Ana Smith Iltis

At the Roots of
Christian Bioethics
Critical Essays on the
Thought of H. Tristram
Engelhardt, Jr.
Edited by
Ana Smith Iltis

Department of Health Care Ethics, Saint Louis
University, St. Louis, Missouri
and
Mark J. Cherry
Department of Philosophy, St. Edward’s
University, Austin, Texas
Published by M & M Scrivener Press
3 Winter Street, Salem, MA 01970
www.scrivenerpublishing.com
Copyright © 2010 M & M Scrivener Press
ISBN-13: 978-09764041-8-7
ISBN-10: 0-9764041-8-4
Cover design by Russell Richardson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
At the roots of Christian bioethics : critical essays on the

thought of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. / edited by Ana
Smith Iltis and Mark J. Cherry.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-9764041-8-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Bioethics. 2. Bioethics—Religious aspects—
Christianity. 3. Engelhardt, H. Tristram (Hugo
Tristram), 1941- I. Iltis, Ana Smith. II. Cherry, Mark J.
QH332.A88 2010
241’.64957—dc22 2009042388
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to
quote shortpassages for use in a review for inclusion in a magazine,
newspaper, broadcast or website.
Printed in United States of America on acid-free paper.

Contents
Acknowledgements v
Thomas J. Bole, III

Foreword
Engelhardt: Brief Biographical Reflections vii
Mark J. Cherry and Ana S. Iltis

Introduction
At the Foundations of Christian Bioethics; or,
Why H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.’s Orthodox
Christian Bioethics is so very Counter-Cultural 1
Part I: Re-reading Engelhardt: The Old and the New

Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes
Morality in a Post-Modern, Post-Christian World: Engelhardt’s
Diagnosis and Therapy 23
Ruiping Fan
A Confucian Student’s Dialogue with Teacher Engelhardt 71
Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.

Completing the Picture: Engelhardt’s Christian Bioethics 89
Part II: Challenges to Engelhardt’s Orthodox Christian Theology

Gerald McKenny
Desire for the Transcendent: Engelhardt and Christian Ethics 107
iii
M. Cathleen Kaveny
Down by Law: Engelhardt, Grisez, and the Meanings of “Legalism” 135
Christopher Tollefsen
Missing Persons: Engelhardt and Abortion 165
Frederic J. Fransen
Engelhardt the Anabaptist: Pursuing Ascetic Holiness in the
Spirit of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.’s The Foundations of
Christian Bioethics 181
Part III: Christian Bioethics, Moral Pluralism, and the Hope for a
Common Morality
Griffin Trotter
Is “Discursive Christian Bioethics” an Oxymoron? 203
Joseph Boyle
The Ethical Significance of Moral Disagreement 229
Stephen Wear
Bioethics for Moral Strangers 247
Nicholas Capaldi
Ethics Expertise 261
Thomas A. Cavanaugh
On the Appropriateness of a Christian Bioethics 273
Part IV: A Restatement

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.
Re-reading Re-reading Engelhardt 285
Contributors 317
Index 319
iv
Acknowledgements
The development of this volume benefited from the kind efforts of many.
We are deeply thankful to the contributors, many of whom recast their essays
several times over the course of the project to create the final versions contained
herein. We also thank The Thomist for permission to reprint M. Cathleen
Kaveny, “What Is Legalism? Engelhardt and Grisez on the Misuse of Law in
Christian Ethics,” The Thomist 72 (2008): 443-85. Special thanks are also due to
Martin Scrivener, a friend of many years, whose guidance has been essential
to the successful completion of this project.
Mark J. Cherry wishes to recognize the on-going generosity of St. Edward’s
University, the School of Humanities, and the Department of Philosophy,
especially Donna Jurick, SND, Louis T. Brusatti, William J. Zanardi, Peter
Wake, Jack Green-Musselman, and Stephen Dilley. Each has been instrumen-
tal, though in diverse capacities, to the success of this project. This volume
would not exist without the support, kindness, and love of Mollie E. Cherry.
Ana Iltis wishes to recognize the generous support of the Saint Louis
University Department of Health Care Ethics, especially its department chair,
James DuBois, as well as the on-going support of the Graduate School through
Dean Donald Brennan. Finally, it would not be possible to pursue a career
without the generosity and love of her husband, Steven Iltis.
The volume is dedicated to the life and work of our friend and mentor:
Professor H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Ph.D., M.D. May God grant you many
many years!
v
Foreword
Thomas J. Bole III
Engelhardt never was, nor is he now, a man of half-measures. He is

disposed to take whatever is important, especially heaven, by violence if nec-
essary (Matthew 11:12). He can be hot or cold on issues, but on matters of
significance he is never lukewarm (Revelations 3:16). This was my first
impression of him, and it remains unaltered. We met as graduate students in
philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. In January of 1966 he had
taken a leave of absence from the study of medicine, going from a surgical
clerkship at the Tulane University of Louisiana School of Medicine to the
graduate study of philosophy and a course on Immanuel Kant taught by
Klaus Hartmann (Hartmann 1966; 1970; 1999), a man who would help direct
both our dissertations at the University of Texas, and at the University of
Bonn, where Engelhardt and I would study and where Hartmann was then a
professor. When I met Engelhardt, he was newly married to his wife Susan
(25 November 1965). Little did I know then that this couple would in friendship
accompany me in most of the important personal, intellectual, and religious
journeys of my life.
Engelhardt presented himself with a mixture of intellectual intensity and
existential seriousness. This may in part have been born of his experience in
medicine. He was out to explore and understand the human condition, which
from his episodic service in New Orleans’ Charity Hospital’s emergency
room had been presented to him in life-and-death extremes. He was committed
to engaging the three cardinal questions on which Kant saw all philosophy
hinging: (1) what can I know, (2) what should I do, and (3) what should I hope
for (Critique of Pure Reason A805=B833), as well as the general question from
vii
viii Foreword
Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, namely, “what is man?”

Engelhardt’s philosophical work has explored the necessary conditions for
the possibility of answering these questions, which he appreciated as
foundationally intertwined.
The late 1960s and the whole of the 1970s was a period of intellectual
change and academic advancement for Engelhardt. He completed his doc-
torate in philosophy in 1969, spent a Fulbright post-doctoral year in Bonn
(1969-70). Bonn gave Engelhardt the opportunity for further study with
Klaus Hartmann, as well as with the Kantian Gottfried Martin. He then
returned to Tulane, where he undertook work in the history of medicine
with John Duffy, did some psychotherapy, and had an academic appoint-
ment even as he completed an M.D. with honors in 1972. Then in the sum-
mer of 1972 he began his academic career in earnest at the University of
Texas Medical Branch in what was at that time a department of the history
of medicine. This allowed him to do further serious work in historical schol-
arship. As the Institute for Medical Humanities was founded, he was drawn
to work with bioethics, serving among other things as an associate editor for
the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Bioethics. He received tenure in 1975.
Engelhardt completed a translation of Alfred Schutz (Schutz and Luck-
mann, 1973), as well as a philosophical examination of the mind-brain rela-
tionship (H.T. Engelhardt, 1973). The latter drew heavily on Immanuel Kant,
G.W.F. Hegel, and Edmund Husserl. This book allowed Engelhardt to exam-
ine fundamental issues in epistemology, metaphysics, and categorial theory.
At the same time, he continued to explore the work of the neurologist John
Hughlings Jackson (H.T. Engelhardt, 1975), which investigations in turn led
him to further studies in the history and philosophy of medicine, especially
to an examination of medical explanations and concepts of health and dis-
ease (Caplan, Engelhardt, and McCartney, 1981). This work brought his
attention to how explanations are local in the sense of requiring a particular
categorial framing. He thus came to appreciate not only the particular char-
acter of different types of scientific explanations, but the disparate character
of diverse forms of moral discourse.
This is not to say that his project regarding the foundations of bioeth-
ics was clear to him at this point. In fact, he confesses that, early in his career,
he contributed to bioethics’ rather naïve fascination with principlism, which
he later criticized (H.T. Engelhardt 2002; 2003a). This contribution occurred
through an essay commissioned by the National Commission for the Pro-
tection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1975).
As Albert Jonsen observed about Engelhardt’s contribution to the National
Commissions: “H. Tristram Engelhardt’s paper suggested three basic prin-
ciples: ‘respect for persons as free moral agents, concern to support the best
interests of human subjects in research, intent in assuring that the use of
human subjects of experimentation will on the sum redound to the benefit
Foreword ix
of society’” (Jonsen, 1998, p. 103). In any event, beginning at least in the

mid-1970s, the philosophical community came to recognize that Engelhardt
was working on a major volume fundamentally reconsidering the character
of bioethics. This recognition resulted in his being named in 1977 the Rose-
mary Kennedy Professor of Philosophy of Medicine at Georgetown Univer-
sity, with appointments in the Department of Philosophy and the School of
Medicine. He was also a senior research scholar in the Kennedy Institute,
working within the Center for Bioethics.
This was a period of sustained debate and reflection in Engelhardt’s life.
He lived across the street from James Childress in Chevy Chase, Maryland,
and often argued with Childress on their way to the university. Their dis-
cussions were rich and productive of many important articles, but his opus
magnum remained unpublished, going through various drafts as Engelhardt
attempted to explore and critically to assess the range and capacities of sec-
ular moral knowledge. He was slowly being confronted with the nature of
the moral pluralism that defines secular morality, as well as its intractability.
He was being forced to reconsider all his prior assumptions regarding secular
morality and its foundations, many of which assumptions he brought with
him out of a youth marked by rather Scholastic instruction regarding natural
law. He came to realize that fallen man could not reason to a common morality.
It was a period in which Engelhardt was engaged in a wide range of
undertakings. He was not only Associate Editor of the Journal of Medicine and
Philosophy, which he joined Edmund Pellegrino in founding in 1976, but
was also at the time co-editor of the Philosophy and Medicine book series,
which Engelhardt and Stuart Spicker founded in 1975. This book series was
originally connected with a series of conferences with the title “Trans-
Disciplinary Symposia on Philosophy and Medicine”. He also directed six
seminars for the National Endowment for the Humanities. His work at the
Hastings Center produced a series of collected volumes (Engelhardt and
Callahan, 1976; 1977; 1978; 1980; Callahan and Engelhardt, 1981; Engelhardt
and Caplan, 1987). These volumes grew out of working groups under Engel-
hardt’s guidance that were exploring the foundations of moral and scientific
claims, as well as the circumstances under which controversies in morality,
technology, and science can be resolved. Among his discussion partners
was Alasdair MacIntyre, who at the time was completing After Virtue
(MacIntyre, 1981). In all of these venues, Engelhardt was exploring the con-
ditions under which controversies can be brought to a resolution. The most
significant immediate publication from these efforts was Scientific Contro-
versies: A Study in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes Concerning Science
and Technology (Engelhardt and Caplan, 1989). In the exploration of these
issues, Engelhardt gave no quarter. As Jonsen summed up matters, “Engel-
hardt has been the enfant terrible of bioethics: irrepressible, irreverent, unpre-
dictable, but ever insightful and brilliant” (Jonsen, 1998, p. 82).
x Foreword
In late 1982 he returned to Texas, where he was appointed Professor in

the Department of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, and Professor in
the Department of Philosophy, Rice University, while also working in the
Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy. He was in addition engaged
with the Institute of Religion, which he had first come to know in the early
1960s. Back in Texas, The Foundations of Bioethics finally took mature shape
and was published in 1986, as well as his Bioethics and Secular Humanism: A
Search for a Common Morality (1991), which he wrote during his stay at the
Institute for Advanced Study in West Berlin, 1988-89. These books expressed
his mature recognition that there is no universal secular morality, nor can
there be. The controversies fragmenting our contemporary society are the
result of the conflict of numerous, incompatible moralities, a point under-
scored by his experience in clinical and bioethical consultation. Clinical bio-
ethicists, as he discovered, rarely gave actual normative guidance, but
instead provided legal advice, mediated disputes, and offered a genre of
psychological interventions to support the interaction of physicians,
patients, and family members (H.T. Engelhardt, 2003b). The fabric of coop-
eration among moral strangers, as he showed, is at best held together by
practices that rely not on a common view of the good or of human flourish-
ing, but merely on a consent to collaborate, as, for example, occurs in the
market. The first edition of The Foundations of Bioethics was widely read,
widely translated, and widely misunderstood. To address these misunder-
standings, Engelhardt produced a second and thoroughly revised edition of
The Foundations of Bioethics in 1996. This revised edition appeared five years
after his conversion to Orthodox Christianity, an event that radically transformed
his life.
The connection between these two editions of The Foundations of Bioethics
in great measure cannot be understood without taking into account Engel-
hardt’s conversion. Already in the first edition, Engelhardt takes pains to
inform the reader that the sparseness of the morality left to bind moral
strangers is not a matter that he celebrates. As he puts it in the first edition,
“Some may wish to see this volume as a defense of a secular pluralist ethic.
That would be a mistake” (H.T. Engelhardt 1986, p. viii). In the first edition,
he underscores the well-worn Western moral-theological distinction
between what one can know by natural reason and what one can know by
grace. He stresses that he does not intend to disparage through his criticism
of the limits of secular moral reflection the scope and substance of knowledge
theologically acquired. As he puts it, “Those with religious persuasions
should know that grace makes plain what reason cannot discern” (H.T.
Engelhardt, 1986, p. 13). Since few readers of the first edition seemed to take
these statements fully to heart, in the second edition he phrases matters a bit
more stridently: “If one wants more than secular reason can disclose−and
one should want more−then one should join a religion and be careful to
Foreword xi
choose the right one…I indeed affirm the canonical, concrete moral narrative,
but realize it cannot be given by reason, only by grace. I am, after all, a born-
again Texan Orthodox Catholic, a convert by choice and conviction, through
grace and in repentance for sins innumerable (including a first edition upon
which much improvement was needed). My moral perspective does not
lack content. I am of the firm conviction that, save for God’s mercy, those
who willfully engage in much that a peaceable, fully secular state will permit
(e.g., euthanasia and direct abortion on demand) stand in danger of hell’s
eternal fires” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. xi). His general philosophical point about
the inadequacy of secular morality was already articulated in the first edition
of The Foundations of Bioethics, which volume already pointed ahead to The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics, which was to appear four years after the
second edition of The Foundations of Bioethics.
Even if one can understand the two editions of The Foundations of Bioeth-
ics without taking into account Engelhardt’s conversion to Christianity, much
of his subsequent work is incomprehensible apart from this event. The story
of Engelhardt’s conversion is an instance of the unfailing love of God. He
now recognizes his life has been a journey in God’s hands. Engelhardt’s first
appreciation, however unclearly, of the truth of Orthodoxy, occurred in a
history of Christianity course as part of his fifth-grade education at St.
Mary’s Grammar School, taught by Dominican nuns in Houston. He knew
that he had never seen the Christianity of the first millennium as described
in the textbook. Puzzled, he asked the nun teaching the class how that could
be the case, but received no satisfactory answer. Later, in the 8th grade he
was asked to serve as an altar boy for a Palestinian Uniate bishop, who
would celebrate the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Not only did this expe-
rience of the Liturgy point to what would be the major center of his liturgi-
cal life, but after the Liturgy the old bishop made a startling statement. He
said to Engelhardt, then thirteen years old: “Listen. This is important for
you. All Christianity will disappear in the West. True Christianity will come
again like a light from the East.” To Engelhardt’s astonishment, the bishop
repeated this remark twice. However, in the mid-1950s (someplace in 1954
or 1955), nearly a decade before the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council
(A.D. 1962-1965), the statement was unsettling and incomprehensible.
Engelhardt sensed that it carried an important message, but he could not
scry the circumstances under which it would be true.
Having graduated from St. Thomas High School (Houston, Texas) in
1959, the old St. Thomas College from which his father had also graduated,
Engelhardt left for college with a pre-Vatican II experience of Roman Catholi-
cism. He benefited from the education of the Basilian fathers, many of whom
were ailing university professors from Canada sent south to the supposedly
more clement climate of Texas. With a understanding of history, Latin, and
the stateliness of liturgy rightly celebrated, he found the chaos of Vatican II
xii Foreword
and its sequellae puzzling, even disturbing. He recognized that what had
taken place in the Roman Catholic church had deep analogues, if not roots,
in the forces that had driven the Cultural Revolution in China and the student
movements in North America and Western Europe. There was a passionate
commitment to starting societal institutions anew in general and Roman
Catholicism in particular. Under the slogan of renewal, fasts were abolished,
Latin fell into desuetude, the priest was turned around to face west to the
people, and ancient pieties were brought into question. Caught up in the
forces of the time, Roman Catholicism had embraced a revolution in its
liturgical habits, ascetical commitments, and paradigm of theology. A radically
new thought and liturgical style had been embraced, which transformed the
fabric of its worship, scholarship, and everyday religious life.
In the wake of these changes, the lives of many of the Roman Catholic
priests, whom Engelhardt knew in high school and later in the 1960s, some
of whom even gave Roman Catholic baptism to his children, had fallen into
disorientation and chaos. Most of those left their priesthood; practically all
had difficulty bringing coherence to their lives in the wake of Vatican II.
Even then, Engelhardt recognized that humans are beings of ritual. He
appreciated that rightly-ordered ritual bears the incarnate unity of symbols,
community, history, and bodily movement. With the continuity of ritual
shattered, and indeed with the abrupt loss of the Latin language as the
scholarly theological lingua franca, a post-Latin Western church emerged in
which its denizens were substantively isolated from their liturgical and
scholarly theological past. As Engelhardt engaged the intellectual projects
just sketched and shouldered the burdens of raising a family, his religious
and liturgical Sitz im Leben was uncertain at best and in shambles at worst.
He found himself estranged from the new spirit that shaped most of the
Western Christianities.
Some time before he left the Kennedy Institute and Georgetown Univer-
sity in December, 1982, he was approached by Francesc Abel, a Jesuit physi-
cian-theologian from Barcelona, to provide his services as a bioethicist to
the International Federation of Catholic Universities. At that time, fully
engaged in the project of completing The Foundations of Bioethics, he declined.
His demurral was grounded in at least two independent concerns beyond
the need to finish The Foundations of Bioethics. First, given his Roman Catho-
lic intellectual roots, and given the arguments that he would lay out in The
Foundations of Bioethics, he recognized already that the intellectual commit-
ments, moral, philosophical, and theological, that had framed the Western
theological project could not secure the claims to which they were directed.
Second, given how uncongenial he found the liturgical experimentations of
the Western Christianities, he was not attracted by the prospect of engage-
ment with matters theological. Nevertheless, some time in 1984, John Col-
lins Harvey repeated the invitation to Engelhardt. By accident, the invitation
Foreword xiii
came to include his being accompanied to Milan by his second daughter

Christina, a woman who, while describing herself as a wife and mother, has
been a contributor to the journal Christian Bioethics (Partridge and Turiaso,
2005). Engelhardt could not turn down such an opportunity for his daugh-
ter. Quite quickly, Engelhardt found himself immersed in theological and
bioethical reflections. In part, these were associated with his service on the
International Study Group in Bioethics of the International Federation of
Catholic Universities. In part, these resulted from discussions with his emi-
nence, Carlo Cardinal Martini, the man who became the runner-up behind
Benedict XVI for Pope of Rome. Despite himself, Engelhardt was forced to
think through with seriousness what it meant to claim to have a religion,
indeed, to claim to be a Christian. As Engelhardt read and reflected, it
became clear to him that both Roman Catholicism and the Protestant reli-
gions were very particular creations of cultural forces tied to the intellectual
singularity of Augustine of Hippo for the early Latin world, the political
singularity of the coronation of Charles the Great and the subsequent Caro-
lingian Renaissance, various neo-Platonic influences on the church of the
West that led to a celibate clergy, the reorganization of the Church of the
West through Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII (A.D. ca. 1020-1085), and then
last but not least the philosophical and theological synthesis of the Western
Middle Ages.
In the spring of 1988, Engelhardt’s academic life could not have been
going better. He enjoyed his positions at Baylor College of Medicine and
Rice University, the first edition of The Foundations of Bioethics had appeared
and was widely and favorably reviewed, and he had received an invitation
to be a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in West Berlin. Yet, he felt
as if he were a prostitute eating the dainties at a false table. He tells the story
of one day driving to the university and praying that, if there be a true
Church and if God would show it to him, he would join, no matter the con-
sequences. He describes having an immediate experience of awful recogni-
tion that something would dramatically occur. Shortly thereafter, he received
an invitation to attend an Orthodox musical recital. What he saw seemed
too alien to a sixth-generation Texan. He and his wife proceeded to West
Berlin, from which they sought safety from the cold of a central European
Christmas through lectures in Constantinople. As Christmas approached,
his wife asked where they would attend Christmas Mass, to which Engel-
hardt flippantly responded, “Let’s go to the Greeks.” On Christmas morn-
ing, 1988, they hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take them to the Romans
(the term even now for the patriarchal Church of New Rome). They found
themselves in a fairly empty church, with most of the congregation over the
age of 60, with the Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrius I celebrating. His daugh-
ter Christina made a remark to the effect that this must be the original
church. Engelhardt observed, “Yes, but is it ever poor!”
xiv Foreword
It is never easy to leave that to which one is accustomed, especially if the

framing customs are those of one’s entire civilization and the history of
one’s family and folk for the span of over a millennium. Engelhardt was
faced with bringing himself and his family through a paradigm change. He
and they would need theologically to return to a place where few in the
West had been for some twelve hundred years (the first dramatic rupture of
the West from the East occurred when St. Photios the Great excommuni-
cated Nicholas I of Rome in A.D. 867). The task was formidable, because it
involved a change of life-worlds, of taken-for-granted ways in which one
thinks, feels, and acts. The thought-style of the Orthodox Church in both its
Eastern and its Western rites, the theological paradigm within which it
locates its understanding of theology, Church, Bible, Liturgy, asceticism,
and worship in general, is quite apart from the commitments, understand-
ings, and sensibilities of the contemporary West. A return to the mind of the
Fathers, to the undivided Church of the first millennium, was undoubtedly
made more difficult by Engelhardt’s engagement in interesting moral-
philosophical debates supported through the International Federation of
Catholic Universities, and because of his Irish wife’s disinclination to enter
Orthodoxy (although she herself would convert some two years after her
husband) (S. Engelhardt, 1995; 1996).
Finally, Engelhardt took the decisive step. In September, 1990, in Maas-
tricht he submitted a letter of resignation from his membership in the Inter-
national Study Group in Bioethics of the International Federation of Catho-
lic Universities. He indicated that he would soon become a catechumen in
the Orthodox Church. Engelhardt entered the Orthodox Church on Great
Saturday, 1991, was tonsured a reader by his grace Bishop Basil of Wichita
and Mid-America on November 19, 1996, and in 1997 made his first trip to
the Holy Mountain. Amazed, he found himself in a surreal world, popu-
lated by frighteningly holy fathers and unanticipated wonders. He quickly
became immersed in the theological life of Orthodox Christianity, which is
not primarily academic, seeking to know about God, but ascetic, aimed at
bringing one to know God. This ascetic turn was combined with engage-
ments as a lecturer for Orthodox groups in North America and Europe. All
of a sudden, he found himself no longer living in the taken-for-granted
assumptions that had been those of the West for over a millennium. He now
found himself in that Church whose 9th Ecumenical Council (A.D. 1341,
1347, 1351) in affirming St. Gregory Palamas (A.D. 1296-1359) had rejected
those Scholastic theological and philosophical aspirations that had fash-
ioned the life-world and theological paradigm of the West and the com-
mitments of his youth.
Engelhardt could now see with an unanticipated depth why secular
discursive rationality had such a limited vision of morality and bioethics.
Now it was clear why a Christian bioethics grounded in empirical noetic
Foreword xv
experience was that which alone could supplement the incompleteness of

the general moral vision underpinning The Foundations of Bioethics. This
epistemological state of affairs, which made perfect sense to his new Orthodox
readers, now gained a more forceful clarity for Engelhardt. In the light of
this clarity, his subsequent academic work has been focused on laying out
with greater precision the geography of secular morality and its bioethics,
as well as the force and implications of Orthodox Christian bioethics. As one
would expect, Engelhardt has continued to address these two and often
quite divergent audiences for his work. Although it superficially appears
that a second Engelhardt has emerged, his philosophical and theological
projects, The Foundations of Bioethics and The Foundations of Christian Bioethics,
are essentially interconnected. The first demonstrates the severe limits and
character of secular moral-philosophical reflection. It explains why the
morality of the emerging secular, global culture, despite its aspirations to
consensus, is marked by intractable plurality. The second points the way
out of the moral and metaphysical disorientation that characterizes this
emerging global culture. It shows why The Foundations of Bioethics should
lead to The Foundations of Christian Bioethics.
Note
1. The author, as well as Engelhardt and some of our fellow students, contributed
to a Festschrift in honor of this teacher, whose influence on us was profound. See
Engelhardt and Pinkard 1994.
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xvi Foreword
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———. Knowledge, Value, and Belief. Hastings-on-Hudson, NY: Hastings Center, 1977
———. Morals, Science, and Sociality. Hastings-on-Hudson, NY: Hastings Center, 1978.
———. Knowing and Valuing: The Search for Common Roots. Hastings-on-Hudson, NY:
Hastings Center, 1980.
———. Engelhardt, H.T., Jr., and A. Caplan (eds.) Scientific Controversies: A Study in
the Resolution and Closure of Disputes Concerning Science and Technology. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.
———. Engelhardt, H.T., Jr., and T. Pinkard (eds.) Hegel Reconsidered. Dordrecht: Kluwer,
1994.
———. Engelhardt, S. “Bless me, St. Patrick, I’m Coming Home,” Again 18.2 (June),
18-19, 1995.
———. “From Rome to Home,” in Our Hearts’ True Home, edited by Virginia
Nieuwsma. Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press, pp. 61-71, 1996.
———. Hartmann, K. Sartre’s Ontology: A Study of Being & Nothingness in the Light of
Hegel’s Logic. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966.
———. Die Marxsche Theorie. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970.
———. Hegels Logik. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999.
———. Jonsen, A.R. The Birth of Bioethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1965 [1781].
———. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, edited and translated by Robert
B. Louden, intro. Manfred Kuehn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006.
MacIntyre, A. After Virtue. South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1981.
Partridge, C., and J. Turiaso. “Widows, Women, and the Bioethics of Care,” Christian
Bioethics 11.1 (April), 77-92, 2005.
Reich, W.T. Encyclopedia of Bioethics. New York: Free Press, 1978.
Schutz, A., and T. Luckmann. The Structures of the Life-World., translated by R.M.
Zaner and H.T. Engelhardt, Jr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Introduction
At the Foundations of Christian
Bioethics; or, Why H. Tristram
Engelhardt, Jr.’s Orthodox
Christian Bioethics is so very
Counter-Cultural
Mark J. Cherry and Ana S. Iltis
This book is as much about a philosophical puzzle as it is about bioethics.

This book is more about a religious quest than it is about a philosophical
puzzle. Yet, it is directed to a philosophical puzzle which it approaches though
philosophical reflection and analysis. The philosophical puzzle is this: if we are
trapped in immanence, can moral truth be anything but ambiguous?
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. (2000, p. xi).
I. Introduction
In The Foundations of Bioethics, published in 1986 followed by a second edition
in 1996, Professor H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. critically and carefully articu-
lated the limits of a secular morality which could legitimately bind moral
strangers.1 He argued that given the reality of deep moral pluralism and the
starkly limited ability of secular rationality to resolve controversies, general
secular moral authority must be created through, and thus limited to, the
actual agreements of actual persons; general secular morality is thus
1
A.S. Iltis & M.J. Cherry (eds), At the Roots of Christian Bioethics (pp. 1-21)
© 2010 by Scrivener Publishing
2 Mark J. Cherry & Ana S. Iltis
libertarian – not due to any particular celebration of personal liberty, nor

because of any simple assumption regarding the rights of persons,2 but as a
default moral and political reality. Reason fails to secure rationally justifiable
ultimate foundations for universal morality and, as a result, there is a prima
facie lack of moral authority to interfere in the free choices of persons acting
with consenting others, even if some would condemn their actions as impru-
dent or even sinful. It is this unflinching libertarianism for which Engelhardt
is best known. Indeed, it is widely assumed not only that Engelhardt affirms
the libertarian social political consequences of his conclusions, but that he cele-
brates all of its frequently libertine personal consequences. Many (perhaps
most) readers have not taken seriously Engelhardt’s own announcements
found throughout the two editions of The Foundations of Bioethics that general
secular morality permits and justifies many activities that he, himself, knows
to be deeply sinful (e.g., abortion on demand, human embryonic stem cell
research, euthanasia, same gender marriage, and so forth)3 as well as impru-
dent (e.g., utilizing a chiropractor or doctor of naturopathy for treatment of
heart disease). The challenge, however, as he argues in great depth, is that
there simply does not exist secular moral authority permissibly to prohibit
such actions among consenting persons.
With the publication of The Foundations of Christian Bioethics in 2000,
Engelhardt completed the previously one-sided picture. Supporters and crit-
ics alike were provided with the other half of the very same coin – Engelhar-
dt’s detailed and deeply serious account of Orthodox Christian bioethics.
Where secular bioethics is limited to what general secular reason can show
to be authoritative and is thus very limited, Christian bioethics, Engelhardt
argues, does not originate in human reason but in the command of God.
Christian bioethics is not a secular bioethics that all presumably should
endorse through their shared rationality; nor is it a bioethics that can be ade-
quately captured in terms of universal accounts of human rights and the best
interests of patients; nor can it be known through the sound rational argu-
ments of philosophers, healthcare lawyers, bioethicists or others. Rather,
Christian bioethics articulates a spiritual and moral framework at one with the
Christian commitments, beliefs, and practices of the ancient fathers of the
Christian Church, founded in the experience of God and the ways in which
He has revealed Himself to man. It is a bioethics set within the Holy Tradi-
tional Orthodox Christianity of the first millennium, which is all-encompass-
ing, transcendentally oriented, frequently mystical, and framed in terms of
the single-minded struggle towards ultimate salvation. As Engelhardt
describes these circumstances:
…this volume invites the reader to the Christianity of the first millennium, a
Christianity rooted in mysticism, or better stated in noetic theology. It is here
that the puzzle is solved and the door found in the horizon of immanence:
Christianity’s disclosure of an immediate experience of the uncreated energies
Introduction 3
of a radically transcendent, personal God. Here philosophical solutions and

theological truth coincide: the truth is a Who. Such a theology is pursued
ascetically through prayer bound to repentance expressed in worship. Within
such a theology, bioethics is a way of life. It can only be introduced via an invita-
tion to enter. To the question of “How can I know the truth?” one receives first
and foremost instruction in ascetic transformation. It is the “pure of heart who
shall see God” (Matt 5:8) (2000, p. xiii).
In short, while The Foundations of Christian Bioethics details and defends a
robustly content-full Christian bioethics, often articulated in the language
of philosophy – an occupational hazard – the book attempts neither to
present a philosophical moral system, nor to provide a legalistic moral
framework for decision making, nor a set of personal values and virtues.
Whereas some critics attempted to frame the volume as just another cul-
tural stop for the devoutly secular cosmopolitan tourist, such a judgment
reflects a significant error.4 Instead The Foundations of Christian Bioethics
seeks both to help readers adequately to comprehend the real moral chaos
of the contemporary moral and cultural landscape, while also to draw
readers into a journey in which philosophy must be left behind so as to
engage in a relationship with a living and very personal, but fully tran-
scendent, God. Engelhardt’s scholarship since 2000 has been dominated
by this central and monumental task: to clarify, explore, and articulate
traditional Christian bioethics, untainted by the errors of scholasticism,
the Enlightenment, modernity, post-modernity, or the numerous religious
heresies and false gods of both east and west (see for example, Engel-
hardt, 2005, 2007, 2009).
At the Roots of Christian Bioethics: Critical Essays on the Thought of H.
Tristram Engelhardt Jr., critically regards Engelhardt’s search for ultimate
foundations – his search for the decisive ground of the why and how of
human existence and knowledge of appropriate moral choice. Compassing
essays authored by his students, friends, and colleagues, at the surface this
book may appear as but an academic assessment of the Christian scholarship
of Professor H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. At another level, however, the book
draws on Engelhardt’s diagnosis and exploration of the contemporary social
and cultural crisis to illustrate the remarkable moral and political shifts so
evident in our time.5 The authors seek, for example, to make sense of the col-
lapse of Christianity in Western Europe, which as Engelhardt documents,
has become decidedly post-Christian and often openly anti-Christian
(Engelhardt, 2009). Still deeper, the volume seeks also to understand and
appreciate one scholar’s personal and tireless enquiry to secure ultimate moral
foundations as well as to recognize the full implications of the results of
his investigations. Perhaps most profoundly, it is also a book about one
man’s religious quest to find God, Himself, and why others ought also to
accept Engelhardt’s invitation to enter Traditional Orthodox Christianity.
II. Bioethics and the Culture Wars

In part, the challenge for contemporary bioethics and public policy, as
Engelhardt’s scholarship both before and after the publication of The Founda-
tions of Christian Bioethics details, is that so much of contemporary bioethics
functions, at best, at the level of political ideology.6 Bioethics and its adepts
routinely assert unique access to an ethical vision that operates on analogy
with the universal legislator of Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, or
the privileged and unbiased utilitarian calculator of costs and benefits, who, in
either case, purports to derive a canonical understanding of appropriate human
choice, rational human preference satisfaction, and legitimate governmental
authority from a particular account of moral rationality and rational volition.
Through its robust moral claims, bioethics attempts to authorize and legiti-
matize state moral authority in terms of a rationally discoverable vision of
morality, justice, and proper conduct. This is why bioethicists routinely give
significant accent to supposedly universal special goods, such as “basic
human rights” or “health”, while also asserting special insight into the human
condition through claims regarding the so called “best interests” of patients,
children, women, and society, and articulating ubiquitous universal state-
ments on morality, bioethics, and proper public policy.7 Such appeals attempt
to side-step any actual regional, cultural, community, or religious morality,
and thereby to claim a universal morality to bind all nations and peoples
through so-called enlightened reason. Or to speak in a more Kantian metaphor: the
community of faith has been restated as the community of reason; the kingdom
of grace has become the kingdom of reason.8 The underlying quasi-religious belief
is that all humans are morally bound together without a common confession
of religious faith, cultural background, or shared moral worldview.
As Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes illustrates, Engelhardt often functions as
an intellectual and cultural critic, documenting the ways in which the twenty-
first century is marked by explicit disorientation, both moral and metaphysical
(2009). Similarly, Thomas Bole chronicles (2009) that, over the time of his pro-
fessional career, Engelhardt came to recognize that the cacophony of moral
perspectives worldwide empirically demonstrated that there did not exist a
particular universal secular morality; and, through his philosophical explora-
tion regarding the character of moral arguments, that, in principle, a univer-
sal content-full secular morality was not possible: “The controversies frag-
menting our contemporary society are the result of the conflict of numerous,
incompatible moralities…” (2009, p. x) and there is no in principle way defin-
itively to resolve such moral conflicts in general secular terms. The contem-
porary moral world is sundered into a wide variety of religions and secular
worldviews, with no definitive set of secular reasons for privileging one par-
ticular moral viewpoint among the many starkly divergent religious and
secular points of view. As Engelhardt argues:
Introduction 5
The elements or dimensions of morality cannot be fully integrated in a secular moral

vision. One cannot bring into harmony (1) the right and the good, (2) the claims
of universal moral perspective and particular moral commitments, (3) the justi-
fication of morality and the motivation to be moral, or even (4) justify the
content of morality (2000, p. 75).9
The typical bioethical fault lines (e.g., such as abortion, cloning, embryo
experimentation, euthanasia, selling human organs for transplantation,
human subjects research, and healthcare resource allocation), illustrate the
real depth of the divisions sundering foundationally different accounts of
the moral life.10
Note, these circumstances are not simply a debate about which policies
will best achieve the desired objectives, but a much more fundamental
disagreement regarding which objectives themselves are desirable; that is,
which moral understanding should be established in public policy and indi-
vidual choice (e.g., pro-life or pro-choice). Given the great diversity of moral
viewpoints in contemporary society, alternative moralities compete without
an apparent principled basis for establishing one as uniquely true. Or as
Delkeskamp-Hayes makes the point:
Richard Rorty and others have begun to speak the unspeakable: once one is
no longer willing seriously to follow Immanuel Kant and act as if God exists,
and once there is no basis in the end to justify as canonical one account of the
right, the good, and the virtuous, there is also no way to guarantee that the
right should trump the good, or even that moral rationality should have pre-
cedence over prudential rationality. Despite passionate proclamations of
moral consensus, the contemporary condition is marked not only by disagree-
ment, but by the inability to determine how through sound and rational argument,
moral diversity—indeed, deep moral conflict—can be set aside (2009, p. 23).
In secular terms, persons are isolated within the finite bounds of human
nature, and are embedded in an immanent world marked by a significant
plurality of moral perspectives.
Faced with such a stark reality, bioethicists and public policy makers
routinely acquiesce to individual preference, current convention, cultural
custom, or falsifiable claims to moral consensus. Moral content to guide
public policy has been sought through appeal to intuitions, consequences,
casuistry, the notion of unbiased choice, game theory, or middle-level
principles. All such attempts, however, as Engelhardt argues in The Foun-
dations of Bioethics, confront insurmountable obstacles: one must already
presuppose a particular morality so as to choose among intuitions, rank
consequences, evaluate exemplary cases, or mediate among various prin-
ciples, otherwise one will be unable to make any rational choice at all.
As he argued, even if one merely ranks cardinal moral concerns, such as
liberty, equality, justice and security differently, one affirms different moral
visions, divergent understandings of the good life, varying senses of what

it is to act appropriately. How then does one break through the seemingly
interminable bioethical debates to truth? Absent definitive moral founda-
tions, grounded in an unshakable moral anthropology, canonical accounts
of human well being, good consequences, and right action, morality – and
thus bioethics – appears to be no more or less than what humans make it
out to be. Or, as Protagoras famously observed: “Of all things the measure
is of man, of the things that are, that [or “how”] they are, and of things
that are not, that [or “how”] they are not.”11 Secular morality, and thus
bioethics, is deeply ambiguous, with no definitive reasons for choosing
one particular moral content rather than another.12
Absent the ability of human reason to deliver a particular content-full
universal morality to bind all in a common moral framework, without simply
begging the question, and insofar as one decides to eschew violence, Engel-
hardt argues that moral authority must instead be drawn from the actual
choices of actual persons. It is this situation which gives general secular
morality and political authority its inescapably libertarian character. It is lib-
ertarian by default – because no authoritative content-full morality can be
justified in general secular terms, moral authority must be created through
the actual agreements of actual persons to cooperate in common projects.
Given such foundations, the morality available to guide the secular world is
stark indeed. Such was the moral and social political conclusion for which
Engelhardt argued in both editions of The Foundations of Bioethics.
III. Re-reading Engelhardt: The Old and the New

Given his overtly and defiantly libertarian positions in The Foundations of
Bioethics when The Foundations of Christian Bioethics appeared there was much
surprise in many quarters. Consider, for example, James Childress’ comment
on the back of the book cover, which states:
‘What a long, strange trip it’s been,’ to echo the Grateful Dead, as Tristram
Engelhardt has moved from a bioethics for moral strangers in a pluralistic
society to a contentful bioethics grounded in traditional Orthodox Christianity
that revels in its separation from and challenge to that society. Those of us who
cannot make the same journey can nevertheless marvel at the coherent and
powerful vision that now motivates Engelhardt’s work and shapes his
understanding of Christian bioethics as a way of life.
For many commentators, there was now a second Engelhardt – an Orthodox
Christian Engelhardt seemingly estranged from his secular libertarian
doppelganger. It is to this particular question, Engelhardt the old and the new,
to which the first section of essays is addressed. Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes,
Ruiping Fan, and Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J. each demonstrate the organic unity
between the past and the present in Engelhardt’s research, scholarship, moral
Introduction 7
and political thought, even while acknowledging that his faith in God has
profoundly shifted his personal and spiritual life.
Delkeskamp-Hayes, for example, argues that Engelhardt’s secular and
religious dimensions are both needed for an accurate intellectual diagnosis of
our cultural condition:
From his early writings in the 1970s (1973), to his contemporary publications
(2006), in diverse venues and in a wealth of articles and books, Engelhardt
persisted in addressing our cultural predicament. In his two editions of
The Foundations of Bioethics, and in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics,
Engelhardt provides a substantive exploration of this state of affairs… (2009,
p. 23-24).
Through both editions of the Foundations of Bioethics, Engelhardt demonstrated
that the resources available in secular reason are inadequate to the task
of securing an authoritative universal morality. Then, in The Foundations of
Christian Bioethics, he provides a way out of the post-modern philosophical
puzzle.
On the one hand, the author accounts for the fractured character of our postmo-
dernity, as well as for the practices that transcend its moral plurality (e.g., the
market). … On the other hand, he accounts for the ultimate disorientation and
loss of final meaning that characterizes the dominant secular culture. Engelhardt
appreciates that the moral and metaphysical challenges of postmodernity
proceed from the collapse of Christendom and of Christian metaphysical orien-
tation. He describes this collapse as linked with the failure of the Western-Christian
project of combining theology with philosophy—a project that he recognizes as
having led to the Enlightenment’s claims regarding the possibility of a universal,
rationally justifiable secular morality (2009, p. 24).
As Delkeskamp-Hayes argues, when both aspects of his scholarship are seen

together, the reader is provided with a unified philosophical diagnosis and
religious therapy.
Ruiping Fan and Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J. similarly argue that these two
dimensions of Engelhardt’s thought organically fit together, exploring different
sides of the same fundamental puzzle. Fan argues that the secular morality
provided in The Foundations of Bioethics can only be appreciated as one-sided
and incomplete. He argues that the arguments in the earlier secular works
required the completion that is only offered in the later Christian work. As a
result, The Foundations of Christian Bioethics provides the epistemic perspective
which is necessary to complete the account of moral knowledge, content, and
community found in Engelhardt’s secular work. Or, as Wildes makes a related
point,
Engelhardt’s model of moral knowledge and moral community is along the
lines of the exclusive model of community. One needs to be a member of a
community. Moral reason only works within the context of a community and
its presuppositions. Moral reason is part of a way of life. But, he also believes
in the call for active conversion. It will be a conversion of faith not of reason
that leads to moral agreement. Only when people work within the same
framework can we reach agreement on moral issues in medicine and health
care (2009, p. 101).
Morality and decision making need the moral life of a substantial community,
such as Confucianism or Orthodox Christianity, to give it content, shape, and
commitments, to specify standards of moral evidence and inference, to distin-
guish right from wrong and good consequences from bad, virtue from vice, or
even to ground a proper account of the human good and human flourishing
in an authoritative moral anthropology.13 In short, The Foundations of Christian
Bioethics completes an intellectual journey begun in The Foundations of Bioethics.
IV. Challenges to Engelhardt’s Orthodox Christian Theology

The second bolus of essays raise specific challenges to Engelhardt’s Orthodox
Christian bioethics. Gerald McKenny notes that Engelhardt’s foundation in
Orthodox Christian theology is at core a call to personal religious conversion
– a call to return to the ancient Christian religion embodied in the Orthodox
Christian Church, a call to experience God rather than to reason about God.
His arguments and conclusions at times display a character that rings oddly
to the modern academic ear. Indeed, Engelhardt explicitly states that until
one converts to Orthodox Christianity and enters into a proper relationship
with God, one will only one-sidedly and incompletely understand what is
truly at stake and why one must act in particular ways. Each of the essays
in this section puzzles about such a foundation for Christian ethics. Such
knowledge is not private – it is shared by the entire Church – however, it is a
very particular epistemological vantage point for understanding and appre-
ciating Truth. Alas McKenny straightforwardly refuses this conversion to
Orthodox Christianity (at least as of the time of this writing), setting aside
its importance, while recasting Engelhardt’s call for conversion into a
reawakening of the desire for the transcendent in modern Christian ethics.
Consider McKenny’s core concern: why Orthodox Christianity? As McK-
enny argues, Engelhardt has demonstrated the limits of discursive reason to
disclose universal moral truth. “It proves that discursive reason is bound to
immanence and that the ground morality requires must be transcendent and,
therefore, must be reached in some other way than by discursive reason”
(2009, p. 114). However, McKenny continues, such a demonstration does not,
and indeed cannot, show that any particular account of the transcendent is
true, which is why Engelhardt’s account in The Foundations of Christian Bioeth-
ics shifts from discursive argument to an invitation to conversion.
This is how it must be if transcendent truth can be known only noetically. But,
as Engelhardt also realizes, this means that there are no criteria external to
Orthodoxy itself by which the now disillusioned rationalist can choose which
Introduction 9
invitation to the transcendent to accept as an invitation to truth. Even where

the argument succeeds, then, it brings one not to Orthodoxy but only to a
notion of the transcendent as such (McKenny, 2009, p. 114).
Thus, McKenny concludes that from an external perspective Orthodox Chris-

tianity will only appear as one among many competing accounts of truth,
each account issuing its own invitation. How can one determine which account
is genuine, which one is uniquely Truth?14
M. Cathleen Kaveny focuses on Engelhardt’s criticism that much of Western
Christian moral theology is legalistic. She argues that Engelhardt’s attack on
what he terms Western Christianity’s “legalism” is for the most part merely
polemical, missing the forest for the trees. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas’s
account of law, she works carefully through a comparison of Engelhardt and
Germain Grisez, both of whom criticize “legalism”. Aquinas argued that law
“is nothing else than (1) an ordinance (2) of reason (3) for the common good, (4)
made by him who has care of the community, and (5) promulgated” (ST, I-II, q. 90, art.
4). Working her way through each of these categories, Kaveny seeks to show
that “legalism” is not a straightforward concept, but rather a complex phe-
nomenon with many components, each leading to what she terms “trigger
points”:
These trigger points touch on basic issues in Christian ethics, such as whether
morality is more appropriately seen as an aspect of God’s will or God’s reason,
what relationship obtains among the individual, the community and the
common good, and what role various ecclesiastical authorities and theologians
play in interpreting Christian moral teaching (2009, p. 159).
She argues that moral theology must be understood within the relevant
frameworks of particular accounts of Christian morality and that once one
appreciates the appropriate framework, mode of reasoning, and appropriate
exceptions, the criticism of “legalism” loses much of its relevance. What is
more important than charges of “legalism”, she concludes, is the clarification
of more fundamental disagreements about the nature and purpose of the Christian
life and of the guiding force of the moral law within such a life.
Christopher Tollefsen changes tactics, turning to questions regarding
whether Engelhardt’s secular moral and political philosophy can in principle
be adequately integrated with his Christian bioethics. Tollefsen raises puzzles,
for example, regarding the ways in which Orthodox Christian bioethics abso-
lutely condemns much that a libertarian bioethics must permit. On the one
hand, the libertarianism of The Foundations of Bioethics requires that the state
permit abortion on demand, at least as a de facto non-prosecutable practice,
provided that all those involved consent. No tax dollars may ever be spent in
support of abortion, nor may any hospital or health care professional be forced
to participate, absent actual contractual agreements, but abortion on demand
remains permissible in the general secular state. On the other hand, The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics states unequivocally that abortion is the spiri-

tual equivalent of murder. How are two such positions to be fully integrated?
Tollefsen argues that an adequate understanding of human biology and the
human good provide strong secular reasons straightforwardly to prohibit
abortion. Moreover, he argues that an argument against abortion that, unlike
Engelhardt’s, distinguishes between the evils of contraception or sterilization
on the one hand and abortion on the other is necessary for modern Christians.
The argument against abortion, Tollefsen argues, must be built around the
language of rights and personhood. Abortion must be rejected, according to
Tollefsen, in part because it involves unjustly taking the life of a person, rea-
soning Engelhardt explicitly rejects in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics.15
In the final essay of this section, Fred Fransen concludes that despite
Engelhardt’s protestations to the contrary, there really is a new Engelhardt in
The Foundations of Christian Bioethics – a triumphal Engelhardt dreaming of
the establishment of an Orthodox Christian empire with the crowning of an
Orthodox emperor at the fourth Rome. Consider Engelhardt on such issues:
As every young Texian16 Christian of school age knows, Austin shall surely be
the fourth Rome, and if not Austin, then Dallas or perhaps even Abilene. …
The patriarch of all the Texans will then bear the weight of that priority among
the bishops which is the Primacy of St. Peter that will be preserved by that
Church, that future diocese of Santa Fe. As the capital of the Empire of Holy
Texas, it will preside as first in loving care for all true believing and worship-
ping churches. …Once all is put in order, the Empire can be reestablished and
the populace of Texas baptized in the Brazos de Dios. Then the Orthodox
Mounted Posses can saddle up and ride out to the Second Rome to restore the
Hagia Sophia, Christendom’s great temple, carrying the Bonnie Blue Flag
next to the Empire’s banner of gold with the proud double-headed eagle (2000,
pp. 393-294).
Fransen’s concern is whether such a millennial vision is compatible with

Christianity. He argues that it may be impossible for persons to embark on
the ascetic path of holiness, while also fully carrying out their duties as mag-
istrates. The role of governing a society may simply be incompatible with
what is necessarily proper to the struggle towards salvation. Here, Fran-
sen’s concern is that the Orthodox concept of symphonia, in which the church
and the state are in “perfect harmony” seems incompatible with Engelhardt’s
account of secular political authority in The Foundations of Bioethics:
From the point of view of symphonia, the state is good, if different from the
Church. There is no room in the world of the Foundations, however, for a
“good” general secular realm. Moreover, for a thick community to rise up and
set out to conquer its neighborseven Traditional Christians in Texas or
Papists and Muslims in Rome and Constantinoplewould be legitimate
cause for the general secular world, together with other thick communities, to
intervene (p. 194).
Introduction 11
As a result, while Fransen finds himself in deep sympathy with many of

Engelhardt’s Christian commitments, he believes that there is a greater differ-
ence between Engelhardt’s Orthodoxy Christian bioethics and his secular
philosophy. As Fransen concludes: “There can be no crusading symphonia
within the terms of the [secular] Foundations” (p. 194).
V. Christian Bioethics, Moral Pluralism and the Hope for a

Common Morality
The final section brings together a series of applications and critiques of
Engelhardt’s arguments, conclusions, and methodology. Each draws out and
carefully explores the ways in which Engelhardt’s account of Christian bioeth-
ics, in Griffin Trotter’s words, “is flagrantly sectarian and outrageously
counter-cultural” (p. 203). Here Trotter asks whether there can be a middle
ground between the stark, substance-free secular bioethics of Engelhardt’s
secular morality and the content-full sectarian bioethics of his Christian
morality. Joseph Boyle and Stephen Wear each consider the ethical signifi-
cance of moral disagreement and moral pluralism. Nicholas Capaldi lays out
the implications of Engelhardt’s work for conceptualizing expertise in ethics,
arguing that many of the ways for which bioethicists claim expertise are flawed.
Thomas Cavanaugh considers whether it is even appropriate to speak of Chris-
tian bioethics as a distinct set of moral and spiritual understandings. Cavana-
ugh contends that a Christian bioethics is necessary if one is to ascertain the
role of sin in the fallen world.
Griffin Trotter questions whether Engelhardt has drawn too fine of a line
between moral stranger and moral friend, with too wide of a cognitive and
moral gap between moral strangers. Trotter shares Engelhardt’s disquiet
about the deceptive ideology of much of contemporary bioethics. As Trotter
argues
At its worst, discursive reason devolves into “conceptive ideology”—intellectual
adornment for coercive politics …, replete with an inventory of academic high
priests (e.g., tenured bioethicists), ritual deployments of intellect (e.g., political
advisory committees), and creative myths disguised as facts (e.g., stories
that portray infant mortality or life-span inequalities as consequences of poor
health care access) (p. 204).
However, Trotter argues that it is more accurate to the ways in which we

often experience the world to think, as Wildes does (2000), in terms of
moral acquaintances. He argues that he finds it fruitful to approach others
in terms of the commitments and concerns that we share in common, to
deliberate together seeking peaceful short term collaboration, and possibil-
ity a common appreciation of ethical truths in the long run. He concludes
that Engelhardt is wrong to so neatly divorce sectarian bioethics from
discursive bioethics.
Following similar threads of argument, both Joseph Boyle and Stephen

Wear approach Engelhardt’s thought with a critical eye to his conclusions
regarding the importance of moral disagreement. Stephen Wear notes that
Engelhardt seems to think of the failure of reason to provide a content-full
secular morality as a bad outcome. Why? Also, Engelhardt states openly that
one ought to want more moral content than a cosmopolitan libertarianism
can provide. Again, why? On the one hand, Wear argues that many of the basic
moral guidelines, such as truth telling, do not kill, and beneficence, remain
remarkably useful tools for day-to-day medical decision making, even if
Engelhardt is correct in his observations regarding the deep disagreement on
hard cases. On the other hand, while Wear by and large affirms a political posi-
tion much like Engelhardt’s libertarianism, he notes that once we recognize
ourselves as wholly within the realm of the immanent, then the liberal affirmation
of liberty and equality, as positive values, is as much on the table for discussion
as any other position:
Once we have placed ourselves wholly in the realm of the immanent, with our
ethics charged with ascertaining how we might best “coherently and account-
ably seek satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness,” then it would seem that
restricting ethics to considering freedom as a side constraint is no longer man-
datory, and a reflection on whether and how a given society might consider
supporting the liberal view of human flourishing becomes as legitimate as any
ethical reflection (2009, p. 258).
In short, Wear argues that secular reason can, and has, fashioned an ethic for
moral strangers, evidence for which in bioethics he sees in the past several
decades of discussion, argument, and often agreement about many types of
cases and circumstances with which physicians and bioethics routinely grapple.
Joseph Boyle argues that persons have, or can obtain, a common grasp of
basic moral principles, that cover a wide variety of cases, even if not all will
articulate such content through the same principles or virtues. Many moral
disagreements can be explained in terms of insincere moral disagreement,
innocent mistakes, and morally flawed ethical thinking, discernment or for-
mation. Regarding apparently deep moral disagreement in complex cases he
argues: “in these cases, moral disagreement is to be expected; there is no
ground for expecting agreement because the necessary thinking is complex
and can easily go wrong without any moral fault on the part of a person
addressing such a problem” (p. 240). As a result, he concludes that the existence
of moral disagreement, even significant disagreement, does not demonstrate
that the serious moral judgments of reflective persons are false; nor, he argues,
does such disagreement show that public ethics and state policy must be
crafted in such a way as to stand free of any particular deep moral commitments
and value rankings, as Engelhardt’s libertarianism would require. Rather, he
argues that conscientious political compromises will accomplish what good
people should do, even though it may routinely be less than perfect.
Introduction 13
VI. Engelhardt’s Reply – A Restatement of Position and a

Response to Critics
As is traditional in these circumstances, we the editors have provided
Engelhardt with the last word – the final shot, as it were, at least within these
pages – to comment on his friends and critics alike. Rather than attempting to
summarize his arguments in this brief introduction, we will simply let him
speak for himself – as he would have done in any case. Instead we offer the
reader two short reflections, which we hope will give those who do not have
the pleasure of knowing Professor Engelhardt personally, some insight into
his personality, intellectual and religious commitments, as well as his sense of
humor.
“Discrete” is hardly an adjective most people would use to describe Professor
Engelhardt. “Provocative” and “in your face” seem more accurate. Another
graduate student and I (Ana) were checking in for a conference when Profes-
sor Engelhardt appeared at the registration desk and said, quite loudly, to the
young woman working at the desk: “It is a pleasure to see you facies ad
faciem.” The woman looked stunned and proceeded to check him in. After he
left, she asked us: “Did he just say the f-word to me?” We explained the
phrase, and have enjoyed sharing the story over the years. Although the
provocative Engelhardt no doubt is the one many know, there is a truly dis-
crete – and deeply generous – Engelhardt. Many who hear his famous toast,
“To a world without taxes, to a world without welfare, to a world without
borders,” assume he does not wish to share his resources with the poor and,
moreover, that he validates selfishness. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Over many years, I have watched Professor Engelhardt very quietly
and abundantly give to those in need, including to people whose actions and
lifestyles I suspect he finds deeply offensive. Not only does he give gener-
ously and without “making a fuss”, he does not flaunt the depth of his gener-
osity when people attack him for being a selfish libertarian, someone who
clearly must not care about the poor given his disdain for a tax-based social
welfare system.
I (Mark) received a call one night after 11:00 p.m., a time at which phone
calling is properly reserved to close family members and perhaps philosophy
professors with metaphysical emergencies. “Mark, let’s fly to Kabul and
preach the gospel of Christ!” Professor Engelhardt enthusiastically replied to
my simple “Hello”. “I just checked and we can get tickets on the cheap. Busi-
ness Class! If we get lucky”, he continued, “the Mohammedans will martyr
us. That’s first class to heaven! It doesn’t get better than that!” “Before we
leave,” I suggested, “we should both officially change our names to Bubba,
that way, if we are martyred, the Church will have gained two saints: Bubba
the Greater and Bubba the Lesser from Texas.” One can only imagine the
glorious Orthodox icons, complete with Texas boots, cowboy hats, and large
belt buckles, as well as a feast day presumably appropriately set on March 02,
or perhaps April 21.17 Cooler heads prevailed, our spouses, and the trip was
indefinitely postponed. At any rate, while Orthodox Christians are at all times
obliged to live the faith, and sometimes obliged to die for the faith, they are
not in general supposed to seek martyrdom, although they are permitted to
accept martyrdom if it is offered.
Again, as is the usual circumstances of academic volumes, there is no real
opportunity adequately to acknowledge the many gifts he has given us, nor
the love and guidance he has shown over the many years of our deep and abid-
ing friendships. Nor are we permitted to reflect on the grand insanity of day-
to-day life while living as his students in a state only properly referred to as
slavery, or even on his wonderful relationship with his many grandchildren
(some 10, as of this writing), who shout “Opa!” with great zeal while climbing
up for a great bear hug, chatting away variously in German, English, and
Romanian. We will, however, openly thank his wife Susan for her frequent
protection and kindnesses far too numerous to mention.
Still, with such heady matters in mind we commend this volume to the
reader’s consideration; it is a great pleasure to present it to the worlds of both
secular philosophy and Christian scholarship; two of the many worlds of our
friend, mentor, and professor: H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Ph.D., M.D.
Notes
1. “Moral strangers are persons who do not share sufficient moral premises or rules
of evidence and inference to resolve moral controversies by sound rational argument,
or who do not have a common commitment to individuals or institutions in
authority to resolve moral controversies. A content-full morality provides substantive
guidance regarding what is right or wrong, good or bad, beyond the very sparse
requirement that one may not use persons without their authorization. Moral
friends are those who share enough of a content-full morality so that they can
resolve moral controversies by sound moral argument or by appeal to a jointly
recognized source other than common agreement. Moral strangers must resolve
moral agreements by common agreement, for they do not share enough of a moral
vision so as to be able to discover content-full resolutions to their moral controver-
sies, either rby an appeal to commonly held moral premises (along with rules
of evidence and inference) and/or to individuals or institutions commonly recog-
nized to be in authority to resolve moral controversies and to give content-full
moral guidance” (Engelhardt, 1996, p. 7).
2. For all of the brilliance of the arguments in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick
just begins with the assumption of forbearance rights: “Individuals have rights,
and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their
rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of
what, if anything, the state and its officials may do” (1974, p. ix). For Engelhardt,
forbearance rights are the end result of the failure of general secular reason to secure
content-full moral norms without begging the question. If we are to eschew simply
Introduction 15
appealing to violence as a means for solving controversies, then we must act only
with the permission of the persons involved. As a result, forbearance rights provide a
conceptual framework for thinking about the authority of persons over themselves
and their private property, for assigning praise and blame, as necessary to the
practice of morality in a general secular world. In Engelhardt’s language: “It is a
disclosure of the minimum grammar involved in speaking of moral commit-
ments with an authority other than through force. This account can be regarded as
a transcendental argument to justify a principle of freedom as a side constraint, as a
source of authority” (1996, p. 70). Respecting the forbearance rights of persons per-
mits the resolution of controversies without appeal to violence, and recognizes
persons as in authority to grant permission to common projects. It is thus a social
fabric that can bind moral strangers in general secular terms.
3. “Here the reader deserves to know that I indeed experience and acknowledge the
immense cleft between what secular philosophical reasoning can provide and
what I know in the fullness of my own narrative to be true. I indeed affirm the
canonical, concrete moral narrative, but realize it cannot be given by reason, only
by grace. I am, after all, a born-again Texan Orthodox Catholic, a convert by choice
and conviction, through grace and in repentance for sins innumerable … My moral
perspective does not lack content. I am of the firm conviction that, save for God’s
mercy, those who willfully engage in much that a peaceable fully secular state will
permit (e.g., euthanasia and direct abortion on demand) stand in danger of hell’s
eternal fires. … Though I acknowledge that there is no secular moral authority that
can be justified in general secular terms to forbid the sale of heroin, the availability
of direct abortion, the marketing of for-profit euthanatization services, or the pro-
vision of commercial surrogacy, I firmly hold none of these endeavors to be good.
These are great moral evils. But their evil cannot be grasped in purely secular
terms. To be pro-choice in general secular terms is to understand God’s tragic re-
lationship to Eden. To be free is to be free to choose very wrongly” (Engelhardt,
1996, p. xi).
4. “He offers a Baedekker’s guide to a system of belief that most of us have heard
about but few of us know much about. One should read this section of the book
just as one would read a book that attempts to describe any system of belief, secu-
lar or religious, mainstream or not. In this sense Engelhardt’s is one more book for
those who take their cross-cultural education seriously. If your bioethics library has a
section devoted to Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Hmong, and Christian Scientists…
here’s one more for your collection” (Scofield, 2002, p. 324). Such a verdict would
be amusing if it were not to display historical ignorance to place Christianity of the
first millennium on a par with the religious beliefs of the Jehovah Witnesses, the
tribal customs of the Hmong, or the spiritual convictions of Christian Scientists.
As Engelhardt underscores, ancient Traditional Christianity was one of the
central historical sources out of which the West drew its cultural, intellectual, and
moral substance. Where the ancient Christian Church defined Christian belief and
culture over against other religions, including the paganism of ancient Greece and
Rome, the Roman Catholic Church, while affirming the first seven ecumenical
councils, recast such reflections within the framework of Western social, political,
and religious institutions. Prior to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church
was the principle institution that framed the Christian moral vision of Western
Europe: from the crowning of Charles the Great by Pope Leo III as “romanum
gubernans imperium,” after the third Mass on Christmas, A.D. 800 to Pope Urban
II’s announcement of the First Crusade in A.D. 1095; from Pope Innocent IV’s of-
ficial inauguration of the Inquisition on May 15, 1252, with the bull Ad extirpanda,
to the founding of the University of Paris in A.D. 1208 and eventual development
of natural law moral philosophy. Thus, when Western Christianity explicitly ar-
ticulated its notions of proper medical deportment, Roman Catholicism offered a
significant institutional locus for much of the moral discussion of the first thou-
sand years of Christianity. The morality of Western Christianity became the moral-
ity of medicine and of the good physician. Clearly, this circumstance has for the most
part ended. Contemporary American and Western European bioethics, as
Engelhardt documents, has been post-Christian if not anti-Christian.
5. This moral cacophony of the contemporary world and the struggles its political
expression and control is often termed the culture wars (see Hunter, 1991).
6. Ideology: 4. A systematic scheme of ideas, usu. relating to politics or society, or to
the conduct of a class or group, and regarded as justifying actions, esp. one that is
held implicitly or adopted as a whole and maintained regardless of the course of
events. … 1970 D.D. Raphael Probl. Pol. Philos. i. 17. Ideology… is usually taken
to mean, a prescriptive doctrine that is not supported by rational argument
(Oxford English Dictionary, On-line edition, 2008).
7. See the following for examples and discussion of such statements: UNESCO, 2005;
National Commission, 1979; World Medical Association, 1964-2008; Council of
Europe, 1997; InterAction Council, 1996; Parliament of the World’s Religions,
1993; Journal of Medicine and Philosophy volume 34, number 3, 2009, especially
Cherry, 2009; Engelhardt, 2006.
8. “…insofar as we take account only of the rational beings in it, and of their connection
according to moral laws under the government of the supreme good, the kingdom
of grace, distinguishing it from the kingdom of nature, in which these rational
beings do indeed stand under moral laws … To view ourselves, therefore, as in the
world of grace, where all happiness awaits us, except as we ourselves limit our
share in it through being unworthy of happiness, is, from the practical standpoint,
a necessary idea of reason” (Kant, 1965[1781], pp. 639-640, A812 = B840). Engelhardt
addresses the relationship between philosophy and theology, faith and reason in
Engelhardt, in press.
9. For example, if one holds that torture is always morally wrong, and one also
knows that if one tortures suspect A.G. that he will provide you with information
necessary to save many many innocent lives, should one choose to save the inno-
cent lives or should one respect the principle not to torture? If one chooses not to
torture, do the family members of those innocents whom one has failed to save,
have a justifiable claim against you for having failed to torture A.G. when you
knew, or should have known, that torturing A.G. would have saved their loved
ones? Or, consider a case in which claims of a universal good conflict with one’s
own particular interests and special obligations. If a physician has access to a vac-
cine that is in very short supply for a deadly disease, and which will very likely
kill his family, would the physician be acting wrongly if he sets the vaccine aside
for his family? Do rights trump even potentially devastating consequences? If so,
which rights? Or whose rights? Which consequences should be given priority over
Introduction 17
others? Which values should we choose or eshew? As Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes

notes,
…once one is no longer willing seriously to follow Immanuel Kant and act as if
God exists, and once there is no basis in the end to justify as canonical one
account of the right, the good, and the virtuous, there is also no way to guaran-
tee that the right should trump the good, or even that moral rationality should
have precedence over prudential rationality (2009, p. 23).
Here, the recognition of post-modernity is simply the understanding of the

foundationally irresolvable character of moral pluralism in general secular terms.
10. For those who believe that the culture wars are a movement of the past, consider
the outrage that was apparent in much of the American Roman Catholic commu-
nity when President Barack Obama was invited to give the commencement ad-
dress and to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Notre Dame,
May 17, 2009. See generally www.notredamescandal.com. Very early in his term of
office, Obama acted to increase federal funding for abortions and embryonic stem
cell research, and many of his choices for high office in his administration are well
know pro-abortion activists.
11. Freeman, 1983, DK 80b1.
12. Here one might consider G.W.F. Hegel, who argued that moral concepts, such as
“moral duty”, possess no particular content, they must first be outfitted with such
a content: “Because every action explicitly calls for a particular content and a spe-
cific end, while duty as an abstraction entails nothing of the kind, the question
arises: what is my duty? As an answer nothing is so far available except: (a) to do
the right, and (b) to strive after welfare, one’s own welfare, and welfare in univer-
sal terms, the welfare of others” (1967 [1821], p. 89, §134). However, even here,
there is no particular content to “welfare”; that is, there is no particular content to
the good or to the good life, many competing incommensurable accounts of the
good exist without an in principle method for authoritatively choosing among
them in a general secular world.
13. Here one might think of Hegel’s critique of Kant: where reason can show you that
you ought to fulfill your duty, it cannot provide the very content of that duty. So,
for example, we may know that having made a promise or agreed to a contract,
one ought to fulfill that promise or contract; reason cannot demonstrate which
promises or contracts to make, or which ones to keep given countervailing circum-
stances (Hegel, 1967 [1821], p. 107, §150) See also, Mark J. Cherry, “The normativ-
ity of the natural: Can philosophers pull morality out of the magic hat of human
nature? In M. J. Cherry (ed.), The Normativity of the Natural: Human Goods, Human
Virtues, and Human Flourishing (Springer: Dordrecht, 2009).
14. Here one might recall Engelhardt’s admission: “If one wants more than secular
reason can disclose – and one should want more – then one should join a religion
and be careful to choose the right one. Canonical moral content will not be found
outside of a particular moral narrative” (1996, p. xi).
15. As Engelhardt documents, the spiritual implications of destroying human embryos
is unambiguous: it possesses a moral and spiritual impact equivalent to murder.
The Didache, for example,which dates from the first century A.D., states: “Do not
murder a child by abortion, nor kill it at birth” (Sparks 1978a, p. 309). Likewise, the
Epistle of Barnabas, dated to the first or second century A.D.: “Do not murder a
child by abortion, nor, again, destroy that which is born” (Sparks 1978b, p. 298). Can-
on 91 of the Quinisext Council (A.D. 691) states: “Those who give drugs for pro-
curing abortion, and those who receive poisons to kill the fetus, are subjected to the
penalty of murder” (Schaff and Wace 1995, second series, vol. XIV, p. 404). More-
over, as St. Basil the Great (A.D. 329-379) made clear, the ensoulment, or state of
formation of the fetus, is not relevant to this traditional Christian judgment: “The
woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us
there is no nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed” (Letter 188, 1995, vol.
VIII, p. 225). St. Basil recognized that even early embryocide possesses the same
spiritual effects as murder, without ever committing himself to understanding the
embryo as already possessing a soul or as being a small person. As Engelhardt
argues, to appreciate the destruction of embryos rightly, one must understand this
practice in terms of its full spiritual implications.
16. “TEXIAN. The term Texian is generally used to apply to a citizen of the Anglo-
American section of the province of Coahuila and Texas or of the Republic of Tex-
as. Texian was used in 1835 as part of the title of the Nacogdoches Texian and
Emigrant’s Guide. As president of the Republic, Mirabeau B. Lamar used the term
to foster nationalism. Early colonists and leaders in the Texas Revolution, many of
whom were influential during the Civil War and who were respected as elder
statesmen well into the 1880s, used Texian in English and Texienne in French.
However, in general usage after annexation, Texan replaced Texian. The Texas
Almanac still used the term Texian as late as 1868” (Fletcher, 2009).
17. On March 2, 1836 at Washington on the Brazos,Texas declared its independence
from Mexico citing, among other grievances: “When a government has ceased to
protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate pow-
ers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and
so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable
rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression. When
the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to sup-
port, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their govern-
ment has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative
republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despo-
tism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood,
both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the
usual instruments of tyrants” (March 2, 1836). The complete document can be found
at www.lsjunction.com (accessed July 6, 2009). On April 21, 1836 the Battle of San
Jacinto was the climax of the Texas war of independence against Mexican rule.
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World Medical Association. “Declaration of Helsinki,” 1964, 1975, 1983, 1989, 1996,
2000, 2002, 2004, 2008. Available: http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm (accessed
July 8, 2009).
Part I
Re-reading
Engelhardt:
The Old and the New
Morality in a
Postmodern,
Post-Christian World:
Engelhardt’s Diagnosis and
Therapy
Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes
I. Life with a Plurality of Moralities

The twenty-first century is marked by an explicit moral and metaphysical
disorientation. There is a growing appreciation of the dominant secular cul-
ture’s inability to justify a particular content-full morality or an account of the
final meaning of human life and the cosmos. In this secular culture, isolated
within the horizon of the finite and immanent, humans find themselves embedded
in a seemingly irresolvable plurality of moral perspectives. Richard Rorty
and others have begun to speak the unspeakable: once one is no longer willing
seriously to follow Immanuel Kant and act as if God exists, and once there is
no basis in the end to justify as canonical one account of the right, the good,
and the virtuous, there is also no way to guarantee that the right should
trump the good, or even that moral rationality should have precedence over
prudential rationality. Despite passionate proclamations of moral consensus,
the contemporary condition is marked not only by disagreement, but by the
inability to determine how, through sound and rational argument, moral diver-
sity—indeed, deep moral conflict—can be set aside.
This is H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.’s diagnosis of our cultural condition at
the beginning of the twenty-first century. From his early writings in the 1970s
23
24 Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes
(1973), to his contemporary publications (2006), in diverse venues and in a

wealth of articles and books, Engelhardt persisted in addressing our cultural
predicament. In his two editions of The Foundations of Bioethics, and in The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics, Engelhardt provides a substantive explora-
tion of this state of affairs, first in terms of the resources available in secular
thought (which he takes pains to show are inadequate to the task) and sec-
ond, in terms of the resources available within traditional Christian theology
(a code-word, which he uses alternatively to identify the Christianity of the
first millennium or Orthodox Christianity). When both dimensions of his
work are put together, one is offered two levels of philosophical diagnoses
and of treatment. On the one hand, the author accounts for the fractured char-
acter of our postmodernity, as well as for the practices that transcend its moral
plurality (e.g., the market). Though Engelhardt’s examples are in great pro-
portion drawn from medicine and, therefore, focus on bioethics, his project
encompasses moral philosophy and moral theology. On the other hand, he
accounts for the ultimate disorientation and loss of final meaning that charac-
terizes the dominant secular culture. Engelhardt appreciates that the moral
and metaphysical challenges of postmodernity proceed from the collapse of
Christendom and of Christian metaphysical orientation. He describes this
collapse as linked with the failure of the Western-Christian project of combining
theology with philosophy—a project that he recognizes as having led to the
Enlightenment’s claims regarding the possibility of a universal, rationally
justifiable secular morality.1
In the wake of this collapse, and the failure of the Enlightenment to produce
a moral surrogate for Christianity, many have become disconnected from ulti-
mate meaning. They are lost in the cosmos, as Walker Percy would put it.
Given both those failures, moral pluralism has again become salient. In this
essay, my goal is to lay out the importance of this diagnosis as well as why
many have resisted its truth and its implications.
A. Postmodernity’s nostalgia for the Middle Ages and the
Enlightenment
Taking up MacIntyre’s image of “life among the ruins of the past” (1981;
1984), Engelhardt modifies its meaning so as to confront the puzzling circum-
stance that we live among the ruins of the Middle Ages as well as among the
more recent edifices from the Enlightenment. On the one hand, as Engelhardt
shows, postmodernity is all that is left after nothing else can be justified. On
the other hand, many still are not willing to abstain from asserting the truth
of Enlightenment claims to universal human rights and the capacities of phil-
osophical rationality. Engelhardt’s account of this contradictory cultural situ-
ation runs something like this. Contemporary culture is defined by pressing
moral questions, a plurality of plausible answers, a recognition that there is
no secure way of rationally choosing between them, and—irrespective of all
that—recurring proclamations of a reasonable consensus. To be sure, moral
Morality in a Post-Modern, Post-Christian World 25
pluralism has always been with us. “Post-Babel”-civilizations have always

been confronted with a diversity of incompatible moral norms and narratives.
Yet postmodernity goes deeper. It is the principled abandonment of the hope
to transcend this pluralism. It involves the recognition that secular moral rea-
son is unable to determine whether or when one has adopted the correct
morality. It accepts secular reason’s incompetence to establish the proper
ranking of moral values or right-making conditions. Throughout Engelhar-
dt’s work as teacher and writer, much of his analytic acumen has been devoted
to persuading his audiences and readers of this foundational limit of moral
reason.2 As he argues: to affirm one ranking of values over another presup-
poses a prior endorsement of particular basic moral premises3 and rules of
moral evidence,4 and so on in an infinite regress. As a consequence societies
that have anchored their moral orientation in rationality, now confront post-
modernity. Most persons live within the overlap and conflict of disparate
moralities (see Engelhardt, 1996).
As a result of this development, so Engelhardt argues, serious secular
reflections on morality at the beginning of the twenty-first century are beset
by the awareness that we are not clear about what it means to be serious
about morality, or about how one could gain clarity in moral matters. Somewhat
as in the ancient world, one lives surrounded by a multiplicity of alternative
philosophical accounts and narratives, as well as by a plurality of moral
understandings. There is, however, a crucial difference. The ancient world
never experienced the Western Middle Ages’ institutionalized-religious
canonization of humans’ rational powers, which later encouraged the
Enlightenment’s arrogance of idolizing reason by proclaiming an “Age of
Reason”. Ancient philosophers were, therefore, able to achieve a critical
awareness of the limits of reason (see, for example, Agrippa in Diogenes
Laertius and Sextus Empiricus, as well as Clemens of Alexandria). By con-
trast, the conceits of the Western Middle Ages which form the heritage of our
contemporary cultural impasse had supported an unjustifiable, yet ever
increasing confidence in the capacities of human reason. The immediate result
was a cultural predominance of the institutions of Western Christian faith,
which endorsed as much faith in reason as faith in faith.
Understandably, in the wake of the Western European wars of religion
(i.e., the 1618-48 Thirty Years War on the continent and the 1641-52 Civil Wars
in England), the Enlightenment recommended abandoning faith in faith and
instead maintaining only faith in reason. In the process, the confidence in
natural law reflections that took shape in the thirteenth century and grew in
boldness in the second scholasticism ultimately led to Kant’s conviction, that
from reason he could derive a morality for all persons. It was thus the very
Medieval conviction that one can reason one’s way to an adequate account of
morality and human flourishing, so Engelhardt argues, which was further
developed and affirmed by the Enlightenment. Or, as he also puts it, even
today, the remaining children of the Enlightenment are the legitimate

grandchildren of the Middle Ages.
In Engelhardt’s diagnosis, reason replaced God, and in the end the will to
impose one particular morality or sense of authenticity came to replace reason.
Thus today, in the absence of a canonical reason, each is left with his own
narrative. Postmodernity has not only lost faith in faith, but also faith in reason.
Among its followers, the quest for a universally valid morality reduces to the
will to impose on all any one of the numerous alternative narratives of morality
and human flourishing they themselves have constructed. But postmodernity
also permits them to enter into the sparse normative fabric that Engelhardt
characterizes as the “morality for moral strangers” (Engelhardt, 1996).5 In this
context, Engelhardt discerns multi-dimensional culture wars. On the other
side of the battle field, the legitimate children of the Enlightenment, the fol-
lowers of “modernity,” still cling to their Middle Ages- and Enlightenment-
based faith in reason. They do not wish to recognize that they cannot think
their way out of the cacophony of competing philosophical and moral visions.
It is as if they were screaming at postmodernity, “Please tell me it is not so!”
Not wishing to face the abyss to which Western culture has led, they passion-
ately assert the possibility of a moral consensus. In addition, as we shall
presently see, both parties find themselves over against Western Christianity.
B. Religion in the ruins of the Middle Ages and the remnants of the
Enlightenment
Engelhardt’s cultural diagnosis also extends to the state of religion at the
beginning of the twenty-first century. On the one hand, the failure of reason
is more obvious here. As a matter of historical development, sound rational
argument did not secure the dogmatic truths embraced by the Medieval West.
Instead of securing a basis for religious and moral unity, these criteria proved
unsuccessful not only for silencing heresy but also for establishing a generally
accepted account of natural law. The project broke into the theological contro-
versies of the Protestant Reformation, thus encouraging even further religious
pluralism. On the other hand, at least the hard-core Roman Catholics today
still place their hopes in reason’s ability to reach across divisions of faith. Yet,
even they remember the scholastic difference between a reason that is illu-
mined by faith and the secular reason endorsed by those on the other side.
Accordingly, even hard-core Roman Catholics, encouraged by Vatican II, have
for the most part ceased to assert an unqualified exclusive uniqueness for
their faith. While holding on to the supposed rationality of their faith, and to
the confidence that that rationality reveals religious truth, they had to adjust
to the fact that other faiths—since these are now entitled to their own, very
different truth-claims—may also claim their own, different kinds of rationality.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, one thus finds some Western
Christians who still hold to a medieval faith in reason’s capacities confronting
those who have begun to acknowledge its impossibility.
The Shema (“Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is one” Deut. 6:4) of the
Middle Ages had been “Hear oh world, our faith is one, our reason is one, and
both are in unity.” Confronted with the allures of postmodernity, the contem-
porary religious scene is characterized by a foundational abandonment of the
pursuit of religious or philosophical truth in the singular. Truth has become
plural. This has occurred in two respects. On the one hand, one no longer
speaks as if one were seeking the correct religion in order to find the one ulti-
mate truth. Instead, each religion has become a particular culture with its par-
ticular narratives and its particular claims. On the other hand, even with
regard to the religion of one’s choice, each person has become the crafter of his
own particular version of that religion. Thus it has become popular not to
speak of one’s religion, but of one’s religious tradition, recasting truth-claims
into engaging narratives. One says not only: “I speak as a Methodist, a Roman
Catholic, a Reformed Jew, and so forth,” but, in addition, one feels free to
embellish and recast such traditions in the pursuit of self-realization and self-
fulfillment with others. Religion remains a necessary building-block for some
in their pursuit of a good life, but only as a matter of personal taste. In the
turmoil of postmodernity, religious reflection on right conduct and the deep
nature of being is no longer able to disclose the truth. It is at best useful for
articulating a particular moral perspective that is both recognized as particu-
lar and imposes acquiescence in its particularity. The Shema of the postmod-
ern world is thus, “Hear oh world, our faith and our gods are many, our reason
is plural, and our reason cannot bring unity to our faith!” It is this cultural
impasse, which Engelhardt’s works describe, diagnose, and critically explore.
C. Why Engelhardt’s readers often don’t get it
One can understand Engelhardt’s literary style as motivated by the
attempt to force down the throats of a mostly unwilling readership recogni-
tion of the circumstance that there is neither a univocal secular sense of truth
nor the possibility to justify such a sense either through philosophy or through
mainline Western Christianity. He accounts for this resistance to acknowledg-
ing the inescapability of postmodernity by noting two circumstances. First,
universalist moral claims have a considerable social political market. Moral-
ists, so Engelhardt argues, can more easily advertise themselves as useful
experts, if they claim that there is a common morality, that they are experts
about that common morality, and that they can use that expertise to solve
contemporary moral and public policy problems. Here Engelhardt agrees
with Marx and Engel’s account of the service of ideologies (i.e., for him: the
Enlightenment claims regarding a common morality), so as to characterize
the defenders of any such common morality as “conceptive ideologists”
(Engelhardt, 1996, p. 17 f). Secondly, Engelhardt recognizes what Nietzsche
acknowledges: the horror of facing the abyss. Once the promises of the Middle
Ages and the Enlightenment have failed, it is still not easy, even against this
background, to accept postmodernity.
One can now re-state Engelhardt’s diagnosis: contemporary Western culture

is caught in a conflict between an Enlightenment-generated rationalistic opti-
mism, and the postmodern pessimism concerning the rational accessibility of
truth. In such a culture, persons’ moral life has become a puzzling enterprise:
there are no reliable grounds on which to choose one moral vision over
another. Yet, one cannot escape serious life and death choices. One must
decide whether to have an abortion, to use artificial insemination to have a
child, to have homosexual relations, to use physician-assisted suicide. More-
over, one determines those choices not just for oneself but with others who
may wish to choose differently. How then is one to coordinate such choices
“after truth”, that is, while recognizing an (at least currently) intractable plu-
rality of moral perspectives? How in particular is one coherently to proceed
while facing the persistence of Enlightenment rationalist promises that moral
consensus will be reached in some distant future?
This state of affairs has disturbing implications for the possibility of a
rationally established, canonical morality. Despite proclamations of consensus
or of a perennial core of common moral commitments, persons and communities
are separated by incompatible views about the circumstances under which
one should have sexual relations, bear children, kill the unborn, execute the
guilty, transfer funds from the rich to the impecunious, and euthanatize the
willing, to choose only a few examples. In the face of incompatible rankings
of human goods and right-making conditions, patients, physicians, and the
producers of medical goods, as well as members of a society in general, must
in some fashion collaborate. Here, Engelhardt identifies yet one further
motive for denying the contemporary postmodern condition: given the
resources of postmodernity, if one is to have a secular society, one must either
settle for Engelhardt’s sparse default position of a libertarian, that is, minimal
state (and most people want more), or one must impose more without any
general secular rational justification.
D. A partial summary in anticipation
From the secondary literature concerning Engelhardt’s work and proposals,
it becomes clear that it has been difficult for many readers:
1. to accept his harsh diagnosis regarding the limits of secular moral rationality
and, therefore, the collapse of the Enlightenment project, because of the political
usefulness of the Enlightenment ideology, the fear of the postmodern abyss,
and concern for securing the legitimacy of sufficient political power so as to
establish desired political structures; and
2. to distinguish between his arguments regarding the capacities of secular
moral reason and the possibility of Christian theological knowledge.
First, on the secular philosophical level, to meet the loss of a common
substantive morality, Engelhardt offers a very sparse procedural foundation
(which amounts to what one might call a second order “morality”). This
morality, while not claimed to be rationally compelling in the sense of being

able to establish its goodness by sound rational argument, can still be made
transcendentally compelling in the sense of opening up a possibility for common
collaboration. The practice of drawing authority from the consent of col-
laborators deprives those who violate this rule, that is, who use persons without
their consent, of any coherent rational basis for complaint when they are visited
with defensive or punitive force.
Second, on the theological level, Engelhardt offers a full Christian morality,
that recognizes, pace Plato’s Euthyphro (to whom the author likes to refer), that
the just (and thus by implication also the good, the right, and the virtuous)6
can only be understood in terms of the holy. Engelhardt’s argument here
depends on the empirical claim that there is a nous, and that Christian theolo-
gians can and do know noetically. As a consequence, what he offers in his
account of Christian morality are conclusions not from sound rational
arguments but from the empirical data of noetic theology.
Both projects, so I shall argue, form two sides of a single coin. That is to
say, the Engelhardt of The Foundations of Bioethics and the Engelhardt of The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics offer complementary views of the human
condition. These views not only allow us to reconcile ourselves to the loss of
the Enlightenment project that had shaped modernity, but they allow us also
morally to transcend postmodernity. Engelhardt offers us not only a clear
diagnosis of our paradoxical modern/postmodern condition, but also of how
we can get beyond it. Each of these two works is developed in response to one
of the two most fundamental questions confronting thinkers at the beginning
of the twenty-first century, namely: What, if anything, can secular rationality
tell us concerning what we can know, what we ought to do, and what we can
hope for? And: What can Christianity show us about what, Whom, and how
we can know, what we ought to do, and what we can hope for ?
The two remaining parts of my essay (II and III) address these questions.
In each case, I shall lay out first (A) the force of Engelhardt’s diagnostic
account, then (B) his conclusions and insights for (in Part II) secular or (in Part
III) Christian morality and bioethics, and finally (C) the challenges which
Engelhardt’s work on each of the two levels has presented for contemporary
mainstream thinkers.
II. Morality in Secular Philosophy

