding scholarly task.
But what if there were no religion? What if we were to dispense with
the deity? Would there then be no morality? No, says William Wainwright,
morality would not collapse; but that does not mean that there are no
deep connections binding together ethics and monotheism. To support
this claim, Wainwright deploys two arguments. The fijirst begins with the
recognition of God’s absolute sovereignty. If indeed God’s sovereignty is
unlimited, then it must cover moral truths as well; in other words, the
divine will cannot be limited by any independent moral standard. Thus
there are good reasons for “identifying moral facts with divine Commands”.
But does this imply that even commands that seem to our moral intuition
to be gratuitous and cruel would be morally obligatory? No! But we must
admit that at least some commands would necessarily be issued by God to
beings like us. (For a diffferent perspective on this question, see the paper
of Aladdin Yaqub in this volume.)
Ralph Cudworth raises a diffferent objection: the obligation to obey
God’s will must be grounded outside the divine will, in some “natural jus-
tice or equity”. Wainwright surveys the solutions known to him, none of
which is completely satisfactory. His own suggestion is to see the author-
ity of divine commands as something intrinsic, not requiring any addi-
tional obligation to obey them.
The second tack is philosophical and leads to the assertion that anyone
who believes that moral facts are objective has good reason to be a the-
ist. Here Wainwright, much like Goodman, and others in this volume and
elsewhere, fijinds that the connection between monotheism and ethics is
most comfortable within a Platonist view of the world.
Do symbols play any role here? Is there a symbol that will rally monothe-
ists, organizing them into a distinct community with shared ethical values?
This aspect of the problem is discussed by Eugene Garver. He approaches
the topic by way of the movement in the mid-twentieth century USA to
post copies or erect replicas of the Ten Commandments in public places.
The program was initiated by E.J. Ruegemer, a juvenile court judge in the
state of Minnesota and chair of a commission on “Youth Guidance” of the
Fraternal Order of Eagles, whose motto is “People Helping People”. But
the Ten Commandments prove to be an odd choice, because, unlike sym-
bols such as the American flag or the crucifijix, the Ten Commandments
are a written text, whose precise meaning has been a matter of debate for
4 y. tzvi langermann
millennia. The religious and political difffijiculties are clear enough; Garver
proposes to see if there is a moral problem as well.
Precisely because the Ten Commandments are open to a variety of inter-
pretations (or even numbering, for that matter), they prove to be suitable
as a symbol for Judeo-Christian morality. For there is no Judeo-Christian
religion or community; as such, Judeo-Christianity appears to be an empty
concept. However, there is some moral tradition shared by most Jews and
Christians, and likely acceptable to members of other faiths as well. The
price for inclusiveness is necessarily a good dose of shallowness, but many
of us will agree that it is a price worth paying. Garver concludes that the
Ten Commandments prove to be “well-adapted to a particular moment of
American civil religion and the relation of morality to monotheism”.
Of course, even if one can show that there is a universally accepted
ethical foundation which would, at the very least, require all monotheists
to behave morally towards each other, this does not mean that it actu-
ally happens in practice. Christians and Muslims have over the centuries
had the political and military capacity to display their intolerance towards
members of the other Abrahamic religions. Jews have been disenfran-
chised for the greater part of the past two millennia, but, as Menachem
Kellner passionately argues, some of them have resisted the implications,
and obligations, of a universalist monotheistic ethic. Moses Maimonides
is a towering fijigure in Jewish thought, whose legal pronouncements have
penetrated far more deeply into the economy of Jewish values than his
more recondite philosophical remarks. In his great law code, Maimonides
unambiguously proclaims that every human who refrains from vanities
and devotes his life to knowing and worshiping God, “is as consecrated as
the Holy of Holies” of the Temple. Kellner fijinds that this pronouncement
yields to a particularist interpretation even on the part of some educated
Jews.
Not only the belief in one God, but the belief in a Creator God, binds
together the Abrahamic faiths. Belief in a Creator God has signifijicant
implications for monotheistic ethics, as we learn from the essays of
Joseph Boyle and Michael Fagenblat. Humans, says Joseph Boyle, have
“an irreducible interest in creating and maintaining themselves in some
appropriate and harmonious relationship with the deity”. Our relation-
ship to God ought to include the element of service; but how is God to be
served? Boyle proposes that the conception of God as the one Being Who
freely creates everything—the conception that lies at the very heart of the
Abrahamic faiths—is an important specifijication for the notion of serving
God and a cardinal commonality linking together those who believe in