A. The Western theological roots of the secular project—from
Thomas Aquinas to Immanuel Kant and Gianni Vattimo
Though postmodernity is a period in intellectual history, Engelhardt
takes pains to indicate that it is also the perennial human epistemic condition
after Adam’s fall. He concedes that dominating ideologies and historical
circumstances have often obscured this state of affairs (e.g., the high Western
Middle Ages’ and the Enlightenment’s faith in reason). It is for this reason
that he treats the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment as contingent cultural
perspectives (i.e., perspectives that, as a matter of history, happen to be prior
to our own). We have simply collapsed back into the saliently irreducible moral
pluralism that constitutes the post-Fall condition, and that is once again recog-
nized by postmodernity. Engelhardt thus sketches how the theological, moral,
and metaphysical premises embraced in the Western Middle Ages were
doomed to failure in spite of the Enlightenment’s attempt to bring rescue.
Thus with postmodernity, we have returned to a realization of what
Engelhardt might term our epistemological fate. Still, that realization in the
twenty-first century draws its particularly confusing and incoherent charac-
ter from the circumstance that it combines insight regarding the failure of
human reason with nostalgia for the promises of those two preceding peri-
ods, the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment. For contemporary morality,
and bioethics in particular, all of this implies that moral and bioethical the-
ory must make sense of both our general human condition and of the his-
torical events shaping that condition. In addition to that two-dimensionality,
Engelhardt’s genealogy of philosophical postmodernity, in a quasi-Hegelian
sense, plays on two levels. One level contains Engelhardt’s account of what
happened in the realm of ideas, stated from the standpoint of an outside
observer (quasi an sich). The second level delineates how these ideal devel-
opments became reflected upon by the philosophical agents who played
their role as part of those developments (quasi becoming für sich). Engelhardt’s
analysis of the persistence of intellectual commitments to the rationalistic
dreams of modernity, finally (and beyond those two levels), singles out West-
ern Christianity’s own historical contribution to the genesis of those dreams.
He thus, as one might say, exposes that philosophized theology as Christianity’s
own gravedigger.
1. Developments in the field of ideas
Engelhardt defines the morality of postmodernity as the experience and
acceptance of the rupture from the Western Medieval and Enlightenment
promise of normative orientation. He describes this rupture in view of its
contingent history (a) and its inner logic (b).
a) As Engelhardt argues, the miscarriage of reason as a historical event
issued from Western Christian theology having engaged in a novel project of
integrating philosophy’s resources into the framing of theological truth. From
its beginning, Christianity had always recognized that Truth is a person, not
a set of propositions. Access to this personal truth is gained through the unifying
experience of Divine love. It presupposes (or at least imposes ex post) the hard
work of ascetic struggle and personal spiritual purification. As Western
Christianity took shape in the early second millennium, a complex of political
and social forces began to frame a new Christian culture with new expectations.
In the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, a liaison was forged between
Christian theology and ancient secular Western philosophy.7
In his account of this history, Engelhardt selects the works of such early
scholastics as Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1225-1274) to show how his reception of
Aristotelian philosophy contributed to a turning-point in Western cultural
and religious understandings. As Engelhardt playfully depicts the affair, the
comely lass philosophy offered the allure of providing theology an easy, i.e.,
merely cognitive access to ultimate truths. She could, without the hard work
of ascetic dedication, disclose to theology the general structure of being.
Among her beautiful allures were those of general metaphysics—a new queen
of the sciences that supposedly possessed truths no empirical knower could
secure but which philosophy would reveal to her obedient lover. She also
offered special philosophical charms, such as those of rational psychology
and natural theology. She guaranteed to show theology the very nature of the
soul, rationally exposing its immortality. She promised rational proofs for the
existence of God, so that one no longer needed to experience God, or person-
ally know Him. Instead, one could study at the new universities and come to
know about God in ample rational detail.
The difficulty with this as with many seductions was, so Engelhardt
maintains, that the comely lover was not able to deliver all she had promised.
Reason turned out not to have the ability, independently of an already estab-
lished faith, to secure a general metaphysics. Reason could not disclose the
basic structure of reality in a way that went beyond the powers of ordinary
empirical science. In time, general metaphysics became replaced by funda-
mental physics. Nor could philosophy deliver on her claims on behalf of
rational psychology. Instead, her rational assertions about the soul shattered
into a pluralism of paralogisms, a multiplicity of different and incompatible
“rational” accounts of the soul. Moreover, and worst of all, philosophy turned
out not to be true and constant to her lover theology. Or rather she was faithful
to theology in her own way, in a way that satisfied each philosopher’s desire
to develop his own speculative framework, thus engendering multiple
competing philosophies and theologies.
In the historical sections of The Foundations of Bioethics, Bioethics and Secular
Humanism and The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, Engelhardt lays out how the
promises born of the Western Middle Ages came to engender the Enlightenment
and, along with it, modernity. Here ‘modernity’ is understood as the Western
philosophical pursuit of truth, once that pursuit has been separated from its
theological origin. Already during the Enlightenment, the comely handmaiden
philosophy had tired of her liaison with theology and had come to demand
that her claims provide knowledge in their own right. Thus modernity
becomes understandable as a further continuation of the Enlightenment’s
continuation of medieval scholasticism’s promise that human rationality,
without appeal to theology or faith, can lay out a universal account of morality
and the ultimate meaning of things.
b) On a philosophical level, philosophy’s liaison with theology involved a
crucial transformation of the theological concept of knowledge. Thomas
Aquinas, along with the scholastics and secular philosophers who followed
him, gradually distanced themselves from a core original Christian claim
regarding the nature of knowledge. This claim had originally encompassed
not only theology as such, but through theology it also encompassed man’s
relationship to the world and to his soul. As Engelhardt makes clear through
greater detail in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, Christians had always
taken for granted that there are three ways in which humans know reality: 1)
through sense experience, subsequently reflected upon and systematized, as
exemplified in empirical physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine; 2) through
discursive analysis, as exemplified in logic, mathematics, and geometry; 3)
through noetically (i.e., non-sensibly) experienced self-revelation of God Him-
self, and through the light this Divine light sheds on man’s spiritual and moral
concerns. This latter kind of knowledge can be found exemplified in the theo-
logical experience and subsequent insights and writings of the holy saints of
Christianity, e.g., St. John the Evangelist , St. Ephraim of Syria (306-373 A.D.),
St. Isaac of Syria (seventh century), St. Gregory of Nazianzus (330-389 A.D.),
and St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022 A.D.).
The philosophical transformation of what it means to know subsequently
reduced what traditional Christianity had conceived as a union of love (i.e.,
between God and man), to a matter of merely theoretical cognition. It intro-
duced a separation between the knowing subject and the object of its knowl-
edge. Christianity had always affirmed that man knows God insofar as he is
known by God, thus reserving the superior position for God, the ultimate
telos of human efforts at knowing. By contrast, the increasingly secular philo-
sophical assumptions, when integrated into the scholastic account of theology,
gave rise to an interpretation of theological knowledge, according to which
the knowing subject attempts to grasp mentally, and thus conceptually mas-
ter, its (inferior) object of knowledge. What should have been a deep personal
relationship became a detached endeavor at objectification. Moreover, since
the Divine “object” must from the very start be defined as transcendent, it
must in principle remain beyond the grasp of the merely finite concepts acces-
sible to a finite knower. Not surprisingly, Engelhardt can, therefore, show
how Western theology fragmented in a plurality of theologies.
Considered from this perspective, postmodernity results from the rec-
ognition that the philosophical, i.e., the discursively rational, search for ulti-
mate truth inevitably fails. This failure discloses the inherent absurdity of the
hope that a philosophical theology could discursively know truth with a capi-
tal T, or know Truth in its native transcendence. Confronted with such transcen-
dence, humans’ inescapably immanent discursive rationality can veil its
impotence only by multiplying its attempts, thus disintegrating into a plural-

ity of equally abortive, and in this respect equally “plausible,” constructions of
truth.
2. Reflections on the limits of knowledge
As a result of these developments, the West lost sight of man’s capacity as
knower to come into union with the One by Whom he had been designed for
knowledge of Him. Western philosophy, as Engelhardt makes clear, progres-
sively found itself isolated within the sphere of sense-experience. Having
become disconnected from the possibility of recognizing, much less experi-
encing, the personal ground of all being, God, one was no longer able coher-
ently to talk of knowing reality in itself. What Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
would later term the “thing in itself,” what lies behind sense experience,
could no longer with assurance be known. Accordingly, the “object for us”
was no longer assuredly connected to what the object is “in itself.” Thomas
Aquinas had naively integrated into his account of knowledge the Aristote-
lian philosophical assumption that the agent intellect could abstract the ousia,
the quidditas, the essence of what was known, from sense experience. With
Hume and Kant, the subjectivity of knowledge claims became clear. The
philosophical problem then arose of how rationally to justify one’s claims
about the objective “reality in itself.” One knew one was affected by one’s
sense-impressions, imagined some sensible species. But how could one know
that one knew the truth “behind” such sensible species? How could one be
sure that one “knew” the intelligible species one claimed to know, and which
supposedly lay at the basis of one’s natural law and discursive theological
claims, if all one actually had were sense impressions?
In Engelhardt’s account, the major thinkers who responded to these questions
were (a) Hume, (b) Kant, and (c) Hegel.
a) The very path of discursive rational reflection, into which Aquinas and
his colleagues had invited the West, ultimately led to the critical onslaughts of
David Hume (1711-1776). Hume recognized that if the knower could not
immediately know the known, then one could only speak of sense impres-
sions, the ideas they leave, the de facto mental habits through which we deal
with them, and the internal logic of our discursive powers. One could not
know that which was making the impressions. Only the impressions were
left. Apart from appeals to a uniform “human nature,” which could not in
turn be empirically asserted but only imposed (as it were) as an interpretive
perspective, one remained confined to, and also isolated from others within,
the deliverances of one’s sensibility and the formal capacities of one’s reason.
None of these could assure philosophy that it could secure access to reality
itself.
b) Reacting to this ultimate exposition of the rupture between the knower
and the known, Kant offered the stop-gap measure of promising at least the
grammar of an objectivity, now transformed into mere inter-subjectivity.
Confined within that inter-subjectivity, Kant nevertheless, as it were, still ges-

tured beyond what he could claim to know within the sphere of sensible
empirical experience, to the subject in itself, to the object in itself, and even to
God. All of these are proclaimed as thinkable, even indispensable for solving
certain antinomies of reason, but in principle not knowable.
c) Hegel (1770-1831), as Engelhardt explains, goes beyond Kant and
anticipates Wittgenstein.8 He recognizes: “that about which one cannot speak
one must be silent.”9 If one cannot speak of the subject in himself, the object
in itself, and God as noumenally transcendent, then any Kantian gesturing
towards the “thing in itself” (or to the noumenon) is vain. All philosophical
discourse must be resolutely confined within the sphere of the immanent, the
sphere of inter-subjectivity. This is Hegel’s ‘Golgotha of the spirit’ (Schädel-
stätte, 1952, p. 564). Transcendence is crucified and resurrected within
the immanence of Hegel’s dialectic. Thus Hegel brings being in itself, the
subject in itself, and God, within the ambit of human reflection. As a
consequence, systematic human reflection on reality, or being, along with the
recognition of the limitations of that reflection, is presented as “absolute
thought.” That is, the philosophical standpoint becomes that standpoint from
which one can recognize and diagnose categorial one-sidedness and
incompleteness, all within the sphere of the immanent. This categorial (albeit
non-transcendental) standpoint is as much of an absolute standpoint as one
can achieve. Absolute thought thus presents the final perspective, once
humans are understood as isolated within the horizon of the finite and
the immanent.
Moreover, as Engelhardt interprets him, Hegel initiates the recognition
that all knowledge of natural and social reality is constituted within a cultur-
al-historical context. Thus, as our basic understandings of reality change,
reality itself changes, because for Hegel there is no possibility of thinking of
reality, or reality-being-for-thought, beyond our categories. As a further con-
sequence, all revolutions in the understanding of natural and social reality
depend upon revolutions in basic categories.10 Because, as was noted above,
there is no “thing in itself,” no noumenal world outside our categories, of
which, for Hegel, one can think, much less speak, Hegel’s reflections lie at the
roots of postmodernity in his recognition that there cannot be one normative
inter-subjectivity, as Kant had hoped. Moreover, Hegel holds that one can
categorically apprehend the character of categorical thought. Thus his recog-
nition (the perspective of absolute Spirit) of the cultural-historical embedded-
ness of the categories is not itself simply a deliverance of a particular culture
at a particular time. The Kantian “objectivity-as-inter-subjectivity” fragments
into a plurality of inter-subjectivities, once knowledge is recognized as socially
and historically constituted. Each perspective has its own categories, its own
dialectic, its own hermeneutic, its own logic of inter-subjectivity. All facts
become interpretations. It is this Hegelian immanentization of the thing in
itself, the subject in itself, and God, along with the recognition that objectivity
as inter-subjectivity is plural, in which Engelhardt discerns even explicit pre-
monitions of postmodernity. It is not for nothing, so Engelhardt points out,
that Richard Rorty (1989) and Gianni Vattimo (2002; 2005) acknowledge
indebtedness to Hegel.
3. The tragedy of Western Christianity
Beyond offering philosophical arguments and historical analyses on its
two quasi-Hegelian levels, The Foundations of Bioethics seeks to wake up its
readers to a crucial insight: it was not merely the philosophical reliance on the
powers of human discursive rationality (merely as such), which in the end
led to an exorcising of Christianity, and its exclusion from both the religious
and the moral culture of the West. At bottom much more importantly, this
downfall was initiated by the Medieval venture of linking theology itself with
discursive rationality. It was this linking, after all, which had induced Enlight-
enment thinkers, irrespective of all their anti-clerical and anti-Christian pas-
sions, to believe that they could still, by rational means exclusively, secure the
general lineaments of that very morality, which had previously been endorsed
by (and was taken to constitute the lasting contribution of) Christianity. One
thus finds Immanuel Kant drawing out of his appeals to that which can be
rationally universalized all the moral constraints to which he in his youth
had been committed as a Protestant Pietist.
Obviously, most secular moral thinkers today no longer accept many of
those (Christianity-derived) moral norms (especially with regard to sexual-
ity) which Kant had presented as universally compelling. These norms have
come to be discounted and Kant’s faith in their rational character exposed as
illusionary. In fact, the indebtedness of a person’s supposedly rational insights
to his early socialization had already been recognized by David Hume (1973,
pp. 176 n. 293), and subsequently invoked by him against “Christian rational-
ism” (1973, pp. 456 ff). Still, and even though contemporary secular thinkers
frequently impute particular “religious prejudices” to their purportedly
“rational” Christian discussion partners, these secular thinkers also, despite
the culturally postmodern, pluralist spirit of our times, tend to endorse
modernity’s moral project. They still entertain the hope that an at least remotely
Christianity-congruent content-full moral common sense can be rationally
grounded as universally valid.
Engelhardt in great detail shows that this project of securing the secular
equivalent of a Christian morality is philosophically impossible. As the most
plausible candidate for having achieved a universally compelling moral
account, Engelhardt focuses on Kant’s attempt to ground morality in rational-
ity. Kant, assuming that a merely formal principle of universalizability could
also secure moral content, attempts to lay out a morality for all rational beings,
irrespective of their time and place. Yet, in spite of Kant’s proclamations to the
contrary, all that can be made rationally to follow from that principle is a
morality which, as will become clear in the next section, closely resembles
Engelhardt’s own second-order morality of mutual consent. Or, to use a Kan-
tian term, the focus is on the non-instrumentalization that Engelhardt also
endorses, though Engelhardt’s grounding is in the will, not in reason. Kant’s
principle of non-instrumentalization prohibits killing the un-consenting inno-
cent for sport. Yet, even though Kant wished it otherwise, that same principle
cannot prohibit the killing of those who consent, as Engelhardt shows. And
even though Kant wished it otherwise, his own principle denies intrinsic
moral status to all those humans who cannot will, and who thus are not moral
agents or persons in the Kantian sense. As a consequence, even though Kant
never acknowledged this circumstance, his principle not only fails to justify
the prohibition of abortion, but also fails in view of infanticide. It cannot
coherently prohibit assisted suicide and euthanasia—even though Kant
surely wanted it otherwise. Once one faces this predicament, one finds one-
self returned to a situation which in many ways resembles the moral fabric of
the pagan world before the advent of Christendom.
As Engelhardt emphasizes, his exposition is meant not only to bring the
reader’s attention to the limits of what can be rationally prohibited or demanded
by secular morality. He also insists on the circumstance that it had originally
been Western Christianity’s ratification of the turn to secular (ancient and at
the same time pre-skeptical) philosophy in the Middle Ages, which deluded
thinkers into thinking that one can think one’s way to ultimate truth. It had
been this theological alliance with pagan philosophy, which had endowed the
quest for discursive rationality with a quasi metaphysical authorization, thus
feeding, to this day, the unjustifiable Western faith in the moral competence of
human reason. Even after the loss of Christian faith, it is this faith in reason
which is responsible for most contemporary moral thinkers’ resistance against
the challenge of recognizing postmodernity.
B. Engelhardt’s second-order moral framework—or a morality
beyond particular moralities
1. The principle of permission as the ground of a default morality
Unlike Rorty and Vattimo, more like Hegel (in his model of the bürgerliche
Gesellschaft, 1972, pp. 168 ff, Part III, section II, §§ 182 ff), and yet against Wit-
tgenstein, Engelhardt points out that underneath the multiplicity of cultural
interpretations of what one ought to do, a sparse secular grammar of gram-
mars can be preserved for secular morality. This grammar discloses a secular
morality not as THE morality, but as a second-order “morality” into which all
can enter, despite their diverse particular (first-order) moralities. It offers a
shred of what the Middle Ages had hoped to attain through a deep harmony
of faith, moral rationality, and metaphysics, and what the Enlightenment had
hoped to achieve in a rational post-Christian morality. But of course this shred
also radically transforms those historical aspirations. Engelhardt’s second-

order morality is set against, and recognizes the existence of, the plurality of
(first-order) moralities that are concerned with moral content and particular
rankings of human goods and right-making conditions. His formal, or proce-
dural, “morality” is designed for those who wish to speak across the plurality
of moralities, and who are ready to discount the rational moral project that
has gone aground in postmodernity. All it requires is that one rely on mutual
consent, that is, on each other’s permission. Let us look, first (a) at that prin-
ciple’s content and basis, then (b) at the conditions for its applicability.
a) Engelhardt’s second-order “morality-of-mutual-consent” is not posited
as foundational. Instead, he shows that it discloses a transcendental possibil-
ity which can be entered into out of an indefinite number of motives, rational
perspectives, and narratives. It is de facto entered into from an innumerable
number of motives. It is grounded in the will to collaborate (for whatever rea-
son11). This dimension relies on affirming only one right-making condition,
one that lies beyond all reasoning about the good, the right, and the virtuous;
namely, the will to authorize collaboration. The Engelhardt of The Foundations
of Bioethics thus accepts much of the diagnosis of the postmodernists. At the
same time, however, he offers a sparse step beyond them. He offers the pos-
sibility of a “game,”12 a “practice” into which one can will to enter, for what-
ever reason, thus securing a common (if only second-order) moral world
(bound by such practices as the market). Engelhardt recognizes that he can-
not show that it is good, right, or in any sense generally rationally attractive
to enter into this world or practice. In fact, he would be violating the rules of
the language-game he proposes were he to do so.13
Engelhardt shows that recognizing the possibility of this inter-subjectivity
of wills, not of reasons, discloses the only (if meager) universalizable justifica-
tion (in will) and availability of a possible common moral world. Atheists,
capitalists, persons living in socialist communes, Amish, Orthodox Jews, and
persons with no coherent moral vision whatsoever, though separated by dis-
parate understandings of the moral life, can collaborate in institutional struc-
tures, whose authorization and justification lies simply in the participants’
will to collaborate. Naturally each of the particular collaborators will have his
own view of why he is collaborating. But from the perspective of the whole,
the whole is simply a concourse of wills for which no particular reason can be
given.
b) In a primary sense, these wills are the wills of individuals who are
recognizably “moral persons,” i.e., able to have a will of their own and make
it known to others. They must have a minimal appreciation of moral respon-
sibility.14 In thus focusing on moral personhood, Engelhardt takes up a Kan-
tian theme, without however adopting Kant’s philosophical commitments to
“moral freedom.” Unlike with Kant, therefore, Engelhardt’s (second-order)
moral persons are not morally enjoined to exercise their autonomy in a lonely
(and merely rational-humanity-cushioned) manner. Engelhardtian persons

may indeed will to give up even their entitlement (or specified areas of their
ability to assert their will) to others. These others can be individuals (with
whom a nucleus for a new moral community is thus created) or already estab-
lished communities.
Such communities determine the social space in which morality in its full,
object level, content-filled and goods-securing sense can be realized. In (estab-
lishing or) entering such communities (or in ratifying their membership in
case they were born or socialized into one), individuals exercise their second-
order autonomy in voluntarily subjecting themselves to the norms and values
of these communities. Individuals construe their moral responsibility along-
side these communal terms. As a result, the will to collaborate and the entitle-
ment to have one’s consent considered can also be exercised by moral
communities, just as by individuals.15
2. The heuristic value of the principle of permission
Understanding this transcendental framework for justification and this
availability of two tiers of possible moral interaction has also a heuristic value.
On the tier of second-order “morality”, this framework allows one to appreci-
ate the rationale behind those practices which, as a matter of fact, bind “moral
strangers.” Engelhardt uses this concept of moral strangers for those inhabit-
ants of the postmodern world who live morally isolated from one another,
without a common view of the good, of morality, or human flourishing. Peo-
ple who are moral strangers to one another may spend the bulk of their lives
as members of their different “home” moral communities (with their respec-
tive particular rankings of values and right-making conditions). But people
can be moral strangers to one another also if they have decided to do without
(or gleefully affirm their independence from) any moral community whatso-
ever. In that case, they will usually even marry moral strangers and produce
children who are moral strangers to their parents. Such (non-community-
bound) persons can be observed all over the world. Indeed, and despite the
morally fragmented character of their own cultural context, they still frame
agreements with one another as well with those who are strangers to them
but who belong to moral communities. All such mutual strangers can still
enter into the market, and sometimes constitute very limited constitutional
democracies. The project of The Foundations of Bioethics is to lay out the gram-
mar, geography, and limits of this fabric of agreements. It is this fabric of
agreements which de facto binds moral strangers across the globe. Thus,
Engelhardt (second-order-morally) reconstructs a set of important successful
practices and gives an account of their possible justification.
On the tier of first-order morality, the permission-principle’s heuristic
function concerns the many different moralities that bind those who are moral
friends to one another, as they are viewed from the outside. By “moral friends”
Engelhardt identifies those who share common moral premises and rules of
evidence, so that they can come to common moral conclusions and/or com-
monly recognized persons who are in authority to resolve moral controver-
sies. Those who are truly moral friends in this sense live in moral community.
They embrace one common particular morality, along with (for example) its
bioethics. Of course, Engelhardt recognizes that many, if not most persons
live morally incoherent lives, unclear as to which moral communities, if any,
they wish to give their overriding allegiance. Moreover, many, if not most
moral communities are in various levels of disarray. Postmodernity, as already
observed, is the condition in which one finds oneself somewhere on the spec-
trum between either partaking in one among many surrounding moral com-
munities, or in the chaotic territory between these communities, where one
lives deprived of an integrated, persistent, and clear understanding of one’s
own moral life and of the proper character of human flourishing. Engelhar-
dt’s second-order “morality of consent” provides a conceptual device that
allows one to navigate the moral chaos defining our contemporary culture.
3. Political implications
Engelhardt’s permission-principle thus authorizes the delegation of individ-
ual autonomy to communities, but requires that this delegation be actual,
not rational-hypothetical. This leads Engelhardt (a) to a critique of Kant’s
crypto-Christian (yet at the same time particular community hostile) endorse-
ment of (a very particularly conceived) human dignity which Kant engages
for normatively framing a universal community based on hypothetical ratio-
nal concurrence. This same requirement (b) implies that morally acceptable
states are restricted to those with a thin, libertarian structure.
a) Engelhardt criticizes contemporary political “liberalism” (i.e., the liber-
alism of social democracies), with its particular moral endorsement of free-
dom as a value (i.e., as placed within the context of commitments to equality,
security, and prosperity). It is by reference to such particular values in par-
ticular hierarchies that thickly “liberal” polities seek to justify their society-
wide acknowledgement of extensive claim-rights. These rights are posited so
as to provide each member with the material resources necessary for his
“proper” self-realization (i.e., as determined by some theory of the good, and
rationally-hypothetically justified, in view of its securing conditions for the
material implementation of individual freedom). In such non-sparse “liberal”
polities, both the provision of material goods and the reference to supposedly
rational values (the one on the practical, the other on the ideological level)
discourage communal life by construing the state as a community. On the
practical level, the endeavor societally to satisfy supposed claim-rights
imposes a burden of taxes to finance the needed goods and services. It thus
drains away resources necessary for private investment in the community-
based provision of goods and services. On the ideological level, the thick
“liberal” (e.g., social-democratic) invocation of the canonical character and

value of a particular (i.e., individualistic and hedonistic) view of human flour-
ishing (as supposedly grounded in some account of rationality or the reason-
able) presupposes the endorsement of a particular view of liberty which
undermines communal (i.e., non-“liberal”) life when this is considered as
illiberally confining and/or as a threat to a human dignity.16
At the same time, the (non-sparsely) liberal endorsement of such a (sup-
posedly universally agreed upon) particular value of individual freedom
repudiates the very possibility of lasting moral commitments. Such commit-
ments, after all, characteristically reduce a person’s resources for arbitrary
changes of mind. Engelhardt’s permission principle, by contrast, tolerates
both individual (spontaneous, inclination-based, a-moral) and community-
oriented (i.e., possibly normative) action.
b) While any (non-sparsely) “liberal” protection of individual freedom (in
the sense of preserved or enhanced autonomy-resources) transforms polities
themselves into (forced membership-) hybrid-moral communities, Engelhar-
dt’s permission principle imposes a fundamental distinction: real moral com-
munities are private, polities are public. Whereas communities exist within
the moral space sustained by the second order “morality” grounded in the
consent of moral strangers, the secular moral justification of political action
(by some individuals in the name of, and authorized by, the polity) is not
simply problematic but insecurable.17
To be sure, a polity that is based on the actual concurrence of its members
(i.e., as persons who use each other only with consent) would enjoy that con-
currence that binds the participants in the market. In such a case, no true
community (e.g., no group of persons sharing common basic moral premises
and rules of evidence) would have come into existence. Merely a sparse and
limited framework of collaboration would have been created, which, among
other things, could maintain a rule of law. Politically constituted societies,
however, as they actually exist today, cannot invoke such a justification.18 To
the extent that such secular political societies can be “morally” justified at
all—and Engelhardt leaves the question, whether this is indeed the case,
pointedly open—they can assume at most the character of very thin, libertarian
states. Political force in such states may be used exclusively for enforcing
(externally through defense, and internally through the police) the principle
of permission. Any additional engagements, which Engelhardt discusses
under the heading of a hypothetical public provision of health care, would
have to be restricted to those circumstances in which, mirabile factu, the state
came into the possession of independent collective resources which could then
be distributed in whatever way the polity determined. Engelhardt’s (at most)
secular libertarian orientation is thus not only based on his arguments con-
cerning the lack of rationally compelling grounds for any more invasive use
of political power. It is also based on his insight into the (voluntary) communal
framework on which any substantial and (if only parochially) defensible

moral claims must rely.
C. Challenges to the cultural environment—or why Engelhardt’s
philosophical work is so divisive
The resistance with which many of Engelhardt’s readers have met his
arguments can be explained by the extent to which these arguments go
against the grain of contemporary social democratic liberal culture. In par-
ticular, Engelhardt’s account (1) undermines the plausibility of the secular
project of moral progress in favor of (2) a recognition of and resignation to the
inevitability of postmodernity.
1. The “iconoclastic” impact of Engelhardt’s arguments
Engelhardt denounces as futile what most of his academic colleagues (not
even to speak of politicians and other participants in the public discourse)
continue to affirm: the possibility of a global moral consensus (Engelhardt,
2006). What should mostly scandalize his modernity-endorsing readers who
have transferred their religious faithfulness to the affirmation of a global
moral consensus is his insistence on the rational intractability of moral diver-
sity. The challenges operate on both the conceptual (a) and the political (b)
level.
a) Engelhardt’s important recognition of the persistence of moral plural-
ism provokes conceptual resistance. Typically, those who believe in the pos-
sibility of moral consensus counter this threat against their (supposedly uni-
versal) authority as secular philosophers by restricting dis-sensus to the realm
of less essential fringe-values. They affirm some common core, or overlap-
ping consensus among the many different moral accounts Engelhardt has
taken such pains to expose as mutually incompatible. Among the various
candidates for such supposedly crucial common values are honesty, health,
social inclusion, tolerance, beneficence, mutual recognition in view of one’s
human dignity, or, to include the more down to earth utilitarian voice, the
satisfaction of basic needs in their survival-privileging, Maslow-defined order.
A prominent exponent of such attempts at limiting the dis-sensus creating
impact of moral pluralism is Hans Küng’s pan-religious world ethos, or also
Beauchamp and Childress’ discounting the diversity of theoretical contexts
by focusing on the supposed “middle-level” principles of justice, autonomy,
beneficence and equality.19
In his critique of such attempts, Engelhardt notes that even if all persons
share concerns for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, their
ordering such moral concerns in different lexical rankings will generate differ-
ent moralities. There will be the affirmation of different moral maxims regard-
ing the major choices in life. It is by reference to the diverse ordering of values
and right-making conditions (including the different content that different
persons give to such values and conditions—not to mention that some persons
affirm still further special moral concerns, as with respect to the clean and
unclean), that Engelhardt accounts for the diversity of public views regarding
such issues as when one may or ought to take human life (e.g., the allowabil-
ity of abortion and the appropriateness of capital punishment) or to have
carnal conversations (e.g., whether homosexual unions are morally permis-
sible). Humans manifestly do not share a common morality, if one means by
that a common set of settled moral judgments about the major moral choices
that confront individuals. The persistent invocation of a common morality
and common middle level moral principles very likely rests in the political
rhetorical effectiveness of such claims. As Engelhardt has pointed out, if one
wishes to convince others that they should comply with one’s moral vision, it
is likely very effective to advance the claim that one’s proposals are grounded
in a universal morality and, when establishing ethics commissions, to
populate them with persons who will endorse one’s morality and its
consequences.
b) The political and social consequences of the irredeemable moral pluralism
that Engelhardt discloses are quite unwelcome. Most post-Enlightenment
political thought rests on the claim that political authority can be justified by
sound rational argument, and thus in a universally compelling manner. The
political agenda this account would support rests on precisely what Engelhardt
disputes, at least insofar as such political authority is claimed to transcend the
limits of a libertarian state. Such political accounts hope to be able to justify a
network of human rights, even claim-rights, which are supposed to respond
to an equally rationally required respect for human dignity. With Engelhar-
dt’s refutation of the possibility of such universally compelling grounds for a
common secular morality and for the moral authority for the secular state,
such states’ claim to legitimacy collapses.
Moreover, if Engelhardt is right, there are no good reasons left for disre-
garding or denouncing as “exotic” or “deviant” any one of the still extant
moralities endorsed by traditionalist minorities (e.g., the Amish and polyga-
mous Mormons). All those supposed “splinter-groups” or archaic societies,
which had seemed negligible once human progress appeared to be moving in
the direction of secular moral universals, are suddenly re-instated into the
respectability of an equal intellectual footing. These moral minorities can thus
no longer be subjected to the humiliating charge of extremism and funda-
mentalism. They can no longer be silenced by the demand that they should
de-traditionalize their commitments to advance to the stage of contributors of
a civilized, i.e., enlightened, diversity. These moral minorities, instead, sud-
denly appear justified in making their non-enlightened voices heard, and
appear entitled, both globally20 and nationally, to the peaceful enjoyment of
the normative freedom rights embraced by the moral majority. All of this, as
Engelhardt points out, increases the puzzles a moral thinker has intellectually
to confront.
2. The moral seriousness affirmed in Engelhardt’s philosophical work

Those contemporary thinkers, who have resigned themselves to the moral
relativism of postmodernity, will find not only Engelhardt’s proposal of a
second-order “morality” (a), but also (and especially) his first-order moral
commitments (b) morally embarrassing.
a) Those postmodern thinkers who have recognized the impossibility of
securing a canonical moral position through sound rational argument, and
have as a consequence become moral relativists, will find Engelhardt’s posi-
tion troubling. They accept the particular moral bias of each culture or reli-
gious tradition as given and—from these cultures’ respective standpoints—
even inevitable. Since no moral resources are acknowledged outside of such
particular milieus, the various peaceful or violent ways, in which such com-
munities affect one another, can only be described, not evaluated outside the
commitments of that particular community. There are thus no general, secu-
lar, rational grounds left for justifying one genre of political structure (say,
democracy) in comparison to another (say, oligarchy). There are as well no
general secular rational grounds for establishing liberal instead of “fascist”
communities. Challenged to disclose the implication of their abandonment of
any general moral perspective, consistent postmodernists often become
implicit defenders of the “rule of the stronger.”
Engelhardt’s insistence on a—even if “default” and “second-order”—
procedural morality exposes such accounts of postmodernity as unnecessar-
ily pessimistic. He offers a secular moral perspective, from which moral dis-
tinctions (including moral distinctions amongst competing political structures)
can still be made. Engelhardt can both recognize the intractability of moral
diversity and yet offer a moral framework for judging the proper and improper
use of persons. Here Engelhardt salvages a remnant, albeit content-less,
of the Enlightenment’s project of disclosing a secular morality open to all.
b) In fact, as will turn out in the third part of my essay, Engelhardt remains
a moral absolutist in two senses. As just discussed, he insists that all persons,
whether or not they are postmodernists, have the ability to enter into a clus-
ter of moral practices (e.g., limited democracies with no content-full view of
justice and fairness, the free market, etc.). Authoritative collaboration (where
the authority is drawn from the concurrence of the collaborators) is main-
tained, so that a transcendental moral perspective is—pace Rorty—preserved
for secular morality. Even more, The Foundations of Christian Bioethics makes
clear that, in addition to affirming this secular second-order morality, Engel-
hardt refuses to posit a logical transition from the irresolvable secular moral
pluralism to the unavoidability of first-order moral relativism. As becomes
clear from this latter work, Engelhardt is not a metaphysical moral skeptic:
he does not deny the existence of an ultimate moral truth. His account of the
pluralism that characterizes secular morality is grounded in a (secularly
moral) epistemological skepticism: a recognition of the inability of secular
rationality to establish a canonical secular moral vision by sound rational

argument.
Among the various consequences of this position, two deserve particular
emphasis.
1. Members of particular traditional moral communities need not in the face of
moral pluralism internalize the postmodern view that all moral accounts and
narratives are equal, thus discounting the seriousness of the moral claims
made within their own moral community.
2. Christians in reflecting on the status of their moral claims not only can, but
should recognize their claims as not relative to being Christian, but relative
to the special epistemic resources of the Christian community which invites
all other human beings into membership.
Engelhardt’s formal permission principle thus protects the seriousness of
existing content-full moralities against their (thickly liberal) destruction in
the name of affirmative tolerance.
Accordingly, in reserving the term “moral friends” to members of closely
knit moral communities, Engelhardt exposes the dismal estrangement that
characterizes postmodern existence in the cultural space between intact moral
communities. He refuses to celebrate the postmodern condition which confronts
us as an outcome of modernity’s collapse.21 He thus exposes the contempo-
rary mainstream’s commitment to an individualistic pursuit of self-satisfac-
tion and self-realization (shorn of rightly ordered communal life) as a mark of
hollow-ness and broken-ness. Whereas the dominant Western culture nur-
tures a post-traditional commitment to emancipation from thick moral com-
munities, and to an eclectic individualist pursuit of human flourishing, along
with a celebration of “diversity” as valuable in itself, Engelhardt reminds his
readers of the faithfulness, obedience, dedication, reliability, altruism and sense
of obligation, which can only flourish in a thick communal environment. To
do so in an academic milieu and with impeccable scholarly and intellectual
resources, challenges the liberal life-style and the breakdown of families lib-
erally accepted within that milieu. By unveiling, behind the public endorse-
ment of an individualistic freedom, postmodern man’s abandonment to the
arbitrary and egocentric play of his passions, Engelhardt puts postmodern
man to shame.
In all of this, Engelhardt’s work makes particularly clear what it means
for the West to live “after Christendom.” He not only shows that nothing
like Christian morality can be secured without Christianity, he also forces
the reader to encounter, in his very principle of permission, the harmful-
ness, emptiness, and triviality, indeed the perversity of the moral life after
Christendom.22 The Foundations of Bioethics, in a number of passages, thus
points beyond itself. It brings the reader’s attention to the circumstance
that, if a second-order “morality” of mutual consent is all that one has, one
is left with a vision of human flourishing that is radically empty, incomplete,
and one-sided. Most of Engelhardt’s readers, who imagine themselves

having happily adjusted to postmodernity, are resolutely committed to
repudiating this diagnosis. Engelhardt disturbs their denial by invoking
Sören Kierkegaard (1813-1855): the worst of all despairs is the despair that
one does not wish to acknowledge. One can even go one step further. One
can, at the roots of contemporary culture’s hostility, not only among secular
thinkers but in particular among post-Enlightenment Christians, to
traditional Christianity, discern an attempt to suppress the threat presented
by that despair.
It is in response to the perverted state of that culture, that Engelhardt
invites the reader to reflect on the possibility of engaging, once again, in the
pursuit of ultimate truth and religious commitment. To accomplish this, he
has to bring the reader to a standpoint that existed before the seduction of
theology by philosophy.
III. Morality within “Philosophy as Theology”

In The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, Engelhardt poses once more the
questions of The Foundations of Bioethics, but now within a broader and deeper
horizon. Whereas the earlier book had shown that, as long as one restricts
one’s efforts to the level of secular philosophizing, the philosophical quest for
truth will produce nothing but a multiplicity of incompatible conceptions of
truth, in this later book Engelhardt removes that secular restriction. He dis-
closes that the quest for truth is in its fullness a theological endeavor. Whereas
the earlier book had developed a “moral” framework that secures the condition
for peaceful collaboration in spite of a multiplicity of conflicting truth-claims,
this later book invites the reader into a pursuit of the Truth “as personal,” a
pursuit that is experientially grounded.
The Foundations of Christian Bioethics incorporates and expands the analysis
of postmodernity developed in The Foundations of Bioethics. It asks, for example:
what would be needed in order to take our contemporary postmodern cultural
situation seriously, while at the same time also taking seriously a Christianity
that had not yet been philosophically numbed, and that looked back to the
traditions and epistemological resources of the first millennium? What would
it mean, while recognizing that the historical development of Western phi-
losophy has led to a situation in which all moral, epistemological, and onto-
logical reflection is placed within a horizon of the finite and the immanent,
also to acknowledge that Christianity is rooted in an experience of the
transcendent personal God? Indeed, what would be involved in acknowl-
edging the secular intractability of the moral pluralism that defines contem-
porary culture, while at the same time endorsing the one single unique and
personal religious Truth? Let us, in investigating Engelhardt’s answers to
these questions, once again follow the three-step schematism of Section II.
A. Retrieving Christianity from postmodernity

In The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, Engelhardt invites the reader
beyond the failure of reason into the possibility of theological experience.
This invitation is predicated on his recognition that Christian theology in the
strict sense is an empirical endeavor. It would make as much sense to ground
theology in philosophical speculation as it would be to ground medicine in
philosophical speculation, rather than in empirical investigation. Speaking in
conformity with the Christianity of the first 1000 years, Engelhardt under-
scores that the theological knowledge sensu strictu that leads to ultimate truth
requires knowing God, not simply knowing about God. The Foundations of
Christian Bioethics re-introduces an epistemological viewpoint (the possibility
of noetic23 knowledge), which recalls the foundations of traditional Christian
theology, but not the foundations of contemporary philosophical reflection
or, for that matter, contemporary Western Christian theology. This has conse-
quences for his portrayal of a properly anchored, and therefore successful,
moral philosophy (as shown in the next sub-section 1) as well as a properly
oriented theology (as shown in the next sub-section 2).
1. Moral philosophy as based on theology

The first three chapters of The Foundations of Christian Bioethics may seem
to review some of the philosophical territory covered in the first five chapters
of The Foundations of Bioethics. Yet already for the limited field of human phi-
losophy, everything now is placed within the quest for, and the meaning of
the transcendent. Here again, but in greater detail, Engelhardt confronts the
circumstance that without some grounding reference to an omnipotent, omni-
scient, creator God, Who resembles the God of the Christians, human phi-
losophy cannot even attempt to devise any moral theory deserving its name.
Only by recurring to such a God can the priority of the right over the good be
guaranteed, can any particular content for morality be secured, and the prior-
ity of morality over the counsels of prudence be established. That is to say,
only by reference to what such a God has revealed about Himself is it possible
philosophically to explain why one should always take the so-called moral
point of view (i.e., appreciating the good and the right in terms of what is
good and right for persons in general). That is, as Kant clearly recognized, if
one does not at least act as if God exists, and as if humans are immortal, then
it cannot always be rational to assume the moral point of view irrespective of
its costs to oneself and/or to those whom one loves. In particular, (and here
Engelhardt addresses a central failure of Kant’s rationalistic account of moral-
ity), only by reference to such Divine self-revelations can the normative sig-
nificance of human biological life be properly appreciated (e.g., as when such
life does not yet and may never achieve rational personhood). In sum, only by
reference to Divine self-revelation can the realm of bioethics be rightly estab-
lished. Yet, such a “philosophically helpful” God may no longer in turn be
regarded as philosophically penetrable, and His revelations as replaceable by

discursive reasoning. What can be secured by secular rational discursive
argument is no longer confused with what can be secured by theological
experience. Under these conditions, moreover, the authority of specific Christian
norms is protected against the eroding impact of secular rational assumptions.
But, of course, the involvement of revealed truths within philosophy pre-
supposes that true Divine revelation can be identified. It is at this point, that
philosophy must turn to the empirical findings of theology. The latter, of
course, is no longer understood within the Western account of theology as a
discursively rational academic discipline. The original sense of theology,
which Engelhardt seeks to recapture for his Western audience, involves a
spiritual journey24 from the envisaged chaos of a world without God to the
experience of a world informed by the grace of God.
2. Noetic theology
Engelhardt highlights three respects in which noetic theology differs from
the discursive rational theology of the West: these concern (a) the way in
which the pursuit of theological knowledge is initiated, (b) the implications
of its noetic character, and (c) its relationship to its (scriptural and traditional)
manifestations.
a) The Christian journey is not carried forward by rational reflection, but,
once again, centrally involves the will. Yet this time the will is turned not to
an assembly of moral strangers. It is a will of a person intent upon turning in
love to God. In order to lay out the consequences of such a turning for moral
knowledge, Engelhardt reminds his readers of the Greek Fathers’ distinction
between God’s Divine nature and His Divine energies. Without endorsing the
voluntarism of William Ockham, Engelhardt acknowledges the unbridgeable
distance, which the Patristic tradition affirmed as separating the nature of
God from what His creatures can access. At the same time, however, he insists
on the equally traditional distinction between God’s nature and His un-cre-
ated energies, through which He manifests Himself, and imparts knowledge
about Himself, to His chosen friends. The will to turn to God invoked by The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics thus envisages the “standing offer” of tran-
scendent personal presence, and responds to the call for a faithful reaction to
that presence. Theology itself (instead of partaking in the discursive ground-
ing efforts of merely human philosophy) becomes grounded in learning how
personally to turn to and respond to the person Who is the source of reality.
Philosophy thus becomes re-fashioned on the model of theology, which in
turn is understood as the ascetical pursuit of wisdom.25
b) It is in particular this empirical turn (i.e., the turn to experiencing God
noetically) at the core of The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, which is radically
disturbing for both Western secularists and Western Christians. It presup-
poses taking seriously the idea of God as alive. It presupposes an anthropology
that was lost in the West in the ruins of its Middle Ages. Whereas the Fathers
had distinguished nous (as the receptive organ for Divine revelations) from
reason (the merely human capacity to analyze and systematize sense data
and mathematical ideas), the corresponding distinction between intellectus
and ratio in the West was lost through the integration of pagan philosophy
into the presentation of dogmatic knowledge. As Western theology ceased to
recognize the central importance of noetic knowledge, its underlying “sociol-
ogy of knowledge” changed. Exemplar theologians were no longer recog-
nized as holy men who experience God but as learned academics who can
write about God. The ascetical pursuit of wisdom (i.e., philosophy in the
sense of noetic theology) was replaced by scholasticism.
The result for theology was a rupture between theologians and God; for
philosophy, as already observed, this led to a rupture between the knower
and the known. In contrast, the theology of the first millennium, which in the
third millennium is alive and well all over the world, with its exemplar theo-
logians in such places as Mount Athos, is not a rational philosophical system.
Rather, it is a way of life informed by grace. It lives and sustains a Christianity
that has existed for two thousand years without requiring support from any
speculative philosophical theology (and, for that matter, without a magiste-
rial institution). It is nourished by God’s personal encounters with His saints.
It is the original Christianity faithfully preserved by the Orthodox Church.
c) As Engelhardt points out, this Christianity is characterized by a rather
different approach both to the Bible and to tradition.
In what concerns the Bible, Engelhardt underscores that this set of books
came to be constituted officially only after the travails of the Western Refor-
mation26 as revelatory authority in its own right. Patristic theology, by con-
trast, has always understood the sacred Scriptures as mere records of such
personal revelations. To be sure, they are among the most important sources
for guidance in a Christian life. Still, they reveal their true meaning only as
interpreted in the Spirit of renewed Divine-human collaborations, i.e., through
the church as the assembly of the Saints.27 In the Christianity at one with the
Apostles and the Fathers one finds, to risk an ambiguous term, a Christianity
grounded in mysticism as the noetic experience of the Holy.
In what concerns tradition, Engelhardt accordingly distinguishes two senses.
On the surface, tradition concerns what is “passed on” among humans. At bot-
tom, however, tradition concerns what is “passed on” by God to humans in the
context of a deifying unification, and thus the “carrying on” of the Holy Spirit.
The truth-status of the first (taken by itself) is questionable, especially when “tra-
dition” appears in the plural, and represents an exclusively human, exhaustively
cultural phenomenon. The second, by contrast, denotes mans’ participation in
the Holy Spirit as Divine Truth. In the ordo essendi, the latter is primary to the
former, even if in the ordo cognoscendi the former is usually encountered first. That
is to say, most Christians on their theological journey will first be guided by what
the Church has recorded about God’s chosen friends’ personal encounters with
Him. This will enable those Christians to recognize that the Church lives in an
unchanging understanding of doctrine, spanning two millennia of Christianity.
Reference to the unbroken mind of the Fathers will help them to pick out false
human additions from true doctrine. It will also inform those Christians about
how to direct their efforts and prayers so as to approach the goal of becoming
friends of God themselves. Only if they reach the end of that spiritual journey
and are blessed with personal encounters with God Himself, will they gain per-
sonally experiential access to the unchanging Truth at the bottom of what had
guided their journey. Once a saint has reached that goal, even the Bible, even the
writings of the Fathers and oral tradition (understood in the first sense of the
term) will no longer be necessary.
B. Christian bioethics: the noetic experience of a personal God

For the person schooled in the conceits of the philosophical theology born
after the Western Middle Ages, this entire account will seem strange. The
appeal is not to a set of rational reflections, but to an empirical confidence
regarding a noetic fact: God lives, and manifests His transforming energies to
those who rightly turn to Him. The reader thus finds in The Foundations of
Christian Bioethics, first, three critical chapters de-constructing the rational
attempt to do what postmodernity has recognized to be impossible. Second,
one encounters a chapter (i.e., chapter IV) that describes the original Christian
empirical noetic account of theology. After that (thirdly), Engelhardt lays out
what this theology means for the conduct of life, drawing primarily on the
injunctions of the Christianity of the first millennium regarding matters bio-
ethical. Let us take a closer look at that meaning first 1) in view of such a life,
taken by itself, and then 2) as placed within a postmodern environment.
1. Morality and bioethics in the context of a life in Christ
No doubt a life that follows the guidance of the—predominantly East-
ern—Fathers would seem at points radically unsettling, not just to secularists,
but even to Western Christians. This Christianity, untouched by Augustine of
Hippo, offers a morality and bioethics not centered around currently expected
norms or values, such as an absolute prohibition against intentional decep-
tion (a norm previously unknown in Christianity). One finds a teleological
moral framework within which the good, the right, the virtuous, and the pure
are all placed in terms of a holy righteousness that is achieved through lovingly
turning to the transcendent person Who is at the root of all.
a) The goal of Christian morality
Christian morality, as Engelhardt never tires of underscoring, derives its
character from its aim of promoting humans’ holiness by helping them to
turn from love of self to love of God. All the proscriptions and prescriptions
that frame Christian liturgical life invite mankind into that obedience which,
in liberating from the rule of the passions (whether sensual, emotional, or
intellectual), also liberates from the ego-centrism at the root of those passions.
In struggling towards the restoration of that paradisiacal nature which was
lost through Adam’s disobedience, such obedience supports Christians in
turning from themselves to God, and to their human brothers. More signifi-
cantly, it allows deification to occur. In disrupting the original community
between man and God, Adam’s fall not only abandoned man’s heart to the
passions, but also clouded his intellect; that fall had compromised man’s
capacity for moral discernment. This is why moral orientation is promoted
primarily through a life of ascetic dedication towards holiness.
On the basis of such an understanding of the purpose of morality,
Engelhardt’s last four chapters (i.e., chapters V through VIII) delineate how
vital areas of man’s embodied life, such as sex roles, procreation, and dying,
disclose their moral relevance. Thus, during a dying process, the secular
mainstream’s endorsement of happiness (or the avoidance of suffering) as the
one overarching goal is complemented by a concern for the patient’s ultimate
happiness, which leaves space for the possibility of sorrow in repentance for
one’s sins. And thus also the differences between the sexes are understood by
reference to a Divinely ordered economy of mutual love and support within
a hierarchical context which, to the outsider, may appear improperly sexist
and patriarchal. In this way, however, human sexuality is integrated into the cre-
ation of families, which, in turn, are appreciated in a manner that is un-fathomable
for modern liberals, as constituting small house churches, illumined by sainthood
and the martyrdom of mutual love.
b) The solution of moral conflicts
As the Church has affirmed throughout the ages and in all places, there
are certain limiting rules proscribing actions which separate the human heart
from God.28 Beyond these, however, whichever course of action either helps
or hinders in a person’s spiritual progress depends on that person’s spiritual
state. Christian morality is not legalistic: it is not a set of legalistic rules, which
one would be guilty for transgressing only if one did so in knowledge and
with intention. From the first century, after all, Christians have recognized
sins committed involuntarily and in ignorance. The focus is not on identify-
ing courses of action that would incur guilt in the sense in which guilt is
established in a court of law. The focus is instead on how particular actions,
omissions, or intentions bring one closer to or move one further away from
aiming flawlessly at God. Since all of human life is drawn into the dynamic of
God’s invitation into His love, there exist, strictly speaking, no morally “neu-
tral” areas. All moments of a person’s life are placed within the alternative of
either responding to God’s call or permitting the gravity of one’s fallen nature
to pull one away from God. This is why moral guidance is properly thera-
peutic rather than juridical: it should aim at strengthening a person’s ability
to resist (supported by the grace of God) the crippling force exerted by one’s
fallen nature.
As Engelhardt emphasizes, this goal-directedness of Christian morality, as

lived in a fallen world, can generate real moral conflict. A Christian may have to
accept committing a sin (a certain act not perfectly aiming at God), in order to
avoid greater spiritual harm to himself or to his neighbor (i.e., much more turn-
ing away from God). For example, though women (among others) are in general
called to turn their other cheek to an aggressor, yet when they are responsible for
protecting their children, they are obliged to use deadly force against a human
aggressor. Yet, even though a woman having acted accordingly knows that she
ought not to have acted otherwise and that, in a similar situation, she should
adopt the same course of action, she nevertheless ought to repent; that is, she
should mourn the circumstances in which the broken world of Adam’s sin
places her, and pray for the guilty person, whom she has sent before the dread
judgment seat of Christ. In fact, she will incur (temporary) excommunication—
but for therapeutic, not for punitive reasons. Rather than clearing her from any
juridical guilt, such a response is designed to support her repentance, her whole-
hearted turning to God in a broken world. Her repentance will be directed to
healing the damage she has suffered through having engaged in sin (that is hav-
ing had to undertake an action which in its broken character did not fully
partake of Christian perfection).
c) The sources of moral orientation
Whereas Western theologians recognize the first millennium Eastern
Fathers as historical sources, Orthodox Christians endeavor to live with those
Fathers’ writings and those of all of the Fathers, including those of this day, so
as to integrate their own minds with the minds of the Fathers. Or, to use a
modern idiom, one is called to enter into their paradigm, their thought-style,
their thought-community. Living within this thought-style, Orthodox Chris-
tians seek to accept spiritual guidance from the Fathers as in the immediacy
of a personal friendship. Such Christians know, as Engelhardt takes effort to
spell out in great detail, that the technological developments introduced in
the twentieth century, even in the field of bioethics, have never impaired
the validity and applicability of the moral and spiritual insights of the
Fathers.
In a very important sense, as Engelhardt shows, traditional Christianity
does not possess a morality, moral philosophy, or theology—at least as these
are understood in the West. There is no third thing between man and God.
There is no morality, moral philosophy, or theology apart from the relation-
ship between God and man. So, in this very important sense, the Fathers do
not point to morality, moral philosophy, or theology as something one could
know outside of being in a rightly ordered relationship to God. The focus,
substance, and significance of traditional Christian morality and theology are
thus ascetical-theological (Engelhardt, 2005; 2007). As a consequence, the cardinal
methodology of morality and theology involves prayer, almsgiving, fasting,
and vigils. Its anchor is not academic. Rather its anchor is in a re-orientation
towards God, a metanoia that aims one away from self-love to a love of God,
through which one can also finally rightly love one’s fellow men.
It is in view of this ultimate source of moral orientation, that the motto
placed over The Foundations of Christian Bioethics invokes the Holy Spirit’s
overflowing of grace: “The Holy Spirit provideth all; ….He hath revealed the
fishermen as theologians.” Moral knowledge is thus ultimately a Divine
gift—a relationship to Himself that God gives men. Its very acceptance
already presupposes that achieved detachment and humility, which in turn
can be developed only with God’s help. As in all human encounters with the
Triune God, the immediate consequence (and thus the most reliable criterion
for the reality of such an encounter) is a deepened perception of one’s sinful-
ness. That is, the closer one comes to God, the more clearly one appreciates
how one usually fails to aim at Him. It is in this sense that repentance secures
the recognition of the labor involved in finally getting matters morally and
theologically right, in finally aiming rightly at God. Again, all of this is under-
stood outside of the moral philosophical and moral theological academic
framework that in the West is to supply moral and theological orientation.
Because everything turns not on an academic framework but on a personal
theological orientation, pace the Euthyphro, the good, the right, and the virtuous
are only to be understood in terms of the holy, and the holy, indeed all of theology,
only in terms of right orientation to God.
In appreciating the traditional Christian understanding of repentance and
right orientation to God, it is important that these not be understood in merely
psychological or intellectual terms. Repentance is not merely feeling sorry.
Repentance is actually aiming rightly at God, and then being transformed by
His un-created energies. The result of this is an appreciation of theology that
is radically at odds with that of the West. The core engagements required to
be theological, and to be rightly morally oriented, turn out not to be having
the right feelings, or forming the right ideas. Instead, they are connected with
an ascetical liturgical theology that brings one into contact with the living
God, Whose un-created energies change the persons who turn to Him. Here
we are returned to the metaphor of the journey. The journey of the theologian
in the strict sense is not an academic journey but an ascetical-liturgical journey.
One ought to recall that all of the distinctions that the Western world has
come to take for granted, among them moral theology, dogmatic theology,
and systematic theology, are rather recent innovations. These distinctions may
provide some service in organizing reflections about the experiences of those
who have actually come into union with God. The theology that has just been
described is not an academic endeavor but a realized relationship between
real persons and their personal God. It is for this reason that the Scripture
reads that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are offered not to the “wise and pru-
dent” but to “babes” (Matt. 11: 25-6). Even educated moral thinkers must take
those spiritually poor in the wisdom of the world as their models, and recognize
their own spiritual poverty. The whole of Engelhardt’s The Foundations of

Christian Bioethics can be read as an effort towards, and invitation into, such
recognized poverty.
2. Pursuing holiness in a modern/postmodern environment
What does it mean for Christians to maintain their prayer and fasting in
the context of contemporary Western societies? As Engelhardt makes abun-
dantly clear, Christians have always had to sustain their struggles in this
world while refusing to be of this world (Jn. 17:14-8). Their home is always
elsewhere, even if this world is recognized to be the arena where they must
prove themselves. Even if Christ blessed the peace-makers, he blessed them
as the ones who know that true peace is a Divine gift. This orientation towards
an eschatological kingdom of God becomes especially clear in the Christian
acceptance of (and sometimes even welcoming of) martyrdom. Wherever the
obligation to confess and suffer for the faith is inescapable, Christians have
never held themselves excused from this pursuit of Christ, merely because
the world required their assistance in building some earthly “kingdom of
God.”
This distance of Christians from the surrounding life-world has surely
increased, as contemporary culture has come to celebrate change and diver-
sity. Postmodernity’s anti-traditional commitment to pluralism tends subtly
to distract Christians from the unchanging nature of God as the goal of their
personal spiritual development, and from His unchanging commandments
as support towards that goal. Maintaining this same distance has, moreover,
become still more difficult in a world that claims its highest civilizing accom-
plishment to lie in the establishment of an ecumenical consensus—not only
among certain culturally dominant Christianities, but even with the morality
of the secular world. Such a consensus, in being recommended as the only
hope for peace on earth, and thus as a central condition for the ultimate goal
of general wellbeing on earth, leaves traditional Christians at odds even with
what seem to be the most noble aspirations of the dominant culture.
There is, as Engelhardt acknowledges, a real hunger for unity among
humans, just as there is a real hunger for truth. Yet, just as the latter is not
stilled by a mere phantom of truth, offered through discursive reflection, so is
the former not stilled by consensus with a fallen world. Real unity among
humans, just as real truth, is available only through Christ. Whoever disre-
gards this truth will find himself moved to construe as peace-threatening
even that very effort at distancing oneself from the world, which is indispens-
able for a Christian life and the attainment of Divine peace. It is especially
Western Christians who, having made their peace with this secular world,
regard such an ascetic, moral and social distancing with suspicion. They tend
to denounce traditional Christianity as sectarian.29 And in this they will even
be right, insofar as traditional Christians must both be in the world and spiritu-
ally cut off from the world.
As Engelhardt makes clear in both The Foundations of Bioethics and in the

first three chapters of The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, there is an implicitly
secular, post-Christian, totalizing tendency penetrating contemporary culture
in spite of its dividedness between modern and postmodern commitments.
This tendency is merely covered up by the endorsement of freedom as the
one overarching value. Both Engelhardt’s criticism and his own identification
of a secular second-order “morality” argue for the need to acknowledge exist-
ing moral differences. Both disclose spaces for moral distancing—even to the
extent of allowing space for a traditionally Christian health care, which would
pursue “first the kingdom of God” (and that kingdom not in terms of all
receiving equal health care). Engelhardt’s critical, as well as his philosophically
constructive, undertakings thus serve the ultimate purpose of securing a condi-
tion for that minimal “peace” (as renunciation of violence), which will enable
committed traditional Christians (among others) to pursue their salvation, and—by
engaging in public (although peaceable) persuasion—that of the world.30
C. Why is reading Engelhardt so difficult?
We return here to an issue engaged at the beginning of this essay, yet now
against a richer background. The foregoing shows how the Engelhardt of The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics undertakes a project that completes the proj-
ects of The Foundations of Bioethics. Far from being two isolated undertakings,
they are intimately connected and should not be read one without the other.
Yet, many readers have been unable to appreciate this complementarity. There
are at least ten circumstances that can help explain why Engelhardt’s endeav-
ors both in secular and Christian morality and bioethics are often radically
misunderstood.
First, right at the surface of things, these undertakings integrate areas of
scholarship usually kept separate. Engelhardt’s corpus ranges from a volume
exploring the relationship of mind and body, drawing on the work of Kant,
Hegel, and Husserl, to various studies in the history and philosophy of medicine.
Many have not recognized the basic categorical and ontological interests that
have driven Engelhardt’s work from the very beginning. Given the diversity
of philosophical arguments he engages, and because of his attempt to bring
into contact both philosophical and theological insights, The Foundations of
Bioethics and The Foundations of Christian Bioethics may to the superficial reader
appear radically different. Readers have often not recognized that the former
book mainly explores a morality for moral strangers and the latter a morality
for Engelhardt’s moral friends (and for all those who, through conversion,
might accept the invitation into this community of friendship). Some may even
be tempted to talk of an ‘Engelhardt I’ and an ‘Engelhardt II.’ The two Engelhardts,
however, are one.
Second, there may be a conflict of paradigms, thought styles, or research
projects separating the author from some of his readers. His two Foundations
are grounded in two rather unique and bold intellectual projects. It is difficult
to communicate across the gulf of disparate conceptual perspectives. To take

some examples from Engelhardt’s philosophical work: many may have never
seriously considered the crucial distinction between freedom as a value and
freedom as a side constraint. Nor may they have appreciated the distinction
between content-full moralities that can affirm the goodness and badness of
particular choices, versus the morality of moral strangers, which can only
acknowledge a sparse right-making condition as a default position in the face
of intractable moral diversity.31 Accordingly, Engelhardt underscores the
difference between affirming the good of liberty or freedom, on the one hand,
and appealing to the concurrence of wills that makes possible a common fabric
of moral authority, on the other hand. If readers fail to awaken to such distinc-
tions, they may easily mis-conclude32 from The Foundations of Bioethics that
Engelhardt is a passionate defender of liberty as an overriding human good.
Though he has repeatedly emphasized the contrary, such readers may never yet
have appreciated that his major focus is upon freedom as a right–making
condition,33 and that freedom in this sense (not as a good) underlies the possibility
of a general secular morality. Such readers will remain blind to Engelhardt’s endorse-
ment of freedom as condition for a transcendental possibility for navigating
moral pluralism.34 Accordingly, some misunderstandings of Engelhardt’s work
result simply from a failure to attend to the conceptual tools framing that work.
Third, some readers may just not be up to the foundational bilinguality
postmodernity imposes on members of thick moral communities when out-
side their moral home-milieu. They may not understand, for example, that a
Christian will both need to speak without hesitation in the thick moral lan-
guage of his own community, and that he also may engage in the thin moral
language presupposed by a world market. Such Christians might employ a
“public” or “inter-community” language in order to be understood by, and
rally (political or economic) support from, non-communal fellow citizens,
while faithfully tithing from their profits in the market for the support of their
very particular community. If Engelhardt’s readers fail to distinguish intra-
from inter-community communication, they will be even less able to appre-
ciate the third language-game his two-layer account of human society offers:
the possibility of an extension of intra-communal discourse into the “public”
space of inter-communal communication. This further manner of speaking
belongs to situations in which members of particular moral communities
publicly proclaim their moral truths in an effort to persuade and invite moral
strangers to join them. Readers who are un-aware of the basic bilinguality
underlying such extensions will be unable correctly to assess, within Engelhardt’s
modes of speech, the differences both between the main text and some of the
footnotes in The Foundations of Bioethics, and between that former work and The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics.35
Fourth, Engelhardt’s intellectual aspirations are not modest. He pursues
nothing less than a comprehensive account of the human condition in
contemporary Western societies. He sets his analysis in the context of Western

civilization’s development during the last two millennia. In pursuing this task,
he not only critically exposes other influential contemporary claims (such as
the ones offered by John Rawls and Richard Rorty) as sorely limited. He also
sets a standard for coherence, against which others may find it hard to com-
pete. By connecting issues in epistemology and the sociology of knowledge
with issues of morality, as well as problems in the history and substance of
theology with questions concerning the development and tenability of philo-
sophical theories, Engelhardt makes it harder for his academic colleagues to
get by with basing their general claims concerning the right and the good on
merely particular areas of research.
Fifth, some readers may fail to realize the political implications of either
affirming or denying moral consensus. Or else, if they do appreciate these
implications,36 they may be unwilling to accept Engelhardt’s libertarian reflec-
tions on the limits of what secular political entities can be rationally justified
in enforcing. The implausibility of the secular moral authority of govern-
ments (beyond that of the minimal state) is, as Engelhardt shows, the inescap-
able consequence of the failure of reason to establish a canonical morality. The
resulting distinction between the moral authority of states, of society, and of
communities with regard to their respective members, may be incompatible
with such readers’ secular ideological commitments.37 The fact that Engel-
hardt himself bemoans the libertarian conclusions to which his arguments
bring him, might gratify the moralizing aspirations of such non-classical lib-
eral readers. Still, such regrets may not suffice to win them to his standpoint.
Similarly, the circumstance that Engelhardt’s secular account would leave
them at liberty peaceably to pursue their particular views of the human good
and human flourishing within communities of their own making may not
compensate them for the loss of their larger political ambitions. The very dis-
tinctions Engelhardt insists on drawing among state, society, and community
will appear unacceptable to those who seek to construe the political state as a
moral community (so as to feel justified in politically enforcing on others the
values they happen to hold dear).
Sixth, some readers may be existentially unable to acknowledge the truth
of Engelhardt’s description of the strangely contradictory nature of contem-
porary secular Western culture. As already indicated above, this culture is
marked by four characteristics, namely: 1) there is both theoretical and
practical disagreement on important moral issues; 2) there is no common
basis to resolve these controversies through sound rational argument, indeed;
3) no one has offered such common basis; but 4) nevertheless there is the view
that there is a common morality, moral core, or at least an overlapping moral
consensus. To accept the incompatibility of the fourth characteristic with the
other three requires the courage to take moral diversity seriously. Yet, as has
been observed, if one’s livelihood depends upon being able to claim that one
can articulate the foundations of a universal moral consensus, or a global

bioethics, opening one’s eyes to that diversity may just be too economically
and psychologically threatening.
Seventh, some readers who have destroyed or abandoned their familial or
communal frameworks, so that they are left to struggle with contriving new
patchwork identities, may find disturbing Engelhardt’s exposition of com-
munal life as the condition for moral substance, integrity, and coherence.
While engaged with construing some surrogate communality that will mor-
ally shelter humanity’s enlightened representatives in a culture of affirmative
tolerance and mutual support for individual self-gratification, such readers
will find it embarrassing even to consider thinking differently: to do so, after
all, would feed the suspicion, that it might have been less the confining impact
of others inviting them to enter into traditional communal structures than
their own inability to outgrow their immature opposition, which placed
them into the morally chaotic and insipid moral niche in which they find
themselves.
Eighth, out of nostalgia for the Enlightenment’s universalist claims, some
readers may refuse to acknowledge moral diversity and communal morality
as the only guarantee for integrity. Recognizing the cacophony of postmoder-
nity and its lack of metaphysical depth would require such readers to aban-
don their Promethean expectations from philosophy. An unwavering yearn-
ing for the restoration of such depth is expressed, for example, in John Paul
II’s plaintive exhortations in Fides et Ratio on behalf of a philosophy with the
courage once more to do metaphysics (see, for example, Engelhardt, 2000, p.
231 n. 151). Facing the death of the Enlightenment project, confronting the full
consequences of the death of God for secular culture, is psychologically
impossible as long as one insists on preserving accustomed and taken for
granted cultural commitments. Because Engelhardt doggedly presses the
consequences of postmodernity for secular morality and culture, those who
vainly hope to recover the powers of reason for which John Paul II pined will
not find in Engelhardt’s The Foundations of Bioethics insights they can with
ease embrace.
Ninth, Engelhardt’s frank recognition of moral pluralism may to some
seem tantamount to resigning in the face of a threat to social peace. That is,
some may engage a strategy of pursuing “peace on earth” by denying that
there is anything of moral seriousness about which any reasonable man
could be willing to fight. Engelhardt’s insistence on both the seriousness of
man’s moral vocation and the intractability of secular moral pluralism upsets
such thinkers’ well intentioned projects. He disturbs the graveyard peace that
has been secured by a resolute restriction of one’s moral attention to “middle-
level principles” as supporting a general appearance of harmony. Or instead,
following Francis Fukuyama, they may attempt resolutely to restrict human
aspirations to those of a civilized animal. Given the resolutely secular orientation
of such thinkers, Engelhardt’s offer of the uncertain and incomplete secular

peace of contracts, the market, and limited democracies for life in this world
must appear unattractive. His reference to a true peace beyond this world, to
be achieved only through rightly directed ascetic struggle, will be considered
not only unrealistic but all too disruptive of a comfortable life.
Tenth and last of all, there are those who are not willing to accept a return
of Christian theology to its roots in the first millennium. To begin with, they
may have fallen in love with—as Engelhardt playfully presents the matter—
the various intellectual children spawned of the early Western medieval liai-
son between theology and the comely maid philosophy. Some may desper-
ately want, despite the collapse of the scholastic and Enlightenment projects,
to forward the very discursive rational theological project, which Engelhardt
argues will always collapse in a plurality of mutually incompatible argu-
ments and narratives.38 Others may prefer a domesticated Christianity that,
given the loss in Western Christianity of a clear biblical basis for its beliefs
after the onslaughts of higher Bible criticism, has become one among the
many cultural inheritances of mankind. There will yet be others who may be
quite disturbed with Engelhardt’s reminder, that the theology of the first mil-
lennium was not a rational a priori but a noetic empirical undertaking, that it
was aimed not at knowing about God but knowing God. They may in par-
ticular be disturbed by Engelhardt’s reminder that the failure to come to the
right conclusion about matters theological in the end is grounded not in an
intellectual mistake but in a moral mistake, or more precisely in a sin: a failure to
turn to the universe as having meaning, and then with ascetic commitment to
search for that meaning, is a moral failure, a sin, with eternal consequences.
Any one of these issues would be enough to bring one to reject Engelhar-
dt’s project. After all, the project asks us to recognize the blind alleys to which
discursive philosophical reflection has led contemporary culture. At the same
time, it calls us to acknowledge that the cardinal question is not “What is the
truth?”, but “Who is the Truth?”—the focus of the noetic empirical theology
lying at Christianity’s roots.
IV. Conclusion: Why One Ought to Re-read Engelhardt with

Care
In 1997, three years before the publication of the The Foundations of Christian
Bioethics, a book appeared with the title Reading Engelhardt. This book (various
contributions to which were discussed in the footnotes of this essay) was
drawn from a conference on Engelhardt’s work, held September 30, 1995.
Even though this conference took place four years after his conversion to
Orthodox Christianity, and in the same year in which he launched the journal,
Christian Bioethics, the resulting book makes little mention of Christianity
and Christian bioethics. That alone would justify a systematic re-reading of
Engelhardt. Since that conference, Engelhardt published scores of studies

on Christian theology and bioethics. All of this makes it indispensable to
re-explore Engelhardt’s work.
Such a re-exploration is not only important in that Engelhardt has influenced
bioethics through both his Christian and his secular scholarship. Much more
significantly, it is his work with Christian theology and bioethics that helps
us, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to re-assess our place both as
secular moral thinkers and as Christians. Engelhardt deals a devastating blow
to the intellectual foundations of the liberal mainstream culture of both the
secular and the purportedly Christian West. That mainstream not only denies
the depth of dis-sensus fragmenting the moral life in Western societies. It also
tends culturally to discount the quest for an ultimately orienting truth, in
terms of which moral dis-sensus could ever be properly recognized as posing
a problem. In demanding that traditional moral and religious communities
relativize their various claims regarding such truth, contemporary Western
liberalism seeks first and foremost to destroy those very communal life-
worlds which cultivate the quest for ultimate truth. Engelhardt’s work
restores the conceptual conditions for the viability of such life worlds. In re-
connecting our contemporary reflections in moral theory and ontology with
the moral and metaphysical commitments that lie at the roots of Western cul-
ture, Engelhardt re-opens the question concerning man’s place in the cosmos.
He thus secures, once again, the ground on which one could even ask the
question whether or not one should pursue that genuinely (non-reduced)
Christian quest for ultimate Truth into which Engelhardt invites his readers.
These are large and perennial issues. Indeed, Engelhardt brings philosophy
back to its traditional concerns regarding the place of God in finding orientation
for morality, epistemology, and metaphysics. He does this by reaching behind
the philosophical-theological synthesis of the Middle Ages to a period when
all of Christianity recognized that natural theology was ascetic and liturgical.
These are matters possessing a scope usually avoided by a bioethics intent on
addressing the bioethical controversies of the moment. It is here that the
enduring significance of Engelhardt’s secular and Christian reflections lies.
Notes
1. Because Engelhardt focuses on modernity’s dream of rationally grounded moral
progress, his account of the Enlightenment gives heavy accent to what is usually
associated with the German (Kantian) tradition. Though his account does attend
to the French intellectual developments that gave rise to the French Revolution, it
should be noted that even those French, Scottish, and English thinkers, who possessed
a greater scepticism with regard to the powers of human reason, nevertheless
thought of themselves as disclosing a space for an Enlightenment secular morality.
2. A foundational failure, to be sure, is not by itself sufficient to repudiate the
possibility of truth-claims. Perhaps many of those who have remained un-impressed
by Engelhardt’s thesis feed their resistance from a (usually tacit) commitment to

the possibility of transferring scientific coherence-theories of truth to the realm of
morality: the wide-spread persistence of faith in a moral consensus of mankind
may thus mirror a different truth-theoretical assumption. But quite independently
of the theoretical value of such an approach, the difficulty with morality and bio-
ethics is that they are used for the justification of political power. To the extent, that
contemporary democratic polities derive their legitimacy from the moral principle
(established by the Enlightenment) of an individual right to autonomy, any politi-
cal violation of that autonomy requires a strong (i.e., foundational) justification,
which the coherence view of moral truth does not offer.
3. Basic moral premises are axioms taken as given within a morality. These may include
claims such as “civil liberty is more valuable than prosperity.”
4. Rules of moral evidence identify those procedures or methods through which a
moral claim is accepted as established, such as through the outcome of a wide reflective
equilibrium (Rawls, 1971, p. 20 f).
5. Engelhardt uses the term ‘moral stranger’ to identify persons who do not share
sufficient basic moral premises, understandings of moral evidence, and/or of who
is in moral authority, so as to be able to resolve substantive moral controversies by
sound rational argument or by an appeal to authority.
6. Socrates, of course, discusses primarily the nature of the pious, and whether it is
so because the gods love it, or whether the gods love it, because it is (in itself) lovable
(a distinction introduced in Plato, 1961, 11 a, 4-6). The extension to the right, the
good, and the virtuous is secured by Plato’s linking the pious (which the gods
love) with the just (11 e, 5).
7. To be sure, philosophy always had played some role, even for the theology of the
early Church Fathers. Not only were many of the Fathers educated in secular rhetoric,
literature and philosophy. They frequently employed philosophical arguments for
the purpose of warding off heresies, for defending their faith against false charges,
for ordering and representing the content of others’ reports about their personal
theological experiences, and for missionary inroads into the cultural elite. Beyond
these uses of philosophy, there were no deeper commitments. Philosophical accounts
were not rendered either foundational to their theological understandings or integral
to their theological accounts. Philosophical concepts were used and discarded,
exchanged for one another and re-defined in a pointedly easy-going way. These
borrowings from philosophy were intellectual tools engaged insofar as this seemed
helpful for communicating and clarifying insights, which some had derived from
their own theological experiences. Forever placed under a hermeneutic of suspicion
in light of Christ’s own opposition to the wisdom of this world (Matt. 11:25), philosophy
served at best as a humble handmaiden for theology (see Engelhardt, 2007).
8. For Wittgenstein (1967), the ontology of reality is the grammer of a particular practice:
“Das Wesen ist in der Grammatik ausgesprochen…Welche Art von Gegenst and
etwas ist, sagt die Grammatik” (Theologie als Grammatik) (#371, 3).
9. “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen” (Wittgenstein,
1963, p. 85).
10. “All cultural change reduces itself to a difference of categories. All revolutions,
whether in the sciences or world history, occur merely because spirit has changed
its categories in order to understand and examine what belongs to it, in order to
possess and grasp iself in a truer, deeper, more intimate and unified manner” (Hegel,
1970, p. 202, §246).
11. Engelhardt’s second-order “morality” has been criticized in diverse ways in the
literature. In the following, I shall restrict myself to the authors who contributed
to the volume Reading Engelhardt, edited by Brendan P. Minogue, Gabriel Palmer-
Fernandez, and James E. Reagan (1997). To begin, Engelhardt’s second-order
morality’s openness for all sorts of motivations accounts for the fact that different
participants in the permission-game can be directed and motivated by their “par-
ticular views of rationality”. This state of affairs, which Wildes thought he could
invoke as the basis for a criticism of Engelhardt’s position (1997, p. 91), is thus
accounted for by Engelhardt’s position. This same openness also makes Weiner’s
speculations about “What does it mean to accept the permission principle” (Weiner,
1997, p. 117) plainly beside the point. The principle will concretely mean different
things to different people.
12. Engelhardt’s notion of a “game,” taken from Wittgenstein, but in fact grounded in
Kant’s understanding of transcendental practices, has given rise to misunder-
standings. For example Robison (1997, pp. 95 ff, 104) fails to distinguish between
two levels of moral concern. One level of moral concern (that of second-order
“morality”) identifies a general possibility for the collaboration with moral au-
thority of moral strangers. (This level also can identify certain practices of the in-
teraction between moral strangers as such, e.g., the market as a general practice).
The other level of moral concern identifies particular collaborations among par-
ticular consenting individuals who have come to agree with regard to particular
rankings of goods and/or certain right-making conditions. Here one might think
(among many other examples of collaborations within thick moral communities)
of very particular markets with very particular participants, all of whom have
come to agree to the rules of that market. To apply this distinction to the issue of
games: the (second-order) “game”-character of the permission-principle as a tran-
scendental condition for the possibility of collaboration as such must be distin-
guished from the particular (first-order) games which that permission principle
allows people to play with one another (after agreeing on particular rules or goals).
When Robison argues for changing the rules of the transcendental practice
(second-order “game”) so as to include children as persons (p. 103), he misunder-
stands the transcendental and, at the same time, default character of that type one
“game”. If a practice is truly a transcendental practice that lays out the grammar
of a general possibility for human interaction, one cannot simply decide to change
its rules. Its rules are, after all, transcendental conditions. Rule-changes are possi-
ble only with regard to first-order games, and they happen with moral authority
according to the second-order “game” only if all participants have agreed. Rather
than impose the particular demand that all players in all types of collaboration
accept Robison’s intuitions about the importance of children, along with the rather
particular moral and psychological assumptions motivating these intuitions, he
should be content with the fact that Engelhardt’s second-order “game” (resting on
the permission principle) offers him, like everyone else, the possibility and,
therefore, the freedom to find collaborators for whatever first-order games (i.e.,
practices) they chose, and among those also games which admit Robison’s
children.
13. Quite understandably, Engelhardt refuses to offer particular motivations for entering
into practices rooted in a transcendental possibility for authoritative collaboration.
He offers a possibility, to be accepted or rejected (at a cost) by persons according to
their commitments. Thus to try and challenge his proposal by demanding such
motivations (“why should the strong be moral?”) (Nelson, 1997, p. 22) is beside
the point.
14. For the purpose of Engelhardt’s account of the morality of moral strangers, he can
say no more about persons than is necessary to recognize persons as beings who
can agree to collaborate in the face of their substantive moral disagreements. This
account of personhood does not carry with it any commitment regarding the dig-
nity, absolute worth, or metaphysical roots of persons. Instead, the ontology of
persons is fully exhausted by their being the source of authorization for collabora-
tion. This is why a criticism that imputes to Engelhardt any specific view about
personhood (as in Hogan, 1997, p. 181) is misplaced.
15. But even when acting in community, persons retain their personal accountability.
A community’s action is accounted for by all its members, who, in entering (or
ratifying their membership through their consent), accepted this responsibility.
Similarly, wherever individual members affect those “outside” in obedience to
their community’s norms, they remain personally responsible for any violation of
the permission principle. In what concerns inter-community traffic from this per-
son, the principle of permission has an inter-communally accepted priority over
any communal morality. Whoever prioritizes the other way around (and affects
outsiders without their permission) also accepts the sanctions which any breach of
that principle implies. He has no generally justifiable secular grounds for protest
against such sanctions.
16. The political implications of the assumption of a general moral consensus, given
the failure rationally to secure such a consensus, undermine the justification of the
political authority of the secular liberal state. This accounts for the merciless char-
acter of Engelhardt’s philosophical criticism—a circumstance obviously not ap-
preciated by Nelson (1997, p. 18). These same implications also explain why the
analogy between scientific and moral transcendentals, which Nelson challenges
(1997, p. 25), indeed holds. Nelson claims that not accepting what is transcenden-
tally assumed in science leaves no alternative but insanity, whereas in morality it
leaves many alternatives. But if the issue is the legitimacy of political authority,
and thus of political power, then those many alternatives reduce to a “yes” (simply
indispensable for justification) or a “no” (disruptive of justification, and in that
sense also quasi insane).
17. It should be clear that the distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ introduced
here concerns the presence of voluntary consent, not the personal versus institu-
tional manner of offering such consent: institutions can, after all, be either private or
public.
18. Many have attempted to construct a secular moral justification for the more than
minimal state. Among the less sophisticated defenses we find Nelson (1997), who
argues (p. 20, borrowing from Locke) that consent to political power is offered
tacitly by any constituent who continues to reside on the territory of his particular
state. Nelson here disregards what Engelhardt presupposes, namely the
Nozickian insight that in a world exhaustively “owned” by states, no option is
left for those who would rather do without any particular citizenship. Nelson
also discounts the question of how states can justify imposing on those who do
not welcome being politically governed the burdens of having to emigrate.
Why should the individual have to leave the state, rather than the state have to
leave the individual alone? Much more must be said than Nelson says. In any
event, among the more sophisticated representatives of a hypothetical social
contract model of the state, one may single out John Rawls (1999) with his sup-
position of a hypothetical rational contract. This suggests that, if only the as-
sumed “rational” society-designers were placed behind a veil of ignorance
concerning their own status in the society they were about to design, they
would come up with principles (combining equality of starting positions with a
justification of inequalities in outcome under the condition that all must profit
some, if some are permitted to profit more), which are “procedurally just.” Yet,
as Engelhardt makes clear, even this supposedly “formal” solution is anchored
in a substantial, and hence particular, rationally un-authorizable, value com-
mitment to a very particular view of “fairness”. It presupposes a specific
interpretation of certain aspects of humans’ embodied life (namely their
achievement of material and social resources, as well as their comparative sta-
tus in this regard) as normatively relevant for those who count as “rational
agents.” Rawls’ account, so Engelhardt argues, imposes as universally canoni-
cal his own parochial academic-culture vision of human flourishing, as it
includes aversion to risk and envy, moderate commitment to benevolence and
peace, and suspicion against human aspirations at greatness and victory—all of
which may seem attractive for the limited population of somewhat more than
middle-aged, well settled, New England white males, but not to others.
19. Among Engelhardt’s critics who relativize the depth of moral pluralism, there
are also those others who, while conceding normative dissensus for the pres-
ent, rely on future homogenizing developments for the overcoming of this
plight (Hogan, 1997, p. 176). Global communication and the media-mediated
proliferation of cultural products, so they argue, will surely transform a previ-
ously geographically diversified world into a “global village.” In particular,
the free exchange of marketable products and services in that village will, so
it is held, lead to a cultural uniformity that will affect the moral sphere as
well. There is, of course, the problem of factual evidence (or counter-evidence)
for such claims. Secular prophecies concerning the future universal endorse-
ment of some particular moral vision are not helpful, given the fact that what-
ever agreements those who consider themselves competent (and entitled to)
inaugurate such a process posit as preliminary condition for such moral har-
monization, given the existing moral diversity, must be politically enforced in
societies that still refuse to subscribe to such harmonization. In particular, any
predictions of future global consensus will be challenged by the question as
to what amount of consensus regarding what moral issues is supposed to
count as normatively significant, and why.
20. On the global level of human rights advocacy, it thus becomes impossible to claim
a moral superiority for Western liberal democracies and—with a philosophically
good conscience—to discriminate against cultures and societies which refuse to
honour the Western-democracy-version of human dignity. Once reason’s moral sterility
is exposed, all Western attempts at normatively colonizing the world degenerate

into merely ideological devices. These ideas are further developed in Engelhardt
(2006).
21. Readers who find themselves classified as “moral strangers” often react with con-
sternation. They feel rejected, and are tempted to retaliate. It is important to notice,
however, that this prima facie rejection is designed, inter alia, to create some free
space between the author and his readers, to impose a pause, so as to secure an
opportunity to scrutinize those conditions for a more intimate normative friend-
ship, which the customary assumption of an already accomplished mutual agree-
ment merely hides from view.
22. The very polemical intent of Engelhardt’s analysis of contemporary culture was
obviously lost not only on Robison (1997, p. 101) and Hauerwas (1997, pp. 40 ff),
who (rightly) exposes (but unfortunately with a critical intent) the lack of trust
(and corresponding extensive need for coercion) in such a society, but it was also
lost on Nelson (1997, p. 17). The latter criticizes Engelhardt for being oblivious to
the evil consequences of permitting the principle of permission to rule supreme.
But of course, Engelhardt by no means celebrates this secular transcendental fact
of the matter and/or its consequences. Rather, he confronts this state of affairs as
conceptually unavoidable, as long as one remains committed to justifying the use
of political power by reference to a generally justifiable secular morality. He wish-
es to confront his contemporaries with the moral state of their culture, to awaken
them to the necessity of abandoning their hope for such a secularly normative
universal morality. When Nelson claims that the permission principle does not
allow a person to shove another in order to avoid a mass destruction (though En-
gelhardt will surely concede that one may make reasonable assumptions in emer-
gencies as to that to which a person will agree), Nelson disregards the fact that any
one engaging in such an act, and pursuing a particular good which he claims as
objective and important, has already thereby outed himself as member of some—
how so ever soft-fringed—moral community. Engelhardt’s account leaves space
for such members’ pursuing what they (if parochially) consider “good” in the so-
cial space between communities. It is just that, should their pursuit involve using
others without their permission, such members must be willing to suffer whatever
sanctions the public has determined for such a using. The willingness to accept an
unavoidable martyrdom, after all, is a normal ingredient of any serious moral
commitment.
23. The term “noetic” is derived from the Greek ‘nous,’ understood by the Fathers of
the Church in one mind with the Church of the first millennium as a capacity of the
soul which, in its original design, renders the soul receptive to Divine revelations.
24. Engelhardt’s notion of a journey is crucial. In The Foundations of Christian Bioethics,
the cardinal journey is the journey of persons to union with God: the journey of
the particular to the Particular. Yet, Engelhardt appreciates that many persons are
bound on quite different journeys. He recognizes that each journey transforms
the one undertaking the journey. Engelhardt lodges a special criticism against those
who invite others on a journey to universal moral agreement. To move from the par-
ticular to the universal requires sacrificing the particular. As a consequence, the
very assumption of a universal rational morality evacuates the content of all
particular moralities. The very notion of a rational moral consensus as a regulative

ideal in ecumenical discussions, for example, leads the discussion partners to
abandon their particular moral positions, once grounded in an experience of a
particular God, in favor of the requirements of their general rational norms. Since
all universality is purchased at the price of particularity, the very assumption of
the possibility of taking the journey to rational moral consensus will evacuate
one’s own moral and theological content and that of one’s dialogue partners. Such
a journey thus leads to ever thinner moral and theological commitments. Wildes
correctly recognizes this (1997, p. 87). The tendency in our culture to underesti-
mate moral diversity is fed by the tendency in most of the still extant moral com-
munities (especially among the Western Christian denominations) to adopt a lan-
guage that enables their members to meet outsiders on the latter’s own conceptual
and normative grounds. Such endeavors have usually resulted in such communi-
ties reducing what they have to offer to that which outsiders can confirm on the
basis of their own beliefs. This in turn has led to the weakening of the communal
profile.
25. The ancient pagan philosophy of the circa-Mediterranean world was surely het-
erogeneous. Among its various expressions were those philosophical schools that
recognized philosophy to be not merely an academic or intellectual endeavor, but
as a way of life that would bring one into union with the object of knowledge Who
is, par excellence, God. As Engelhardt shows in great detail in chapter four in The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics (2000, see especially pp. 184-185), when Christians
came to reflect on philosophy, they recognized that a philosophy without a theol-
ogy was blind and perverse. They affirmed that all true philosophy was under-
taken by those holy Saints whose hearts were pure so that they could see God. It is
for this reason that the great church of Christendom is called Hagia Sophia (Holy
Wisdom).
26. As Engelhardt makes amply clear (2000, p. 213 n. 14), Roman Catholicism (and
indeed the Church of the first thousand years alive in Orthodoxy) had not con-
cerned itself with publishing a final, single definitive list of the books of the Bible
until the council of Trent (although a first step had been taken at the Synod at Ba-
sel, Session 11, February 4, 1442, in the Bull of Union with the Copts). It took quite
a while before particular Protestant religions decided which list they would use.
The creation of a final universal definitive list in the West was in part driven by the
Protestants invoking the Bible as a means to criticize the heresies of the Roman
Church, having forgotten that there was a church alive and well in the East that
had excommunicated the church in the West for much the same reasons for which
the Protestants were protesting against Rome. There was also the technological
innovation of the printing press, so that one needed to decide which of the books
of the Bible would be printed in the book now called “The Bible.” All this led to
the taken-for-granted social construction of “The Bible” as the Gideon Bible that
travellers find in hotel rooms.
27. For that Christianity at one with the Christianity of the first millennium the Church
is revelation. The Bible is the exemplar record of revelation.
28. Such actions encompass the killing of the innocent (except on explicit Divine
command as with Abraham), disordered sexuality, idolatry, and blasphemy.
29. It is this destructive implication of the liberal consensus-culture for any tradition-
al, and hence specific, moral community (and especially for traditional Christian-
ity) which explains the rigor with which Engelhardt separates moral friends from
moral strangers. It is for this reason as well that he warns the former against get-
ting too close to the latter. Christ prophesized that those who were His would be
hated by the world (Matt. 10:22)— a harshness which is not repudiated by, just as
it does not repudiate, the fact that Christians, since they are enjoined to love their
enemies, are at least as much obliged to love their moral strangers.
30. In all its morally and religiously cosmic significance, this rhetorically very limited
agenda explains why Engelhardt has no time to engage in a detailed phenomenol-
ogy of moral communities and their variegated relationships one to another. Thus
Wildes’ argument (1997, p. 88) that there exists indeed overlapping consensus (se-
curing members’ “moral acquaintanceship”) between different “milieus” within
Roman Catholicism is relatively irrelevant (and insufficient to repudiate the con-
fessed “emptiness” of Engelhardt’s secular society), as long as such consensus
cannot be claimed to be universally shared and, therefore, able morally to justify
secular political power in implementing whatever that consensus celebrates or
demands.
31. Examples of the latter mistake can be found in Nelson (1997, p. 17) and in Weiner,
when he without reservation affirms “Engelhardt’s secular bioethics supports a
two-tier health care system” (1997, p. 113). Precisely because Engelhardt’s permis-
sion principle does not support public health care, but only in very hypothetical
terms concedes its possibility (and affirms only that if there were such a thing, it
would have to be two-tier), Engelhardt, pace Weiner (p. 120), would not even have
to explain that concept of “general ownership” (which, in fact, he does at length
explore).
32. Only if one conceives of freedom as a value will one worry about the different
degrees to which a human being is able to realize this value (Hogan, 1997, p. 178).
33. Only if Engelhardt had affirmed freedom as a value, would it be a valid criticism
that he “never defines” what it means to be free (Weiner, 1997, p. 119), though
Engelhardt does explore the minimum conditions necessary for conveying per-
mission. Similarly, when Nelson (1997, p. 21) charges Engelhardt with positing a
“value” involved in keeping promises, he falls into this first trap, which was aptly
recognized by Wildes (1997, p. 83). When Nelson, in addition, claims Engelhardt’s
value is “very specific” he disregards the fact that promise-keeping is a central
formal requirement for all efforts at collaborating freely with others, and thus a
central requirement for any secular morality.
34. Readers who falsely interpret Engelhardt’s permission principle as affirming an
individualism, and who then criticize him on anthropological grounds as doing an
injustice to the intrinsic relatedness of humans (Hogan, 1997, p. 177), have failed
to read his texts with attention. They are, in other words, unable to appreciate that
both the extent and the way in which any individual conceives of his relatedness
to different subsets of others will depend in each case on normative commitments,
about which many among them will differ. It is precisely because Engelhardt
appreciates more deeply than others the depth of certain kinds of human relat-
edness that he recognizes more clearly than Hogan that the “objectivity” of such
relatedness is shaped by the different interpretations attached to it. However,
Engelhardt’s general second-order “morality” is a transcendental possibility and

is not dependent on Hogan’s anthropological assumptions.
35. A good example of this inability is Hauerwas (1997, p. 34 ff). In particular, when
he argues that Christians should witness, rather than trying to refashion the
political structure of the secular world (p. 43), he neglects the need, recognized by
Engelhardt, first to separate Christianity from its all too intimate involvement with
that “world.” Thus Hauerwas accepts, for example, as “Christian witness” West-
ern Christianities’ supporting a health care system that pays exclusive attention to
patients’ worldly well-being. Hauerwas is insensitive to the fact that Engelhardt
endeavors to provide the very political conditions under which Western Christi-
anity could reform itself so as to recapture the Christian tradition and recognize
such support as dangerous and improper.
36. The political implications of the absence of a morally significant consensus or other
ground for secular political authority are profound. The secular moral legitimacy
of contemporary social democratic states is brought into question. A particularly
pronounced inability to understand this political dimension is evinced by Robi-
son, whose use of “we” oscillates between denoting players in a game all agreed
on playing and members of a political entity where membership is enforced. In
suggesting that one can still play the transcendental “game” Engelhardt invokes,
while nevertheless introducing the permission principle “differently,” and in giv-
ing as his example “let no one become a physician unless he is willing to perform
abortions” (1997, p. 105), Robison makes clear that he has not grasped the difference
between voluntary and non-voluntary collaboration.
37. One of the most persistent of these secular moral commitments concerns equality
(or, as in Robison, 1997, p. 107, a “fair share of a public good”). Thus Weiner mis-
understands the transcendental character of Engelhardt’s permission principle: he
does not realize its character as a default position which any one can assume for
whatever reasons he may have, so as to secure the basis for morally authoritative
collaboration among moral strangers. Engelhardt makes no claim that this possi-
bility is good, only that it is the only possibility for authoritative collaboration in
the face of robust moral pluralism. Weiner interprets the proposal quite differ-
ently; namely, as an endorsement of a particular view of just or proper interaction.
Weiner consequently reflects on the conditions for a “moral authority”, which
could bring all to embrace that principle, conceiving those conditions as fulfilled
by the mitigation of (what he mistakenly believes he can establish as) “relevant”
inequalities (1997, p. 114). Indeed, as Nelson correctly observes (1997, p. 27), the
permission principle (were it to be introduced point blank) would stabilize exist-
ing power positions (except where particular persons would be entitled to particu-
lar compensation from other particular persons for particular harms the latter had
imposed on them). The problem with any of the alternative construals of the per-
mission principle is that to determine which kind of equality should be imple-
mented, those very value-judgments about “relevant” inequalities must first be
secured, concerning which general consensus just does not exist. This is why, if
one decides to adopt a pure default position, one is left with no alternative but to
keep that position as free from any “moral burden of proof” as possible. Absent
generally conceded guidelines concerning how (why, and in what way) existing
differences in social status should be removed, accepting the status quo is the
consequence of not employing un-consented force when one cannot rationally

establish that a state of affairs is unjust.
38. Thus Wildes, in spite of his thorough grasp of moral pluralism in the first part of
his essay, in the second part suddenly insists on the reality of his Christian “faith
seeking understanding” (1997, p. 89). In Wildes’ perception, this faith, irrespective
of the diversity of meanings which “understanding” may assume among those
seriously committed to differing faiths, once again suggests an ongoing universal-
ising development. Some such project is also pursued by Hauerwas. In his insis-
tence on the “reasonableness” of Christianity (1997, p. 38), he just does not under-
stand that, given the empirically manifest multiplicity of interpretations of
rationality or reasonableness, the burden of proof for defining either “understand-
ing” or “reasonableness” does not lie with Engelhardt (as the one affirming their
incompatible plurality) but with Hauerwas himself, as the one claiming that there
can be a canonical account of these terms.
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Engelhardt, H. T., Jr. “The philosophy of medicine: A new endeavor.” Texas Reports on
Biology and Medicine 31 (1973): 443-52.
———. Bioethics and Secular Humanism: The Search for a Common Morality. London: SCM
Press, 1991.
———. The Foundations of Bioethics. 2d. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
———. The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger
Publishers, 2000.
———. ed. Global Bioethics: The Collapse of Consensus. Salem, MA: M & M Scrivener
Press, 2006.
———. “Why ecumenism fails: Taking theological differences seriously.” Christian
Bioethics 13, no. 1 (2007): 25-51.
Fukuyama, F. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992.
Hauerwas, S. “Peace with Engelhardt’s peace.” In Reading Engelhardt, edited by B.P.
Minogue, G. Palmer-Fernandez, and J.E. Reagan, 31-44. Dordecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1997.
Hegel, G.W.F. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1952 [1807].
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ties Press, 1970.
———. Rechtsphilosophie. Frankfurt: Verlag Ullstein, 1972.
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Reagan, 175-88. Dordecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997.
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Plato. “Euthyphro.” In Vol. 1 of Platonis Opera, edited by Joannes Burnet. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1961.
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Dordecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997.
Nelson, J.L. “Everything includes itself in power: Power and coherence in
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Robison, W.L. “Monopoly with sick moral strangers.” In Reading Engelhardt, edited by
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An analysis of Engelhardt’s principles of bioethics.” In Reading Engelhardt, edited
by B.P. Minogue, G. Palmer-Fernandez, and J.E. Reagan, 113-38.. Dordrecht: Kluwer
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———. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1967.
A Confucian Student’s
Dialogue with Teacher
Engelhardt
Ruiping Fan
I. Moral Vacuums East and West

A very superficial reading of The Foundations of Bioethics (1986; 1996) might
suggest that there is a significant gulf between Engelhardt’s early work and
his views after he became senior editor of Christian Bioethics in 1994. I shall
argue twice over that this reading is both superficial and mistaken. A careful
reading of the two editions of The Foundations of Bioethics shows that the
author is already pointing towards The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. In
these earlier publications, he gives an account not only how the life of strang-
ers, but also why a life framed by its morality is radically one-sided and
incomplete (Engelhardt, 1991) and in need of the life of the substantive com-
munity, which he describes in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics (2000). The
content of The Foundations of Bioethics is fully compatible with what Engelhardt
develops in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. One can go so far as to show
that the argument in the early work requires a completion that is offered by
the later work. That is, the later work offers an epistemic and communal per-
spective that completes the account of moral knowledge, morality, and moral
community offered in Engelhardt’s early works. Although the Engelhardt of
The Foundations of Bioethics is post-metaphysical, while the Engelhardt of The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics is robustly metaphysical, in fact there is only
one Engelhardt.
This essay explores what the resources of Engelhardt’s reflections offer the
traditional Confucian addressing the major moral, social, and political
challenges of contemporary China: the rebuilding of a moral community. On
the one hand, China is entering the twenty-first century as a nearly unparalleled
71
72 Ruiping Fan
success story. In terms of its recent development, China has become a leading
economic, technological, and scientific power. The reforms initiated by Deng
Xiaoping led more quickly than many imagined to a transformation of
Chinese life. On the other hand, China faces a set of moral problems that has
been described as a moral vacuum resulting from a loss of moral sense on the
part of many Chinese (Wang, 2002). Elements of Chinese society have come to
be characterized by corruption driven by an almost nihilist pursuit of self-
satisfaction. In his works, Engelhardt addresses primarily the issue of moral
communities that share a common understanding of how to resolve their
disagreements, either through sound rational argument or through an appeal
to commonly accepted authorities or procedures. In The Foundations of
Christian Bioethics, we find that his exemplar case of moral community is that
of Orthodox Christians who can worthily approach Communion.
In this essay, I take issue with this privileging of religious community,
because Confucians must address the moral restoration of China, while
appealing neither to decisive sound rational argument, commonly accepted
authorities, or God’s grace. Confucians must appeal to the force of Confucian
moral and metaphysical vision and its capacity to attract Chinese individuals,
Chinese communities, and Chinese political structures. Engelhardt and I in
our own projects start from a diagnosis of a moral vacuum that has arisen
from the collapse of traditional moral and social structures, such as Engelhardt
gives regarding the West (see especially Engelhardt, 2000, chapters 1-3).
However, I develop his diagnosis, and in essential ways amend his diagnosis
to account for, and to address, the challenges of the Chinese situation. In so
doing, this essay argues that Engelhardt’s secular account of bioethics may
have underestimated the function of geographical moral communities as one
finds them in these East Asian areas influenced by Confucian morality. This
Confucian sense of moral community is an enormously important resource
that should be drawn on to reconstruct Chinese morality and politics in the
twenty-first century. The essay contends that the Engelhardtian position
should be seen as much more sympathetic to Chinese, especially Confucian,
political approaches than might at first appear to be the case.
II. Moral Strangers and Moral Friends

Engelhardt takes seriously the cacophonous plurality of ethics and
bioethics. The Foundations of Bioethics1 begins with the recognition that there
are concrete but different moral communities within which men and women
can live coherent moral lives and pursue virtue. “There are devout Jews,
Protestants, Orthodox Catholics, Roman Catholics, Moslems, Hindus, and
others. There are fervent egalitarians and libertarians. There are capitalists
and socialists of various persuasions. There still remain even Marxists” (1996,
p. viii).2 As he sees it, contemporary society is characterized by the existence
of moral strangers; namely, the persons “who do not share sufficient moral
premises or rules of evidence and inference to resolve moral controversies by
sound rational argument, or who do not have a common commitment to
individuals or institutions in authority to resolve moral controversies” (p. 7).3
Such moral strangers cannot constitute a moral community. These sustain the
contentious moral pluralism of at least Western societies.
In his work, community is usually contrasted with society: community is
used to identify a body of men and women bound together by common moral
traditions and/or practices around a shared vision of the good life, which
allows them to collaborate as moral friends. In contrast, society is used to
identify an association that compasses diverse moral communities, as well as
moral strangers. While moral friends can resolve moral controversies by
sound moral argument or by an appeal to jointly recognized moral authority,
moral strangers must resolve moral controversies by mutual agreement (p. 7).
Therefore, the moral fabric of society is both thin and marked by contention.
Engelhardt’s secular, moral, and epistemological work is best understood
as a series of studies in controversy theory. In various publications, he explores
the circumstances under which moral controversies can be brought to a reso-
lution. Because of the formative influence of Roman Catholic Scholastic reflec-
tions on Western European thought, which reflections gave issue to the
Enlightenment, much of the West has come to regard moral and cultural tra-
ditions as structured primarily by a web of discursive arguments. Engelhardt
in The Foundations of Bioethics focuses on the possibility of resolving moral
controversies through sound rational argument. He brings these assumptions
into question.
The appeal to sound rational argument as the foundation for the moral
intellectual perspective of the West fails. As is well-known, the Western Scho-
lastic and Enlightenment project attempts through the capacities of discur-
sive reason to establish a universal content-full ethics and a moral community
of all persons outside of any particular religious and cultural assumptions. It
attempts to frame a contentful moral vision from nowhere. According to this
project, all persons through sound rational arguments can come to recognize
themselves as members of a common, universal, moral community. Engelhardt
sees this project as totally hopeless. Indeed, one of the major arguments that
he has constructed in The Foundation of Bioethics is to show why this Scholastic
and later Enlightenment aspiration is a blind alley. From his view, no matter
what kind of approach one takes, one’s argument will either lead to no sub-
stantive moral conclusion, beg the question, or involve an infinite regress. For
instance, an appeal to a formal structure (such as a formalist approach) pro-
vides no moral content; an appeal to any particular moral content (such as an
intuitionist approach) begs the question of the moral standard by which the
content is selected; and an appeal to an external reality (such as a naturalist
approach) will show what is, not what ought to be or how what is should be
74 Ruiping Fan
judged (pp. 41-42). Engelhardt analyzes in detail eight popular approaches

that have been designed by modern philosophers and explicates in depth
why they must all fail (pp. 42-65).
Given the centrality of sound rational argument in the fabric of the Western
moral and metaphysical cultural edifice, the failure of foundationalism
threatens the West with postmodernity and nihilism. Indeed, this failure
brings the secular West to the brink of nihilism. In the face of this crisis,
Engelhardt points out that there is still another possibility for framing a
common secular morality. The only difficulty is that this morality must be
grounded not in reason, but in the will (in permission). This morality cannot
have any canonical moral content (it cannot establish as binding one among
the many possible rankings of cardinal human goods). Engelhardt’s account
of this possibility for a secular morality allows him to rescue a small sliver of
the Enlightenment project of framing a common morality. It also allows him
to give an account of the authority of those practices such as the free market,
which bind moral strangers together across the globe. Engelhardt reminds his
reader that, even if one is not able to resolve controversies by sound rational
argument, and even if all those in controversy are not brought to a common
agreement by conversion, as long as one does not wish simply to resort to
what will appear to others as mere force when imposing what one desires or
what one knows to be true, then one can at least derive common moral
authority from consent.
Against this background, Engelhardt is able to underscore, “If one is
interested in collaborating with moral authority in the face of moral
disagreements without fundamental recourse to force, then one must accept
agreement among members of the controversy or peaceable negotiation as
the means for resolving concrete moral controversies” (1996, p. 68). He
summarizes this requirement as the principle of permission: “Authority for
actions involving others in a secular pluralist society is derived from their
permission” (p. 122). This is a default means of gaining common authority
when persons enter into moral practices grounded neither in sound rational
argument nor in the noetic knowledge that, Engelhardt claims, leads to
conversion. Engelhardt understands that he is outlining the equivalent of a
transcendental condition in the sense of providing the grounds for the
possibility of an unavoidable general human practice: the moral collaboration
of moral strangers. For Engelhardt, this transcendental condition is the
equivalent of a conceptual grammar that lies at the basis of all practices
binding moral strangers in forms of collaboration that each of the participants
can recognize as authorized by his consent. This transcendental condition,
this ground for the possibility of a particular form of morality, allows an
explanation of the ways in which numerous practice-relevant understandings
of moral rationality take shape (which practices do have moral content).
Engelhardt appreciates that, in the actual world actual persons make actual
agreements, so that thick practices come into existence through the

development of spontaneous order. The result is that, for example, very local
markets can have very local and particular rules. Beyond such markets, thick
moral communities with practice-relative content can be regarded as coming
into existence through a set of agreements, formal and informal (such as the
moral character of the bounds of a particular form of marriage: an Orthodox
Jewish marriage).
In this way, Engelhardt accounts for the deep structure of a wide range of
practice-specific understandings. From the outside, the general secular moral
legitimacy of such practices can be regarded as grounded in mutual consent.
From the inside, their legitimacy will not be seen as grounded in mutual
consent, but in the mutual encounter with and experience of a moral-
metaphysical truth, a concern for a particular view of human flourishing or
the pursuit of a particular cluster of ordered human goods. Engelhardt’s
procedural morality can thus achieve one cardinal element of the
Enlightenment project: it can account for the moral authority of a wide range
of moral interactions, as well as disclose the possibility of a universal morality
binding persons as moral strangers. It has the advantage of justifying all
practices “that draw their authority from bare consent or from the necessary
forbearance from using individuals without their consent…”, such as “free
and informed consent, the market, and limited democracies” (1996, p. 71). It
also has the advantage of accounting from the outside for the legitimacy of
numerous moral communities built up around very specific moral practices.
The participants can be regarded as consenting to a practice, although the
participants would never see it that way.
What Engelhardt has established for contemporary pluralist society to
settle moral controversies among moral strangers is, in his own terms, a
content-less, purely procedural morality. This morality is content-less and
purely procedural because it involves no particular moral vision or
understanding. Neither does it give any value to agreement or permission. It
only provides “a means of characterizing the secular moral community as the
possible intellectual standpoint of persons interested in resolving moral
controversies in ways not fundamentally based on force” (1996, p. 69). For
him, this is all that secular reason can disclose for us.
Importantly, Engelhardt recognizes that there is much more to be affirmed
morally than sound rational argument can justify or common agreement
authorize. The exemplar case of this further and cardinal genre of knowledge
he takes to be provided by the noetic knowledge (a form of non-sensible,
empirical knowledge) that Orthodox Christians hold to be at the foundation
of their theological claims and their way of life. It is out of recognition of what
he claims this knowledge to disclose that he holds that one should want more
than a sparse morality grounded in consent can justify. He goes so far as to
assert that one should join a religion and be careful to join the right one (1996,
76 Ruiping Fan
p. xi). This claim indicates both the thickness of his community of moral
friends, as well as that Engelhardt regards the exemplar moral community as
one with religious commitments. Engelhardt recognizes that, since the sparse
morality grounded in consent primarily presupposes that consent allows the
interaction of persons embedded in diverse moral communities, it is quite
another matter if all one has is what is provided by Engelhardt’s procedural
morality of permission. In the last case, one’s morality will indeed be vacuous
and inadequate to any substantive notion of human flourishing (see Engelhardt,
1991, especially chapters 1 and 2). Further, such a general procedural morality
will allow much that Engelhardt’s moral community will noetically know to be
deeply immoral and perverse. Engelhardt’s procedural morality is not celebrated
by him as a freestanding morality. Instead, he would hope that at most it would
serve morally to authorize the collaboration of persons already living in their
own thick moral communities. It is not the morality by which one should live a
full-fledged moral life (1996, p. 421). Finally, in cooperating with moral strangers
in today’s secular pluralist circumstances, one must tolerate much that one
knows to be profoundly wrong. This wrongness, for him, “cannot be remedied
by rational analysis and argument, [but] only by conversion to the moral
community that will give proper guidance and moral substance” (1996, p. 421).
These reflections lead Engelhardt to The Foundations of Christian Bioethics
(2000), where he addresses a content-full ethics that binds Christian moral
friends. For him, this Christian ethics is not only a content-full ethics, but the
content-full ethics that can remedy the one-sidedness and incompleteness of
the sparse secular ethics (not to mention the wrongheaded moralities of other
moral communities). Thus, it is both superficial and mistaken to take that
there are two Engelhardts—an early Engelhardt engaged in secular bioethics
and a late Engelhardt committed to Christian bioethics. There is in fact only
one Engelhardt: his intellectual adventure is always attuned to finding an
adequate answer to the question regarding how it is possible for a devout
Christian like himself to live a Christian moral life in a contemporary society
that is both post-Christian and neo-pagan. This possibility requires, from his
view, both the sparse fabric of a libertarian cosmopolitan ethic regulated by
the principle of permission and the substance of a Christian morality that
draws on canonical Christian ontological and epistemological foundations.
That is why the two foundations—the foundations of bioethics and the
foundations of Christian bioethics—are complementary to each other.
Engelhardt is diagnosing the character of life in the post-traditional West,
while also pointing to what he takes to be its needed therapy.
III. Moral Community: Who is In, Who is Out, and Why

As Engelhardt’s pagan Confucian student, I am not in a position to
comment on his Christian bioethics. But I have enjoyed consulting him
continuously regarding the sparse secular ethics that he proposes for binding
moral strangers. I say “continuously” because our conversations reach back
at least to the time I became his graduate student at Rice University in 1992.
He and I must be moral strangers according to his definition: it seems that, for
many moral controversies, we do not share sufficient moral premises or rules
of evidence and inference to resolve our controversies by sound rational
argument (since he holds fundamental Christian premises and rules while I
Confucian), neither do we have a common commitment to individuals or
institutions in authority to resolve them (since he has his Christian priest
while I my Confucian family). He has always been careful to treat me—a
pagan student—in ways in which his secular principle of permission has
never been violated. Much more than that, his love, care, patience, and
incessant assistance have never failed to fill, enrich, and deepen my life. I am
confident to say that I cannot be luckier than to have become a student of this
great man!
All this seems to pose no problem for this account—we are simply affective
friends, but not moral friends. As he states, “given the complexity of human
circumstances and inclinations, moral strangers can be the best of affective
friends” (1996, p. 7). However, this account by Engelhardt appears inadequate
to the task of characterizing the full texture of the differences separating his
Orthodox Christian understandings from those of most Confucians. It is also
insufficient for addressing the contemporary moral crisis of China. It is clear
that for Engelhardt the exemplar case of a moral community is that of a robust,
religious community bound in noetic knowledge to a very personal God. The
result is that his view of the exemplar moral community is one that is morally
and metaphysically very thick. In part, this state of affairs may reflect the dif-
ference between a robust monotheism and a rather relaxed Chinese paganism
with a de facto acceptance of polytheism. Although Confucianism claims suf-
ficient moral premises and rules for its believers to follow, it is quite another
thing to assume that religious community is the primordial model of moral
community.4
Many of the religious communities of the contemporary, post-traditional
West do not demand the strict coherence around a common understanding of
right worship and right belief that is demanded of Orthodox Christians. No
doubt Engelhardt would find such communities to be deficient cases or
flawed examples of moral communities in general and of religious communi-
ties in particular. This is especially important where there are important moral
communities not completely overlapped by religious communities, with the
result that it is unclear as to where the final loyalties of the members lie. For
example, many contemporary Roman Catholics are also liberal social-demo-
crats in their political morality, and others are political conservatives. While
both still belong to the same religious community, they could also be classi-
fied as members of other moral communities, one liberal social-democratic,
78 Ruiping Fan
another conservative, so that it may be unclear as to which commitment will

trump which in what circumstances.
When Engelhardt takes “sufficient moral premises and rules of evidence
and inference” to be the standard for identifying moral friends, it is not quite
clear whether “sufficient” is used in the sense of quality or quantity. If it is
used in the sense of quantity, then an atheist egalitarian and a Roman Catholic
egalitarian may count as belonging to a common moral community, while an
anti-egalitarian Roman Catholic and an egalitarian Roman Catholic may not.
This is because, given the large amount of social and moral issues involved
with the egalitarian and anti-egalitarian distinction in many contemporary
societies, the moral premises and rules of evidence and inference shared by
the atheist egalitarian and the Roman Catholic egalitarian may outnumber
the moral premises and rules of evidence and inference shared by the anti-
egalitarian Roman Catholic and the egalitarian Roman Catholic. On the other
hand, if “sufficient” is used in the sense of quality, then one must decide
which moral premises and rules of evidence and inference are weightier than
others in identifying moral friends or moral strangers. Is a religious moral
premise always more important and, therefore, often more compelling, than
a secular moral premise? I think Engelhardt would agree that this question
can only be sensibly answered by each particular moral community in terms
of its respective internal view. The question then is, do all moral communities
take religious moral premises as more important than secular moral premises
in identifying a moral community? Are they correct in doing so, where this is
the case?
It seems that, in constructing The Foundations of Bioethics, Engelhardt is
aware of all these issues. For instance, in an endnote to the book we read the
following:
It is important to recognize that persons who do not live their lives fully
embedded within a very thickly joined community, such as a monastery or
some other committed religious community, or a group of ideologically
dedicated, will find that they are both moral friends and moral strangers in different
areas with the same people—which is to say that, in some areas of discussion,
they will be able to resolve disputes by sound rational argument or by
commonly acknowledged moral authorities. In other areas, resolution will
be possible only by agreement. (1996, p. 24 n. 13, emphasis added)
This means that since many people today do not live in thickly-bound
religious communities or groups of the ideologically dedicated (which are
like tight-knit religious sects in many ways), many are inevitably both moral
friends and moral strangers with each other in different areas.
Many who explore Engelhardt’s use of the terms moral stranger and moral
friend do not have a strictly analytic philosophical problem with the substance
of his claims. Instead, they are disturbed by the rhetorical associations that
come along with calling others moral strangers. Engelhardt as an Orthodox

Christian wants to draw clear lines between orthodox and heterodox moral,
communitarian, and metaphysical understandings. He, therefore, engages
what have been for many of his readers emotively shocking, if not highly
provocative terms. His Orthodox readers along with other traditional
Christians and Orthodox Jews may in principle be willing not only to grant
the distinctions he draws, but also to underscore the rhetorical associations.
Not only do they do so for conceptual reasons, but they join Engelhardt for
his socio-political reasons as well. Others may want to resist these distinctions,
because they wish to resist his divisive agenda, which is clear in The Foundations
of Bioethics, and even clearer in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Engelhardt
is committed to drawing a crisp line between the orthodox and the heterodox,
so as to rally his troops to the defense of what he takes to be both traditional
and proper.
A Confucian will in general not wish to attend to such bright distinctions.
For Confucians, the difficulty with Engelhardt and with Orthodox Christians
generally is that, although they recognize the importance of communities and
friends, and even of the family as a moral community, they always hold that
their community with other Orthodox Christians, or more precisely put, their
community with God, trumps all other loyalties. Engelhardt and his Ortho-
dox will hold that the family is properly constituted in terms of its relation-
ship with God the Father in terms of whom all other instances of fatherhood
are to be understood. Hence, the focus by Engelhardt and Orthodox Chris-
tians on their community with those who recognize this prior, defining com-
munity with God. A Confucian may wish to ignore such boundaries, even
when they undoubtedly exist. This is because within a Confucian perspective
things look and feel quite different. If anyone is both my moral friend (in
some areas) and my moral stranger (in other areas), my interest in calling him
a moral friend or a moral stranger will most probably reflect some over-arch-
ing concern for community. Confucian community-building requires under-
scoring communality and discounting many areas of disagreements. Chinese
in general, and Confucians in particular, seek social harmony.
IV. Confucianism as a Fuzzy, Bordered, Open-Ended

Community
Engelhardt would argue that his account is not to blame for the circumstance
that many people today do not live in deep-rooted and thickly joined moral com-
munities. They could and should, he would contend, seek and join in such pro-
found communities. He holds that they should all become Orthodox Christians.
This account, taken as a whole, overestimates the significance of non-geographical
moral communities (such as religious community) and underestimates the sig-
nificance of geographically located moral communities (such as family, neighborhood,
80 Ruiping Fan
city, and state). Non-geographical moral communities exist across the borders of
states. Religious sects constitute prominent examples of such non-geographical
communities. Given economic globalization and the movements of populations,
non-geographical communities have begun to play more and more significant
moral and cultural roles. One finds major religious denominations that maintain
their respective religious and moral integrity across geographical regions. Still,
while affirming the importance of such non-geographical moral communities,
Engelhardt has under-analyzed the function of geographical moral communities.
At least in the East Asian areas shaped by Confucian moral teachings and
practices, one can find significant geographical moral communities cutting
across different religious communities, so as to include Confucians, Buddhists
and Daoists (the so-called “Three Teachings” or “Three Religions”). In the case
of China, for example, for some two thousand years, Confucianism, as the
dominant religion, has been quite tolerant of and integrative of Buddhism and
Daoism. These three religions have dialogued, argued, and competed with
each other in various ways, but have never fallen into bloody religious warfare.
As a result, although the dominant ethics and politics in the life of Chinese have
always been Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist religious elements have also been
present. Accordingly, a Chinese village has certainly typically been a Confucian
moral community, but it has not been a purely Confucian religious
community.
Confucians have never thought it a good idea to attempt to prohibit cross-
religion marriages in order to maintain Confucian religious integrity. Instead,
given the tolerant Confucian views, most Buddhists and Daoists have
accepted the Confucian moral viewpoint that everyone is naturally born into
a family and should cultivate the Confucian (natural) virtues in their familial
and social lives. Hence, a Chinese family is a Confucian moral community,
but may not be a Confucian religious community. In the Chinese family it is
not unusual for the father to be a Confucian and the mother a Buddhist. In
extreme cases, one can find religiously quite mixed families: the father is a
Confucian, the mother a Buddhist, and the grandparents Daoists. But most
Chinese take their three-generation families (if not even larger families) as
their primary moral communities. They practice the Confucian moral virtues
in taking care of each other, even when they hold more or less different reli-
gious metaphysical beliefs.5 My point with regard to Engelhardt is that, with
respect to the great majority of Chinese who live, marry, and raise children,
they do so within a quite open-ended understanding of what it is to be
Confucian.
Within such an understanding of Confucianism and in terms of the rather
open-ended understanding of moral community that it sustains, does it make
sense to take such Chinese family members as both moral friends (in some
areas) and moral strangers (in other areas), even if that is literally true in
terms of Engelhardtian terminology? With his Orthodox Christian experience,
Engelhardt would find that Confucians do not take seriously their religious
(metaphysical) convictions—e.g., a Confucian husband has no problem with
his wife’s worship of Buddha for the family’s welfare, as long as she also
exercises the essential Confucian rituals, such as performing sacrifices to the
ancestors. Like the Christian missionaries to China, Engelhardt is
unsympathetic to the circumstance that many Chinese pray to all kinds of
deities, such as Confucian spirits, Buddhist gods, and Daoist immortals
(indeed, they often put the statues of all of them into a common temple) and
are not bothered at all by the inconsistency of these various religious and
metaphysical beliefs. An ordinary Chinese might honor his ancestors by
following the rigid rules of the sacrificial ritual dictated by Confucianism,
attend a Buddhist pageant, and practice Daoist breathing exercises, all in the
same day.
Chinese are not the type of philosophers who worry about the theoretical
coherence of different metaphysical systems. What they care about most is a
practical morality: whom should I love and how should I love? For Confucians,
the importance of moral community is not the common embrace of a consistent
theoretical perspective, but the fulfillment of the practice of loyalty: your
primary moral friends are those who sincerely take care of you, who give
priority to your welfare over others, and who would even in some cases
sacrifice their own interests to promote yours. Whether they are Confucians
in religion, they are the most valuable persons to you—especially in this
world of persistent scarcity of resources and competition. Indeed, from the
Confucian view, even if you are a Confucian, your Buddhist mother is your
primary moral friend, not a far-away Confucian whom you have never gotten
to know, even if that person happens to hold Confucian religious and moral
convictions similar to your own.
On the other hand, it is not quite clear if these considerations stand in any
real contradiction with the principle of permission that Engelhardt has proposed
for guiding today’s pluralistic societies. As he points out, “the distinction
between moral friends and moral strangers, between societies and communities,
is directed to the way in which controversies can be resolved with commonly
recognized moral authority” (1996, p. 24 n. 13). Were a Confucian child and his
Buddhist mother to hold the same moral premises and rules of evidence and
inference, they could resolve their moral controversies through sound rational
argument. Where they do not hold compatible moral premises and rules, they
can resolve their controversies by an appeal to their commonly recognized
moral authority: the family as a whole. In either instance, their solutions are
morally authoritative—they have not used unconsented-to force in their actions
with each other. For those Confucians and Buddhists who do not share sufficient
moral premises and rules, and who do not have a commonly recognized
individual or institution, Engelhardt would contend that they must resolve
their moral controversies by agreement or permission.
82 Ruiping Fan
Engelhardt’s proposal has obvious moral-theoretical advantages for the

contemporary world, especially at international levels. On the one hand,
Engelhardt is able to account for international collaboration among moral
strangers at numerous levels. Unlike those who proclaim consensus in the
face of irresolvable moral diversity, Engelhardt has the conceptual resources
to recognize that global collaboration is not grounded in a common morality,
in a common ranking of goods, in a common understanding of human
flourishing, but rather in the sparse authority provided by the moral power
of consent (Engelhardt, 2006b). On the other hand, unlike many who would
step away from ever advancing canonical moral and metaphysical claims, he
clearly affirms his Orthodox Christianity as providing the content-full
morality that is canonical, albeit not justifiable through sound rational
argument (Engelhardt, 2007a). He argues for mutual respect, peaceful
negotiation, and consent-based cooperation, but he is committed to converting
and baptizing us all. Despite his religious commitments, if this principle of
permission could be followed in contemporary international politics, the
world would no doubt be a better place than it is currently under the guidance
of a liberal social-democratic ideology.
The principle of permission should be understood in a practice-relevant
sense. The truth of the matter is that real moralities are always embedded in
particular practices.6 From a Confucian point of view, morality begins from a
familial sentiment and related activities. For Confucius (551-479 BC), everyone
is born into a family and has a natural sentiment to love parents and siblings.
The love between parent and child and between siblings is both the genesis
and the norm of the fundamental human virtue, ren (Analects 1: 2). Ren must
then be cultivated and promoted through a system of familial and social
activities (called li—ritual—in the Confucian Chinese culture) to become
realized as a virtue. While Confucius was not unique in recognizing that
humans must follow proper rules and form appropriate behavior patterns in
order peaceably and virtuously to live together and realize a good life, he was
truly distinguished from almost all other ancient sages in vindicating the idea
that human virtue cannot be realized independently of rituals, the essential
group of particular human activities and practices affirmed by a culture. The
Confucian principle of morality or fundamental virtue is arrived at and
embodied in the practical activities and social institutions affirmed by the
Confucian culture.7 This is the case for any general moral principle or virtue,
whether it is Confucian or not. In short, when a general principle or complete
virtue is articulated for the sake of directing individual actions and social
institutions, it is nothing but a handy abbreviation for a concrete web of ideas
and values secured and embedded in particular practices. In this sense, general
moral principles are inevitably practice-relevant principles. This affirmation of
ritual appears to be underscored in Engelhardt’s emphasis on the central role
of liturgy in the moral life (Engelhardt, 2005).
V. Whose Morality? Which Politics? What May One Do in a

Less Than Ideal Political State?
In The Foundations of Bioethics, Engelhardt shows that not only can the
consent of collaborating individuals account for the moral authority binding
persons in actually existing practices such as global markets, but it can also in
principle give authority to the minimal state. While the market does exist, the
minimal state exists nowhere on the face of the earth. Whether or not the
minimal state ever existed, its non-existence in the twenty-first century means
that all contemporary states are, for Engelhardt, in varying degrees illegitimate.
To some extent, this state of affairs does not bother him. First, he regards
the minimal state as a secular regulative moral ideal. Second, he lives in a
non-geographically-located Orthodox Christian moral community (with a
robust religious grounding). He is of the view that this community can use
Engelhardt’s secular morality to defend its existence to secular states. His
community can say to the secular state, “Leave us alone. In general secular
terms, we can justify our internal moral authority better than you can justify
your secular moral authority. We are a free-will association, and all in this
community freely submit to its power structure and affirm its beliefs.”
Although he regards his community as having this defense, Engelhardt does
not hold that the substantive moral authority of his community comes from
consent (that defense is only the justification offered to the external moral
observer). He holds that the substantive authority for his community comes
from God. The question is then what Engelhardt’s theory has to tell both
Orthodox Christians and Confucians about how they should regard the
much-more-than-minimal states that actually exist and in which they actually
live (Engelhardt, 2006a).
The issue of how one ought to live in far-from-minimal states is of great
significance for moral communities such as Confucians and Orthodox
Christians, who are interested in maintaining traditional social structures
such as the family in robustly post-traditional societies. What social structures
ought one to endeavor to use the force of the more-than-minimal state to
establish and protect? In answering such questions, in analyzing how to
assess and limit the abuses of more than minimal secular, post-traditional
states, Engelhardt unlike liberal social democrats does not hold that civil
rights have a priority over property rights. Because of Engelhardt’s recognition
of the strong bond between embodiment and property, property rights have
for him a priority over such civil rights as the voting franchise and public
protest. He will then accept some limits on civil rights, if this will protect the
more fundamental property and market rights. In terms of such concerns,
Engelhardt’s position allows him to judge among contemporary more-than-
minimal states as to which is more morally oppressive and disordered. In
deciding which is to be preferred, liberal-social-democratic states such as the
84 Ruiping Fan
United States with heavy taxation and an emerging post-traditional morality,

or market-rights-oriented polities such as Hong Kong with an equally post-
traditional morality, all else being equal, his position puts him on the side of
Hong Kong.
Here a bit of historical reflection is in order which surfaces in some of
Engelhardt’s recent work. In the twentieth century, the United States moved
from being a more-than-minimal state that gave robust recognition to market
rights, while establishing a generic Christian moral and religious
understanding, to being a more-than-minimal state that gives less recognition
to market and property rights, while dis-establishing its generic, mostly
Christian moral and religious understandings. The current American polity is
now on its way to endorsing a post-Christian, post-traditional moral vision,
while decreasing property and market rights (Engelhardt, 2001). In such
circumstances, it would appear that in secular moral terms Engelhardt’s
Orthodoxy may, and should, use the political processes of the secular, more-
than-minimal state to protect or even establish their own community’s moral
and religious commitments. In terms of the arguments of The Foundations of
Bioethics (Engelhardt, 1996), such attempts at establishment can be justified as
acts of self-defense against a state that has transgressed the constraints of a
minimal state. There appears to be no secular moral grounds for Engelhardt
to deny this option to his Orthodox Christian moral community. In such
circumstances, the morality of a non-geographically-located community can
through an act of self-defense come to establish its moral vision over a
particular geographical area.
Confucianism has suffered a series of anti-Confucian political movements
with roots in the late nineteenth century which culminated in a number of
explicit rejections of Confucianism, such as the May Fourth movement of
1919 and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The superstructures of China‘s
politics and economics are no longer Confucian. However, this does not mean
that the Confucian civilization has been placed in a museum. To the contrary,
despite radical changes in China over the last century, the Chinese moral
sense and the general understanding of moral agency remain at bottom Con-
fucian. At the foundations of contemporary Chinese culture, there remains a
strong Confucian sub-structure, which is the source of the dynamism of Chi-
na‘s contemporary social transition, as well as of the Chinese economic
reforms and remarkable success of the last three decades. Confucians are
called morally to engage in fully restoring contemporary Chinese culture.
China must be rendered whole through restoring proper Confucian intellectual
understandings and actual living practices of morality and politics.
There appear to be a number of points in which the Confucian can agree
with Engelhardt, the Orthodox Christian. First, like the Orthodox who for the
most part remained untouched by the West’s Scholasticism and Enlightenment
(Engelhardt, 2007b), Confucians can regard many of the intellectual puzzles
generated by the West as just that: intellectual puzzles irrelevant to the

concrete life of Confucians and a Confucian society. Second, Confucians, like
the Orthodox, will assert a privileged access to moral truth and will invoke
that access as the basis for the authority of the Confucian community
preserving itself, even when this involves acting to achieve governance over
the surrounding society. Like Orthodox Christians, Confucians will celebrate
when Heaven gives them the opportunity to enthrone an emperor. Confucians
will resist Engelhardt’s crisp line between moral friends and moral strangers.
Unlike Engelhardt, this attempt to establish Confucianism will not in principle
give much emphasis to Engelhardt’s distinction between a Confucian moral
community and a Confucian society. In part, this is the case because Confucians
do not hold any ritual equivalent of the Orthodox Christian Eucharist in
which only those of ritual purity may participate (Engelhardt, 2005). For the
Confucian, it is enough that, in China, most people have implicitly, if not
explicitly, consented to the government’s restricting certain religious actions
and promoting certain Confucian practices to preserve Confucian virtues.
This is so not only because the Chinese have never explicitly required state
religious neutrality, but also because they have certain areas of religious
freedom.
Acknowledgments
I thank H. T. Engelhardt, Jr. and Mark J. Cherry for their useful comments
on the earlier drafts of this essay. The support of the Governance in Asia
Research Center at City University of Hong Kong is acknowledged with
gratitude.
Notes
1. It has been generally agreed that there is no real substantive difference between
the two editions of the book, except for some terminological changes made for the
sake of accuracy, such as a change from “the principle of autonomy” used in the
first edition to “the principle of permission” used in the second edition. For the
sake of simplicity, this essay only cites the second edition.
2. Interestingly, he does not mention Confucians. This “omission” may not only be
because of the decline of Confucianism in the modern time, but may also be be-
cause he finds that Confucians are not seriously religious. See section IV.
3. In contrast, “moral friends are those who share enough of a content-full morality
so that they can resolve moral controversies by sound moral argument or by an
appeal to a jointly recognized moral authority whose jurisdiction they acknowledge
as derived from a source other than common agreement” (1996, p.7).
4. Engelhardt mentions non-religious moral communities in many places of his book.
However, anyone seriously reading through the book would get the impression
that religious community is usually in his mind when he characterizes a close or
86 Ruiping Fan
profound moral community. For instance, he says “moral friends can become moral
strangers overnight through heresy or schism” (1996, p. 25 n. 13).
5. One must concede at least one point to Engelhardt: a Confucian highly dedicated
to rightly-ordered Confucian views would not want his son or daughter to marry
a Buddhist or Daoist who took either of these religions too seriously.
6. Michael Walzer has clearly spelled out the embodiment of morality in thick practices:
“morality is thick from the beginning, culturally integrated, fully resonant, and it
reveals itself thinly only on special occasions, when moral language is turned to
special purposes” (1994, p. 4).
7. This does not mean that the rituals should never change. Confucius certainly
understands that the rituals did change throughout Chinese history (Analects 2: 23).
But he does not think such change can be directed by one overriding principle.
Rather, it should be achieved through a procedure in which one would integrate
and balance relevant moral concerns and ideas, all of which are practice-relevant
(e.g., Analects 3:4, 9:3, 17:21).
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———. “Life and Death after Christendom: The Moralization of Religion and the
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———. “Taking Moral Difference Seriously: Morality after the Death of God.” In Rec-
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———. “Critical Reflections on Theology’s Handmaid: Why the Role of Philosophy in
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Completing The Picture:
Engelhardt’s Christian
Bioethics
Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.
Some readers might think that The Foundations of Christian Bioethics (hereafter
Christian Bioethics) represents an about face in the thought of H. Tristram
Engelhardt, Jr. In the field of bioethics, Engelhardt is well known for his
arguments in The Foundations of Bioethics (hereafter Foundations), and Bioethics
and Secular Humanism (hereafter Secular Humanism), for a thin, procedural
ethic in a secular world. In Christian Bioethics, Engelhardt argues for a rich
content-full1 Christian bioethics. Christian Bioethics seems to be an abrupt
about-face. However, to see Christian Bioethics as a complete change in direc-
tion would be a misreading of his work. This essay will argue that Christian
Bioethics is not a change in direction but the completion of a journey. Further-
more, I would argue that, to achieve a complete understanding of Engelhar-
dt’s thought, readers need to examine the three books together. While they
are independent works, the books are best understood as forming a whole
picture. The books are like a triptych in which each painting, though
complete in itself, is given greater meaning when viewed with the others.
While readers may think that the books are very different works, there are
a number of themes that bring these very different works together. One deep
and influential theme that runs through each of the works is about moral
epistemology and how content-full claims for bioethics can be known. In
Foundations and Secular Humanism, Engelhardt argues that public reason in a
secular society can establish only a content-thin bioethics based on the neces-
sary conditions for moral discourse. The focus of his concern in Foundations is
moral reason in a secular society. In Christian Bioethics, moral reason is set
89
90 Kevin Wildes, S.J.
within the context of a believing community. In this context, reason can establish
much more by way of content. Engelhardt’s exploration of these epistemo-
logical questions raises important issues about public reason and the role of
faith that can be both religious and nonreligious.
While exploring these epistemological questions, Engelhardt argues for a
second theme in his writing, about the importance of moral community in
shaping moral knowledge and action. It is out of his exploration of moral
epistemology that Engelhardt argues for the social construction of moral
knowledge. The role of social and communal dimensions for moral knowledge
is very important to the positions he develops in the three books. Engelhardt
argues that practical reason is always from “somewhere” and never from
“nowhere.”
A third theme, which builds from the first two themes, concerns the
implications of his analysis for understanding moral community, moral
knowledge, and the moral authority of the secular state. When discussing
Engelhardt’s work, people often begin with his views about the limited state.
That is the wrong starting point. His views about the role of the state are not
his starting point but rather they are based on his analysis of public moral
reason and questions of moral epistemology. Instead of starting with his
views about the state, one ought to start with his argument about public reason
and its limits. These views set the stage for his conclusions about the secular
state and its limited moral authority (Engelhardt and Wildes, 1994).
In this essay, I trace each of these themes: moral knowledge, the context of
moral reason, and the moral authority of the state. In so doing, I hope to dem-
onstrate how the three different books are best understood in relationship to
one another. The essay will begin by tracing out the “postmodern dilemma”
for moral thought and its implications for moral epistemology. It is in light of
this view about the limits of moral reason that we come to understand the
social nature of moral knowledge. This, in turn, leads to views about the secular
state and the role of community in moral knowledge and action.
I. The Postmodern Dilemma and Moral Epistemology

Engelhardt situates bioethics in the midst of what he calls the postmodern
dilemma for ethics. ‘Postmodern’ is a risky term to use since it is used to con-
vey a number of different views in contemporary intellectual discourse. Con-
sequently, the term itself has become a source of controversy in the academy.
Engelhardt understands the postmodern dilemma as both an epistemological
problem and a cultural problem for ethics.
The project for ethics in the Modern Age was to develop morality outside
of the context of any particular religion or moral community. A key theme for
Engelhardt, developed in both Foundations and Secular Humanism, is that the
modern project has failed. On Engelhardt’s account the modern age sought to
Engelhardt’s Christian Bioethics 91
develop ethics by appeal to reason, or some human faculty like intuition or

affection, without resorting to cultural or religious beliefs. He sets the mod-
ern project in ethics against the backdrop of the Reformation and the wars
of religion. The failure of the modern project to find common justification for
ethics leads to the postmodern dilemma of how to justify moral choices in a
secular society. There are two dimensions to the postmodern dilemma for eth-
ics: the diversity of moral cultures in secular societies and the loss of a com-
mon moral culture pose both socio-cultural and philosophical/epistemologi-
cal issues. These two dimensions—epistemological and cultural—are
interwoven. Moral judgments are structured with a context and the contem-
porary, secular world has many contexts. Moral reason, intuition, or affection
cannot stand outside these contexts to determine a right answer. To the degree
that there is a shared moral culture, the epistemological questions are not as
evident. But as a society becomes more culturally and morally diverse, moral
assumptions are less and less common and moral questions are framed in
many different ways.
Such diversity is a particular problem for health care and bioethics in that
actions in medicine and health care are often understood and evaluated
within a framework of moral commitments. Engelhardt argues in Foundations
and elsewhere against a model of medicine as “applied science.” Health care
and medical care are delivered within the context of people’s moral frame-
works which often shape our views of what is in the “best interest” of patients.
Furthermore, the delivery of medical care requires the cooperation of patients,
professionals, and organizations who frequently have different moral views.
Engelhardt understands that one of the key challenges for bioethics is resolv-
ing the moral dilemmas in a morally and culturally diverse society. Secular
bioethics must seek to resolve shared moral controversies in the midst of the
limits of moral epistemology and the diversity of secular societies.
Bioethics has tried to resolve moral controversies in a number of ways. It
has followed the road of modern moral philosophy. Notably it has often
appealed to sound argument, or to a set of normative principles, or a set of
normative cases. To understand why the only closure possible in a morally
pluralistic society is a procedural closure, one must understand why appeals
to arguments, principles, or cases inevitably are limited. The appeal to ratio-
nality seems at first to be especially promising. If one is able to provide a
definitive rational account of a moral issue, this should resolve all the rational
questions advanced by rational individuals. In short, rational individuals
could not protest a definitive rational answer to a rational question without
declaring their own irrationality. Moreover, if one imposes a definitive ratio-
nal solution on those who rejected it, this imposition would not be untrue to
the real nature of those individuals as rational beings. After all, insofar as
humans are rational animals, one would realize their true nature by the
imposition. The appeal to rationality comes with great promise.
This approach to closure of moral controversies has been central to Western

culture since Plato and Socrates. It has deep historical roots in the natural law
tradition of the West. Roman law, while acknowledging the practices and cus-
toms of different cultures, was shaped under the influences of Cicero, Ulpi-
anus, and Justinian by a belief in the jus naturale, which was known to all
animals, and the jus gentium, which embodies what reason commands of any
rational agent. Gaius speaks of “the law that natural reason establishes among
all mankind [and which] is followed by all people alike, and is called jus gen-
tium [law of nations or law of the world]” (de Zulueta, 1976). This point is
repeated in the Institutes of Justinian (Book I.2). Centuries later, William Black-
stone picks up this same theme when he writes of one of the purposes of the
law as supporting the moral law common to all (1979, pp. 42-55). More
recently Lord Patrick Devlin argued that the state should “compel a man to
act for his own good” (1996, p. 136).
It is interesting to note that there is an interest among contemporary
philosophers and bioethicists in developing some account of “common
morality.”2 There are several risks to such a search. One risk is that the genu-
ine nature of diversity in moral cultures will be overlooked. Another risk is
that this search for moral ecumenism will stress common points while over-
looking real differences. The risk in seeking to find common moral ground is
that we will downplay or ignore important moral differences. One example
of this challenge already in bioethics is the priniciplism of Beauchamp and
Childress (Beauchamp and Childress, 2001). Both authors, for example, cite
and use a principle of autonomy. While it appears that they have common
ground (i.e., they use the same word), the theoretical backgrounds, which
ought to frame the principle, should lead to very different interpretations of
the principles (Wildes, 2000)
The fundamental conceptual difficulty for the project of resolving moral
controversies on the basis of rational argument is that one needs a shared
moral view expressed in some set and ranking of moral values, rules, prin-
ciples, virtues, or narratives in order to give content to the argument. Such
standards have been sought in (1) the very content of ethical claims, or in
intuitions, as self-evidently right; (2) in the consequences of actions; (3) in the
idea of an unbiased choice made by an ideal rational observer or group of
rational contractors; (4) in the idea of rational moral choice itself; or, (5) in the
nature of reality. None of these strategies can, however, succeed because there
is no way uncontroversially to select or discover the right or true moral con-
tent in reason, intuitions, consequences, or in the world.
The appeal to intuitions is limited because for any intuition which is
advanced, a contrary one can be advanced with equal ease. The same can be
said with regard to compositions or systems of intuitions. What for one indi-
vidual will appear to be a corrupt or deviant moral intuition can for another
appear correct, wholesome, and self-evident. For some, for example, assisted
suicide is a horrible sin, while others will think that it is often noble. There is
no way to sort out and rank the intuitions without begging the question.
Nor can more success be achieved by appeal to the consequences of one’s
choices. The appeal to consequences faces the problem of how to assess and
evaluate different consequences. For some, living a while longer after chemo-
therapy is a better consequence, even with side-effects, than dying. For others,
however, living a life unimpaired by treatment is a more important outcome
than extending the quantity of life. To make a judgment, one needs a way to
rank the outcomes. A consequentialist will have to build in some presupposi-
tions about the ranking of values in order to evaluate possible outcomes and
to know which outcomes are more important and which preferences are to be
given priority. One might agree, for example, that the proper goals of political
life include liberty, equality, prosperity, and security. Though one may be in
agreement with regard to these major goals, one cannot assess consequences
until one has decided how to rank or weigh these goals. Different rankings
will give decidedly different outcomes. Each may hold commitments to the
same values but rank them in different ways. Consequentialist accounts are
no better advantaged than intuitionist accounts with regard to being able to
demonstrate which set of outcomes is to be preferred since such a judgment
requires an authoritative means of ranking benefits and harms. We are left in
a position that one way of weighing consequences can always be countered
by another way of weighing consequences with no way to judge between
them except by appeal to our own moral sense.
Others have attempted to develop content-full, authoritative moral conclusions
by employing some variety of hypothetical-choice theory. In such theories an
Ideal Observer, or set of choosers, needs to be informed of the various possible
choices and be impartial in weighting everyone’s interests and siding with
none of the parties involved. But if the observer is impartial how will deci-
sions be made? The observer cannot be so impartial or dispassionate as not to
favor certain outcomes over others. Therefore, despite the guise of impar-
tiality, proponents of hypothetical-choice theories must build into the
observer some particular moral sense or thin theory of the good in the order
of choice. Like the intuitionist account or the consequentialist account, one
needs a way to rank the choices.
One can see this situation in John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971). By
imposing particular constraints on his hypothetical contractors, Rawls builds
into his contractors a particular moral sense. They must (1) rank liberty more
highly than other societal goods, (2) be risk aversive, (3) not be moved by
envy, and (4) be heads of families or concerned about the members of the
next generation (1971, pp. 152-158). Again the problem is that the description
of the contractors is one that presupposes a particular moral point of view.
But one is given no independent reasons which argue for one particular
view of the contractors over any other.
Attempts to discover a concrete view of the good life, or justice through

analysis of the concepts themselves suffer the same difficulty as hypothetical-
choice theories. One must know, in advance, which sense of rationality,
neutrality, or impartiality to use in choosing among different accounts of the
good life, justice, or morality. There is no content-full moral vision which is
not itself already a particular moral vision. One cannot choose among alter-
native moral senses or thin theories of the good without already appealing to
a moral sense or thin theory of the good.
Finally, one is not able to resolve moral controversies by appealing to the
structure of reality. This model is known as an appeal to the natural law. It
assumes that nature is morally normative and that there is a moral law in the
structure of the world and men and women (see e.g., Finnis, 1981). The difficul-
ties here are twofold. First, in order for the structure of reality to serve as a
moral criterion nature must be shown to be morally normative. But in the
absence of some metaphysical account of reality it will be impossible to con-
clude whether the structure of reality is accidental or morally significant apart
from the concerns of particular persons or groups of persons. This is espe-
cially the case with regard to human nature, which appears in scientific terms
to be the outcome of spontaneous mutations, selective pressures, genetic drift,
constraints set by laws of physics, chemistry, and biology as well as the effects of
catastrophic events. Human nature is, as such, simply a fact of reality without
direct normative significance.
The second difficulty with appeal to nature is that even if one thought that
one could find moral significance in human nature, this would be possible
only if one already possessed a canonical understanding of nature. Even if
one accepts the normativity of nature, the structure of reality is open to
many descriptions and interpretations. The natural law appeal, like others,
must build in some particular moral sense that determines which descrip-
tion of nature is to be normative. However, we have no rational way to dem-
onstrate that one description of nature should trump all others. Furthermore,
contemporary philosophers, like W. V. O. Quine, have argued that reason
can only be understood within a context. Many “reasonable” judgments
lose their reasonableness when the context is changed.
Engelhardt argues that in spite of its attractiveness and historical importance
the appeal to reason for content-fully resolving moral disputes has been a
failure. Unless men and women share a common understanding of the moral
world or moral rationality, they will be unable to resolve moral disputes in a
content-full way. Even if men and women could agree on a particular theoreti-
cal approach (i.e., an appeal to consequences, or duties, or intuitions) the
problem still remains of selecting a particular guiding moral content (e.g.,
does one rank liberty over equality or equality over liberty; what discount
rate for time does one choose?). To produce a secular bioethics that can give
content-full guidance, one must already have in hand that which one is seeking
to discover, namely, a content-full moral vision. A view from nowhere will
not give content-full guidance, because it carries with it no particular ranking
or account of values. On the other hand, any particular moral view already
presupposes what one needs to secure: guiding moral conduct. Generality is
purchased at the price of content; content is purchased at the price of generality.
This project of justifying a secular bioethics from a single theoretical starting
point thus appears impossible. Every argument that will lead to a content-full
moral conclusion must start from certain particular assumptions. It is just
that they will intractably be at dispute in a secular moral society in which
there are communities with different moral visions, moral senses, and moral
narratives.
The appeal to reason may be even more troubled than Engelhardt claims.
One can ask the very basic question about how different methodologies and
thinkers understand the notion of moral, practical reason. There are, for
example, very different interpretations of practical reason between those who
are natural law theorists and those who are consequentialists. Quine argues
correctly for the relationship of reason and its context. If this is so, one might
ask, why has the project of modern moral philosophy appeared to work? One
could argue that the project has worked because there has been a shared
moral, cultural context. But, in an age that celebrates multi-culturalism, there
will be no reason to assume that the project will work any longer. The depth
of the problems of epistemology and justification become more evident in a
culturally diverse society.
II. Bioethics and the Hopes of the Past

Engelhardt has applied the problems of epistemology and justification to
bioethics. The limitations of modern, secular moral philosophy have not
deterred bioethicists from appeal to reason for content-full solutions to the
moral controversies in bioethics. There has been a variety of methods deployed
in bioethics (Wildes, 2000). Each of these approaches encounters two basic
difficulties. First, each must build in content to its premises in order to resolve
moral dilemmas. Second, each must presume a particular account of the
nature of moral reason. For example, Peter Singer defines the most basic ele-
ment of moral reasoning to be that of a concern for “interests” (1994). How-
ever, one might argue that moral reasoning is based on a notion of natural
“duties,” as Grisez and Boyle do, rather than on a notion of interests (1979).
Furthermore, in defining the very concept of “interests” Singer has built in a
basic moral commitment. Robert Veatch experiences similar difficulties in his
account of the contractual structure of medicine, patient, and society (1981).
His argument that medical practice should be understood in terms of hypo-
thetical contracts contrasts sharply with others such as Edmund Pellegrino
and David Thomasma who understand the nature of moral reasoning through
the concept of virtue (1988). Even if one accepted Veatch’ s position, there is
no compelling reason to think that one should accept his account of how those
contracts would develop. Contractors, with different interests than Veatch’s,
would make very different bargains.
The foundational problem for any theory of morality is that a theory can
only resolve moral controversies to the extent that those involved in the contro-
versy share the same set of moral premises, that is, the extent to which they
share the same concept of moral reason and the same set of moral values or
intuitions. Absent such similar commitments the disputes will be intermi-
nable. As MacIntyre argues, the interminable nature of moral controversies
is based on the lack of a shared conceptual framework and values (1984).
There have been two different attempts in bioethics to avoid the founda-
tional difficulties which have confronted theoretical models. The best known is
that of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress who forward the use of middle
level principles in resolving moral controversies (2001). Beauchamp and Chil-
dress argue that moral controversies can be settled without reaching foun-
dational agreement. They argue that there are enough middle-level principles
which men and women share to allow the resolution of moral controversies.
That is, they hold that there is enough overlap of moral theories that controversies
can be resolved by appeal to the middle-level principles which are common to
different moral theories and viewpoints. These principles are held to be “mid-
way” between the general foundations of a moral theory and the particular
moral controversy and its hoped for resolution. They argue for four such prin-
ciples: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. These principles
are, in their view, an articulation of common morality for health care. They
form the most general boundaries of moral commitments and discourse.
There are at least three difficulties with the position they have developed.
First, there is an insufficient account of why one should accept this list of
principles as the list of middle-level principles. Others (e.g., sanctity of life,
human dignity, or solidarity) might be added to the list. Second, it is not
entirely clear how to specify the principles. While people may speak of
“autonomy,” they, in fact, mean very different things. For some, autonomy
means the freedom to do whatever one chooses with oneself and consenting
others (e.g., assisted suicide), while for others autonomy means the freedom
to act within certain moral constraints. For others, it reflects a value assigned
to liberty or to acting on one’s own authentic values. There is significant
ambiguity in each of the principles which allows them to capture a wide
range of interpretations. But such a range of specifications means that while
people may be using the same words they may actually be speaking about
very different matters.
Beauchamp and Childress do not see this as a problem of “meaning” but of
specification. The principles are general and need to be specified to the context
and situation. This also involves a process of weighing and balancing. Finally,
even if the principles were shared, and their meanings were clearly defined,
it is not evident how they would be able to address particular moral contro-
versies. That is, one could easily imagine cases where different principles
would seem to address the same controversy. Since there is no theoretical
structure to order the principles, there is no definitive appeal by which to sort
out the relationship of the different principles one to the other. For example,
in discussing the issue of physician assisted suicide one might appeal to the
principle of beneficence in arguing that the physician should assist while
another may appeal to the principle of non-maleficence in arguing that the
physician must not take part. One comes to understand that the difficulties
confronting the appeal to middle-level principles can only be resolved by
situating the principles within the context of a moral account by which the
principles are defined in their own terms and in relationship to one another.
To bring these procedures together—specification, weighing, and balancing—
Beauchamp and Childress use a process of reflective equilibrium.
Still, one may wonder if all of these difficulties beset middle-level princi-
ples, why should they appear to be so successful? The answer lies in the cir-
cumstances that many of those who write books on bioethics in fact share one
particular secular moral vision. They then attempt to reconstruct their moral
vision, along with their moral sensibilities, in terms of different theoretical
approaches. For such theoreticians, the point of departure is a common moral-
ity in which they share similar moral sentiments. They simply set about the
task of reconstructing those sentiments through different deontological or
consequentialist approaches. It should not be startling that the middle-level
principles they endorse will have similar substance, though different theo-
retical overtones. It is only when individuals attempt to resolve moral contro-
versies from different ideological understandings (imagine the differences in
the understandings of the middle-level principles of justice as given by a
Rawlsian versus a Nozickian bioethicist) or different religious understand-
ings (imagine the differences in the understandings of the middle-level principle
of non-maleficence regarding abortion as given by an observant Roman Cath-
olic, verses a secular humanist) that one discovers that middle-level principles
disclose differences rather than resolve controversies.
A second attempt to avoid the conceptual dilemmas of ethical theory is the
recent attempt to appeal to some form of casuistry. Perhaps the best known
example is that of Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin (1988). They argue that
the failure of moral philosophy to resolve moral controversies is due to the mis-
conception of moral reason. Moral reason needs to be understood as practical, rhe-
torical reason not as geometrical or theoretical reason. Jonsen and Toulmin argue
that moral controversies are resolved by referring controversies to particular
moral paradigm cases. For example, one might resolve the controversy
associated with assisted suicide by referring to the paradigm case of murder.
The conceptual problems for a secular casuistry revolve around the need
for a content. Jonsen and Toulmin’s appeal to rhetorical, practical reason can-
not resolve moral controversies unless there is content for the structure
(Wildes, 1993). However, unless the content is commonly shared there is no
way to recognize a moral controversy or its specific character. Furthermore,
without a common moral framework there is no way to know the correct set
of paradigm cases that should be applied. In the continuing controversy over
abortion, for example, some apply the paradigm of killing while others apply
the paradigm of privacy and battery.
In their exposition of casuistry, Jonsen and Toulmin apply a historical
example from a very highly defined moral community. The casuistry of Roman
Catholicism, which they explore at length, was set within the life of a commu-
nity with particular moral understandings and a common juridical structure
(confessors, bishops, popes), which could resolve ambiguities when it was
unclear as to how a case should be interpreted or which paradigm case
should be applied. What Jonsen and Toulmin’s account makes clear is that if
casuistry is to work within a secular, morally pluralistic context there will
have to be some common moral framework. The problem is to find the correct
one.
The recognition that a content-full moral framework is necessary has been
expressed in various appeals to the existence of consensus. One might think
here, for example, of the notion of overlapping consensus in John Rawls’ vol-
ume Political Liberalism (1993). There is a recognition that, without a common
normative framework, one will not possess the thin theory of the good, the
canonical moral intuitions, the correct moral sensibilities, needed to make
moral choices and to endorse particular moral judgments. As a result, much
is done to manufacture the seeming presence of a consensus. When one
impanels national commissions or other bioethics committees to frame public
policy or to make bioethical recommendations, one is careful both to choose
individuals with much in common and to focus the agenda on issues where
common agreement is likely to be attainable. One can only imagine the kinds
of principles that would have been endorsed were the National Commission
for the Protection of Human Subject in Biomedical and Behavioral Research
to have had as its members Robert Nozick, John Rawls, William Bennett, Al
Sharpton, and Pat Buchanan. When people talk about a consensus shared in
bioethics, they often fail to recall the great range of moral opinions about
health care expressed in political campaigns. One can argue that the different
Presidential commissions or councils reflect the dynamic of managed consen-
sus. Members are selected not only with a reasonable like-mindedness in
mind so that they might work together but also so that they will recommend
policy options that are a fit with the views of the current administration. A
person could examine the different recommendations made by President
George W. Bush’s President’s Council on Bioethics and President Clinton’s
National Bioethics Advisory Commission on stem cell research to find examples

of how moral consensus can be managed.
Of course, like Richard Rorty, one can accept a particular deliverance of a
particular history as normative and speak as “we twentieth century liberals”
(1989). When one speaks of oneself and like-minded individuals as inheriting
a particular understanding of cosmopolitan and democratic institutions, one
accepts a particular contingent history as normative and justified. But that is
to return to something like the secular equivalent of a religious faith. For the
Christian notion of a consensus fidelium, one substitutes a particular orthodoxy
or ideological viewpoint in order to gain content, but with the Holy Spirit.
Though it is not a true consensus of all the persons involved, it is considered
normative as the consensus of those whose conscience is evoked as if it would
have a religious but still secular significance.
In examining the history of secular bioethics, one finds that after trying
to come to terms with the difficulties and pluralisms of religious bioethics,
secular bioethics has in great measure reiterated the character of religious
bioethics. It has substituted particular philosophical and ideological com-
munities for what had been found in religious faith. The result has been a
recapitulation of the disagreements that shaped religious bioethical dis-
putes, but now couched in secular terms. This outcome is fully under-
standable. If one wishes to resolve moral controversies by means other
than the mere application of force, that is, only with morally authoritative
force, one must derive that authority from God, reason, or common agree-
ment. The development of secular bioethics as a response to the diverse
ways in which individuals have chosen to hear God led to the attempt to
ground bioethics in sound rational argument. But since this cannot suc-
ceed without presupposing particular content-full moral premises, that is,
without a prior act of faith or common agreement, a common agreement
was silently assumed. Part of the hope of modernity, with respect to ethics,
has been that reason could overcome the cultural pluralism that is the con-
text of moral thought. But the postmodern age not only represents the
fracturing of common moral culture and the celebration of multi-culturalism
but it also represents the multiplication of how we think about moral
justification.
The failure of this project is manifest both sociologically and theoretically.
On the one hand, one finds a continuing multiplicity of bioethics, not simply
numerous religious bioethics, but secular bioethics as well. The controversies
go on and on; they do not appear open to definitive resolution through sound
rational argument. As a sociological fact, pluralism has persisted, if it has not
been intensified. On the other hand, one can recognize the theoretical basis
for the failure. The closure of content-full moral controversies by sound rational
argument requires that one employ content-full moral premises. The character
of these is exactly what is at issue.
Engelhardt moves then from the epistemological questions around moral

reason to the need for moral reason to have a context. In this he recognizes the
limits of moral reason in a postmodern world and the correlative limits on the
moral authority of the secular state. He then develops, in Christian Bioethics,
his own understanding of the bioethics of his own community.
III. The Turn to Faith: Moral Community and the Social

Context of Moral Knowledge
In an earlier essay, I argued that to understand Engelhardt’s work in
Foundations one had to view him as a communitarian thinker (Wildes, 1997a).
While his diagnosis of the postmodern condition in moral theory leads to a
libertarian view of the state, it also leads to a focus on moral community. Moral
communities shape the context of a person’s moral world. They have a content-full,
particular moral view of the world. Moral communities have some particular
understanding of moral authority (Who is to decide? How are decisions
reached?). Finally, moral communities have views about how they should
relate to other moral communities and to secular society as a whole.
Not all moral communities are alike, however. In fact, one could argue
that there are radically different models of moral community in play in secular
society. These different communities vary in terms of the content of the moral
life and the understanding of moral authority. There are at least three models
of community that can be used in understanding the religious and moral life.
One model is the exclusive community. This model lives and works within
itself. Moral knowledge is rooted in the community and morality is simply
part of its way of life. In thinking about this model, consider communities like
the Amish that live coherent moral lives in the midst of a secular society that
is morally pluralistic. This is the model of community that I think shapes
Engelhardt’s thought in Foundations and Christian Bioethics.
An alternative to the exclusive community is the inclusive community.
This model might often be associated with many traditional forms of main-
line, militant Christianity. Here the religious truth of the community is
believed to be necessary for salvation or happiness. All men and women must
somehow be brought within the community if they are to be saved. This drive
to bring all peoples in has been manifested in a number of ways historically
from the Crusades to Karl Rahner’s “anonymous Christian,” which brings
people into the community whether they realize it or not.
A third possible model for moral community is the pluralism model. In this
model each community of faith maintains the integrity of its own tradition.
Nonetheless, on this model the community is open to what it can learn from
others. Unlike either the inclusive or exclusive models a pluralist model of
community does not think that it “has” the truth. The pluralist community
thinks that its tradition has key and important insights into the moral life.
But, this model would hold open the possibility that the community can learn
from other communities and moral traditions. It also runs the risk that a tradition
could be lost in such exchanges.3
These models of community can be helpful in understanding Engelhardt
and the development of his thought. In his philosophical explorations,
Engelhardt has rejected the inclusive model of community and moral knowl-
edge because of the limits of public, moral reason. The inclusive model
assumes the existence of some form of common morality that cuts across different
communities and gives them a common framework and language for discussing
moral issues.
The picture that emerges from Foundations and Secular Humanism is one of
secular society with a very “thin” common morality. A culturally diverse secu-
lar state for Engelhardt is not a moral community in any thick sense of the
term. The secular state might be described as a thin moral community insofar
as it is founded on the consent of the governed. The secular state, then, is
more of a procedural society with all procedures grounded in consent. His
view of a robust moral community works more out of an exclusivist framework
as he develops the account in Christian Bioethics.
In many ways, Engelhardt’s model of moral knowledge and moral community
is along the lines of the exclusive model of community. One needs to be a member
of a community. Moral reason only works within the context of a community
and its presuppositions. Moral reason is part of a way of life. But, he also
believes in the call for active conversion. It will be a conversion of faith not of
reason that leads to moral agreement. Only when people work within the
same framework can we reach agreement on moral issues in medicine and
health care.
Engelhardt’s later work in Christian Bioethics is his articulation of the
bioethics of a particular community. It is a view articulated as an exclusivist
model. In the book, he develops what he takes to be a Christian view of bioeth-
ics. He focuses on the importance of transcendence in understanding the
human person and God. He examines issues surrounding sexuality, repro-
duction, cloning, abortion, birth, suffering, disease, dying and death. The
views he develops on these different issues may surprise those who only
know his work in Foundations. Many people who have read Foundations or
Secular Humanism have understood Engelhardt to endorse a wide range of
practices that he opposes in Christian Bioethics (e.g., abortion). Examining
the three works together yields a much richer sense of each individual work
and the complexities of his thought.
IV. Future Directions: Proceduralism and Communal Integrity

If you look at the world of bioethics through these three central works of
Engelhardt, what kind of direction is there for the future of the field of bioethics?
Is there a future for the field of bioethics? I think his work points in two very
important directions for the field. One is the development of ‘proceduralism’ as
a theme for bioethics. Engelhardt develops his argument for proceduralism
largely in terms of individuals (patients and professionals). It can be expanded
to the realm of organizations in health care. A second, important theme that
his work raises is the integrity and identity of moral communities.
Following from his work in Foundations, there is a very important step in
the development of procedural ethics for a secular society. Proceduralism is a
term that often focuses on the ways in which common moral authority can be
justified. In democratic societies, for example, moral justification rests in some
way on the consent of the governed. Procedures like informed consent have
played critical roles in the development of bioethics. Consent to treatment,
advance directives, consent for research are all everyday elements in the prac-
tice of medicine. Such procedures convey moral authority and allow health
care professionals to act. Some thinkers may lament that bioethics has been
reduced to empty procedures and mere formalisms. But, are these procedures
so empty? It can be argued that procedures are not. Practices like informed
consent only make sense if there are underlying moral assumptions about
respect for persons.
Embedded in procedures like free and informed consent are not only
assumptions about respect for persons, but also moral assumptions about
honesty, truth-telling, and fraud. Each of these are rich moral concepts that
give the procedure of informed consent its moral power. The procedures then
are far from “empty.” Rather, they have moral content and provide a place
where men and women with moral differences can meet.
One can argue that the turn toward procedures is a way to capture moral
ties that cut across different moral traditions and communities. The appeal to
procedures is a way to identify common moral ground. Procedures have been
crucial to the development of bioethics and it would seem safe to guess that
they will develop and grow with the field as medical options multiply, as our
moral fragmentation continues, and as our resources remain limited.
If one understands secular bioethics along the lines of proceduralism then
there are two directions for the field to move. One direction is that of organi-
zational ethics. It is important that bioethics move to take a wider account of
the importance of institutional and organizational ethics (Wildes, 1997b;
2003). The controversies of bioethics are not just about patients and physi-
cians or even society at large. Many of the areas of bioethics—clinical ethics,
research ethics, distributive ethics—are encompassed by questions about the
organization of medicine and health care. While institutions and organiza-
tions are more difficult to figure out than the choices of individual decision
makers, there are important questions to ask about an organization. What is
the identity of the organization? Does it fulfill its mission and responsibility
to the community? Institutions are not just aggregates; they are actors that, like
health professionals, have an obligation to enable patients to make as free and

rational a choice as possible.
This means that organizations will need to return to their fundamental
mission and moral commitments. Communities and individuals will need to
do the same so they may be clear when questions of compromise and integ-
rity arise. The secular society will allow for diverse visions to have their place
as long as they do not involve non-consenting others. There is an underly-
ing legitimacy to informed consent, the free market, and limited democracy
that presupposes only the permission of those who collaborate. There is de
facto a web of moral authority that can bind individuals of diverse moral
understandings as it does in any market, in any war-torn area of the world
where members of hostile communities can still trade commodities without
sharing a moral vision. There is theoretically the possibility of attending to
the ways in which permission suffices to ground general moral authority
without concurrence in any particular, content-full moral vision, or the presup-
position of a commonality of content-full moral premises. This theoretical
possibility offers a basis for the general moral justification of a range of lim-
ited collaborations that can legitimate a res publica and health care policy
with robust rights to privacy and space for deviant but peaceable consensual
undertakings. Something of a secular bioethics can indeed be sustained.
This article has argued that Engelhardt’s three principle works, Foundations,
Secular Bioethics, and Christian Bioethics gives a complete picture of Engelhardt’s
complex thought. There are three themes that run though his work: moral
epistemology and justification, the communal context of moral knowledge,
and the limited nature of the secular state. He raises fundamental questions
about the nature of secular society and public moral knowledge and the dif-
ficulty of developing a coherent bioethics in a secular society. In light of these
questions and problems he turns to examine bioethics within a particular
community. His works also raise important questions for what it is to be a
multi-cultural society that takes the views of communities seriously. Engelhar-
dt’s thought gives a direction for secular society and raises important ques-
tions for moral communities. He also raises important questions for the field
of bioethics and its future direction.
Notes
1. By ‘content-full’ I mean a moral view with some specific moral values and a ranking
of those values, or a method by which they can be decided amongst when they
conflict.
2. See the thematic issue of Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13, no. 3(2003), as an
example of framing a common morality for contemporary bioethics.
3. I am indebted to my colleague Professor Chester Gillis for his thought on these
three models of community. These were developed at a conference in Elbow
Beach Bermuda in the fall of 2003.
Bibliography
Beauchamp, T.L., and J. Childress. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 5th ed. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991.
Blackstone, W., Commentaries on the Laws of England. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1979.
Devlin, P. The Enforcement of Morals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
de Zulueta, F. Institutes of Gaius. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.
Engelhardt, H.T. Jr. Bioethics and Secular Humanism: The Search for a Common Morality.
Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991.
———. The Foundations of Bioethics. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
———. The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger
Publishers, 2000.
Engelhardt, H.T. Jr. and K. Wm. Wildes. “Postmodernity and Limits on the Human
Body: Libertarianism by Default.” In Vol. 3 of Medicine Unbounded: The Human Body,
Emerging Issues in Biomedical Policy, edited by R. Blank and A. Bonnicksen, 62-71.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Finnis, J. Natural Law and Natural Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Grisez, G. and J. Boyle. Life and Death with Liberty and Justice. Notre Dame: University
Jonsen, A. and S. Toulmin. The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988.
MacIntyre, A. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1984.
Pellegrino, E. and D. Thomasma. For The Patient’s Good: The Restoration of Beneficence in
Health Care. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.
———. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
Rorty, R. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1989.
Sanders, T.C. Institutes of Justinian. Westwood, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970.
Singer, P. Practical Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Veatch, R. A Theory of Medical Ethics. New York: Basic Books, 1981.
Wildes, K. Wm. “The Priesthood of Bioethics and the Return of Casuistry.” Journal of
Medicine and Philosophy, 18: 33-49.
———. “Engelhardt’s Communitarian Ethics: The Hidden Assumptions.” In Reading
Engelhardt, edited by Brendan Minogue, 77-93. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub-
lishers, 1997a.
———. “Institutional Identity, Integrity, and Conscience.” Kennedy Institute of Ethics
Journal 7 (1997b): 413-19.
———. “Institutional Integrity in Health Care: Tony Soprano and Family Values.” In
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———. Moral Acquaintances: Methodology in Bioethics. Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2000.
Part II
Challenges
to Engelhardt’s
Orthodox Christian
Theology
Desire for the
Transcendent:
Engelhardt and Christian
Ethics
Gerald McKenny
To appreciate the achievement of H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr.’s articulation

of Christian bioethics from the standpoint of the Orthodox Christian tradition,
one must look well beyond the limited horizon of bioethics itself.1 Part theology,
part moral philosophy, part intellectual history, part cultural criticism,
Engelhardt’s project shares the scope and ambition of the projects of thinkers
like Alasdair MacIntyre (1984; 1988; 1992) and John Milbank (1990). Like their
work, his is both erudite, in a nonspecialist sort of way, and idiosyncratic.
Like theirs, his work is at once a moral argument, a genealogy of modern ethics,
and the articulation of a concrete ethical vision as an alternative to modern
ethics. And like theirs, his work is an audacious indictment against the
entirety of modern Western ethics and politics.
While Engelhardt addresses a familiar set of conditions—the fragmentation
of ethics under the hegemony of modern reason, the immanent horizon of
modern religion, and the crisis of moral and political authority following the
loss of confidence in Enlightenment successors to Christian ethics and
politics—he speaks in a strange voice. It is the voice of a tradition with roots
outside the West, an origin that explains why the ambiguity towards the
modern West in Engelhardt’s thought is nearly the opposite of that in think-
ers like MacIntyre and Milbank. Engelhardt is both much more cheerful in
the face of such features of modern society as political liberalism, capitalism,
107
108 Gerald McKenny
and pluralism than are MacIntyre and Milbank, and much less willing than
they are to concede to modern conditions for the expression of theological
claims. The cheerfulness is due to Engelhardt’s conviction that political lib-
eralism (albeit in its libertarian form), the free market, and pluralism create a
space for a minority tradition such as his to thrive, while the social and
cultural climate they generate constitute a challenge to the Orthodox Chris-
tian tradition but not (as with MacIntyre and Milbank) the loss of the very
conditions under which a robust tradition or a favored theologico-political
vision can survive. Meanwhile, the unwillingness to concede to modern
conditions for theological discourse stems from Engelhardt’s conviction that,
prior to the modern era, Western Christianity had already departed fatefully
from the East in treating theology as primarily a field of academic inquiry. As
a result, Engelhardt feels free to ignore the entire set of problems posed for
Western theology by modern rationalism, naturalism, historicism, and other
products of the modern university. To those steeped in these inquiries—and
even those Western theologies most determined to shake off their constraints
nevertheless manifest the effects of their discipline—Engelhardt’s theology
may appear naïve. Yet, his determination to ignore this entire set of problems
is deliberate: it follows from a conviction that theology in the most proper
sense is undertaken by adepts who experience God, and that academic the-
ology, while legitimate, is simply the conceptual articulation of what they
experience. This principled refusal to concede to the conditions under which
modern Western theologies labor, combined with the refusal to write off
modern cultural and institutional life as such as hostile to true Christian
faith and practice, makes Engelhardt something of an anomaly—a trans-
plant from the fourth century curiously functioning in its twentieth-century
host.
This essay considers Engelhardt’s work in relation to Christian ethics. On
the one hand, his work intersects with major controversies in contemporary
Christian ethics. These controversies include disagreements over whether
Christian ethics articulates a natural moral order or a particular way of life;
whether it primarily involves norms or virtues; whether its sources are reason,
revelation, or some complex relation between the two; whether it focuses on
the Christian community, society in general, or human nature as such; and
how it treats the natural in relation to the supernatural and the minimal
requirements of human community in relation to the quest for perfection or
holiness. Yet, on the other hand, cutting across all of these divides in
Engelhardt’s thought is a more fundamental one: the contrast between a
transcendent ground and object of ethics with its “noetic” (i.e., mystical, non-
discursive) epistemology, on the one hand, and the immanent horizon to
which, according to Engelhardt, ethics is confined by its reliance on discursive
reason, on the other hand. For Engelhardt, this contrast marks a deep and
irreconcilable divide between two forms of Christian ethics, one practiced in
Engelhardt and Christian Ethics 109
the Eastern Christian communions and the other in the churches of the West,
Catholic, and Protestant alike.
Engelhardt’s most controversial move has less to do with his articulation
of the Orthodox position than with his characterization of the West. He treats
Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard as the three thinkers in whom the Western
history of discursive reason, with its implications for religion and morality,
comes to its paradigmatic expression. With what Engelhardt takes to be the
discovery by Kant of the limitation of reason to immanence, the account of
reason in immanent terms provided by Hegel, and the unsuccessful effort of
Kierkegaard to reformulate a relation to the transcendent, the West reaches
the inevitable result of its initial turn to discursive reason. With the help of
these thinkers, Engelhardt offers a picture of Western Christian ethics as com-
mitted to a rational enterprise destined to end up with an immanent ethic that
is incapable of resolving, and which in fact has contributed to, modern moral
fragmentation. For him, Kant and Hegel are the great diagnosticians of the
West; they understand how discursive reason winds up in immanence and
what implications follow. It is Kant who completes the process by which
discursive rationality brings Western Christianity to its culmination in
secularism; his thought marks the end of the hope of reaching transcendent
truth through discursive reason. In this respect, Engelhardt’s philosophical
argument is undertaken in a Kantian spirit. Like Kant, he seeks to demon-
strate the limits of reason—its inability to reach the transcendent—in order to
make room for faith. But unlike Kant, the faith for which Engelhardt makes
room is not subordinate to reason. Similarly, it is Hegel who grasps both the
need for concrete moral content and the inability of discursive reason, con-
fined to immanence, to provide it, and who finds the solution to the problem
in the contingent sphere of custom. It is also Hegel who gives reason a history,
one that culminates in immanence. In this respect, Engelhardt’s genealogy of
Western reason is undertaken in a Hegelian spirit. Like Hegel, his argument
traces the fate of reason in history to its culmination in immanence. But unlike
Hegel, Engelhardt’s narrative does not endorse this actualization of reason in
history, and the moral content he seeks is not found in the immanent sphere
of custom. Thus, while Kant and Hegel are the great diagnosticians, their
therapies only contribute to what, for Engelhardt, is the disease. The only
genuine therapy is one that will deliver us from immanence. It is Kierkegaard
who, for Engelhardt, understood this. Coming after Kant and Hegel, Kierkegaard
both sought a way back to the transcendent and understood the impossibility
of arriving at it through discursive reason. In this respect, Engelhardt’s turn
to the transcendent in recognition of the immanence of discursive reason is
undertaken in a Kierkegaardian spirit. Like Kierkegaard, he identifies the
transcendent with a passionate faith in a personal God. But unlike Kierkegaard,
Engelhardt finds this faith in noetic knowledge of God, and in the beliefs and
practices of Orthodoxy as the most ideal conditions for attaining this knowledge.
110 Gerald McKenny
A critic will protest that this entire picture is both narrow and exaggerated:
narrow because there is more to Western Christian ethics than is represented
by a history of discursive reason and its aftermath culminating in Kant, Hegel,
and Kierkegaard, and exaggerated because its disjunctions—discursive reason
or noetic knowledge, transcendence or immanence, East or West—obscure as
much as they illuminate. We will see that the critic is often right. But for all its
narrowness and exaggeration, Engelhardt’s work articulates a more direct
reference to a God who transcends nature, reason, and history than is charac-
teristic of much modern Western Christian ethics. Engelhardt’s articulation of
this relation of ethics to the transcendent God in the Orthodox tradition is at
bottom a call to conversion.2 We do him justice only if we read him in that
spirit. But the call is issued in the threefold form of an argument, a genealogy,
and an explication of a moral vision. As such, it demands a critical analysis as
well as an existential response. This essay is a critical analysis of that three-
fold call. To the extent that it is critical, it is a refusal of the call—the essay will
not end with a conversion. But it is no simple refusal. What Engelhardt issues
as a call to conversion can be received as a call to bring to the center a desire
for the transcendent that too often lies on the margins of modern Christian
ethics or to reawaken a desire that is now dormant. If the critical aspects of
this essay are a refusal of the call in the first sense, the general agreement with
Engelhardt that lies behind the criticisms is a reception of that call in the
second sense. In this second sense, Engelhardt’s work is indispensable to
Christian ethics.
I. The Argument
In the very first paragraph of the Preface, Engelhardt informs readers of
The Foundations of Christian Bioethics (hereafter FCB) that the book is about
both a philosophical puzzle and, above all, a religious quest. The puzzle is
whether moral claims can be grounded at all apart from genuine knowledge
of transcendent moral truth. The quest aims at experience of a personal, tran-
scendent God through mystical or noetic knowledge. Readers of Engelhardt
know that the puzzle and the quest are not unrelated: the point of his ethics,
in a nutshell, is that in the absence of a veridical experience of a transcendent
ground of morality, there is no way to adjudicate conflicting substantive moral
claims; as a result, the merely procedural principle of permission is all that is
available on purely rational grounds for a moral basis of a society characterized,
as modern societies are, by deep moral disagreement, while true moral con-
tent as a basis for morality can be found only in a genuine experience of a
transcendent reality. The puzzle and the quest converge in the experience of
the transcendent God: here the veridical experience that grounds a canonical
ordering of goods and principles is precisely the experience of a personal,
transcendent God.
This section examines this convergence. To begin, we note that there is a

kind of heterogeneity in this pairing of a puzzle and a quest—a heterogeneity
that lends Engelhardt’s project both its distinctive character and its pathos. A
philosophical puzzle seems to demand a philosophical inquiry, not a religious
quest, while for its part the religious quest on which Engelhardt has embarked
exceeds reason and can only be expressed in homiletical terms. In FCB, this
heterogeneity is marked by a sudden shift in genre: from the philosophical
argument and philosophico-historical genealogy that characterize the first
three chapters of FCB to a description of the Christian life that is part homily
and part spiritual manual beginning with the fourth chapter—a shift for
which Engelhardt offers an eloquent defense (2000, pp. 161f). Arguing that
the puzzle cannot be solved on its own philosophical terms, Engelhardt pres-
ents the goal of the quest as the solution to it. The juxtaposition of these two
heterogeneous orders is, therefore, not an arbitrary one. Meanwhile, the rup-
ture between the two orders, marked by the shift in genre, is real; the puzzle
can be solved only by a turn from the immanent horizon of philosophical
reasoning to the transcendent God Who is known only noetically. The solu-
tion to the philosophical puzzle comes from outside philosophy, articulated
in the form of a genre and content that is heterogeneous to philosophy itself.
The heterogeneity enables Engelhardt to present what he calls traditional
Christianity as the solution to the philosophical puzzle, while leaving it free
from determination by philosophy. Faith and reason remain distinct, yet rea-
son leads to faith—but only at the point where, conscious of its own limit, it
acknowledges its need for something that is and must remain beyond it.
In principle, then, the quest is carried out independently of the puzzle and
the puzzle can be formulated independently of the quest. Yet, in reality
neither the puzzle nor the quest is what it is without the other. We will see
that the puzzle itself arises within the quest, and the quest is determined in
certain respects by the puzzle. This interpenetration of what initially appeared
to be heterogeneous orders raises questions about Engelhardt’s argument.
The power of that argument, and what distinguishes it from standard apolo-
getic arguments, is that the heterogeneity of the two orders avoids certain
problems with many apologetic arguments, namely, that what they attribute
to reason or common human experience is already determined by Christian
content, while they distort what is genuinely Christian by presenting it in
terms dictated by reason or experience. Engelhardt’s argument at least
appears to avoid this twofold problem. But it does so only if the heterogeneity
prevails; i.e., if the philosophical puzzle really is purely philosophical and if
the religious quest really is articulated on its own terms. We will see, however,
that this is not the case.
The philosophical puzzle is the one to which Engelhardt has devoted his
career as a philosopher. If different moral perspectives each identify and rank
goods and principles in accordance with a distinct moral sense, disagree-
112 Gerald McKenny
ments between these perspectives can be resolved only if one can appeal to a
standard which can adjudicate these conflicting moral senses. The problem is
that unless one can identify a genuinely transcendent standard, any standard
to which one might appeal to adjudicate the conflict will itself presuppose a
particular, contingent moral sense. Therefore, any rational justification for
one or another perspective will either beg the question (by already presupposing
the moral sense from which a standard is derived) or be involved in an infinite
regress (by always having to appeal to a further standard to justify the moral
sense from which a standard is derived). Discursive reason is, therefore,
unable to resolve disputes between diverse moral perspectives. Only a tran-
scendent moral truth can establish an ordering of goods and principles as
canonical, but discursive reason is confined to immanence and so is unable to
arrive at such a truth. Engelhardt concludes: “The content of any particular
morality and its bioethics could always have been otherwise unless one can
establish a particular moral rationality as content-fully canonical and tran-
scending history” (2000, p. 35). Actual moral content, then, can be derived
from only two possible sources: an admittedly contingent ordering of goods
and principles based on a particular moral sense, on the one hand, or a tran-
scendent good that exceeds reason, on the other hand. In neither of these
cases is moral content rationally grounded. We are left, therefore, with the
purely procedural, “content-less” principle of permission as the only rational
ground on which those who hold diverse moral perspectives can cooperate.3
Two points can be made about this philosophical puzzle. The first point is
that the principle of permission itself is not capable of providing a rational
ground on which persons holding different moral perspectives can agree,
because any formulation of this principle itself presupposes a particular moral
sense. What is to count as having given permission? Any answer to this ques-
tion will have to formulate criteria to distinguish permission from coercion
and to determine to what extent one must know what one is permitting. There
are thin notions of permission that require minimal thresholds of knowledge
(e.g., that one not have been lied to before agreeing to a transaction or to being
treated in a certain way) and of non-coercion (e.g., that one could have acted
otherwise). There are also thick notions of permission that set more robust
requirements for knowledge (e.g., that one be given all the information a
hypothetical reasonable person would wish to have) and for non-coercion
(e.g., that one be capable of acting autonomously). And, of course, there are
many degrees of thinness and thickness. The point is that any conception of
permission, however thin or thick, presupposes particular conceptions of the
relevance of these conditions of voluntary action and, therefore, to use
Engelhardt’s terms, presupposes a particular moral sense. It follows that any
such conception is subject to the same problem that, for Engelhardt, faces
every substantive moral claim: namely, that it either begs the question or is
involved in an infinite regress. Engelhardt cannot evade this problem by relying,
as he does, on a very thin conception of permission. For even thin conceptions

have content, however little. There is no concept of permission which itself is
purely procedural, lacking content, and therefore available as a default
position when all substantive conceptions turn out to have relied on a
particular moral sense. And if there is no “content-less” default position then
Engelhardt’s choice of a thin conception over thicker conceptions follows
from a particular moral sense; it, therefore, either begs the question or is
caught in an infinite regress.
The philosophical puzzle is, therefore, even less resolvable than Engelhardt
thinks. Engelhardt believes that insofar as this puzzle leaves us with no
rationally grounded moral content, it brings us to the very brink of nihil-
ism; we now see that with the failure of the procedural principle of per-
mission, it in fact pushes us over that brink. Engelhardt’s theory is no
exception to Nietzsche’s observation that rationalistic approaches to
ethics end in nihilism. But if this is so, why keep trying them? Why not
recognize, with Aristotle, that it is inappropriate and indeed futile to
bring rationalistic expectations into moral and political matters? This
brings us to the second point that can be made about Engelhardt’s philo-
sophical puzzle, namely, that it is a puzzle only for those who retain the
sense that, in Engelhardt’s terms, “a final and enduring truth must exist
in these matters” (2000, p. xiii), for those who hunger for the unity pro-
vided by a canonical ethic (2000, p. 93). Engelhardt realizes that this lin-
gering sense and hunger are themselves remnants of a Christian culture.
But if this is so, what force do they have in a culture Engelhardt admits is
post-Christian? Why should we not treat them as merely nostalgic? A
genuinely post-Christian culture would be one devoid of expectations
regarding ethics that reflect Christian convictions, whether in their proper
form or in rationalistic moral theories as their secular successors—that is,
a culture in which, among many other things, the sense of a final and
enduring truth in moral and political matters would cease to function as
an expectation for moral and political theory.4
We can now understand the sense in which Engelhardt’s philosophical
puzzle expresses his religious quest. This puzzle itself arises because Engelhardt
is a Christian who believes that there must be a final and enduring truth in
moral matters—a Christian, moreover, for whom this truth must transcend
history. It is precisely for this reason that Engelhardt holds moral reason to
such high standards, requiring it either to produce the transcendent ground
morality requires in order to justify its content (which it cannot do) or to settle
for a merely procedural morality of permission (the validity of which we have
just questioned). And it is the failure of reason to secure the transcendent
ground in place of the religious context in which it was once secured that, in
Engelhardt’s scheme, brings the disillusioned rationalist back to the place
from which discursive reason took its departure. The disillusionment betrays
114 Gerald McKenny
the hope entertained in the form of the philosophical puzzle. That puzzle is
itself an expression of a particular desire: the desire for the transcendent.
Engelhardt argues from the requirements of morality to a realization that
reason cannot fulfill those requirements, and thus to an acknowledgment of
the need for a transcendent ground for morality. He offers a kind of moral
argument not for the existence of God but for the necessity of the transcendent.
Moral reason, taking itself to its limits, must acknowledge the need for faith
in order to complete its own project. But the argument works only if the need
for a transcendent ground arises out of morality itself. We have just seen that
the argument fails on this account because the first premise—the assumption
that there must be a final and enduring truth in moral matters—presupposes
a particular conception of morality, in this case one that is Christian either in
a classical or (more likely) in a secular, derivative sense. The argument is
powerless against those who simply reject the particular moral sense that lies
behind this premise, whose conception of morality is such that it would be a
mistake to expect a moral theory to ground itself in these rationalistic terms.
Still, the argument, if sound, does succeed against one group, namely,
rationalistic Christians and those successors to Christianity who think that
discursive reason alone can do what Engelhardt insists only noetic knowl-
edge can do, i.e., ground morality. This is a not inconsiderable group. But
what does the argument prove against these rationalists? It proves that dis-
cursive reason is bound to immanence and that the ground morality requires
must be transcendent and, therefore, must be reached in some other way than
by discursive reason. But the argument does not pick out any one version of
the transcendent or any one path to it as true. Of course, Engelhardt is well
aware of this. This is precisely why in FCB the shift from a rational argument
for the necessity of the transcendent to the exposition of Orthodox Christian-
ity as transcendent truth is in fact a sharp break, marked, as noted above, by
an abrupt shift from the discourse of argumentation to that of invitation (2000,
pp. 161, 170). This is how it must be if transcendent truth can be known only
noetically. But, as Engelhardt also realizes, this means that there are no crite-
ria external to Orthodoxy itself by which the now disillusioned rationalist can
choose which invitation to the transcendent to accept as an invitation to truth.
Even where the argument succeeds, then, it brings one not to Orthodoxy but
only to a notion of the transcendent as such. At best, Engelhardt’s exposition
of Orthodox Christian ethics will appear to an outsider as “a possible suffi-
cient condition for a canonical, content-full morality” (2000, p. 170). The disil-
lusioned rationalist looking outside of discursive reason for a ground of
morality will no doubt receive multiple invitations. How is he or she to determine
which one is genuine?
Engelhardt’s approach thus exhibits what was said above about the
general plight of apologetic arguments in the post-Christian world, at least to
the extent that those arguments are intended to lead a non-Christian
interlocutor to accept the truth of the Christian faith. On the one hand, to the
extent that the religious convictions to which such arguments bring the inter-
locutor are determinately Christian convictions, the apologist incurs the sus-
picion that the premises were selected or formulated in a way that favors the
Christian conclusion in the first place. This is the case insofar as the need of
morality for a transcendent ground arises out of (allegedly) Christian expec-
tations about morality. On the other hand, to the extent that the premises do
not implicitly favor Christianity, they may just as readily lead to other deter-
minate convictions or to no determinate convictions at all. This is the case
insofar as Engelhardt’s argument leads only to a need for the transcendent as
such. Again, Engelhardt recognizes this. There is no point from outside Ortho-
dox Christianity from which one can know that it is true. In the end, the out-
sider must respond to the invitation to “enter in and experience so that you
will see” (2000, p. 190).
This twofold limitation of Engelhardt’s argument takes on more urgency
when we go on to ask whether that argument obscures or distorts the very
character of Orthodox ethics as Engelhardt describes it. This brings us to the
question of whether the religious quest, or at least Engelhardt’s presentation
of it, is determined by the philosophical puzzle. Engelhardt first introduces
the Orthodox vision of ethics grounded in a noetic knowledge of transcen-
dent reality as an answer to the inability of discursive reason to secure a
ground for morality (2000, pp. xi-xiii). Christian ethics is established on the
basis of a need arising out of morality in general, so that “the possibility of a
Christian bioethics must be gauged through exploring the possibility of a
secular bioethics” (2000, p. 2). This suggests that the religious quest arises out
of the philosophical puzzle: that it is the failure of rational morality that drives
one to seek the transcendent in order to ground morality. If so, it is appropri-
ate to inquire into whether the philosophical and religious conceptions of the
transcendent are the same, and, if not, whether the former exercises an undue
influence on the latter.
Here we confront another problem facing apologetic arguments; namely,
that by showing how one or another aspect of Christian faith fulfills a general
cognitive or other need, they risk presenting the Christian faith in terms of
something outside itself. This point should not be understood to mean, as
some proponents of the particularity of the Christian tradition imply, that
Christian faith and practice constitute their own internal world of discourse.
It is not only inevitable but also appropriate that the Christian faith present
itself in terms shared by others; no sooner is Christian faith formulated in
language than it is involved in general modes of discourse. However, it is
possible in principle to distinguish between apologetic arguments that
attempt to reinterpret general human or cultural realities in light of Christian
truths, from those that reinterpret Christian truths in light of those general
human or cultural realities. In Engelhardt’s case, Orthodox Christianity is
116 Gerald McKenny
initially presented as that which answers to a need for the transcendent as

such—i.e., as that which offers moral unity, certainty, and authority in
the midst of modern anxieties about morality. But is Christian ethics best
understood as a cure for these anxieties?
After pointing out how a particular religious conception of the transcendent
gives rise to the entire problem formulated in terms of the philosophical puzzle,
it may seem ironic to claim now that Engelhardt’s quest for the transcendent
is in part determined by his philosophical puzzle. But in fact these are two
sides of the same claim. Just as modern moral philosophy in its rationalistic
forms can be understood as a successor to a certain Christian conception of
moral truth, so that philosophical conception of moral truth can have a recur-
sive effect on its Christian predecessor. When this happens we begin to treat
Christian ethics as the answer to a problem regarding moral truth whose
terms are set by modern philosophy. In Engelhardt’s case, anxieties about
morality expressed in a philosophical idiom set the terms for the meaning of
the transcendent in Christian ethics. How is this so? Orthodox Christian
ethics as Engelhardt describes it understands the Christian life, in whole
and in its details, as oriented to holiness, i.e., to the love of God and neighbor;
Engelhardt’s greatest achievement is to show, at every point of his treat-
ment of concrete issues, how the ethical content of the Orthodox tradition
is designed to lead one to this twofold love. Yet, it is notable that the con-
cept of the transcendent, in the sense it has as the solution to the philo-
sophical puzzle, figures little in his description of the Christian life itself. In
the Christian life as he describes it, ethics is not understood as an ordering
of goods or principles in search of a non-contingent ground. Instead, ethics
is understood as a means for union with God (2000, p. 167) or as the require-
ments for orienting one’s heart to God (2000, p. 169). This orientation, as
Engelhardt presents it, begins when one turns one’s heart to God, and
Christian ethics per se seems to be comprehended entirely within the con-
text of that orientation; namely, as that which keeps one moving toward its
goal. In the context of this description of the Christian life, ethics has a
transcendent ground in a twofold sense: first, it consists of the require-
ments for rightfully orienting oneself to the love of a personal, transcen-
dent God; second, these requirements derive from the noetic knowledge
of the apostles and their successors.
Insofar as this ethics is grounded in the transcendent in these two senses,
it can be said to be a “canonical” morality. But what does this mean? It means
precisely that one can rely on this ethics as a genuine condition of attaining
union with God. This is a very different context from that of the philosophical
puzzle, in which someone asks which of the many moralities present in a
pluralistic society is genuinely binding. The point is that it is not clear how
the desire for a transcendent ground of morality is the same as the desire for
union with a transcendent God. In the first case, the transcendent fulfills a
need grounded in morality. In the second case, morality fulfills a need grounded
in the pursuit of the transcendent. In the first case, the transcendent meets a
threefold yearning: for unity in the face of moral fragmentation, for certainty
in the face of nihilistic denials of the possibility of truth in moral matters, and
for authority in the face of the discovery of moral traditions as contingent
human artifacts. These yearnings express a certain conservative anxiety over
the modern moral context and it is in relation to them that he characterizes his
quest as a search for a “canonical” morality. In the second case, one suspects,
the transcendent meets a deeper yearning than those expressed in this conser-
vative anxiety. It may well be that immanent morality leaves us restless and
that only a transcendent ground can fulfill our deepest moral yearnings. But
these yearnings have less to do with unity, certainty, and authority than they
do with what is the ultimate meaning and purpose of our action. Engelhardt
himself is an eloquent witness to the latter. All the more puzzling, then, is that
he expresses the religious quest in an idiom that can only distort it. To identify
the transcendence of God with the transcendence to which one looks to guar-
antee unity, certainty, and authority amid late modern anxieties about moral-
ity is to misrepresent the very relation of ethics to the transcendent Engelhardt
so carefully establishes in the first place.5
If this mutual interpenetration of the philosophical puzzle and the religious
quest generates these opposite yet complementary problems, why not simply
articulate the desire for the transcendent in what for Engelhardt is its true
form, given expression in Orthodox Christianity? Why does he insist on keep-
ing the specter of transcendence alive to haunt moral philosophy? After all,
Engelhardt has no need, as some natural law theologians do, to argue for the
inseparability of moral philosophy and Christian ethics. Perhaps the answer
to these questions lies in his moral and political philosophy rather than in his
theology. If moral and political philosophy no longer recognize the need to
ground themselves in a way that, according to Engelhardt, can be met only by
a transcendent ground—if, that is, those who argue that we should simply
dispense with this kind of expectation prevail—then Engelhardt’s libertarian
default position is no longer necessary. The assumption that moral content
must be grounded in this way in order to be binding will no longer hold; it
will follow that the inability of any theory to ground ethics in this way will no
longer be recognized as a reason for turning to a morality that is capable of
binding persons in the absence of any such ground. We saw above that for
Engelhardt there are two ways to secure moral content following the failure
of discursive reason to ground moral content: one must either accept an
admittedly contingent ordering of goods and principles based on a particular
moral sense, or one must appeal to a transcendent ground for such an order-
ing.6 “Liberal cosmopolitanism” is Engelhardt’s name for a way of life in mod-
ern liberal societies that is theorized by a wide range of contemporary think-
ers who take the former route. John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Jeffrey Stout, and
118 Gerald McKenny
Michael Walzer would all qualify as liberal cosmopolitan theorists in

Engelhardt’s description. They eschew the need for foundations, appealing
instead to democratic traditions, common background assumptions shared
in modern liberal societies, or widely shared intuitions. While Engelhardt’s
portrait of them verges on caricature at certain points, he correctly points
out: 1) that the content of their ethics differs rather profoundly from that of
the Orthodox Christian ethics, 2) that the confidence in which they repre-
sent a genuinely common morality is exaggerated, 3) that their toleration is
less encompassing than they claim, and 4) that these false assumptions
regarding their representation of a genuinely common morality and their
toleration have at least in many circles legitimized them as the moral custo-
dians of our public institutions. As a member of a moral minority, Engelhardt
worries about whether his tradition can survive in a liberal cosmopolitan
order in which, as he repeatedly asserts, it will inevitably be deemed
“politically incorrect” at many points. This is a legitimate worry. Unlike
some who harbor similar worries, Engelhardt’s libertarianism does not
respond by seeking to impose its own or any other concrete moral content
on others without their permission. Under his libertarian polity, grounded
in the principle of permission, neither the fundamentalist Christian in San
Francisco nor the gay or lesbian person in the Bible Belt would be bound by
the prevailing moralities of their respective communities (unless, as we
have shown, the principle of permission itself is not neutral). If the expectation
of a final truth in moral and political matters is itself the legacy of a particular
tradition, the appeal to the need for a transcendent ground of moral claims
is unlikely to accomplish what Engelhardt wants it to accomplish in the
political realm.7
II. Genealogy
When did ethics become modern? For two decades this question has been
a minor obsession in both Christian ethics and moral philosophy. In Christian
ethics, at least, the obsession is not attributable to any sudden interest in the
history of ideas or to any genuinely historical turn. Christian ethicists, with
few exceptions, remain focused on the present even in the recent trend toward
treatment of historical figures and periods. The attention to the origins of
modern ethics is genealogical rather than historical in the proper sense; it
aims to de-legitimize contemporary approaches to ethics by showing how
their fundamental assumptions belong to now discredited modern theories
rather than to Christianity proper. Engelhardt belongs to the company of
these genealogists. He seeks to de-legitimize forms of Christian ethics that
rely on reason by showing, via Kant and Hegel, how they remain in an
immanent horizon. If the genealogy is designed to show how efforts to
ground ethics in discursive reason end up in immanence, the philosophical
argument just examined is designed to show that the genealogy is not the
narration of a historical accident—that any effort to ground ethics by discursive
reason must meet the same fate.
A common Protestant narrative locates the origin of modern ethics in
Kant’s articulation of a rational morality, which required religion neither for
the formulation and justification of its principle nor as an incentive to do what
that principle requires. As early as Schleiermacher, a rejoinder to Kant
appeared in the form of a Christian ethics (christliche Sitte) distinct from
rational morality, an ethics grounded in the concrete reality of the church as a
historical and cultural form. Much of modern Protestant ethics can be under-
stood in terms of a competition between these two approaches.8 By contrast,
many Catholic and Anglican thinkers, including MacIntyre (in his later work),
Milbank, and Oliver O’Donovan, trace modern ethics back further, to late
medieval nominalism and voluntarism. For MacIntyre, the seeds of moder-
nity were sown by Duns Scotus, who in his zeal to preserve the notion of
morality as obedience to God made moral norms radically dependent on the
will of God, prompting the rationalist Enlightenment response.9 For Milbank,
nominalism is again the culprit; it marks the point at which voluntarism
destroys Thomistic participation and thereby ushers in the secular (1990,
pp. 14f). For O’Donovan, voluntarism and nominalism undermine the
generic and teleological orderings that constitute the cosmos as a divinely
created order and usher in an era in which nature and history open up as
arenas for human beings to produce their own order and create their own
value (1994, pp. 39f, 45f). Of these Catholic and Anglican genealogists, only
O’Donovan raises suspicions about the role given to human reason in high
scholasticism, and particularly in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Yet, one
could argue that the seeds of modern ethics are planted here, specifically in
the extent to which (and the grounds on which) Aquinas thought that a natu-
ral morality could be articulated on its own terms (in spite of his conviction of
its actual inseparability from the supernatural end), and in his portrayal of
fallen reason as capable in principle (though with difficulty in practice) of
knowing the morally good apart from divine revelation.
This suspicion brings us to Engelhardt’s genealogy. For Engelhardt, both late
medieval nominalism and voluntarism and Kant’s articulation of a morality
whose principle and motive are independent of religion merely draw out the
implications of the general scholastic belief in the capacity of discursive reason to
formulate a common morality binding on all. Engelhardt concedes that Aquinas
recognized the necessity of grace as a prior condition of the exercise of reason and
also understood the effect of disordered passions on the exercise of reason. Aqui-
nas, then, placed moral reason in a context of grace and ascetic practice; for him,
discursive reason was not, strictly speaking, independent of the holiness of life
needed to exercise it correctly. Nevertheless, Engelhardt insists, “emphasis came
to be placed on moral truths that discursive reason could disclose by examining
120 Gerald McKenny
human nature” (2000, p. 18). The vagueness of the expression “came to be placed”
leaves it unclear exactly when and in whom Engelhardt thinks this emphasis
actually took hold.10 But there is no doubt that he thinks that Aquinas held to
certain convictions—presumably the ones identified in the previous paragraph—
that prepared the ground for a rational morality whose content can be articulated
and grounded on the basis of discursive reason alone.
Engelhardt narrates the history of the search for a ground for ethics
through discursive reason as a double tragedy. First, reason, confined to
immanence, failed to unite the West under a single, canonical morality. Sec-
ond, in its turn to discursive reason, Western Christian ethics abandoned the
understanding of ethics as part of the process by which human beings come
to know a personal God, breaking decisively with the mystical, noetic form of
knowing which, according to Engelhardt, retains its primacy only in Ortho-
dox Christianity. We will say more about this conception of ethics in the final
section. Here, the focus is on the history of discursive reason Engelhardt nar-
rates. The most significant point here is that discursive reason has a history.
The discursive reason described by Engelhardt is characterized by a gap
between its aim (to supply a ground for morality that is not merely contin-
gent) and its inability to fulfill this aim. This gap is the space within which a
history can unfold, first in the form of a succession of diverse (and necessarily
unsuccessful) attempts to fulfill the aim and then as a gradual recognition by
discursive reason of its own immanent character. With this recognition, rea-
son not only has a history but also is its history and must be expressed as
such—as Hegel above all understood. By contrast, noetic knowledge has no
history at all in this sense. Its object is outside history and its relation to its
object is immediate. There is a history of discovery and articulation of its con-
tent, but that content itself is not historical. For Engelhardt, the shift to Ortho-
doxy is a shift from a tradition of ethics that must be narrated as a history
because it is confined to immanence, to a tradition of ethics that cannot be
narrated as a history because it is rooted in the transcendent.
Against this relegation of discursive reason to immanence, a Thomist
might protest that Engelhardt has simply read Kantian and Hegelian reason
too far back into history and has thus obscured an alternative account of
moral reason. The traditional Thomistic claim is that while God is transcen-
dent, the divinely created moral order is accessible in principle to human
reason. Moral reason is, therefore, not locked into an immanent horizon but
participates in the divine moral governance. Engelhardt says surprisingly
little about this claim and so ignores the strongest theological objection to his
view of moral reason as immanent. Still, at least two replies are open to him.
First, he could reply that the late modern fragmentation of moral reason cre-
ates problems for this account. Natural reason appears to arrive at multiple
versions of morality, many of which are incompatible with one another. While
moral diversity itself does not invalidate the Thomistic claim, it does place a
strong burden of proof on it. The more people arrive at mutually incompatible
conclusions through what, to all appearances, seems to be the exercise of
reason in independence of scripture and Christian tradition, the stronger
must be the error theory that is capable of explaining how this can be so given
the capacities of moral reason; yet, the stronger the error theory is, the more
modest must be the claims for what moral reason is capable of doing on its
own. Second, and more in the spirit of his genealogy, Engelhardt could reply
that the capacity of natural moral reason to arrive at what Christians know
from other sources (e.g., noetic knowledge or biblical revelation) to be the
divinely created moral order is only apparent, an illusory effect of centuries
of tutoring of reason by Christian tradition. Now that the tutorial is over,
natural moral reason shows itself in its true light as the source of diverse,
mutually incompatible claims. It only appeared that natural moral reason
arrived at the same destination as noetic knowledge or biblical revelation on
its own ticket; in reality, it was all along being escorted by Christian tradition.
Meanwhile, the claims made on behalf of natural moral reason were prepar-
ing the way for the oscillating forces of voluntarism and rationalism which
struck, from opposite sides, against the possibility of articulating a notion of
moral reason under the tutelage of Christian tradition.
Engelhardt’s actual position is somewhat different from both of these
hypothetical replies. This position holds that any moral order known through
discursive reason is not the moral order as God created it but is only a broken
form of that order, the order of a world that is no longer a window to the
transcendent God. What discursive reason is capable of grasping is only
nature as it is after the fall, and nature in this post-lapsarian form is enclosed
within its own immanent horizon. Here, Engelhardt will likely meet another
objection. This confinement of discursive reason to immanent nature sounds
similar to the older Catholic notion that reason unaided by grace apprehends
moral order in terms of a “pure nature” which can be characterized apart
from any effects of grace. In recent decades, Catholic thought has shifted
away from this conception of pure nature to the view expressed in the nou-
velle théologie of the mid-twentieth century that nature is integrally related to
the supernatural. Again, Engelhardt largely ignores this important move-
ment, leaving him open to the charge that his characterization of the differ-
ence between Orthodoxy and Catholicism on the normative status of nature
is based on an outdated Catholic paradigm. However, Engelhardt could point
out that while the newer Catholic understanding of natural order recognizes
an integral relation of nature and grace, it remains the case that the nature it
identifies with the divinely created moral order is still nature as it is known
through discursive reason rather than nature as grasped in noetic knowledge.
The issue, then, is not simply the difference between an Orthodox under-
standing of nature as a window to God and an older Catholic understanding
of a “pure nature” apart from any effects of grace. Rather, the issue is whether,
122 Gerald McKenny
after the fall, nature as grasped through empirical or rational investigations

can have normative significance in Christian ethics or only nature as known
noetically, through prayer and asceticism. From Engelhardt’s perspective,
Catholic natural law theories—whether physicalist (identifying natural law
with inclinations or with ends inherent in biological capacities grasped ratio-
nally), naturalist (identifying natural law with requirements of natural
human flourishing grasped empirically or with some combination of empiri-
cal and rational investigations), or rationalist (identifying natural law
with rational moral constraints)—all deal with nature in a broken state,
treating as normative an order that no longer is a window to God but is
rather an immanent sphere closed off to the divine, and is thus unnatural
with respect to God’s intent in creating it (2000, pp. 172-176). From this
perspective, it is not sufficient to claim that nature is already permeated
by grace and integrally related to the supernatural. Nature as we now
encounter it through our ordinary knowledge and experience—as often
hostile to humans, as explicable apart from the miraculous, as the source
of profound obstacles to spiritual growth—obscures its divine source and
end. It remains the good creature of God, but in its broken form we experi-
ence it as closed to God and locked in its own immanence. It follows that
versions of natural law that rely on our ordinary experience or reason
remain within immanence.
Given this view of the immanence of discursive reason, for Engelhardt it
was inevitable that with the commitment to the latter beginning in the scho-
lastic period the subsequent history of Western Christian ethics would play
out as a struggle between moral reason and traditional Christianity—and just
as inevitable that traditional Christianity would lose. It is odd, then, that
Engelhardt, who places the Council of Trent at the origin of the modern era in
the West while also stressing its continuity with scholasticism (and thus with
the turn to discursive reason), commends post-Tridentine Catholic medical
ethics as a coherent and unified tradition of moral guidance, capable of
absorbing new scientific and technological developments within a continu-
ous conceptual and methodological framework (p. 8f). It is the fracturing, by
the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath, of the moral unity and moral
certainty he finds in the post-Tridentine “manualist” tradition that disturbs
Engelhardt. Moreover, Engelhardt attributes the moral fragmentation and
confusion that, for him, followed the Council not to the rationalism of the
manualist tradition, but to the attempt on the part of the Church to con-
form to a rapidly changing social and cultural order that in its moral ori-
entation as in other respects was becoming increasingly less Christian.
This brings us to a problem. Engelhardt’s own description of post-Triden-
tine moral theology presents the latter as an exemplary case of a unified,
continuous tradition. At the same time, this tradition continues the scholastic
emphasis on discursive reason. By his own account, then, post-Tridentine
moral theology seems to constitute a strong argument against Engelhardt’s

claims about the limits of discursive reason. For here is a tradition that
maintained its unity and continuity while relying on discursive reason to
resolve moral questions. The fragmentation and confusion following Vati-
can II were due, in Engelhardt’s view, not to reliance on discursive reason
but to the decision to conform to new social and cultural circumstances.
It, therefore, seems questionable—precisely on Engelhardt’s own
terms—to reject all approaches to ethics that rely on discursive reason on
the grounds that they are incapable of sustaining traditional Christian eth-
ics.
Perhaps Engelhardt is not inconsistent here if we keep in mind two
points that are at least implicitly made in his account. One is that the post-
Tridentine tradition was committed in principle to providing by discursive
reason an account of morality that is binding on all. For Engelhardt, when
the tradition retains this commitment under circumstances where the
morality of a society is no longer even nominally Christian, moral theology
makes itself indistinguishable from secular rational morality. It is only at this
point that moral theology begins to pay the price for its confidence, articu-
lated during the scholastic period, that a common morality, binding on all,
can in principle be grasped by discursive reason apart from knowledge of
God through revelation and faith. The other point is that, as Engelhardt
sees it, up to Vatican II both the liturgy and ethos of the Catholic Church
retained much of the substance Engelhardt ascribes to the common heri-
tage of Christians prior to the schism. The implication seems to be that
post-Tridentine moral theology owed its coherence, its unity, and its conti-
nuity to the remnant of traditional (i.e., pre-schism) Christianity that had
not yet been eliminated from the Roman Church despite seven centuries of
discursive reason in moral matters. To put it in another way, only in the
aftermath of Vatican II, with the stripping away of many vestiges of pre-
schism Christianity, did the commitment of the Catholic moral tradition to
discursive reason stand exposed; at precisely this point the limitations of
discursive reason, made clear by Kant and Hegel, became clear.
Still, questions remain. A history of Catholic moral theology might
suggest that Engelhardt has exaggerated the unity and continuity of post-
Tridentine moral theology and the absence of crisis during that period.
More relevant to our concerns is that what Engelhardt values about the
post-Tridentine tradition are the unity, stability, and certainty it offered.
We have already suggested that Engelhardt’s understanding of the tran-
scendent confuses the need for moral unity, stability, and certainty in the
face of modern anxiety about morality with the relation to a personal
God; we must now wonder whether this need has alienated him from the
modern West and led him to a mythical, timeless Orient. With this ques-
tion in mind it is time to examine Engelhardt’s turn to the transcendent.
124 Gerald McKenny
III. The Turn to the Transcendent

Is there any light of the transcendent at the end of the tunnel of Western
reason? Can the West reconstitute a relation to the transcendent once it is
clear that discursive reason ends in immanence? Or will it be necessary to
step outside the history of Western reason altogether? Before turning to the
East, Engelhardt must address the possibility of a rebirth of transcendence in
the West, a possibility that emerges in the figure of Kierkegaard. According to
Engelhardt, Kierkegaard sought a genuine relation to the transcendent per-
sonal God yet inherited the view that the temporal world is fully immanent
and thus unable to manifest God who, as transcendent, must remain invisible
in the world even in his incarnation in Christ. It is this rejection of an immedi-
ate experience of the transcendent in the historical encounter with Christ,
Engelhardt argues, that ultimately kept Kierkegaard tethered to immanence
despite his desire for the transcendent. For him there can be no immediate
experience of God; immediate experience of the divine occurs only in pagan
immanence, not in relation to a transcendent God. But for Engelhardt, this
denial of immediate experience of God left Kierkegaard unable to account for
a genuine experience of the transcendent God, while it also alienated him
from the apostles, who directly experienced God incarnate in Christ, and
from the Church, which is the visible continuation of the incarnate God in the
world (2000, pp. 97-109). Kierkegaard’s failure is emblematic for Engelhardt;
it represents the necessary failure of any quest for the transcendent that: 1)
holds no more illusions regarding the immanence of reason, yet 2) is alien-
ated from the more ancient tradition of noetic experience. Kierkegaard, in
other words, is the paradigmatic late modern Western seeker. It is critical
that Engelhardt both treat Kierkegaard as the sole option left in the West
and pronounce his project a failure. For if there is a post-Kantian and post-
Hegelian quest for the transcendent which takes a different form than that of
Engelhardt’s Kierkegaard or if Kierkegaard’s quest could be interpreted as a
success, then Engelhardt must reckon with another way to the transcendent
aside from Orthodoxy.
Rather than ask whether Engelhardt has rightly understood Kierkeg-
aard—a question whose difficulties would take us far afield11—we might ask
whether there is a broader context regarding immanence and transcendence
in which to place Kierkegaard even if we follow the basic lines of Engelhar-
dt’s reading. This context involves worries similar to Engelhardt’s own,
namely, that the Western metaphysical tradition as a whole or (more plausi-
bly) in its modern variations reduces the transcendent to immanence by plac-
ing it at the disposal of a knowing subject. At the same time, to protect the
transcendent from this fate by placing it beyond all possible knowledge and
experience of it is to render it empty and abstract. It is possible to understand
not only Kierkegaard but a long tradition of thought beginning with Hegel as
an effort to deal with this problem; namely, that to grasp the transcendent
conceptually or in an experience of it is to make it immanent, while transcen-
dence apart from any capacity to know or experience it is purely abstract and
inaccessible, and therefore devoid of any moral or religious significance. From
this perspective, Kierkegaard’s second immediacy of faith can be understood
as an effort to account for an experience of the transcendent which avoids
both the reduction of transcendence to immanence in an immediate experi-
ence of it, on the one hand, and a purely abstract, inaccessible transcendence,
on the other hand.12 Engelhardt is correct to argue that the challenge here is to
show how a relation to a personal God can be a genuine one without being
direct or immediate—in other words, how faith avoids the “bad infinity” of
the abstract, inaccessible transcendent. But Engelhardt himself faces the chal-
lenge of showing how one can have a direct or immediate relation to a God
Who remains genuinely transcendent—in other words, how noetic experi-
ence avoids reducing the transcendent to immanence. The point here is not to
pronounce Kierkegaard a success where Engelhardt finds him a failure, or to
defend one or another modern Western version of the transcendent. Rather
the point here is twofold: 1) there are modern Western versions which attempt
to understand transcendence in light of the problem identified above, and 2)
from the standpoint of this problem, Engelhardt needs to show how the
immediate experience of God involved in noetic knowledge is compatible
with the transcendence of God. At the very least, these remarks indicate that
Engelhardt’s dichotomy between a West locked in immanence and an East in
communion with the transcendent is a gross oversimplification.
Of course, Christian theology is not interested in any discourse about
transcendence as such but in the extent, if any, to which such a discourse
helps to express the encounter with God in Jesus Christ. Engelhardt is, there-
fore, right to focus on Kierkegaard’s Christology, or rather that of his pseud-
onym, Johannes Climacus. In this context, he contrasts the latter’s conviction
of the invisibility of Christ’s divinity in his human presence with the Ortho-
dox conviction that the Gospels attest the immediate experience of God in
Christ’s humanity. Engelhardt adduces, among other things, the story of the
transfiguration of Christ in the synoptic Gospels in support of the Orthodox
view. However, as narrated in the synoptic Gospels the encounter of Peter,
James, and John with the transfigured Christ conforms neither to the view of
Kierkegaard’s Climacus nor to that of Engelhardt. The encounter seems to
overwhelm the disciples’ capacity to comprehend it; in Mark and Luke,
Peter’s verbal response indicates confusion, while in all three Gospels refer-
ence is made, at slightly different points in the episode, to the disciples’ fear.
It is, to be sure, a vision according to Matthew 17:9, and the disciples, as Luke
9:32 reports, beheld Christ’s glory. But their confusion and fear indicate the
extent to which this transcendent glory overflows their understanding and
their receptivity. Moreover, in all three Gospels the moment of vision is
126 Gerald McKenny
eclipsed by cloud; in Matthew and Luke this occurs while Peter is still speaking.
Disclosure is immediately followed by concealment; the transcendent with-
draws its presence even as it gives it. Finally, the moment of intelligibility, if
there is one in this event, comes not with the sight of the transfigured Christ
but with the divine voice, which, speaking from out of the cloud, pronounces
Christ to be the beloved Son and enjoins the disciples to listen to Him. The
word of God from the concealing cloud reveals the divine Sonship of Christ
and places the disciples in the position of its addressees, enjoining obedience
to the Christ—here the transcendent ground of Christian ethics involves nei-
ther Engelhardt’s first immediacy nor the second immediacy of Kierkegaard’s
Climacus. On this view, Christian ethics is grounded neither in an invisibility
of God that is overcome in faith nor in a noetic experience that comprehends
God but in a more complex encounter with Christ, of which these two alter-
natives are opposite exaggerations—one which by leaning towards an abstract
transcendence is on the way to becoming secular, the other which by empha-
sizing the immediacy of the encounter with the transcendent still retains
elements of the pagan.
IV. Ethics as Therapy of Desire

“Christian bioethics is not a set of rules. It is integral to a liturgical life
leading to union with a fully transcendent God” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 236). By
repeatedly issuing declarations like this one, and above all by his rich descrip-
tions of the Christian life in these terms, Engelhardt portrays Orthodox Chris-
tian ethics as a therapy of desire. Ethics is a process of healing and restoring
the capacity to experience the transcendent God rather than conforming to a
natural order characterized in terms of law. It follows that the focus of ethics
is not on what must be done to avoid or remove guilt but on what must be
done to avoid or remove what prevents one from pursuing union with God
or detracts from that pursuit.
Two aspects of Christian ethics understood in these terms distinguish
Engelhardt’s Orthodox ethics from much of Catholic and Protestant ethics.
The first is that different levels or categories of ethical injunction are deter-
mined not on the basis of a legal or judicial regime but by the relation of the
behavior they regulate to the pursuit of holiness in a broken world. This
makes room for a broad category of actions that are not ideally oriented to
holiness, yet are not significantly inimical to its pursuit—actions that, in
Engelhardt’s terms, fall somewhat short of the mark but not wide of the mark.
These actions fall somewhere between the permissible and the forbidden;
they comprise an indeterminate danger zone, which those who pursue holi-
ness enter at varying degrees of risk. There appear to be two criteria for such
cases. One is that the actions involved are directed to a good that is positively
related to the pursuit of holiness. The other is that these actions do not violate
a norm that marks the boundaries of what is compatible with that pursuit.
Perhaps as significant as Engelhardt’s efforts to categorize kinds and degrees
of spiritual danger in this zone, or the fact that it has principally to do with
efforts of married couples to conceive children, is that there is such a zone at
all. Its very existence indicates the character of Orthodox ethics as Engelhardt
describes it, shedding light, in turn, on the meaning of the permissible and
the forbidden and thereby on the nature of Orthodox ethics generally. Because
actions are evaluated ethically with regard to whether they contribute to or
detract from the pursuit of holiness, the permissible and the forbidden are
insufficient as categories for the evaluation of actions; there are many cases in
which a prohibition would be too strong while permission would wrongly
signal that an activity involves no spiritual harm. The impossibility of charac-
terizing the intermediate zone in the legal or judicial terms of prohibition and
permissibility indicates the sense in which the entirety of ethics for Engelhardt
is a therapy of the desire for the transcendent.
A second aspect of Christian ethics understood in this therapeutic sense is
also worth noting. When ethics is oriented to the avoidance and removal of
guilt, the question of the voluntary and involuntary is decisive: the voluntary
character of an action is a necessary condition of its susceptibility to moral
evaluation. Conceptions of involuntary sin are thus incomprehensible, and to
require penance in cases of involuntary action appears cruel. But of course,
for Engelhardt, Orthodox ethics is instead grounded in the pursuit of holi-
ness, which is not moral goodness but union with God. In this context, the
situation regarding involuntary action is different; the notion that certain
things, which befall us apart from our volitional capacities, hinder our pur-
suit of holiness is not incomprehensible, nor is it cruel to require those affected
by such things to undergo practices aimed at renewing this pursuit. How-
ever, we may ask whether in some cases the set of such things recognized by
the Orthodox tradition is in fact a product of the cultures in which Orthodox
Christianity has flourished. We may suspect that this is the case at certain
points where this tradition attaches significance to bodily penetration.
Engelhardt’s analysis indicates at least two senses in which bodily
penetration is ethically significant. Whether or not penetration has occurred
is definitive in determining which sexual activities engaged in by persons not
married to one another are classified as adulterous in the strictest sense and
which are classified as masturbation, a lesser though still very serious sin
(2000, p. 247f). According to Engelhardt, penetration is significant for Orthodox
Christianity because it constitutes the carnal union in which husband and
wife become one flesh. It follows that sexual activities with a partner other
than one’s spouse which do not involve penetration do not violate this union
to the same degree—though of course they do violate it and are considered a
form of adultery. This apparently has the implausible implication that because
it involves penetration, the introduction of semen into the wife by a third
128 Gerald McKenny
party in the course of assisted reproduction is a more serious form of adultery

than is masturbation sans penetration with a third party solely for the pur-
pose of mutual sexual pleasure (2000, p. 253). In any case, the significance of
penetration also appears in a second sense, namely, under the category of
defilement. Engelhardt points out that the Orthodox tradition excludes from
the priesthood those who have been anally penetrated. In part, this is related
to the significance of carnal union just described; anal penetration is the “anti-
icon” of vaginal penetration and thus of the proper carnal union of marriage
(2000, p. 248). But Engelhardt also refers to anal penetration in terms of defile-
ment; to undergo such a bodily violation, despite one’s lack of assent (non-
consensual instances are assumed, though it is not clear that only these are
meant), is to incur “an injury that can have an impact on one’s heart” even
without one’s volition (p. 248). The same attitude toward defilement leads the
Orthodox tradition to permit (and even praise) leaping to one’s death to avoid
penetration (p. 249).
Why does penetration have a degree of significance in the East that is
apparently greater than that in the West? With respect to the first sense in
which penetration is significant, the answer seems clear; it follows from the
importance of carnal union in constituting the proper place of sexual activity
in the pursuit of God. It makes sense that vaginal penetration is more deeply
implicated in becoming one flesh than are acts, such as masturbation, which
do not involve penetration. But what about the second sense in which pene-
tration is ethically significant? We are told that anal penetration has a perma-
nent effect on the heart—an effect that, apparently, no spiritual or ascetic
practice can finally erase. But why does this particular form of defilement
have such an ineradicable effect? Because we are dealing with the category of
defilement we may safely rule out a modern explanation that it is because of
the psychological scar such a violation leaves. In the absence of another
answer, we must ask whether exclusion from the priesthood on these grounds
simply carries into the Church the ancient Greek view that anal penetration is
incompatible with the social status appropriate to a male citizen. Is the notion
of penetration as defilement a genuinely Christian notion or simply a survival
in Christianity of what we know was a specifically (though not uniquely)
Greek obsession?13
This question brings us to a final problem with Engelhardt’s understanding
of the transcendent. For Engelhardt, Tradition (capital “T”) is the continua-
tion into the Church of the presence of the transcendent God in the humanity
of Christ. It is characterized by its timeless, unchanging uniformity in con-
trast to mere tradition, which is a purely immanent, historical continuity. To
identify this sharp contrast between Tradition and tradition with the contrast
between transcendence and immanence is doubly problematic. First, the
sharp contrast leaves Engelhardt with an overly simplified scheme that is
incapable of grasping versions of transcendence for which the transcendent is
related in complex ways to what is historical and changing. This is most

notably the case in Engelhardt’s stance toward biblical revelation.14 Second,
and more relevant to the present point, the sharp contrast forces a choice
between denial of the historically and socially conditioned character of what
is ascribed to Tradition and a radical suspicion of the very notion of Tradition
itself. Consider again the case of defilement by anal penetration. When mat-
ters such as these, which at least seem to suggest a particular socio-cultural
origin, are identified with unchanging Tradition the effect is either to remove
them from critical interrogation as to their place in Christian tradition or to
threaten the very status of Christian tradition itself by raising suspicions
about the notion of Tradition. Engelhardt forces us to choose between denial
of the social and historical nature of beliefs and practices, on the one hand,
and their complete immanence, on the other hand. Once again, this seems to
confuse a reliance on the transcendent as an escape from anxiety over
contingency with a relation to the transcendent God.
In recent decades, Christian ethics has been largely divided between two
approaches: one based on the notion of a natural human flourishing known
by reason and another based on the convictions and practices of the Christian
community grasped through a narrative construal. Both claim to be ultimately
grounded in a transcendent, personal God, but with respect to actual ethical
content this relation is usually indirect. The forces of rationalism, naturalism,
and historicism continue to exert their effect even when they are overtly
rejected. In this context, Engelhardt’s work should inspire Christian ethics to
a more direct grounding in the relation to the God who transcends reason,
nature, and history. At the same time, Engelhardt’s conception of the tran-
scendent reflects a desire for timelessness, uniformity, certainty, and author-
ity in the face of change, multiplicity, complexity, and human autonomy as
much as it reflects a desire for union with a personal God. The problem is not
that the relation of ethics to the transcendent God does not cure the anxieties
reflected in the former desire but that it does not cure them by offering an
escape from reason, history, and nature. When desire for the transcendent
takes this form, it invites the kind of criticism that ends up casting suspi-
cion on transcendence as such and reducing everything to immanence.
We began by observing that Engelhardt’s Christian bioethics is a call to
conversion. It is also the intellectual articulation of a spiritual journey, one
that begins with the pre-Vatican II confidence in discursive reason, continues
through the upheavals of Vatican II with a sobering and disillusioning
experience of the limits of discursive reason, finds in Kant and Hegel an
account of those limits but no path to what we had once hoped to attain
through reason, and finally ends in a fulfillment of the desire for the
transcendent in a turn to Orthodox Christianity. We have questioned whether
this journey is inevitable for Western Christians who desire the transcendent,
and have suggested that at various points, Engelhardt confuses the desire for
130 Gerald McKenny
union with the transcendent God with the desire for release from certain
modern anxieties. We have denied that the relation of ethics to the transcendent,
personal God forces choices between a transcendent ground and nihilism,
between immediacy and inaccessibility, between Tradition and tradition, and
between noetic knowledge and discursive reason. However, we have not
questioned whether Christian ethics must be based on a relation to the tran-
scendent, personal God. Engelhardt’s is the most articulate and passionate
voice we currently have for Christian ethics in that form. For this reason, this
articulation of a remarkable journey has much to teach even those who have
never entertained such confidence in moral reason, who have never felt such
an unqualified need for moral unity, certainty, and authority, and whose relation
to the transcendent, personal God is not polarized between inaccessibility
and immediacy.15
Notes
1. The primary source of Engelhardt’s Christian bioethics is The Foundations of
Christian Bioethics (2000).
2. The call seems most explicitly directed to Roman Catholics. Engelhardt barely
engages Protestantism. Protestant thought is represented not by Luther, Calvin,
Menno Simons, Edwards, Hooker, Wesley, Schleiermacher, and Barth but, remark-
ably, by Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. For Engelhardt, the Protestant Reformation
occurred in three phases: a first phase which fragmented Western Christianity and
created the conditions for the emergence of a liberal polity, a second phase character-
ized by pietism, and a third phase, marked by Kant and Hegel, which transformed
Christianity into the secular, rationalized religion against which Kierkegaard
unsuccessfully rebelled. The first two phases are superficially treated while if the
third phase concerns a genuine form of Protestantism at all, it is a thoroughly
non-ecclesial form.
3. The most thorough exposition of this position is found in Engelhardt, The Foun-
dations of Bioethics (1996, pp. 35-72). What appears in this paragraph is a summary of
the argument Engelhardt presents there with much more nuance and detail.
4. In this context, the twofold significance of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Michel
Foucault, Richard Rorty, and Bernard Williams is that they: 1) understand the
extent to which rationalistic moral theories can be treated as contingent survivals
of a Christian culture, and 2) make it possible to envision a form of ethics which
(with respect to the expectation of a final and enduring truth in moral and political
matters) breaks not only with Christianity but also with its continuation in
modern rationalistic moral theories.
5. This does not mean that Christian ethics is not concerned with unity, certainty, and
authority. Quite the opposite is the case. But it is far from clear that the kind of
unity, certainty, and authority it offers is the same as that sought by many in their
modern anxieties about morality. It is far from clear that these modern anxieties
are the anxieties Christians have in their sinful separation from God, a point that
is brought home by the fact that in the face of these anxieties appeals to the
transcendent often take on a problematic and sometimes even a demonic form.
6. At several points, Engelhardt asserts that contingent moral content is insufficient

to ground morality because it would be binding only on those who agree to accept
it; we are, therefore, thrust back again on the merely procedural principle of
permission. However, this begs the question: opponents of Engelhardt’s requirement
of permission would most likely reply that morality is not the kind of thing that
can be agreed to in that way, that the very features of morality that constitute its
contingency make it a mistake to require individual permission of the kind
Engelhardt requires. Engelhardt would likely reply that their contingent morality
involves force to the extent that it is imposed on those who do not consent to it and
that he is only offering a morality for those who are interested in resolving moral
disagreements without appeal to force.
7. The most persuasive aspect of Engelhardt’s political philosophy is its exposure of
the inevitability of force under a moral or political order that can no longer
pretend to ground morality or politics in an end or ends inherent in human
nature, in universal senses of benevolence or justice, in a faculty of reason
with which each person is ultimately identified, or in a form of practical rea-
son which all moral discourse presupposes. To the extent that a moral and
political order is contingent, it inevitably coerces those who fall under that
order but do not identify with the community, tradition, or form of practical
reason from which the moral and political norms that comprise that order are
derived. Engelhardt’s libertarian theory sets the transcendental conditions of
possibility of a morality for those who seek to resolve moral and political
disagreements without recourse to force. Measured against this standard, we
can see to what extent actual liberal orders are based on coercion despite
their frequent claims to the contrary. In this sense, Engelhardt offers us a very
useful critical theory. Of course, he intends it to be much more than that. At
the same time, the least persuasive aspect of Engelhardt’s political philoso-
phy is that it responds to this situation by proposing a single, abstract prin-
ciple (that of permission). Those who reject this principle plunge into an
abyss in which there are no principled limits on the violence that may be
done to them; they place themselves outside any moral order. Either a single,
abstract principle or utter nihilism: surely we saw enough of this kind of theory in
the twentieth century.
8. This is to say that much of Protestant ethics is a conflict between largely un-avowed
heirs of Kant (who qualify the latter’s rationalism but for whom Christian beliefs
and practices are meaningful primarily as figurative expressions of a morality
whose content can at least be articulated, if not grounded, apart from Christian
beliefs and practices), and unwitting heirs of Schleiermacher (who reject the latter’s
assimilation of the church to its culture as well as his recognition of the validity of
a rational ethic apart from Christian ethics, but who repeat his fundamental
characterization of Christian ethics as the normative description of the convictions
and practices that distinguish the church as a distinct community).
9. This is the critical point in MacIntyre’s narrative of the loss of Thomistic tradition
in Three Rival Versions (1992).
10. Engelhardt distinguishes the intertwining of faith in reason with faith in faith
characteristic of even the late middle ages, from the faith in discursive rationality
characteristic of the Enlightenment. This places the transition to modern ethics in
132 Gerald McKenny
the aftermath of the seventeenth-century wars. See Engelhardt, 2002, p. 214.

11. At the very least we would have to ask whether Engelhardt is sufficiently aware of
the stances of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms and their differences from the stance(s)
articulated in his signed texts, and whether he takes sufficient account of the kind
of argument these pseudonyms undertake when they try to ask what kind of belief
or attitude regarding Christ is possible from their stances.
12. Kierkegaard would thus be the first in a line of thinkers who include Emmanuel
Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion. See Levinas, Totality and Infinity (1969, pp. 33-52)
and Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena (2002).
13. We may suspect that something similar is the case in the emphasis placed by the
Orthodox tradition on the lordship of man over woman. The grounds for this
hierarchy in the Genesis text on which Orthodoxy bases it makes this case more
complex than the case of anal penetration; nevertheless, one can question whether
the importance this hierarchy has in Engelhardt’s description of that tradition
owes more to the strongly patriarchal societies in which Orthodoxy developed
than to the biblical tradition itself.
14. Engelhardt dismisses biblical revelation by first identifying it with the biblical
text and then arguing that the biblical text is conditioned by its historical and
social circumstances and thus remains in immanence (2000, pp. 167, 181). How-
ever, while the biblical text is subject to historical and other forms of criticism,
nothing in its socio-historical character precludes it from also being the bearer of
divine self-revelation, an inspired and authoritative human witness through
which God speaks. It is true that seventeenth century Protestant orthodoxy iden-
tified divine revelation with the biblical text and thereby held revelation hostage
to critical methods, which for two centuries have drawn attention to the human
medium as a product of immanent forces. But these methods do not count
against the claim that it is God who speaks through that medium and that an
explanation of the Bible in critical terms fails to grasp its true character and con-
tent. There is, therefore, no theological reason for concluding that a biblically
grounded Christian ethics is confined to immanence simply by virtue of the
socially and historically conditioned nature of the biblical text. Properly under-
stood scripture is a window to the transcendent personal God, or more properly
the medium in which the transcendent personal God speaks to human creatures.
Rather than treat this version of transcendence on its own terms Engelhardt
rejects it because it fails to conform to his rigid contrast between transcendence
and immanence.
15. The lessons to be gained from this articulation of his journey are among the many
unpayable personal, professional, intellectual, and spiritual debts I owe to H. Tristram
Engelhardt, Jr. These debts, too plentiful to enumerate here, prove what Kierkegaard
understood and Derrida did not: that a genuine friendship can be based on an
unpayable debt.
Bibliography
Engelhardt, H.T., Jr. The Foundations of Bioethics. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
Publishers, 2000.
———. “Medicine and the Biomedical Sciences after God: Do Right-Worshipping
Christians Know More than Others about the Content of Morality?” Christian Bioethics
8 (2002): 209-214.
Levinas, E. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.
MacIntyre, A. After Virtue. 2nd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1984.
———. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1988.
———. Three Rival Versions: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition. Notre Dame: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1992.
Marion, J.-L. In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena. New York: Fordham University
Press, 2002.
Milbank, J. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Malden: Blackwell
Publishers Inc., 1990.
O’Donovan, O. Resurrection and Moral Order. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.
Down By Law:1
Engelhardt, Grisez, and the
Meanings of “Legalism”
M. Cathleen Kaveny
In The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. observes

that the term “fundamentalism” now functions as a general term of oppro-
brium, used against those holding “firmly to their transcendent religious
commitments, contrary to the prevailing secular and post-traditional conceits
of the age,” rather than as a label for a clearly defined position regarding bib-
lical interpretation within the Christian community (2000, p. 212 n. 4). He
writes that “for those of modernist, post-traditional, revisionary commit-
ments, the term fundamentalist is often used as a conversation-stopper. The
implication is that no one in his right, or at least enlightened, mind would
admit to being a fundamentalist” (p. 212 n. 4, emphasis added).
The presupposition of this paper is that the term “legalism” functions
much the same way for a broad range of Christian moral theologians. It seems
inconceivable that any contemporary Christian moralist, in his right, or at
least his enlightened, heart would admit to being a “legalist” or uncomplain-
ingly accede to a description of his moral theological framework as “legalis-
tic.” Nonetheless, just as the term “fundamentalism” continues to be freely
used in secular academic discussions to gesture to an object of polemic and
scorn, so too does the term “legalism” in Christian theological discussions.
In fact, Engelhardt frequently takes Christian legalism as the proximate
object of his own polemical attacks against Western Christianity. He also
maintains that one virtue of his “traditional Christian” approach, which is
rooted in the theological and liturgical traditions of Eastern Christianity, is
that it avoids legalism. According to Engelhardt, Western Christian moral
135
136 M. Cathleen Kaveny
thought, particularly Roman Catholic moral thought, has long been plagued
by legalistic modes of analysis. More specifically, his prototype of legalistic
thinking seems to be the “manualist” model of moral theology that pre-
dominated in the Catholic Church from the time of the Council of Trent until
the mid-twentieth century, and which was designed to allow confessors to
evaluate the seriousness of the sins confessed by members of their flock and
to set an appropriate penance.
But as Engelhardt repeatedly observes, Catholic moral theology underwent
a sea change after the Second Vatican Council. The moral manuals have all
but disappeared from the scene. Are there any intellectually respectable, card-
carrying legalists left within mainstream Roman Catholic thought? Or is
Engelhardt’s polemic against legalism nothing more than a quixotic battle
with authoritarian ghosts of the past? It is hard to say, because Engelhardt
does not support his accusations of Catholic legalism with citations to any
contemporary Roman Catholic thinkers.
One plausible candidate for the role of intelligent, contemporary, card-carrying
legalist is Germain Grisez, the Flynn Professor of Christian Ethics at Mount
Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Strongly supportive of the
reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council, he nonetheless also has been
concerned to promote and defend aspects of Catholic moral and spiritual life
that have fallen into desuetude in its wake: the desirability for frequent use of
the sacrament of penance, the importance of penitential practices, and even
the usefulness of indulgences in deepening one’s spiritual life. Moreover, for
nearly thirty years, Grisez has been a tireless defender of the Roman Catholic
magisterium’s affirmation of the existence of exception-less moral rules,
including an absolute prohibition against the use of drugs, devices, or surgical
procedures for the purpose of preventing conception. At first glance, there-
fore, Grisez seems as likely as any post-Vatican II Catholic moralist to defend
an explicitly and self-avowedly legalistic approach to moral theology. None-
theless, he does not do so. In fact, in his magisterial three-volume work, The
Way of the Lord Jesus (1983; 1993; 1997), he devotes a great deal of explicit atten-
tion to combating what he defines as legalism and the abuses and distortions it
introduces into the moral life of Christians.
In my view, illuminating Engelhardt’s view of legalism by putting it into
conversation with the reflections of Germain Grisez will be fruitful for a num-
ber of reasons. First, both theorists have reason to distance themselves from
legalism, because the nature of their writings renders their work casually sus-
ceptible to that very charge. More specifically, Engelhardt and Grisez both
maintain that moral theological reflection ought not to remain at the level of
abstraction; it should provide sufficient detail to help people address the
issues that arise in their day-to-day lives.2 The writings of both men, there-
fore, include finely nuanced analyses of particular classes of cases, which
achieve substantial definiteness regarding acceptable and non-acceptable
Engelhardt, Grisez, and the Meanings of “Legalism” 137
courses of action. As Engelhardt and Grisez surely know, the refusal to limit
one’s moral theology to the articulation of abstract ideals or principles can
render a theorist vulnerable to the charge of legalism by those inclined to
think that any effort to reach a definite judgment on specific questions threatens
to constrain Christian freedom.
Second, despite the fact that Engelhardt is Orthodox and Grisez is
Roman Catholic, they share a significant number of basic judgments
regarding the shape of the Christian moral life. For example, although
Grisez is a natural law thinker (and, therefore, believes that a significant
amount of moral truth is accessible in principle both to believers and non-
believers), he and Engelhardt would agree that Christian revelation affects
both the accessibility and the substantive content of moral norms.
Engelhardt and Grisez also both maintain that prayer and spiritual guid-
ance can significantly contribute to moral discernment. Neither man
believes that the Christian moral life can be lived without participation in
the liturgical practices that have marked the Christian community from its
beginnings.
Third, their commonalities are punctuated by important differences. While
they are equally adamant in their condemnation of “legalism,” Engelhardt
and Grisez in fact mean significantly different things by the term. By exploring
their differences within the broader context of their respective theological
commitments, I hope to shed some light on the more general question of
when and how it is appropriate to understand Christian morality as a type of
“law.”
My plan for this essay is as follows. In Section I, I will attempt to flesh out
what both Engelhardt and Grisez mean by “legalism,” drawing upon the five
components of the definition of law offered by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa
Theologiae to serve as a framework for my analysis. In Section II, I will exam-
ine some of the deleterious consequences that Engelhardt and Grisez believe
a legalistic approach to morality entails for moral life and pastoral practice. In
conclusion, I will offer some brief reflections on the usefulness of the term
“legalism” in contemporary discussions regarding the methodology and content
of Christian ethics.
I. What is Legalism?
A. General comments on Engelhardt’s theory
The title of Engelhardt’s book, The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, needs
some interpretation. It is not a book about biomedical ethical questions—or
their foundations—narrowly construed; it is rather a book that situates bio-
medical questions within a broad articulation of an Orthodox Christian
approach to the meaning and purpose of human life. Engelhardt clearly
frames his objectives in the preface to his work:
The cardinal philosophical and theological puzzle is: can one break through
immanence to truth? And if so, how? By addressing this puzzle, this volume
invites the reader to the Christianity of the first millennium, a Christianity
rooted in mysticism, or better stated, a noetic theology. It is here that the puzzle
is solved and the door is found in the horizon of immanence: Christianity’s
disclosure of an immediate experience of the uncreated energies of a radically
transcendent, personal God. (2000, p. xiii)
Engelhardt, a former Roman Catholic, objects to the Christianity of the
West on both political philosophical and religious grounds. Following MacIntyre,
Engelhardt argues that the Western tradition in political philosophy has failed
in its objective of identifying foundations for a common morality in a reli-
giously pluralistic world (pp. xi-xii). Second, he maintains that Western Chris-
tianity has not even succeeded in providing a coherent, content-full morality
that is uncontroversially acknowledged to be true by its own adherents (p. 127).
What approach does Engelhardt adopt in this situation? Because all
attempts to formulate a substantive, rich common morality have failed, he
argues that the attempt to do so must be given up as impossible. He main-
tains that in a secular society whose members do not agree on the nature and
purpose of human life, the only justifiable morality is based on autonomy,
consent, and contract; in his terms, the only justifiable public morality is a
libertarian cosmopolitan morality of strangers. Such a morality will,
Engelhardt admits, allow practices deeply offensive to many Christians (e.g.,
abortion and assisted suicide) to proceed without legal impediment. It will
also tolerate a great deal more disparity in the distribution of health care
resources than most Christian theorists of social justice would deem permissible.
At the same time, however, Engelhardt emphasizes the creative possibilities
of a libertarian cosmopolitan public ethos for religious believers. In his view,
it will leave room for traditionally minded believers, such as Orthodox Chris-
tians, Jews, and Muslims, to create communities free from interference by the
larger world. He believes that this community-based freedom from interference
constitutes a far preferable alternative for religious believers than the adop-
tion of a cosmopolitan liberal morality, which would impose contemporary
ideas of liberty and equality upon non-liberal religious communities that
endorse sexist or homophobic practices (pp. 138-144). Engelhardt suggests
that a cosmopolitan libertarian morality would also support the creation of a
number of different value-based health care systems, among which individuals
could choose according to their own moral commitments. For example, abor-
tion and euthanasia would be freely available in the secular liberal health care
system, but not within the traditional Christian or the Roman Catholic health
care systems (p. 382).
Engelhardt objects to the theological and liturgical commitments of Western
Christianity no less than to its political morality. For him, the problem with
Western Christianity is that it never moves beyond an immanent understanding
of reality to touch the transcendent. Roman Catholic thought emphasizes the

priority of discursive reason, which remains trapped within the immanent; it,
therefore, cannot find itself a secure foundation in unchanging, transcendent
truth. Protestant thought, with its emphasis on private study of scripture,
apart from the liturgical life of the worshiping community, generates a historical-
critical approach to sacred writings that obscures their value as a gateway to
transcendence. “If God is available to us only through arguments, texts, and
oral traditions, God is obscured by the immanent, the finite, the contingent,
and the historically conditioned” (p. 127).
In contrast, Engelhardt maintains that traditional Christianity is enabled,
by the grace of God, to reach beyond the immanent in order truly to touch the
transcendent—to touch the energies of God Himself through a type of noetic
experience. The marks of a life formed by such an experience do not change
with the passage of time throughout the ages. He writes:
Orthodox Christianity interweaves theological experience and reflection
through liturgical texts and ascetical practices that have firm roots in the work
and the sentiments of the Fathers, thus making the Fathers of the Church and
their lives present to the contemporary community of believers. By sustaining
religious life in the spirit of the first millennium, a framework for moral theology
is engaged so that the contemporary believer can engage the moral reflections
of early Christians with little conceptual opacity or distance. (p. 160)3
Consequently, according to Engelhardt, a traditional Christian bioethics,
rooted in the Orthodox tradition, can escape the foundational problems
plaguing secular ethics and most forms of Christian ethics in the contempo-
rary world. It is, he claims, beyond challenge, because it is anchored in a
noetic experience of the transcendent God. It provides, he asserts, a canonical
content-full morality, which can be received and appreciated as true by the
community of believers whose liturgical life and ascetic practices enable them
to have that experience, and thereby to grow in participation in divine life
(pp. 168ff).
In a nutshell, then, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. is an Orthodox Christian
libertarian. He has taken Orthodox Christianity’s lack of a social ethic, ele-
vated it to a principled libertarian political theory, and turned it into an
advantage in a pluralistic, post-liberal society. At the same time, he invites
those alienated by the anomie and rootlessness of liberal individualism to
choose to give themselves over to the challenges and possibilities of a tradi-
tion whose fundamental commitments he believes have not changed since its
inception two thousand years ago.
B. A strategy for pinning down the meaning of legalism in
Engelhardt’s thought
As I will demonstrate in more detail below, the foregoing sketch of
Engelhardt’s basic theological position is crucial to his understanding of
legalism; in fact, one might even go so far as to say that his criticisms of legalism
are integrally intertwined with his articulation of traditional Christianity’s
approach to ethics. His book, however, does not include a straightforward
discussion of the nature of legalism and its ensuing difficulties. Instead, he
uses “legalism” as a general pejorative term, as a negative contrast to the
positive aspects of the Orthodox approach to Christian ethics that he wishes
to defend on various points. How, then, can we articulate Engelhardt’s
understanding of legalism in a more systematic way—in a way that will also
facilitate comparison with Germain Grisez’s view of legalism?
I propose working with the definition of law given by St. Thomas Aquinas
in his Summa Theologiae. In my view, it is a logical choice for several reasons.
First, Aquinas is indisputably a major source of the later Catholic scholasti-
cism which Engelhardt criticizes. Second, it is also indisputable that Aquinas
works in close conversation with the Fathers of the Church. For example,
more than one contemporary scholar has documented how Aquinas exhibits
important similarities with the Eastern Fathers in his view that the fulfillment
of human life lies in nothing less than deification.4 Third, while Aquinas’s
thought contributed to the scholasticism that characterized Catholic moral
thought before the Second Vatican Council, it is also a touchstone for the
attempt to renew Catholic moral thought after the Council. Fourth and most
importantly, Aquinas’s definition is both concise and comprehensive. It is a
straightforward definition of law that ought to be uncontroversial to all par-
ties to this conversation. Consequently, it will allow us to organize our discussion
of the various components of legalism in the thought of Engelhardt and Grisez,
as well as to identify their similarities and differences in a fruitful way.
So what is Aquinas’s definition of law? He maintains that a law “is noth-
ing else than (1) an ordinance (2) of reason (3) for the common good, (4) made by
him who has care of the community, and (5) promulgated” (ST, I-II, q. 90, art. 4).
In view of this definition of law, what, then, is legalism? My hypothesis is that
moralists will label as “legalist” any view of moral norms that they believe
gives disproportionate or otherwise inappropriate stress to one of the five ele-
ments of the definition of law given to us by Aquinas. As one might suspect,
the label functions more as a broad, negative judgment about a rival moral
system than as a nuanced, positive statement about one’s own view of the
moral life. Furthermore, in using the label, the user objects to a perceived
distortion in a rival way of understanding morality, but is not committed to
adopting a mirror-image distortion. For example, by saying, negatively, that
one objects to the over-emphasis on God’s will in understanding the eternal
law at the expense of His reasonableness, one is not asserting positively that
God’s will plays no role whatsoever in the legitimate meaning of the eternal law.
This way of defining “legalism” has several advantages. First, it makes it
clear that one’s definition of legalism is, in fact, a) dependent upon one’s
understanding of the nature and function of law; and b) integrally related to
one’s understanding of the way in which the norms of the moral life can
helpfully be understood as laws. Second, it gives us a way to account for the
fact that the various people who make the charge of legalism, and those who
respond to it, frequently seem to be talking past one another, even while they
seem to be loosely talking about the same thing—the moral law. This defini-
tion allows us to see how they are indeed talking about the same thing—but
about different facets or aspects of the same thing. There are several compo-
nents to the definition of law, and one or more of them may be the central
focus of a charge of “legalism.” Third, this definition makes clear that in some
cases, perhaps in many cases, the charge of “legalism” within a Christian context
can be more helpfully understood as a charge that a particular thinker or
school of thought has incorporated one or more distorted elements into a
proffered articulation or application of the moral law, rather than a charge
that a thinker has wrongly extended the moral law into a sphere where it does
not belong.
1. An ordinance
To focus on the aspect of law as an ordinance is to focus on its nature as a
command or an order given by the lawgiver to those subject to the law. To
someone who concentrates on this aspect of the law, the content of the order
is less decisive; it is the fact that it is valid order that is crucial for recognizing
its binding legal character. Some Christian theologians have placed almost
exclusive emphasis on God’s role as lawgiver, conceiving of the moral life
largely as obedience to a series of divine commands. Their heavy emphasis
on the sovereignty of the divine will logically leads to the position that even
a divine command to perform an evil action must be obeyed.5 In one sense,
their approach was not different from that taken by theorists, such as Thomas
Aquinas, who also maintained that all divine commands should be obeyed.
Aquinas took pains, however, to show that what was apparently a wrongful
act (e.g., taking someone else’s life) was not in fact evil (because God was in
command of life and death already) (ST, II-II, q. 64, art. 6, rep. ob. 1). Viewed
narrowly, this endeavor may seem like an attempt at special pleading, an
attempt to escape a difficult moral problem with a clever distinction. When
viewed more broadly, however, Thomas’s goal is to ensure that two attributes
of God—knowledge and will—are not set against one another.
For Germain Grisez, the core mistake of legalism is placing too great an
emphasis on the aspect of the moral law as a product of the will of God, rather
than as something intelligible in itself, as an aspect of the divine intellect. He
writes:
In thus tracing the practical force of moral obligation back to God as lawmaker,
classical moral theology tended toward voluntarism. Voluntarism in general is
a theory which assigns primacy to the will over reason. Classical moral theology
assigned primacy in the genesis of moral obligation to God’s will, although it
left a subordinate place for human reason. This limited voluntarism, together
with the isolation of moral from dogmatic theology, led classical moralists to
pay less and less attention to intrinsic reasons for accepting Christian moral
norms as true. Instead, they increasingly tended to treat moral norms as laws
which members of the Church must obey because the Church insists upon
them with divine authority. (1983, pp. 12-13)
Grisez identifies four basic consequences of legalism for the moral life.
First, it concentrated too much on the “detailed specification of duties,” with-
out clarifying “the meaning of good and bad in terms of the total Christian
vocation.” Second, it meant that Catholic moral theology was primarily con-
cerned with “the minimum required to avoid mortal sin.” Third, it largely
avoided addressing the responsibilities of personal vocation, because “it
tended to suggest that what is not forbidden is thereby permitted, in the sense
that one is free to do as one pleases in regard to it; thus it tended to ignore the
responsibilities of personal vocation.” Fourth, classical moral theology
“tended to liken moral truths to Church laws,” leading to the “suggestion
that the Church might or should change its moral teaching, as if it were
changeable law rather than unchangeable truth” (Grisez, 1983, p. 13).
Engelhardt would agree with Grisez about the undesirability—and the
danger—of most of the consequences that Grisez attributes to legalism. He
would not, however, be likely to trace their source to an over-emphasis on the
moral law as an aspect of God’s will, or of human willing in response to the
will of God. According to Engelhardt, the basic move toward God is one of
the will, rather than one of reason. “The impact of the Fall is not so much on
man’s will as often supposed in the West, but upon his intellect, his noetic
capacity for non-discursive knowledge” (2000, p. 174). The knowledge of
God’s moral law follows upon, rather than leads to, an experience of God
himself, what Engelhardt refers to as a “noetic” experience of God, which
begins with a grace-inspired turning to God. He writes:
Natural law properly understood compasses the precepts taught us by God
through our being and through the world around us, rendering nature a window
to God. To see that law, one must take on the faith that turns us from agnosticism
to an encounter with God. God then allows us through His energies to grow in
knowledge of His commandments. (p. 176)
According to Engelhardt, the fundamental mistake human beings make is

to attempt to come to know God through discursive reason before we will to join
ourselves with Him by grace. Consequently, as discussed below, for Engelhardt,
the key problem of legalism is a distorted emphasis on the powers of human
reason to reach the mind of God by proceeding in a discursive manner.
2. Of reason
For Aquinas, law is an ordinance of reason; it is not an arbitrary imposition
expressing the whim of the lawgiver. In his account of morality, Grisez follows
Aquinas in emphasizing the reasonableness of the moral law. In fact, it is in
this emphasis on the reasonableness of the requirements of morality, and the

reasonableness of expecting Christians to follow them, that Grisez locates the
antidote to legalism. For example, he charges the “new moral theology”
developed after Vatican II with remaining “as legalistic as the old,” because
“[i]t provides no account in Christian terms of why one should seek human
fulfillment in this life, what the specifically Christian way of life is, and how
living as a Christian in this life is intrinsically related to fulfillment in
everlasting life” (1983, p. 15).
In this situation, Grisez aims to provide an adequate treatise on Christian
moral principles, which:
...clarify what a Christian is and how Christian life can be at once and entirely
both human and divine. It must explain how human goods determine Christian
moral norms and show why a life in accord with the Christian norms is the
only life which is really humanly good, while also showing how to live such a
life. It should be oriented toward preaching, teaching, and counseling, while
providing an adequate basis for studies leading to the formation of confessors.
Finally, it must explain the authority of the Church’s teaching. (1983, p. 22)
For Engelhardt, in sharp contrast, reason is not the solution—it is the
problem. He believes that legalism results from distorted emphasis on the
rational accessibility of divine law. As noted above, the key for Engelhardt is
the noetic experience of the uncreated energies of God, which is only made
possible by union with God. The goal of the Christian life is “an intimate
knowing between persons, most particularly an illumination of the creature
by the Creator. It is only through this illumination that true knowledge
becomes possible” (2000, p. 163). It is only by repenting of one’s sins, joining
with God, and living in accordance with God’s will, that one will be in a posi-
tion to discern the requirements of the moral life.
Engelhardt contrasts “noetic knowledge,” the intimate, immediate,
non-discursive knowledge of the transcendent God made possible through this
union with God, with “discursive knowledge,” his name for human reasoning
as it proceeds more or less autonomously. Discursive reason is helpful in dealing
with the world of immanence, but absolutely useless in reaching the transcen-
dent. In fact, by relying exclusively on discursive reason, human beings will
move away from God, rather than toward Him. The sad history of Western
debates over the establishment of rational foundations for morality demonstrate
that discursive reason is not sufficient to produce a morality certain enough to
provide a basis for living one’s life. Relatedly, and perhaps more importantly,
discursive reason remains trapped within the realm of immanence, according to
Engelhardt. He would reject the effort to clarify and systematize the moral
norms that constitute the heart of Grisez’s project. He reflects:
This is not to deny a place in Christian bioethics for moral rules, commandments,
or precepts: properly understood, they indicate real boundaries beyond which
one will go very wrong rather than enter into union with God. But they cannot
be systematized in terms of conceptual foundations. So, too, one should resist

the temptation to ground prohibitions against murder or abortion in supposed
general principles such as the principle of the sanctity of life, rather than in the
pursuit of God. Murder and abortion are wrong first and foremost because
they lead us away from union with God. Nor can there be a legalistic rule for
dealing with particular cases… (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 209)
A flash point revealing the difference in the approaches of two theologians
is their respective attitudes toward the principle of double effect. At its core,
the principle states that agents are responsible for the intended effects of their
actions (whether they intend those effects as ends in themselves or as merely
as means to other intended ends) in a way different from their responsibility
for the foreseen-but-unintended side effects of their actions.
What is the difference? In mainline Roman Catholic thought, one is never
permitted to intend to cause certain effects in one’s acting (e.g., the death of
an innocent human being), but under certain circumstances, one may permit
such a result as the foreseen-but-unintended side effect of one’s action. This is
not to say that agents are not responsible for the foreseen-but-unintended
effects of their action. They are required to consider whether permitting such
effects conforms to the norms of proportionality and fairness. For example, a
doctor may not perform an abortion intending to bring about the death of a
child, even to save the life of the mother, but may perform another action
(e.g., removing the cancerous uterus of the pregnant woman) foreseeing but
not intending the death of the baby, provided it is proportionate and fair to
cause that result in that particular case.
According to Grisez, this distinction between intended consequences
and consequences that are merely foreseen is an essential tool of practical
reason. Fundamentally, one constitutes one’s character differently with
respect to the intended effects of one’s action (even those intended as means
to other ends) than with respect to effects that are foreseen-but-unintended
side effects of one’s intentions. Consequently, Grisez believes that it is
extremely important for deliberating agents to identify precisely which
effects they are intending in their actions, and which effects they are merely
permitting as foreseen-but-unintended side effects. This process of clarifi-
cation requires reflecting upon the path of action proposed by one’s own
practical reason, which chooses means in order to achieve ends. For exam-
ple, an agent may mistakenly believe that a contemplated action is ruled
out by the prohibition against intentional killing, when a proper under-
standing of the situation and the norm at issue reveals that the action in
question will involve permitting, but not intending, the death in question
(Grisez, 1983, pp. 295-300). Once an agent has reached this understanding
of her action, she is not required to rule it out ab initio, but is permitted to
go on to consider whether it is proportionate and fair to cause such a side
effect in the case at hand.
In contrast, Engelhardt rejects the principle of double effect, and its basic
distinction between intended effects and side effects that are foreseen-
but-unintended by the agent, as the tool of a legalistic, rationalist mentality.
First, he believes that by exonerating certain types of unintentional killing,
the distinction ignores the need for spiritual treatment in this type of case. He
notes that in the Church of the first millennium, even involuntary homicide
required penance and purification. “One can become involved in an evil such
as the death of a person, which even against one’s will can have an effect on
one’s heart” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 278).
Second, he argues that the distinction is wrongly used to draw absolute
distinctions between cases that should be treated as different in degree, not
in kind.
One must fully recognize how far a choice to kill in order to save life falls short
of the mark and that this is the case whether the abortion is undertaken “indirectly”
(i.e., the abortion as a side effect of another intervention), as when one removes
a cancerous uterus containing a child, or when one performs a “direct” abortion
(i.e., acts to abort) for a woman with severe congestive heart failure. (2000,
pp. 279-280)
Engelhardt notes that according to traditional double effect analysis, the

indirect abortion should be justified and the second should be prohibited. In
his view, both abortions can be permitted and both must be repented, in the
sense that the spiritual harm they inflict upon both the physician and the
mother should be recognized and treated in the context of spiritual direction.
How should we understand the difference between Engelhardt and Grisez
on double effect? From one perspective, that difference may not be as great as
it initially appears. Like Grisez, Engelhardt acknowledges that “differences in
willing make a difference to the human heart” (2000, p. 279), although obvi-
ously for him the difference is not as decisive as for Grisez. Moreover, although
Engelhardt’s approach might seem to be more permissive in theory, in prac-
tice, the only cases of abortion that Engelhardt seems willing to allow are
those designed to save the life of the mother. He categorically rules out other
abortions, including in the stereotypical “hard cases” of rape and incest,
although this position does not seem to be required by his theological com-
mitments. For his part, Grisez’s reformulation of the principle of double effect
in order to focus on the purpose of the acting agent would likely permit the
narrow range of actions permitted by Engelhardt but prohibited by the Cath-
olic manualists (e.g., early delivery of a nonviable baby in the case of the
mother’s congestive heart failure) (1983, p. 299).6
Yet, significant divergences in opinion do remain. At bottom, Grisez
believes that the distinction between intended effects and effects that are merely
foreseen by the agent is an illuminating tool of moral discernment, separating
unjustified actions from those which may, other things being equal, be justified
for an agent to perform. For Engelhardt, this distinction, the core of the principle
of double effect, functions to obscure more than it reveals. More specifically, it
threatens to occlude the spiritual harm to an agent that can result from foresee-
ably causing certain effects, in particular the death of another human being.
More generally, in identifying similarities and differences between
Engelhardt and Grisez, it is important to avoid creating the impression that
the two thinkers are as far apart as one might initially judge them to be on the
basis of their rhetoric. Engelhardt, for his part, does not deny the usefulness
of reason—it would be foolish for him to do so, given the analysis and argu-
ment that is the backbone of his 400-page book. In fact, he emphatically denies
that “a Christian bioethics should eschew clear expression, analytic explica-
tion, or systematic reflection in favor of contradictory statements and deliber-
ately ambiguous claims” (2000, p. 180). Engelhardt’s overriding goal is to
downgrade the importance of discursive reason relative to the moral wisdom
stemming from the noetic experience of God, which is more properly a property
of the holy than of the analytically brilliant. More generally, he wants to affirm
that the recognition and appreciation of moral norms are only possible within
a life shaped by the liturgical and ascetic practices of the Orthodox Church.
Grisez is also sensitive to the need to situate morality within a well-lived
Christian life. Moreover, he explicitly describes the moral life as leading to
union with God, as God’s decision to offer us divine life within the divine
unity (1983, pp. 580-586). He notes, as well, that his position on this point “is
very similar to the view of some theologians of the Eastern Church” (p. 597 n.
24). Furthermore, like Engelhardt, Grisez recognizes both that Christian
morality is true morality, appropriate for all persons, and that a full account
of that morality is only accessible with the help of the grace divinely provided to
the Church. He also acknowledges, like Engelhardt, that Christian commitment
generates additional, specific norms binding only upon Christians (pp. 606-609).
Nonetheless, there are significant differences in their respective under-
standings of the role of reason in identifying moral norms. Beyond the gen-
eral claim that Grisez has more confidence than Engelhardt does in the power
of a reasoning person, working with all the resources that the Church has to
offer, to identify moral norms and courses of action that correspond to them,
it is hard to press further with the texts at hand. It is not difficult, however, to
identify the point at which further conversation would need to begin. In
describing his methodological approach, Grisez cites a passage from the First
Vatican Council about the role of reason in the context of faith:
It is, nevertheless, true that if human reason, with faith as its guiding light,
inquires earnestly, devoutly, and circumspectly, it does reach, by God’s gener-
osity, some understanding of mysteries, and that a most profitable one. It
achieves this by the similarity [anologia] with truths which it knows naturally
and also from the interrelationship of mysteries with one another and with the
final end of man. (1983, p. 31)7
Grisez maintains that Vatican I should be understood here as implying

that the appropriate method for theology is “dialectic,” in Plato’s sense of the
term. “By this method, one considers truths of faith by comparison (anologia)
with truths of reason, with one another, and with the ultimate fulfillment to
which God calls us in the Lord Jesus” (Grisez, 1983, p. 31). In broad terms, this
method strikes me as one advocated by nearly all post-Vatican II Roman
Catholic moral theologians, both liberal and conservative. Does Grisez’s dia-
lectical method qualify as “discursive reason” in the sense condemned by
Engelhardt? I am not sure.
On the one hand, Engelhardt never gives a clear account of what he means
by “discursive reason.” At times, he seems to mean a process that stresses
conceptual analysis as opposed to reflection on experience, an excessive con-
cern for logical consistency, a desire for immediate certitude as opposed to
dynamic progress in understanding eternal truths, and a total prioritization
of unchanging human nature rather than the changing conditions of history.
His account of discursive reason, in short, significantly resembles the “ratio-
nalism” of the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church that Grisez criticizes (Grisez,
1983, pp. 27-31).8 Moreover, admittedly with some glossing, Engelhardt’s
account of the practice of noetic theology, within the context of the ecclesial
community of Orthodox Christians, could be encapsulated in Grisez’s sum-
mary of the use of the dialectic method in Catholic thought. The use of that
method “means that, accepting the truth of Catholic faith present in the living
Church of which one is a member, one seeks a better understanding of this
truth in which one already lives” (Grisez, 1983, p. 7).
On the other hand, my sense is that Engelhardt might argue that the method
that Grisez actually practices in The Way of the Lord Jesus not infrequently
seems more akin to discursive reason—or rationalism—than to dialectical
reason. For example, he might suggest that the rhetorical tone, together with
the exhaustively pursued question-and-answer format of Christian Moral
Principles, overwhelmingly convey the impression of the author’s certitude
with regard to the answers he provides, rather than inviting the reader to
engage in a dialogical pursuit of truth. One largely sympathetic review of Dif-
ficult Moral Questions was titled “Germain Grisez Explains It All (Well,
Almost)” (Brumley, 1999). In addition, Grisez’s work bears more than a trace
of the rationalist concern with true propositions. His most extensive and
explicit discussion of truth in Scripture in Christian Moral Principles, for
example, focuses largely on its role in transmitting true moral propositions to
the faithful (1983, pp. 831-835, 861-863).
3. For the common good

According to Aquinas, the purpose of law is to advance the common good.
But what, exactly, is the “common good”? This is a notoriously elusive ques-
tion. In Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on
the Church and the Modern World, the common good is defined as “the sum of
those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual
members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment” (1965,
§ 26). In defining the common good, the precise relationship of the good of
the individual person and the good of the community is a key issue. Christian
thought has generally resisted the temptation to choose between the two,
asserting that the common good is the good of all persons, who are by nature
social creatures designed to flourish in community.
According to Jacques Maritain, the common good “is therefore common
to the whole and to the parts, which are themselves wholes, since the very notion
of person means totality; it is common to the whole and to the parts, over
which it flows back and must all benefit from it” (1943, pp. 8-9). On this basis,
mainstream Christianity has rejected, for example, the idea that the community
can sacrifice one innocent person to save many; the argument would be made
that any community which did so would actually be undermining its own
common good, not merely the good of the sacrificed individual.9 Nonethe-
less, many of the debates within Christian ethics can be fruitfully understood
as rooted in a disagreement about appropriate balance between protecting
the good of the individual and safeguarding the good of the many in promoting
the common good.
In his articulation of the requirements of Christian morality, Engelhardt
tends to emphasize the good of the individual over the broader concerns of
the community. This emphasis appears first and foremost in his understanding
of the point of the moral law: it is therapy for diseased souls, a way of preparing
us to experience God. The moral law is intimately connected to a regime of
personal asceticism, quelling our passions and enabling us to make life-giving
contact with the energies of the divine being. For Engelhardt, therefore, “the
moral law is thus a means for the growth of an intimate connection between
the creature and the creator” (2000, p 171). In his view, “[m]orality must be
lived so as to cure our souls from passions, to make us whole, and to unite us
with God” (p. 171). Like medicine, like therapy, the application of the moral
law must be intensely personal, applied with discretion and judgment to each
patient, taking into account their own particular strengths and weaknesses.
Engelhardt contrasts the notion of the moral law as therapy with a more
“legalistic notion” of morality, which is not concerned with promoting the
well-being of the individual, but with enforcing the requirements of “an
impersonal codebook of divine law” (2000, p. 169). While he does not expand
systematically on this contrast, it seems to me to include the following three
components.
First, according to Engelhardt, the moral law should be applied and
interpreted with the mindset of a healer—a spiritual physician, if you will. In
contrast, he seems to believe that a legalistic conception of morality is applied
and interpreted with the mindset of a judge. The healer is first and foremost
concerned with the well-being of the individual patient, while the judge is
more concerned with protecting the well-being of the community as a whole,
by maintaining the structure and authority of the rule of law.
Second, of crucial importance for Engelhardt is his understanding of
morality as intensely personal—grounded in and facilitating the relationship of
a personal God with the persons created in his image and likeness. To subor-
dinate the well-being of particular persons to the inexorable requirements of
law is an aspect of what he means by “legalism” (p. 209).10
Third, by combining his notion of the purpose of morality as a type of
healing with his understanding of morality’s ground as a relationship between
persons, Engelhardt develops a pastoral approach that gives great discretion
to spiritual advisors to tailor moral advice to particular situations. “The
appropriate response will not be found in a casuistic literature, or at least in
a formalized casuistical approach. In each particular case, the appropriate
response must be drawn from prayer and grace. A formal casuistry that pro-
vides recipes for responses to particular cases would confront the Spirit with
our dead letters” (p. 209).
Germain Grisez tends to focus more than Engelhardt does on morality’s
role in contributing to the well-being of the community as a whole, by provid-
ing a basis on which human beings can rightly structure their interactions
with one another. In this vein, a striking difference between the two theorists
is the way they conceptualize paradise and the human path to it. Engelhardt
emphasizes the personal relationship between God and the believer, charac-
terized by the communication of the divine energies to the human person.
The social dimension of paradise is not developed in his analysis, which con-
centrates on the individual believer’s union with God. In contrast, Grisez’s
notion of heaven, and our path to it, is much more essentially social—one
could even say political, in the sense of having to do with a polis. He sees the
task of earthly life as nothing less than building up the kingdom of God.
Quoting the Second Vatican Council, he writes “after we have obeyed the
Lord, and in his Spirit nurtured on earth the values of human dignity, broth-
erhood and freedom, and indeed all the good fruits of our nature and enter-
prise, we will find them again, but freed of stain, burnished and transfigured”
(1983, p. 1). Although the kingdom can only be brought to fruition with the
second coming of Jesus Christ, Grisez maintains that believers are contribut-
ing to its construction here and now. In fact, each and every one of our mor-
ally acceptable actions contributes to the building up of the kingdom of God
(1983, pp. 1-2).11
Now a theory that sees morality as identifying the actions that contribute
to the construction of the kingdom of God will have a significantly different
understanding of the role of moral principles and rules than does a view of
morality as a type of therapy for sick souls. Grisez emphasizes that free
choices are constitutive of both self and community (1983, pp. 56-57). So his
act analysis focuses on principles and rules, which pick out not the unique
circumstances of agents and their lives, but the generalizable features of
action that are repeatable in a number of cases. Furthermore, he expresses far
more concern than does Engelhardt for the maintenance of social practices in
which large numbers of people may find individual flourishing. For example,
in analyzing the prohibition against divorce and remarriage in the Catholic
Church, he stresses the importance of being able to make an absolute commit-
ment for the creative unfolding of the lives of many Christians.
In responding to proportionalists—those who would make exceptions to
some moral prohibitions in difficult circumstances for proportionate reason
(e.g., prohibitions against contraception, adultery, and divorce), Grisez is
extremely concerned with the impact of such exception-making upon moral
and social practices in general.
Proportionalism also undermines unconditional commitments, which are essential
to Christian personal vocation. Those who have lived in any state for a few
years have a very different awareness of its good and bad points than they had
upon entering it. Marital and religious vows often are set aside today with the
encouragement of proportionalist theologians, who suggest that in some cases
the choice to set them aside is a lesser evil than continuing fidelity without any
apparent benefits. (pp. 155-156)
This is not to say that Grisez is insensitive to the needs of human beings
who experience themselves constrained by the rules and principles. A bed-
rock assumption of his approach is the ultimate compatibility of the flourish-
ing of the individual with compliance with exceptionless moral rules, even in
difficult situations. First, Grisez emphasizes that such situations provide
tremendous opportunities for evangelization. He notes that a woman who
refuses a potentially life-saving abortion “can bear outstanding witness to her
faith and hope in God: faith if her refusal is based on her willingness to live
by the Church’s teaching and to leave in God’s hands the risk of the disaster
which might occur; hope if her choice shows her confidence that disaster
accepted in Jesus is not final” (p. 155). Second, he emphasizes the self-constituting
character of actions. “Human action is soul-making. Moral acts are ultimately
most important insofar as they make a difference to the self one is constituting
by doing the act. Ultimately, it would profit nothing if one saved the mortal
lives of everyone in the world by committing one mortal sin” (p. 155). Third,
he believes that every Christian, by grace, has the power of avoiding mortal sin.
Grisez rejects as incoherent the idea that there might be some circumstance
under which one is required to commit a mortal sin. Fourth, and most generally,
he believes that complying with the Church’s moral teaching is the only way
to achieve genuine human fulfillment. “To sin is not to break a law (taking
‘law’ in any ordinary sense); to be punished for sin is not to experience the sanc-
tion imposed upon lawbreakers. Rather, to sin is to limit oneself unnecessarily, to
damage one’s true self and block one’s real fulfillment. . .” (Grisez, 1983, p. 329).
Nonetheless, Engelhardt, in my view, would consider this analysis as

verging dangerously close to his understanding of legalism. First, he would
not accept the Roman Catholic tradition’s clear division of sins into the cate-
gories of mortal and venial; he would argue that the failures of the human
heart are deeper and murkier than that division permits. We all sin; in his
terms, we all “fall short of the mark” and stand in need of some form of
spiritual therapy. Engelhardt would likely consider any attempt to distin-
guish so sharply between fatal and non-fatal “falling short of the mark” to
exemplify the rationalism he associates with legalism. Second, he would
argue that it is simply unjustified to say that every human being is strong
enough not to be morally or spiritually destroyed by bearing the burdens
associated with acting in a morally courageous way. Third, he would contend
that the Orthodox tradition allows for the possibility of maintaining the ideal,
while allowing for merciful exceptions to be made in individual instances. He
could point, for example, to the Orthodox practice of allowing for divorce
and remarriage in cases where the first marriage is simply impossible to carry
on for the two parties. These exceptions do not endorse the less-than-optimal
course of action tout court. They simply constitute a merciful recognition that
the agents involved are not capable of doing more at the present time
(Engelhardt, 2000, p. 237).12
Grisez would likely respond that Engelhardt’s view of morality is simply
a logical muddle, particularly in its attempt to recognize that there are some
acts that are both permissible and morally forbidden. Engelhardt, in turn,
would argue that Grisez’s approach simply places too much emphasis on
logical coherence. At some point, theological sources would become an issue.
Grisez would likely observe that Engelhardt’s view of morality is inconsistent
with the teaching of the Roman Catholic magisterium, which is divinely
assisted in its identification and proclamation of moral norms, including the
acceptance of negative moral norms (such as the norm against adultery)
which bind absolutely.13 Engelhardt would obviously not find this a telling
point, given his own view of ecclesiastical teaching authority as a member of
the Eastern Church. This response, of course, would lead to a discussion of
the next two elements in Aquinas’s definition of law: it must be made by one
who has care of the community, and promulgated.
4. Made by one who has care of the community
Both Engelhardt and Grisez are in agreement that the source of the moral
law is ultimately God, Who has care of the universe. Both Engelhardt and
Grisez are worried, in some sense, that the moral law will be wrongly perceived
as independent of the divine lawgiver. But the shape of that worry is very
different in the two cases, which difference reflects back to other differences
in their views of morality.
Engelhardt worries that the Roman Catholic tradition depicts the moral
law as a constraint independent of God and, therefore, binding upon God in
a way analogous to the way it binds human beings (p. 173). For him, the basic
problem with this approach is that it will lead to an application of the moral
law that does not take into account God’s overriding purpose for it as a type
of therapy for sinful and diseased souls. In contrast, Grisez worries that peo-
ple will think of the law as independent of the divine lawgiver for a different
reason. If it is merely a product of divine will, then God, or divinely autho-
rized representatives, can simply change the law, or discount it as an arbitrary
imposition by a divine bully. For Grisez, the basic separation at issue is divine
will from divine intellect. The moral law is not an arbitrary imposition, but a
constitutive element of God’s rational plan for building the kingdom of God
with the cooperation of human beings.
5. And promulgated
Finally, of course, the different ecclesial commitments of Engelhardt and
Grisez affect their assessment of legitimate and illegitimate moral law. For
Engelhardt, as an Orthodox Christian, God’s moral law is revealed preeminently
in the theological reflections, liturgical practices, and ascetic disciplines that
have been handed down by the Fathers of the Church (2000, p. 159). The true
meaning of that law in difficult cases is revealed primarily to the holy, not pri-
marily to those skilled in discursive reasoning. The application of the law to
one’s own difficult case is to be done by engaging in prayer and appropriate
liturgical and ascetic practices, and by consulting one’s spiritual father or mother.
For Engelhardt, therefore, the moral law of God is not definitively promulgated
through the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, he argues that
the widely secular culture that we have now has its roots in the rationalist under-
standing of the natural law perpetuated by the Catholic Church (p. 6). To
Engelhardt’s mind, the Roman Catholic moral tradition before the Second Vati-
can Council at least had the advantage of being coherent. Now, much of it sim-
ply follows the latest intellectual fashions, dictated by the concerns for liberal
equality animating secular Western culture. It is post-traditional Christianity,
which is nothing short of blasphemy to the traditional Christian (pp. 144-148).
In contrast, for Grisez, the mind of Christ is closely identified, and at points
virtually equated, with the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church:
“One ought to proceed with personal obedience of faith; one must submit
one’s experiences, insights, and wishes to the judgment of the Church’s teach-
ing, prepared to reform oneself according to the mind of Christ” (1983, pp.
18-19). While the Catholic tradition includes the possibility for the develop-
ment of doctrine, and the revision of non-infallible Church teaching, it is not a
possibility upon which Grisez dwells. Instead, he emphasizes the need to bide
one’s time while living in a spirit of docility with respect to Church teaching:
Catholics who wish to be faithful and consistent will attempt to conform their
consciences exactly to the Church’s moral teaching. There is a substantial body
of received moral teaching which deserves recognition as infallibly accepted
and handed on by the Church. Moreover, even teachings which are not
proposed infallibly must be accepted with religious assent; this obligation

admits of exception only if there is some superior theological source for a
contrary judgment. (p. 871)
Consequently, for Grisez, when the Church teaches authoritatively it is
not legalistically imposing an arbitrary norm on the faithful; instead, it is
communicating the will of God, which is ultimately inseparable from the
mind of God. The point of the norm will therefore be accessible, in principle,
to the mind of the believing Catholic “thinking” with the mind of the
Church.
II. Legalism and the Moral Life

The charge of legalism is not a solely theoretical charge, lodged against
the plausibility or internal consistency of a moral theory in the abstract. It is a
charge with a fierce practical bite; it is made with deep concern about the
ramifications that the legalism identified will have for the moral life of Chris-
tians. What are the consequences of legalism for the moral life? It is helpful, I
think, to look at this question from two angles: how people apply the moral
law to themselves in a legalistic framework and how people in authority
apply the moral law to others in such a framework.
A. How people apply the moral law to themselves

One concrete problem often identified with legalism is the equation of the
contents of the moral life with the application and extension of a discrete set
of rules or principles—moral “laws,” so to speak. This equation can have two
consequences: moral minimalism and/or laxism, or moral maximalism and/
or rigorism.
One could fear that a view of the moral life as a collection of rules or
principles illegitimately reduces it to a small set of moral rules. Those who
worry about this consequence focus on two aspects of legalism’s effect on
moral agents, reasoning in the following manner. First, they fear that a legal-
istic account of morality will create the impression that there are no moral
norms applicable to situations falling outside these rules; if an agent follows
the rules, then all other aspects of his or her life are matters of unfettered free-
dom. Second, it will create the impression that the more difficult rules can be
changed, provided enough pressure is exerted on the rule maker. Conjoined
with the factual judgment that the most dangerous temptation in the contem-
porary world is to minimize the requirements of morality, a moralist could
come to the conclusion that these two features of legalism will generate moral
minimalism and/or laxism.14
In fact, this reasoning process encapsulates Grisez’s most pressing
worries about the practical consequences of legalism for the moral life in
the contemporary era.15 At the end of his most extensive section discussing
legalism at the beginning of Christian Moral Principles, he summarizes his

concerns:
Legalism often causes the faithful to view the Church’s moral teaching as an
imposition. The suspicion grows that the Christian life itself is a kind of arbitrary
test for which different rules could well be devised if only the test maker chose.
In these circumstances, the desire increases to do as one pleases as much as one
can. Thus, while setting stringent requirements concerning a few matters, classical
moral theology offers little or no helpful guidance for much of Christian life.
The temptation to rebel against received teaching is nourished by its seeming
arbitrariness, as well as by interests cultivated without reference to Christian
faith. (1983, p. 13)
In opposition to legalism, Grisez’s major concern is to emphasize that
every decision we make, every path we choose, is fraught with moral impli-
cations. We are never free to do as we choose in the sense that there are aspects
of our lives that are unrelated to our overarching task of building up the king-
dom of God, by following “the way of the Lord Jesus.” But we are generally free
to do as we choose in the sense that every choice we make is an opportunity
freely to constitute ourselves as the children of God that we are called to be.
In his view, the purpose of his book is to provide guidance to Catholics who
realize, as adults and as believers, that “[i]n this passing world we make the
selves and relationships which will endure forever” (1983, p. xxix).
Like Grisez, Engelhardt also wants to emphasize the radical, all-encompassing
claim of Christianity on the lives of those who profess their faith in it. The
goal is nothing short of holiness, which he repeatedly emphasizes cannot be
achieved within the framework of a legalistic account of morality. For exam-
ple, in articulating how a Christian should approach beginning of life ethics,
he writes: “This focus on holiness transforms the question of how correctly to
make reproductive choices from a merely legalistic engagement to the ascetic
task of finding spiritual wholeness in a morally broken world” (Engelhardt,
2000, p. 6).
In contrast with Grisez, however, Engelhardt seems to be more worried
about the maximalist rather than the minimalist tendencies of legalism. How
can this be the case? Here it is important to remember that Engelhardt’s fun-
damental definition of legalism concentrates on an excessive rationalism,
rather than an excessive voluntarism. If we expand the sphere of operation of
moral principles and rules, and the demand for rational discernment, to cover
the whole of our lives, we will, in his view, lose the forest for the trees. More
specifically, we will begin to think that holiness is virtually identical to, if not
actually constituted by, the requirements of discursive rationality.
Engelhardt, in my view, would say that a rationalist approach, even one as
nuanced as Grisez’s (or perhaps, especially one as nuanced), simply expands
the requirements of immanence, when what is required is a turn to the
transcendent. An analogy may be helpful here. The requirements of practical
reasonableness are like a map. One can continue to mark landmarks, to fill in
details, to add color and some texture to the map. Nonetheless, no matter
how elaborate it becomes, the map remains two-dimensional. Finding the
transcendent in life is fundamentally a matter of breaking the confines of the
map itself; it requires a new movement into a third dimension, which
transcends the map entirely.16
While rational argumentation has its place for Engelhardt, as do rules
and principles, it is not fundamental. Instead, as I noted above, the funda-
mental source of knowledge is grace-filled participation in the liturgical
rites and way of life of traditional Christianity. The moral life and its rational
regulation are preparatory means for the noetic experience of God.17 Indeed,
his major complaint against Roman Catholic thought is precisely that it has
lost the forest for the trees: “In this century of intellectual energy [the thir-
teenth century, which saw the rise of the medieval university], theology
came no longer to be regarded primarily as the fruit of holiness. Theology
came instead to be understood more centrally as the fruit of scholarship”
(2000, p. 203).
B. How people apply the moral law to others

We do not only apply the moral law to our own actions, both prospectively
and retrospectively, we also apply it to the actions of others. Many times,
people do so informally, with respect to friends and acquaintances who seek
their advice, with respect to the actions of public figures whose activities are
reported by the media, and with respect to the actions of strangers who cross
their paths. Some situations, however, present more formal occasions for
evaluating the past acts of other persons, or of giving counsel to them with
respect to future acts. In Roman Catholicism, these occasions are most
frequently associated with the priest-penitent relationship in the sacrament
of Confession; in Eastern Orthodoxy, they are found in the relationship
between a spiritual father or mother and his or her spiritual children.
What special concerns arise in contexts where people apply the moral law
to the lives and choices of other people? Here, John Noonan’s Persons and
Masks of the Law provides a good perspective on the problem, although he is
discussing law as it is treated in the legal system, not the moral law per se.
Standing at the heart of any system of law are two entities: rules and persons.
For Noonan, the legal “process is rightly understood only if rules and persons
are seen as equally essential components, every rule depending on persons to
frame, apply, and undergo it, every person using rules” (1976, p. 18). Grave
dangers arise from letting go of either component. On the one hand, the sub-
suming of persons into the inexorable impersonality of rules can be ruthless,
creating masks (“personae”) that obscure the faces of persons. On the other
hand, the abandonment of impartially formulated rules can produce “monsters”
which strangle justice with favoritism and arbitrariness (see Kaveny, 1994-1995).
Not surprisingly, Engelhardt is very concerned about the former possibility.

His core concern, in my view, is rooted in his conception of morality (and
spiritual direction regarding moral concerns) as being a kind of therapy,
designed to heal the soul and enable union with God. The task of the spiritual
father or mother is always to keep this ultimate purpose of the moral law in
sight when dealing with individual spiritual children (Engelhardt, 2000, pp.
283-284). Consequently, the spiritual parent has a significant amount of dis-
cretion in dealing with individual cases—dealing with them as a guide and a
healer, not as a judge. Fulfilling this role entails refusing to constrain one’s
evaluation of a spiritual child’s actions within the law-oriented framework of
“justified” or “unjustified,” “innocent” or “guilty.”
Sometimes, a spiritual father or mother must identify problematic aspects
of situations, which would not raise any question from the perspective of a
more law-oriented framework focused on the culpability of the agent.
Engelhardt recognizes, along with the Eastern tradition, the possibility of
“involuntary sins,” a manifestation of the brokenness of original sin in our
lives. An example would be a woman who suffers a miscarriage, and who
may face feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and despair because of it. Once
repentance and spiritual therapy are seen to be applicable outside the narrow
context of individual moral responsibility, the Orthodox practice of providing
for purification in such cases can be seen as a humane way of dealing with a
situation that manifests human brokenness on a bodily level (p. 277). Further-
more, he argues that some actions that may be morally justified from a legal-
ist point of view (e.g., abortion to save the life of the mother)18 are nonetheless
fraught with spiritual danger. Persons who engage in these actions are at risk
of spiritual harm, for which they should receive spiritual treatment (pp. 278,
325-326).
In other situations, Engelhardt believes that the strict requirements of the
law are modified to take into account the exigencies of the particular situa-
tion. Sometimes those modifications are designed to recognize that the appli-
cation of the moral law in its full force will break a morally weak person,
causing them to turn their backs on the Christian message, or cause harm to
innocent third parties.19 In some instances, a gradualist approach to Christian
holiness is possible. For example, Engelhardt contends that prophylactics
(and contraceptives) might be provided to unmarried persons “with regret,
admonition, but without impropriety” (p. 274).
Sometimes those modifications involve tailoring general moral concerns
to the specific situation. While Engelhardt recognizes the validity of many of
the concerns identified in Humanae Vitae about the consequences of widely
available contraception (p. 267), he does not believe that these concerns justify
an absolute prohibition against its use, even by married couples (pp. 267-287).
In these situations, the Orthodox tradition assigns the responsibility to spiri-
tual fathers (or mothers) to help married persons make decisions regarding
contraception in a way that will facilitate their journey to holiness. In some

cases, that may mean abstaining from artificial contraception; in other cases,
it may not (p. 299 n. 101). Engelhardt writes: “The differences between the
Orthodox and the Roman Catholic views regarding contraception lie in the
first being primarily articulated in terms of an asceticism directed toward
approaching holiness and the second being directed to conforming to imper-
sonal norms, including those rooted in a highly biological interpretation of
natural law” (p. 300 n. 102). He notes as well that the Orthodox Church has a
highly developed notion of married asceticism (p. 244), which:
…requires married persons regularly to abstain from sex at certain points in
the liturgical calendar. In his view, this integration of moral norms with liturgical
practices is the key to understanding the holistic aim of Christian ethics: to enable
a life of holiness in union with God. (See especially p. 292 n. 43.)
Engelhardt’s general position on these matters, I believe, is encapsulated
in his discussion of the Orthodox understanding of canon law as it bears on
moral discernment:
The result is a collage of canons without systematic order, making their legalistic
application nigh unto impossible. The canons are not a set of laws to be applied,
for example, to bioethical issues. The canons have not given rise to a systematic
casuistry, but to an invitation to approach each case guided by the relevant
canons and the Holy Spirit. This is surely one of the great strengths of the canons.
The canons must be understood not as a law that must be applied following its
letter, but as a set of very important spiritual signposts directing Christians
toward salvation. (p. 224 n. 112)
Particularly important to him is the difference between the notion of
“economia” in the Orthodox Church and the notion of “dispensation” in the
Western Church.
A dispensation lifts the law for a particular person or class of persons. An
economia recognizes that the purpose of the law, namely, to bring salvation, is
best achieved by something other than the strict application of the law. An
economia thus should not violate the spirit of the law; rather, it should focus
better on the goal of the law by setting aside its letter. It is important to note
that the notion of economia includes not only applying a canon less rig-
orously, but also applying it more rigorously, thus achieving the true pur-
pose of the canon. At times, the spirit of the law is best served by acrivia,
the strict application of the law. (p. 224 n. 112) 20
Grisez’s concerns, in contrast, seem to be clustered more at the other end
of Noonan’s polarity; he is primarily worried about the monsters that stran-
gle justice with arbitrariness and favoritism. Because Grisez does not con-
ceive of his approach to the moral life as the imposition of an arbitrary set of
norms, but as the fruits of the deliberation of practical reason (aided by the
Roman Catholic magisterium) about acts to be done and to be avoided, he
would not share the worries about the impersonal application of the moral
law expressed by Engelhardt. The idea that the requirements of practical rea-
son should be bent to conform to the exigencies of particular situations would
likely strike him as a deeply misguided claim. Within his framework, the dan-
ger that looms largest in our time with respect to the application of the moral
law to others is precisely the temptation to distort the requirements of the
moral law for irrational reasons (e.g., sympathy with the plight of a particular
person).
Like Engelhardt, Grisez believes that Christians and the Christian
community are called to perfect holiness, an ideal that is not possible imme-
diately to achieve. At the same time, he firmly rejects any interpretation of
Christian morality as an ideal that would reduce the claim that binding moral
norms have upon us here and now (1983, pp. 684-685). While acknowledging
that complying with some of those norms is difficult, he does not believe it is
ever impossible, in congruence with Catholic belief that it is never impossible
to refrain from sinning mortally. Consequently, moral gradualism, in the
sense of only gradually bringing oneself to comply with difficult moral
teaching (e.g., the teaching that using contraception is always wrong) is not
acceptable to Grisez.
Unlike Engelhardt, Grisez struggles hard to demonstrate that there are no
true moral dilemmas (situations in which one has no choice to commit a
wrongful act), at least for the morally upright, and sometimes even for those
who have sinned. He emphasizes the possibility of always complying with
the negative absolute norms, which by definition trump positive norms. He is
less concerned about the specific effect of compliance with moral norms upon
individuals, and more concerned with upholding the validity of the norm. In
arguing that there are fewer moral conflicts than initially appears to be the
case, Grisez writes:
In many cases, apparent conflicts are removed when the morally right course,
previously ignored because it is unappealing, is accepted as a practical possi-
bility. For example, persons who have divorced and remarried need not
really choose between committing adultery and renouncing their responsi-
bilities to their second family. They can choose instead to live together in
celibacy, in accord with the moral truth that they have no marital rights
but do have familial responsibilities. (p. 297)
In Engelhardt’s view, this response would likely epitomize an “impersonal”
concern for the preservation of the moral law, rather than a “personal” con-
cern for the well-being of the two parties. In some cases, a celibate marriage
is likely to suffer immense strain, leading to a second divorce. In line with the
Orthodox view, second marriages are regrettably permitted as a concession to
the lingering effects of sin in human life. For Grisez, however, for a confessor
to distort the requirements of practical reason by inappropriately responding
to the emotionally appealing aspects of a particular situation would be triply
wrong. First, the priest would be conveying only illusory comfort to the penitent.
Because the moral principles and rules at issue are rooted in reason, not in
arbitrary will, they cannot be set aside in individual cases. Second, he would
be weakening the social and religious fabric that allowed the faithful to recog-
nize the truth. Third, he would be weakening his own moral character, by
choosing in a way that reflected and confirmed a distorted perception of the
goods at stake (1983, p. 154).
In this long essay, I hope to have demonstrated that “legalism” is not a straight-
forward concept. H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. and Germain Grisez both condemn
legalism, but mean significantly different things by the condemnation. Why is that
the case? I have argued that the concept of legalism is a derivative concept, draw-
ing its meaning from a theologian’s conception of the nature and proper function
of the moral law in the Christian life. “Legalism” is a pejorative term, with which
theologians gesture to what they believe are distorted elements in a competing
understanding of the nature and function of the moral law for Christians. As
defined by Aquinas, the concept of law includes a number of components. Conse-
quently, there are a number of trigger points tracking these components, each of
which can attract a charge of legalism from one critic or another.
These trigger points touch on basic issues in Christian ethics, such as
whether morality is more appropriately seen as an aspect of God’s will or
God’s reason, what relationship obtains among the individual, the commu-
nity and the common good, and what role various ecclesiastical authorities
and theologians play in interpreting Christian moral teaching. Moreover, they
have significant practical implications for how one addresses questions such
as whether true moral dilemmas occur in the Christian life, and whether some
moral norms can be tailored to the exigencies of particular circumstances.
What does this mean for future conversation among Christian ethicists? In
my view, it suggests that the charge of “legalism” generates more heat than
light. To understand what precisely is meant by the charge, one has to under-
stand the fundamental moral framework used by the theologian making it, in
comparison to the framework against which the charge is being lodged. Once
one understands the relevant frameworks, the charge itself loses its sting: it
becomes situated within broader and more fundamental disagreements about
the nature and purpose of Christian life, and the role of the moral law within it.
Speaking more broadly, it is not surprising that Christians would have
different views of the use and misuse of the law, including the moral law, in
the way of discipleship. After all, Christ himself expressed different attitudes
toward the law on different occasions in the Gospels. On the one hand, in the
Gospel of Mark, he chastises the Pharisees, with the admonition that “The
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). On the
other, in the Gospel of Matthew, he says, “Think not that I have come to
destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. For
verily I say unto you, until heaven and earth pass, one jot or one title shall in
no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (5:17-18).
From the earliest times, beginning with James and Paul, there have been
disputes among faithful followers of Christ about the proper way to reconcile
the seemingly conflicting attitudes toward divine law that these statements
reflect. So it is not surprising that the debates continue to this day, whether we
give primacy with Engelhardt to the first millennium of the Church’s witness
in the East, or honor with Grisez its continued development in the West under
the headship of the Bishop of Rome.
Notes
1. Down by Law, a film described by writer-director Jim Jarmusch as a “neo-beat noir
comedy,” chronicles the lives of three men who meet in a Louisiana prison and
who try, in very different ways, to overcome their fateful encounters with the pe-
nal system.
2. This is not to deny that Engelhardt wants to distance himself from the practice of
casuistry, at least as it is usually understood (2000, p. 209).
3. Obviously, this claim is susceptible to vigorous challenge by sociologists of knowl-
edge who view the appropriation of texts as conditioned by the presuppositions of
the reader.
4. If Engelhardt had wished to be somewhat less polemical toward the Roman
Catholic tradition, he might have probed the common ground he has with Thomas
Aquinas. He charges that, “The West became theologically underdeveloped. Rath-
er than encouraging theological union with God, it focused instead on developing
the intellectual framework that became scholasticism. The West lost the central
mystical focus core to traditional Christianity” (2000, p. 203). He notes in a foot-
note that Denis Bradley (1997) “places Thomas Aquinas closer to the Orthodox
and further from the Scholastics who followed him” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 220 n. 58)
but does not pursue this insight. If he had done so, he would have discovered that
the goal of human life for Aquinas, no less than for the doctors of the Eastern
Church, was union with God. See Williams (1999).
5. For an overview, see Idziak (1979) and Helm, ed. (1981).
6. The manualists tended to describe the object of the agent’s action from a purely
external perspective. They also considered the timing of the two effects to be
significant; if the undesired effect preceded the desired effect, it appears that they
considered it a means to the desired effect.
7. Grisez is citing Denzinger and Schönmetzer (1967, 3016/1796).
8. See especially Grisez, 1983, p. 29: “A rationalist philosophy, even if it need not con-
tradict essential truths of faith, has a number of limitations and tendencies which
render it less than ideally suited for the work of theology. The rationalist stresses
certitude as an objective: this objective does not fit well with the ideal of theology
as a work faith seeking constantly growing—but only gradually growing—under-
standing. Also, the rationalist emphasis on clear and distinct ideas tends to distract
users of the method from the complexity and richness of human cognition, and
thus leads them to overlook the many ways in which linguistic expressions have
meaning. As a result, rationalists almost inevitably misunderstand the relational
character of the language used to talk about God. Moreover, rationalist often overlook
the need for careful interpretation of the witness of faith. They generally oversimplify
the problem of interpretation even when they realize the need for it.
Rationalist philosophers focus on the intellectual knowing subject; they tend
to identify the human person with the mind, the thinking self. Embodiment and
other dimensions of the person are insufficiently appreciated. A theologian using
rationalism tends for this reason to ignore many aspects of revelation and to stress
almost exclusively the communication of propositional truths. At its extreme, this
tendency leads to a conception of faith as acceptance of a certain amount of correct
information rather than as a personal relationship of hearing and adhering to God
revealing himself.
Rationalist philosophy also makes a very sharp distinction between the
knowing subject and the thing known. It tends to be unsuited to practical reflection,
in which one thinks about oneself and shapes one’s becoming by one’s thought. A
rationalist approach tends rather to look at what is known as if it were a detached
object. Any practical problem tends to be looked at on the model of the application
of mathematics in engineering.
This approach also takes insufficient account of history, which can hardly be so
easily ignored when one begins practical reflection about the lives of real, bodily
person who have diverse abilities and opportunities, and who exist in actual
relationships with one another. This aspect of rationalism had the result that the
more it became accepted as a method for Catholic theology, the less Christian
life could be treated integrally by the same theological inquiry which considered
the central truths of faith. The latter were considered much more as dogmas or
theoretical truths to be proved from the witness of faith than as normative truths
shaping Christian life.
9. Aquinas does come disturbingly close to the notion of sacrificing one to save many
in the case of a guilty person, by analogy to the situation in which one cuts off a gan-
grenous limb in order to save the body as a whole (ST, II-II, q. 64, art. 3). His analogy
fails, because it would actually justify killing an innocent person to save the broader
community: in extremis, a rock climber could, for example, cut off a healthy limb
hopelessly entangled in a rope in order to save his own life. Catholic moral thought
does not allow intentional killing of an innocent person for any reason.
10. “Persons are central. Moral principles are at best chapter headings and rules of
thumb. Too much attention to general principles can even divert attention from
the personal character of the communion with God to which all theology and all
bioethics should lead” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 209).
11. “We can do this by respecting and defending the human goods of the kingdom
insofar as they are goods of our nature, and pursuing and promoting them insofar
as they can be good fruits of our work. It is God’s wish that our daily contribution
to the building up of Christ, made in obedience to him and in the power of his
Spirit, have eternal worth. Every morally good act of Christian living through the
grace of the Spirit is therefore an act of cooperation in the work of the Trinity”
(Grisez, 1983, pp. 1-2).
12. I am extrapolating from Engelhardt, 2000, p. 237.
13. To my knowledge, Grisez has never addressed the question whether the mode of
moral thought associated with the Eastern tradition is also subject to the charges
he makes against proportionalism.
14. Grisez would no doubt acknowledge that in other circumstances, of course, these
features of legalism could generate rigorism: the web of rules fixing the moral life
could conceivably be large, not small; changes in the teaching of the Church could be
more restrictive, not less restrictive. Yet, his discussion of “how can the requirement
that Christians live according to the modes of Christian response escape rigorism”
(1983, pp. 695 ff.) would no doubt be deeply unsatisfactory to Engelhardt. Grisez’s
first point is that many people are not subjectively culpable for living according to the
modes of responsibility. His second point is that “[r]igorism is relative” (p. 697)—the
moral framework he outlines does not ask too much of God’s adopted children, al-
though it may ask too much of fallen human beings. His third point is that love, the
gift of the Holy Spirit, makes all things possible—and even “easy and joyous” (p. 697)
(although Grisez does recognize the concrete need for the Catholic community to
provide more support for those facing difficult situations). In my view, Engelhardt
would likely respond that Grisez is simply defining the problem away, by failing to
recognize the degree to which God’s adopted children are still marred by sin.
15. On the idea that legalism leads to the idea that the basic question is whether the
person is bound by law or free to do as one pleased, see, e.g., Grisez, 1983, pp. 13,
86-87, 293-94, 304-05, 370, 375, 514. See also, Grisez, 1993, pp. 9, 34, 250, 251, 514,
535, 544, 672, 876. In Grisez, 1997, see pp. xvii, xxv, 44, 250, 452, 607, 645. On the
idea that legalism leads to the idea that moral rules are changeable laws rather
than unchangeable truths, see, e.g., 1983, pp. 13, 21-22, 74, 85, 101, 107, 154, 283,
382. See also 1993, p. 249.
Grisez believes that many people today pick and choose from a legalistic
world view, in order further to minimize their moral responsibilities. “It is ironic
although not surprising that in the present new, and still transitional, situation
many—among theologians, priests, teachers, and the ordinary faithful—both
gladly reject legalism insofar as it is restrictive and cling to it insofar as it limits
responsibility” (1983, p. 307). By contrast, I have found only two places where
Grisez interprets legalism as the use of authority to impose a morally unjustified
burden: 1983, p. 535 (discussing Jesus’s interaction with the Pharisees), and 1997,
p. 64-68 (tithing).
16. See, e.g., Engelhardt, 2000, p. 170: “Only if truth veridically communicates with us
can we break out of the horizon of immanence.”
17. See, e.g., Engelhardt, 2000, pp. 179-180: “Because the goal par excellence of human
life is holiness, union with God, then the moral life, the keeping of the command-
ments, the acquisition of virtue, along with the articulation of a Christian bioeth-
ics, are not ends in themselves. They are means to carry us to the other side of
natural knowledge.” Grisez would not deny that they are means to that end; he
would emphasize that they are constitutive means, and not instrumental means.
Consequently, we cannot legitimately decide to follow them or depart from them
on a case-by–case basis.
18. Grisez would say that no action taken with the intent of destroying the baby is
ever justified, even to save the mother. However, some actions which foreseeably
result in the death of the baby are allowable for this purpose, if the purpose is not
to kill the baby, under the principle of double effect (1983, pp. 499-507). As noted
above, Engelhardt rejects the principle of double effect as a legalistic strategy used
to evade responsibility.
19. “The Church is uncompromising in her demand that we open our hearts to God,
that we become perfect, that we become saints. She is therapeutic in her approach
to making us perfect. She recognizes that she must begin by treating us where she
finds us in our sins” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 284).
20. Engelhardt clearly thinks that some moral prohibitions function as “real moral
boundaries,” while others are more flexible. Grisez would no doubt press him to
articulate more fully the distinction between the two categories.
Bibliography
Aquinas, T. Summa Theologica, translated by Benzinger Brothers. Ethereal Library,
www.ccel.org.
Bradley, D. Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good. Washington, DC: Catholic University
Press, 1997.
Brumley, M. “Germain Grisez Explains It All (Well, Almost).” Catholic Faith (March-April):
1999, www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Faith/MARAPR99/books.html.
Denzinger, H. and A. Schönmetzer. Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum
de Rebus Fidei et Morum. 34th ed. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1967.
Engelhardt, H.T., Jr. The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse, The Netherlands:
Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers, 2000.
Grisez, G. Vol. 1 of The Way of the Lord Jesus: Christian Moral Principles. Quincy: Franciscan
Press, 1983.
———. Vol. 2 of The Way of the Lord Jesus: Living a Christian Life. Quincy: Franciscan
Press, 1993.
———. Vol. 3 of The Way of the Lord Jesus: Difficult Moral Questions. Quincy: Franciscan
Press, 1997.
Helm, P., ed. Divine Commands and Morality. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press,
1981.
Idziak, J.M. Divine Command Morality: Historical and Contemporary Readings. New York:
E. Mellen Press, 1979.
Kaveny, M.C. “Listening for the Future in the Voices of the Past: John T. Noonan, Jr.
On Love and Power in Human History.” The Journal of Law and Religion 11, no. 1
(1994-95): 203-28.
Maritain, J. The Rights of Man and Natural Law. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1943.
Noonan, J.T., Jr. Persons and Masks of the Law. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1976.
Vatican II. Gaudium et Spes, Vatican Official Site. www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/
ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.
Williams, A.N. The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas. Oxford: Oxford
Missing Persons:
Engelhardt and Abortion
Christopher Tollefsen
No orthodox (small ‘o’) Christian would contend that, as to the authoritative

and specific position held by Christianity on the morality of abortion, H. Tristram
Engelhardt, Jr. was in error. In The Foundations of Bioethics, Engelhardt writes,
with characteristic élan, that he is more in doubt as to the nature of the rele-
vant kindling—mesquite? live oak? trash cedar?—than he is of the fact that
the fires of hell await those who procure or provide abortion on demand, in
the absence of God’s saving grace (1996, p. xi). More soberly, in The Founda-
tions of Christian Bioethics, he cites Father Pilotheos Zerkavos, who held that
“there is no worse crime than abortion. It surpasses all heresies and evils”
(2000, p. 304 n. 133). In short, Engelhardt holds, correctly, that the constant
teaching of the Christian Church is to reject abortion, and Engelhardt accepts
this teaching himself.
However, Engelhardt’s position is, in at least certain particulars, deliberately
the position of the first millennium or more of Christianity, rather than the
position of, to take the most prominent recent Christian opponent of abor-
tion, Pope John Paul II. For Engelhardt, like some thinkers in that early tradi-
tion, holds that “the position regarding abortion is independent of concerns
regarding personhood, ensoulment, or distinctions in utero between human
personal and human biological life” (2000, p. 305). This traditional position is
further to be understood adequately only “outside a language of rights, even
of a right to life” (p. 279). And while Engelhardt, like some early Church
fathers, is willing to use words such as homicide and murder, it does not
seem that he uses such words in ways that would be uniformly acceptable to
one who follows John Paul II on these matters, in at least three ways.
First, Engelhardt opts for the language of “taking the life of a human being,”
rather than “taking the life of a person,” in describing the wrongfulness of
165
166 Christopher Tollefsen
abortion. Second, that abortion is an injustice to someone seems little part of

Engelhardt’s objection to abortion and related procedures. Third, from a rather
different angle, Engelhardt writes that the “traditional approach to abortion…
does not draw a crisp line between abortion and miscarriage” (2000, p. 277).
It appears to be true that a significant strand of thought in the early
Christian Church did not primarily address abortion in terms of the language
of personhood, and the killing of persons. Indeed, in the early Church, there
is sometimes no sharp distinction drawn between contraception and steriliza-
tion, on the one hand, and abortion on the other. This was neither because the
Church wished to downgrade the evil of abortion, nor necessarily to elide the
distinction between contraception and murder in the sense in which the fifth
commandment prohibits it. Rather, both contraception and early abortion
were looked upon as grave contra-life sins. Practically speaking, however,
there could have been little profit, as the work of Aristotle and Aquinas inad-
vertently reveals, in speculation about the nature of the early embryo or even
fetus, given the paltry biology at hand.
When, in the Middle Ages, the Thomistic position on delayed ensoulment
became the norm, a distinction was subsequently drawn between the sin
involved in killing an early embryo and that involved in killing a later embryo.1
Engelhardt rejects this approach, in favor of the earlier tradition, unconcerned,
as it apparently was, with the issue of personhood or ensoulment.
The Catholic position as promulgated by Pope John Paul II, at any rate, no
longer fails to draw a sharp distinction between contraception and abortion.
In Evangelium Vitae, for example, the Pope clearly states that, although inti-
mately linked in their nature and consequences, the evils of contraception
and of abortion are different:
…from the moral point of view contraception and abortion are specifically
different evils: the former contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the prop-
er expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human
being; the former is opposed to the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is
opposed to the virtue of justice and directly violates the divine commandment
‘You shall not kill.’ (1995, p. 24)
Lest anyone think that the Pope here, in referring to “the life of a human being,”
is abstaining from judgment about whether the early human being is also a human
person, John Paul II reiterates tirelessly throughout the encyclical what he states in
its introduction, that opposition to abortion is linked to recognition of “the incom-
parable value of every human person” (1995, p. 5). The Pope further articulates that
this value is the foundation of “the right of every human being to have this pri-
mary good [of life] respected to the highest degree” (p. 5). So both persons, and
their rights, are foundational for an understanding of the wrong of abortion, and,
as well, of the various abuses of early embryos in scientific research.2
In this paper, I intend to argue that this move towards a differentiated
position on the specific evils of contraception and abortion is not only reasonable
Engelhardt and Abortion 167
but, in this third millennium of Christianity, necessary for all Christians who
hope to be pleasing to God, and to obey the commands of Jesus Christ. Thus,
there can be no separation, of the sort proposed by Engelhardt, between the
“language of rights and persons” and the language which he favors, which is
“preeminently that of commands, proscriptions, and invitations to holiness,
which direct to a life aimed at the pursuit of the kingdom of heaven” (2000, p.
279). In the world in which we live, the invitation to holiness must include a
command to understand, recognize and protect the personal status of all
unborn human life.
Moreover, a proper understanding of this issue, and of the way in which
obeying God where matters of abortion are concerned is pleasing to Him, has
inevitable consequences for our understanding of what may be permitted in
the political sphere, and indeed, of what sort of moral understanding is avail-
able to us as rational agents. Engelhardt, as the first two quotations in the first
paragraph indicate, has written two different books on the foundations of
bioethics—one depicting a secular ethics for moral strangers, the other a
content-full traditional ethic for Christians. Famously, the former ethic
permits abortion, while the latter condemns it. But practitioners of the Christian
bioethic are nonetheless expected by Engelhardt to accept, in the legal and
political realm, the secular morality of consent which permits abortion at will,
as well as privately funded embryo creation and research. I shall argue that such
acceptance is itself unacceptable to a Christian with a proper understanding
of the evil of abortion.
I. Engelhardt on Procreation
Engelhart’s procreative ethics is set in the context of God’s call, to each
individual, to a life of holiness. Moreover, the specific arena in which men
and women are called to holiness where issues of procreative ethics are
concerned is, naturally enough, the arena of marital sexuality. Thus Engelhardt
writes, in all such matters:
…concerns with sexual morality must be judged in terms of the struggle to
God, the pursuit of the kingdom of God. The beautiful, the thrilling, the pleasing,
the satisfying, and the completing elements of sexual experience must be relo-
cated within the mutual love of husband and wife in their companionship in
loving God. Human sexual fulfillment can only be judged through and in
terms of a turn through asceticism toward holiness and away from self-love.
(2000, p. 235)
From within this perspective which views marital sexuality as normative
for sexuality in general and sees marital sexuality as appropriately ordered
only when ordered to salvation, procreation is given a special place as pleasing
to God, in accordance with his injunction to “be fruitful and multiply.” Repro-
duction is not the whole of marriage, nor even its sole purpose; the union of
two in one flesh by which marriage symbolizes the union of Christ and His
Church is established even in non-fruitful marriages. Still, as the natural
fruit of such a union, and as a response to a specific command of God to
Adam and Eve, the generation of children is crucial to a normative under-
standing of human sexuality.
This understanding then provides the framework from within which specific
issues of reproductive ethics may be addressed. Certain forms of assisted
reproduction, for example, such as maternal surrogacy, artificial insemination
by donor, or cloning, constitute ruptures in the marital union; they are
instances of reproductive adultery albeit without adulterous intercourse.
There must be no third party involved in either genetic parenthood, or in the
sexual act itself by which parenthood is achieved.
In this context, Engelhardt first addresses issues concerning the treatment
of early human life: what are we to make of the destruction or wastage of
embryos often associated with in vitro fertilization, or with the destruction of
embryos, created or otherwise, used in scientific research? Many such proce-
dures involve “direct actions against an instance of human life” (2000, p.
261).3 It is not clear, Engelhardt writes, if such early embryos are to be accorded
the status of embryos in the womb, given the natural wastage rate of early
embryos. But:
…even if such action against human life before it is or could have been in the
womb may not clearly be equivalent to abortion and therefore murder, one
should not act destructively against such zygotes, embryos, and fetuses. To
take a different position is to step outside of the spirit of the Fathers. In the use
of zygotes and embryos for non-therapeutic research, there is an intimate
involvement in non-benevolent actions against early human life. (2000, p. 261)
It is, further, in this context that Engelhardt introduces the notion of “being
a person,” albeit briefly. “To be a person is to be a being whose proper destiny
is theosis” (2000, p. 255). Engelhardt’s hesitation here to claim that early
embryos created and maintained outside the womb are persons does not lead
him to doubt the wrongfulness of their active destruction, since they are still
early human life. But the hesitation here leads one to expect something that
does not really materialize later in the discussion, namely, that destruction of
life within the womb, at least after a certain time, is wrong precisely because
it involves the destruction of a person, rather than simply early human life.
Engelhardt’s first sentence in his discussion of “Abortion, Miscarriage,
and Birth” corrects this misunderstanding: “From the early Church, inten-
tionally killing embryos has been acknowledged as a radical failure of love,
as one of the worst of actions, whether or not the embryo is yet a person”
(2000, p. 275). And more strongly, later in the section, “the evil of abortion [is]
not dependent on having taken the life of a person” (p. 281). Rather, in keep-
ing with the focus on marital sexuality as open to God’s commandments,
“Christians are called to engage in reproduction with love, with humility, and
without taking human life” (p. 275). Obedience in these matters is sufficiently
justified by appeal to the demand for ascetic holiness, without the necessity
of bringing in the Western Church’s baggage concerning personhood and
ensoulment.
Indeed, Engelhardt believes that to focus on the person—the individual
with a right to life who is wronged by abortion—may:
…obscure the integral character of the Christian life by suggesting that there
are ultimate reference points for the moral law outside the pursuit of the kingdom
through Jesus Christ. Fully discursive understandings of natural law can dan-
gerously mislead in suggesting that morality can be adequately understood
outside of a life appropriately directed to God…[O]ne must not lose sight of
the real significance of this evil. The appreciation of evil, as well as of the
good, must always be situated in terms of the pursuit of holiness. (2000, p. 279)
Now it is precisely this claim—that our approach to God and holiness is
potentially obscured by a focus on the person wronged in abortion—which I
shall attempt to challenge in subsequent parts of this paper. One more aspect
of Engelhardt’s discussion of abortion needs mentioning, however, namely,
his refusal to draw a sharp distinction between abortion and miscarriage.
Engelhardt discusses miscarriage in the context of his discussion of abortion
because he views it as a kind of “involuntary homicide.” One’s involvement
in the death of one’s fetus, even though involuntary, requires repentance, and
Engelhardt includes a prayer from his church of absolution for one who has
suffered a miscarriage. While there is much to say about the very notion of
involuntary sin, my point here is that this treatment of miscarriage seems to
be of a piece with the non-person-centered discussion of abortion. For in a
context in which it is recognized that we are dealing squarely with full moral
persons, it would be inconceivable for us to fail to draw a crisp line between
premeditated murder, for example, and a car accident for which one was
entirely not at fault, but which resulted in the death of a pedestrian. It must
be granted that one might accuse oneself and feel guilt, having non-culpably
struck a pedestrian. But to reorient our entire framework of normative
response—the reactive attitudes discussed by Strawson, for example—so
that murder and accidental death were viewed similarly, would seem to
involve a refusal to see murder as an affront against persons, whereas
accidental death was a tragedy for persons; and it would fail to do justice to
the persons who had in radically different ways done the lethal deed.
II. Love, Justice and Abortion

As we have seen, Engelhardt believes that a focus on the personhood of
the fetus threatens to draw our attention away from Christ and the pursuit of
holiness. But it is not clear that such a focus must inevitably do so; indeed, it
is difficult to see how the opposite is not true.
What is it that must occupy the attention of a moral agent who wishes to
be pleasing to Christ? It is insufficient, on Christ’s own testimony, as well as
that of his disciples, to love God without also loving others. When the Lord is
asked what must be done to inherit eternal life, he commends the scholar of
the law for his reply: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your
neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27-28).
Moreover, in this same discussion, which concludes with the parable of
the Good Samaritan, Jesus is at some pains to extend the notion of being a
neighbor beyond the boundaries of tribe or nation. As Germain Grisez
summarizes:
Jesus teaches that everyone should be counted as a neighbor. Instead of making
this point by proposing an argument in general terms, however, he uses a parable.
Faced with a suggestion that the responsibility to love might be limited by
restricting neighbor to some particular class of people, Jesus teaches that even
a despised Samaritan makes himself a Jew’s neighbor by acting toward him
with love. Thus, Jesus rules out using some predefined notion of neighbor as
an excuse for limiting the circle of those whom one is prepared to love; he
teaches instead that love of God calls one to act as a good neighbor toward any
person found to be in need. (1993, pp. 308-309)
Moreover, Jesus makes it clear that the love of others, including, but not
necessarily limited to, their appropriately just treatment, is intimately linked
to love for Him: “When the righteous ask ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry
and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?’ the Son of Man will say to them
‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least of my brothers, you
did for me’” (Matt. 25:37-40). Likewise, the author of the Letter of John writes
that, “If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses
him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him” (3:17)?
Nor, finally, can the requirements of love be understood apart from the
requirements of justice. Although love goes beyond justice, Christ makes it
clear that failures of justice are themselves failures of love. Such failures
include generically a failure with regard to the Golden Rule, and more spe-
cifically, particular harms committed against persons. So the love of Christ
requires that one not harm persons, that one seeks the good of persons, that
one aids persons in their distress, and that one considers one’s neighbor to be
potentially anyone in grave distress.
As St. Thomas argues, this does not mean that every agent has an equal
obligation to provide aid to every other agent, an unworkable command,
incompatible with the true order of charity. Still, an important lesson of the parable
of the Good Samaritan, and of the Letter of John, is that those in great need make
a legitimate demand on us, a demand that ultimately is made by Christ Himself.
Presumably, none of this is unfamiliar to Engelhardt, or to any orthodox
Christian. But what I wish to focus on now is the way that demands of love
and justice can become, in certain ways, more stringent through time, in light
of changing social facts and circumstances. Two examples will suffice. First,
consider duties to persons in need, but at a great distance. Prior to the advent
of mass media of communication, the duties of many Christians to such
persons were considerably different than they are now. Today, because all
moderately prosperous Christians in the West are capable of knowing about,
for example, starvation or AIDS in Africa, and are also capable of providing
aid, many of those Christians, perhaps the great majority, will have some
obligation to contribute to the aid of such suffering Africans. Their plight
now is practically relevant to Christians in the West in a way that it simply
was not two hundred years ago.
For a second example, consider the argument of Joseph Boyle to the effect
that there is now in the West a right to health care in a way that there was not
in the past and that does not exist in some less developed societies (2002). All
agents have Good Samaritan duties to those in great need, as pointed out
already, and these duties include duties to provide health related assistance
when possible. I must help you if I find you bleeding on my doorstep, or about
to choke to death from a fish bone. In societies with few resources, or an unde-
veloped system of social coordination, these duties are more or less one-off, to
be recognized and met individually as they arise. But in advanced societies, in
which it is possible to pool resources and to rely upon advanced communica-
tions, and other technologies, as well as the widespread power of the state,
then it is irresponsible not to create mechanisms by which those in grave health
related need are aided and served. Corresponding to this social responsibility
to provide health aid is the corresponding right to health care, a right that it
would be nonsensical to assert in various other social and historical contexts.
What I want now to argue, then, is that the current day and age likewise
makes certain new demands on Christians where matters of early human life
are concerned, demands that did not need to be met with the same sort of
specificity or urgency in an earlier day.4 The three following points will help
to establish the argument.
The first reason concerns abortion’s role in our social world. Abortion is now
common in a way it never was previously. An estimated 1.3 million abortions are
performed in the United States alone each year, and many millions more are per-
formed in other parts of the world. Moreover, abortion is linked, practically and
conceptually, to a number of other phenomena: sexual immorality, the failure of
the family, and various additional forms of anti-life attitudes, collectively
referred to by the Pope as the Culture of Death, and including, prominently, a
new interest in euthanasia. Finally, abortion is now a part of the everyday con-
sciousness of millions of young people, who take it for granted, and in many
cases obtain abortions without a great deal of thought. Abortion is not, in short,
an insignificant feature of our contemporary cultural landscape. It is, arguably,
the single most important and culturally defining feature of our world.
Second, abortion at least potentially involves a failure of justice, and if so,

then also a radical failure of love. Why “potentially” a failure of justice? Pri-
marily because justice, and love, can only be directed at persons: persons, not
living beings, and not human beings, if human beings are not persons, are the
only created beings who can be treated justly and unjustly, loved or hated, in
the morally relevant ways. So abortion is a failure of justice only if those
human beings whose lives are taken are also persons, but it is also a failure if
those human beings are persons.
This is not to deny that abortion can, like contraception, reasonably be
held to be morally impermissible even if does not involve taking the life of a
person. Some, at least, of the arguments against contraception would likewise
rule out abortion. But the wrong of abortion would be fundamentally different
if it did not involve an assault on a particular human person than if it did.
As mentioned above, some of the early Christian fathers not only did not
draw a fine line between abortion and contraception, but they also blurred
the distinction between homicide and sterilization.5 From one point of view,
this underscores the significance of both abortion and contraception, and,
further, underscores that both involve a contra-life will; hence, it is no wonder
that the will to one can lead to the will to the other. But from another point of
view it is unfortunate: homicide is a violation of particular persons, particular
children of God. It is a radical failure of justice and of love.
The third point to make is that the biology necessary for understanding
the nature of the zygote, embryo, and fetus, which was missing through eigh-
teen hundred years or so of the Church’s existence, is now available. It is not
idle speculation, doomed from the start, to consider with biological accuracy
when a particular human being begins, and to consider this evidence in light
of some basic reflections on the nature of persons. We are in a radically different
epistemic position with respect to the embryo or fetus than were the early Church
fathers, Albert and Aquinas, and even more modern thinkers, such as those who
imagined that they saw homunculi in sperm when looking through a microscope.
In consequence of these three points, plus the earlier reflections on Christ’s
call for us to love one another as ourselves, and His linkage of this call to the
call to love Him, it does not seem to me morally acceptable to address the
question of the morality of abortion without consideration of the personhood
of the early human being. For it does not seem available to us to aspire to
fulfill Christ’s demand on us to love one another without ascertaining whether
or not that demand is being radically violated every day, 1.3 million times a
year, all around us. To refuse to address the question of the personhood of the
early human being is itself a radical failure of love for all those human persons
if indeed they are human persons, in two ways.
Consider first the familiar analogy between abortion and slavery, and a
different analogy between mistreatment of animals and mistreatment of persons.
It is a common argument of the Western tradition that certain ways of treating
animals should be avoided, not for the sake of the animals themselves, but
because these ways of treating animals are degrading for the humans
involved, and could potentially lead to other forms of ill behavior. Kant
articulates the first sort of claim, and Aquinas the second.6 My sense is that
many animal rights activists find such arguments profoundly disturbing, and
well they should given their premises. Consider what we would think of a
similar, albeit different in some particulars, argument about slavery.
Suppose we were offered an argument that addressed the morality of
slavery only in terms of the ways our treatment of animals can be wrong.
Slaves look sufficiently like us, the argument might go, that ill treatment of
them might lead to a diminished moral sensitivity to other persons, and might
lead us to treat other non-slaves poorly. Further, cruelty to slaves might be
dehumanizing to the slaveholder; so, slaves should be released. We might
even add that no part of God’s creation should be treated with wanton
cruelty, regardless of whether it is a person or not.7
Such arguments would disturb us in the way that Aquinas’s argument
about animals disturbs animal rights activists. We would think that an injus-
tice was being done to human slaves in the very presentation of these argu-
ments, for the greatest wrong of slavery was being overlooked, namely the
injustice being done to each enslaved human person by their being kept in
slavery. Similarly, no amount of gentle treatment of animals will be pleasing
to the animal rights activist who believes that what is most fundamentally at
stake is the need to recognize that it is the animals themselves who must be
morally acknowledged.
By the same token, we risk a grave injustice to the unborn by addressing
the evil of abortion on grounds that fail to take into account the possibility
that the evil involves a radical injustice. This was not an injustice risked by
earlier Christians. Abortion was sufficiently rare, happiness in pregnancy and
childbirth sufficiently common, and ignorance about the biology of human
beings sufficiently inevitable that it seems not to have been incumbent upon
earlier Christians to condemn abortion in more specific terms than they did.
The spirit of our day, however, does not permit this.
There is, however, a second reason that we must consider the personhood
of the early human being and this is simply the obvious reason that the
Christian response to 1.3 million violations of chastity a year must be
considerably different from the Christian response to 1.3 million homicides a
year. Love of neighbor clearly makes certain demands on Christians vis-à-vis
a culture that flouts the moral demands of chastity regularly. But much of
what is demanded is surely of a non-interventionist sort: Christian families
should set good examples of marital chastity, Christian parents should teach
their children, and all Christians should work together to strengthen the family,
and to promote a sound moral ecology. But it is not clear that people should
be legally restrained from unchaste behavior in the large majority of instances.
By contrast, love of neighbor surely makes strongly interventionist

demands in the face of 1.3 million persons condemned to an unjust death. If
the unborn are persons, then Christians cannot meet Christ’s demands by
simply being a good example when they become pregnant in a difficult situ-
ation: Christians must work, in various ways, to bring an end to abortion. The
unborn are presently that part of God’s children who are radically denied the
status of neighbor; Christians have an obligation, if the unborn are persons, to
be neighbors to them. This, in turn, means that they have an obligation to
discover whether the unborn are the sorts of beings for whom we are required
to become neighbors. Another way to put this is to say that abortion is the
foundational problem for any Christian bio and social ethics.
So how is that question of personhood to be answered? I cannot, in this
paper, go through all the reasons that seem utterly convincing to me that from
conception, the human being is a person. Suffice it to point out that modern
biology makes clear that a new human individual is present from conception—
this is the crucial bit of knowledge unavailable to earlier Christian thinkers.
But then any attempt to attribute personhood to some human beings and not
others will be radically arbitrary and will have various counter-intuitive
consequences for our assessment, for example, of the personhood of the
unborn, the infirm, and indeed, of the sleeping. The conclusion reached by
the Pope, by philosophers, theologians and faithful Catholics, that it is human
persons who are wronged by abortion and by embryo disposal and experi-
mentation, seems to me irrefutable.
I conclude this first part of my argument, then, with the claim that
Engelhardt’s refusal to address the evil of abortion in terms of the issue of the
personhood of embryos and fetuses is incompatible with the demands of
Christian love and justice; when that issue is appropriately addressed, the
scope of the injustice may be seen to be even more significant. In the next part
of this paper, I argue that this conclusion is itself corrosive of many of
Engelhardt’s claims about the morality and politics which must be mutually
accepted by moral strangers.
III. Abortion and the Morality of Strangers

Engelhardt’s two foundations for bioethics—the foundations for a secular
bioethics and the foundations for a Christian bioethics, could not be more differ-
ent. Engelhardt writes at length, in the Foundations of Bioethics, of the failure of the
Enlightenment to establish a rational ethics universally binding on all from prem-
ises equally available to all rational agents. Engelhardt criticizes intuitionist views,
natural law views, Kantian views, utilitarian views and others, all on the ground
that to adopt the premises of one or another of these rivals is already to
presuppose allegiance to the normative content of that view and hence to beg the
question. (While it is not the point of this essay specifically to criticize this claim, I
would point out that there is at least one instance, not discussed by Engelhardt, in
which adoption of a set of premises, and allegiance to the normative standards
expressed by those premises would not be question begging, namely, if the agent
in question really recognizes those premises as true.)
Nonetheless, given the failure of the Enlightenment attempt to establish
normative standards for all rational beings, what remains? Engelhardt
moves in two directions. First, the inevitable question begging is the result
of any attempt to establish for ethics a substantive normative content: it is
precisely insofar as ethics attempts to do this that it must smuggle in nor-
mative standards. Thus, the only available route to thick normative stan-
dards lies not through detached and universal reason, but through alle-
giance to the various thick moral communities that can provide the shared
substantive content of a morality for friends. Here Engelhardt has in mind
communities of Orthodox Christians or Jews, or Buddhist or Confucian
communities.
By contrast, to the extent that any universal claims are made, they must be
evacuated of moral substance. But the absence of any universal moral author-
ity is unacceptable to Engelhardt: there will be no peace, and hence no thick
moral communities, if there are no minimal normative standards granted
authority across such communities. What emerges for Engelhardt is that in
the absence of any real normative authority, and given the only alternative of
coerced agreement, an ethics of permission must rationally be accepted by all
agents as the minimal condition necessary for entering into moral conversation
with others. Engelhardt writes:
The appeal to permission as the source of authority involves no particular
moral vision or understanding. It gives no value to permission. It simply
recognizes that secular moral authority is the authority of permission. This
appeal is a minimal condition in relying on what it is to resolve issues among
moral strangers with moral authority: consent. It establishes a secularly
acknowledgeable authority for its conclusions: agreement. By appealing to
ethics as a means for peaceably negotiating moral disputes, one discloses as a
necessary and sufficient condition…for a general secular ethics the requirement
to respect the freedom of the participants in a moral controversy…as a basis
for common moral authority. (1996, p. 69)
An ethics of permission, however, can extend only to those who are
capable of giving or refusing permission. Thus secular bioethics has a bias in
favor of “persons,” where “person” is understood in terms of this prior
notion of permission: persons are all and only those beings capable of entering
into, or refusing to enter into agreement with others. One obvious conse-
quence of this is that there can be no secular restraints on the morality of
abortion: embryos and fetuses cannot enter into agreements, and so are left
unprotected from those who would do them harm. The unborn are radically
outside of the secular moral community.
Of course, the interests of the unborn may be recognized, and protections

offered, from within the more thickly constituted moral communities that are
capable of providing content-full ethics. Roman Catholics may be forbidden
by their Church authorities from having or performing abortions, for example,
and Catholic hospitals should be left free by the state to refuse to provide
abortion services. But neither Catholics nor any other members of thick moral
communities can make moral demands regarding abortion on those outside
of their communities. In conversation with moral strangers, and in the politics
of the secular communities, Catholics and others must accept what Engelhardt
calls, in the Foundations of Christian Bioethics “libertarian cosmopolitanism.”
I wish to make two points in passing about this conception of libertarian
cosmopolitanism. First, Engelhardt contrasts this with “liberal cosmopolitan-
ism.” The latter moves away from allowing the various thick moral commu-
nities to maintain their own standards, and from the refusal of libertarian
cosmopolitanism normatively to endorse anything at all, to the claim that the
liberty rights of modernity are something more like entitlement rights,
grounded in their own goodness. So tolerance of abortion, of sexual license
and of alternative lifestyles, ceases to be sufficient to the liberal state; such
practices and liberties must be viewed as goods and entitlements, deserving
of more than just tolerance, and rather of something like moral recognition.
This appears to me a more or less accurate description of the recent course of
history.
Secondly, it is not obvious to me that the seeds of liberal cosmopolitanism
are not present in libertarian cosmopolitanism. Those who pursue abortions,
or sexual experiences at will, must do so under the aspect of good—they, at
any rate, cannot see such activities and practices as matters of indifference. If
it is unavailable to, e.g., Catholics, in the public sphere, to argue that such
activities and practices are bad, morally unacceptable, then the natural telos
of the permissive state will be the view that these are in fact goods to be pursued
by all with an interest in them, and those who, in their thick communities,
find these practices repulsive, will increasingly be looked upon as obstacles in
the way of progress.
Should Catholics, and other Christians, accept Engelhardt’s claims that
they may expect no more than the morality of strangers—i.e., the morality of
permission and consent—in their dealings with moral strangers? The argument
of the earlier parts of this paper were to the effect that Catholics and others
who recognize the nature of the evil of abortion for what it is, can only see
abortion as a problem to be addressed publicly. We cannot be neighbors to the
unborn unless we address the question of abortion persistently and publicly,
with a view to the legal enforcement of the rights of the unborn.
What I am attempting here, then, is a kind of end-run around Engelhardt.
Engelhardt begins from the premise that reason cannot deliver a content-full
morality, and that accordingly, all parties to moral discussion and disagreement
must accept the morality of consent, regardless of whatever thicker moral

norms they accept as members of a robust moral community. One could
address Engelhardt head-on, by attempting another defense of some founda-
tional position in moral philosophy. On the other hand, one could show, as I
have, that from the standpoint of some thick moral community, it would be
intolerable to accept Engelhardt’s conclusions. But if those conclusions are
indeed implied by his premises, then to reject the conclusion is also to reject
the premise that reason cannot deliver a content-full morality.
This is surely the only acceptable view for a Catholic on a variety of
grounds well established in Catholic tradition, but it is also the view one
should expect if the earlier arguments about abortion are correct. Earlier, I
argued that abortion should be considered the foundational problem of bio-
ethics for Catholics, and indeed, for all Christians. Catholics and all Chris-
tians are thus called to be neighbors to the unborn in this grim time. But the
call of God is always answerable: God calls no one who is otherwise unsuited
or unable to be a priest to be a priest, nor does he call anyone otherwise
unsuited or unable to be married to be married. As Grisez writes, “God calls
no one to do what is impossible” (1983, p. 120). Yet, given Engelhardt’s prem-
ises, the call to be neighbors to the unborn is rendered so. This seems to me in
part a reason for his reticence from within the framework of his Christian bio-
ethics to address the wrongfulness of abortion in terms of killing persons, and
injustices to persons. Persons go missing in the discussion of abortion (and
other issues of reproductive ethics) in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics
because an adequate account of the personhood of the unborn would radically
undermine Engelhardt’s The Foundations of Bioethics. If, on the other hand, we
give due weight both to the personhood of the unborn, and to the duties this
places on us as Christians, then we have good reason to doubt that the foun-
dations of bioethics are as spare as Engelhardt believes.
Notes
1. Both, it is important to note, were still considered objectively grave sins.
2. This is not to imply necessarily that rights are foundational for moral discourse as
such. Indeed, there is good reason to hold that they are consequents of prior
duties, representing, as John Finnis puts it, the perspective of the object of such
duties and what is owed to them (Finnis, 1980, chapter eight).
3. Though not in some IVF procedures in which the embryo is not actively destroyed.
4. A further brief excursus is in order on the subject of the early Church and abortion.
Engelhardt points to one strand of thought in the early Church as normative for
traditional Christianity, namely, that in which the Fathers did not concern them-
selves with whether the fetus was animated, or ensouled, or not, but straightfor-
wardly condemned abortion, as well as contraception and sterilization. In point of
fact, the line between contraception and abortion in some of these early Fathers is
rather blurred. Jerome, for example, suggests, according to John Connery, S.J., that
“even a woman who makes herself sterile is guilty of homicide” (Connery, 1977, p. 53).
Caesarius of Arles makes a similar suggestion. Later, the Si aliquis canon will dictate
that anyone who gives a potion to prevent a man or woman from conceiving or
generating a child “must be held as a murderer” (Connery, 1997, p. 80).
At the same time, there were fathers who were concerned with the question of
the time of animation, and related this question to that of abortion. So Connery, in
his discussion of the early Church on abortion writes that:
A tradition was forming which looked upon only the abortion of the formed
fetus as homicide. Abortion of the unformed fetus, although universally
condemned, was not classified as homicide…Parallel with this tradition was
another which considered not only the abortion of the unformed fetus, but
even sterilization, as homicide. These two traditions will continue to grow
side by side for some centuries to come, and many attempts will be made to
reconcile them. (pp. 63-64)
These two traditions clearly do not stand in an easy relationship to one another,
and each has its virtues and vices. The view that elides the distinction between
contraception and abortion certainly seems to identify the relevant similarity in
the wills of agents who engage in both sorts of act, and is witness to the Church’s
constant teaching on both abortion and contraception. But, for reasons that will
become clearer in the text, it seems to me to be now (though not then) both
impossible and unjust to refuse to address the question of when a contra-life act is
in fact also an act of murder.
The other tradition, which became more firmly established in the Middle Ages,
and which was concerned with drawing a distinction between abortion of an
animated and abortion of an unanimated fetus, clearly recognizes the important
need to distinguish between murder and non-murderous acts, without denying
the moral wrongness of the non-murderous acts. But, as I have mentioned above,
the attempt to draw the distinction seems doomed to have failed in the absence
of further biological knowledge. So one strand of my argument in the text may
be summarized in this way: the subsequent biological knowledge has two
consequences: it makes it necessary to ask the question about the beginnings of
the human person, and it makes it possible to answer it.
5. Blurring the lines is not necessarily the same as misidentifying one thing as
another: Grisez points out that the Si aliquis canon, for example, merely says that
contraceptors should be treated as homicides, not that they are homicides.
6. Kant in the Lectures on Ethics, Aquinas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Three,
Chapter 112.
7. This would parallel Grisez’s suggestion that there is an “irreverence towards God”
implicit in mistreating His creatures (1993, p. 736).
Bibliography
Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Summa Contra Gentiles. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University
Press, 1976.
Boyle, J. “Limiting Access to Health Care: a Traditional Roman Catholic Analysis.” In
Allocating Scarce Medical Resources, edited by H.T. Engelhardt and M.J. Cherry, 77-95.
Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002.
Connery, J.R. Abortion, the Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective. Chicago:
Loyola University Press, 1977.
Press, 1996.
Publishers, 2000.
Finnis, J. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Grisez, G. Vol. 2 of Living a Christian Life: Christian Moral Principles. Quincy: Franciscan
Press, 1993.
Kant, I. Lectures on Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Engelhardt the
Anabaptist:
Pursuing Ascetic Holiness
in the Spirit of H. Tristram
Engelhardt, Jr.’s The
Foundations of Christian
Bioethics
Frederic J. Fransen
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.’s theoretical framework for bioethics includes

multiple, overlapping, and seemingly conflicting moral perspectives.1 At the
outermost level one finds society, a place for the interactions of moral strang-
ers and a place in which lack of agreement about the content-full foundations
of morality leaves peace-loving persons to use permission as both a necessary
and a sufficient condition for deeming an action moral, at least in what
Engelhardt calls “general secular moral” terms. Thus, at this level, not only is
contracting with a killer to murder oneself a perfectly legitimate transaction
(such as in the case of physician assisted suicide), but so is indentured servitude,
if freely entered into (one might imagine the underlying ontology of graduate
student-teacher relationships in the modern university).
At another level, among those whom Engelhardt terms moral friends,
matters are quite different. The necessity of consent is reduced to an at most
181
182 Frederic J. Fransen
one-time occurrence, and provided a person has given such one-time

consent, virtually any conduct must be allowed by the general secular moral
society. Thus, within a Right-to-Life Community, it might be perfectly acceptable
to execute both a woman and her doctor for murder and accessory to murder
after an abortion, provided that the woman and her doctor had consented to
the authority of their community to declare abortion murder and a capital
crime, and provided that the community had decided the matter within its
consented-to rules. In the meantime, members of an adjacent Pro-Choice
Community must stand by and allow these executions to take place, since
they fall within the framework of those sanctions to which the doctor and the
woman had given their permission. Moral content from one community carries
no authority within another.
In Engelhardt’s world, such bizarre circumstances need not only arise
within a specific community of moral friends. In the interactions among moral
strangersor between groups of moral strangers belonging to different
content-rich communitiesseemingly unthinkable exchanges might take
place, so long as they do not involve violence and are consensual. Thus,
within a society functioning according to the Engelhardtian permission prin-
ciple, one might observe a group of Amish farmers going to a market and
selling addictive and potentially deadlybut pesticide and meat-freecrops
to their neighbors, a commune of vegetarian, socialist, animal-rights activists
who are willing to take their chances with addiction and disease so long as no
animal is harmed in the process.2 Assuming that the Amish have legitimate
title to their produce, that no deceit is involved in the sale, and that the buyers
are consenting persons using their legitimately acquired resources to make
the purchase, there would be no general secular moral grounds for society to
intervene to regulate or stop this transaction from taking place, however
strange it might seem on the surface. In Engelhardt’s world, one either belongs
to a content-rich and potentially restrictive community of moral friends, or
one acts strictly according to the principle of permission in the general secular
realm, bearing the full consequences of one’s acts in the world of moral strangers.
Both The Foundations of Bioethics (1996) and The Foundations of Christian
Bioethics (2000), address issues related to each of these realms, albeit with
starkly different emphases. The Foundations of Bioethics (hereafter Foundations)
speaks primarily to a general secular audience and explores the world of gen-
eral secular morality according to the permission principle. The Foundations of
Christian Bioethics (hereafter Christian Bioethics), by contrast, explores a par-
ticular community of moral friends, referred to as Traditional Christianity, by
which Engelhardt means those adhering to the Orthodox Church.
This division of labor between the two books poses a serious problem for
someone offering a response. On Engelhardt’s terms, very little mediation is
possible between the worlds of moral friends and moral strangers. Although
one can have multiple and overlapping moral communities and, therefore,
Engelhardt the Anabaptist 183
have much in common with people from a variety of communitiesor even

participate in multiple communities simultaneously under certain
circumstances3it is hard to imagine the possibility of multiple overlapping
communities dealing with ultimate moral questions, such as procreation and
sexuality, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and death, immortality,
and eternal life.4 In any case, this is not the approach taken by Engelhardt in
Christian Bioethics. Instead, Christian Bioethics is written from the point of view
of one particular community whose moral presuppositions are, by definition,
impenetrable to the reasoning of outsiders such as myself.
I am not, it is fair to say, a born-again Texian Antiochian Orthodox Catholic
(Engelhardt, 1996, p. xi; 2000, p. xvi). Therefore, I am a moral stranger to the
bulk of Christian Bioethics. Because I am a moral stranger, however, any criti-
cisms that I might have are open to easy dismissal within Engelhardt’s system,
by attributing my differences, for instance, to my not sharing the same under-
standing of authority with Traditional Christianity, or to my having a different
hierarchy of values, or to me simply not getting it.
As a moral stranger, moreover, I have no reason to “get it”or perhaps
even to try. Rather than engaging my arguments, the response of a born-again
Texian Antiochian Orthodox Christian might simply be to refer me to a holy
person or spiritual father, or to offer me a knowing but silent nod and inclusion
in his prayers. Although such responses may be fully adequate to a moral
friendand indeed they might even be the most beneficent response available
to a moral strangerfrom a moral stranger’s point of view, such responses
are as disheartening as the emptiness one feels in the face of the postmodern
tragedy of man’s inability to succeed in the Enlightenment Project (1996, pp.
65-66), or the sadness in one’s heart when pondering the failed attempt of
some Anabaptists to win Germany for the faith in 1535.5
Despite this epistemological problem, however, I do not feel like a moral
stranger to either the framework of Engelhardt’s Foundations, nor the thick
community of Christian Bioethics. This can only be possible in one of three
ways: either I am really Antiochian Orthodox, or Engelhardt is Anabaptist, or
there is no fundamental difference between the two. The first and last assump-
tions seem patently absurd, at least to me. Therefore, in order to overcome the
theoretical impasse described in the previous paragraph, I am going to assume
that Engelhardt is not telling the full truth about his faith when he describes
Traditional Christianity as the Eastern Orthodox Church. In fact, I am going
to assume that Traditional Christianity as used in Christian Bioethics actually
refers to Anabaptism, particularly that of the early Church (ca. A.D. 33-337
and then as reconstituted in 1527). With this in mind, I propose to test a few
of the provisions of Christian Bioethics against that assumption.
Before I begin, however, two final disclaimers are in order. First, I am neither
a theologian nor a bioethicist, and I may not even be a very good Anabaptist.
As a result, despite appearances to the contrary, the following arguments
should not be taken as authoritative, in either sense of the word. Second, to

avoid any misconception, I am in no way attempting an exploration of the
limits of the ecumenicity of Christian Bioethics. Engelhardt and I would almost
certainly agree that the bioethics, not to mention the theology, of a majority of
the adherents of various Christian sects are seriously misguided, if not damnable,
and, therefore, that human efforts at ecumenicity would probably be better
served by prayerful requests for the intervention of the Holy Spirit than by
Councils, Commissions, Boards or any other such gatherings of humans
called to work out a common position.
Instead, this essay seeks to explore the degree of Christian Bioethics’
compatibility with another group of pious devotees of the route to holiness
taught by Jesus Christ and passed along to his disciples and others through
the Holy Spirit. Given the radical surface differences between the Traditional
Christianity of Christian Bioethics and the one described below, the more
substantive agreements sketched here may be yet another example of the
mysterious and miraculous ways of the Spirit.
I. The Return to Traditional Christianity

As a prophet of the return to Traditional Christianity in the West, Engelhardt
takes careful note of the overwhelming problems that had developed within
Western Christianity by the time of the Reformation, but which were not solved
by the Reformation as it developed in the form of magisterial Protestantism, and
for which the solutions could not be found within the practices of the Roman
Catholic Church. What was needed, as Engelhardt recognizes, was a return to the
Traditional Christianity of the early Church. This effort involved rediscovering a
way of thinking about Christianity that was “neither Protestant nor [Roman]
Catholic.”6 It recognized insurmountable problems with both Roman Catholicism
and magisterial Protestantism, and sought to avoid the pitfalls of both:
[Roman Catholics] thought they could attain salvation in [useless, unchristian
practices and ceremonies] but they failed miserably ... So, too, in the same way,
everyone now wants to be saved in showy faith, without the fruits of faith,
without the baptism of temptation and testing, without love and hope, and
without true Christian practices. ... [those opposed to the true way of Traditional
Christianity] despise the divine word and pay attention to the papal word, or
to the word of the antipapal preachers, which is also not in conformity with
the divine word. (Grebel, 1991 [1524], p. 37)
Accepting, therefore, that something had gone extremely wrong in the
Western Church that needed dramatic correction, let us pursue our thought
experiment regarding Anabaptism.
In a section of Christian Bioethics that places the Scriptures in their context
within the set of guideposts for the Christian life, Engelhardt quotes Saint
Silouan the Athonite who engaged in a similar experiment:
Suppose that for some reason the Church were to be bereft of all her books, of
the Old and New Testaments, the works of the holy Fathers, of all service
bookswhat would happen? Sacred Tradition would restore the Scriptures,
not word for word, perhapsthe verbal form might be differentbut in
essence the new Scriptures would be the expression of that same “faith which
was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). They would be the expression of
the one and only Holy Spirit continuously active in the Church, her foundation
and her very substance. (St. Silouan, 1991, pp. 87-88; quoted in Engelhardt,
2000, p. 193)
Supposing that instead of the Scriptures, much of the liturgical tradition
of the Church and all the carriers of the Apostolic Succession would disappear
in a geographical area (perhaps as a result of severe persecution combined
with extensive martyrdom).7 Surely, Saint Silouan would agree that the “one
and only Holy Spirit,” would nevertheless restore the Church, despite such a
loss of continuity. It may take a long time and, as Saint Silouan notes, it would
not be a literal recreation, word for word, in the case of the Scriptures, and act
for act in the case of the liturgy, but the Church under the Holy Spirit’s guidance
would nevertheless be restored to the traditions of the “Fathers and the
Patriarchs.”8
II. The Church as the Early Church

How, therefore, would a group of inspired individuals, under the influence
of the Holy Spirit and witnessing the corruption around them, go about
restoring the Church? Let us further assume that the sources they had to
work with were their observations of the corrupted Church, some works of
the Church Fathersin particular Eusebius9and the Old and New Testaments.
As Engelhardt observes, the Traditional Church did not think of itself
primarily as the locus of theological disputations, but rather as a community
of saints within which theology was found in a demonstrative life: “Theology
is not primarily an academic field. Theology is the expression of an intimate
relationship with God” (2000, p. 190). Indeed, for the Traditional Christians of
the sixteenth century, the very word ‘theologian’ was a term of rebuke. “To
the early Anabaptists it was precisely the lack of such spiritual immediacy
which made the Reformers predominantly ‘theologians,’ that is, discursive
thinkers on religious questions” (Friedman, 1973, p. 20). They similarly
refused to place their faith in those trained in the theological schools of the
Catholic Church.10
The alternative to a Christianity of discursive theology is a Christianity of
holiness. The way of life outlined by such Christian morality “has much more to
do with holiness than with social justice” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 163). Such holi-
ness is discovered through a “life of repentance and virtue” (p. 172). Finally, as
Engelhardt notes, truth(s) in this understanding will be revealed to the Christian in
worship and through the practice of an “ascetic and liturgical life” (p. 188).
III. The Ascetic Theology of Holiness

Engelhardt must, therefore, closely identify with the struggles of the early
Anabaptists, for despite all that had been lost to them, they were endeavoring
to reinvigorate and reawaken the Traditional Church. In their efforts, they
came “remarkably close to the practice of the apostolic and early ante-Nicene
church...” (Davis, 1974, p. 167). As Kenneth Ronald Davis has shown,
“Anabaptist theology may be best described as a theology of holiness” (1974,
p. 129). The early Anabaptists integrated three key notions into what Davis
called the “ascetic theology of holiness” (p. 129). Shortly, I will discuss two of
these three, the “theology of martyrdom,” and the “theology of discipleship.”
The final idea, “The doctrine of the two worlds,” will be reserved for last. But
first, let me explain in somewhat more detail what is meant by an ascetic theology
of holiness.
Although this quotation is drawn from a description of the theology of
Traditional Christians of the sixteenth century, I would argue that it is equally
applicable to the understanding outlined in Christian Bioethics. There are three
essential ingredients within the Christian theology of holiness. First, there
must be a conviction that the development and attainment of actual sanctity,
of Christ-likeness in inner spirit and outer conduct in the individual Christian
disciple,11 is both a possibility and at the same time the supreme object of the
redemptive purposes of God.12 Second, every person hoping for salvation is
required actively to pursue and, in some measure, attain in this life some
similitude of this otherworldly perfectionbased on Christ’s words: “Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt.
5:48)”.13 Third, if the ideal of the pursuit of holiness is to become a full theology
of holiness, it must be demonstrably the determinative interpretive principle
for understanding and expressing all other aspects of Christian doctrine and
practice (Davis, 1974, p. 130).
The last point, it seems, is the core claim of Christian Bioethics. The first
two, however, are equally important and can be combined into particular
claims about the importance of martyrdom, as well as the (generally) more
common call to discipleship, both thought of in terms of their contribution to
the quest for holiness.
IV. The Theology of Martyrdom

In his discussion of “Suffering, Disease, Dying, and Death,” Engelhardt
pays close attention to the issue of martyrdom, distinguishing it from suicide
and euthanasia. In the process, he notes the prominent role that martyrdom
plays in the theology of holiness of Traditional Christianity:
The lives and deaths of martyred saints carry with them a vivid appreciation
of the importance of locating life and death within the pursuit of the Kingdom
of God. ... Christianity experiences martyrdom as a special opportunity to heal

one’s soul and to unite oneself with God. (2000, p. 328)
Traditional Christians of the sixteenth century were fully aware of the call
to martyrdom, which, during the worst years of persecution, became a cen-
tral part of their understanding of what it meant to follow Christ. This was
perplexing to their persecutors, whether Protestant or Catholic.
“How does it happen”, asked the Dominican monk John Fabri of Heilbronn
in 1550, “that they accept death so readily and joyfully” (quoted in Friedman,
1973, p. 28)? The answer lies in their understanding of death as an event in
the past, as having occurred prior to baptism, and to their being born into
eternal life. As Engelhardt notes, such an attitude about life and death
becomes extremely relevant to a bioethics of dying within a theology of ascetic
holiness (2000, p. 317).
From 1527 to 1560, in the worst years of persecution, more than 5,000 men,
women and sometimes children, attempting to live according to the precepts
of Traditional Christianity, were martyred in Western Europe, primarily in
small areas of what are now Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. This
compares to fewer than 2,000 who died under the Spanish Inquisition during
its entire 300-year history. Their stories were recorded in 1660 by Thieleman J.
van Braght (1950 [1660]). One of the most famous examples of sixteenth century
martyrdom is the story of Dirk Willems, who was arrested in 1569 in Asperen,
Holland, for his faith:
When he fled he was hotly pursued by a thief-catcher, and as there had been
some frost, said Dirk Willems ran before over the ice, getting across with con-
siderable peril. The thief-catcher following him broke through, when Dirk
Willems, perceiving that the former was in danger of his life, quickly returned
and aided him in getting out, thus saving his life. The thief-catcher wanted to
let him go, but the burgomaster, very sternly called to him to consider his oath,
and thus he was again seized by the thief-catcher, and, at said place, after se-
vere imprisonment and great trials proceeding from the deceitful papists, put
to death at a lingering fire by these bloodthirsty, ravening wolves, enduring it
with great steadfastness, and confirming the genuine faith of the truth with
his death and blood, as an instructive example to all pious Christians of this
time, and to the everlasting disgrace of the tyrannous papists. (van Braght,
1950 [1660], p. 740)
V. The Theology of Discipleship

Not every Christian is confronted with martyrdom through torture and
death, especially today.14 The route to holiness for most Traditional Christians
instead takes the form of asceticism, itself understood as a kind of martyrdom.15
As mentioned earlier, sanctification takes precedence over justification in this
approach (Friedman, 1973, p. 24). In their desire to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in
realizing God’s kingdom, Traditional Christians seek to live a “concrete, actualized
Christianity, reminiscent of the primitive church of the apostles” (Friedman, 1973,

p. 158). Positively, one’s search for holiness takes the form of “a total love for God
and for one’s fellows, total obedience to God, and an otherworldly value sys-
tem.” Negatively, it is represented as the “elimination of sin which is identified
primarily with a corrupt human society, the flesh, and the devil” (Davis, 1974, p.
133). In one’s search for holiness through discipleship, one seeks to foster a “syn-
ergistically oriented, continuous attitude of repentance, the penitent life, which
would then express itself in repeated acts of specific, public, or private penance,
and confession for restoration after sins were committed” (p. 167). Most specifi-
cally, it is expressed in “its emphasis on daily devotions, including prayer,
contemplation, adoration, and praise, and fasting” (pp. 174-175).
Although the core of an ascetic theology of holiness concerns each
individual’s commitment to follow Christ, even to the extent of martyrdom,
it also includes an other-directedness that derives from Christ’s command to
love one’s neighbor, even at a potentially high cost. Dirk Willems’ decision to
return to rescue his pursuer is one extreme example of fulfilling the obligation
to one’s neighbor. Other such examples abound.16 Moreover, by understand-
ing Christianity as a way of life, while accepting the special circumstances of
the hermit (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 210), Traditional Christianity thinks of its
moral and ethical foundations as essentially located within a community of
believers. This also implies that bioethical decisions should take place within
a communal framework. As Engelhardt notes:
Traditional Christian bioethics is not fully understandable outside of a
traditional Christian life. Access to its content and its meaning grows within
the life of faith, love, alms, asceticism, worship, and participation in the
Mysteries of the Church. ...That life is communal. (2000, p. 191)
VI. The Holy Community of Saints

The community of Traditional Christians has as its objective the pursuit of
holiness and even sanctification, which, with the help of the Holy Spirit, is
partially achievable, even during one’s earthly life. As Davis points out,
“Holiness ... took on a corporate nature, concern, and expression similar to
cenobitism” (1974, p. 140). Traditional Christians, therefore, understand
themselves to be part of a holy communion of Saints, engaged in something
akin to communal monasticism.
One of the key elements of any close-knit community is the discipline it
imposes upon its members. As Engelhardt notes:
...If the body of the Church receives these articulations [of moral or ethical
precepts], they have an enduring, infallible, and special therapeutic standing.
It is agreed that those who reject these formulations must be treated with
excommunication. (2000, p. 200)
As Engelhardt enters into the particulars of Traditional Christianity’s

understanding of bioethical issues, he repeatedly mentions excommunication
as the appropriate sanction for those who violate the Church’s accepted teachings.
An important aspect of the reawakening of Traditional Christianity in the
sixteenth century was the revival of the kind of Church discipline described
by Christ in Matthew 18:15:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and
him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not
listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be con-
firmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them,
tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to
you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
As Conrad Grebel wrote to Thomas Muentzer: “Strive with the word and
create a Christian community with the help of Christ and his rule, as we find
it set forth in Matthew 18” (1991, p. 42). This “rule of Christ” is the key to
discipline within the Traditional Church. By creating a set of steps prior to a
sanction that Engelhardt must certainly agree is an extremely harsh
punishmentbeing treated as a tax collectorTraditional Christians of the
sixteenth century approached falling away from the community in a thera-
peutic way. Their intent was to invoke authority gradually and progressively,
giving the violator a chance to repent prior to being expelled. In the extreme
cases in which a case goes as far as excommunication, however, expulsion is
complete. For instance, when the Amish shun a member, he or she is denied all
intercourse with the community, including family members.17 From the Church’s
point of view, the shunned individual ceases to exist as a member of the
community, and is considered worse than someone who had never joined.18
Because such discipline is required to maintain the communityand
especially where expulsion of members is a viable option in more than a few
casesit follows that communities of Traditional Christians need a well-
developed understanding of their place in the world of moral strangers,
including firm convictions about their relation to the society around them.
That relationship is at heart sectarian, and indeed, fundamentalist19 in its
refusal to compromise with society on matters of core concern. In speaking of
this with regard to the bioethics of Traditional Christianity, Engelhardt echoes
much the same idea:
To the discomfiture of a post-metaphysical, liberal culture, sectarians or funda-
mentalists have a cult of full commitment to a transcendent truth. ... Traditional
Christian bioethics is cultic in embedding its moral concerns in a particular life
of worship. Traditional Christians pursue ways of life at variance with mainline
moral and religious understandings, not to mention secular health care policy.
(2000, pp. 157-158)
As a result, Traditional Christians find themselves self-consciously separated
from the world. Although they are factually in the world, they do not consider
themselves as a matter of fact of the world. One of the clearest statements of

this position occurs in the Schleitheim Confession, written by Michael Sattler
and accepted by Swiss Brethren on February 24, 1527:
Fourth Article: A separation shall be made from the evil and from the wickedness
which the devil planted in the world; ...For truly all creatures are in but two
classes, good and bad, believing and unbelieving, darkness and light, the
world and those who [have come] out of the world, God’s temple and idols,
Christ and Belial; and none can have part with the other.
He further admonishes us to withdraw from Babylon and the earthly
Egypt that we may not be partakers of the pain and suffering which the Lord
will bring upon them:
From this we should learn that everything which is not united with our God
and Christ cannot be other than an abomination which we should shun and flee
from. By this is meant all popish and antipopish works and church services,
meetings and church attendance, drinking houses, civic affairs, the commitments
[made in] unbelief and other things of that kind… (quoted in Wenger, 1949,
p. 209)
The sociology of such a community is in harmony with the theoretical
structure of both the Foundations and Christian Bioethics. It encompasses a
world in which one’s primary commitments are to a moral community with
a well-developed, authoritative structure for making ethical and moral judg-
ments and to a set of disciplines to protect the spiritual and moral integrity
of that community. Here, there is no significant departure from the Tradi-
tional Christianity of Christian Bioethics. The Christian community recognizes
the existence of a world apart from itself and fully integrates an understand-
ing of it into its own self-conception. The Traditional Christianity of the six-
teenth century, however, goes one step further than that of Christian Bioethics,
in that it also anticipates andunlike the Traditional Christianity of Christian
Bioethicsintegrates the Foundation’s understanding of the relationship
between a particular community and general secular moral world into its own
practice.20 Moreover, unlike the Traditional Christianity of Christian Bioethics,
although it condemns that world, it does not contemplate the use of force to try
to change it.
These differences are most apparent in two areas. The first is in the notion
of consent, understood theologically, within sixteenth century Traditional
Christianity. The second is the relation of Traditional Christians to the State.
VII. The Free Church

The issue of a voluntary community bound by permission has two parts.
The easiest one is expulsion. An important component of the communal quest
for ascetic holiness is the ability to expel members for breaches in discipline.
For the Holy Community of Saints to preserve its integrity, it must be able to
expel members. More difficult than expulsion, however, is the question of

how one goes about entering the Traditional Church.
The default position within the logic of the Foundations is that of permission.
That is, for lack of another grounding in the postmodern, post-Christian
world, we are thrown back on permission as the only peacefully available
authority upon which to justify the use of force. In fact, peace can be defined
to include the use of force to protect those who are being coerced without
their consent, as in “peace officers.” Whether or not moral communities inter-
nalize permission as a doctrine of faith, and whether or not they apply the
principle of permission to their own admittance policies, the general secular
moral world has the rightif not even the obligation to refuse to recognize
one’s membership in a particular community unless one can document one’s
entrance to that community as a full person, granting permission for the com-
munity to assume a stipulated authority over that person in defined areas. In
other words, however the community understands membership internally,
from the point of view of general secular morality, entry into its conditions
must take a contractarian form. Unlike Orthodox Christianity,21 Traditional
Christianity incorporates such a practice of free entry fully into its own theology.
For sixteenth century Traditional Christians, infants and small children do
not need to be baptized in order to be saved. Their souls are protected by
God’s mercy, as explained by Jesus:
They brought children for him to lay his hands on them with prayer. The dis-
ciples rebuked them, but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me; do not try
to stop them; for the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matt.
19:13-14)
Upon reaching personhood, however, humans souls are imperiledindeed,
they will go to hellunless they voluntarily submit to baptism and become
members in the Church.
The practice of treating young adults as unredeemed and in a different
salvific state is followed most literally by the Amish, who set their sixteen-year-old
men and women loose in the world, where they partake of all the temptations of
twenty-first century Western culture before being given the free choice to join
the Church. The period of “skipping around,” or Rumspringa, as it is called in
Pennsylvania Dutch, generally lasts for about two years in the case of women,
and three to four years with men. Many live at home during these years, while
others live in apartments or with friends.22 This practice of lived-sinfulness is
theologically necessary so that the decision to join the Church is a free one, in
which persons in the full sense of the Foundationsof Amish parents but not
themselves Amishfreely agree to have Church discipline enforced upon them
until their physical death, or to be subjected to shunning.23 After several years of
modern clothes, cars, wild parties and illegal drug use,24 currently ninety per-
cent of these “general secular persons” of Amish descent voluntarily give up
their worldly ways and become Amish by becoming baptized into the Church.
During this period, from the point of view of Amish parents, the stakes for
their offspring are enormous. Unlike Amish children whose salvation is in
God’s hands, a person who dies during Rumspringa is doomed to hell as an
unrepentant sinner. Nevertheless, whereas such behavior is toleratedand
even encouragedbefore baptism, someone who has been baptized Amish
but then decides to leave the Church can never be accepted and is shunned
for life unless he or she returns to the discipline of the community. Expulsion,
however, is the only step taken. Shunned members are not pursued into the
general secular world, for to do so would involve a use of force considered
inimical to their understanding of the Christian life. Instead, they are simply
left to fend for themselves in the general secular world of the “English,” or to
join another community. In either case, their souls are lost to God.
Implied in this theological understanding, of course, is the existence of a
non-Church, or world apart from that of the Community of Saints. The atti-
tude of Traditional Christians to the state, including its general secular morality,
therefore, becomes an important and integral part of Traditional Christianity’s
overall theology.
VIII. Can There Be a Christian Governor (Even in Texas)?

The second area in which the Traditional Christianity described here differs
fundamentally from that of the Christian Bioethics is in its core understanding
of the state. Let us be blunt about it: the Engelhardt of the Christian Bioethics is
a statist. He calls upon the Church to use state power to violate the permission
principle to further the secular aims of the Church:
The Orthodox Mounted Posse can saddle up and ride out to the Second Rome
to restore the Hagia Sophia... carrying the Bonnie Blue Flag next to the Empire’s
banner of gold with the proud double-headed eagle. (2000, p. 392)
The claim that Engehardt is a statist may come as a surprise to those who
know him and his work. Some additional explanation is, therefore, in order.
As Konstantinos Kotzias notes, under the Orthodox notion of symphonia,
Church and State were conceived of as one perfect harmony (Contemporary
Review, 2001). Credit for developing this conception is generally given to the
Byzantine Emperor Basil I, who wrote:
As the Commonwealth consists of parts and members, by analogy with an indi-
vidual man, the greatest and most necessary parts are the emperor and the
Patriarch. Wherefore agreement in all things and harmony (sumfwnia) between
the Imperium and the Sacerdotium bring peace and prosperity to the souls
and the bodies of the subjects. (Epanagoge III, 8; quoted in Goheen, 2000, p. 5)
However brief Engelhardt’s tongue-in-cheek description of the rise of
Austin, Texas as the Fourth Rome, the Orthodox view of the state is fully
compatible with his millennial hopes. Within Orthodoxy, the boundaries between
the Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Man are frequently blurred. There are
Holy Emperors, and just wars, and many Orthodox Christians see the state as
an important tool of the Church.25 Therefore, the vision of the Mounted Posse
must be taken seriously.
From the point of view of Traditional Christianity, government by force is
part of God’s plan, but only for those outside the Church:
We are agreed as follows concerning the sword: The sword is ordained of God
outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and puts to death the wicked, and
guards and protects the good. (Schleitheim Confession, Article six; quoted in
Wenger, 1949, p. 210)
Although the use of force by governors is necessary given the evil in the
world, it does not follow that this makes it acceptable for a Christian to
become a magistrate:
Shall one be a magistrate if one should be chosen as such? The answer is as
follows: They wished to make Christ king, but He fled and did not view it as
the arrangement of His Father. Thus shall we do as He did, and follow Him,
and so shall we not walk in darkness. (Wenger, 1949, p. 211)
To exercise force as a magistrate, therefore, is to “walk in darkness,” and is
not appropriate for a Christian. This is not to say that magistrates are not neces-
sary. They are. But their necessity does not imply that they produce any good:
“The dead works of darkness have no part in the light” (Wenger, 1949, p. 209).
The distinction is not between moral and immoralthe Church is moral and
government immoralbut rather between moral and amoral.26 Those exercis-
ing force do so within an entirely different set of categories than that which
guides the lives of Traditional Christians. The rules for one Kingdom are incom-
mensurable with the rules for the other. This does not make government
badonly not good. Such a view is fully in keeping with the spirit of both the
Foundations and Christian Bioethics. That is, although it is necessary for there to
be a general secular realm to mediate relations between moral communities, as
well as to locate those who chose not to live in any one particular community
(Engelhardt’s yuppies), that realm is, effectively, beyond good and evil.27 By
contrast, the rich moral communities in which our moral decisions are made are
either good or evil, although we cannot generally agree about which is which.
It follows that it is inappropriate for a Traditional Christian, whose only
orientation is toward seeking the light, to be a magistrate (even a deputy sheriff),
since to do so would necessarily detract from his pursuit of holiness. Perhaps the
last Christian who was also a magistrate to understand this truly was Constan-
tine the Great. Throughout his life Constantine acted to protect Christians and,
therefore, might be considered a model magistrate. Because he knew that he
could not do so as a Christian, however, he delayed his baptism until days before
his death. In finally converting, he made the following, telling, declaration:
... For should it be his will who is Lord of life and death, that my existence here
should be prolonged, and should I be destined henceforth to associate with the
people of God, and unite with them in prayer as a member of his Church, I will
prescribe to myself from this time such a course of life as befits his service.
(Eusebius, 1995, p. 556)
In other words, Constantine recognized that he had not been leading a
Christian life until that time, and that upon becoming a Christian he must
alter his ways and orient himself toward “a course of life as befits [God’s]
service.”28 It is reasonable to assume that by this he meant to embark on an
ascetic path of holiness, which was only possible once he had given up
magisterial ambitions and transferred the power of the sword to his sons.
Magistrates can become Christians, but Christians cannot become
magistratesnor crusaders, even to restore the Hagia Sophia.29 Unfortunately,
too many Christians after Constantine have had less compunction about
recognizing the basic incompatibility between Christianity properly under-
stood and the general secular obligations of magistrates.30 Therefore, it is
appropriate, as the Christians of the sixteenth century did, to mark the break
with Traditional Christianity not primarily at 1054, but rather to the reign of
Constantine himself, after which the two Kingdoms became ever more con-
fused, spiraling into the crisis that led to the Reformation.
This wisdom of the sixteenth century is in contrast to the Orthodox concept
of symphonia, in which the church and the state are in “perfect harmony.”
From the point of view of symphonia, the state is good, if different from the
Church. There is no room in the world of the Foundations, however, for a
“good” general secular realm. Moreover, for a thick community to rise up and
set out to conquer its neighborseven Traditional Christians in Texas or
Papists and Muslims in Rome and Constantinoplewould be legitimate
cause for the general secular world, together with other thick communities, to
intervene. There can be no crusading symphonia within the terms of the Foun-
dations. If Posse members were coming to distribute copies of the Martyrs’ Mir-
ror and the Gospel under the Bonnie Blueeven at the cost of their own
livesthat would be one thing. If they intend to distribute fire from Colt 45s,
that is quite another matter. This distinction between moral communities and
general secular morality was well understood by sixteenth century Traditional
Christians, but is less well integrated into Orthodoxy.
Engelhardt’s theology of Traditional Christianity, particularly as it integrates
the philosophical positions of the Foundations into the descriptions of Christian
Bioethics, provides a rich account of the way in which Christians dedicated to
the traditions of the original Church should think about ethics and morality.
Engelhardt’s core claim, repeated throughout Christian Bioethics, is that the
authority for bioethical decision making among Christians can only be located
within a Christian understanding of the central purpose of life, the ascetic
pursuit of holiness. Decisions about how to respond to particular problems,
therefore, should be liturgical, and should be made within the body of Christ
rather than through the use of reason. The process itself should be integral to
the pursuit of a life directed toward holiness. The core of this theology is the
notion of Christianity as a way of life, the pursuit of holiness through ascetic
practices and within a liturgical community. This is highly relevant to
Anabaptism.
Within Christian Bioethics, Engelhardt not only presents the prolegomena
to a Christian bioethics, but also provides content for one. Although Anabaptists
share much in common with Engelhardt’s theology, they have not extended
this theology in the same way so as to establish their own content-rich bioethics.
Scholars seeking to rediscover a Christian bioethics on the basis of sixteenth
century Anabaptist writings have been unable to discover any substantive
content on issues such as abortion, euthanasia, or the provision of medical
services (Miller, 1990, pp. 203-213). Most of the Anabaptist writings on the
subject have proceeded sociologically, rather than theologically, describing
what Anabaptists do in practice, rather than identifying how they ought to
guide their lives. As an example, one effort at Anabaptist bioethics provides
factual information from a variety of points of view, but ends each section
with a set of study questions, rather than practical conclusions that provide
guidance (Miller, 1990; see also Snyder, 1995).31 For this reason, Christian Bio-
ethics is groundbreaking, and something that all those who take Christ’s call
to live the Christian life seriously should study carefully. By bringing to light
so much information about the bioethical teachings of the early Church,
Engelhardt provides a point of reference from whichguided by the Holy
SpiritChristian communities intent upon living out the life of the early
Church can meaningfully identify content for their own bioethical practices.
Notes
1. For helping me to unravel some of these, I am deeply indebted to Corinna
Delkescamp-Hayes, Ryan Ahlgrim, Elvin Plank, Herbert Fransen, Mary Fransen,
and Angelika Quitchke-Fransen. Their careful readings of earlier drafts and helpful
suggestions have greatly improved this paper. Remaining tangles, kinks, and
knots are entirely my fault.
2. Many Amish grow tobacco as a cash crop. Note that the use of horses to farm and
for transportation may be considered exploitive by some animal-rights activists,
making even Amish-grown cigarettes morally objectionable.
3. Given a system of limited and enumerated powers, one can imagine, without
contradiction, being simultaneously a citizen of Texas, a member of the American
College of Surgeons, and on the board of the National Rifle Association.
4. It is impossible, for instance, to imagine being a member of both the College of
Cardinals and Planned Parenthood.
5. Misguided Anabaptists in Muenster, now in Germany, took up the sword in 1535
and for a short time established an Anabaptist theocracy. The sins of these people
included not only the use of force in the name of the Church, but also the establishment
of a community of property, including women. This tragic and unfortunate incident
was invoked at the time to justify severe persecution of dissenters throughout

Europe, and continues to be invoked today. In a part of the interview between
Friar Cornelis and Jacob the Candlemaker, not included in the subsequent note,
Friar Cornelis accuses Jacob of being a Muensterite.
6. This phrase is borrowed from Walter Klaassen, Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor
Protestant (1981).
7. For Traditional Christians of the sixteenth century trying desperately to restore the
Church, the execution of their leaders was such a common event that they provided
rules for this in a confession of faith. Note in the Schleitheim Confession, Article
Five: “...But should it happen that through the cross this pastor should be banished
or led to the Lord [through martyrdom] another shall be ordained in his place in
the same hour so that God’s little flock and people may not be destroyed” (Wenger,
1949, p. 210).
8. “In the first place, we must with all understanding concede and confess that the
first church of Christ and the apostles was destroyed and ruined in early times by
Antichrist.... these very devout hearts have resolved that they shall serve God in
all such quiet simplicity after the manner of the Fathers and the Patriarchs...”
(Philips, 1957 [c. 1560], p. 207).
9. Cornelius Krahn, one of the leading Mennonite historians of the twentieth century,
notes that among the few documented sources from the Church Fathers that influenced
Menno Simons was Eusebius, whom he repeatedly looked back to (1982, p. 42).
See also Friedman (1973, p. 47n1).
10. This comes through in the following exchange between Jacob the Candlemaker
and Friar Cornelis, his prosecutor, which took place in 1569:
Friar Cornelis: Well, I’ve come here to see whether I can convert you (Jacob,
I believe, is your name) from your false and evil belief, in which you are erring,
and whether I cannot bring you back to the Catholic faith of our mother,
the holy Roman church, from which you have apostatized to this damnable
Anabaptism. What do you say to this, eh?
Jacob: With your permission, as regards that I have an evil, false belief,
this I deny; but that through the grace of God I have apostatized from your
Babylonian mother, the Roman church, to the members, or the true church, of
Christ, this I confess; and thank God for it, who has said: “Come out of her,
my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her
plagues” (Rev. 18:4; Isa. 52:11).
Friar Cornelis: Is it true: And do you call our mother the holy Roman
church, the whore of Babylon? And do you call your hellish, devilish sect
of Anabaptism the members, of the true church of Christ? Eh! Hear this fine
fellow once. Who the devil has taught you this! your accursed Menno Simons
I suppose ...
[Jacob cites Revelations in response]
Cornelis: ... At what university did you study? At the loom, I suppose; for
I understand that you were nothing but a poor weaver and chandler before
you went around preaching and rebaptizing out here in the Cruthuysbosch.
I have attended the university of Louvain and studied divinity so long, and
yet I do not understand anything at all about St. John’s Apocalypse; this is
a fact.
Jacob: Therefore Christ thanked His heavenly Father, that He had revealed
and made it known to babes and hidden it from the wise of the world, as it is
written, Mathew 11:25.
This exchange goes on for several pages, before Friar Cornelis gets frustrated
and brings the interview to a close:
Friar Cornelis: Well, I have no desire to dispute any longer with you. I shall
go my way, and let the executioner dispute with you, with a burning fagot***
and afterwards the devil in hell, with burning pitch, brimstone, and tar, see. ...
Friar Cornelis: Bah! in hell, in hell.... Hell yawns and gasps for your soul
you accursed, damned Anabaptists that you are.
Because of the foul language of the Franciscan, the original editions of the
Martyrs Mirror left out this and a subsequent interview of Friar Cornelis. In the
1950 edition, the editors restored them, but replaced the unprintable language
of the Franciscan with triple asterisks. For the complete interview, see van
Braght, 1950 [1660], pp. 774-785.
11. Such statements in Christian Bioethics are generally in reference to the particular,
but generalizable context of bioethics: “Christian bioethics has to do with Christ”
(Engelhardt, 2000, p. 208). Compare “Woe to him who looks anywhere but at this
end. For whoever thinks that he is a Christian must travel the path which Christ
traveled” (Denck, 1991, p. 133).
12. See, for example, “Traditional Christianity represents an always and everywhere
present possibility of redemption of the Spirit” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 160).
13. See, for example, Christian Bioethics, quoting Patriarch Bartholomew, “Joyful Light,”
“…we become ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4). We are truly changed...”
(2000, p. 207). For Engelhardt, “theologians as saints in union with God” exist in
the world in an ongoing, real, and present way, and therefore provide actual examples
of how those who aspire to holiness can live. Their presence as exemplars indicates
the real possibility of the devoted Christian attaining the perfection of holiness that
saints represent.
14. Exceptions, of course, are to be found. In the twentieth century, the number of
martyrs of the Church was greatly added to, particularly at the hands of communists
in the Soviet Union. See The Black Book of Communism, Stephane Courtois, et al.
(1999). Persecution of twentieth century Christians also continues elsewhere. For
up-to-date information on this, see www.christianfreedom.org.
15. I am indebted to Corinna Delkescamp-Hayes for making me aware of the range of
Christian practices that fall within asceticism. Even marriage can be thought of as
a kind of asceticism.
16. Most famous is Mennonite Disaster Service, a corps of volunteers who help in cleanup
and reconstruction following natural disasters. Another Anabaptist service organiza-
tion, Mennonite Central Committee is among the most highly reputed relief and devel-
opment agencies in the world, and among those with the lowest overhead. Anabaptists
are also leaders in the developing field of mediation and conflict resolution.
Of particular interest with regard to bioethics is Anabaptist involvement
in mental health work, which derived from the experiences of World War II
conscience objectors doing service in asylums. In a 1983 study, one author noted
that more than half of all church-related mental hospitals in North America were
Anabaptist-related.
They were modeled on the Gheel community in Belgium, where more than
one of seven homes care for a mentally ill person. Gheel’s involvement in mental
health goes back to the occurrence of a miracle in the early years of the Church:
“According to tradition, Dympna, the daughter of an Irish king, was converted
to Christianity and fled with a priest. The father of Dympna, angered over her
conversion and elopement, pursued her. After finding Dympna and being unable
to dissuade her from Christianity, he beheaded both her and the priest. The legend
is that several mentally ill persons who saw the cruel act thus regained their mental
health. This was accepted as a miracle and thereafter she became a patron saint
for mad persons, saint Dympna.” When Mennonites set out to engage in mental
health activity, they went to Gheel to examine their approach and incorporated
into their own program of reform (see Neufeld, 1983).
17. Intercourse here is meant both figuratively and literally. Not only are the bread
and wine denied to shunned members, but their families cannot eat with them,
and their spouses cannot have sexual relations with them so long as they refuse to
repent.
18. An example of this can be found in the story of Elvin Plank. Plank grew up in an
Amish family and joined the Amish Church upon reaching adulthood. Afterward,
he decided to leave the Church, in part to pursue a college education. After his
bishop was unable to convince him to reconsider, he was shunned. This meant
that even his family could not share a dish with him at a meal, and that they could
receive nothing at all from him. When he married, in order to eat with his parents,
neither he nor his parents could serve him, so his wifewho had never been
Amishhad to put the food on his plate. If they went somewhere together, she
had to drive the car, since his parents could not receive a ride from him. When he
later joined a Mennonite Church, his Mennonite pastor wrote the bishop asking
that the shunning be lifted, and the bishop and congregation joyfully did so, now
that he was in good standing in an Anabaptist Church. (Interview with the author,
December 18, 2003.)
19. Some authors refer to Anabaptism as the “first true fundamentalist movement”
(see Klaassen, 1981, p. 1; compare Engelhardt, 2000, p. 158).
20. Within the logic of the Foundations, of course, it is not necessary for a moral
community to incorporate the permission principle into its own internal practice,
or even to believe it, but in order to avoid being an outlaw from the point of gen-
eral secular morality, it must be able to document that, at least at one time, each
individual in the community had given permission (which only persons can do) to
be subjected to its sanctions. Thus each child who reaches personhood, however
defined, must convince the general secular moral world that he or she has volun-
tarily joined the community. Adult baptism may not be necessary for a moral
community, but something like it is essential for general secular morality.
21. Anabaptism shares with Orthodox Christianity a disdain for Augustine’s notion
of original sin, but breaks with Orthodoxy on the question of the status of the souls
of non-persons. As a result, it is not important for Anabaptists that infants be bap-
tized as far as their salvation is concerned. Because sin is a failure of the will to
conform to God’s plan, only when one is a person in the full sense of the Foun-
dations, can one sin in the full sense of the word: only persons can be culpable and,
therefore, only persons are in need of the discipline of the Church to provide for
their salvation.
In a ceremony of child blessing, the following words can be spoken: “Maker of
galaxies and planets, yet also of the hairs on our heads, we magnify your name for
our creation and for all the blessings of this life. ... We claim the same assurance for
him that Jesus gave to the children he took into his arms: Give the parents grace to
raise their child to your glory. Let this child come to his own faith in Christ crucified”
(Hymnal: A Worship Book, 1992, #792). Although they scorn infant baptism as “the
highest and chief abomination of the pope” (Schleitheim Confession, Article One,
Wenger, 1949, p. 208), many Anabaptists do dedicate their infants in the community
and promise to educate them in the traditions of the Church. In return, the Church
promises to help the parents to raise the child: “...We promise, with humility and
seriousness, to share in your child’s nurture and well-being. We will support, by our
example and words, your efforts to provide a loving and caring home, where trust
in God grows and Christ’s way is chosen...”(Hymnal: A Worship Book, 1992, #791).
22. A compelling documentary on this phenomenon is Lucy Walker’s 2002 documentary,
The Devil’s Playground. One of the many surprising and interesting traditions
among the Amish is that of “sleeping dates,” in which unmarried Amish youths
share a bed with their boyfriend or girlfriend. This is apparently an ancient and
widespread custom, which has been preserved by the Amish. Compare a similar
scene in the Mel Gibson movie, The Patriot, in which a boy is sewn into a “bundling
bag” so that he and his fiancée can sleep together.
23. Although shunning may seem harsh, it is understood in contrast to the alternative
practice of popish and anti-popish sects in the sixteenth century in putting heretics
to death. The sixth article of the Schleitheim Confession includes the following
statement: “...only the ban is used for a warning and for the excommunication of
the one who has sinned, without putting the flesh to death,simply the warning
and the command to sin no more” (Wenger, 1949, p. 210).
24. According to Samuel Stoltzfus, 0.5 percent leave the church each year, 3 percent do
drugs, 10 percent “travel in the fast lane,” and 25 percent participate in “hoedowns.”
Hoedowns are rural drinking parties, generally held on Amish farms with their
parents’ knowledge, in which as many as 1500 persons take part (Stoltzfus, 1999,
pp. 110-111).
25. Note, for instance, the Russian Orthodox Church’s efforts to have the state criminalize
non-Orthodox mission activity in Russia.
26. To use an example: if a Christian provides charity in keeping with the commandment
to love one’s neighbor, a good and holy event occurs in which both giver and
recipient gain spiritually. (The recipient also benefits materially.) If the state, by
contrast, provides aid to families with dependent children, by contrast, a need
might be met, but there is nothing holy about the transaction. It is purely secular.
The bureaucrat, working with tax dollars that may well have been coerced, gains
nothing in the way of holiness by administering the transaction. The recipient, as
a consequence, partakes of none of the transformative holiness of the giver. Both
receive secular benefitsthe bureaucrat in the form of salary, also paid with
coerced moneybut the meaning of the event stops there.
27. This also contrasts with Orthodox views.
28. On the difficulties contemporary Anabaptists encounter when trying to negotiate

the difficult waters of the Kingdom of God in a participatory democracy, see Frederic
Fransen, “Uneasy Citizens: An Essay on the Difficulty in Creating a Mennonite
Politics” (1997).
29. It is possible that Engelhardt could reconcile the Crusades of his Fourth Rome with
a Christian understanding by declaring that neither he nor any other Texian Chris-
tian could join the Posse. He would also, however, need to remove it from any
millennial hopes.
30. “Charles the Great then being elected Emperor of the West, and by signal Services
deserving so well of the Church of Rome, Adrian and Leo III. Roman Pontiffs, loaded
him with greater Honours than ever had been heard of. There was a mutual Emu-
lation of Generosity and Courtesy betwixt them. Charles squander’d away Prov-
inces, Cities, Jurisdictions, and other Temporal Riches on the Popes; they on the
other hand repay’d him with their Spiritual Gifts. Thus the two Powers were so
confounded and jumbled together, that their Boundaries, which were clear and
distinct before, could never be well distinguish’d and ascertain’d thereafter; so
that it has been the opinion of wise Men (Rich. Apolog. J. Gerson. par. 2. axiom 36),
that Charles the Great went to further Lengths than Constantine the Great in ruining
the Political State of the Empire, and corrupting the ancient Disciplines of the
Church” (Giannone, 1729, p. 321).
31. Edwin Dubose’s survey of “The Anabaptist Tradition: Religious Beliefs and Health
Care Decisions” (1996), finds few official positions on matters from reproduction
technologies, abortion, and sterilization to gene therapy, sex selection, to medical
experimentation.
Bibliography
Basil I. Epanagoge, III: 8. Quoted in Michael Goheen, “Building for the Future: World-
view of Sand and Rock.” Religion in Eastern Europe 20, no. 5 (October 2000).
Braght, T.J. van. The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians Who
Baptized Only Upon Confession of Faith, and Who Suffered and Died for the Testimony of
Jesus, Their Saviour, From the Time of Christ to the Year A.D. 1660, Compiled from Vari-
ous Authentic Chronicles, Memorials, and Testimonies, translated by J.F. Sohm. 1660
ed. Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1950.
Courtois, S. et al. The Black Book of Communism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1999.
Davis, K.R. Anabaptism and Asceticism. Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1974.
Denck, H. “On the Law of God.” In The Radical Reformation, edited and translated by
M.G. Baylor, 130-151. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
The Devil’s Playground. Directed by Lucy Walker. Stick Figure Productions, 2002.
Dubose, E. “The Anabaptist Tradition: Religious Beliefs and Health Care Decisions.”
Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics, 1996.
Engelhardt, H.T. Jr. Foundations of Bioethics. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
———. Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger
Publishers, 2000.
Eusebius, Vol. I of Life of Constantine, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, edited by P. Schaff
and H. Wace. 2nd series. Edinburgh: repr. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1955.
The digital version is by The Electronic Bible Society.
Fransen, F. “Uneasy Citizens: An Essay on the Difficulty in Creating a Mennonite Politics.”
In Separation from the World for American Peace Churches: Asset or Handicap? York,
England: Sessions Book Trust, 1997.
Friedman, R. The Theology of Anabaptism. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1973.
Giannone, P. The Civil History of the Kingdom of Naples, 1793. Translated by Captain J.
Ogilvie. London: W. Innys, 1729.
Goheen, M. “Building for the Future: Worldview of Sand and Rock.” Religion in Eastern
Europe 20, (October): 5, 2000, http://www.georgefox.edu/academics/undergrad/
departments/socswk/ree/goheen_bft.html#_ftn1
Grebel, C. C. Grebel to Thomas Muentzer, 5 September 1524, Zurich. In The Radical
Reformation, edited and translated by M.G. Baylor. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991.
Hymnal: A Worship Book. Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House, 1992.
Klaassen, W. Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant, rev. ed. Waterloo, Ontario:
Conrad Press, 1981.
Kotzias, K. “The Myth of an Orthodox Block.” Contemporary Review (June 2001),
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1625_278/ai_76737772 (accessed
July 25, 2006).
Krahn, C. Menno Simons: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Theologie der Taufgesinnten.
Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1982.
Miller, M. “The Maze of Bioethical Dilemmas.” In Bioethics and the Beginning of Life,
edited by R.J. Miller and B.H. Brubaker. Scottdale, PA: Harold Press, 1990.
Neufeld, V.H. “Introduction.” In The Mennonite Mental Health Story, edited by V.H.
Neufeld. Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1983.
Philips, O. “A Confession” ca. 1560. In Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, edited by G.H.
Williams and A.M. Mergal. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957.
Silouan the Athonite, Saint. Archimandrite Sophrony. Translated by R. Edmonds. Essex:
Monastery of St. John the Baptist, 1991.
Snyder, G.F. Health and Medicine in the Anabaptist Tradition: Care in Community. Valley
Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995.
Stoltzfus, S.S. “The Drug Problem: How It Came to the Amish Community.” In What
Mennonites Are Thinking, edited by M. Good and P. Pellman Good. Intercourse, PA:
Good Books, 1999.
Wenger, J.C. Glimpses of Mennonite History and Doctrine. Scottdale, PA: Herald
Press, 1949.
Part III
Christian Bioethics,
Moral Pluralism, and
the Hope for a
Common Morality
Is “Discursive Christian
Bioethics” an Oxymoron?
Griffin Trotter
“For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.
Every one who is on the side of truth hears my voice.”
Jesus, according to John 18: 37
In The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. offers a

Christian bioethics that “relocates the field yet once more”—from bioethics as
an academic discipline tasked with navigating ethical controversies in high-
technology medicine back to bioethics as a way of life, as Van Rensselaer Potter
initially proposed. But unlike Potter, Engelhardt portrays bioethics as life
worshipping a transcendent God. “The goal”, he announces, “is to lead Christian
bioethics back to where Christian reflections found themselves in the first
millennium” (2000, p. xviii).
The genesis of Christian bioethics, so conceived, antedates by about two
thousand years the birth of discursive bioethics as a response to high technology
medicine. Yet, in another sense, Engelhardt’s version of Christian bioethics is very
new and very radical. Since the introduction of the term “bioethics,” no one has
used it quite like Engelhardt now proposes. When viewed from the standpoint
of the emerging orthodoxy of secular humanism or the somewhat less fashionable
(yet barely distinguishable) ecumenical Christian bioethics, Engelhardt’s version
of Christian bioethics is flagrantly sectarian and outrageously counter-cultural.
Bioethics was born and raised in cosmopolitan neighborhoods at Georgetown,
Hastings, and Charlottesville. In his current visage—bent, it seems, on kidnap-
ping bioethics and dislocating it from these comfortable roots—Engelhardt
appears more a Texian outlaw than a gentle mystic or pious reformer.
Engelhardt has no intention of ridding the world of discursive bioethics.
To the contrary, he conceives of two strains of bioethics operating in mutually
203
A.S. Iltis & M.J. Cherry (eds), At the Roots of Christian Bioethics (pp. 203–227)
204 Griffin Trotter
exclusive domains. Discursive bioethics is bioethics undertaken from the

vantage point of immanence—admitting only the data and principles that
can be appreciated by all reasonable persons and hence excluding claims to
special knowledge from transcendent sources. Discursive bioethics is inerad-
icably secular1 and useful primarily for inter-communal discourse, where a
multiplicity of diverging and incompatible moral communities must live
together. It is tasked with the peaceful mediation of refractory disagreements
between moral strangers.2 Sectarian bioethics, the second strain, is intra-
communal and confined to particular moral visions. Its fundamental axioms
are inherited through tradition; and it is tasked with helping moral friends
articulate a content-full account of ethical biomedical practice.
Engelhardt’s primary beef against the current practice of discursive
bioethics is that its most influential practitioners market a substantive, sectarian
worldview (secular humanism) as the universal morality of immanence. This
project (liberal cosmopolitanism) is confused at best, since any substantive
morality of immanence depends on premises that cannot be established by
discursive reason alone. The arbitrariness of such fundamental premises from
the standpoint of discursis seems to guarantee unproductive wrangling and
ethical pluralism, with an expansive multiplicity of moral visions separated
like monads in eternal circularity or infinite regress.3 At its worst, discursive
reason devolves into “conceptive ideology”—intellectual adornment for
coercive politics (Engelhardt, 1996, p. 68), replete with an inventory of
academic high priests (e.g., tenured bioethicists), ritual deployments of
intellect (e.g., political advisory committees), and creative myths disguised
as facts (e.g., stories that portray infant mortality or life-span inequalities as
consequences of poor health care access).
Though I largely share Engelhardt’s disquiet about bioethics as conceptive
ideology, I believe (apparently contra Engelhardt) that there is a middle
ground between stark, substance-free secular bioethics and content-full sec-
tarian bioethics. I believe, as Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J. has argued (2000, pp.
139-140), that it is fruitful to approach members of diverging moral communi-
ties as other than moral strangers—as “moral acquaintances,” to use Wildes’
term. Intermediate bioethics (my term for this middle path) is a process in
which moral acquaintances deliberate together with an eye to peaceful col-
laboration (in the short term) and a common, universal appreciation of ethical
truths (in the long run). In this essay, I examine one possible vantage point for
this project—intermediate bioethics undertaken from a Traditional Christian
perspective, conceived as an effort to engage non-believers discursively in a
project that will ultimately open the pathway towards an appreciation of
Traditional Christianity and the truths it bears (assuming, for our purposes,
that Traditional Christianity offers the true morality).
In order to make my case, I will: (1) summarize what I take to be Engelhardt’s
argument against sectarian Christians’ use of discursive inquiry to generate
ethical content, and then (2) show how intermediate bioethics—understood

as a form of content-generating discursive bioethics—can be fruitfully under-
taken from a Traditional Christian perspective. I will conclude that Engelhardt
is wrong in so neatly divorcing sectarian bioethics from discursive bioethics.
In the following discussion, several assumptions are operative. First, I
assume that Engelhardt is correct about the theoretical foundation of secular
bioethics in the principle of permission (though I have argued elsewhere that
his account of the genesis of this principle is flawed),4 and hold that the prin-
ciple of permission should hold sway throughout discursive bioethics—at
least until inquiry converges on ethical truth. Second, I assume that Engelhardt
is correct in his characterization of the dimensions of Traditional Christian
morality as it operates in health care. If either of these assumptions is false,
then my case against Engelhardt may actually become stronger. A third
assumption is that intermediate bioethics, based on the principle of permission,
is a field of inquiry that is: (1) discursively content-generating, (2) theoretical,
and (3) historically traceable to the response to ethical issues emerging in late
twentieth century, high technology medicine. It is discursively content-generating
in that one of its aims is to generate discursive knowledge.5 It is theoretical in
that it addresses bioethical issues at a relatively high level of generality. And
it is historically situated in that it should be regarded as a concrete project of
an actual community of inquiry6—rather than a domain of abstract universals,
waiting to be discovered by whomever happens to apprehend them.7
I. Discursive Christian Bioethics as an Oxymoron

Engelhardt views twentieth century bioethics as the projection of a failed
Enlightenment project, which sought to establish tenets of morality on the
basis of reason alone.8 As a species of Enlightenment discourse, mainstream
contemporary bioethics purports to be discursive and secular in its founda-
tions. As discursive, it rejects the idea that idiosyncratic, non-discursive
sources of knowledge (such as the insights of religious mystics) can be foun-
dational for the community of inquiry. As secular, it purports to reject premises
that presuppose a particular moral vision—especially if that moral vision is
religious in nature.
There is only one viable version of secular bioethics on Engelhardt’s
account—worked out in his second edition of The Foundations of Bioethics.
Engelhardt argues that there is no non-coercive way to establish one moral
vision over and against the others.9 On this basis, he concludes that secular
ethics must either retain neutrality or resort to force. But force is not a method
of ethical mediation (though it is a method of upholding standards established
through ethical mediation). Hence, secular bioethics must remain neutral. In
other words, secular ethics is a procedural ethics, devoid of substantive ethical
content. Engelhardt argues that the only plausible non-coercive, value-neutral
206 Griffin Trotter
procedure is a permission-gathering one, and articulates this idea in his

principle of permission: “Authority for actions involving others in a secular
pluralist society is derived from their permission” (1996, p. 122). For
Engelhardt, secular ethics founded in the principle of permission is as far as a
discursive ethics can go.
Sectarian bioethics, on the other hand, comes in as many varieties as there
are distinguishable, particular moral visions. In The Foundations of Christian
Bioethics, Engelhardt strives to articulate a sectarian bioethics for Traditional
(Orthodox) Christianity. On his view, Traditional Christian bioethics is trans-
formative, liturgical-ascetic, and experientially-based. It is transformative in
that it aids the individual in a process of turning away from a broken, sinful
self to a state of holiness or purification in which the subject is oriented
towards and receptive to God. It is liturgical-ascetic in that it prescribes a life
of communal devotion in sacramental worship with the intentional repulsion
of sinful impulses through the avoidance of actions, indulgences, and temp-
tations that confound the transformative effort (2000, p. 191). Finally, it is
experientially-based in that it employs an essentially practical, empirical,
performative focus that places discursive or theological analyses in the
background (p. 286).
For the Traditional Christian, ultimate, complete, and unchanging truth
has been available since the time of Jesus and is “at hand” (Mark 1:15; Matt.
4:17) for followers of Jesus, in the sense that it can be accessed through the
liturgical-ascetic transformation of individuals within a community of faith.
Christian ethics, which addresses general aspects of the path to this truth, was
accurately, reliably, and completely articulated by Jesus’ followers and early
Church fathers in the scriptures, liturgy, and spiritual practices of the first
millenium. Christian ethics, on Engelhardt’s view, is best regarded as thera-
peutic in nature (2000, p. 284)—as a path to the “self-authenticating, ultimate
truth” (p. 285) that is available only noetically (pp. 215-217) and only to those
who are spiritually purified and hence freed (however temporarily) from
temptation and sin. Hence, Christian ethics is not the ultimate truth, nor even
the telos of a Christian life; it is at most a partial embodiment, strongly instru-
mental in nature, of a deeper, mystical spirituality. At the same time, it is
clearly grounded in the noetic insight of saints and apostles who have
traversed their paths to holiness. Like Aristotle’s eudaimon, the Traditional
Christian views the telos as both origin and destination, and as the foundation
for rules and habits of right living. Unlike the eudaimon, the Traditional Christian
grounds the telos in a transcendent reality—stretching beyond the purview of
conceptual thinking and elusive to any individual, community, or polis
outside the Christian fold.
Because (1) the noetic insight that grounds Christian ethics depends on
experiential access to a transcendent God, and (2) this access is readily available
only for holy individuals who have successfully undertaken the protracted
regimens of Christian worship, it follows that (3) the axiomatic, noetically-

based foundations of Christian ethics are unavailable to discursive inquirers
locked in immanence. Discursive inquiry, as a knowledge-generating enter-
prise, appears to be isolated from the fonts of genuine (i.e., Christian) ethical
knowledge because it repels and repudiates, by its very methodology, the
sources of this knowledge. Instead, discursive bioethics that seeks more than
a permission-based modus vivendi is doomed to controversy and fragmentation,
as inquirers wallow in circular logic and unending explanatory regress. For
Engelhardt, content-generating discursive ethics is not only futile,10 it is self-
referentially inconsistent (since it requires axioms that its methodology
precludes), and it is potentially corruptive (since it diverts focus from the
Christian path to salvation). Discursive Christian ethics, on this view, is an
oxymoron.
II. Intermediate Bioethics as Inter-Communal Discursive

Bioethics for Sectarian Thinkers
The immediate task for intermediate bioethics is to fashion a modus vivendi.11
That is, intermediate bioethics, as a practical field, seeks through compromise
to create a provisional domain for peaceful coexistence between parties with
diverging visions about the good life, about the common good, and about the
optimal array of social rules and conventions that will promote them. The key
concept, procedurally speaking, is compromise. Intermediate bioethics is
wary of efforts to carve a quick consensus, since these are often contrived,
and often lead to coercion.12 A modus vivendi approach encourages inquiry by
respecting diverging belief systems and bringing their proponents into
dialogue.13 Because the threat of an enforced pseudo-consensus does not
preempt open discussion, prospects for inter-communal discourse are
enhanced.
This notion of intermediate bioethics is based on the conviction, largely
inspired by American philosophers Peirce and Royce,14 that the impulse to
throw out discursive inquiry is inexpedient. For sectarian thinkers—particu-
larly Traditional Christians, Buddhists, and other spiritual instrumentalists
who view ethics as a journey to holiness—intermediate bioethics is attractive,
in the first place, because it views ethics in richly instrumental terms: both (1)
as a means of getting from an undesirable state of affairs to a better one, and
(2) as a way of transforming and sanctifying “means” by embedding them in
ends. In intermediate bioethics, the undesirable state of affairs is moral
controversy and the better state of affairs it desires is social harmony
(understood primarily as peaceful coexistence rather than as social integration).
Intermediate bioethics sanctifies its means insofar as it begets an array of
practices and social virtues that are meaningful for those in the community of
inquiry, and part of the peaceful coexistence they desire.
208 Griffin Trotter
A second attractive feature of intermediate bioethics for sectarians is the

manner in which it generates discursive content—namely by introducing
principles, rules, and practices that facilitate peaceful coexistence. This
approach diverges from approaches that derive content-full moral visions
linearly—i.e., from fundamental ethical axioms and principles that are viewed
as self-legitimizing and inviolable in their own right, apart from ends such as
peaceful coexistence. As an instrumentality, intermediate bioethics is discur-
sively content-generating in the way that inquiry about how to ride a bicycle
would be discursively content-generating. In inquiry about bicycle riding,
epistemic content would generally take the form: “Technique X will help the
cyclist to get from point A to point B.” In intermediate bioethics, the form
would be: “Practice X will help the current array of moral acquaintances and
moral strangers to coexist peacefully.” This epistemic structure is closely
analogous to what we find in Traditional Christianity, where ethical claims
generally take the form: “Practice X will help purify us, bringing us closer to
God.” Such claims are true when the practice or technique does indeed generally
contribute to the predicted desirable end.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, intermediate bioethics is congenial
to sectarian thinkers because it does not expect them to bracket, reconstruct,
or dilute their particular sectarian ethical frameworks. Though intermediate
bioethics hopes for an ultimate moral consensus, it rejects the effort to concoct
a pallid, New Age universalism by distilling out robust elements of various
moral visions that others find offensive, unbelievable, or uncomfortable. To
the contrary, consensus in intermediate bioethics is likely to occur, if at all,
when one full-bodied moral vision displaces the others by recruiting free
individuals into its ranks. That is, moral consensus arises through competition
and conversion—not through deduction, distillation, and decree.
Despite the similarities, intermediate bioethics is distinguished from
sectarian bioethics by its explicitly discursive nature.15 To wit, intermediate
bioethics refrains from accepting the ethical axioms of any particular moral
tradition or community—except as tentative hypotheses to be discursively
examined, observed, and evaluated. This stance does not preclude represen-
tatives of various sectarian viewpoints from articulating and offering their
sectarian views for the community of inquiry, but it does preclude them from
foisting their moral vision, through coercion, on reluctant others. Hence,
intermediate bioethics stands outside the domain of liberal cosmopolitanism
(while admitting liberal cosmopolitan arguments), just as it stands outside the
domain of any particular religious tradition (while admitting religious argu-
ments). Non-forceful persuasion, conversion, and argument between aficiona-
dos of diverging moral communities are encouraged, but no one can proclaim
victory until all legitimate doubts have been entertained and laid to rest.
Intermediate bioethics can be undertaken at local, national, or even global
levels. At each level, mutual agreement about rules and practices that will
govern relations between particular individuals and particular moral

communities is the sole means of normative content-generation. When
provisional arrangements become widely enough accepted and practiced,
they solidify into norms and constitute a kind of knowledge-base, endorsed
by a deep consensus. At the global level, content is very sparse (contra liberal
cosmopolitan bioethicists who claim to have established a durable consensus
about issues such as brain death, informed consent, a right to health care, and
other still contentious matters). Content sources such as the Nuremberg Code
and the Helsinki Code lack global secular authority because they have not
been implemented through permission from an appropriate plurality of the
world’s moral communities. Whatever universal ethical norms we have in
health care—for instance, the imperative that physicians not torture patients
in order to extort higher fees—for the most part have emerged from routine
social interactions, and not from bioethics, international politics, or any other
formal deliberative process.
Engelhardt has argued that ethical norms are unlike scientific norms in
that only the latter are amenable to empirical verification (1996, pp. 39, 53).
But this claim is disputable—depending on the prevailing account of the
structure and meaning of ethical norms. On at least some accounts, ethical
norms are amenable to empirical verification in much the same way we verify
beliefs in chemistry, physics, and biology. Ethical norms are claims that cer-
tain practices will enhance experience in some specific way—by allowing
people to coexist peacefully (intermediate bioethics), by bringing people
closer to God (Traditional Christianity), by maximizing happiness (utilitari-
anism), by expressing freedom of will (Kantianism), and so forth. Insofar as
these claims can be tested, the ethical norms are verifiable. They are verified
when those who live according to the norms actually experience the predicted
outcomes—just as chemists’ claims about the qualitative analysis of silver-
containing compounds are verified by the (inter-subjective) perception of a
black precipitate when certain reagents are mixed. Unlike non-moral claims,16
ethical claims are particularly difficult to test, since to be tested they must: (1)
be actually believed and enacted by an existing moral community, and (2) be
congruent enough with the moral presuppositions of those outside the enact-
ing community for the experience of the enacting community to be translat-
able and compelling. Engelhardt provides no argument to prove that these
obstacles cannot be overcome in the long run (there is indeed no sound argu-
ment for such a negative thesis).17 Yet overcoming them will certainly be an
arduous and prolonged task. The fact that physical and biological inquiries
have progressed further than ethical inquiry is a manifestation of the magnitude
of these obstacles—not a repudiation of the notion of ethical inquiry.
In sum, intermediate bioethics is an instrumental ethics that mediates
moral controversies between divergent moral communities and aims at
peaceful coexistence. It plays by the ground-rules of secular bioethics in that
210 Griffin Trotter
it honors the principle of permission, but differs from Engelhardt’s strictly

secular bioethics in that: (1) it admits, and strives to analyze and understand,
arguments from divergent, sectarian moral communities,18 (2) it aims to gen-
erate ethical content, and (3) it optimistically holds that barriers between
moral strangers can be worn down through dialogue, competition, and/or
conversion.
III. Can Good Traditional Christians Participate Meaningfully

in Intermediate Bioethics?
Intermediate bioethics invites Traditional Christians and other sectarians
to “come as they are” into its community of inquiry. However, given that
Traditional Christians are already satisfied that they have discovered the
ultimate sources of morality and truth, is there any reason they should accept
this invitation? Why would a Traditional Christian want to participate in a
community of inquiry that presumably would take millennia to arrive at the
threshold of truths that are currently at hand for those within the Church?19
And in what sense could a Traditional Christian participant in the machinations
of intermediate bioethics even be regarded as a genuine inquirer?
In this concluding section, I will argue that Traditional Christians have
something relevant and interesting to offer to intermediate bioethics, that
they have good reasons to participate in intermediate bioethics, and that
an inquiring role for Traditional Christians in intermediate bioethics need
not diminish their religious convictions. My argument will proceed in
five stages. First, I will argue that—contrary to prevalent opinion—noetic
experience provides suitable hypotheses for discursive inquiry within
intermediate bioethics. Second, I will argue that these hypotheses (includ-
ing the hypothesis that they evolve from noesis) can be evaluated in a
manner similar (though not identical) to other, non-noetically-founded
premises. Third, I will argue that, despite access to the self-authenticating,
complete, and ultimate truth, most Traditional Christians lack fully com-
prehensive, secure ethical knowledge. Fourth, I will argue that discursive
inquiry (as in intermediate bioethics) can be a useful means of developing
the ethical knowledge that Traditional Christians need to develop. Finally, I
will argue that participation in a discursive community of inquiry, outside
the faith community, is a potentially useful (though also potentially
dangerous) means for Christians to fulfill their duty to spread the
doctrines of Christianity across the globe.
A. Noetic experience provides suitable hypotheses for discursive

inquiry.
Charles Peirce—arguably philosophy’s deepest thinker about the generation
of hypotheses for discursive inquiry—has argued at length that hypothesis
formation, or retroduction, is a complicated form of induction that cannot be

traced to a faculty of pure reason or rational intuition. To the contrary, he
argues, retroduction proceeds from a process of musement that engages the
whole sign-interpreting apparatus—emotions, passions, will, desire, and
cognition inclusive. As Raposa observes, Peirce at times regarded musement
as “a form of therapy, designed to facilitate religious perceptions” that ideally
“evolves into religious meditation, becomes a type of prayer, filling the heart
and mind of the Muser with the love of God” (1989, p. 151).
Similarities between Peirce’s description of hypothesis-formation through
musement and the generation of Christian insight through the purification of
nous are apparent.20 In the first place, both are integrative activities requiring
purity of focus. Christian nous, like Peirce’s power of reflection, is an indis-
creet power that operates properly only when the other powers—“appetitive”
(desire) and “incensive” (vehemence) in the usual Orthodox scheme—are
aligned properly.21 Thus, Maximos the Confessor writes of the intellect’s
“fawning friendship for the flesh” (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, p. 325)
and claims that “an intellect agitated by passions is beset by impassioned
conceptual images” (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, pp. 76-77). Nous
(intellect) is not entirely distinct from desire and vehemence, but rather manifests
a right measure of these powers in its natural operation. Likewise, a “pure”
nous is not devoid of desire and vehemence; it is devoid of passion (which
occurs with unnatural manifestations of desire and vehemence).22
Second, both Peirce and Christian Fathers such as Maximos firmly reject
the fact/value distinction. For these thinkers, claims about “what is the case”
are not strictly distinguished from claims about “what we ought to do.”
Indeed, it is a central tenet of Orthodoxy that right opinions about metaphys-
ical and cosmological issues (such as the Trinity and its functions) have ethical
as well as theoretical import. They help bring us closer to God. Maximos
holds that all “discourses of our Lord” contain four elements: (1) command-
ments, (2) doctrines, (3) threats, and (4) promises (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware,
1981, p. 69). The admixture of these elements indicates that Maximos—like
Peirce—views the fact/value distinction as a polarity along a continuum.
Third, both Peirce and the Christians hold that the motive for discernment
is the inquirer’s sense that she is lacking something. The discursive account of
what she lacks is described differently from various points on the fact/value
continuum—from the factual side as a firm belief; from the evaluative side as a
good plan; and more holistically perhaps as a well-ordered life. Discernment,
then, is the child—and the antidote—of restless longing and sin.
The major distinction between Peircean musement and Orthodox Christian
contemplation as adjuncts to the ethical life (setting aside Peirce’s liturgical
separation from the Orthodox Church), is that Peirce seems to focus more on
outward objects and events, while Traditional Christians tend to look inwardly.23
But this is a matter of degree and does not affect the ability of musement and
212 Griffin Trotter
contemplation to generate discursive content. In both cases, claims emerge

and these claims can be regarded as hypotheses for discursive analysis.
Whether these claims constitute adequate discursive hypotheses will hinge
on their analyzability.
B. Hypotheses derived from noesis can be evaluated in a manner
similar to other hypotheses.
Noetic experience24 is generally disregarded by discursive inquirers
because it is a special form of experience that is not available to all. As such,
noetic experience fails both as a direct object of inquiry25 and as a form of
experience that can verify ethical hypotheses. On careful examination, this
interpretation is unsound.
According to Christian doctrine, noetic experience is potentially available
to all human inquirers, and it is both a source of Christian teachings and a
way in which Christians apprehend and experientially verify truth. Though
the experience of a transcendent God is quite distinct in ontological terms
from what transpires in the realm of immanence, from the standpoint of
discursive epistemology there are important similarities.
According to Traditional Christianity, noetic experience, like the experiences
that verify scientific hypotheses, is reproducible (nature, after all, is full of
God’s grace and love, and all are called to receive it). That is why, for
instance, various holy fathers agree on the tenets of Christian ethics. They
acquire this knowledge through a common, experiential source, which they
approach, through grace, in the liturgical-ascetic discipline. When a
would-be prophet or mystic interprets an alleged instance of noetic experi-
ence in a manner incongruent with the interpretations of other Christians,
it is taken as evidence that the experience was not a genuine encounter
with God (likely due to the fact that the subject has not undergone a proper
and complete spiritual transformation).26 In similar fashion, scientists who
make observations that diverge from others in the community of inquiry
(for instance, a scientist who observes pink elephants whenever he blows
his duck whistle) is thought to suffer from an aberration in perception (perhaps
due to large quantities of Scotch imbibed prior to his experiments) rather
than as offering evidence that what others perceive as ducks are really pink
elephants.
When Traditional Christians say that fundamental insights and noetic
experience are not ordinarily available to those outside the Church, they are
not claiming that these insights and experiences are beyond the reach of any
particular individual. They claim only that non-Christians must first embrace
Christian teachings, and then undergo the rigors of spiritual transformation.
But this qualification is neither radical nor unusual. As we observed earlier, it
is a property of every ethical hypothesis that it can be verified only when it is
first believed and enacted by an existing moral community.
We also observed that Traditional Christianity views Christian ethics

instrumentally, as a tool for purifying and transforming Christians so that
they are receptive to God. In this respect, the Christian regimen is analogous
to the tools of scientists. For instance, a scientist who wants to examine the
minutiae of biological cells with an electron microscope needs to undergo a
regimen of study and practice. If this regimen is followed faithfully, he will be
able to use the microscope for its intended purpose. Most of the rest of us are
unable to wield the microscope, but trust the scientist’s observations because:
(1) we know they have been (or can be) reproduced by others who have
learned to use the microscope, and (2) we trust that the development and use
of electron microscopes has proceeded in accordance with other knowledge that
is equally well verified. Given the plurality of moral systems and the difficulty
in reproducing and reporting ethical experiences, it is less likely that religious
insights—allegedly reproducible for those who faithfully undertake the
prescribed regimen—will command such wide assent, but in theory they could.
The Christian neophyte, new to the Church, far from pure, and relatively
unpracticed in the Church’s liturgy and customs, is akin to the non-scientist
who trusts the electron microscopist’s conclusions without having the ability
to reproduce them personally. In typical instances, the new Christian has
embraced Christianity without actually experiencing the type of verification
that comes with purification and advanced noesis—presumably because of
impressive evidence and testimony acquired from trusted sources. Hence, in
The Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church (Anonymous, 1997, pp.
12-13), the following signs are proposed as verifying evidence when “the
Church proposes the doctrine of Divine Revelation and of holy Scripture to
people for the first time”:
1. The sublimity of this doctrine, which witnesses that it cannot be
any invention of man’s reason.
2. The purity of this doctrine, which shows that it is from the all-pure
mind of God.
3. Prophecies.
4. Miracles.
5. The mighty effect of this doctrine upon the hearts of men, beyond
all but Divine Power.27
These signs constitute tangible premises for discursive inquirers. That the
Orthodox Church employs them discursively in dialogue with persons outside
the faith is neither remarkable nor unexpected. With God’s grace, they become
effective tools of Christian evangelism.
Of course, once inside the Christian fold, inquirers have a source of
authority for mediating ethical conflicts. Is there still a role for discursive
inquiry undertaken by Christians in community with persons outside the
faith?
214 Griffin Trotter
C. Traditional Christians lack fully comprehensive, secure ethical

knowledge.
Christian doctrine may be complete (in the sense of covering all the
general norms of human behavior), but it is not comprehensive (in the sense
of interpreting these norms for all the contingencies of human experience).28
Traditional Christians disagree, for instance, about ethical questions (such as
when it is permissible to lie) and political questions (such as the proper means
of distributing property or the justification for war). These disagreements are
not the result of content-divides between religious ethics and secular ethics,
or between private ethics and public ethics. To the contrary, they reflect the
fact that standards of Christian morality are not absolutely determinate.
Though the basic commandments or principles are known, their application
in particular spheres and cases is still somewhat up for grabs. Hence, in the
Introduction to his book examining contemporary moral issues from the
standpoint of Orthodoxy, Stanley S. Harakas writes:
The Orthodox Church has no ready formulae and pat answers for many of the
contemporary problems which we face in our modern technological society.
The best which can be done is for some Orthodox Christians living today to
seek to examine, test and evaluate these new and challenging questions of our
time from the perspective of the Orthodox worldview. (Harakas, 1982, p. 8)
The degree of indeterminacy in Christian bioethics seems to be underplayed
to some degree by Engelhardt, perhaps because of his (understandable) eagerness
to exhibit the yawning chasm between Christian bioethics and its counterparts.
For instance, Engelhardt employs several passages from St. John Chrysostom
justifying physicians’ use of deception to show how Christian bioethics
diverges from “the accepted standard American version of bioethics” on telling
the truth (2000, pp. 363). But many Orthodox Christians are more stringent
than Chrysostom about truth-telling.29 Further, Chrysostom’s comments on
lying may not be the most reliable source for Traditional Christians, coming
as they did in the wake of a scandal about his deception of friend Basil in a
mutual compact that each would accept the priesthood if both men were
called.30 Engelhardt rightly observes that deceit is handled “within a spiritual
therapeutic context” (p. 360), with concern for the spiritual development of
the deceiver and all others involved. Though this emphasis on spiritual well-
being is alien to standard American bioethics, the concern with well-being
certainly is not. The secular dialogue about deception parallels the Christian
one in many ways—and in both cases precise guidance on circumstances that
permit deception is elusive.
The interpretation of Christian norms is a content-generating process,
necessary to some degree in the lives of all Christians. Of course, this process
can be undertaken as a “Christians only” affair—much as the Jews kept to
themselves in developing mishnah and midrash as interpretations of Torah.31
But that risks neglect of Christian teachings about the limitless manifestations
of God’s grace, the work of the Holy Spirit, and God’s command to help bring
non-believers into the fold.
D. Discursive inquiry (as in intermediate bioethics) can be a useful

means of developing the ethical knowledge that Traditional
Christians need to develop.
Alluding to the doctrine that nature is full of God’s grace, and that the
Holy Spirit can descend on anyone, Engelhardt cites Orthodox speculation
about Chinese mystic Lao Tzu—and the possibility that Lao Tzu experienced
Christ before His Incarnation. From the same volume Engelhardt quotes
St. Seraphim of Sarov:
Though not with the same power as in the people of God [the Hebrews], never-
theless the presence of the Spirit of God also acted in the pagans who did not
know the true God, because even among them God found for Himself chosen
people…Though the pagan philosophers also wandered in the darkness of
ignorance of God, yet they sought the Truth which is beloved by God; and on
account of this God-pleasing seeking, they could partake of the Spirit of God,
for its is said that the nations who do not know God practice by nature the
demands of the law and do what is pleasing to God. (2000, p. 215)
Scriptural allusions (Rom. 2:14-15) to a natural ability to apprehend moral
law led Church fathers to elaborate a moral epistemology similar in some
respects to later accounts of moral sense philosophers such as Hutcheson and
Butler, who proposed that humans possess a (corruptible) faculty, analogous
to vision, for discerning right from wrong. In this vein, Saint Gregory of Nyssa
writes that “the man who purifies the eye of his soul will enjoy an immediate
vision of God” (Hopko, 1976, p. 46). However, unlike Hutcheson and Butler,
Orthodox Christians believe that the soul “sees” ethical truth not primarily
by looking outward at the world, but by looking inward, to the “Kindgom of
God within” (Luke 17:21). Non-believers, like all human beings, are created
in God’s image, and bathed in God’s love and grace. For Traditional Christianity,
it is far from inconceivable that persons outside the faith—somehow in touch
with a divinely sustained, deep-seated sense of morality—could in some
circumstances help Christians navigate ethical hurdles (such as how to write
an adequate DNAR order).
Another reason for enlisting persons outside Orthodox Christianity as fellow
inquirers is that some discursive communities of inquiry, such as communities
engaged in intermediate bioethics, employ a method of inquiry that is well
suited to producing the kind of fissures and openings that allow God’s grace
to do its work. I refer to the method of compromise (Trotter, 2002), embodied
in modus vivendi deliberations. Based as it is on the principle of permission,
this method preserves the great prerogative of created humanity—modeled
by the Theotokos—a freedom to acknowledge and obey, or repudiate and
ignore, God’s word. It also provides a purchase for Orthodoxy, in that it
216 Griffin Trotter
admits all testimony, peacefully offered, on whatever terms the inquirers

can negotiate.
When Christians forge a “compromise” with members of diverging moral
communities, it does not mean that Christians have decided that they will
live in a manner that departs from the norms of Christian living. To the con-
trary, it means that, while recognizing that it would be impossible, ineffec-
tual, or otherwise wrong to enforce certain Christian standards among those
with diverging moral visions,32 Christians believe it benefits Christians
and non-Christians alike to agree on rules of conduct. Such rules are regarded
as compromises not because they prevent Christians from living according to
Christian precepts, but rather because they fall short of these precepts and
hence deprive the greater community (Orthodox and Heterodox inclusive) of
the better, more substance-rich moral life that could be achieved when the
precepts are voluntarily embraced by all human beings.
Ethical deliberation towards a modus vivendi generates relevant ethical
content for Traditional Christians because: (1) its provisional norms serve as
specifications for Christian moral conduct within a particular ethically pluralistic
social milieu (not in the sense of exhausting the responsibilities of faithful
Christians, but rather in the sense of specifying political and/or ethical norms that
Christians can agree to under given or similar circumstances), (2) its practice
requires that Christians develop habits of conduct that themselves serve as speci-
fications of Christian ethical commandments, and (3) it is a potential means for
bringing persons outside the faith into closer contact with Orthodox Christianity.
E. Participation in a discursive community of inquiry, outside the

faith community, is a potentially useful (though also potentially
dangerous) means for Christians to fulfill their duty to spread
the doctrines of Christianity across the globe.
Whenever individuals with diverging moral visions are brought together
to mediate moral disagreements, there is potential for ethical transformation.
This prospect is enhanced when deliberation is non-coerced—as in interme-
diate bioethics, where inquirers seek only permission for a humble modus
vivendi. Because Christians are commanded to love their neighbors, and to
provide a tangible and compelling witness to persons outside the faith, the
transformative potential of intermediate bioethics and of similar pursuits is
of interest. This potential evangelical feature of co-inquiry between Orthodox
and Heterodox is attractive, but also dangerous insofar as: (1) not every ethical
transformation is a good transformation—Orthodox Christians would need
to be on guard about subtle and not-so-subtle sources of temptation and corruption;
and (2) the modus vivendi methodology is by no means a prevalent norm in
contemporary international, national, or local deliberation—Orthodox Christians
would need to be on guard to resist coercive politics deceptively marketed
in the raiment of “democracy,” “human rights,” and “international law.”
Traditional Christians who would be intermediate bioethicists are at risk

of being seduced, persuaded, or contaminated by doctrines, sentiments, and
arguments that countervail their Christian commitments. Though interaction with
the Heterodox is commonplace and expected, Orthodox Christians who choose
vocations in fields such as bioethics, politics, or public health willingly undertake
a major burden of discourse, with its potential diversions and temptations. On
the other hand, if all Traditional Christians eschewed bioethics, the results could
be disastrous (since they would not be represented in crucial deliberations).33
In public deliberation, whenever the vocabulary, the rules of discourse, and
the discussion are all framed or dominated by Heterodox, the prospects for Ortho-
dox Christians are unlikely to be good. In 1978, the Standing Conference of Canon-
ical Orthodox Bishops in America (SCOBA) observed the thirtieth anniversary of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by urging cooperation with
President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to ratify elements of the UDHR in congress (Hara-
kas, 1982, pp. 132-133). One might take this as a paradigmatic example of
co-inquiry between Orthodox Christians and members of other, diverging moral
communities. However, this example is far from constituting the sort of coopera-
tive inquiry I have promoted in intermediate bioethics. To wit: the UDHR is per-
haps not so much a modus vivendi as a distillation of Western secular morality
formulated without significant input from Orthodox Christianity; many liberal
cosmopolitans have sought to inflict it by force; and the endorsement by SCOBA
seems to have little evangelical potential, since it seems to send the message that
fundamental, content-full ethical norms can be derived on secular terms without
taking account of major spiritual traditions. This is not to say that SCOBA erred;
the only claim is that the SCOBA endorsement is potentially dangerous, and a far
cry from the kind of cooperative inquiry I have endorsed.
Perhaps, then, only a subset of Traditional Christians is suited for
intermediate bioethics as a serious form of inquiry. In any case, it should be
clear: (1) that discursive bioethical inquiry, as intermediate bioethics aimed at
a modus vivendi, is a feasible, content-generating alternative to strictly secular
bioethics, (2) that the modus vivendi will be interpreted and integrated in different
ways by sectarian inquirers from various, diverging moral communities, (3) that
Traditional Christians—members of a particular sect with a well-established,
robust, and complete moral vision—can (and some perhaps ought to) participate
in intermediate bioethics without sacrificing their moral beliefs, and (4) that
intermediate bioethics, undertaken by Traditional Christians, can generate content
acceptable to Traditional Christians. Hence, “discursive Christian bioethics,”
is not an oxymoron.
Notes
1. For the purpose of this essay, “secular” will be understood to denote the absence
of substantive ethical input from idiosyncratic sources (such as religions or
218 Griffin Trotter
particular cultural traditions) that cannot be verified by inquiry into immanent

reality (acknowledging that the category “immanent reality” is tenuous insofar as
it is divorced from transcendence and “reality” construed as somehow indepen-
dent of God). Engelhardt’s working conception of secular in The Foundations of
Christian Bioethics is similar: “Secular in this volume will be used, unless otherwise
noted, to identify those moral frameworks that are neutral with respect to religious,
including particular, quasi-religious cultural viewpoints. A viewpoint is secular in
the sense of not being the morality of a religious or particular worldview, but of
humans as such” (2000, p. 45, 2 f).
2. Engelhardt also recognizes a role for discursive analysis within sectarian Christian
bioethics—for elaborating, explicating and organizing tenets of a sacred theology—
but emphasizes that “it cannot establish a content-full, moral vision” (2000, p. 189).
The foundations of Christian moral knowledge are, for Engelhardt, found only in
noetic experience. Noesis provides the foundation and content; discursis is an
imperfect but useful means for articulating it.
3. Observing the necessity of fundamental axioms—and the plurality of supposedly
self-evident premises that present themselves as axioms for secular inquiry—
Engelhardt asks: “whose axiomicity, whose self-evidence?” (2000, p. 217).
4. The most complete version of my critique of Engelhardt’s account of the genesis of
the principle of permission is in “Loyalty in the Trenches: Practical Teleology for
Office Clinicians Responding to Terrorism” (2004).
5. Engelhardt comments on the existence of non-discursive epistemologies—including
the noetic epistemology of Traditional Christianity (2000, p. 236).
6. Moreno (1995; 1999) claims bioethics is a consensus-seeking social reform
movement founded on a naturalist version of inquiry. Stevens (2000) claims it
is socio-political legitimation strategy. Sherwin, who agrees with Stevens that
bioethics often functions as implicit cover for the socio-political status quo,
claims it optimally should be a liberation movement based on a hermeneutic
of suspicion (1992, pp. 76-95). These controversial claims specify the move-
ment too deeply. For our purposes, it should be enough to hold that bioethics
is oriented to the mediation of ethical controversy in medicine and the health-
sciences, and that it is committed to inquiry that is: (1) interdisciplinary, (2)
inter-communal, and (3) democratic in the minimalist sense that it seeks to
establish standards of political and ethical mediation that are consistent with
the core commitments of democratic nations. There are, of course, controver-
sies about the substance of these core democratic commitments, and about the
disciplines and moral communities that are best suited to make substantial
contributions in bioethics.
7. This doctrine of the historicity of inquiry sets intermediate bioethics apart from
Platonism. Though Platonists might be induced to join in its deliberations, they
would not acknowledge the “content-generating” office of intermediate bioethics.
To the contrary, they would regard its results as terminally provisional, without
promise of yielding genuine knowledge. I fear that Traditional Christians seduced
by Platonic epistemology might raise similar doubts. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware,
for instance, observe that nous, or intellect, is “the highest faculty in man, through
which—provided it is purified—he knows God or the inner essences or principles
of created things by means of direct apprehension or spiritual perception” (1981,
p. 384). We must ask about the nature of the first “or” in this sentence—do the
authors mean to present the inner essences or principles of created things as
independent objects of spiritual perception (strongly disjunctive “or”), or are
these essences entwined with their creator (weakly disjunctive “or”)? In ethics, the
former, Platonic spin begets dizzying perplexities, such as Plato’s Euthyphro problem
(where piety must be either: (1) an idea wholly distinct from God and desirable for
its own distinct essence rather than a projection of God, or (2) lacking appeal, but
loved in a purely arbitrary way by God). For the historicist, created things exhibit
the stamp of their creator, such that we can approach God through the study of
His creations, and creation is good, not strictly in itself, but precisely as God’s
creation.
8. This provision, that bioethics seeks to establish the tenets of morality based on
reason alone, is not part of the minimalist conception of bioethics assumed in this
essay. Though Engelhardt is undoubtedly correct in his apprehension that many
prominent bioethicists market their views as more strongly supported by reason
than competing views, there are few bioethicists who claim to establish their
positions through an appeal to reason alone.
9. Engelhardt rightly acknowledges that a “general conversion” to a specific content-rich
moral vision is a possible means of settling moral controversies non-coercively
(1996, p. 35). His secular ethics is a temporizing device, pending this presumably
salutary development.
10. Engelhardt does not say that there is no role at all for discursive reason in Christian
ethics. But reason is confined, on his view, to deducing the consequences and
specifying the application of fundamental premises that arise only from, and are
confirmed only by, the veridical experience of God. Even in this capacity, reason is
frequently a blunt instrument, as Engelhardt demonstrates in his analysis of
TEYKU problems in Jewish ethics (1996, pp. 129-131). A TEYKU problem is one
that cannot be solved through discursive treatment of the moral law inherited by
God. The only solution to TEYKU problems is a verdict from God—passed down,
for instance, through a prophet such as Elijah. For those maintaining fundamentalist
religious moral visions, understood in the sense described by Engelhardt (2000, p. xv),
discursive reason works only in the company of grace.
11. For a contemporary defense of modus vivendi liberalism, see John Gray, Two Faces
of Liberalism (2000, pp. 105-139) or Patrick Neal, “Vulgar Liberalism” (1997, pp.
185-205), or Stuart Hampshire, Justice is Conflict (2000, pp. 25-56, 79-98). Each of
these authors promotes a more left-leaning account of how a contemporary modus
vivendi should work out than what you will find in Engelhardt or in my own work.
These differences hinge—among other things—on the former authors’ more
public-minded (and in Hampshire’s case, frankly socialist) conceptions of property.
They are right, in my estimation, that property is an evaluative (rather than value-
neutral) construction, and that it should be worked out as a modus vivendi. Though
I believe that something close to Engelhardt’s libertarian concept is a more likely
product, at least in the United States, I do not view his or any other account of
property as a built-in feature of secular ethics based on permission.
12. My concept of “Whig bioethics,” elaborated and defended elsewhere (2002) is in
essence the same as “intermediate bioethics” elaborated here. In the Whig essay, I
argue at length for compromise-based methods of mediation.
220 Griffin Trotter
13. The notion of mediation-focused inquiry deserves explanation, since mediation is

often regarded as an agreement-producing rather than a knowledge-producing
process. Intermediate bioethics seeks to mediate ethical disputes between parties
with differing ethical theories, differing ethical principles, or differing interpreta-
tions of common ethical theories or principles. Knowledge is produced in this
process insofar as: (1) moral opinions and practices are accurately inventoried, (2)
particular practices are correlated with particular consequences, (3) one moral
community comes to a better understanding of another moral community, (4)
members of a particular moral community come to understand their own commit-
ments in a deeper or clearer way, or (5) certain ethical claims are shown to have
bearings on all moral communities. Regarding (1), an inventory of moral opinions
and practices is necessary fairly to construct a roster of parties who should be pres-
ent to grant or withhold permission in the negotiation of ethical controversies.
Regarding (2), much of secular bioethics is occupied with arguments that certain
policies (e.g., the legalization of assisted suicide) will lead to certain consequences
(e.g., coaxing individuals to choose suicide). These arguments can be powerful
mediating tools even under the principle of permission, since presumably citizens
will be prone to granting permission for policies that produce consequences they
all favor (despite diverging underlying reasons). Regarding (3), better understand-
ing of others’ moral beliefs seems a likely, if not inevitable result of engaging them
in deliberation or negotiation. Regarding (4), knowledge of a discursive structure
that articulates a particular moral vision is useful to individuals tasked with rep-
resenting that moral vision in negotiations over the terms of cooperation between
divergent moral communities. Finally, regarding (5), the demonstration of a
sound ethical theory, principle or interpretation is a potent mediating tool. Even
Engelhardt allows that there is a legitimate object of knowledge in this realm—
namely his principle of permission, which he proposes as the only sound basis for
his mediating-conception of secular bioethics. More robust knowledge is possible
if proponents of true doctrines are able to convert others to their point of view. It
is important to observe that conversion and persuasion are still available to
participants in secular debate under the principle of permission. Even if there is
no way of rationally demonstrating the superiority of one moral vision over and
against the others (a point that Engelhardt never proves), it may still be possible
to persuade others that one moral vision is better than another.
14. The direct object of mediation in secular decision-making—agreement about how to
proceed in the face of particular moral dilemmas or controversies—is typically not so
much an object of knowledge as a tentative compromise. Intermediate bioethics is
concerned primarily with generating the methods, theories, principles and data that
facilitate such decisions. More often than not, actual decisions fall to citizens, practitio-
ners, administrators and policy makers who have the opportunity to appropriate
input from bioethics. Intermediate bioethics, then, is an account of bioethics as a field
of inquiry that develops tools for mediating ethical controversies in biomedicine.
These tools include a knowledge base that bioethics seeks to develop—but ethical
knowledge in a robust, substance-rich sense is rarely achieved or even directly sought.
This account of the office of bioethics diverges significantly from that of many contem-
porary leaders in secular bioethics—as well it should, since these leaders typically
eschew the principle of permission we have tentatively granted in this essay.
15. Regrettably, there is no room in this study to address the thought of pragmatists
Peirce and Royce. Nor can I delve at length into the ideas of important contemporary
interpreters such as Susan Haack. I should note, however, that these thinkers
exhibit important epistemic similarities to Engelhardt, such as: (1) recognizing the
social nature of scientific inquiry (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 83; Royce, 1968, pp. 322-331;
Peirce, 1992b, pp. 149-151; Trotter, 1997, pp. 148-149, 273), (2) subscribing to falli-
bilism in discursive metaphysics and ethics (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 38; Trotter, 2000,
pp. 84-90), (3) recognizing that the right and the good cannot be reconciled “unless
one assumes a harmony between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace
grounded in God” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 85; Royce, 1995, pp. 163-185), and (4) hold-
ing that a hard-and-fast dualism between nature and grace is an aberration of
secular vocabularies employed by those who ignore grace (Engelhardt, 1996, p. 31;
Peirce, 1992c, pp. 250-251; Peirce, 1998b, p. 158). There is, however, a critically
important point of basic moral epistemology on which these thinkers diverge from
Engelhardt. Engelhardt is skeptical of the experimental method in ethics, because
he believes there is no way that the community of inquiry can confirm or falsify
moral claims (2000, p. 39; 1996, p. 75). From the pragmatist standpoint, this move
is erroneous on two fronts: (1) Engelhardt overestimates the degree of certainty
that can be obtained in experimental sciences such as biology and physics because
he doesn’t recognize the fallibility of confirmations and falsifications based on
mutual observation (Royce and Peirce, contra Engelhardt, are thoroughgoing
fallibilists about logic, mathematics, and the empirical sciences); and (2) Engelhardt
fails to recognize the manner in which moral visions are confirmed and falsified
over the long run. This divergence can be traced, in part, to Engelhardt’s reliance
on a basically linear, non-conative account of discursive reasoning. Regarding
linearity, Engelhardt holds that moral arguments must always begin with first
premises or axioms, such that the epistemic strength of any system of beliefs is
assessed by determining the antecedent support (in self-evidence or in observa-
tion) for these axioms. Though pragmatists acknowledge, with foundationalists
such as Engelhardt, that certain beliefs are better justified and more fundamental
for discursive reason than others, they also recognize that these quasi-foundation-
al beliefs are themselves open to revision, especially when they countervail a large
mass of other beliefs (even if none of these other beliefs, of itself, is better sup-
ported than the foundational beliefs). Haack refers to this pragmatic epistemology
as “foundherentism,” designating its middle ground between epistemic founda-
tionalism and epistemic coherentism (Haack, 1993, 73-94). Interestingly, Engelhardt
has exhibited a tincture of support for the idea that communities bearing discordant
moral visions are in amiable competition, and that moral truths may be disclosed
if we refrain from interfering with the competition (2001, p. xiii). Regarding cona-
tion, Engelhardt (following Kant and other Enlightenment figures) seems to take
it as an axiom that discursive reasoning excludes will, grace, or any volition-giv-
ing influence. For Peirce and Royce, discursive reasoning is sign-cognitive reason-
ing, which is ineradicably conative.
16. The term “discursive” is somewhat elusive. I will accept a standard semiotic
interpretation—the view that discursive inquiry is a method of belief fixation
undertaken by a community of inquiry interpreting signs through arguments. For
discursive inquiry to proceed, there must be a perceived overlap in the experience
222 Griffin Trotter
of inquirers (such that they jointly recognize a certain object, event or concept as a
sign for interpretation), and enough of a common vocabulary to allow meaningful
communication. That is why the experience of religious mystics is not admitted at
face value in a community of discursive inquiry—it is not a common object that
can be evaluated with a common vocabulary. The notion that discursive inquiry
must be “purely rational” or dictated by “reason alone” is ludicrous, since these
categories are vacuous. As Peirce and others have argued, semiotic inquiry is
inherently integrative, combining subjective, volitional, and cognitive elements.
Though Peirce prefers “scientific” forms of inquiry, where belief is fixated through
empirical evaluation of well-constructed hypotheses (Peirce, 1992a), this is not the
only conceivable method of discursive inquiry. Belief fixation through a priori
arguments is discursive. Belief fixation through authority (i.e., on the say so of
someone in authority) or tenacity (i.e., through stubborn adherence) is not
discursive, but may be justified through discursive argument.
17. A purely “non-moral” claim is merely a useful fiction, since it is always possible to
argue that any particular classification scheme or vocabulary utilized in scientific
descriptions (such as the use of a scheme that reduces matter into an inventory of
constitutive elements) is morally wrong-headed. We choose to describe the world
in particular ways because our particular descriptions satisfy particular purposes.
But there is always a potential ethical argument against any particular purpose or
system of purposes.
18. Engelhardt writes that “the empirical sciences benefit from a discipline imposed
by an external reality, even when that reality always appears dressed in the expec-
tations of particular times, societies and persons. In the case of conflicts regarding
morals, such appeals to ‘facts’ do not appear to be as decisive, since what is at
stake are not simply the ‘facts,’ but evaluations of the ‘facts’” (1996, p. 39). But this
proposed duality between the empirical sciences and ethical inquiry is based on a
hard and fast fact/value distinction that is repudiated by a recognition of the eval-
uative component of scientific descriptions and the lack of direct access to any
“external reality” such as Engelhardt presupposes.
19. The suggestion that public discourse requires a deliberation-specific public
vocabulary that excludes religious concepts or premises derived from “private”
morality is popular, but impossible to defend (since any enforced public vocabulary
or standard of evidence begs the question in favor of particular, usually non-theistic,
moral visions, then establishes these moral visions by force). Contemporary
proponents of “deliberative democracy” (e.g., Thompson and Gutmann, 1996)
often implement this draconian strategy. Citing Thompson and Gutmann, Thomas
Halper observes: “When a leading explication of deliberative democracy evaluates
a series of policy controversies and concludes that a liberal response is required in
every case …, readers may begin to wonder whether deliberative democracy is a
corollary of pluralism or a tactic to be used against it” (2003, p. 11). Intermediate
bioethics, on the other hand, has no canonical vocabulary or standard—save for a
general conception of permission and the dictum that moral acquaintances should
negotiate using whichever terms and standards particular circumstances allow.
20. The inevitably long timeline for discursive moral inquiry is especially troublesome
for Christians, since they know that it is apt to be interrupted by the second coming
of Jesus Christ.
21. One apparent divergence between retroduction in Peircean musement and insight
in Christian spiritual seeking is that Peirce insists that retroduction “does not afford
security” (Peirce, 1998c, p. 441). But this passage refers to epistemic security from
the standpoint of discursis. Presumably this would not exclude the kind of psy-
chological certainty that accompanies a noetic encounter with God. Though Peirce
discourages rigid certainty in scientific inquiry, he notes that “in matters of right
and wrong, we sometimes cannot and ought not avoid it” (1998a, p. 56).
22. Following Plato (Republic, 434D-441C), Maximos the Confessor and most of the
other Greek Christian Fathers held that there are three powers of the soul: appetitive
(desire), incensive (vehemence), and intelligence (logikos, pertaining to the intellect
[nous] and in some accounts also to reason [dianoia]) (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware,
1981, pp. 193, 380, 384, 386). At times Maximos seems a little sloppy with his ter-
minology, writing that: (1) intelligence (logikos) is an active faculty tasked with
accomplishing the virtues, while intellect (nous) is a receptive faculty “which is
capable of receiving unconditionally all spiritual knowledge, of transcending the
entire nature of created beings and all that is known, and of leaving all ages behind
it” (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, pp. 181, 380), (2) intelligence (logikos) is one
of the powers of the intellect (nous), and that the former receives spiritual knowl-
edge (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, p. 202), (3) intelligence (logikos) and intel-
lect (nous) are both receptive faculties, the former receiving spiritual knowledge
and the latter receiving wisdom (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, pp. 217, 238),
and (4) intelligence (logikos) and intellect (nous) both exhibit active movements—
the former in investigating (occurring when “the intelligence, through the opera-
tion of the virtues, discerns its own cause with the help of some wise and profound
concept”), the latter in seeking (occuring when “the intellect, spurred on by intense
longing, moves spiritually, and in cognitive awareness, towards its own cause”)
(Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, p. 241). The equivocation in these passages
seems predicated in part on an implicit dual function of nous. On the one hand, it
is an imminently natural faculty employed by all humans, useful in the conceptual
apprehension of created objects and essences; on the other hand, it is a faculty of
divine communion through which Christians acquire spiritual knowledge and
manifest their deification (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, p. 193). Another
source of apparent confusion is that the powers of the soul are intermingled, so
that each expresses (and thus may be said to possess) the other. A third source (far
beyond my scope) may be the presence in holy scripture of a number of incompatible
linguistic conventions, which are difficult to transcribe into an authoritative Christian
spiritual taxonomy.
23. “Passion,” which involves an imbalance or other misuse of the powers, should be
distinguished from “natural” deployments of the intelligent, appetitive, and incensive
powers (though these latter two tend to be lightening rods for passion). Maximos teach-
es: “Impurity of soul lies in its not functioning in accordance with nature.” Impurity of
the intellect occurs with: (1) false knowledge, (2) ignorance of universals, (3) impas-
sioned thoughts, and (4) assent to sin (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, pp. 88-89).
24. Maximos writes: “Until you have been completely purified from the passions you
should not engage in natural contemplation through the images of sensible things;
for until then such images are able to mould your intellect so that it conforms to
passion” (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, p. 203).
224 Griffin Trotter
25. “Noetic experience” in this section denotes the activity of a purified nous (a.k.a.,
“intellect”), which, according to Orthodox Church fathers, is a source of direct
knowledge. I will focus on the noetic encounter with God, though noesis is also a
source of knowledge of created essences. This usage of “noetic experience” is quite
restrictive, since it excludes the activity of a contaminated nous (which also, techni-
cally, is noetic). As a source of direct, experiential, conceptual knowing, the nous is
akin to an inner sense (the “eye of the heart”), providing reason with concepts just
as the senses provides it with percepts. Hence, Maximos the Confessor writes:
“Things are outside the intellect, but the conceptual images of these things are
formed within it” (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1981, p. 77). Because Maximos
recognizes that the nous is subject to passions and corruption, he adds: “It is con-
sequently the intellect’s power to make good or bad use of these conceptual
images. Their wrong use is followed by the misuse of the things themselves.” We
should add bad discursive reasoning to the inventory of bad outcomes of corrupted
conceptual imagery.
26. By a “direct object of inquiry” I mean an experience shared by all inquirers (such
as the setting of the sun every evening). Noetic experience may be studied indi-
rectly, as in William James’ classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience (James, 1936,
pp. 58-76, 186-253, 370-420). Often such studies proceed on the assumption that
there is nothing special about noetic experience, and hence on the belief that the
self-authenticating nature of noetically-apprehended truths is actually only a
secondary interpretation of the experience—and a false one at that.
27. As Engelhardt points out (2000, pp. 97-108), the communal nature of interpretation
in Traditional Christianity is an important point, in which it diverges from Protestant
versions of Christianity, such as Kierkegaard’s, that represent the Christian experience
as essentially subjective.
28. These signs seem to be recorded in order of ultimate importance, but in reverse
order of their appeal to those outside the faith. Persons outside the faith are less
likely to apprehend the sublimity and purity of Christian doctrine than those who
have been purified. But miracles are impressive to all. And the lives of the apostles
and members of the Church are, on a broad scale, probably the most important
immanent signs of God’s presence for those outside the faith.
29. The distinction employed in this essay between “complete” and “comprehensive”
content is potentially confusing, since neither of these terms has a precise render-
ing in the natural language. A better way, perhaps, of making this distinction is to
use the terms “whole” and “determinate.” For instance, we might say that the
commands to love God and love the neighbor constitute the “whole” of ethics, while
conceding that the precise interpretation of these commands has not been determined
in every case. My thesis in this section is that Christian ethics, as it is currently articu-
lated in Traditional Christianity, is absolutely whole but not absolutely determinate.
30. Seventh century Egyptian ascetic Saint John Climacus condemned lying out of
prudence—including most lies designed to help others. He claims that lying is
permissible only when we are completely free of the urge to lie, “and then only in
fear and out of necessity” (Climacus, 1982, p. 161). Engelhardt cites Elder Paisios,
who warns that lying is a sin, and that lying on someone else’s behalf is half a
sin—to be undertaken only for “significant things” (2000, p. 386). Though there
seems to be agreement about this conclusion in Orthodox Christianity, there also
seems to be quite a bit of divergence on the interpretation of “significant things.”

31. Chrysostom’s discussion of deception in Priesthood is delivered in the context of
autobiographical comments about his deception of Basil—which Chrysostom
defends as an instance of “prudent management.” J.N.D. Kelly notes that
Chrysostom’s admirers have often been embarrassed by his lengthy discussion of
“how invaluable deceits (apatai) planned ‘with a salutary purpose’ can be in war,
in medical practice, even in the conduct of family life and relations with one’s
friends” (Kelly, 1995, p. 26).
32. Kee writes: “Jewish teachers began to expand and add to the written Law a growing
body of oral interpretation in which new applications of the ancient precepts were
offered and new institutions dealt with that were not anticipated in the ancient
laws themselves. In order to lend authority to the oral law, the tradition developed
that it was as old as the written law and had actually been given orally to Moses at
the same time he received the written Torah” (Kee, 1973, p. 126). In Orthodox
Christianity, new interpretations are recognized as new interpretations—and
viewed not as additional doctrinal content, but rather as guidelines that bring doctrine
determinately into the contemporary world. The distinction between doctrine and
the interpretation of doctrine, if I understand it correctly, is not based on discrete
logical or structural features of the content in question, so much as on generality
(which is always a matter of degree) and source. The most general, fundamental
concepts and guidelines, along with some fairly specific directives, come from Jesus
Christ and the early church fathers; these constitute doctrine. Subsequent content
comes only by way of interpreting doctrine.
33. Engelhardt notes, citing Canon 119 of the Council of Carthage (A.D. 418/19), that
“employing force to achieve conversions has from the beginning been forbidden”
(2000, pp. 363, 386).
34. If one can convince non-Christians not to do things like prostitution, striptease,
high-stakes gambling, and so forth, there will be fewer temptations to thwart
Christians. If one cannot convince others not to engage in such tempting diversions,
then it is still possible for Christians to negotiate a modus vivendi in which Christians
cordon themselves off from such activities.
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The Ethical Significance
of Moral Disagreement
Joseph Boyle
I. Moral Disagreement: Dealing with the Phenomenon

Sometimes a person’s moral judgment about some particular choice,
event, or situation is logically opposed to the judgment of another person
about that same choice, event, or situation. For example, Jim confidently
judges that it would be wrong for him to lie to Betty, an elderly family mem-
ber, about Betty’s dim life prospects, while another family member, Robert,
confidently judges that such a lie is morally required and that Jim should do
his part in carrying it out. Moral disagreements of this kind certainly appear
to be commonplaces of moral life.
Disagreements such as this one might shake the confidence of some of
those involved concerning the soundness of their own judgments. This can
happen when at least one of those disagreeing respects the other(s) as persons
of sound moral judgment, or when at least one of them introduces consider-
ations that are recognized by the other(s) as weakening his or her moral
assessment. Plainly, there is not always a reason that will lead a party to such
a disagreement to question his or her judgment. Each or both parties may
have well-founded confidence in their own judgments. For example, Jim has
thought long and hard about the evils of lying to elderly family members,
and confidently believes that this form of lying is harmful. Each or both can
also have an account of why the other disagrees. For example, Jim knows that
Robert has always had a problem with telling the truth. Some of these accounts
can be unflattering. For example, Jim believes that Robert knows lying to
Betty is wrong, but will not face it and agree, because he cannot stand giving
in to Jim’s moralism and tough argumentation. Another unflattering possibility is
that the other party, although sincere in disagreeing, is morally at fault for failing
to agree to one’s judgment. Thus, Jim believes that Robert has a problem with
229
230 Joseph Boyle
lying because he has found it useful in covering up his many moral failings as
an employee and family member. Moreover, one or both might hold that there
is an innocent explanation for the other’s refusal to agree, a mistake the person
could not avoid. For example, Jim believes that Robert has not understood
how important it is for Betty to know about her bad condition and to have an
opportunity to wrap up her earthly affairs.
Of course, these justifications and explanations are available to all the
parties in a moral controversy of this kind such that all the parties can confidently
think they are correct. If their moral judgments are contradictory (unlike the
opposed judgments of Jim and Robert, both of which might be in error), then
one party is necessarily in error. That should give some pause to all involved,
but not a reason for any of them seriously to question his or her moral judgment.
That is so because reactions such as I supposed Jim to have towards his
disagreement with Robert are not necessarily irrational, nor are they inevitably
a form of moral dogmatism. As in other areas where correct judgment can be
insincerely opposed or can be prevented by ignorance or by moral error, a
person can be confident that he or she has investigated the possible influence
of such factors sufficiently to assure himself or herself that they are not skewing
his or her own moral judgment. Sometimes a person can have the further
confidence that some such factors are skewing the judgment of a person
rejecting his or her moral assessment.
In short, the commonplace of moral life considered here—that we often
disagree with others about particular moral judgments—is not by itself
sufficient to generate deep puzzles about the nature of moral knowledge.
Disagreements are widespread in every domain of human endeavor that
involves truth claims, or other analogous claims of correctness or adequacy
in which the results of human understanding are measured by appropriate
standards. Moral disagreements are puzzling, therefore, not simply because
they are disagreements about the adequacy of important practical convic-
tions, but because of some features of these disagreements—perhaps, for
example, their extent or resistance to resolution.
The grand philosophical and theological narrative provided by H. Tristram
Engelhardt’s work in Christian bioethics makes much of moral disagreement.
Indeed, it is an irreducible element in Engelhardt’s narrative, as it must be in
any comprehensive account of the current state of morality. Engelhardt’s
narrative relies on moral disagreement at several key junctures. He begins
with the natural law theory of the medieval Western Church. This theory has
notably rationalistic elements: moral principle is known by reason, formu-
lated propositionally and applied by discursive reason. It is also universalist
in that the moral principles which reason manifests are held to be available to
all human beings capable of understanding moral concepts, and so these
principles have universal application. These aspirations of the Western
Church came into crisis with the Reformation, but Enlightenment thinkers,
The Ethical Significance of Moral Disagreement 231
notably Kant, sought to maintain the idea that the basis of morality was
rationally knowable and universally accessible and applicable, while, of
course, severing all connections between morality and religion or theistic belief.
But the claims of Kant and other modern philosophers to provide a compelling,
secular foundation for morality have done nothing to generate more
widespread moral agreement. In fact, they have led to further and to deeper
disagreements about morality, including disagreements about the rationalistic
ethical theories themselves, whether Kant’s own or its consequentialist
alternatives.1
This very summary rendering of the problem Engelhardt’s narrative
addresses indicates the features of moral disagreement which are central to
its role: the moral disagreement Engelhardt focuses on is that which arises
initially within in a culture shaped by the expectations of medieval natural
law theory and later by its secular offspring, Enlightenment rationalism. The
relevant expectation is that people should agree on moral matters. In other
words, it is moral disagreement in a context shaped by the expectation that it
should not be there—that the emergence of substantial moral agreement is
normal because morality is the property of common human reason.
Engelhardt’s constructive response to the epistemological crisis of morality
thus generated naturally aims to avoid the mistakes that generate the negative
dialectic. The two aspects of his solution are systematically anti-rationalist
and non-universalist.
The first aspect of Engelhardt’s solution is his account of public, secular
morality. Instead of a public secular morality based on a putative rational
ordering of values, Engelhardt recommends a thin, libertarian public morality,
which he calls libertarian cosmopolitanism. This secular morality promises
little, since it eschews the value rankings that have led to the interminable
moral disagreements that characterize postmodern social life. The purpose of
this thin morality is not to provide a full bodied idea of the good which all
interacting humans can embrace—that is the fallacy of natural law and the
Enlightenment. Rather, its task is to provide an authoritative basis for interactions
between moral strangers—those who share no common conception of the
good. This public morality is based on the consent, agreements, and mutual
permissions of moral strangers who wish to engage in peaceable interactions
instead of the conflicts that arise from their diverse and often opposed moral
outlooks. Its source is consent and so it is not rationalistic but voluntaristic,
and since it binds only those who consent, its application is not universal.
The second aspect of Engelhardt’s solution is his version of Christian ethics.
Libertarian cosmopolitanism cannot provide a robust and content-full
conception of good living. But it can provide the social space for that which
it cannot deliver. Diverse moral communities can flourish within a pluralistic
society governed by libertarian standards, and in these communities individuals
can share a conception of the good and of the practices through which it can
232 Joseph Boyle
be realized. Engelhardt, of course, is not a relativist but a traditional Christian.

So, he thinks that a moral community exists, membership in which provides
what is needed to live a genuinely good—that is, religious and theocentric—
life. But the moral truth is available only within the way of life of the Orthodox
community, by the communion with God which this way of life makes possi-
ble. That communion with the Divine is not rationally articulable. Moreover,
the source of moral truth is available just to the extent that membership in this
moral community is available; and so, genuine moral life is neither universalist
nor rationalist.
This paper reflects on the role moral disagreement plays in getting this
narrative going and, in particular, questions the claim that moral disagree-
ment provides a compelling starting point for Engelhardt’s narrative. I argue
that moral disagreement, even if understood from the rationalistic and
universalist perspective according to which morality is the product of common
human reason, requires neither a voluntaristic libertarianism nor sectarian
Christianity, nor both.
II. The Expectation of Consensus

As argued above, moral disagreement becomes a significant problem for
moral theory and practice only if it is surprising that it exists, only if its common
occurrences cannot be easily and satisfactorily explained. Moral disagreement
will be surprising and anomalous only if this fact is inconsistent with a view
of morality that implies that such disagreements should not exist or should be
more limited in kind and extent than they are. In this section, I explore the
question of whether the form of ethical rationalism and universalism that is
essential to the view that moral principles are available to common human
reason creates an expectation of substantial moral agreement. I argue that the
creation of this expectation requires the addition of something outside this
form of ethical rationalism and universalism; namely, the belief that no plausible
explanation for widespread moral disagreement is available to those who
hold that morality is based on common human reason.
Roman Catholics who accept natural law theory, and maybe others as
well, need not accept this claim, and consequently, have no reason to find
their confidence in their own considered moral judgments to be shaken by the
fact that others disagree with them.
My argument will not assume that moral disagreements are rare or limited
in respect to the objects about which there are moral disagreements. Indeed,
although I am not convinced that moral disagreement is as deep and as exten-
sive as Engelhardt believes,2 I will for the sake of argument allow that it is
wide enough and deep enough for the purposes of his dialectic. I accept that
moral disagreement is so deep that it touches the foundations of people’s
conceptions of morality and moral principles, and so wide that it can affect
any particular moral judgment, even those constituting general policies, such
as laws and professional codes, practices, such as marriage, and institutions,
such as property. A brief consideration of the depth and breadth of moral
disagreement shows that it is surely pervasive enough for the purposes of
Engelhardt’s argument.
Disagreements of the kind described at the start of this paper appear
common; still they find their place within moral lives that are not defined by
disagreement alone. We do not expect disagreement to arise whenever we
make a confident moral judgment about a particular choice or event. Certainly,
a person making a moral judgment expects that not everyone will disagree
with his or her moral assessment; a person ordinarily expects that some oth-
ers—good friends, perhaps, or at least some fellow members of a group or
community—will accept the moral assessments he or she makes. Much less
do any of us assume that someone is ready to contradict every moral judgment
he or she could make. Indeed, in making many such judgments a person
expects that all or most people knowing the particulars would not contradict
him or her.
Nevertheless, it remains possible that for every concrete moral judgment
any person makes, there is some person who, fully and accurately considering
the facts of the situation evaluated, will come to a contrary moral evaluation.
For example, consider a jury of typical North Americans considering the case
of a public official accused of inflicting pain and grave bodily harm on a pris-
oner in order to obtain information necessary to prevent further terrorist
murders. They would likely agree, if the facts showed just this, in condemn-
ing that official’s action as morally wrong. But in other ages and places, and
even now when the information needed was seen to be strictly necessary for
saving many innocent lives, many have thought that an intentionally harmful
act, correctly described as torture, could be morally justified. In short, there is
no particular moral judgment about an individual choice or event that some-
one might not contradict, and there are likely not many moral judgments that
someone, somewhere, at some time has not actually contradicted, even when
all the morally relevant circumstances were taken into account.
The prospect of disagreement about moral judgments sketched in the
preceding paragraph would be of theoretical interest only if those who dis-
agreed were separated by time or isolated geographically or socially from one
another. Some might find it puzzling that some people from far away or from
other times disagree with one’s moral judgments, but others might find that
fact to be just what one would expect from people far away, whose social
world, problems and moral formation would likely be different than their
own. On either reaction to this form of disagreement, no rational basis emerges
for questioning one’s moral judgments which one knows are rejected by some
far away in time or place. Moreover, the practical problems raised by having
to get along with those who reject one’s moral judgments do not arise. We are
234 Joseph Boyle
not required to deal with these far away contrarians—only read or study
about them.
But the prospect of concrete moral disagreement among those who must
interact and often must cooperate, such as the disagreement among family
members with which I began, creates practical difficulties and can even
lead to moral perplexity. These practically important implications of moral
disagreement among family members and neighbors may be thought to
undermine people’s confidence in their moral judgments.
My initial example of Jim and Robert’s disagreement reveals some of the
practical difficulties that arise when their contrary judgments bear on the
same matter. Even if Jim and Robert fail to reach agreement about what to say
or not to say to Betty, neither is forced by the situation to surrender or ques-
tion his own moral judgment. For each might in that situation act indepen-
dently, on his own moral conviction. Robert could benevolently lie to Betty,
and do his best to prevent Jim from spilling the beans, and Jim could refuse to
have anything to do with that act, or even try to expose the lie to Betty. This
may hardly exhibit a rule for harmonious family relationships, and so may
create a practical problem, but this outcome of the case does not suggest any
further reason for either Jim or Robert to doubt the correctness of his moral
judgment.
Moral judgment is more straightforwardly challenged when those who
disagree morally do so in respect to an action which requires their coopera-
tion or common action: for example, when family members must agree on a
course of medical treatment for a non-competent family member for whom
they are together the proxy decision maker. In cases like this, agreement is
necessary for a non-optional decision, and if the joint proxies have contrary
moral judgments about a decision, then the practical problem implicates their
moral judgments more intrinsically than when they can act independently
and in opposition on the basis of their own moral views. For in these situa-
tions, each cannot act in accord with his moral conviction and still do what
must be done. Cases like this one point to a specifically moral difficulty cre-
ated by a concrete moral disagreement. Cooperative action is called for, but
can be achieved only if one or both parties, who disagree morally, act contrary
to moral conviction.
Important as conflicts of this kind are for thinking about the social coop-
eration of those having opposed moral convictions, they do not yield a
specifically new element for the dialectic detailing the foundering on moral
disagreement of the universalistic and rationalistic ethics founded on com-
mon human reason. They add nothing special to this dialectic because they
can arise for anyone who allows that moral disagreements can arise when
cooperative action is called for. This kind of cooperative conflict can arise for
anyone, no matter how they conceive morality and its foundations, for example,
for two morally serious members of the same community who have no
articulated view about the nature of moral reasoning and its principles. Any
morally serious person can recognize the existence of situations calling for
cooperative action while recognizing that the common actions others are will-
ing to support is (in his or her own judgment) immoral. This can, and often
does, happen within robust moral communities, when members of a religious
family disagree on the sense and application of commonly understood and
accepted norms. Such disagreements can be explained to the satisfaction of
each party within the categories as mentioned in section I: feigned, insincere
moral disagreement, innocent mistakes, and morally flawed ethical thinking,
discernment or formation.
In short, it is practical moral disagreements that are likely to generate
personal skepticism about one’s moral convictions. But practical disagree-
ments, even if they generate moral perplexity, do not necessarily have that
effect. The reason, again, is that disagreement alone, without a view of morality
that creates an expectation of agreement or disagreement, has no implication
as to what amount of disagreement will be unacceptable.
It is tempting to think that the depth of moral disagreement, not simply
the extent of the moral judgments over which disagreement arises, may provide
the ground for reflective people to be skeptical about their well-considered
moral judgments. I think this temptation should be resisted, since deep moral
disagreements about general norms and even principles shake our confidence
in our convictions about moral norms and principles only if we have reason
to think that others can be expected to know and express adherence to them.
A. Expected agreement about principles

There may seem to be just such a reason in the view of those who believe
that morality is a work of common human reason. According to this view,
moral principles will necessarily be known or readily knowable by anyone
sharing in that common human reason. Plainly, in this conception common
human reason gives us propositionally articulable principles; otherwise the
principles are not reasonable in the sense that they could not be used as prem-
ises in moral arguments. If these principles are rationally articulable, then
they are in principle accessible to those able to exercise the human capacity to
reason, since human reason responds to what is propositionally intelligible
and articulable. But if these principles were arcane, accessible only to the
learned, then they would not be included in what common human reason can
judge. So, universal accessibility does not follow from rationality alone, but
requires that the objects of rational judgment are sufficiently basic and simple
as to be readily accessible to all who are in the moral domain. And that is
what the view of morality as the product of common human reason implies.
It is difficult to see how this element in the view of morality as the work of
common human reason does not create an expectation about common acceptance
of the most basic moral principles. St. Thomas Aquinas’ discussion of moral
236 Joseph Boyle
principles suggests as much: he considers the question of why the most basic
moral principles, such as the twofold love commandment, are not listed in the
Mosaic Decalogue, which, he says, contains the immediate implications of the
natural law. His response is that these “primary and common precepts” though
not listed, are contained within the Decalogue as the grounds for its precepts, but
are not themselves in need of any further proclamation than that given by their
being “written in natural reason as self-evident” (ST, 1-2, 100, a. 3 response and ad 1).
On St. Thomas’ account, therefore, moral principle is there to be understood
by anyone who is clearheadedly engaged in rational action; indeed, it is hard
to avoid by any such person. This position is not unique to his version of
natural law theory but seems required by any view similar to his in maintain-
ing that morality is the work of common human reason. How is it conceivable
that this does not imply that, at least at the most fundamental level, people
should be expected to agree about morality? I believe there is a correct implication
here, but not nearly so unqualified as the question suggests.
There are two important qualifications to the view that common, rationally
accessible principles must be a matter of de facto consensus. First, a person
may have reason to disavow or ignore a moral principle he or she knows: for
example, one might notice some obvious implications of the principle, dislike
the conclusion, and so find some way to overlook, to set aside or to fudge
when thinking about the principle. Surely, that can happen and has no tendency
to show that the person does not know the principle.
Second, there are a variety of ways in which, without bad will, a person or
group can be confused in articulating the principles he or she knows or inad-
equate to the task of formulating them. Some of these can lead to disagreements
about moral principles that are only implicitly used in moral reasoning, and
some generate the disagreements that characterize moral theory; namely,
those based on incomplete and misleading formulations of the rational under-
standing people have of moral principle.
Ordinary moral thinking often starts with concrete moral problems and
seeks resolutions of these problems, making use of underlying principles, but
hardly focuses precisely on them and on their proper articulation. Ordinary
moral thinking often proceeds by using casuistry, comparing cases that are
problematic to those that are taken to be morally perspicuous, with principles
plainly present even if not articulated, so as to reveal the moral character of
the problematic cases. This process can reveal the moral intelligibility needed
for moral guidance but only to the extent necessary for dealing with the problem
at hand; formulating principles is not the point. In this approach to moral
thinking, the articulation and explicit use of principles as premises in moral
arguments is limited. But that does not imply that the intelligibility of the
principle is not fundamental to the concrete moral conviction.
In short, our understanding of moral principle does not ordinarily develop
in the “top down” way the language of foundational or self-evident principles
suggests. In many cases, questions about choices emerge and norms are
formulated to settle matters, without any explicit attention to articulated
moral principle. These norms contain an intelligible moral predicate but in an
intuitively or casuistically revealed way that is sufficient for the problem at
hand. This common way of approaching moral issues moves towards the
articulate knowledge of universal moral principles in a gradual and as-needed
way, and ordinarily does not articulate moral principle as a free standing proposition.
When moral principle is articulated as the normative basis for all precepts,
that formulation is likely to be sufficiently abstract so as to defy the compre-
hension of all but those carefully attending to its meaning independently of
its instantiation within norms governing specifically described actions.
In short, the idea that morality is the work of common human reason does
imply that humans can know, and perhaps ordinarily do know, the basic
principles of morality. That knowledge can remain partial and implicit or
confused, and that allows that without careful reflection and attention even
what is basic and readily accessible to human reason can fail adequately to be
properly formulated, and that allows widespread misunderstanding. Thus, it
should not surprise that norms like the precepts of the Decalogue will be
more obvious to many people than are the more basic Love Commandments
that ground them. Nor should it surprise us that across the languages of the
many human communities there is no common and canonical formulation of
the basic principle of morality.3 Moral communities may organize their ethi-
cal thinking in ways that highlight one or more fundamental moral concerns,
or may approach moral questions piecemeal. In either case, the lack of apparent
agreement with outsiders does not imply the absence of common moral
understandings.
Philosophers have sought to provide by their moral theories what ordinary
moral thought and casuistry have not needed to address: a clear and uncon-
troversial formulation of moral principle. But they, too, apparently have
failed. Consequentialists seek a formulation of the principle in terms of the
good—our basic duty is to promote the good. So far that seems unexception-
able. But it quickly turns into a proposition having a supposition that the
goods among which humans must choose are generally commensurable in
goodness. That supposition is not self-evident, but likely false. So, the
philosophers do not avoid confusion.
Similarly, Kantian proposals about the formulations of the basic moral
principle include one that is too restricted to interpersonal considerations to
be plausible as the fundamental principle—the universalizability formulation,
which captures the idea of the Golden Rule, but only implausibly the whole
of morality. Here we have a different sort of confusion than that of the utilitar-
ians. Another of Kant’s formulations—respect for rational nature as an end in
itself—seems to share the problems of the formulations generated from casu-
istry. Even if true and basic, it is too vague to apply to many cases. What does
238 Joseph Boyle
and does not fail to respect rational nature as an end in itself? There are a few
paradigm cases—such as slavery—but many other generally described cases
where its application is unsure and unsurely determined.
The preceding considerations suggest that the idea that humans have, or
can easily get, a common grasp, however imperfectly it may be articulated, of
basic moral principles is not obviously false. If there are good reasons for
thinking that some moral knowledge is universally available,4 then the lack of
consensus about how to formulate them is not strong evidence that such
principles—propositionally articulable and available to all using human
reason—do not exist. Consequently, an expectation of the possibility of con-
sensus about moral principles is created by the view of morality as the work
of common human reason. But an expectation about the actual existence of or
likely prospects for a commonly agreed upon formulation of moral principle is
not created by this moral view.
B. Expected agreement about general moral norms

If morality is the work of common human reason, it is sensible to think
that there is a basic principle that is formulable as a generally applicable moral
rule. That general rule provides moral guidance by being joined to statements
describing kinds of human actions about which people seek moral guidance.5
This, of course, is an account of the logical structure of moral thought, not of
the actual moral reflection of people, but of how the results of that reflection
can be exhibited for critical discussion and communication.
The descriptions of actions needed to relate principle to what we do can
be more or less general, and some fairly generally described actions are mor-
ally interesting to most people. The contours of these areas of interest are
suggested by the topics considered in the Decalogue: actions relating humans
to God; those inflicting harm on people; those creating and relating to peo-
ple’s holdings of non-human goods; those involved in communicating with
others and in other human interactions, for example, friendship and intimate
relationships. Guidance for choices in these and other similar areas is needed
and can be made in the light of moral principle. The guidance provided is a
set of generally stated precepts, such as those of the Decalogue, arising from
joining moral principle and descriptions of kinds of actions.
The question to be addressed here is whether conceiving a set of moral
norms like the Decalogue as the initial result of the working of common human
reason creates a presumption that people should widely agree on something like
the Decalogue.
There is, perhaps, an approach to norms like these that might allow them
to be widely agreed to. For example, let us consider the rule against killing.
We might agree that there is an ill defined set of borderline cases in which a
generally formulated and rationally justified prohibition of killing is not easily
applied—for example, self-defense, capital punishment, and justified warfare.
There might be further areas where the application of a general prohibition

might be unclear: cases where deflecting harm from one causes death of
another, or where not doing something that would preserve life is implicated
in ending it. Noting all these cases, one might still reasonably think: killing is
wrong; granted there are some hard cases requiring careful thought, but that
does not mean that killing in the focal sense is not wrong.
There is some merit to this way of thinking about general norms. There do
seem to be some clear cases prohibited by a norm excluding killing, even if
the whole range of hard cases is regarded as unsettled except by further care-
ful and likely controversial thought. But the line between the cases clear in
virtue of their connection to moral principle and those requiring controver-
sial casuistry for moral assessment is not likely to fall on the line dividing the
universally accepted and the contested. Therefore, the distinction between
the cases covered by the general norm and those requiring complicated rea-
soning does not provide a ground for thinking that moral disagreement is
limited to the hard cases. For example, abortion and euthanasia are forms of
killing. They do add circumstances that add to the simple description of an
action as killing, but as such they add very common and generally under-
stood circumstances, not the myriad of detail that complicates moral thinking.
Moral judgments about acts of these kinds remain controversial. Similarly,
suicide, human sacrifice, revenge killing and other such generally described
acts have been regarded by some as morally acceptable.
If the general prohibition against killing is a simple implication of moral
principle known or knowable by all how are we to explain the widespread
inability to know it? A common, traditional answer to this question is that
human weakness and immorality are at the root of the moral mistakes
involved in these easy inferences from principle. Moral weakness and immo-
rality explain different sorts of moral error in different ways. One common
explanation is that there is a natural but morally questionable tendency for
individuals and groups to restrict their concerns about fairness to the group
with which they must cooperate to survive and flourish, their neighbors, nar-
rowly understood. This restriction of concern can allow all sorts of evils, for
example, discrimination, contempt for outsiders, and enslaving people. This
concern, as distinct from its restriction, is an implication of moral principle,
and historically has led to social arrangements such as fairly respecting prop-
erty rights and insisting on judicial proceedings requiring due process, and so
on. The restriction is easily explained by the self-interest of the community
and its members in relationship to outsiders and to others without power: no
need to put ourselves in their shoes. Some such account could spell out Aqui-
nas’s famous comment on the Germani described by Caesar: they did not
know that brigandige was wrong because of their bad customs (ST, 1-2, q. 94,
a. 4); they were not able to extend to alien travelers in their lands the human
concern shown within the community.
240 Joseph Boyle
More generally, human societies all have reasons to turn away from the
full implications of morality: that can get you killed, wreck your position in
society, or otherwise lead to results individuals and groups find abhorrent.
All those prospects are difficult to face squarely if one does not accept the
Christian doctrine of Resurrection of the Body. The Christian theological
account of this form of human weakness is available to all Christians, and
those holding for the reality of moral knowledge based on common human
reason are no worse off than other Christians in this respect.
Indeed, those who accept morality as the product of common human
reason have some advantages here. Their conception of morality provides a
basis for holding that those who do not know general moral truths adequately
can be morally responsible for this ignorance, and have the capacity to overcome
their moral ignorance.
C. Expected agreement about complex cases

Although the line between what is a complex case and what is a case covered
by a general moral truth is often unclear, there are complex moral cases made
difficult by the presence of a number of morally relevant circumstances whose
presence prevents an easy application of general norms. In cases such as
these, careful reflection to articulate the various circumstances is needed, as
well as careful analysis of the moral significance of these circumstances. The
thinking involved may be capable of formulation after the fact into sound
deductive argumentation that leads to an undeniable conclusion, but that
thinking involves a number of descriptions, definitions, and classifications
that are anything but infallible. In cases such as these—for example, end of
life decisions where there are many complicating factors—only those who
have thought long and hard about a given decision can be confident in their
moral assessments, and even the most well reasoned of these can be disputed.
So, in these cases, moral disagreement is to be expected; there is no ground
for expecting agreement because the necessary thinking is complex and can
easily go wrong without any moral fault on the part of a person addressing
such a problem.
In some cases, the moral complexities arise from the application of general
but clearly defeasible norms. The moral generalities derived from the Golden
Rule are like this; the classical example of the moral obligation to return
borrowed property at the owner’s request is a famous example. Would
returning borrowed property upon request be morally obligatory in all cir-
cumstances, including those in which returning it would be plainly unjust?
The answer of Aquinas (ST, 1-2, q. 94, a. 4) and others is that the obligation
does not bind in all circumstances; but specifying all these circumstances in
advance is difficult. This effort may well lead to controversy. Contemporary
issues exhibiting this sort of complexity include the difficulties in distributing
scarce medical resources in a fair way.
D. Moral diversity and the expectation of agreement

In the preceding discussion, I argued that on the view of morality as the
product of common human reason the expectation that moral disagreement
will be overcome is limited. To complete this account of the prospects for
moral agreement, I will consider very briefly the sort of moral diversity that
does not necessarily involve disagreement. Many moral norms, for example,
those concerning property, presuppose some form of social life and some
form of authority, if only that of customs taken to be binding within a com-
munity. The details of any regime of ownership will include much that is
conventional, and much that is instrumental to living and living well in a
particular physical and social environment. Moral universalism recognizes
the role played by such factors in determining whether a property regime is
reasonable and just, and whether owners use their property reasonably (see
Boyle, 2001). More generally, the values of a community express its common
decisions, which can be informed by moral principle and law without being
completely specified by them. The casuistry that sorts out complex moral
cases must attend to these variable factors, and unmasking confusions caused
by them can be crucial in clarifying issues and in removing apparent con-
flicts. But the moral differences that arise because of differences in communi-
ties’ diverse histories and circumstances, and from different choices the
groups may have made in dealing with them, do not necessarily cause moral
disagreement, as distinct from moral diversity. Indeed, much of this kind of
moral diversity is compatible with agreement about moral principle.
Of course, diverse moral communities often do disagree about moral
judgments, but that is not simply because of their differing social choices
shaped by variable conditions of human life. When those choices lead to the
rejection of others’ moral judgments, that rejection reflects rejection or igno-
rance of moral standards. Thus, they disagree with those others about general
norms and principles. In such cases, it is not the case that there is simply
difference caused by distinct social choice caused in turn by differing circum-
stances, but a differing response to the morally significant values at stake.
Those values are not purely local. This suggests that differences in communities
do not as such generate disagreements in moral judgments.
The fact that others in different social circumstances arrange their affairs
very differently than do twenty-first century North Americans points to
differences, not necessarily disagreements. Moreover, moral disagreements
of the kind that are thought to generate a general suspicion of any effort to
generate moral norms from common human reason arise within the same
families, between those of the same religion, and so on. Even the very deep
oppositions in moral outlook expressed by moral theorists are not necessary
for moral disagreements of the kind I used to introduce this article.
In short, moral disagreement leads to skepticism about reason’s capacity
to deliver credible moral judgments only if there is no explanation of it
242 Joseph Boyle
compatible with the rationalism and universalism implicated in the view of

morality as the product of common human reason. I have suggested that
there are such explanations of the disagreements that arise at the various levels
of moral discourse and judgment. The role of diverse communities in making
moral life concrete does not add anything special to our understanding of
moral disagreement. Membership in diverse communities is neither necessary
nor sufficient for disagreement, whether with those in other communities or
in one’s own community or outside any community. However, noting the
compatibility of this very extensive form of moral diversity with universalism
sets aside a parody of universalism.
III. Do We Need a Postmodern Public Morality?

I have argued that ethical universalism does not generate the expectations
of agreement the obvious absence of which would undercut the moral con-
viction of any person who so understood his or her moral judgments that
way. The fact that a person finds others disagreeing with his or her moral
judgments will usually give that person pause, and it may often cause him or
her to revise the judgment, but it does not provide a reason for general skepticism
about morality, because there are plausible explanations for the existence of
unresolved moral disagreement compatible with moral universalism.
This prospect has implications that some may think unacceptable. For a
person can, on my account, be confident of his or her moral judgment, even
when that puts him or her in conflict with others, including some with whom
cooperation is needed. For example, as suggested at the beginning of this
paper, family members may disagree about a moral decision on which their
agreement is legally necessary, as when they are joint proxies for a family
member. More generally, there are many deep moral disagreements in a modern
pluralistic society; yet governments must sometimes take sides on these matters—
for example, euthanasia must either be legally allowed or legally proscribed.
If all parties to such conflicts are within their epistemic rights to stick to
their considered moral judgments, social cooperation and mutual respect
seem put in question. This might seem to require a public morality sufficient
to guide the necessary interactions of those who disagree about the moral
quality of the actions in question.
Engelhardt has suggested a thin procedural ethic to serve this purpose.
Those who disagree widely about ethical matters can consent to some
constraints in their mutual interactions, and that consensual ethic creates a
possibility for peaceable interaction. I believe, however, that Engelhardt’s
libertarian cosmopolitanism is not required practically to address this condition
of widespread moral disagreement.
It is surely possible for morally opposed people to come to agreements
about how to cooperate. Depending on exactly the proposition on which
agreement is needed, more or fewer people could buy into such an agreement.
Thus, for example, many people appear to agree that competent patients
have a right to refuse medical treatment, and that a social agreement
along these lines is acceptable, but many would not accept a law allowing
physician assisted suicide or euthanasia. The agreements and disagree-
ments with these social arrangements can be morally based, at least inso-
far as those who agreed or disagreed did so in accord with the dictates of
their own consciences. So the moral grounds appealed to would likely be
very different for different people, including many who agreed.
The accommodations arrived at in this way are plainly far short of a “public
morality,” even the thin libertarianism favored by Engelhardt. The morality
involved is just that of the parties accepting some agreement. The common
and mutual consent does not create a public morality as something distinct
from a de facto agreement as to what shall be done. If Engelhardt claims only
this, then his public morality is morally reducible to the moral judgments of
those consenting to the arrangement. The morality remains within the moral
judgments of the parties to the agreement.
In particular, there is no presumption that the consent of oneself and others
to an agreement provides a moral ground to limit or trump one’s antecedent
moral judgments concerning the object of the consent. If Engelhardt’s libertarian
cosmopolitanism claims the authority morally to bind those who believe that
its permissions are prohibited by the moral judgments they antecedently think
true, then an account is needed as to why the considerations favoring the per-
mission are more compelling than those supporting the prohibition. It is this
more robust reading of Engelhardt’s libertarianism—a reading that appears to
be required if the traditional libertarian resistance to moralistic public action is
to be sustained—that seems to me unnecessary for the conduct of public life.6
It will seem necessary not because of the requirements of public life but because
of the now controverted belief that universalistic and rationalistic moral
convictions must erode in the face of irresolvable controversy.
The need to compromise for vital practical purposes may introduce
circumstances that require careful scrutiny of one’s prior moral judgments,
but this factor in moral judgment must, if it is not a temptation, meet moral
muster in the light of a person’s own considered moral standards.7 Those
standards normally include norms about what to do in the face of practical
conflict. Therefore, for each person in such a conflict, normative consider-
ations from outside his or her normative outlook will have little impact,
except as temptations, and the question of how to resolve the conflict will be
settled on his or her own moral terms. The fact that one considers consenting
or making a contract to effect the needed agreement does not decisively alter
that moral landscape.8
In short, compromise and mutual accommodation are sometimes possible
between those who deeply disagree, and sometimes that is something a
244 Joseph Boyle
morally serious person can do compatibly with moral judgment. Compromise

and accommodation are easier to whatever limited degree potential coop-
erators do morally agree. Overlapping consensus is certainly a possibility
and seems to exist on some social issues, for example, concerning a compe-
tent adult’s right to refuse medical treatment. But sometimes a given
compromise will be impossible for a conscientious person; in such cases,
the benefits of the cooperation must be foregone and this bad side effect
of moral integrity accepted. Sometimes proposed actions or omissions of
others are morally intolerable and must be in some ways opposed, not-
withstanding any general libertarian rule to the contrary. This at least is the
array of options facing one who believes that morality prohibits a necessary
cooperative undertaking.
To sum up: the seriousness of moral allegiance to the principles, norms,
and judgments a person believes true is not destroyed by the existence of
irresolvable moral disagreement, at least not for those with a sensible concep-
tion of morality as based on common human reason. Such people have a non-
dogmatic account of why others disagree and of when it is unreasonable to
maintain one’s moral judgment. If this is true, then a major element in
Engelhardt’s dialectic towards a voluntarist social morality and the non-
propositional religious ethics of Orthodox Christianity is called into question.
Moreover, once this element is in doubt, the need for a public ethics that
stands free of anyone’s deep moral commitments and value rankings is
unnecessary: conscientious compromises will do all that good people should
do. Finally, the conviction of one who believes that God reveals part of His
will for our lives through our common human reason can be humanly as secure
as that of a holy practitioner of Orthodox Christianity.
Notes
1. See Engelhardt’s The Foundations of Christian Bioethics (2000), chapters 1 and 2 for
the full story. See my review of this book for a brief summary of Engelhardt’s dialectic,
“Orthodox Christianity and Libertarian Cosmopolitanism?” (2001).
2. I think that there is a common moral world that is recognized by many people,
including those who try to dispute its authority. The participants in this common
moral world may formulate in different ways, and may indeed disagree about, the
grounds for their acceptance of its accepted deliverances, but this fact does not
make their agreement simply a deal or accommodation. The content thus agreed
upon is thin, but has a logical structure and implications. If I am mistaken in agree-
ing with Michael Walzer (and Jacques Maritian) on this, that is irrelevant to my
current argument against Engelhardt, because I agree with him that there is
enough moral disagreement to get his dialectic going, and dispute the other
factors needed for his story (see Boyle, 1997).
3. See my “Natural Law and the Ethics of Traditions” (1992) for further reasoning
along these lines.
4. I am not arguing for this proposition here. I think it is true. See Boyle (1992).
5. See Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (1977, pp. 66-74), for an account of the
structure of this reasoning.
6. I am uncertain how to understand the moral force of Engelhardt’s libertarian
permissions, particularly when they allow in the public domain activities one
believes immoral and requiring public opposition. If they do not block some moral
conviction from the domain of interactions between the morally opposed, then
they do little to structure and direct the transactions in question; but if they do
block moral conviction, then they have moral force that can compete with a per-
son’s moral conviction. His treatment of abortion as a form of murder without
commenting on whether it should, ideally at least, be legally prohibited is an
example of what puzzles me. See Christian Bioethics, 2000, pp. 158, 209, 275-283. It
is scarcely believable that Engelhardt would suppose that a traditional Christian
would be blocked by libertarian permissions from acting publicly on a prescription
of Orthodox morality having public implications. I would add that they no more
credibly block a judgment based on common human reason.
7. The post-Tridentine Roman Catholic tradition has developed a considerable
casuistry concerning cooperation with evil and tolerating evil. For an introduction
to this literature, see my “Radical Moral Disagreement in Contemporary Health
Care: A Roman Catholic Perspective” (1994).
8. See Boyle (1994) for a development of an argument for this claim.
Bibliography
Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by Fathers of the English
Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1948.
Boyle, J. “Fairness in Holdings: A Natural Law Account of Property and Welfare
Rights.” Social Philosophy and Policy (2001): 206-26.
———. “Just and Unjust Wars: Casuistry and the Boundaries of the Moral World.”
Ethics and International Affairs 11 (1997): 83-98.
———. “Natural Law and the Ethics of Traditions.” In Natural Law Theory: Contemporary
Essays, edited by R. George, 23-8. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
———. “Radical Moral Disagreement in Contemporary Health Care: A Roman Catholic
Perspective.” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 19 (1994): 183-200.
______. “Orthodox Christianity and Libertarian Cosmopolitanism?” Second Opinion
(May 2001): 68-72.
Donagan, A. The Theory of Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Engelhardt, H.T., Jr. The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse, the Netherlands:
Bioethics for Moral
Strangers
Stephen Wear
The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, by H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., contains

much that is familiar to those who have studied his thought over the years. In
sum: given the failure of the Enlightenment rationally to secure a content-
filled, lexically ordered secular morality, we are left with a bare-bones sort of
ethics of permission between moral strangers. This is all very unfortunate, as
Engelhardt himself repeatedly notes, in that it utterly fails to provide ultimate
meaning and specific moral guidance to people within the often bewildering,
not seldom tragic realm of health care. However, the difference between him
and others is that whereas many commentators rail against such a constrained
view of bioethics, he commends it as all that is possible from a secular
perspective.
Engelhardt has, in many ways, made a career out of retailing this skeptical
vision of the limited possibilities of secular bioethics and the underlying
critique that supports it. While others run out their content-filled visions of
bioethical “truth” from whatever perspective—pragmatic, communitarian,
Georgetown mantra, and so forth—there is Engelhardt, over and over again,
pointing out the unjustified assumptions advanced, the questions begged,
the infinite regresses triggered, and the overall “news from nowhere” that he
sees much of contemporary bioethics as selling. In a nutshell, the Enlighten-
ment project has failed and perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in
bioethics, where so many issues of profound moment to so many people
enjoy no real consensus whatsoever.
What is new in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics is that Engelhardt
comprehensively provides what he has long hinted at, viz. a content-filled
vision of bioethics from within a specific non-secular perspective. The
perspective is that of Orthodox Christianity, which he assures us he knows to
247
248 Stephen Wear
be the truth, and which constitutes his way out of the secular bioethics that he
has done so much to describe.
I will, in this paper, leave to others the core issue of whether what
Engelhardt provides in this work truly describes the foundations of Christian
bioethics. Engelhardt clearly thinks it does, not solely because of his conver-
sion to Orthodox Christianity, but because, as he extensively argues, much of
contemporary Christian thought has simply lost its moorings in the Christian
tradition and experience. But I will leave this sort of reflection to others for
two simple reasons: (1) I am not a Christian, and (2) I do not believe I have the
requisite theological knowledge properly to evaluate the conclusions
Engelhardt derives from his meditations on the ancient Christian texts and
experience—not that I am unsympathetic with much that Engelhardt says in
this regard. Unlike much of contemporary Christian bioethics, it seems to me
he actually takes seriously the problems facing Christians within health care,
and does so in a way that avoids just being another “God is dead and Mary is
his Mother” version of Christianity, i.e., a Christianity that embraces what it
sees as the Christian ethic without a corollary belief in God. It may well be a
good way to keep one’s congregation in the pews, but what it has to do with
Christianity has always escaped me.
What I do propose to do is address three interrelated issues. (1) Is the
secular, libertarian ethics of permission that Engelhardt sees us left with as
impoverished as he and others hold it is, and if so, is this really all a secular
bioethics can say? (2) Does this libertarian view somehow naturally tend to
evolve into the liberal cosmopolitan view that he abhors as much as I do?
And, (3) is there nothing between the libertarian and liberal cosmopolitan
views which those who lack the content-filled sort of vision that Engelhardt
aspires to might find relatively satisfying? I will proceed to address these
issues first by briefly describing my own personal perspective on all this, par-
ticularly regarding the urge toward transcendence that I believe figures
prominently in Engelhardt’s thought, an urge which I simply do not share.
The initial point here will be that as I cannot follow where Engelhardt has led,
my task will then be to reflect on whether the result, for those of us stuck in
the realm of the immanent, is really as impoverished and unsatisfying as
Engelhardt believes it to be.
I. The Urge to Transcendence

For all his advocacy of a secular ethics of permission, one gets the sense
that Engelhardt, like many other commentators, does not think people can
live with such an ethics, however much he feels they must when faced with
moral strangers. Other commentators often want to emphasize that a true
appreciation of the realm of health care, with its asymmetrical power
relationships, the diminished competence of patients due to illness, the
bewildering medical assembly line, and so forth, calls for much beyond a
procedural ethics of permission. Without beneficence or virtue on the part of
health care providers, patients are just too vulnerable and at times prey, to
those who provide their health care. Similarly, the libertarian political account
that undergirds Engelhardt’s bioethics is seen by others as completely inad-
equate to support and fund the equality of access that they see as absolutely
necessary for an ethical health care system. Engelhardt’s point, however, is
that as long as it is moral strangers who are interacting, an ethics of permission
is all that can be justified, and the political claims of equality and justice on
moral strangers are similarly quite minimal. An impoverished setup perhaps,
but anything more flies in the face of the deep-seated diversity of moral views
that exist in postmodern society.
There remains, however, a sense of the transcendent in Engelhardt, as one
reads him closely over the years, which appears to lurk in the immediate
background of all he says. That is: Engelhardt repeatedly talks of the deeper
hunger for more than the minimal secular ethic that he otherwise supplies
(Engelhardt, 2000, p. 209); put simply: “the immanent cannot still the hunger
for the transcendent” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 313). He clearly believes that without
a belief in God there is no ultimate personal meaning to life, no adequate
account of suffering, and so forth. Not that he straightforwardly asserts that
there is some clear logical or existential necessity operating here; at one junc-
ture, he asserts that the inadequacy of secular bioethics is only truly appreciated
from a religious (read Christian) perspective (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 73). But
however much his minimal ethics may work as a way to deal with moral
strangers, one senses that he simply does not see it as being adequate for
one’s personal ethics; it is not a place where one can live, at least comfortably.
The point is that however much secular ethics must be seen as radically lim-
ited, the ways of life that people can rest in are not, and cannot be. There
seems to be a psychological “necessity” here for Engelhardt, however much
other people may more-or-less ignore such deep urges.
By way of initial response: as Engelhardt often appeals to personal knowl-
edge and experience, I will do the same. That is, whereas Engelhardt at vari-
ous junctures lets us know that he is a born-again Texican, I am a lapsed
Unitarian from New Hampshire. Unitarian by raising, this involved a child-
hood experience of a rather locally grown “Christianity” with not a little def-
erence to our neighbors Emerson and Thoreau down the road, and lapsed
because when I finally got the nerve to ask the minister what God was, his
response of “whatever you think he is” was so unsatisfying that I quickly
concluded that Unitarianism merited neither further study nor allegiance.
So, as far as the hunger for the transcendent goes for me, that was that,
then and now. Whatever ethics I have had or seem to have welled up out of
the Yankee farmer background I was nurtured in, with a lot of emphasis on
self-reliance and personal responsibility, not much regarding one’s obligations
250 Stephen Wear
to strangers of a positive variety; and, as far as the urge to or need for

community goes, I am in agreement with another neighbor, viz. the Yankee
poet Robert Frost, that stone walls good neighbors make.
Not that I have not attempted to entertain something beyond all this, from
graduate study that focused heavily on medieval philosophy, to various
excursions into spiritual realms that might be expected of a college student of
the 1960’s. Particularly to the point here, perhaps, I once even joined Professor
Engelhardt in attending an Orthodox Christian service, and was certainly
impressed. Unlike what I have seen when I have had occasion to attend various
Christian services over the years, this was clearly the real thing. Rather than
the usual “Mary is his mother/vote democrat always and often” fare, the
incense was smoking, religious images and icons were everywhere, and the
priest was deadly serious. Like I said, serious stuff....the real thing.
It was, however, a little too real for a lapsed Unitarian. The images and
icons served instead to re-awaken my iconoclast heritage, and that heritage is
equally insistent about not allowing priests, or presbyters, or elders, between
the individual believer and God. Nor did this experience rekindle any reli-
gious urgings in me. It instead instructed me that if I were ever to undergo
some sort of religious transcendence, it would not be in such a place. Where
that place is, I have no idea; nor am I currently seeking it.
So that leaves me, and many other people I suspect, stuck in the realm of
immanence, with only our brains and experience of life to guide us. In the rest
of this essay, I will attempt to respond to Engelhardt’s portrayal of its impov-
erished character, among other things by arguing that it is not necessarily as
impoverished and unsatisfying as he seems to think it is.
II. Two Cheers for the Enlightenment

Such a background has always made me a rather mixed bag in relation to
Engelhardt who has been variously my mentor, colleague and good friend
over the years. We have always disagreed sharply in a sectarian way, viz.
about the significance of the War of Southern Insurrection (mislabeled the
American Civil War by some, the War of Northern Aggression by others),
Engelhardt believing the Southern cause a righteous one, whereas I think it is
most unfortunate that Sherman was not allowed to make a few more passes
through the South to make them all howl that much louder. I suspect when he
thinks of Picket’s charge at Gettysburg, he sees glory in the Southern ranks; I
see it in the rows of cannon with which my ancestors shredded those rebel
ranks with grapeshot.
Beyond this, whereas Engelhardt has always seemed to see his ethics of
permission as somehow unfortunate and not a place in which one can live, I
always thought he had it pretty much accurate as to where many others and
I do live. That is: my own upbringing, and experience of life, has instructed
me that I should assume other people are in fact moral strangers to me,
whatever cultural community I may happen to seem to share with any
individual. That we may happen to share moral views thus needs confirmation
to the extent we interact. Again, my experience is that knowing another’s religion,
cultural background, and so forth, is unlikely to indicate what that person’s
moral views are, within health care or outside it. This is the case even with
other lapsed Unitarians, or even fellow Yankees. There is just no telling.
This appears to leave me, and many others, in the position of being
“libertarian cosmopolitans,” as Engelhardt labels the syndrome. That is: a
content-filled, lexically ordered vision of the right and the good is not available
to us. The Enlightenment having failed to provide this via reason unaided, and
the necessary relief of religion being rejected, then our ethics can be procedural
only, an ethics of permission which wholly lacks specific guidance within health
care as well as without. According to Engelhardt, this is not a good result:
What if the chaos of the moral life is such that many people possess no coher-
ent understanding of the right, the good, and virtue? Thoroughly postmodern
persons that not only have no moral narrative to share with others but also no
coherent moral account of their own lives are exactly such individuals. Life
happens to them, including their passions. They are persons without a moral
plot for their own bibliographies. They have desires, impulses, urges, needs,
wants, and concerns, but no moral projects that shape and unite their lives as
a whole. In particular they have no coherent sense of good and evil to structure
their life projects. This does not mean that such persons lack coherence to the
point of suffering from a moral thought disorder disabling them from acting as
moral agents. They can quite coherently and accountably seek satisfaction,
fulfillment, and happiness. They simply lack a coherent substantive personal
moral narrative. Instead their life is a sequence of happenings. (2000, p. 137)
Whoa! There appears to be a great deal packed into the notion of coherence
here. And what does it mean to say, in the same breath, that such people
“have no coherent sense of good and evil to structure their life projects” but
concurrently allow that “they can quite coherently and accountably seek
satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness” (p. 137)? I believe two basic factors at
least are in play here. First, Engelhardt clearly holds that only via a “noetic”
experience of the foundations of Christian bioethics can the “difficulties besetting
secular morality” be escaped. As he indicates, this is so because these foundations
are: “(1) anchored in an experience of God, (2) apperceived as true, and (3)
sustained in a community maintained in this experience over the centuries”
(Engelhardt, 2000, p. 168). In sum, without this noetic experience, any secular
morality must be either a minimal ethics of permission, or if it presumes to
more content, ends up offering the incoherent, question begging, news from
nowhere that Engelhardt sees much of contemporary bioethics as offering.
Now, as already indicated, others and I do not have this noetic experience
to rely on, nor are we willing to take Engelhardt’s word for it. So if this is the
252 Stephen Wear
real ground of the critique of secular ethics that Engelhardt offers, we might
just as well shrug our shoulders and return to our own moral reflections, such
as they are. At least we can “quite coherently and accountably seek satisfaction,
fulfillment, and happiness” (p. 137).
There is, however, another barrel in Engelhardt’s shotgun, viz. his
portrayal of the failure of the Enlightenment project. And my main point
about this particular salvo is as follows: Engelhardt’s assertion of the failure
of the Enlightenment project to secure a content-filled, lexically ordered vision
of the right and the good from reason unaided by tradition or revelation takes
on an altered significance once one appreciates that in the end he holds that
only a noetic religious experience can succeed in such a project. That is: his
view of the Enlightenment thus succeeds only by begging the question of
what counts as success in ethics once it is severed from any appeal to revela-
tion and tradition. If we instead, divorced from that tradition and revelation
as some of us are, tired of priests and presbyters telling us how to act, adopt
the project of seeking to ascertain what a reason-based ethics might provide,
however minimal, then success may well turn out to lie in a quite marginal,
bare-bones sort of ethic, perhaps Engelhardt’s ethic of permission. This would
not then be a failure for those of us not vouchsafed by Engelhardt’s noetic
experience. Nor would any such result be a failure because the expectations
of the early Enlightenment thinkers were much too high. That reason unaided
may well supply much less than religion does is not only not a failure; it
should have been expected.
My point, in the end, is that Engelhardt may well have let the cat out of the
bag here; i.e., if Engelhardt’s critique of the Enlightenment project ultimately
rests on the fact that it could not provide the same sort of content-filled morality,
on the same terms and principles, as the noetic Christian experience, then his
critique is itself circular. Pursuit of the Enlightenment project might still
legitimately continue, however humbled. It might just have to recognize that
a more basic and humbler sense of what constitutes ethical justification will
be part of the result. And if we keep in mind Aristotle’s dictum that one
should not expect more of a type of inquiry than it is capable of providing,
then this will not be failure either.
If the above rings true, and for those of us stuck in the realm of immanence
without any such noetic instruction I believe it must, then I submit that in the
end we must conclude that Engelhardt is not even playing the same game as
the rest of us. If, for example, he wants to insist that any reason-based ethics
must provide the same level and depth of satisfaction, logical and existential,
that religion does, then we simply need to part company with him, indicating
that we are willing and bound to pursue whatever result we can manage, and
failure simply is not shown, for us, if the result does not measure up to what
he has found, which we have not. In the remainder of this essay, I will presume
to summarize what I believe some of this legitimate result amounts to, first
within the bioethical realm where moral strangers interact as patients and
providers.
III. Justification and Belief in Clinical Bioethics

Stuck in immanence as some of us are, the primary issue thus comes to
regard what a secular ethics can provide, with an expectation that the result
will probably not approximate the sort of ordered content that Engelhardt has
obtained for himself. This question will, in part, turn on what constitutes
legitimate justification and belief in bioethics. Here a further conjecture
regarding Engelhardt may be helpful. That is: if we attempt to place Engelhardt
as a philosopher, we might initially tend to think of him as some sort of chas-
tened Hegelian. Aside from his well-known Germanophile tendencies, his
dissertation was on Hegel, and he presents, in many ways, the aspect of the
dedicated rationalist, however much the end result of that rationalism is
severely limited. I believe we should, however, look further north from Ger-
many for a philosophical soul mate for Engelhardt, viz. to Kierkegaard. In
sum, where Kierkegaard spends most of his writing illustrating how no secu-
lar “way of life” can rest easy in itself, that all involve contradiction in some
way or another, I submit that Engelhardt may be seen as engaged in the same
project regarding all forms of secular ethical argument. For both, the end
result is that one is left to somehow jump to what one might rest easy in or, of
course, remain in the realm of the incoherent and ultimately unsatisfying.
The point of my argument thus far is rather that if we cannot jump with
either of these thinkers, then we are stuck with coming up with the best
account that we can (some account may be more adequate than others). The
search for such an account may well also involve re-thinking what constitutes
legitimate justification and belief in ethics, with the expectation that it may
end up much less austere than what Engelhardt insists upon.
More specifically: take Engelhardt’s reflection on Tom Beauchamp’s
attempt to hold that “there is a common morality shared by all.” Engelhardt
notes that Beauchamp “tries to make his case by listing fourteen rules he
holds to be universal”, such as “1) Tell the truth. 2) Respect the privacy of oth-
ers ... 6) Do not kill” (2000, p. 31). So far, so good, one would think, but not for
Engelhardt. Aside from the obvious fact that no such principle enjoys una-
nimity across cultures, Engelhardt observes that Beauchamp is explicitly
offering an “open-ended list of moral considerations that different persons
from different communities may rank differently” (p. 31). And this will not do
for Engelhardt; being open-ended, Beauchamp’s principles “cannot provide
any moral guidance” (p. 31).
What should we think of this? On the one hand, I believe Engelhardt is
correct in making the important point that Beauchamp’s system fails in an
important sense; namely, that many of the specific dilemmas that called forth
254 Stephen Wear
the field of bioethics are simply not going to be solved by such an approach.
This is so because they are dilemmas precisely in that they involve head-on
conflicts between the very principles that Beauchamp advocates. Thus, as
Engelhardt endlessly points out, as Beauchamp and others cannot provide a
lexical ordering of such principles, whereby we might decide between them
when they conflict, then his principlism does not provide the guidance sought.
At most, Beauchamp’s principlism helps us better understand the nature of
the dilemmas at hand, but cannot resolve them without begging the question
as to the relative ranking of any of these principles, in general or in any
particular case.
Fair enough. I believe Engelhardt has Beauchamp dead to rights in this
regard. What Engelhardt fails to allow is that Beauchamp may still be mean-
ingfully and helpfully offering a great deal of guidance about how to proceed
in the usual case where we are not faced with intractable dilemmas, but are
merely trying to fathom how we should usually act. And Beauchamp’s accep-
tance of the open-ended character of all this does not constitute abject failure
of his system; it is just a prudent recognition of its limits. Beauchamp may
thus succeed in an important sense for all that Engelhardt says.
Let us consider the possibilities here more specifically. Consider the notion
of truth-telling. Now it is clear that truth-telling does not enjoy universal
acceptance across cultures, so descriptive ethics will not help us. Further, à la
Engelhardt, when truth-telling conflicts with some other basic principle, e.g.,
beneficence (as when we hesitate to tell a patient who is currently suffering a
myocardial infarction that this is so for fear we will worsen the effect somehow),
it may well be that reflection on the case at hand will leave us with a “six of
one, half dozen of the other” result regarding the weight of the conflicting
principles. But that hardly indicates that the principle of truth-telling is not
ethically mandatory in the usual case. That ethical guidance has limits does
not mean that it does not provide guidance.
Now this is hardly the place to attempt to argue that truth-telling is a
universal ethical maxim. Nor is this needed, as I believe sufficient argument
has already been supplied. To my mind, Sissela Bok, in her classic piece on
“Lies to the Sick and Dying,” has done a quite adequate job of marshaling a
“preponderance of the evidence” in favor of embracing truth-telling as an
appropriate ethical rule, as what we should do in the usual case (1978,
pp. 232-255). Admittedly, it is primarily a consequentialist argument, and
would surely remain open-ended, as Beauchamp’s principles are. Still, it does
provide guidance in the usual case, and its consequentialist character seems
hardly objectionable for those of us stuck in immanence and thus intend only
to “coherently and accountably seek satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness”
(p. 137), as Engelhardt puts it.
More generally, and toward the issue of how impoverished any legitimate
secular ethics must be, I submit that such consequentialist argumentation can and
has produced a full blown “system” of clinical ethics that is not impoverished,
contains much guidance in the usual case, and legitimately guides the behavior
of many in the clinical realm. As I have suggested elsewhere:
Whether it be in the “Patients Bill of Rights” (American Hospital Association,
2001) which is hung on the walls all over the institution, or in well known legal
or reviewing body (i.e., JCAHO) statements that many staff can parrot, or in
the policies and procedures of the institution, many bioethical issues appear in
the form of established truths. The right of competent patients to informed
consent and confidentiality, to be told the truth, to refuse any and all treat-
ment, and so forth, are seen as guiding principles for everyone. They are seen
as no more up for grabs, intellectually or morally, than the clinical guidelines
for managing diabetes, or the proper methods for assessing and responding to
multi-infarct dementia.
Teaching within such a framework of accepted moral truths goes into consid-
erable clinical and ethical detail before any true controversy arises. Explaining
how competence, i.e., decision making capacity, should be evaluated, the rank-
order of surrogates for incompetent patients, what sort of interventions re-
quire informed consent and what the elements of any such disclosures should
be, and so on, are clearly delineated for staff who, in the main, want to know
how to proceed in the usual case. One often spends time “talking tactics,”
whether this regards how (not whether) to tell bad news to patients and fami-
lies, when and how to encourage patients to designate a surrogate or generate
advance statements regarding extraordinary scenarios, or how to document
what one has discussed or determined so it will be available and useful during
subsequent care.
The further point here is that, however much actual bioethics teaching at (or
near) the bedside may incidentally key to, or be triggered by, actual contro-
versy or disputes, a very broad and complex background of what is accepted
or assumed guides most such discussion. Often these moral truths completely
control what is then done, as when a patient’s specific prior statements are
held, per hospital policy, to overrule contrary wishes or views of family mem-
bers, or when “self-destructive” patients who are deemed competent are allowed
to continue those behaviors, however much staff and family would like somehow
to prevent them from occurring. Even when policy does not clearly stipulate
the proper ethical course, tactics aimed at dispute mediation—attempting to
restore staff-patient/family interaction—or simply talking it out in the hopes
that consensus might be reached, are utilized to resolve problems as often as
anything one would recognize as ethical reasoning. That such latter tactics as
converting dispute into consensus often work suggests that the accepted truths
mentioned above are not only those of the institution and its staff, but are often
shared equally by patients and their families. The diversity of ethical beliefs
and values itself appears to be more a creature of the lecture hall, than a presence
at the bedside. (Wear, 2002, pp. 436-437)
My basic point here is that there actually exists a canon of clinical ethics
that is widely shared (at least in the West), provides specific and comprehensive
guidance in the usual case, seems to well satisfy most patients and providers,
256 Stephen Wear
and enjoys substantial support from the last few decades of argument, debate
and experience in Western clinical circles.
I will further presume to suggest that this canon might well amount to a
universal clinical ethics, for all that Engelhardt says. It is surely the case that
certain other cultures do not subscribe to this canon, e.g., if Engelhardt is correct,
that of Orthodox Christianity. I cannot see, however, that this is a telling criti-
cism. For once one marshals one’s arguments, e.g., as Bok does in favor of
truth-telling, one might legitimately conclude that different practices are, in
fact, unethical, however much they enjoy the sanction of some particular culture.
Not that we are obliged to be overly imperialistic about this; in the end, all we
need seek is a system of ethical norms that can guide us in our interactions
with moral strangers. They can then still inform us if they see things differently,
e.g., that they would not want the sort of aggressive truth-telling that this
Western canon advocates. We still have guidance for ourselves and, via
patient’s bill of rights statements and otherwise, can advise moral strangers of
how we intend to conduct ourselves absent contrary instructions from them.
Nor do I think such an approach is as impoverished and merely proce-
dural as Engelhardt portrays it. We can surely presume to emphasize the need
for beneficence and virtue in health care providers given the vulnerability
and diminished competence seen in patients. More substantially, there are
many situations where such providers might legitimately go beyond the
merely procedural as when they perceive that patients are making unin-
formed, foolish, or needlessly tragic choices, as when a patient with moderate
emphysema indicates he or she never wants to be on a “breathing machine,”
and the provider appropriately advises the patient that such an exclusion
may well not be wise as they may later present with an eminently treatable
acute infiltrate for which a short term trial intubation might successfully
return them to base line. More substantially, I submit, there is a whole constel-
lation of “standard practices” in medicine that are no less so because the occa-
sional patient rejects them, and it seems fair to say that the debate of medical
futility has clearly succeeded in identifying scenarios where medical aggres-
siveness is just not appropriate, however much certain patients or families
may have different views, and however one wants to deal with the discrepancy.
This canon, then, is neither impoverished, not merely procedural, for all that
Engelhardt says. Nor is it simply arbitrary “news from nowhere,” however
much unanimity about it does not exist, and it does not fully satisfy the hopes
and expectations of the early Enlightenment.
IV. The Politics of Health Care Provision

The other fly in the ointment here regards Engelhardt’s claim that secular
bioethics must also embrace a libertarian sort of political philosophy; anything
beyond this is seen as unjustified and more “news from nowhere.” I propose
to address this issue by referring to Engelhardt’s further argument that such a

libertarian political view naturally tends to evolve into some sort of a much more
insidious liberal cosmopolitanism, a result we both abhor. As Engelhardt says:
This libertarian cosmopolitanism is libertarian in drawing authority from the
permission of those who collaborate, and not from any particular valued state
of affairs, much less from a lexical priority or value given to freedom or liberty.
It is cosmopolitan in the sense of providing a framework that can be invoked
outside of any particular socio-historical context, tradition, or moral commu-
nity by drawing simply on the consent of those willing to be involved. Such a
sparse moral foundation may be endurable only if the individuals who col-
laborate primarily place their own lives within functional moral communities
where they confront others as moral friends, persons with whom they share a
content-filled moral vision. (2000, p. 43)
Engelhardt proceeds to observe, however, that:
Because increasingly people do not find themselves in such communities, and
because they often find themselves hungering for community, value and
meaning, the default position becomes, not as a matter of strict necessity, but
as a matter of moral desire, a liberal cosmopolitanism. (2000, p. 43)
What we thus find, according to Engelhardt, is another form of urge to
transcendence, as previously discussed:
This shift from a libertarian cosmopolitanism to a liberal cosmopolitanism
involves a radical change of moral and metaphysical perspective. It establishes
a fundamentally different context for a bioethics. A libertarian cosmopolitanism
advances no criticism of particular moral communities, as long as those who
participate can from the outside be seen as giving their permission...it consti-
tutes the moral point of view of moral strangers...involves no particular ranking
of values...eschews moral imperialism. This is in contrast to a liberal cosmo-
politanism, which assigns a cardinal value to a particular understanding of
autonomous choice and holds that all persons should likewise. The liberal
cosmopolitan ethos requires that people decide to be autonomous, self-
determining individuals. The failure to pursue this ethos of autonomy
becomes an indication of false consciousness... Liberal cosmopolitanism
locates self-determination centrally in its account of human flourishing. In the
absence of a transcendent moral truth, the focal point of the moral life becomes
autonomous self-determination. The good life is not found in submitting to
and being determined by the good and the true. Autonomy instead becomes
integral to the good. (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 43)
There is much here that I would second; in fact, it signals a parallel thread
of argument in Engelhardt’s book that can be profitably read even by those
who have no particular Christian commitments, but are more simply unable
to follow along with the liberal cosmopolitanism that Engelhardt is at such
pains to explicate. It, in effect, traces the movement from a minimal ethics of
permission, which relies on freedom as a side constraint, to a full-blown lib-
eralism that makes freedom the primary value and focus of the moral life.
258 Stephen Wear
This in turn, as Engelhardt observes, moves us from a tolerant minimal secular

ethic to an intolerant, imperialistic ethic that demands that all support a society,
and health care system, that keys to a much richer notion of human flourishing
as its touchstone. The arguments for the welfare state, socialized medicine,
confiscatory taxation, and so forth, are not far behind.
Within the confines of this essay, we should now pause to reflect on what
we have to say about this shift from libertarian to liberal cosmopolitanism. Is
it driven by some clear logical or existential necessity? Engelhardt does not
think so, although his own tendency toward transcendence is appearing here
in another form, however misguided, by his lights. Is this liberal cosmopoli-
tanism still the “news from nowhere” that he has always claimed it is,
especially given the arguments we have previously considered?
I do not think so. Once we have placed ourselves wholly in the realm of
the immanent, with our ethics charged with ascertaining how we might best
“coherently and accountably seek satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness,”
then it would seem that restricting ethics to considering freedom as a side
constraint is no longer mandatory, and a reflection on whether and how a
given society might consider supporting the liberal view of human flourishing
becomes as legitimate as any ethical reflection. In effect, if we reject Engelhardt’s
austere employment of the Enlightenment project for a much more garden
variety ethics that humbly pursues the issue of how best to “coherently and
accountably seek satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness,” then the liberal
cosmopolitan view merits as much of a hearing as anything else.
Lapsed Unitarian Yankee that I am, I am as committed as Engelhardt to
opposing this shift to a liberal cosmopolitan view, but not for the philosophical
reasons that he gives. As previously argued, I submit that his critique of secular
ethics itself fails once we recognize that its only real satisfaction, and
wellspring, comes from a view of the Enlightenment project that can be
satisfied only by returning to some sort of religious vision. Given this, and
thus proceeding with our more garden variety ethical reflections, I would feel
obliged to admit that a society might legitimately and coherently opt for liberal
cosmopolitanism. The basic argument for this could appeal to Engelhardt’s
own notion of permission, but expand its basis, viz. that permission may be
sufficiently secured from a democratically based social, majority rules sort of
permission. As I have argued extensively elsewhere (Wear, Freer, and
Koczwara, 1999, pp. 363-383), the “representatives of the people assembled”
might legitimately choose to support such a system, including forcing it on
others who do not agree with it. In effect, I believe permission is necessary,
but see no reason why this must be limited to only the explicit permission of
specific individuals.
I would then, for my part, presume to argue that such a liberal cosmopoli-
tanism is unwise and imprudent for many of the sort of reasons that contem-
porary American conservatism offers. A good start for such an argument
might be obtained by reviewing F. A. Hayek’s book Road to Serfdom. I will not

supply such argument here, but be content merely to signal it towards my
rejection of the idea that such a much more circumscribed political view need
not, for good and sufficient reasons, shift to that of liberal cosmopolitanism,
as Engelhardt seems to believe. It would most likely, however, once the “rep-
resentatives of the people assembled” have reflected on the issues and argu-
ments, result in a polis, and a health care system, that goes way beyond the
libertarianism that Engelhardt erroneously holds we are limited to in the
secular realm.
My basic argument here is that for those of us who, unlike Engelhardt,
remain stuck in the secular world of immanence, a substantial, secular ethic
can be (and has been) legitimately fashioned that provides respectable, coher-
ent guidance for moral strangers. His critique, in effect, succeeds in claiming
that the Enlightenment has failed only by appealing to a transcendental result
that many of us do not accept. Ethics then can legitimately and helpfully pro-
ceed in a more garden variety fashion whereby we seek, as best we can, to
“quite coherently and accountably seek satisfaction, fulfillment, and happi-
ness,” as Engelhardt himself expresses it. Nor need the result of such an
inquiry be objectionably impoverished; in fact, we have about three decades
of substantial argument, debate, and experience that has resulted in a detailed
canon of clinical ethics that seems to work for many, and may well constitute
a universal ethic for all that Engelhardt says. Similarly, I would submit that
legitimate political permission can be gained from the “representatives of the
people assembled” to a polity that goes way beyond the limited libertarian
polis that Engelhardt advocates. This, in turn, might be kept from shifting to
an objectionable liberal cosmopolitan polity by advancing the usual conser-
vative prudential arguments.
Bibliography
Bok, S. Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
Engelhardt, H.T., Jr. The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse, The Netherlands:
Hayek, F.A. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944.
Wear, S.E., J. Freer, and B. Koczwara. “The Commercialization of Human Body Parts:
Public Policy Considerations.” In Persons and Their Bodies: Rights, Responsibilities,
Relationships, edited by Mark J. Cherry, 363-83. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer
Wear, S.E. “Teaching Bioethics at (or near) the Bedside.” Journal of Medicine and
Philosophy 27, no. 4 (2002): 433-45.
Ethics Expertise1
Nicholas Capaldi
This essay would never have been conceived or written if it had not been
for H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. I have learned and shared many things with
and from him, many of them too profound and important to be publicly
acknowledged and discussed. From an intellectual point of view, I have redis-
covered the limits of philosophy, the need for the transcendent (see, e.g.,
Engelhardt, 2000), and the dangers of taking ethics expertise too literally (see,
e.g., Engelhardt, 2002).
The notion of ethics expertise in any important and controversial sense is
really a contemporary idea. We live in an age dominated by science and tech-
nology. Experts are understood to be individuals with technical instrumental
knowledge and skills who can give authoritative and definitive answers
about why something happens or how to make it happen. Some have even
suggested the bizarre idea that there are ethics experts. Why is this idea
bizarre and how did it come about? To answer those questions, to understand
the idea of “ethics expertise” and its variants, it is necessary to begin by
enumerating the different historical senses of ethics expertise.
I. Classical Philosophical Contributions to the Idea of Ethics

Expertise
By classical philosophy, I mean the views which derived from Plato and
Aristotle.2 What these philosophers share in common is the following. There
is an objective external framework of norms (comprising the true, the good,
and the beautiful). Our first task is to apprehend those norms, and our second
task is to conform our behavior and all social structures to those norms. Theory
logically precedes practice (T/P). Moreover, theory takes the form of a deductive
argument in which we argue from first principles to specific applications. The
ultimate structure of these first principles is a comprehensive metaphysics
(hence, there is no real separation among ethics, politics, religion, and so
261
262 Nicholas Capaldi
forth). Only those who understand the ultimate big picture can truly determine
what the right thing to do is in a particular set of circumstances. Philosophers
with the proper vision and training, therefore, are the true ethics experts.
There are, of course, significant disagreements between Plato (a priori forms)
and Aristotle (empirically observed teleology) on how to discover these first
principles.
Needless to say, many of the views of Plato and Aristotle have been
challenged, and some might even say to some extent largely discredited.
Nevertheless, what remains is the belief that there is an intellectual elite,3 who
have access to an “objective” intellectual structure beyond or “behind” practice
that entitles them to recognition as ethics (or political) experts. Practice should
conform to their collectively determined theory. This is a view that still per-
meates and dominates the academic world today. This is a difficult position
to defend if there are conflicting views in the academy, and that leads to a
tendency toward some form of ethical and political uniformity, lest the public
fail to recognize and honor the claim to expertise.
In the classical world, philosophers formed schools or sects, in which
membership was exclusive and voluntary. In its classical form, this view was
privately inspirational and publicly mostly harmless. Part of the weakness of
the classical intellectual elite was that the uneducated public could not recog-
nize and, therefore, acknowledge their expertise; at the same time, this lack of
recognition rendered the classical intellectual elite relatively powerless and
harmless. The recognition of an external order also inhibited most excess. In
its modern variant, as we shall see, it becomes pathological and dangerous.
II. Early Christian Contributions to the Idea of Ethics Expertise4

The Judeo-Christian worldview introduced the idea of a personal
transcendent God in place of an impersonal order. Christianity went further
in rejecting the classical Greek assimilation of the totality of life to the political
by insisting that the ethical-religious domain was independent of the political
domain.
Access to God’s principles was a product5 of moral virtue and not intel-
lectual virtue. Moral virtue was achieved through faith, communal authority,
ritual, and ascetic practice. Many of these early Christians embodied in their
own lives and practices the very virtues they expounded. There was and is in
this context no gap between theory and practice.
The ascetic practices emphasized self-sacrifice partly as a way of achieving
a form of disinterestedness. Those who achieved this state were accorded
recognition as spiritual mentors rather than as ethics “experts.” Their status
might be more appropriately described as holiness or saintliness. But, in any
case, it gave to some people an elite status, a form of moral authority and the
role of spiritual mentors. In an important sense, early Christianity eschews
the notion of expertise; it is the later combination of Christianity with classical

Greek philosophy that makes this an important part of the story.
Problems abound as to how exactly to understand the relation6 of the
ethical-religious domain to the political domain, and there is always the
danger that asceticism itself becomes a form of pride. Nevertheless, this is a
view that has remained a powerful stimulus to the ethics content of the
members of religious communities from the time of its inception to the present,
and it has largely been politically benign.
III. Late Medieval (Roman Catholic) Ethics Expertise

This version of ethics expertise consists of early Christian expertise now
viewed through the lens of philosophy. I’ll use the term ‘theology’ loosely
here to mean the rationalization of Christianity through the employment of
classical Greek philosophy. To be an “expert” here was to be both a member
of the intellectual elite (intellectual virtue) and the moral elite (moral virtue).
Few people could achieve both sorts of virtue, and that is one reason why
ethical expertise was necessary; namely, so that all could live an ethical life.
Recognition of the elite by the non-elite was facilitated both by the erudition
and articulateness as well as the ascetic lifestyle of those who claimed this
status. Recognition was achieved through association with another institution,
the university and its trappings.
The university was invented in the late Middle Ages primarily to train clergy
who thus constituted the ethics experts. The university becomes the locus of ethical
expertise. Modern universities still claim this authority long after they have given
up even the pretense of belief in the transcendent or the practice of moral virtue.
One of the dangers of trying to combine intellectual and moral virtue is
the tendency for the former to subsume the latter. This transforms morality
into an intellectual exercise, the application of theory to practice or morality
as the reflective observance of rules or ideals. Emphasis is put upon having a
correct and defensible theory rather than on how to act. The ideals too quickly
turn into obsessions. Inevitably, moral sensibility is inhibited or even eroded
in favor of an elaborate casuistry. The object seems to be to observe a rule
instead of behaving in a certain concrete manner. Obsession with rigid
deductive structures and a preoccupation with logical systematicity have
been destructive of both historical understanding and rational criticism. This
is especially true with the assimilation of the Aristotelian natural law tradi-
tion and its tendency to obscure the dividing line between ethics and politics. Part
of the appeal of Aristotelianism and Aristotelian natural law was supposed to
be that non-believers could concede it. It is but a short step to ignoring
everything except the intellectual virtue.
It is now important to introduce a distinction between those who remained
inspired by Platonism (e.g., Augustinians) and those who were inspired by
the newly rediscovered Aristotelianism. The Platonists always emphasized

the divine locus of holiness, the unclose-able gap between the ideal and the
actual world (hence, no earthly utopianism), the recognition that even the
Church was imperfect, the inspirational role of the spiritual domain, and the
purely negative role of the political domain (to prevent or punish evil). The
Aristotelian inspired Christians, on the other hand, accepted the idea of a
hierarchical order to the social world, but instead of the state being preeminent
the institution of the Church would be. The role of the Church (especially as
defined by university trained clerics) was to serve as ethics experts who
directed the state to take an active (positive) role in helping individuals
achieve their ultimate good, understood as salvation. Statism became the
preferred mode for the implementation of ethics expertise.
The danger of any “Aristotelian” inspired view, as here defined, is utopian
reform. Once you place the “form” in the “matter,” there will always be a
temptation to close the unclose-able gap. To the extent that you remember the
divine mystery you can, like Aquinas, use the Church as a check on govern-
ment excess. To the extent that you come to view yourself as the voice of the
divine on earth, you are tempted to try to make the world divine7 by claiming
that your ethics expertise entitles you to supreme political power. We shall
dub this the Gnostic (utopian) temptation.
Protestant reformers faced the same temptation. Some remained true to
the Augustinian-Platonic view and sought to protect the church from worldly
corruption. Some gave in to the Gnostic temptation. The “experts,” now holding
a multiplicity of conflicting theological views, vied for control of worldly
political power. The result was the religious wars of the seventeenth century.
One thing we have not really explained is why there should be a diversity
of theological views. The obvious answer is that the appeal to different and
conflicting philosophies will yield different and conflicting theologies. The
further answer is that, as we shall see, there is no way to reconcile philosophical
disagreements through rational argument alone.
IV. Early Modern Philosophy

This period tended to downplay the notion of expertise. To begin with,
early modern philosophers were initially concerned to accommodate new
values in science, commerce, and politics to old values. As a consequence they
tended to incorporate religious modes of thought along with philosophical
modes of thought, as for example in Hobbes and Locke. The main compromise
that arose at first in Protestant countries was the distinction between the
political realm (where procedural norms prevailed) and the religious-ethics
realm (where substantive norms were articulated). One thinks in this context
of Locke’s use of Christianity to defend religious toleration and a secular
state. The long-term tendency of this compromise was (a) to marginalize and
eventually to exclude the idea of a purely religious expertise;8 and eventually

(b) to secularize the whole context of ethics and politics.9 One thinks in this
context of Hume’s critique of the “monkish virtues” (asceticism) as pathological.
Public policy on the whole seemed not to need expertise. This was a period
when philosophers emphasized toleration, liberty, and autonomy. Moreover,
there is something inconsistent about autonomous agents asking others to
take responsibility for making ethical judgments that concern themselves.
V. The Enlightenment Project

The origin of the contemporary idea of an ethics expert derives from the
Enlightenment Project (Capaldi, 1998). This movement, which is not to be con-
fused with the whole of the Enlightenment, asserted the doctrine of scientism,
namely, that physical science was the whole truth about everything. Among the
French philosophes (e.g., La Mettrie or Holbach), who were the primary propo-
nents of this view, the success of physical science solved all potential philo-
sophical problems, since philosophy was no more than the logic of science.
Further, it was assumed that there could be a social science based on the model
of physical science. Just as physical science led to the wonders of modern phys-
ical technology, so there would be a corresponding social technology that would
solve all social (ethics, economic, political, aesthetic, and so forth) problems.10
This purely secular and naturalistic conception of expertise was espoused
in the nineteenth century by Comte (as positivism) as well as Marx, and it
survives in various forms of positivism, behaviorism, analytic philosophy,
artificial intelligence, and so forth. This intellectual movement or collection of
movements (a) dominates the intellectual world; (b) finds its locus in univer-
sities; (c) permeates all professions based on university education including
journalism, the ministry, law, and medicine; (d) explains why the only two
growth areas in the discipline of philosophy are bioethics and business ethics;
and (e) is inevitably statist because the social technology requires planning by
experts who need the full resources of government power and taxation to
solve all social problems.
We are now in a position to summarize all of the relevant features of ethics
expertise as they are reflected in the Enlightenment Project.
1. Theory precedes practice (T/P)
a. “experts” need have no actual experience of what they direct
b. they “see” the truth “behind” the practice
c. they can teach “how” to do it, not “what” to do—triumph of
methodology over substance
d. disdain and condescension expressed toward mere practitioners
2. Intellectual elite
e. communication skills (articulate)
f. use of insiders vocabulary and set of references
g. recognition is achieved through association with the university and

its trappings
h. journalists are junior partners who popularize intellectual knowledge
for the public
3. The university becomes the locus of ethical expertise (solves problem
of recognition), primarily because of its connection with scientific and
technological research. American universities followed three models:
German Research model; small religious liberal arts college; utilitarian
model (e.g., A&M)—all three reinforce various older features of the
notion of ethics expertise.
4. Gnostic (utopian) temptation
i. a certain impatience with practice that refuses to conform to theory
j. statism becomes the preferred mode for the implementation of ethics
expertise
k. obscure the dividing line between ethics and politics
i already inherent in Aristotle
ii fostered by the modern assumption that there is no such thing
as free will—everything is a matter of environmental determinism;
hence the need for primarily external sanctions
Enlightenment Project ethics expertise (EPEE as we shall now call it) usually
takes two forms. The simple form is utilitarianism. The expert already knows
(because he has graduated from the “correct” program in the social sciences
or philosophy11 at one of the “major” schools) what ends human beings pursue;
hence, he only has to calculate the consequences of the various alternatives.
This form of expertise is often criticized because behind these judgments
there are all kinds of “deep,” creative and imaginative accounts offered (e.g.,
Rawls, Nozick or Nagel), conflicting accounts of what ends human beings
pursue (teleology) and no current reductive physiological explanation of
which account, if any, is true.
The complex form of EPEE recognizes the limitations of utilitarianism and
its attendant philosophical difficulties. It adopts a different approach. A real
scientific explanation is an exploration, that is, a hypothesis about the hidden
structure behind everyday events. Analogously, we begin with surface ethics
judgments and then speculate on the hidden structure behind these judg-
ments. All kinds of “deep,” creative and imaginative accounts are offered
(again, e.g., Rawls, Nozick or Nagel). The hidden structure hypothesis allows
one to determine which surface ethics judgments are veridical and which are
not. This approach is sometimes called “Kantian” to avoid any problem about
the status of the original ethics judgments.
There is one major problem with the complex form of EPEE. There are
alternative exploratory accounts with no way to resolve disputes over which
one is correct. Moreover, there is the suspicion that these explorers are merely
rationalizing private ethics and/or political agendas by populating their

hypothesis with whatever they need to confirm their cherished intuitions
(i.e., prejudices).
This is one of the subjects in which Engelhardt has made his greatest
contribution. Here we go back to a point we made earlier, namely, that there
is no way to reconcile philosophical disagreements through rational argument
alone. Proponents of EPEE thought they could avoid this problem by appeal
to scientism, but scientism cannot validate itself (see Capaldi, 1998). In the
area of ethics, the mess is even more apparent. Engelhardt has made the fol-
lowing powerful case against the possibility of a philosophical resolution of
moral diversity. It is not simply the case that there are significant moral dis-
agreements about substantive issues. Many if not most of these controversies
do not appear to be resolvable through sound rational argument. On the one
hand, many of the controversies depend upon different foundational meta-
physical commitments. As with most metaphysical controversies, resolution
is possible only through the granting of particular initial premises and rules
of evidence. On the other hand, even when foundational metaphysical issues
do not appear to be at stake, the debates turn on different rankings of the
good. Again, resolution does not appear to be feasible without begging the
question, arguing in a circle, or engaging in infinite regress. One cannot appeal
to consequences without knowing how to rank the impact of different
approaches with regard to different moral interests (liberty, equality, prosperity,
security, and so forth). Nor can one non-controversially appeal to preference
satisfaction unless one already grants how one will correct preferences and
compare rational versus impassioned preferences, as well as calculate the dis-
count rate for preferences over time. Appeals to disinterested observers,
hypothetical choosers, or hypothetical contractors will not avail either. If such
decision makers are truly disinterested, they will choose nothing. To choose
in a particular way, they must be fitted out with a particular moral sense or
thin theory of the good. Intuitions can be met with contrary intuitions. Any
particular balancing of claims can be countered with a different approach to
achieving a balance. To appeal for guidance to any account of moral rationality
one must already have secured content for that moral rationality.
Not only is there a strident moral diversity defining debates regarding all
substantive issues, but also there is in principle good reason to hold that these
debates cannot be brought to closure in a principled fashion through sound
rational argument. The partisans of each and every position find themselves
embedded within their own discourse so that they are unable to step outside
of their own respective hermeneutic circles without embracing new and
divergent premises and rules of inferences. Many traditional thinkers find
themselves in precisely this position. They are so enmeshed in their own
metaphysics and epistemology, so convinced that they are committed to “reason”
when what they are committed to is a particular set of premises and rules, so
able to see the “flaws” in the positions of others who do not accept the same
rules, that they quite literally do not understand the alternative positions or
even how there can be other positions. More important, they fail to under-
stand the character of contemporary moral debate. What is peculiar about
contemporary moral debate is not just the incessant controversy but also the
absence of any basis for bringing the controversies to a conclusion in a
principled fashion.
VI. Last Refuge

The last line of defense is to claim that an ethics expert can facilitate the
discussion of ethical issues by helping others to put their thoughts into a clear
argument. We can call this the modest but pure argument clarification model.
This emphasis on logic is a tenuous connection with the scientism of the
Enlightenment Project. However, identifying premises logically does not tell
us which premises are true. I suspect that people who do this and call them-
selves experts are engaging in some sort of subliminal pressuring that gives
privilege to certain premises over others.
VII. Politics, Ethics, and Expertise

Given the foregoing discussion, I conclude that there is no such thing as
ethics expertise. Ethical issues are not the sort of thing about which one can
have “expertise.” There are spiritual mentors or ethical mentors within a
given community all of whose members subscribe to a substantive view of
what is right and what is wrong. In no instance have I ever found that
intellectualizing those substantive views helps very much. Usually the
most valuable intellectual activity is a critique of previous attempts at
over-intellectualization.
What meaning, then, can be given to the practice of bioethics? The simple
answer, which is all we have space for here, is to seek guidance from spiritual-
ethical mentors on specific issues. What happens if there are incommensurable
ethical communities? The simple answer is that you move to the political
level and recognize that on the political-legal level all that you will obtain is
agreement on procedural norms (e.g., autonomy) that leave different ethical
communities or the members thereof to practice as they see fit. We might call
this the negotiation model of bioethics.
What meaning can be given to the practice of business ethics? A business
ethicist can be either a scholar of business ethics or a business ethics practitioner.
The point of business education is to understand and explain market
activity in the broadest sense. It is a philosophical activity in that it seeks to
reveal the role of business activity on the map of our total experience. It is not
a theoretical endeavor. It involves knowledge of our tradition of business
behavior. Comparative studies are valuable in getting us to look more

carefully at our traditions. Historical studies would show what people have
said and thought—manner of thinking. Its purpose is not to expose errors but
to understand its prejudices. Business ethics education is an explanatory not
a practical activity; we do not infer practical consequences from understanding
or explanation. To be a scholar of business ethics is not directly linked to being
a business ethics practitioner.
Business ethics as a practice is immanent. That is, it is either identifying
the traditional norm(s) relevant to a particular situation or amending existing
arrangements by explication of the norms inherent in previous practice. It is
very much like the practice of law in the common law tradition. These norms
cannot be accessed as a permanent substructure; they can never be defini-
tively explicated but are fertile sources of adaptation; they are an inheritance
that does not entail its own future development.
Explication is a mode of understanding social practices. It presupposes
that all social practices function with implicit norms and that to explicate a
practice is to make explicit the inherent norms. In explication we try to clarify
that which is routinely taken for granted, namely our ordinary understanding
of our practices, in the hope of extracting from our previous practice a set of
norms that can be used reflectively to guide future practice. Explication
attempts to specify the sense we have of ourselves when we act and to clarify
that which serves to guide us. We do not change our ordinary understanding
but rather come to know it in a new and better way. Explication is a way of
arriving at a kind of practical knowledge that takes human agency as primary.
It seeks to mediate practice from within practice itself (P/T).12 Explications
are narratives that may or may not contain arguments within them, but the
overall explication is not itself an argument. You cannot refute an explication,
but you can offer an alternative one.
An explication presupposes a general background agreement on what we
are trying to achieve; it commences with a diagnosis of the problem at issue;
it then proposes a response; it recommends this proposal by considering the
consequences likely to follow from acting upon it; it balances these against
those of at least one other proposal.
We may raise the question whether the norms of market practice are
compatible with the norms of specific ethical communities. The simple
answer, which is again all we have space for here, is to seek guidance from
spiritual-ethical mentors on specific issues. What happens if there are incom-
mensurable ethical communities? The simple answer is that you move to the
political level and recognize that once you are on the political-legal level all
that you will obtain is agreement on procedural norms (e.g., autonomy) that
leave different ethical communities or the members thereof to practice as they
see fit within the larger procedural framework. We might call this the
negotiation model of business ethics.
Finally, we can ask in the case of both bioethics and business ethics: Can
there be specific ethical communities in which there is serious conflict and
confusion both about what the right thing is to do and about who the mentors
are or whether the mentors could be misguided on a specific issue? I think the
answer is yes. Depending upon how charitable one wants to be we can call
those ethical communities (a) dysfunctional, or (b) communities in crisis, or
(c) disintegrating communities. This is a story for another occasion.
Notes
1. There are a potentially infinite number of ways in which one can define and
defend ‘expertise’ by trivializing the meaning of the term. I shall not waste my
time with those definitions.
2. This is not the only way to read Aristotle, as I shall point out later. However, it is
one of the more influential readings.
3. The elite is intellectual as opposed to practical in the senses that their status is (a)
not the result of past practice or achievement and (b) not dependent on their ability
to affect present or future practice and achievement. This is one of the consequences
of the T/P paradigm.
4. This view is still present in Orthodox Christianity.
5. The exact relationship is not something that can be explained as any kind of natural
process precisely because the transcendent is beyond earthly conceptualization.
6. Lord Acton has famously argued that Christianity was, as a result of the space
created, therefore responsible for our notions of political liberty.
7. This is what Voegelin sees as the danger of what he calls ‘Gnosticism’ (see Voegelin,
1968).
8. There arose a distinct notion of anti-clericalism.
9. This did not impact medicine until the last half of the twentieth century. Medicine
did not become a disputed area until the development of modern medical technology
raised substantive ethics issues and the cost of such technology became a political
issue.
10. The formal components (assumptions) of this Axiology are as follows:
1. Primacy of theoretical knowledge. As a consequence of scientism,
theoretical knowledge is primary and practical knowledge has a
secondary status. The philosophical challenge is not merely to identify
the realm of the practical but to explain it theoretically.
2. Dichotomy of fact and value.
(a) Only factual judgments can be true.
(b) Value judgments are not truths because they do not refer to
structures independent of the observer or agents.
3. Science of Ethics.
(a) Values are a kind of epiphenomena.
(b) Given the primacy of theoretical knowledge and the
derivative nature of the social sciences, there can be a
physical-scientific and/or social-scientific factual account of
the substructure of the context within which values function.
This is how the realm of the practical will be explained,

ultimately, in theoretical terms.
(i) There is a two-tier view of human psychology in
which values are epiphenomena with a materialist
substructure.
(ii) The relevant explanatory constituents of the
substructure are physiological
drives;
(iii) Freedom is compatible with substructure
determinism only if freedom is construed as the
absence of arbitrary external constraints, and
where restraints are determined to be arbitrary
relative to the fundamental drives.
(iv) The fundamental drives alleged to exist in the
substructure are neither culture specific nor
conscious level specific but physiological (e.g.,
seeking pleasure), and therefore more universal.
(v) The fundamental drives also seek some kind
of homeostasis or maximization that permits
negotiation or overruling specific rules
(utilitarianism).
(vi) The foregoing conception of freedom leads to a
political conception of ethics based on external
social sanctions instead of morality (which
involves the inner sanction of autonomous
agents).
(vii) This substructure allows for a social technology
in which cognition can control volition because
this substructure is not dependent upon a
perspective; it is a structure that reveals our
basic and universal drives so that we respond
automatically (causally) to any information about
this structure.
(viii) If we add a cultural (i.e., social and historical)
dimension to our understanding of this
substructure (i.e., a social epistemology) we arrive
at Hegelian versions of analytic philosophical
ethics.
(ix) This is the science of ethics for which analytic
philosophers seek, i.e., this is the level at which
we shall find explanations that exhibit realism,
causality, and empirical verifiability but not
deductivity.
(c) Knowledge of this substructure is what permits social and
political planning.
(i) Liberalism, socialism, and Marxism all subscribe
to the two-tier view of human psychology in
which values are epiphenomena with a materialist

substructure that is transcultural, timeless, and
allows for a social engineering that renders human
beings compatible and cooperative (homeostasis).
(ii) This substructure can be appealed to in order
to correct surface disagreements and overcome
relativism.
(iii) In the case of liberalism the upper level consists
of rights (e.g., life, liberty, property, etc.) that are
not directly equatable with or deducible from a
specific account of the good life.
(iv) If we supplement the cultural account with some
notion of homeostasis, the Hegelian versions
become compatible with socialism and Marxism
on the political level.
11. Philosophy is now (a) either the study of the logic of science or (b) a social science
explaining both individual (including how we learn) and social behavior.
12. It can be argued that this philosophical activity is also to be found in Aristotle.
Bibliography
Capaldi, N. The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation. Dordrect: Kluwer,
1998.
Engelhardt, H.T., Jr. The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets
& Zeitlinger Publishers, 2000.
———. “The Ordination of Bioethicists as Secular Moral Experts.” Social Philosophy
and Policy 19(2002): 59-82.
Voegelin, E. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism: Two Essays. Chicago: H. Regnery Co.,
1968.
On the Appropriateness
of a Christian Bioethics
Thomas A. Cavanaugh
In this paper, I consider The Foundations of Christian Bioethics with the in-
tent of indicating the unique relation that obtains between Christianity and
Bioethics such that it makes sense to have a work so entitled. In our pluralistic
age, adjectival modifications abound. Thus, initially, few would remark upon
the reasonableness of entitling a volume Christian Bioethics. Somewhat simi-
larly, one would take little note of volumes entitled Islamic Bioethics, Japanese
Bioethics, and so forth.1 One observes, however, the paucity of titles such as
Christian Geometry or Buddhist Astronomy. This calls for explanation. At the
very least, our ready acceptance of the plausibility of a Christian Bioethics
deserves attention when contrasted with our initial skepticism of a Christian
Mathematics. In what follows, I argue two claims. First, that Bioethics occu-
pies a relatively unique position amongst practical disciplines insofar as its
subject matter, the human being as patient, would not exist and cannot ade-
quately be known absent revelation of the Fall. Second, and following from
this first claim, I argue that Bioethics absent revelation apprehends the fallen
human condition as basic. Thus, Bioethics cannot understand disease as a
symptom of the human problem, namely, sin. Accordingly, a Christian Bioeth-
ics is a sound endeavor.
I. Differentiating Disciplines
In his Commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate (in Questions V and VI),
Saint Thomas Aquinas addresses the division and the methods of the different
sciences (Maurer, 1963). Saint Thomas follows and elaborates upon Aristotle’s
abbreviated discussion of the bases for differentiating Arithmetic, Physics,
and Metaphysics. Aquinas proposes that one differentiates these speculative
disciplines (concerned with knowledge ordered towards understanding in
273
274 Thomas A. Cavanaugh
contrast to practical sciences ordered towards doing or making) from one

another in terms of two aspects. The first concerns the role of matter in the
existence of the thing known. The second concerns the role of matter in knowing
the thing. Physics studies material being in motion. Mobile being requires
matter for its existence. Moreover, one may not abstract from matter in one’s
knowledge of mobile being. Thus, matter plays a crucial role both in the
existence of the thing Physics studies and in knowing that object.
In Arithmetic, one studies being insofar as it admits of quantity. While being
would not admit of quantity were it not material—that is, there would not be
three of something nor the concept three absent stuff—one need not introduce
matter or stuff into one’s mathematical knowledge. Indeed, one tends to
abstract from matter even in one’s geometrical representations. Thus, for
example, in a geometrical argument a triangle is not of a specific size. Rather,
one attends to the properties that any sized triangle of certain proportions
could have—such as a right-angled isosceles triangle. While mathematical
phenomena cannot exist apart from stuff, they can be understood apart from
matter.
Metaphysics concerns being insofar as it exists, simply. Because some
beings—immaterial beings—exist independently of matter, one need not
abstract from matter in order to understand them. Indeed, immaterial
beings—such as the one who moves all things by being loved to whose exis-
tence Aristotle argues in the Metaphysics—cannot be known if one incorpo-
rates matter into one’s understanding of them. Accordingly, the subject mat-
ter of Metaphysics exists independently of matter. Therefore, it can—indeed
must—be so understood.
Thus, Aquinas differentiates the speculative sciences from one another to
the extent to which matter plays (or lacks) a role both in the existence of the
objects they study and in the very act of knowing them. He does so because
he—again, following Aristotle—holds knowledge to differ from sensation
insofar as knowledge abstracts from matter while sensation remains immersed
in the features of stuff. Sensation, therefore, does not get beyond the particu-
lar while knowledge moves towards the general and away from the individual
by means of abstraction. Accordingly, Aristotle and Aquinas offer a philo-
sophical division of the sciences. They do so by attending to matter’s role in
knowledge as a further articulation of the original difference between sensation
and knowledge.
Analogously, I propose a theological and Christian division of disciplines
in terms of their subject matter’s relation to divinely revealed truths, such as
The Fall and Christ’s Incarnation, Suffering, and Death. Following Aqui-
nas’s division of the sciences, I note the relation between these revealed
truths, on the one hand, and the existence of certain disciplines’ subject mat-
ters and knowledge of those subject matters, on the other. I contend that
Bioethics is relatively unique amongst practical disciplines insofar as the
subject matter with which it deals, namely, agents and actions bearing on
patients—i.e., humans as sick, in pain, and dying—would not exist absent
the Fall. Moreover, only a Christian Bioethics can fully understand how to
act with respect to patients as patients. For a Christian Bioethics can distin-
guish pain, suffering, and death as symptoms from the underlying disease,
sin. In contrast, secular Bioethics—at least typically—misapprehends the
patient’s diseased condition as fundamental. Thus, Bioethics has only a su-
perficial knowledge of the patient’s relation to suffering, sickness, pain, and
death. Accordingly, as I will now argue, Christian Bioethics correctly appre-
hends the patient as a patient by distinguishing sin as a disease from sickness
as a symptom. In making this claim, I first contrast Bioethics from other
practical disciplines.
II. Differentiating Politics, Economics, Ethics, and Bioethics

In his discussion of the division of the sciences, St. Thomas discusses
speculative disciplines ordered towards knowledge for its own sake. In con-
trast to speculative sciences, there are practical disciplines such as Politics,
Economics, and Ethics ordered towards acting and making. Bioethics is a
practical discipline ordered towards acting well in the forum defined by med-
icine. Bioethics considers matters as diverse as research into the causes of and
cures for disease, caring for sick persons, the conduct of patients, and a myriad
of other acts bearing upon human sickness. At the center of Bioethics, one
finds the patient.
Patient comes from the Latin patior - pati – passus, meaning to bear, undergo,
suffer, or endure. One defines a patient as one who suffers, bears, undergoes,
endures, or is subject to sickness. Sometimes well-intentioned thinkers—in
the hope of empowering a patient—propose to refer to him as a client. Simi-
larly, occasionally some institutions of health care ask their employees to refer
to the patient as a customer. Of course, by doing so one loses the connotations
associated with being a patient: of being sick, of bearing with something
involuntarily, of being in need, of being dependent, of being vulnerable (from
the Latin vulnus meaning naked), and so on. As I will shortly argue, one can-
not eliminate sickness, suffering, and death from Bioethics. Insofar as the ven-
erable term patient captures these ineradicable phenomena definitive of
Bioethics, we must retain it in our vocabulary.
Since Bioethics concerns practical knowledge, to understand the unique
relation of Bioethics to Christianity and thereby to understand the appropriate-
ness of a Christian Bioethics, one must consider other practical disciplines. I
will consider Politics, Economics, and Ethics (understanding Politics to include
Law) as prominent and important disciplines that nicely contrast with Bioethics
and illustrate the uniqueness and appropriateness of a Christian Bioethics.
Politics addresses how to govern men as social animals. Famously, James
Madison asserts that Government would not exist were men not fallen:
But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human
nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were
to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be
necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over
men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to
control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. (1961, p. 322)
Here, Madison asserts that school of political thought that holds that
absent fallen human nature, government would not be necessary. Such think-
ers often refer to government as a necessary evil. Others differ, holding that
the need for government does not arise entirely from the fact that we now live
in a state of fallen human nature. Rather, government partially addresses the
need to coordinate human actions, even given entirely virtuous citizens. Thus,
insofar as we have arbitrary yet necessary rules to coordinate our behavior,
government is not a necessary evil. Rather, government is an art that would
exist even if men were angels in their behavior.
Of course, much of government would not exist were there no Fall. For
example, there would be no need for criminal law, punishment, law enforce-
ment, or a military. Nonetheless, government as a coordinator and organizer
would exist if man were not fallen. Accordingly, Politics would exist—albeit
in an abbreviated fashion—absent the Fall. Moreover, Politics currently can
adequately understand its task of securing the human good, e.g., of coordina-
tion, absent an understanding of man’s fallen nature and other revealed truths
central to Christianity. Thus, neither Politics’s subject matter nor its under-
standing of that subject matter depends upon the facts at the center of Christian
revelation. Surely, because we are fallen and our understanding is obscured,
we do not grasp political truths as easily or as clearly as we would absent the
Fall. Nonetheless, those truths that we may fail to grasp due to the Fall are not
truths dependent upon our being fallen. So, for example, humans are nat-
urally social animals. Because we are fallen, we may, as Hobbes, fail to
apprehend this truth about ourselves. Yet, those who—as Plato—succeed in
apprehending this truth about humans as social do not do so by incorporating
some understanding of the Fall in their apprehension of this truth. Thus, a
significant body of political truths do not require knowledge of the Fall to be
understood. Turn now to consider Economics.
Roughly, Economics concerns how to produce material prosperity. Absent
the Fall, there would certainly be no poverty, nor would there be problems
such as the just distribution of goods or difficulty in securing one’s material
needs. For the ordeal of labor results from sin:
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the
ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will
return. (Gen. 3:19)
Nonetheless, were there no Fall, one would still find human arts that
transform nature, specialization in these arts, and exchange of goods and
services to meet human needs and desires. One would also find Economics,
to the extent to which it addresses these matters. Of course, much of Economics
would be absent. So, for example, just as in Politics one would find no criminal
law, in Economics one would not find the study of poverty or of market failure.
Yet, insofar as Economics cannot be reduced to features that would not exist
absent sin, this discipline, its subject matter, and understanding of that subject
matter would exist even in Eden. Again, after Eden’s loss, while a proper
understanding of wealth and its place in a human life may be obscured
by the darkness that descends upon the human intellect, failure to understand
wealth appropriately—e.g., considering it an end instead of a means—does
not result from a failure to incorporate divine revelation into one’s Economics.
For, prior to Revelation, thinkers such as Aristotle correctly apprehended the
nature of wealth as a means. Now consider the practical discipline most
proximate to Bioethics, namely, Ethics.
Ethics concerns how one becomes a virtuous agent and, thereby, how
one achieves human happiness. Of course, absent the Fall there would be
Ethics: there would be such phenomena as acting virtuously and becoming
virtuous. Indeed, there would be no other kind of conduct. For example, we
would not struggle with concupiscence that leads us astray from the mean
in which virtues of character such as temperance consist. Nor would we err
by vicious acts. Clearly, the subject matter of Ethics would exist and knowl-
edge of that subject matter—the constituents of human happiness—would
be correctly apprehended in Eden. Currently, the Fall obscures our ability to
apprehend our end. As Aquinas notes, supernatural revelation is necessary
for human beings to apprehend their true end insofar as, otherwise, few
would know God, these only after much time and study, and with an
admixture of error. The loss of Eden significantly affects ethical knowledge
while not obliterating it.
Thus, to greater and lesser extents the subjects and knowledge of the
subjects of Politics, Economics, and Ethics would exist absent the Fall. Simi-
larly, given the Fall, knowledge of the subjects of these disciplines is available
to reason unaided by Faith. Bioethics, however, differs. For Bioethics addresses
how one conducts oneself regarding sickness, suffering, and death. Thereby,
Bioethics confronts phenomena that result immediately from Adam and Eve’s
fall from grace. Here, one encounters questions such as: How ought one to
experience pain, suffer, and die? How ought one to care for those who experience
pain, suffer, and die? Pain, suffering, and death would not exist absent the
Fall. Thus, Bioethics addresses realities that would not exist in Eden. We
experience pain, suffer, and die as the fruits of our first parents’ Original Sin.
Were there no sin, there would be no medicine or therapy for these symp-
toms. In this respect, Bioethics differs from Politics (and, as noted, Economics,
and Ethics more generally) insofar as the latter would exist were there no Fall.
Again, Politics—in addition to dealing with the unique problems of fallen
man such as retributive justice—also addresses the practical issues that arise
from human beings as social animals regardless of their fallen state. That is,
Politics concerns matters of distributive justice, such as how property is held
and shared, that would attend human life even if Adam and Eve had not
fallen from God’s grace. Similarly, Politics concerns the necessary, yet arbitrary
coordination of human activities that do not arise because of man’s fallen
state. Rather, such need for coordination attends the human condition as
social and naturally in need of the political art. Of course, were there no
Fall, there would be no Christian Politics, just as there would be no Chris-
tian Bioethics. For absent the felix culpa, there would be no Christ.2 More to
the point, however, is not that there would be no Christian Bioethics, but
that there would be no Bioethics at all. For absent pain, suffering, and death
due to sin, there is no medical therapy, and thus no ethic bearing upon
medical therapy, even a secular Bioethics. Thus, Bioethics has a much more
intimate relationship to Christianity than other disciplines to the extent to
which it addresses some of the very phenomena that Christ does. Accord-
ingly, presenting a Christian Bioethics has significant import for Christian-
ity, for the foundations of Bioethics are proximate to those of Christianity
itself.
In what follows, I argue that Bioethics absent revelation apprehends the
fallen human condition as basic. Thus, Bioethics cannot understand disease
as a symptom of the basic human problem, namely, sin. Christian Bioethics
can so differentiate sin and sickness. Moreover, this distinction has practical
ramifications, as I note in what follows.
III. Distinguishing Diseases and Symptoms, Sin and Sickness

Original Sin causes the evils of pain, suffering, and death and justly
leads to these phenomena. As with evil, pain, suffering, and death are to be
avoided. Accordingly, these phenomena appropriately give rise to medical
therapies and attempts to relieve pain, sickness, suffering, and, at the least,
to postpone death. Thus understood, medicine is a response to the symp-
toms of sin. Of course, not all so understand disease. Indeed, only a Chris-
tian or theologically-informed Bioethics apprehends illness as a symptom.
Typically, Bioethics and medical interventions informed by secular Bioethics
understand disease as a basic reality beyond which one need not inquire.
Granting that point, to what practical ramifications could this conceptual
difference lead? Regardless of how a Christian Bioethics conceives of ill-
ness, will it not propose to treat illness as a secular Bioethics would, given
that they agree on the basic badness of sickness? This modest conceptual
difference has significant practical import, although we may be on the his-
torical threshold of noticing it. That is, the difference between Christian
and secular Bioethics with respect to their differing conceptualizations of
disease as symptom of sin and disease as basic illness becomes more evi-
dent as medical technology advances in its ability to mitigate and perhaps
indefinitely postpone death. To explore this possibility, one must consider
the origins of the medical ethic, and its most basic quandary.
IV. Bioethics’ Question

In his magisterial, The New Medicine and the Old Ethics, the historian of
medical ethics, Albert Jonsen, claims that the central tension at the heart of
medicine and medical ethics is the conflict of interest that obtains between the
goods of the patient and those of the physician: the danger of contagion in the
treatment of diseases; the opposition of the financial well-being of the doctor
and the patient’s care found both within fee-for-service reimbursement plans
and capitated systems; and the significant benefits to physicians and risks to
patients in the use of experimental therapies illustrate the variety of conflicts
of interests found in medicine. Understandably, Jonsen proposes that medical
ethics exists primarily to address this ineliminable tension.
While conflicts of interest both inherently attend the practice of medicine
and deserve much attention in medical ethics, one errs in thinking that they
constitute the heart of Bioethics. Such conflicts, while they may appear more
pronounced in medical ethics, attend all professional activities. A lawyer, for
example, suffers a conflict of interest in serving as an advocate for, at times,
opposing interests. Professors bear conflicts of interest in assigning their own
texts for a course, and, more profoundly, in balancing the rewards for
research with their obligations to their students. All professions suffer con-
flicts of interest. Moreover, the ethics of each profession must address how to
deal with these conflicts. For example, ethicists propose that accountants
must avoid both the reality of a conflict of interest, as well as the mere appear-
ance of such a conflict—a very demanding standard. Thus, while conflicts of
interest certainly pose problems in medical ethics, they do not constitute the
definitive issues of medical ethics. Rather, the central ethical issue definitive
of medical ethics concerns the ends towards which one orders the medical
art. One finds this problem articulated at the very beginnings of the medical
ethic in the West in the myth of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine.
Asclepius illustrates the ethical quandary at the heart of medicine in his
possession of two vials of the Gorgon’s blood, given to him by Athena. The
blood taken from the right side of the Gorgon heals and restores life, while
that taken from the left side sickens and kills. Just as the Asclepian symbol of
medicine, a single snake on a staff, symbolizes the homeopathic principle that
he who sickens, heals (the snake both wounds with venom and heals with his
intimate knowledge of the earth), so this principle underlies the problem at
the center of medical practice. For the power to heal encompasses the power
to sicken. To what end will one order this ability: towards death or towards
life? In Greek myth, Asclepius typically uses his power to heal and not to
sicken. Hippocrates—who establishes one branch of Asclepian practice—

definitively orients the medical art towards health and life by forswearing
poisoning and killing. Yet, if one were to leave this question of the proper
ordination of medicine as if it were sufficiently answered, merely holding
that medicine must not be used to sicken and to kill, one would not have
come fully to grips with the central ethical quandary definitive of medicine.
For, while that problem encompasses medicine’s orientation to death and
sickness, it is not limited to it. Indeed, even Hippocrates never addresses the
more profound, underlying problem that the possibility of killing and sickening
is but one instance of, namely, the technological imperative.
With certain qualifications bearing upon consent and the welfare of others,
that command generally asserts that if one has a means to relieve pain, suffering,
and death, then one should employ that means to do so. Of course, Hippocrates
does not address this problem because his characteristic difficulty is the pau-
city of his armamentarium against sickness, pain, and death. Nonetheless,
one sees in the Asclepian myth that this difficulty presents itself right from
the beginning in medical practice. Recall that the astronomical constellation
Ophiuchus (the serpent-bearer) immortalizes Asclepius after Zeus punishes
him. Zeus punishes Asclepius, not for violating the forthcoming Hippocratic
Oath in an act of killing or sickening accomplished by using the vial of blood
from the Gorgon’s left side. Rather, Asclepius suffers Zeus’s wrath for his use
of the medical art to raise the dead. In interpreting the myth, some err by
holding that Zeus punishes Asclepius for accepting money to raise the dead.
While greed may be the motive for using his art to raise the dead, Zeus does
not object to Asclepius’ greed. Rather, the gods punish Asclepius for going
beyond the appropriate bounds of medicine. Hades’ complaints over the loss
of his kingdom of the dead lead Zeus to kill Asclepius so that mortals may not
acquire immortality via medicine. Zeus does not object to the use of the blood
from the Gorgon’s left side to kill. Rather, the boundary violated bears upon
the use of the medical art—blood from the Gorgon’s right side—to cure death.
Death is not a proper problem for medicine. Rather, it is a defining boundary
in two ways. First, medicine is not to be used to kill. Second, medicine is not
to be used to cure death. As noted, curing death was not an issue for Hippo-
crates. Yet, for current medicine it may become one. Here we see the import
of a Christian Bioethics as it addresses the issue definitive of medical ethics:
to what ends ought we to direct the medical art?
In medicine, the technological imperative does not assert that physicians
ought to use their art to produce sickness, death, or, for example, weapons.
Thus, the technological imperative does not violate the definitive Hippocratic
commitment not to use this art to sicken and kill. Rather, this imperative com-
mands that one must do what one can to relieve pain, suffering and, if possi-
ble, death. As technological, one does not understand the full import of this
imperative absent a fully developed technology. Thus, while Hippocrates
sees the significance of declaring death and sickness out of bounds, he does
not commit himself or his followers not to raise the dead. For, even with his
knowledge of the Asclepian myth and of how out of bounds this would be,
his art does not offer him the opportunity to raise the dead. We, however,
may stand at the threshold of this boundary, for the ability indefinitely to
forestall death may become available in near decades. Research on cellular
aging, stem cells, organ tissue transplant therapies, and allied technological
developments may offer us in the not-too-distant future the opportunity to
postpone death significantly, perhaps indefinitely. Of course, this would not
be to raise the dead, as Asclepius did. Yet, it might become tantamount to the
ability to address death itself as a disease. Of course, such technologies remain
largely speculative. Accordingly, thoughts about how such technologies
would affect human lives remain conjectural. Nonetheless, given the Ascle-
pian myth’s bearing upon the use of medicine to raise the dead, one wonders
if the vial from the right side of the Gorgon may not shortly be so used once
again.
How does this possibility bear upon the overall argument regarding
Christian Bioethics’ ability to distinguish disease as a symptom from disease
as basic? If secular Bioethics cannot but help to take disease as basic, then
given technological developments that promise to be capable of addressing
death itself, such a Bioethics would typically argue on behalf of such tech-
nologies as profoundly good. A Christian Bioethics, in contrast, although it
may not necessarily reject the use of such technologies, would certainly insist
that death can never be adequately treated by medical technology. For death
is a symptom of the first disease, sin. The human as patient results from the
human as transgressor. Thus, a Christian Bioethics aware of this relationship
correctly apprehends what stands at the center of all Bioethics, the human as
patient. Accordingly, those who propose to articulate a Christian Bioethics—
as Engelhardt does—do so with good reason. Given his emphasis upon the
liturgical aspect of a Christian Bioethics, I wish now in conclusion to address
specific medical acts that lend themselves to becoming part of Christian litur-
gical life.
V. Thou Shalts in a Christian Bioethics

Christian Bioethics typically receives note for what it prohibits, e.g., abortion,
euthanasia, cloning, and so on, because of the significant differences between
secular and Christian Bioethics in their treatment of reproduction, abortion,
and death. Yet, just as the Natural Law’s first principle commands that one
does good and avoids evil, so, too, does Christian Bioethics. In what follows,
I conclude this reflection on the appropriateness of a Christian Bioethics by
briefly considering the doing of good that such an ethic proposes. Moreover,
following Engelhardt’s suggestion of the role of the liturgy in therapy, I
consider the liturgical possibilities these acts offer.
“Man hath no greater love than this: that he give up his life for his friends”
(John 15:13). Following Jesus, a Christian Bioethics sees pain, suffering, and
death as opportunities to participate in His redemptive suffering. Without
Christ’s revelation, human suffering and death remain phenomena that we
cannot fully understand and in which we can find no ultimate meaningfulness.
The punishment for our first parents’ sin is itself redeemed by Christ in
His voluntary acceptance of death to which He was not in justice subject.3
Accordingly, by accepting His passion and crucifixion on our behalf, He enables
us to offer our otherwise due suffering and deaths for others. A Christian
Bioethics proposes that patients offer their pain, suffering, and deaths up for
the redemption of others. Of course, it would be a perversion of the Christian
understanding to seek out pain, suffering, and death or to fail to avoid these
basic evils to offer them up for others. Nonetheless, given their inevitability,
patients will eventually have the opportunity to offer their own sufferings
and deaths up for others, just as Jesus did. The willingness to do so and the
theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity that allow one to do so are at the
foundations of a Christian Bioethics. Students of a Christian Bioethics offer
up their sufferings and deaths for others. Currently, Christian communities of
worship typically pray for the sick. Indeed, in the Roman Catholic liturgy the
rubric for the prayers of the faithful calls for a praying for the sick of the com-
munity. A Christian Bioethics would suggest, additionally, that the sick offer
up their pain, suffering, illness, and death for others, just as Christ did. Physi-
cians and nurses limited in their ability entirely to eradicate a patient’s pain
and symptoms might incorporate into their armamentarium the age old advice
of “offering it up.” Such an opportunity might give a patient the needed
insight into her condition that her pain and suffering admits of meaning and
value. Of course, physicians and nurses could only do so at the threshold of
their ability to address the patient’s pain and symptoms. Moreover, such advice
could only be offered meaningfully to a patient who understood the import
of pain and illness and the opportunity these phenomena represent. Nonetheless,
a communal acknowledgment of this meaning on the part of care-givers
reflects a Bioethics imbued by Christianity.
Similarly, just as Jesus shed His blood for others, those familiar with a
Christian Bioethics will give their own blood for patients. One can imagine a
sodality or Christian fellowship—it would be surprising if one does not exist
somewhere—that encourages the regular giving of blood to the local blood
bank in imitation of Christ’s shedding of His blood on our behalf.4 Such a
sodality would encourage Christians to imitate Christ, perhaps setting aside
special days on which to give blood in conjunction with the liturgical calendar,
such as on Good Friday, or on Fridays during the year, in commemoration of
Christ’s death.
Finally, a Christian Bioethics will also support and advocate the donation
of vital bodily organs upon one’s death as a sharing of the precious gift of life.
Just as Jesus gave His life, so a serious follower of a Christian Bioethics would
be willing to donate his organs and corpse so that others might live. Indeed,
one would think that organ donation would be embraced by the Christian
Churches and seen as an act of distinctively Christian charity. Such organ
donation might be made liturgical at the Rite of Christian burial at which the
deceased’s act of donation would be recognized as a foreshadowing of Christ’s
bringing life from death, just as the organ donor’s act brings life from the sorrow
of his death.
In conclusion, given its unique abilities to apprehend the human being as
a patient and, thereby, to distinguish disease as a symptom from disease as
basic phenomenon, thinkers sensibly propose a Christian Bioethics. Moreover,
such a Bioethics clearly makes specific medical acts more meaningful by
incorporating them into Christian worship.
Notes
1. For example, see Hoshino, 1997.
2. In the Exultet hymn in the Liturgy for Holy Saturday Liturgy one reads: “O felix
culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere redemptorem!” One might translate
this, “O happy fault which merited to have so great and so good a redeemer.”
3. The point here is not that Christ accepted a death that was unjust—that of an
innocent man unjustly condemned to death. Rather, Jesus was not in justice
subject to death. Had He not accepted death, He would not have died. Thus, He
alone had the ability to pay our debt. Moreover, He thereby transformed our payment
of our debt by death and suffering so much so that we now may offer our sufferings
and deaths on behalf of others.
4. Perhaps, this practice could be named Sangue Christe, in Texan manner. In my
undergraduate years, one faithful Jesuit priest, Father Thomas Aquinas McGovern,
S.J., inconspicuously and regularly gave his blood in imitation of Christ’s shedding
of His Blood. Certainly, there must be many Christians who think of Jesus’ example
when they do give blood. Yet, one would think it would rise to a more conscious
and organized level at which the giving of blood could become sacramental, like
the wearing of a medal or blessing oneself with holy water upon entering a
church.
Bibliography
Engelhardt, H.T., Jr. The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets
& Zeitlinger Publishers, 2000.
Hoshino, K., ed. Japanese and Western Bioethics: Studies in Moral Diversity. Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997.
Jonsen, A.R. The New Medicine and the Old Ethics. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1990.
Madison, J. Federalist, #51. New York: New American Library, 1961.
Mauer, A. The Division and Methods of the Sciences: Questions V and VI of Thomas Aquinas’
Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, translated by A. Maurer. Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963.
Part IV
A Restatement
Re-reading Re-reading
Engelhardt
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.
I. Claiming Too Much and Claiming Too Little: Moral Diversity

and the Myth of Consensus
The controversies concerning my work include complaints that I claim
too little, as well as complaints that I claim too much. My work may indeed
seem puzzling. On the one hand, I explore the character of the world when
approached apart from God. I show how little moral guidance can be derived
from sound, rational, secular moral argument. On the other hand, I examine
the implications of the traditional Christian experience of God and show the
rich and particular moral guidance that is available. My attempt has also been
to show the compatibility of these two projects. My project of showing how
the second completes what is empty in the first and transforms the secular
moral vision (Engelhardt, 1991) spans some two decades (Minogue et al.
1997). As for having claimed too little, there are various contentions lodged
against my claim of having secured good grounds for a secular moral episte-
mological skepticism. As I argue, secular moral rationality cannot establish
which morality is canonical or which view of human flourishing is normative,
because we do not share common basic moral premises or rules of evidence.
Secular moral pluralism marks the fallen human condition. The position I
establish is not that of a moral metaphysical skepticism. I do not deny that
there is in fact one canonical normative account of the good, the right, and the
holy. I only demonstrate that secular rational argument cannot show which
among the many competing secular moralities is canonical. Secular sound
rational argument cannot get us free from the moral pluralism we confront.
In the face of this circumstance, I give an account of, and a justification for, a
sparse common secular morality grounded in permission that can bind moral
285
286 H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr
strangers. The fallen human condition is one in which markets flourish and moral
strangers, should they wish, can collaborate with moral authority in morally
sparse projects. This human condition is one in which a web of moral authority
grounded in consent binds not only moral strangers but moral enemies.
The secular world is characterized not just by moral pluralism and
sparse procedurally grounded moral practices, but by ultimate moral and
metaphysical disorientation. Within the confines of secular moral rational-
ity, all is viewed as if it were without ultimate meaning, as if all came from
nowhere, went to nowhere, and for no final purpose. Within the horizon
of secular experience, there is nothing that can be said about the meaning
of things beyond reality simply being there to be embedded in human
practices. Cut off from even the hope of a point of transcendence that can
serve as a moral and metaphysical anchor, man becomes the measure of
all things and there are different and contending human measuring rods.1
The full implications of this state of affairs are still largely unacknowl-
edged, for they bring into question such currently dominant secular pieties
as human dignity and human rights by undercutting their claims to cen-
trality in morality, law, and public policy. Such secular moral claims
become particular commitments within particular moral understandings.
They become elements of one among numerous and competing moral
understandings. Nevertheless, many still aspire to affirm as canonical par-
ticular, secularly transformed Christian moral understandings, absent a
recognition of the Christian God (Vattimo, 2002). Hence my having been
charged with claiming too little.
As for having claimed too much, I am faulted for having pointed out that
there is no final way free from this moral and metaphysical disorientation
except through experience of the Trinity. My work in various ways has argued
for the impossibility of a secular moral surrogate for Christianity, not in order
to point towards nihilism, but in order to show the way to the God Who lives.
The reader is then confronted with the core empirical claim of traditional
Christianity: as a noetic-empirical fact of the matter one can know that God
lives and that He is the God preached by the Christians (Hierotheos, 1998;
Engelhardt, 2006a; Romanides, 2008). The reader is brought from a set of
arguments about how little we can know philosophically to how much we
can know theologically. Taking this last step is difficult, because it requires
ascetic commitment. It requires breaking one’s pride and submitting to God.
It demands a personal turn to a personal God. This step towards theological
knowledge is impossible unless one takes on a new way of life. It is for this
reason that it is in general easier to gain agreement about claims regarding
our moral pluralism, its intractability, and the limits of secular moral knowledge,
than it is to gain agreement to join in the project of gaining theological knowledge
through ascetic struggle. Nevertheless, succeeding in bringing persons to
acknowledge moral diversity itself remains difficult.
Re-reading RE-READING ENGELHARDT 287
One might think it would be simple to show that humans do not possess
a common morality or a single content-full bioethics. After all, humans
disagree vociferously regarding when sexual relations are morally illicit, as
with regard to the moral status of bestiality, homosexual liaisons, or for that
matter sexual relations outside of the marriage of a man and a woman. We
disagree about the nature of social justice, the strength of individual property
rights, the circumstances under which needs justify claim rights that trump
claims to property, and about the moral legitimacy of social democratic states.
We also disagree about the circumstances under which humans may be killed,
as illustrated by debates regarding human embryonic research, abortion,
euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and capital punishment. We do not
agree as to how one should rank such cardinal values as liberty, equality,
prosperity, and security as illustrated by the differences between the political
and social systems of Canada and Singapore. We do not share a single set of
settled moral judgments. We do not share a common morality. More funda-
mentally, we do not share the basic moral premises or rules of moral evidence
that would allow us to resolve by sound rational argument our disputes about
the proper nature of morality and bioethics. We are left with profoundly dif-
ferent accounts of morality and human flourishing, framed within different
accounts of the ultimate meaning of things.
One’s view of the nature of human flourishing changes if one no longer
recognizes God, along with rewards or punishments in the world that is to
come, and instead approaches reality as if all is without final purpose and
there is no life beyond the grave. As Elisabeth Anscombe puts it with respect
to morality, the loss of a recognition of God’s existence and of immortality
radically changes the practical force of morality: “It is as if the notion ‘criminal’
were to remain when criminal law and criminal courts had been abolished
and forgotten” (Anscombe, 1958, p. 6). Among other things, once the exis-
tence of God is denied, the absolute claims of morality are undercut, as
Kant recognizes in the Canon of Reason in the First Critique and in the Dia-
lectic of The Critique of Practical Reason. Because the genesis, the justification,
and the motivation of morality are no longer recognized as in principle united
in God, they in practice fragment into disparate sets of considerations. As to
the genesis of morality, it becomes in part a biologically-based phenomenon
and, as with all such phenomena, likely marked by a polymorphism of moral
inclinations and sentiments that in different balances among inclinations and
sentiments conveys different advantages for inclusive fitness, in different
circumstances. Different balances of egoism and altruism, inclinations to
abide by moral rules or inclinations hypocritically to violate them, will be
more or less productive of social stability, wealth, and inclusive fitness in
different socio-cultural and physical environmental niches. Claims regarding
the good, the right, and the virtuous are also in principle placed within different
frameworks of justification, ranging from various utilitarian accounts to
diverse deontological accounts. Finally, the moral life can in principle be

supported by different plausible motivating considerations. The intersection
of these factors produces a robust plurality of moral visions. As Vattimo
observes, “Atheism … [is] another catastrophic Tower of Babel” (Vattimo,
1991, p. 31). There need no longer be one particular content, justification, or
motivation for the moral life, since there is no longer in principle a single,
canonical perspective from which to define that content, establish a justification,
or select a proper constellation of motivations to be moral. Despite all these
points of profound disagreement regarding the character and substance of
morality, there are claims of moral consensus.
The Foundations of Bioethics (Engelhardt, 1986, 1996), as well as an edited
volume on aspirations to a global bioethics (Engelhardt, 2006a), addresses
this paradoxical state of affairs: namely, there are incessant, indeed intractable
moral disputes, combined with passionate claims of consensus. Often, the
agenda behind such denials is rather clear. There is a desperate commitment
on the part of many to deny the foundational moral pluralism defining our
secular culture so as to be able without controversy to announce various
forms of putative common agreement regarding the moral implications of
human dignity and particular views of an ever-increasing list of basic human
rights. Yet, such claims of human dignity and human rights are generally
unsecured by sound rational argument, in that the claims depend on particular
moral premises and rules of moral evidence that are themselves unsecured. It
will not do simply to renounce all claims to foundationalism, because then
one is left with the canonization of the particular perspectives and conceits of
particular dominant groups in particular localities. We are left with a paradoxical
state of affairs in which there is both robust moral pluralism and the general
assertion of consensus can be accounted for by a number of circumstances.
First, this dogged presumption of consensus is sustained by a widespread
false consciousness, an ideology of consensus that serves the economic and
political interests of those who endorse it. This ideology, whether or not
explicitly recognized, allows its supporters to sell their services as moral
experts supposedly privy to the canonical morality that should supply the
bases for a putatively universally rational and generally morally justifiable
public policy. That is, the affirmation of the ideology of a common morality
and of a consensus allows its defenders to forward their services in advanc-
ing particular moral, policy, and political agendas as if they represented the
one and only rationally defensible moral position. Without such an assertion
of rational consensus, such “experts” would have to acknowledge that they
are only experts regarding, and defenders of, one among a number of com-
peting moralities. They would be recognized as merely offering their services
as experts regarding the claims of a particular moral-philosophical sect.
Second, ideological interests in consensus are further strengthened by the
illusion of consensus generated by the recommendations and statements
produced by many ethics commissions and committees. What goes unno-

ticed is the circumstance that most do not appoint to ethics committees and
commissions that must reach substantive conclusions persons of truly diverse
normative commitments. If persons appointed to such committees repre-
sented the range of actual moral diversity, such committees would produce
interminable debate and controversy rather than conclusions and recommen-
dations. The policy- and agenda-oriented character of the incentives for select-
ing particular members for such committees and commissions facilitates the
social construction of consensus. This circumstance leads to changes in the
character of the moral views and of the “consensus” endorsed by such com-
mittees and commissions as those appointing their members, and conse-
quently the membership of such commissions and committees, change. This
circumstance is amply demonstrated by the differences in moral positions
and ideology between the National Bioethics Advisory Commission appointed
during Bill Clinton’s presidency and the President’s Council on Bioethics
appointed during George W. Bush’s presidency.
The denial of intractable moral pluralism and the affirmation of moral
consensus are also in part rooted in fears that the balkanization of societies
might be further strengthened, given an honest appraisal of our moral condition
and a subsequent increasing self-identity of persons around the particular
moral communities to which they are committed. In short, claims of consen-
sus function as an element of a Realpolitik in which consensus is claimed in
order to aid in the establishment of a particular social agenda. For example,
when a particular moral and political agenda is advanced as the basis of
claims regarding human rights and human dignity, it often becomes politically
incorrect, a matter of secular heresy, to be skeptical about such claims. Alleging
the existence of a common moral vision may also contribute to maintaining
support for law and public policy by convincing people of the moral rightness,
not the merely legal rightness, of governing law. The result of all this is that,
despite the circumstance that the contemporary, dominant, secular culture is
defined by an intractable pluralism, it is also characterized by a denial of this
state of affairs, along with the affirmation of the claim that there is a common
morality that supports a common bioethics that can be laid out through a
generally accepted bioethical methodology (e.g., with the four principles of
Beauchamp and Childress, 1979).
These circumstances, as well as others, are stumbling blocks on the way to
understanding my work, which starts from a frank acknowledgement of the
moral pluralism that defines the human condition and the limits to being able
to establish a moral authority for much of law and governmental action. Some
of the essays in this volume also explore these stumbling blocks by describing,
analyzing, and evaluating the problems my work has addressed. Others do
so by falling prey to these very stumbling blocks. After all, many of these
stumbling blocks, such as the inclination towards passionately advancing
claims regarding the existence of consensus, are integral to the self-deceptions

of the dominant, secular culture within which we find ourselves. That culture
tends to obscure its own characteristics by its very taken-for-granted character.
It tends to hide the profound moral pluralism that brings many of its core
assumptions into question. Many who address my work do not concede the
existence of this moral pluralism, although their disagreements with my view
concerning the possibilities for a general secular morality and their disagreements
with the moral commitments of Orthodox Christians demonstrate that which
they wish to deny: moralities and bioethics are substantively plural.
II. Living in a World without Ultimate Meaning

Another difficulty lies in a failure of many readers to appreciate the limits
of human reason, the transcendence of God, and the implications for moral
theory and theology, points addressed in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics
(Engelhardt, 2000). Many are also not willing to recognize the deep metaphysi-
cal disorientation that results from our secular culture’s commitment to regard-
ing humans and the cosmos as ultimately meaningless, as coming from
nowhere, going nowhere, all for no discernible, ultimate purpose. Indeed,
this culture seeks to embrace this circumstance as a virtue. There is a hope to
locate all within a horizon of finitude and immanence that can obscure any
sense of a loss or importance of ultimate meaning. Many have the hope that
they can thus move beyond all conflicts and controversies grounded in dis-
agreements regarding the ultimate meaning of things. This hope has roots in
the cultural developments that took place at the end of the Enlightenment
and in the wake of the French Revolution. The aspiration thoroughgoingly to
relocate the transcendent within the ambit of the immanent lies at the core of
the position G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) articulates in 1802 in his essay “Glauben
und Wissen”. Here Hegel diagnoses and then supports a radical change in
elements of Western culture, especially in the religious sensibilities of his
time. He notes these as manifest in “the feeling that ‘God Himself is dead’”
(Hegel, 1977, p. 190; Hegel 1968, p. 414). He recognizes that the old metaphys-
ics that grew from the philosophical rationality of Scholasticism is also dead,
leading Hegel to speak of “the corpse of reason and faith” (Hegel, 1977, p. 55;
Hegel, 1968, p. 315). Against this background, Hegel sees his task as freeing
culture from all yearning for the transcendent and noumenal. Instead, he
seeks to disclose a philosophical and cultural standpoint anchored firmly
within the horizon of the finite and the immanent. Hegel seeks to “re-estab-
lish for philosophy… the absolute Passion, the speculative Good Friday in
place of the historic Good Friday. Good Friday must be speculatively re-es-
tablished in the whole truth and harshness of its God-forsakenness” (Hegel,
1977, p. 191). Considered apart from God, the perspective of philosophical
reflection becomes the “absolute” perspective, which substitutes for the
perspective of God. It is the perspective within which all rational questions

are asked and answered. In this, Jürgen Habermas recognizes “the methodical
atheism of Hegelian philosophy and of all philosophical appropriation of
essentially religious contents” (Habermas, 2002, p. 68).
Some faced with our contemporary moral and metaphysical disorientation
wish to embrace this meaninglessness as a moral agenda. They wish to exorcize
all claims of moral and metaphysical ultimacy, particularly religious claims.
Despite the twentieth century having killed tens of millions in the atheist
pursuit of justice and fairness, there is a growing view of religion as the pri-
mary threat to world peace. In place of concerns for the ultimate, we are
invited resolutely to embed ourselves in the satisfactions and pleasure of the
moment so as to settle into a world that will supposedly be marked by fewer
global conflicts. Such a view naively discounts the possibility of conflicts over
scarce resources and on behalf of power and glory, in the hope of entering
into a peace achieved by pursuing nothing but merely immanent animal sat-
isfactions (Fukuyama, 1992). The result is an attempt to canonize ultimate
meaninglessness. This shift of philosophical perspective has proven profoundly
transformative of Western culture. The contemporary dominant culture of the
West is committed to the articulation and defense of an all-encompassing
secularity. All yearning for the transcendent is to be lost within the bounds of
the search for immanent self-satisfaction. Among the outcomes of this overriding
commitment to immanence are attempts to make do with a Christianity
without God (Zabala, 2005, p. 14). Religious sensibilities are to be retained as
long as they can be resituated within the sphere of the immanent and the
finite. As a consequence, a profound gulf is opening between this post-
metaphysical, post-traditional, post-religious secular culture and those
cultures that still recognize the presence of the living, personal God (e.g.,
traditional Christians, Orthodox Jews, and most Mohammedans). This gulf
constitutes a profound point of disagreement, one of the most troubling char-
acteristics of our contemporary moral and cultural condition: a fault-line of
conflict dividing traditional believers from the secular culture.
In part, this is a philosophical, not a theological issue. It involves the challenge
of how one can and should appreciate the meaning of human existence and
reality. In part, this is also a religious issue, indeed an issue of religious
fundamentalism, if one understands the latter as a reaction against modernity,
against an attempt to domesticate and then recast religious claims in sec-
ular terms. One might consider Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) bold claim
published as the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution was about to
begin:
We have good reason to say … that ‘the kingdom of God is come unto us’ once
the principle of the gradual transition of ecclesiastical faith to the universal
religion of reason, and so to a (divine) ethical state on earth, has become gen-
eral and has also gained somewhere a public foothold, even though the actual
establishment of this state is still infinitely removed from us (Kant, 1960, p. 113,
AK VI 114).
Kant’s goal is to render Christianity rational and make it conform to the
expectations of modernity, so as to pursue the possibility of perpetual peace.
Kant has faith in the power of rationality, where Fukuyama hungers for a
peace grounded in animal satisfaction. Both wish to settle into a world without
real transcendence.
Habermas correctly appreciates fundamentalism as a reaction against this
project. He recognizes within many religious bodies a commitment to resist
the demands of the culture born of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
As he puts it,
We call ‘fundamentalist’ those religious movements which, given the cognitive
limits of modern life, nevertheless persist in practicing or promoting a return to
the exclusivity of premodern religious attitudes. Fundamentalism lacks the
epistemic innocence of those long-ago realms in which the world religions first
flourished and which could somehow still be experienced as limitless. … But
modern conditions are compatible only with a strict, Kantian form of universalism
(Habermas, 2002, p. 151).
Traditional religious believers and surely traditional Christians are com-
mitted to rejecting the project of Kant, Hegel, and Habermas of recasting the
significance of traditional Christianity through a “non-destructive seculariza-
tion” (Habermas, 2003, p. 114) as incompatible with Christianity. The result is
a deep cultural gulf. This gulf separates those who recognize the ultimate
meaning given by a transcendental personal God, from those who would
lodge the moral life and human flourishing totally within the satisfactions
that can be realized within the horizon of the finite and the immanent.
Since the contemporary secular culture is committed to denying the
intractable character of moral pluralism and to ignoring the consequences of
its metaphysical disorientation, it is difficult for many to accept or even
acknowledge the actual character of our contemporary state of affairs. These
difficulties are compounded by the circumstance that the Christianities of the
West are sufficiently distant from the Christianity of the first millennium that
the theological spirit of traditional Christianity has become nearly inaccessible
to Western culture, including Western Christian theology. The defining difference
of the Christianities of the West is in great measure anchored in the embed-
ding of the Western Christian theologies within the governance of philosophy,
especially through the locating of moral theology within moral philosophy
(Engelhardt, 2006a). This shift has led the Roman Catholic community and
much of Protestantism to embrace the mores of the Enlightenment with its
secularist and egalitarian commitments.
Although there were important antecedents, in 19th-century mainline
central-European Protestantism, which had been domesticated by demands
of the secular culture, much of the radical deconstruction of Western
Christianity occurred in the wake of the moral, epistemological, liturgical,

ascetical, and ecclesiological chaos engendered by Vatican II (1962-1965). The
result was that a major cultural institution of Western culture, Roman Cathol-
icism, was significantly (which is to say, even further) disconnected from its
roots in traditional Christianity. As a consequence, it became ever more
enmired in substantive internal disputes and controversies as well as pro-
gressively unable to respond to the secularizing forces of the age. In addition,
a cluster of Christianities whose understandings of theology and its theologi-
cal lifeworld had been recast by the demands of the secular culture were set in a
trajectory progressively at odds with that of the Christianity of the first millen-
nium. The depth of this divide is only increasing. As the Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomeus I has observed: “The manner in which we [the Orthodox versus
others] exist has become ontologically different” (Patriarch Bartholomeus I,
1997, pp. 2). Nevertheless, many are blind to these developments and differ-
ences, thus making an adequate appreciation of their nature difficult.
The Western Christian attempt to compass God within discursive reason
has in the end obscured the nature of transcendence, the nature of the profound
gulf separating created and uncreated being. The seemingly innocent attempt
to articulate an account of natural law open to all has itself obscured the
transcendent character of God. Morality has been increasingly uncoupled
from a rightly-ordered relationship with the transcendent God. As David
Bradshaw indicates, the West’s view of God developed from a Christianity
that had “no concept of God [; this Christianity of the first millennium]
view[ed] God not as an essence to be grasped intellectually, but as a personal
reality known through His acts, and above all by oneself sharing in those
acts” (Bradshaw, 2004, p. 275). Kant, Hegel, and Habermas may in the end
have shown, as Bradshaw puts it, that “the God who has been the subject of
so much strife and contention throughout western history was [n]ever anything
more than an idol” (Bradshaw, 2004, p. 277).
III. Reflections on the Reflections on Engelhardt

As Delkeskamp-Hayes recognizes, this state of affairs, one characterized
by both moral pluralism and metaphysical disorientation, defines our con-
temporary moral cultural context. “The 21st century is marked by an explicit
moral and metaphysical disorientation. There is a growing appreciation of
the dominant secular culture’s inability to justify a particular content-full
morality or an account of the final meaning of human life and the cosmos. In
this secular culture, isolated within the horizon of the finite and immanent,
humans find themselves embedded in a seemingly irresolvable plurality of
moral perspectives” (2009, p. 23). Delkeskamp-Hayes correctly appreciates
that, given the dominant secular culture’s commitment to claiming the exis-
tence of consensus (e.g., regarding human dignity and human rights), this
culture must at the same time deny the substantive moral pluralism we face
and the actual grounds for our failure to achieve consensus. As already noted,
there is an ideological barrier to recognizing that many are truly moral
strangers, persons divided by foundationally different moral as well as meta-
physical premises and rules of evidence. As a consequence, the term “moral
stranger”, which identifies our moral separation through moral pluralism,
has the politically incorrect force of bringing into question the culture’s pas-
sionate proclamations of moral consensus. Delkeskamp-Hayes offers a care-
fully developed geography of our situation.
The essays by two of my former students, one a Confucian and the other
a Jesuit, each in its own way further develops Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes’
reflections regarding the implications of moral pluralism and metaphysical
disorientation. Fan correctly underscores that The Foundations of Bioethics is
post-metaphysical, while The Foundations of Christian Bioethics (Engelhardt,
2000) addresses transcendent issues that had once been compassed by phi-
losophy, and that the character of the latter supplements the post-metaphysical
character of the former. Fan appreciates that there is only one Engelhardt, and
that the Engelhardt of The Foundations of Christian Bioethics completes but does
not contradict the Engelhardt of The Foundations of Bioethics. A major project of
my work, as Fan notes, has been that of providing a theoretical account of the
moral and metaphysical controversies that characterize the human condition,
and which are expressed in the post-modern moral pluralism and the meta-
physical disorientation of the contemporary dominant culture of the West. As
a Confucian, it is only to be expected that he does not (at least yet) appreciate
that the only way beyond the difficulties defining our dominant, post-tradi-
tional culture lies in recognizing the Source of all meaning and the ultimate
point of orientation, namely, the Triune God. As Wildes acknowledges, any
discursive account of the human moral condition is always to some extent
hostage to the force of the social constructions imposed by the particular
moral community within which it is framed, and this is surely the case for
Confucian and Roman Catholic thought. One is always tied, at least in part,
to the conceits of one’s historical and social situation, unless and until one
noetically encounters the Truth. Yet, as a Confucian who recognizes the claims
of both ultimate reality and of tradition, Fan is able in good measure to appre-
ciate the moral and metaphysical disabilities of contemporary Western cul-
ture. This capacity is located in his keen appreciation of the moral vacuity or
rootlessness of much Western and Chinese culture, as well as his sophisti-
cated understanding of traditional social structures. The cardinal issue
concerning ultimate orientation is whether humans are able to go beyond the
post-modern iteration of diverse social constructions of reality through con-
necting with ultimate reality.
Wildes correctly appreciates the bond between The Foundations of
Bioethics and The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. He recognizes that one cannot
establish as canonical by sound rational argument any particular moral vision

without already having established background canonical moral premises
and rules of evidence that can justify the foundation for the content-full,
moral understanding that one wishes to affirm. As Agrippa summarized the
challenge to this project nearly two thousand years ago, any attempt to establish
a canonical moral perspective through sound rational argument either begs
the question, argues in a circle, or involves an infinite regress.2 It is this set of
difficulties that underlies what Gerald McKenny in his essay refers to as
Engelhardt’s intellectual puzzle. It is this state of affairs that defines as well
the gulf separating moral strangers: they cannot resolve their moral contro-
versies either through sound, rational argument or through an appeal to a
common authority. The relationship between The Foundations of Bioethics and
The Foundations of Christian Bioethics presents no puzzle for Kevin Wildes,
because he recognizes the presence and force of substantive moral and meta-
physical difference. This is the case even though he insists on introducing the
term “moral acquaintances” to identify the circumstance that, inter alia, with
regard to some issues, persons may enjoy moral friendship and with regard
to other issues be separated as moral strangers. Persons quite frequently in
some areas share common premises and moral visions, while in crucial areas
they remain divided and perhaps in conflict, a point to which Griffin Trotter
in a somewhat different fashion also turns. People often have loyalties divided
among different moral communities. Having said all this, moral differences
remain: moral understandings are plural. Wildes’ notion of moral acquain-
tances is not the basis for a critique of my position, but only for a further
elaboration.
Gerald McKenny resists core arguments of both The Foundations of Bioethics
and The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Correctly observing that there can
always be a controversy as to whether a person has given uncoerced permis-
sion, or for that matter has even given permission, McKenny falsely concludes
that such puzzles necessarily or even usually depend on moral disagree-
ments, in particular on moral disagreements as with respect to the correct
orderings of cardinal values. He fails to note regarding when bare permission
has been given that what is at stake in most controversies is not any particular
ordering of values or particular moral appreciation of the goodness of per-
mission, or even a view as to harms associated with coercion, but rather a
dispute about a bare fact of the matter, though surely a fact overlain with
moral significance. The question is whether permission has been given. The
Foundations of Bioethics appreciates that secular morality has no canonical
basis to affirm the goodness of permission or to claim that on balance a harm
is associated with particular forms of coercion. It is simply the case that per-
mission can supply the foundation for a sparse moral fabric of common
authority. The question as to whether permission has been given by one per-
son to another particular person without coercion by the permission receiver
is not necessarily a moral question. It can be a factual question as to whether

the persons in question have entered into the practice of resolving controver-
sies on the basis of agreement. This is not to deny that various moral and
other normative commitments frame the context of discovery, thus shaping
the facts one perceives to be the facts of the matter. The Foundations of Bioethics
does not presume that the procedural approach it offers as the secular default
means for cooperation among persons who have different rankings of values,
and are in general moral strangers, will solve all controversies. However, this
practice will allow moral strangers to collaborate with common moral
authority. In the process, particular thresholds for permission, procedures for
confirming permission, and different practices that attend to risks of false
positive and false negative determinations of whether permission has been
given can in particular circumstances be established and authorized through
practices established on the model of the spontaneous structuring of particular
markets as a result of numerous free individual choices.
What is offered is a way beyond some of the moral controversies that
are a function of the fallen human condition, a condition defined by moral
pluralism. The Foundations of Bioethics is not advanced as a moral panacea.
It does not aspire to set all content-full moral controversies aside, but only
to showing a way around some of them by disclosing a possibility for lim-
ited cooperation among moral and metaphysical strangers. The only final
way out of the intractable secular pluralism and metaphysical disorienta-
tion defining our secular culture, given the fractured and disparate charac-
ter of our moral insights and understandings of the meaning of things, is,
as The Foundations of Christian Bioethics argues, noetically to encounter the
Truth. Our state of confusion (i.e., moral pluralism and metaphysical dis-
orientation) within the horizon of the finite and the immanent is also the
result of an inability to secure a point of ultimate orientation. Such a point
of orientation can only be secured through a noetic encounter with the
Truth, which encounter is an experience with decisive consequences for the
knower that are very distantly analogous to a first-person encounter with a
sensible quale (e.g., experiencing blue). It is this experience that makes the
community of Orthodox Christianity not simply a community, but the
canonical community of knowers as well as the canonical community of
worshipers. The community of right-believing and -worshipping Chris-
tians is, because of its anchoring in noetic experience, categorically the
community. All of this is to affirm a view of theology and ultimate truth at
odds with what defined the Christianities that emerged in the West during
the second millennium. Those Christianities in great part placed themselves
within the governance of secular philosophy and thereby engendered the
developmental character of the theologies of the Western Christianities
(Engelhardt, 2006a) as well as eventually the post-traditional, post-modern
character of the currently dominant secular Western culture.
A number of the essays in this volume are poster-children for the deep
and widening cleft between the mind of the original Christianity and the var-
ious Western Christianities that took shape in the second millennium. This
radically different understanding of Christianity that began to emerge in the
West in the latter part of the first millennium and took full form in the second
millennium resituated all moral and theological issues. In the end, it even
recast how secular moral issues are regarded in the West. The character of
these developments is sketched in The Foundations of Christian Bioethics and
elsewhere. Christopher Tollefsen’s essay paradigmatically discloses this gulf
between the life-world of the Christianity of the first millennium alive today
in Orthodox Christianity and that of the contemporary Western Christiani-
ties. He unwittingly underscores this gulf between the Western Christianities
and the original Christianity of the first millennium by his amazement at the
character of the mind of the Fathers. Tollefsen’s views, for instance, trade on
the old saw that the early Fathers placed acts of contraception under the
rubric of abortion, without noting that acts he considers to be those of contra-
ception were likely considered to be feticidal by those Fathers. He does not
notice the silence by the Fathers on the use of the early equivalent of dia-
phragms and condoms. Tollefsen confronts a number of these differences
between the Western Christianities and the Christianity of the first millen-
nium, including the circumstance that many sinful acts are referred to as
equivalent to murder, although no one is actually killed (e.g., as when Canon
LXXII of St. Basil the Great penances divination like murder). The moral con-
cerns of the Christianity of the first millennium are set within a discourse
quite different from that of the moral theology of most contemporary Western
Christianities.
Tollefsen reacts to these differences not by trying to enter into the mind of
the Fathers, into the thought-style or paradigm of the early Church. Instead,
he invokes the reflections of contemporary secular philosophical fathers such
as P.F. Strawson (1919-2006), no less, in order to argue that the Church’s spir-
itual-therapeutic treatment of both murder and accidental death as forms of
homicide “would seem to involve a refusal to see murder as an affront against
persons, whereas accidental death [is] a tragedy for persons; and it would fail
to do justice to the persons who had in radically different ways done the
lethal deed” (2009, p. 169). This commitment by Tollefsen as a theological
matter to a secularly justified account of God’s justice may make it difficult
for him to appreciate the paradigmatic prayer of repentance of the murderer
and adulterer, as well as great saint, David, “Against Thee only have I sinned
and done evil in Thy sight” (Ps 50:4 LXX). The difficulty with secular accounts
of justice in Christian theology is that Christianity sets centrally God’s decla-
ration to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will
have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Exodus 33:19). The Mes-
siah comes bringing mercy, not justice. It is precisely because sin involves
primarily an alienation from God, the Lord of the universe, that one can in
true repentance be absolved for the murder of millions so that all is entirely
forgiven without purgatory. Tollefsen wishes to impose on a transcendent
and merciful God his own secular standards of justice and his own account of
sin. As a result, he has difficulty in appreciating the Church’s spiritual thera-
peutic interest in penancing (as a matter of spiritual therapy) both voluntary
and involuntary homicide. Through his essay, one encounters the great diffi-
culty Tollefsen has in thinking himself back into the mind of the Church of the
first millennium. He lives in the paradigm of a quite different religious com-
munity, a new religious body that emerged fully in its new identity in the
early second millennium, in great measure due to the role philosophy came
to play in reshaping its theology.
The differences separating the Christianity of the first millennium from
the Christianities that developed in the West are profound. They lie in sub-
stantively different understandings of such cardinal issues as theology,
Church, Bible, sin, redemption, grace, and the force of God’s commandments.
In part, the difference divides those rooted in an experience of God Himself
versus those rooted in a moral-philosophical-theological framework that has
succeeded in placing justice and human rights on a par with, if not precedent
to, the traditional Christian experience of God. As a consequence, one finds in
the Christianity of the first millennium, from which the Western Christiani-
ties slowly but progressively separated themselves, a strikingly different
appreciation of all the cardinal matters of life, ranging from murder and gender
essentialism (e.g., the taxis ordering men and women in the family and in the
Church) to the significance of homosexual relations, and indeed all sexual
liaisons outside of the marriage of a man and a woman. For example, as
already noted, prohibition of early abortion in the Christianity of the first mil-
lennium rest not on the claim that the early embryo is ensouled (see e.g. Let-
ter 188 of St. Basil to Amphilochius concerning the Canons), but on the fact
that God forbids such acts.3 There is the puzzle for Tollefsen and other West-
ern Christians concerning the early Church’s recognition of involuntary sins
and sins committed in ignorance. Where the West is still struggling with the
implications of its medieval claims in a nature broken by sin regarding the
recognizability of constraints set by natural law, the Christianity of the first
millennium remains oriented towards submitting to the content of the law to
love one’s neighbor, which is understood in the light of the discharge of the
first great commandment to love God fully and rightly. It is the first com-
mandment that always remains prior to any consideration of justice or basic
human rights. All turns on how correctly to “love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37), so
that one can then rightly love one’s neighbor as oneself (Matt 22:39).
Orthodox Christianity maintains a vivid sense of the divine-commandment
character of Christian obligations (Engelhardt, 2007a). Orthodox Christianity
has not developed an independent morality, moral philosophy, or moral

theology as a third thing that may mediate, revise, or develop the Church’s
original understandings of appropriate deportment. So, too, because
Orthodox theology is in its foundations an experience of God, theology does
not emerge as a third thing that can serve as an academically institutional-
ized practice in authority to revise and develop the character of theological
commitments. This shift in the character of philosophy’s role with regard to
theology is in great measure the result of philosophy, which had begun as the
handmaid of theology, now becoming theology’s master. One should note
that the term ancilla dominae as employed by Peter Damian (A.D. 1007-1052)
and Gerard of Czanad (d. A.D. 1046) was originally meant to underscore the
subservient and limited role of philosophy. Nevertheless, theology in the West
became a philosophically driven academic institution. Tollefsen does not
appreciate the force of this development. He is so intent on developing and
vindicating a secularly apprehendable moral framework that can support
universal claims of justice and human rights, which he contends that all men
should by natural reason recognize (albeit they have only a fallen human
reason), that he misses the point of The Foundations of Bioethics. The volume
shows how little fallen man separated from right worship can and will see, as
is in fact demonstrated by the widespread acceptance by reasonable persons of
abortion and physician-assisted suicide, actions that Tollefsen presumably
holds to violate natural law.
The Fathers did not nor do they hold that the reference in Romans 2:14
regarding those gentiles who by nature do what the law requires applies to
pagans in general, but only to pious pagans such as Melchizedek and Cornelius
(see St. John Chrysostom’s Homily V on Romans). Tollefsen would most
likely concur that there is a widely accepted set of secular moral reflections
that supports a post-traditional, post-Christian morality at odds with the
commitments of traditional Christians. Those are precisely the gentiles who
do not do by nature what the law requires. Tollefsen would likely also recog-
nize that the moral difference between secular morality and the moral com-
mitments of traditional Christians lies at least in part in the circumstance that
those who endorse the dominant, post-traditional, post-Christian morality
affirm as self-evident basic moral premises and rules of moral evidence dif-
ferent from those of traditional Christians. There is real moral difference in
the world, because there is not one sense of moral rationality: we do not share
one morality. The Foundations of Bioethics shows why this is the case and why
better discursive philosophical reflection will not resolve the moral pluralism
we face, nor set aside the intractable moral controversies we confront. The
Foundations of Christian Bioethics shows the way out of this difficulty, not
through better moral-philosophical distinctions and arguments, but rather
through an experience of the living God acquired through right worship. It
explains that small subset of gentiles who by nature do what the law requires.
Fred Fransen’s essay is a jewel. He is zealous to embrace a church in

community with the Church of the Fathers. He recognizes the unique gift to
mankind of martyrdom. All of this he gets exactly right. Where he goes wrong
is where all Protestants as Protestants must go wrong – namely, in their appre-
ciation of Church. Or rather, to put the point a bit more stridently, Protestants
cannot get the notion of Church right. Or to put the matter even more starkly,
Protestants lack the meaning of Church around which early Christianity was
built. Protestants in rightly protesting against the heresies of the medieval
Western church (e.g., universal papal jurisdiction, purgatory, indulgences,
etc.) thought that, in order to ground their critical position, they had to presume
that one could start the Apostolic church anew in the 16th century. So they
made the Bible into the basis of the church, rather than recognizing the Church
as having accepted and authorized the content of the Bible. After all, early
creeds stressed belief in one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church, not belief
in a particular Bible. Once everyone was left to read the Bible on his own, as
the old saw goes, the result was that the Protestants traded having one man
as pope for having every man as pope. As a consequence, Western Christianity
is scandalously fragmented due to attempts again and again to reform and
restart Christianity anew on the basis of a new reading of the Bible. On the
basis of the Bible alone and without continuity with the visible Church that is
one with the Church of the Apostles,4 Protestantism has effected its own
reductio through its constant fragmentation.
The difficulties with the Protestant project are in fact manifold: first, Christ
promised to preserve His Church against the gates of hell (Matt 16:18), and
God is not an underachiever. The Church He founded cannot cease to be.
Second, as the Reformers were protesting against the church in Western
Europe, the original Church was alive and well in Palestine, as well as else-
where. Protestants did not need to try to establish the Church anew. Third, it
is only within the theology of the unbroken Church embedded in right wor-
ship and right belief that one gets doctrinal points rightly. It is the Church, not
the Bible outside of the Church, that supplies the privileged epistemological
viewpoint for Christian theology. Therefore, in disagreement, to address an
example from Fransen, one does not abandon infant baptism. Given the
injunction of Christ that “no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born
again. … I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he
is born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:3,5), and given the command “Suffer
the little children to come to me” (Matt 19:14), and given the antiquity of infant
baptism, infant baptism is not to be set aside. Fourth, one does not have good
grounds for regarding the reign of St. Constantine (A.D. c.274-337) and the
establishment of Christianity as constituting a rupture in the history of Chris-
tianity. The early Christians having obeyed pagan emperors in all things not
contrary to the faith recognized no bar to obeying Christian emperors. The
original Church knew and still knows that what St. Paul says of a pagan
government also applies to an Orthodox emperor, such as St. Constantine the

Great. “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there
is no authority except that which God has established … for he is God’s ser-
vant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the
sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punish-
ment on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:1,4). The Church also understands that this
Scripture applied and applies not only to internal enemies, but also to exter-
nal enemies, thus legitimizing the possibility of war and Christian military
service (all without oppressing civilians – Luke 3:14).5 Fifth, the Church had
understood and still understands that the Church affirmed in the creeds as
the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church can only be recognized in that
Church that has both a succession of bishops from the Apostles, along with
the maintenance of Apostolic belief. The Church is an actual visible assembly
in right worship and right belief. There is no invisible Church, although one
should pray that many who are not now in the Church will be in the Church
after the Judgment on the Last Day.
All of this is to say that to see things within an authentically Christian
theology is to see everything in the unbroken mind of the ancient Church and
in a way quite different from what emerged in the second millennium. Here I
wholeheartedly agree with Fred Fransen in recognizing that this original and
enduring theology of Christianity is primarily a theology of holiness, not a
theology of discursive reflection, social justice, and human rights, as is the
current conceit of many of the religious bodies still lodged, even after the
Reformation, in the Western medieval synthesis of philosophy and theology.
Both Tollefsen and Fransen are thus in quite different ways focused on pro-
viding a justification for the moral-theological perspective that emerged in
the West long after Christ had ascended and left His Church on earth pro-
tected in the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, Fransen’s view is much closer to the
Fathers than Tollefsen’s.
The next three authors in this volume, Griffin Trotter, Joseph Boyle, and
Stephen Wear, in various ways explore further the possibility of a procedural
morality, a morality that can be shared with moral strangers. In different
ways, each of them also recognizes that those who authentically live within
particular, substantive moral communities, such as the community of Orthodox
Christians, will truly appear strange against the background of the morality
of the dominant secular cosmopolitan culture. As the author of the “Epistle to
Diognetus” puts it, Christians “dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if
sojourners in them; they share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as
strangers. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a
foreign country” (Lake, 1965, “Epistle” V.5). The morality of Orthodox Chris-
tians stands over against the morality of liberal cosmopolitans, as well as the
morality of traditional Texans. In quite a different fashion, it stands over
against the sparse morality sketched in The Foundations of Bioethics and elsewhere
(Engelhardt, 1997). Trotter is correct that a local, more substantive morality is

present or develops in particular communities. It can take shape in part as all
spontaneous orders develop, through a multitude of tacit, not merely formal
agreements. All of these authors in diverse fashions realize the following state
of affairs as characterizing the human condition: (1) there are some communities
of very devout believers (e.g., observant Orthodox Jews as well as non-
excommunicated Orthodox Christians who regularly and in good order
approach the chalice) who are bound together as moral friends in very thick
moral communities (and who give their full loyalty only to this community);
(2) there are various, less thick communities grounded within particular
moral and metaphysical understandings both traditional and post-traditional
(e.g., traditional Texans and Confucians, as well as mainstream Episcopalians);
(3) there is a dominant, cosmopolitan, post-Christian, post-religious, post-
traditional culture that overarches particular communities and is deeply in
conflict with the commitments of traditional believers on issues ranging from
abortion and the authority of men in the church, to capital punishment and
euthanasia (there are not only strident cultural wars, but actual contemporary
bloody wars over some of these issues, as with some fundamentalist Moham-
medans); and (4) there is a set of practices such as the market and contracts
that can allow morally authoritative collaboration not only among moral
strangers, but among moral enemies. An adequate account of our moral
geography must attend to all four of these features of our cultural context.
In The Foundations of Bioethics, I have addressed the fourth and last of these
phenomena, the domain of moral meaning that can be shared by moral
strangers. In The Foundations of Christian Bioethics I have attended primarily to
the first, namely, what those bound in true faith can share, but also in part to
the second and the third as distractions from the first. In certain circumstances,
I have even addressed culture and commitments of traditional Texans
(Engelhardt, 1990, 2004). I have in particular explored the third, the post-
Christian culture that is at odds with religious orthodoxy (Engelhardt, 2006b,
2003, 2001, 1991). In all of this, I have no reason in principle to object to the
general lineaments of Griffin Trotter’s proposal. Indeed, it is clear that various
regional and even international, but nevertheless particular, moral under-
standings develop out of the interaction of particular individuals and
communities of individuals. I disagree with Trotter as to the justification of
such intermediate moral understandings: they cannot be grounded primarily
in general, secular, rational resources, because there are no such generally
available, common moral understandings, in that we have no common under-
standings of human happiness, human flourishing, or the human good.
Rather, as the market fashions particular structures, so, too, intermediate mores,
intermediate understandings of what is consuetudo can come into existence.
All those who are religious fundamentalists6 (e.g., Orthodox Christians
and Orthodox Jews), this author included, know that such understandings
constitute merely a provisional agreement or modus vivendi. They do not

trump that to which one is out of theological grounds committed. As a conse-
quence, when Joshua is told by God to ride into Jericho with his men, he may,
indeed should kill all that lives in the city. The point is that only in very lim-
ited senses is there “a middle ground between stark, substance-free secular
bioethics and content-full sectarian bioethics” (Trotter, 2009, p. 204). This mid-
dle ground is simply a provisional modus vivendi. This middle ground is the
child of a market of agreements and of the rhetoric of persuasion. It is not
grounded in common, discursive, rational understandings. In this middle
ground, for example, to talk about peaceful co-existence can serve as a delay-
ing strategy so as to prepare better for war. “Ethical deliberation” within an
intermediate morality will therefore never truly and rightly specify tradi-
tional Christian moral conduct.
Joseph Boyle is concerned to vindicate the existence of a common human
moral rationality. By this, he does not mean what the Fathers mean, namely, a
common capacity of repentant humans through ascetic struggle and right
worship to experience God and in the light of God’s uncreated energies to
know how they should act. For Boyle, common human reason has become an
independent tribunal of rational reflection directed to the investigation not
only of sensible, empirical reality, but also of morality and theology in a context
set apart from the experience of God. He is correct that it is logically true that
the widespread moral disagreement characterizing the human condition does
not only follow from the circumstance that humans do not share “a common
human reason”, if one means by this a failure to share a common human
appreciation of how one ought to rank basic human goods and right-making
conditions. The difference could follow as well from sinful willfulness. How-
ever, as I argue in The Foundations of Bioethics, Secular Humanism and Bioethics:
The Search for a Common Morality, The Foundations of Christian Bioethics and
subsequently (2007b, 2006c, 2005a, 2005b), human disagreements are in fact
substantially (but not exclusively) rooted in foundationally different appre-
ciations of human moral rationality. A common human moral rationality in
the sense of a common ranking of cardinal human goods or a common fabric
of settled moral judgments does not exist. Humans do not share a common
morality or a common moral rationality. To give an example of moral difference,
unlike Western moralists who live in the shadow of Augustine of Hippo (A.D.
354-430), Orthodox Christians appreciate that in certain circumstances it is a
good and praiseworthy thing to lie, to tell a falsehood directly with full intention to
deceive (e.g., when saving Jews from the National Socialists). As St. John Cassian
the Just Roman (ca. A.D. 360 – 435) observes defending the traditional Christian
position, “Holy men and those most approved by God employed lying, so as not
only to incur no guilt of sin from it, but even to attain the greatest goodness;
and if deceit could confer glory on them, what on the other hand would the truth
have brought them but condemnation?” (Cassian, 1994, p. 465).
For another example of moral diversity, consider Boyle’s contention about

the existence of a common human moral rationality as advanced in the claim
that “a jury of typical North Americans considering the case of a public offi-
cial accused of inflicting pain and grave bodily harm on a prisoner in order to
obtain information necessary to prevent further terrorist murders … would
likely agree, if the facts showed just this, in condemning that official’s action
as morally wrong” (Boyle, 2009, p. 233). Moved by his claim, I enquired of a
number of Americans, Europeans, and Texans whether they would consider
such an official to have acted in a morally wrong, licit, or morally obligatory
fashion, as well as how they would vote, if they were members of such a jury.
Granted, mine was by no means an unbiased or significant sample (after all,
the majority of the persons polled were either philosophers or theologians
whom I knew well – a point to which I will return in speaking to Stephen
Wear’s claims regarding “widely shared” views of moral canons). All agreed
that the official was morally obliged to engage in such actions, if the official
had clear and convincing evidence that the prisoner had the information and
would divulge it and that this would save a number of lives. Moreover, both
the Americans and Texans agreed that a decent jury should find such an offi-
cial, if indicted, not guilty. Relying on well-established precedent in common
law, they held that through jury nullification the official’s action would be
regarded as an act of necessity undertaken outside the law and not to be pun-
ished by the law. That is, any law under which the official could have been
found guilty would in this case have been appreciated as inappropriate or
inapplicable and therefore to be nullified by the jury. Moreover, the view of
those polled was that the jury should do this with the clear understanding
that their nullification of the indictment would place the case beyond any
appeal by the state but would set no precedent. This view expressed regard-
ing how juries should operate offers an example of the intermediate morality
about which Griffin Trotter speaks.
In summary, Joseph Boyle’s contention that humans share a “common
human [moral] reason” cannot be true if the possession of a common human
moral rationality entails the possession of a common sense, after mature
deliberation, about how to rank important human goods and cardinal right-
making conditions. Such simply and clearly does not exist. Even Boyle’s
appeal to the Mosaic Decalogue (Boyle, 2009, p. 236) discloses further moral
diversity by raising the question as to why, when Christians think of the Law,
they should just think of the Decalogue rather than of the seven laws given to
Noah. As already noted in a footnote, Christianity from its beginning forbade
abortion on the basis of the laws of Noah. Moreover, the Jerusalem Council
upheld the proscription in the laws of Noah of the eating of blood (Acts 15:20).
It is for this reason that Christians are still forbidden to eat blood sausage
(although I can understand from the poorly seasoned character of Canadian
blood pudding why this may never have seemed a significant issue for
Joseph Boyle). The point is that discussions with reflective, rational individuals
from different moral communities discloses not just disagreement about
moral issues of great significance, but disagreement as well concerning the
moral premises and rules of evidence to which one could appeal for the reso-
lution of these disagreements. Boyle on closer inspection of the matter will
find well-developed and disparate accounts of not only when killing is wrong,
but also when it is a good time to kill in order to please God (Eccles 3:3). For
example, God enjoined the Israelites, “in the cities of the nations the Lord
your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that
breathes. Completely destroy them … as the Lord your God has commanded
you” (Deu 20:16-17). For further reflections on this last topic, I would com-
mend to Joseph Boyle’s attention the very thoughtful examination of the issue
of when one ought to kill, as given by Moses Maimonides (A.D. 1135-1204) in
the Mishnah Torah. Unlike Marcion of Sinope (ca. A.D. 110-160), right-believ-
ing Christians acknowledge that the God of both the New and the Old Testa-
ment is equally righteous and holy, indeed that He is the same God. The point
among other things is that God gave different laws to different communities
(e.g., to the sons of Noah and then to the Jews) at different times. Understanding
what it is to identify the canonical morality is both complex and a matter of
foundational contention.
Much of what Stephen Wear develops in his paper recapitulates what
Joseph Boyle develops. When Wear advances his account of “a canon of clinical
ethics”, he defends it on the basis of its being “widely shared” (Wear, 2009,
p. 255). But how widely shared and with whom must a set of clinical-ethical
views be in order to be well-grounded? For that matter, what does a proposi-
tion being “widely shared” have to do with the truth of any proposition?
Most importantly, who is the we whose widely-held views are normative or
definitive? How much of a majority and of whom entails what level of confi-
dence in the truth one wishes to affirm? For example, what does the circum-
stance that persons generally widely affirm certain propositions in physics,
chemistry, biology, and medicine have to do with the truth of what they
affirm? Why would opinions in matters of morality be any different? Why
and under what circumstances would a moral consensus count for anything?
Just as in the case of Joseph Boyle’s official who engages in torture in order to
prevent further terrorist actions, views with regard to the propriety of any
matter will differ, depending on the moral community polled and its back-
ground commitments. To specify whose widely shared opinions are norma-
tive requires already identifying who knows what truly.
Wear describes my claims regarding noetic theology as circular (2009, p. 252).
My claim that one should move from the Enlightenment project lodged in
discursive rational justification to the Christian commitments grounded in
noetic experience is secured by the claim that rightly-ordered moral knowledge
in these matters requires for its foundation rightly-ordered empirical (albeit
in this case noetic, not sensible) experience. An analogous sort of empirical

claim is made by those who recognize that the central truths of medicine are
empirical, not rational-deductive. There is no circularity involved in pointing
to these empirical circumstances, although there can surely be disputes about
the nature of those circumstances, their character, and the truth of the claim.
Last but not least, Wear’s appeal to “representatives of the people assembled”
to settle any matter depends on antecedent arguments regarding the divine
right of majorities and on arguments to show how, why, and to what extent
moral authority is realized in particular assemblies. Much more would have
to be said, because, inter alia, the founders of both America and Texas under-
stood the great dangers involved in rule by the majority. Indeed, they recog-
nized that “the people is a beast.” As a result, they framed constitutions that
limited majority rule and in the case of the United States so structured the
more authoritative legislative branch (i.e., the Senate) that now an eighth of the
population elects more than a majority of the Senate. One needs to show which
assemblies have what moral authority and on what basis. As Wear well knows,
there has been blood shed in the territory now occupied by the United States
over the issue of which representative assemblies were lawfully assembled.
Claims about “a canon of clinical ethics” involve complicated issues, as
Nicholas Capaldi and Thomas Cavanaugh appreciate. As Capaldi rightly
notes, there is a foundational difficulty in talking about ethics expertise, given
that the fallen human condition is marked by moral pluralism and an inabil-
ity to set that pluralism aside through sound rational argument. Capaldi like
Delkeskamp-Hayes observes, “Not only is there a strident moral diversity
defining debates regarding all substantive issues, but there is in principle
good reason to hold that these debates cannot be brought to closure in a prin-
cipled fashion through sound rational argument. The partisans of each and
every position find themselves embedded within their own discourse so that
they are unable to step outside of their own respective hermeneutic circles
without embracing new and divergent premises and rules of inferences.
Many traditional thinkers find themselves in precisely this position” (Capaldi,
2009, p. 267). As Capaldi acknowledges, moral diversity is real and intracta-
ble. As a consequence, this is no particular body of moral claims that without
great controversy can sustain a canon of clinical ethics. Cavanaugh appreci-
ates that contemporary moral and policy controversies are defined by the
fallen human condition. As a consequence, the existence of law and political
constraint, rather than being truly normative, reflects the results of sin.
For Cathleen Kaveny’s fine-grain analysis of my arguments and her
comparison of my position with that of Germaine Grisez, I am very grateful.
First, I am grateful for the care and energies she invested. Second, the manner
in which she repeatedly sees my position wrongly provides an important and
nuanced heuristic illustration of the paradigmatic differences separating
Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian understandings of theology. As to
her reflections concerning the legalistic approach about which I reproach the
Romans, my point is this: The Roman Catholics have a legalistic approach to
sin in tending to focus on determining the guilt or innocence of the sinner,
rather than curing the sinner’s sinfulness. A spiritual therapeutic approach,
should recognize that we are all sinners and attempt first and foremost to
bring the cure of repentance and purification so that union with God can take
place. The issue raised about legalism addresses the accent in Roman Cathol-
icism’s approach to the sinner, an approach that Kaveny herself illustrates.
Roman Catholicism’s accent is on determining guilt or innocence, rather than
nurturing repentance. For example, the Orthodox surely hold that there are
things that one should never do (e.g., effect an abortion). The crucial differ-
ence is how to approach the sinner, once the sinner has sinned. The absence
of an innocence-establishing appeal to the principle of double effect with
regard to abortion in Orthodox Christianity means that there is no way to find
a woman innocent who has had an indirect abortion (e.g., removing a cancer-
ous uterus of a pregnant woman with the intention to cure the cancer but not
to kill the infant in utero). Rather than looking for a basis to establish a finding
of innocence, what is important is to help the woman to mourn the act in
which she has been involved. The Roman Catholic engagement of the prin-
ciple of double effect with regard to abortion provides an example of Roman
Catholic legalism, not just in terms of its focus on finding those involved to be
innocent, but because of the loss of a concern with spiritual therapy.
Before turning to the issue of the contrast between a noetically grounded
and a discursively grounded theology, I must address a few of the other
important points raised by Kaveny. First, from the circumstance that a spiri-
tual father should act as a spiritual physician rather than as a judge, it does
not follow that spiritual fathers have “great discretion” (2009, p. 149), as
Kaveny alleges. Physicians should identify the best therapy for their patients,
an obligation that does not invite “moral monsters of arbitrariness, and favor-
itism” on the part of physicians, physical or spiritual, any more than it does
on the part of judges. Of course, policemen, prosecutors, and juries have great
discretion, if not more discretion than physicians. To begin with, the question
is whether the focus is juridical or therapeutic. Then there is the issue of judg-
ing and treating well. As to the task of the good judge, it is to judge rightly,
while the task of the good physician is to cure effectively, in the case of the
spiritual physician by bringing the sinner to repentance and purification from
passions. Second, I do not claim that certain acts of abortion are both “permit-
ted” and to be “repented”, or that they are in some sense allowed (2009, p. 145).
This is simply false. All abortions are sinful, as I clearly state in The Founda-
tions of Christian Bioethics. Third, some of Kaveny’s confusions appear to turn
on her falsely imputing to the Orthodox a Roman Catholic view regarding
contraception. Fourth, it is not the case that I or more importantly the Ortho-
dox Church fails to hold that we are all called, each and every one of us, to
have the courage of martyrs in all things (2009, p. 151). Indeed, on the page
Kaveny cites from The Foundations of Christian Bioethics in substantiation of
her false claim that I hold that Orthodox Christianity fails to require all to
strive for perfection, I quote Matthew 5:48: “Ye shall be perfect, even as your
Father Who is in heaven is perfect.” Perhaps she was confused by my obser-
vation concerning the Orthodox Christian position that “everything is
required; anything can be forgiven” (Engelhardt, 2000, p. 237). Fifth, Kaveny
has it wrong with regard to the issue of marriage, divorce, and remarriage
within Orthodox Christianity. On the one hand, the Church follows Christ,
Who rejected the teaching of Hillel that one may divorce one’s wife for any
reason (Matt 19:3), and indirectly affirms a position similar to that of Sham-
mai that divorce is permitted only on grounds of porneia (Matt 19:9). On the
other hand, the Church recognizes all second marriages, including those of
widows and widowers, as spiritually problematic, although “it is better to
marry than to burn” (I Cor 7:9). Sixth, Christ’s kingdom is not of this world
(John 18:36). The kingdom that is to come, the city that is to come, the New
Jerusalem, is not simply built up from below but descends from above (Rev
21:1-2). Nor are there politics or community structures in heaven as there are
on earth, because human laws and political organizations are framed in
response to sin and to human sinfulness. The community that is restored by
the Church is community with God, with the Trinity. All truth is personal, and
this community is fully personal.
Thomas Cavanaugh sees what Cathy Kaveny does not see, or at least does
not address, namely, that politics, governments, legal systems, medicine, and
bioethics are all about sin – or at least about how to come to terms with the
various consequences of our sins and the sin of Adam. It is for this reason that
one cannot simply build the kingdom of heaven from the bottom up as a
social project, as an undertaking in social justice. It is for this reason that
Orthodox Christianity focuses primarily on establishing and enlarging the
community of right worship, right belief, and right conduct (which surely
includes almsgiving) so as thus to build up the Kingdom of Heaven by being
transformed in and through God’s grace, which comes from above. It is for
this reason that in Orthodox Christianity’s Eastern rites the Liturgy begins
with the proclamation, “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Spirit.” The kingdom into which we are to enter comes from
God. Nevertheless, Orthodox Christians recognize that all authority on earth
is from God (Rom 13:1-4) and that the Church must pray that rulers will be
God-fearing and right-believing, and even in the right circumstances anoint
God-fearing, right-believing men as kings and emperors.
Finally, as to the gulf between Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian
theology, it lies most fundamentally in the circumstance that Orthodox
theologians are sensu stricto those who know, and do not merely know about,
God. Grisez’s dialectical theology produces knowledge about God. In contrast,
for the Orthodox, as John Romanides puts the matter, “The Fathers do not say
anything about God on the basis of philosophical reflection. They do not sit at
their desks like the Scholastics in order to do theology, because when the
Church Fathers theologize, speculation or reflection is strictly forbidden”
(Romanides, 2008, p. 85). Moreover, Orthodox Christianity does not merely
experience the truth in “theological reflections, liturgical practices, and ascetical
practices that have been handed down,” as Kaveny puts it (2009, p. 152).
Instead, the Church always experiences the Truth as revealed now and as
always the same. Orthodox theology is an empirical theology that unites
theologians across the centuries. It is this theology that maintains the Ortho-
dox Church united over space and time, unlike the fractured Protestants or the
Roman Catholics with fragmentations of doctrine on the one hand and devel-
opment of doctrine on the other. Rather than Orthodox Christian theology rest-
ing on claims of papal infallibility or papal magisterium, its theology rests in
the experience of God by the holy Fathers over the ages and today. It is this that
unites the Church as one. Because this theology is at its core personal, an expe-
rience of the holy Trinity, it is not legalistic or discursive. We were not created
to think our way to knowledge about God, but to submit to Him and to experi-
ence Him, to know God’s uncreated energies. This is not an individualistic
enterprise: no Orthodox Christian should ever seek to have his own personal
theology. For Christians, there is no theology other than that of the Trinity.
To all the authors who contributed to this volume and for their essays, I
am very grateful. Each of these authors has joined with me in exploring foun-
dational issues in moral philosophy, metaphysics, theology, and bioethics,
about which I have considerable concern. In each essay, an important contri-
bution has been made, directly or indirectly, to recapturing the seriousness of
the task of coming to terms with life in a culture that has over the span of two
generations become normatively post-traditional and post-Christian. A
thoughtful and critical appreciation of these radical and rapid changes has
only begun to emerge. These authors have been very generous to join me
in contributing to the task of understanding and critically evaluating our
circumstances.
IV. Rethinking the Nature and Task of Philosophy: Taking

the Turn to Theology
For the ancient Greeks, philosophy was generally not just an academic
undertaking, but also a way of life aimed at the human good and human
flourishing and, in many cases, the pursuit of the ultimate meaning of things.
Philosophy was rarely a limited analytic descriptive project or merely a critical
project focused on avoiding ultimate questions. Even if Socrates meant to
resituate philosophical reflection through focusing it on moral issues, Plato
relocated such reflections within larger metaphysical concerns. These ultimate
questions are in the end difficult to avoid. To avoid them takes a firm act of
the will. It would be simpler if there were nothing, but there is something,
and the gulf between existence and non-existence is infinite. The principle of
sufficient reason calls out for an infinite and non-surd, that is, an infinite per-
sonal answer – an answer that can only be satisfactorily provided by a per-
sonal God. This recognition is not the beginning of a discursive proof for the
existence of God, but is an account of how one can begin to turn to reality so
as to look through reality as through an icon and see God. It is the beginning
of a will to an encounter with reality such that one does not merely see in
nature traces of God, or bases through rational argument for concluding to
God’s existence, but rather looks through nature to its Creator. It is the begin-
ning of the experience of grace, which requires an act of the will to turn to that
grace, an act of turning to God, and not merely a discursive argument for
the existence of God.
It is because of pride and the passions, not because of faulty arguments or
a lack of intellectual acumen, that many will not recognize God. Instead, they
decide to focus their concern on creatures apart from their Creator. With this
turn of the will, everything begins to look different, as one progressively
ceases to look through reality as through an icon to God and looks instead on
reality as seen completely apart from God. When we turn away from God, we
are left with the broken moral and metaphysical landscape of intractable
moral pluralism and metaphysical disorientation. The Foundations of Bioethics
describes and offers an account of the broken character of this defining con-
text. The arguments advanced in both editions of this work are not made in
order to celebrate moral pluralism, its intractability in the face of sound rational
argument, or its framing metaphysical disorientation. The goal has been
instead honestly to assess our situation. Given the reluctance of many of the
contributors to this volume to acknowledge the full depth of our moral differ-
ences and the implications of these differences for both secular and Christian
moral reflection, facing our condition is obviously no mean task. It is both an
intellectual and a moral challenge.
The Foundations of Christian Bioethics shows us where the only way free
from this disorientation lies – namely, in a rightly-developed focus on the
God Who is the source of all and to Whom all reality is in fact properly to be
oriented. The Foundations of Christian Bioethics addresses questions about right
conduct and orientation, ranging from concerns with abortion and euthanasia
to the proper use of human genetic engineering that arise within The Foundations
of Bioethics and that are existentially cardinal, but unanswerable within its
confines. Those who are interested in a foundational, discursive, philosophical
answer to such questions will be disappointed. The correct answers depend
neither on learning nor on erudition. Access to such final answers comes only
through an ascetic struggle that allows one rightly to love God with all one’s
heart, mind, and soul, and in the light of that love to love one’s neighbor
properly. The Christian message is addressed to both the learned and the
ignorant. It is Personal. In the end, it is not what one knows, but Whom one
knows that is important: the Trinity to Whom all can have access through
repentance, right worship, and right belief.
Notes
1. The connection between finding oneself set solely within the horizon of the finite
and the immanent and finding oneself confronted by an intractable moral pluralism
was explored by Protagoras (ca. 490-420 B.C.), who lived through and influenced
the passage of Greek society into the period of post-traditional moral and religious
commitments that characterized the Hellenic Age. As Protagoras puts it, “man is
the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not
that they are not” (Diogenes, 1979, vol. 2, pp. 463-465, IX.8.51).
2. From the beginning of Western philosophy, there was the recognition that one cannot
through sound rational argument resolve disputes between those separated by
different moral visions. Protagoras, for example, appreciates “that there are two
sides to every question” (Diogenes, 2000, vol. 2, p. 463, IX.8.51). Clement of Alexandria
(ca. A.D. 150 - 211/216) notes that “Should one say that Knowledge is founded on
demonstration by a process of reasoning, let him hear that first principles are
incapable of demonstration…” (Clement, 1994, vol. 2, p. 350, Book 2, chapter IV).
Agrippa summarizes the difficulties under five clusters of arguments that show
the irresolvability of these disputes, his famous pente tropoi (Diogenes, 2000, vol. 2,
p. 501, IX.88).
3. The Orthodox Church continues to keep Noachite commandments, as was
required by the Apostles in Acts 15:28-29 and confirmed in Canon 63 of the 85
Apostolic Canons and in Canon 67 of the Quinisext Council. With regard to
abortion, the Jewish rigor of the Noachite law is also maintained. “On the authority
of R. Ishmael it was said: [The Gentile is executed] even for the murder of an
embryo. What is R. Ishmael’s reason? – Because it is written, Whoso sheddeth the
blood of man within [another] man, shall his blood be shed. What is a man within
another man? – An embryo in his mother’s womb” (Sanhedrin 57b).
4. Jaroslav Pelikan observes that early Christianity appreciated the one, holy, Catholic,
and Apostolic Church as an actual, visible community united in faith and worship,
so that “efforts to superimpose upon the second or third centuries the distinction
made by Augustianism and especially by the Reformation between the visible and
the invisible churches have proved quite ineffectual….” (Pelikan, 1971, pp 160-61).
5. For an example of Orthodox Christian participation in war before the reign of St.
Constantine the Great, consider the holy Great-Martyr Mercurius, who died as a
martyr in A.D. 259. “In battle, an angel of the Lord appeared to Mercurius, placed
a sword in his hand, and assured him of victory over his enemies. Indeed, Mercurius
displayed wonderful courage, mowing down the enemy like grass” (Velimirovic’,
2002, vol. 2, p. 580).
6. The term “fundamentalism” has a complex history. Fundamentalism initially identi-
fied Christians who affirmed at least the bare essentials of Christianity. The term
took its origin from the American Bible League, which in 1902 began producing
twelve pamphlets entitled “The Fundamentals,” which were directed against

higher biblical criticism in reaction against modernist, liberal, or revisionist forms
of Christianity, many of which were influenced by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
and G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831). These twelve pamphlets called “The Fundamen-
tals” appeared after 1909 and defended points taken from a fourteen-point creed
developed from the 1878 Niagara Conference. The fundamentals were then sum-
marized around six core doctrines: the inerrant inspiration of the Bible, the Virgin
Birth of Christ, Christ’s atonement for the sin of Adam through His death, Christ’s
physical resurrection, the miracle-working power of Christ, and the Second Coming.
The focus of the term was originally on Christians alone.
The Oxford English Dictionary identifies fundamentalism as a “religious
movement which became active among various Protestant bodies in the United
States after the war of 1914-18, based on strict adherence to traditional orthodox
tenets (e.g., the literal inerrancy of Scripture) held to be fundamental to the Christian
faith; opposed to liberalism and modernism” (1933, Supplement, p. 399). For an
overview of some of these early publications, see Torrey, 1990. Fundamentalism
later came to identify any group of believers (e.g., Jewish or Mohammedan) who
are committed to living according to the original defining beliefs of their religion,
unaltered by the conceits of the Enlightenment and modernity.
The term fundamentalist was then even further recast by some in order to
identify any moral/metaphysical understanding, whether secular or religious, that
holds its claims to truth to trump comprehensively the claims of any competitor.
As Rawls puts it,
Many persons – call them “fundamentalists” of various religious or secular
doctrines which have been historically dominant – could not be reconciled to a
social world such as I have described. For them the social world envisaged by
political liberalism is a nightmare of social fragmentation and false doctrines,
if not positively evil. To be reconciled to a social world, one must be able to see
it as both reasonable and rational. Reconciliation requires acknowledging the
fact of reasonable pluralism both within liberal and decent societies and in their
relations with one another. Moreover, one must also recognize this pluralism
as consistent with reasonable comprehensive doctrines, both religious and
secular. Yet this last idea is precisely what fundamentalism denies and political
liberalism asserts (Rawls, 1999, pp. 126-127).
Many traditional believers will in this sense be pleased to be counted as
fundamentalists (e.g., traditional Mohammedans, Orthodox Jews, traditional
Protestants, and Orthodox Christians). Among other things, they will have
grounds to recognize as very regrettable and far from reasonable the fragmentation
of society into communities organized around false, not to mention sinful moral
and metaphysical viewpoints.
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Wear, Stephen. “Bioethics for Moral Strangers,” in At the Roots of Christian Bioethics,
edited by Ana S. Iltis and Mark J. Cherry. Salem, MA: Scrivener Publishing, pp. 247-
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Wildes, Kevin, Wm. “Completing the Picture: Engelhardt’s Christian Bioethics,” in At
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Zabala, Santiago (ed.). The Future of Religion. New York: Columbia University Press,
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Contributors
Thomas J. Bole, III, Holy Archangels Greek Orthodox Monastery, P.O. Box
422, Kendalia, Texas 78027
Joseph Boyle is Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, 170 St. George
St., Rm., 408, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5R 2M8; jboyle@chass.utoronto.
edu.ca
Nicholas Capaldi is Legendre-Soule Distinguished Chair in Buisness Ethics,
Loyola University New Orleans, 6363 St. Charles Ave., Campus Box 015,
New Orleans, Louisiana 70118; capaldi@loyno.edu
Thomas A. Cavanaugh is Professor of Philosophy, University of San Francisco,
2130 Fulton St., San Francisco, California 94117; cavanaught@usfca.edu
Mark J. Cherry is the Dr. Patricia A. Hayes Professor in Applied Ethics and
Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, St. Edward’s Univer-
sity, 3001 S. Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas 78704; markc@stedwards.edu.
Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes is Director of European Programs, International
Studies in Philosophy and Medicine, Buchbergstrasse 17, 63579 Freigeri-
cht 1, Germany; Corinna.Delkeskamp-Hayes@gmx.de
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., is Professor Emeritus, Baylor College of Medi-
cine and Professor of Philosophy, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston,
Texas 77005; htengelh@rice.edu
Ruiping Fan is Associate Professor, Department of Public and Social Admin-
istration, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Ave., Kowloon, Hong
Kong; safan@cityu.edu.hk
Frederic Fransen is President and CEO, Donor Advising, Research &
Educational Services, 9780 Lantern Rd., Suite 150, Fishers, Indiana 46037;
ffransen@donoradvising.com
317
318 Contributors
Ana S. Iltis is Associate Professor, Department of Health Care Ethics, Saint

Louis University, 221 North Grand Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri, 63103-
2006; iltisas@slu.edu
M. Cathleen Kaveny is John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and
Professor of Theology, Notre Dame Law School, Notre Dame, Indiana
46556; M.Cathleen.Kaveny.1@nd.edu
Gerald McKenny is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Director of the
John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at the University
of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
Christopher Tollefsen is Professor of Philosophy, University of South Carolina,
Columbia, South Carolina 29208; Christopher.Tollefsen@gmail.com
Griffin Trotter is Professor, Department of Health Care Ethics, Saint Louis
University, 221 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis, Missouri 63103; trotterc@slu.
edu
Stephen Wear is Associate Professor of Medicine and Co-Director of the
Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in Health Care, 803 Veterans’
Hospital, Buffalo, New York; wear@buffalo.edu
Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J. is President, Loyola University New Orleans, 6363
St. Charles Ave., New Orleans, Louisiana 70118; wildesk@loyno.edu
Index
Abel, Francesc, xii Amish, 37, 42, 100, 182, 189, 191-192,
Abilene, 10 195, 198-199, 201
abortion, xi, 2, 5, 9-10, 15, 17-18, 28, 36, Anabaptism, 19, 181, 183-184, 186, 195,
42, 97-98, 101, 138, 144-145, 196-201
150, 156, 165-178, 182, 195, 200, animal rights, 173, 182, 195
239, 245, 281, 287, 297-299, 302, Anscombe, G. Elisabeth M., 287, 312
304, 307, 310-311 antichrist, 196
indirect, 307 anti-clerical, 35
Abraham, 65 apostles, 116, 124, 188, 196, 206, 224
Absolute Spirit, 34 Apostolic succession, 185
Absolute Thought, 34 Aquinas, Thomas, xi, 9, 29, 31-33,
Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 119-120, 137, 140-142, 147, 151,
270 159-161, 163, 166, 170, 172-173,
Adam, 29, 50-51, 168, 277-278, 308, 312 178, 235-236, 239-240, 245, 264,
addiction, 182 273-275, 277
adultery, 127-128, 150-151, 158, 168 Aristotle, 113, 166, 206, 252, 261-264,
reproductive, 168 266, 270, 272-274, 277, 313
affection, 91 artificial insemination, 28, 168
age of reason, 25 artificial intelligence, 265
Agrippa, 25, 295, 311 ascetic struggle, 58, 286, 303
Ahlgrim, Ryan, 195 ascetic transformation, 3, 206
almsgiving, 51, 308 asceticism, xiv, 3, 10, 30-31, 50, 53, 58-59,
Alora, A. Tan, 225 119, 122, 128, 139, 146, 148, 152,
altruism, 44, 287 154, 157, 167, 169, 185-188, 190,
America, 16-18, 84, 226, 304, 306 194-195, 197, 206, 212, 262-263,
North, xii, xiv, 197, 233, 241 265, 286, 310
American Bible League, 311 Asclepius, 279, 280-281
American College of Surgeons, 195 assisted suicide, 36, 96-97, 138, 181, 183,
American Hospital Association, 255 220, 243
319
320 Index
atheism, 37, 78, 288, 291 184, 187, 189, 195, 197, 203-205,
Athena, 279 207-209, 214-220, 247-249, 251,
Augustine of Hippo, Blessed, xiii, 49, 253-257, 265, 268, 270, 287-288,
198, 303, 311 290, 308-309, 313
Augustinians, 263 American, 214
Austin, 10, 192 as political ideology, 4, 11, 204, 214
authority, political, 6, 10, 42, 62, 67, 107 birth of, 203
autonomy, 37-39, 40-41, 60, 96, 129, 138, Christian, xiv, 2-3, 6, 9, 11, 29, 54, 76,
257, 265, 268-269, 271 101, 107, 115, 126, 139, 146, 162,
autonomy, principle of, 85, 92 174, 188, 195, 197, 203, 206, 214,
axiology, 270 217, 230, 248, 251, 273, 275, 282
content-thin, 89
Babylon, 190 discursive, 11, 203-205
whore of, 196 intermediate, 204-205, 207-210,
baptism, xii, 184, 187, 191-193, 198-199, 215-220, 222
300 sectarian, 11, 204-206, 208, 303
Barcelona, xii secular, xv, 2, 6, 95, 99, 102-103, 115,
Barth, Karl, 130 174-175, 204-205, 209-210, 220,
Bartholomeus I, Patriarch, 197, 293, 312 247-249, 275, 287, 303
Basil, Bishop of Wichita Western European, 16
and Mid-America, xiv Whig, 219
Basil I, Emperor, 192, 200 biology, 10, 32, 94, 166, 172-174, 209,
Basil the Great, Saint, 18, 297-298 221, 305
battery, 98 birth, 17, 101
Battle of San Jacinto, 18 Blackstone, William, 92, 104
Bayertz, Kurt, 313 blasphemy, 65, 152
Baylor College of Medicine, x, xiii blood pudding, 304
Baylor, M. G., 200-201 Bok, Sissela, 254, 256, 259
Beauchamp, Tom, 41, 68, 92, 96-97, 104, Bole, Thomas J., 4, 18
253-254, 289, 313 Bonn, viii
behaviorism, 265 Bonnie Blue Flag, 10, 192, 194
Belgium, 187, 198 Boyle, Joseph, 11-12, 19, 95, 104,
Benedict XVI, Pope, xiii 171-178, 241, 244-245, 301,
beneficence, 12, 41, 96-97, 249, 254, 256 303-305, 313
benevolence, 63, 131 Bradley, Denis, 160, 163
Bennett, William, 98 Bradshaw, David, 293, 313
Berlin, xiii, xvi Brazos de Dios, 10
Bermuda, 103 Brennan, Donald, v
best interests, viii, 2, 4 Brubaker, B.H., 201
bestiality, 287 Brumley, M., 147, 163
Bible, xiv, 48-49, 58, 65, 132, 298, 300, Brusatti, Louis T., v
312 Buchanan, Pat, 98
Bible Belt, 118 Buddha, 81
bioethics, viii-ix, xiv-xvi, 1-6, 8, 11-12, Buddhism, 80-81, 86, 175, 207, 273
15, 24, 30, 39, 46, 49, 51, 57-60, Bull of Union with the Copts, 65
66, 72, 76, 89-103, 107, 112, burden of proof, 67-68, 121
129-130, 143, 161, 167, 177, 181, Bush, George W., 289
Index 321
Caesar, 239 Christianity, xi, 2, 10, 15, 24, 29-30, 32,

Caesarius of Arles, 178 35, 44-46, 48-49, 51, 53, 58-59,
Callahan, Daniel, ix, xv-xvi 66-68, 111, 114-115, 118, 120,
Calvin, John 130 122-123, 127-128, 130, 138-139,
Canada, xi, 287 148, 152, 154, 160, 165, 167, 177,
cancerous uterus, 145, 307 182-190, 192, 194-195, 198, 204,
canon law, 157 209-210, 212-213, 216, 218, 224-
Capaldi, Nicholas, 11, 19, 265, 267, 272, 225, 248-249, 262-264, 270, 273,
306, 313 275-276, 278, 282, 286, 291-293,
capital punishment, 42, 238, 287, 302 297-298, 300, 304, 308, 311-312
capitalism, 37, 72, 107 anonymous 100
Caplan, Arthur, viii-ix, xv-xvi Christian life, 48, 53, 111, 116, 126,
Carlo Cardinal Martini, xiii 143, 146, 154, 159, 161, 169, 184,
Carolingian Renaissance, xiii 188, 192, 194-195, 206
Carter, Jimmy, 217 Christian metaphysical orientation,
Cassian, John, 303, 313 7, 24
casuistry, 5, 97-98, 149, 157, 160, 236-237, militant, 100
239, 241, 245, 263 Orthodox, x-xi, xv-xvi, 1-3, 6-10, 14,
categorial theory, viii 24, 32, 45-46, 48, 51, 58, 65, 72,
causality, 271 75, 77, 79-80, 82-85, 107-108,
Cavanaugh, Thomas, 11, 19, 306, 308 114-118, 126, 129, 137-139, 147,
charity, 170, 199, 282-283 152, 175, 183, 189, 191, 193, 211,
Charles the Great, xiii, 16, 200 214-217, 224, 244-245, 247-248,
Charlottesville, 203 250, 256, 270, 290, 296-299,
chastity, 166, 173 301-303, 306-309, 311-313
chemistry, 32, 94, 209, 305 Protestantism, xiii, 35, 65, 72, 109,
Cherry, Mark J., v, 16-21, 85, 87, 178, 259, 119, 126, 130-132, 139, 184, 187,
313-314 224, 264, 292, 300, 309, 312
childbirth, 173 rationalization of, 263
Childress, James, ix, 6, 41, 68, 92, 96-97, Roman Catholicism, xi-xiii, 15-17,
104, 289, 313 26-27, 65-66, 72-73, 77-78, 97-98,
China, 71, 72, 77, 80-82, 84-86, 215 109, 119, 121-123, 126, 130, 136-
Cultural Revolution, xii, 84 140, 142, 144-145, 147, 150-155,
chiropracty, 2 157-158, 160-162, 166, 174, 176-
Christ, 13, 49, 53, 60, 66, 124-126, 128, 178, 184-185, 187, 196, 213, 232,
132, 149, 152, 159-161, 167, 245, 263, 282, 292-294, 306-309
169-170, 172, 174, 184, 186-190, traditional, 122, 140, 155, 184,
193-197, 199, 215, 222, 225, 274, 190-194, 197, 204, 206, 208,
278, 282-283, 300-301, 308, 312; 213, 215, 224, 293, 297 see also
see also: God Christianity: Orthodox
dread judgment seat of, 51 Western, 3, 7, 9, 16, 24, 26-27, 30, 36,
second coming of, 312 58, 65, 67, 108-109, 135, 138,
kingdom, 308 184, 297-298
physical resurrection of, 312 christliche Sitte, 119
virgin birth of, 312 Christmas, xiii, 16
Christendom, 7, 10, 24, 36, 44, 65, 313 Chrysostom, Saint John, 214, 225, 299
Christian Scientists, 15 Church, meaning of, 300
322 Index
Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 92 Confucius, 82, 86

City University of Hong Kong, 85 Connery, John R., S.J., 177-179
civil liberty, 60 consensus, xv, 24, 28, 53, 56, 62-63,
civil rights, 83 66-67, 82, 98-99, 207-209,
Clement of Alexandria, 25, 311, 313 218, 238, 247, 255, 288-290,
clergy, celibate, xiii 293-294
Climacus, Johannes, 125-126 consensus fidelium, 99
Climacus, Saint John, 224-225 de facto, 236
clinical ethics, 102, 255-256, 259, 306 liberal, 66
Clinton, William Jefferson, 98, 289 overlapping, 41, 98, 244
cloning, 5, 101, 168, 281 pseudo, 207
Coahuila, 18 consent, x, 9, 18, 29, 36-38, 40, 62, 74-76,
coercion, 64, 112, 131, 207-208, 295 82-83, 101-102, 131, 138, 167,
collaboration, 11, 29, 37, 40, 43, 45, 175-177, 181-182, 190-191, 231,
61-62, 67, 74, 76, 82, 204, 302 242-243, 255, 257, 280, 286
Colt 45, 194 Constantine, Emperor, Saint, 193-194,
commandments, 53, 142-143, 162, 168, 200, 300-301, 311
211, 214, 216, 298 Constantinople, xiii, 10, 194
common good, 9, 140, 147-148, 159, 207 contraception, 10, 150, 156-158, 166, 172,
common law, 269, 304 177-178, 297, 307
communion, 72, 125, 223, 232 contraceptives, 156
communion of Saints, 188 condom, 297
communitarian, 69, 79, 100, 247 diaphragm, 297
community, ix, xii, 4, 7-9, 39-40, 43-44, contract, 17, 58, 63, 95-96, 138, 243, 302
50-51, 55-56, 62, 71, 73, 76-80, controversy, 74, 90, 96-98, 175, 207, 218,
83-85, 90, 98, 100-103, 108, 129, 240, 243, 255, 268, 288-289, 295,
131, 138-139, 148-149, 151, 158- 306
159, 162, 182-183, 185, 188-195, controversy theory, 73
198-199, 205-210, 216, 220-222, conversion, x, xi, 8, 54, 58, 74, 76, 101, 110,
233-234, 239, 241-242, 250-251, 129, 198, 208, 210, 219-220, 248
257, 268, 282, 296, 300, 301, 308 Cornelis, Friar, 196-197
Christian, 108, 135, 137, 213 Council of Carthage, 225
ecclesial, 147 Council of Europe, 19
non-geographically-located, 84 Council of Trent, 65, 122, 136
of faith, 4 Courtois, Stephane, 197, 200
of inquiry, 205 crime, 165, 182
of reason, 4 criminal law, 276, 287
of Saints, 188, 190, 192 Crusades, 16
religious, 72, 80, 298 culture, 15, 17, 23-24, 26-28, 30, 34-35,
Comte, Auguste, 265 41, 43, 45, 53-54, 56-58, 63-65,
concepts of health and disease, viii 82, 84, 99, 113, 131, 152, 173,
Confucian spirits, 81 189, 231, 256, 271, 288-290,
Confucianism, 8, 71-72, 76-77, 79-82, 292-294, 296, 302, 309
84-86, 175, 294 Chinese, 294
anti-Confucian political Christian, 113, 130, 302; see also:
movements, 84 Christianity
rituals, 81 cosmopolitan, 301
virtues, 85 of Death, 171
Index 323
secular, 7, 57, 59, 152, 291-293 diversity, 5, 25, 41-44, 53-54, 57, 68, 91,
Western, 44, 59, 92, 191, 291-294, 249, 255, 264
296 Divine
culture wars, 16, 302, 313 commands, 141
energies, 47
Dallas, 10 lawgiver, 151-152
Damian, Peter, 299 nature, 47
Daoism, 80-81, 86 revelation, 47, 213
immortals, 81 will, 141, 152
David, Saint, 297 divorce, 11, 150-151, 158, 308
Davis, Kenneth, 186, 188, 200 doctrine of the two worlds, 186
de Zulueta, Francis, 92, 104 Donagan, Alan, 245
death, vii, 28, 57, 101, 128, 141, 144-146, Donaldson, James, 313
162, 169, 171, 174, 183, 186-187, DuBois, James, v
191, 193, 199, 239, 275, 277-283, Dubose, Edwin, 200
297, 312 Duffy, John, viii
accidental, 297 Dympna, Saint, 198
brain death, 209
Decalogue, 236-238, 304 economia, 157
Declaration of Helsinki, 21 economics, 275-277
dedication, 31, 44, 50 ecumenical council, ninth, xiv
defilement, 128-129 ecumenical councils, 15
Delkeskamp-Hayes, Corinna, 4-7, 17, Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrius I, xiii
19, 195, 197, 293-294, 306, ecumenism, 184
313 Eden, 15, 277
democracy, 43, 64, 103, 200, 216 egalitarianism, 72, 78
deliberative, 222 Egypt, 190
limited, 43, 58, 75 Elijah, Saint, 219
democratic polity, 60 elite,
Denck, H., 197, 200 intellectual, 262-263
Deng Xiaoping, 72 moral, 263
Denzinger, H., 160, 163 embryo, human, 5, 17-18, 166-168, 172,
Derrida, Jacques,132 174-175, 177, 298, 311
despair, 45, 156 experimentation, 2, 5, 287
determinism, 266, 271 destruction of, 168
Devlin, Lord Patrick, 92, 104 stem cell research, 2
Didache, 17, 20 embryocide, 18
Dilley, Stephen, v Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 249
Diogenes Laertius, 25, 311, 313 Emmitsburg, 136
discursive analysis, 32, 212, 218 emotions, 211
disease, 2, 16, 101, 109, 182, 273, 275, emperor
278-279, 281, 283 Confucian, 85
disorientation Orthodox Christian, 10
metaphysical, xv, 23, 286, 291-293, pagan, 300
296, 310 enfant terrible, ix
moral, 23 Engelhardt, Susan, vii, xiii-xiv, xvi,
dispensation, 157 14
distributive ethics, 102 Engels, Fredrick, 27
324 Index
English Civil Wars, 25 239, 251, 264, 276, 278, 281-282,

Enlightenment, 3, 7, 24-31, 35-36, 42-43, 297, 312
45, 57-60, 73-75, 84, 107, 119, cooperation with, 245
131, 174-175, 183, 205, 221, tolerating, 245
230-231, 247, 250-252, 256, 258- Ewell, C. Rosalee Velloso, 313
259, 265, 268, 290, 292, 305, 312 excommunication, 51, 188-189, 199
ensoulment, 18, 165-166, 169 experimentation, viii, 174, 200
envy, 63, 93 expulsion, from the community,
Ephraim of Syria, Saint, 32 189-191
Episcopalians, 302
epistemology, viii, 56, 59, 89-91, 95, 103, Fabri of Heilbronn, John, 187
108, 212, 215, 218, 221, 267, 271 fairness, 43, 63, 144, 239, 291
moral, 90 faith, 4, 7-8, 14, 16, 25-27, 30-32, 35-36,
Epistle of Barnabas, 17, 20 53, 60, 99-101, 108-109, 111,
equality, 5, 12, 39, 63, 67, 93-94, 138, 152, 114-115, 123, 125-126, 131, 142,
249, 267, 287 146-147, 150, 152, 154, 160-161,
eternal life, 170, 183, 187 183-185, 187-188, 191, 196, 199,
ethical norms, 209, 216-217, 256 206, 210, 213, 215-216, 224, 262,
ethical universalism, 242 282, 291-292, 300, 302
ethics, corpse of, 290
Christian, 8-9, 76, 107-110, 114-120, faith seeking understanding, 68
122-123, 126-127, 129-132, 137, role of, 90
139-140, 148, 157, 159, faithfulness, 41, 44
206-207, 212-213, 224, 231; fall of man, 11, 29-30, 50, 142, 274, 276
see also: Christianity fallibilism, 221
commissions, 42, 289 family, x, xii, xiv, 13, 16, 79-83, 158, 171,
expertise, 11, 261-264, 266, 268, 306 173, 189, 198, 225, 229-230,
business, 265, 268-270 234-235, 242, 255, 298
Jewish, 219 Chinese, 80
secular, 76-77, 139, 167, 175, Confucian, 77
205-206, 214, 219, 248-249, Fan, Ruiping, 6-7, 19, 294
252-254 Farrow, Douglas, 86
Eucharist, 85 fasting, 51, 53, 188
eudaimon, 206 Fathers of the Church, xiv, 18, 20, 47-49,
Europe, xiv, 16, 196, 200 51, 60, 64, 139-140, 152, 168,
Council of, 16 177, 185, 196, 200, 211, 223, 297,
Western, 3, 300 299-301, 303, 309
Europeans, 304 Fernandez, Gabriel Palmer, 61
Eusebius, 185, 194, 196, 200 feticide, 297
euthanasia, xi, 2, 5, 15, 28, 36, 138, 171, fetus, 18, 166, 168-169, 172, 174-175,
183, 186, 195, 239, 242-243, 281, 177-178
287, 302, 310 Fides et Ratio, 57
Euthyphro, 29, 52, 87, 219 Finnis, John, 94, 104, 177, 179
Evangelium Vitae, 166 Fletcher, H., 18-19
Eve, 168, 277-278 forbearance rights, 14-15, 69, 75
evil, 10, 15, 18, 64, 141, 145, 150, 166-169, Foucault, Michel, 130
173-174, 176, 190, 193, 196, 229, foundationalism, 74, 221, 288
Index 325
Foundations of Bioethics, x-xvi, 1-2, 6-10, George, Robert, 98, 245

19, 24, 29, 31, 35, 38, 44-46, 54- Georgetown University, ix, xii, 203, 225
55, 57, 68-69, 71-73, 78, 83, 86, Gerard of Czanad, 299
89, 104, 132, 165, 174, 177, 179, Germany, 183, 195, 253
182, 200, 205, 225, 288, 294-296, Gettysburg, 250
299, 301-303, 309-310, 314 Gheel community, 198
Foundations of Christian Bioethics, xi, xv, Giannone, P., 200-201
2-3, 6-8, 10, 19, 24, 29, 31-32, 43, Gibson, Mel, 199
45-47, 52, 54-55, 64-65, 68, 71, Gillis, Chester, 103
76, 79, 86, 89, 104, 110, 133, 135, global village, 63
137, 163, 176-177, 179, 200, 203, Gnostic (utopian) temptation, 264, 266
225, 244, 247, 259, 272-273, 283, Gnosticism, 270
290, 294-297, 299, 302-303, 308, God, v, xi, xiii-xiv, 3, 5, 7-9, 15, 17, 23,
310, 314 26-27, 31-35, 45-53, 58-59, 65,
Fransen, Frederic J., 10-11, 19, 200-201, 72, 77, 79, 83, 99, 101, 109-111,
300-301 114, 116-117, 119-130, 132,
Fransen, Herbert, 195 138-144, 146-155, 157, 159-163,
Fransen, Mary, 195 165, 167-170, 172-174, 177-178,
fraud, 102 185-188, 190-199, 203, 206, 208-
free market, 43, 74, 103, 108 209, 211-213, 215, 218-219, 221,
freedom, 12, 15, 37, 39, 42, 44, 54-55, 61, 223-224, 232, 238, 244, 248-251,
85, 96, 137-138, 149, 153, 175, 262, 277-278, 285-287, 290-294,
209, 215, 257-258, 271 297-301, 303, 305, 308-310
as a side constraint, 12, 15, 55, 257 as lawgiver, 141
as a value, 55, 66 authority from, 99
freedom, individual, 40 command of, 2
Freeman, K., 17, 20 community with, 79
Freer, J., 258-259 death of, 57
French Revolution, 59, 290-292 experience of, 2, 108, 303, 309
Friedman, R., 185, 187-188, 196, 201 kingdom of, 291
friendship, vii, 51, 54, 64, 132, 211, 238 knowing, 46
Frölich, Margrit, 313 love of, 310
Frost, Robert, 250 mind of, 142
Fukuyama, Francis, 57, 68, 291-292, 314 submission to, 309
fundamentalism, 42, 135, 291-292, uncreated energies of, 309
311-312 union with, 64, 116, 129, 143, 156,
161, 307
Gaius, 92 will of, 153
game theory, 5 Goheen, Michael, 192, 200-201
Gaudium et Spes, 147, 163 golden rule, 170, 237
gender essentialism, 298 Golgotha of the spirit, 34
gene therapy, 200 Good Friday, 282, 290
Genesis, 132 Good Samaritan, 170-171
genetic engineering, 310 good
genetic parenthood, 168 human, 28, 37, 74-75, 143, 161, 238,
gentile, 189, 311 302-304
geometry, 32 thin theory of, 93-94, 98, 267
326 Index
Good, P. Pellman, 201 heaven, vii, 13, 85, 149, 159, 186, 191, 308
Gorgon, 279-281 kingdom of, 167, 308
Gospel, 125, 159, 194 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, viii,
synoptic, 125 xvi, 17, 20, 33-36, 54, 61, 68,
grace, x-xi, 15-16, 47-48, 50, 52, 72, 119, 109-110, 118, 120, 123-124,
121-122, 139, 142, 146, 149-150, 129-130, 253, 290-293, 312, 314
155, 161, 165, 196, 199, 212-213, hell, xi, 15, 165, 191-192, 197
215, 219, 221, 278, 298, 308, 310 gates of, 300
Grateful Dead, 6 Hellenic Age, 311
Gray, John, 219, 225 Helm, P., 160, 163
Grebel, Conrad, 184, 189 Helsinki Code, 209
Greece, 15 heresy, 3, 60, 65, 165, 300
Green-Musselman, Jack, v hermeneutic circles, 267, 306
Gregory VII, Pope, xiii hermeneutic of suspicion, 60
Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint, 32 heroin, 15
Gregory of Nyssa, Saint, 215 heterodox, 79
Grisez, Germain, v, 9, 95, 104, 136-137, Hierotheos, Metropolitan of Nafpaktos,
140-147, 149, 150-154, 157-163, 286, 314
170, 177-179, 306, 308 Hildebrand, Dietrich von, xiii
guilt, 50, 126-127, 156, 169, 303, 307 Hinduism, 72
juridical, 51 Hippocrates, 280
Guinn, David E., 86, 313 historicism, 108, 129
Gutmann, Amy, 222, 227 Hmong, 15
Hobbes, Thomas, 264, 276
Haack, Susan, 221, 225 Hogan, Margaret, 62-63, 66-68
Habermas, Jürgen, 291-293, 314 holiness, 10, 49-50, 53, 108, 116, 119,
Hagia Sophia, 10, 65, 192, 194 126-127, 146, 154-158, 162, 167,
Halper, Thomas, 222, 226 169, 184-188, 190, 193-195, 197,
Hampshire, Stuart, 219, 226 199, 206-207, 262, 264
happiness, 12, 16, 18, 50, 100, 173, pursuit of, 127
209, 251-252, 254, 258-259, 277, Holland, 187
302 Holy Mountain, xiv
Harakas, Stanley S., 214, 217, 226 Holy Scripture, 213
Hartmann, Klaus, vii-viii, xvi Holy Spirit, 48, 52, 99, 157, 162, 184-185,
Harvey, John Collins, xii 187-188, 215, 301, 308; see also:
Hastings, 203 God
Hastings Center, ix, xvi homeostasis, 271-272
Hauerwas, Stanley, 64, 67-68 homicide, 165, 172, 177-178, 297-298
Hayek, Friedrich A., 259 involuntary, 145, 169, 298
health, 4, 41, 54, 66, 67, 98, 102, 171, 189, homosexuality, 138
197-198, 209, 217, 249, 251, 275, homosexual relations, 28, 287, 298
280 homosexual unions, 42
health care, 8, 11, 40, 91, 96, 101-102, honesty, 41, 102
138, 171, 205, 209, 247-249, 251, Hong Kong, 84
258-259 hope, vii, 13, 25, 29, 32, 35, 42, 53, 57, 64,
policy, 103 76, 90, 99, 109, 114, 137, 150,
resource distribution, 138 159, 167, 184, 269, 275, 282, 291
Index 327
Hopko, T., 215, 226 inequality, 63, 67

Hoshino, Kazumasa, 283 life span, 11, 204
Houser, N., 226 infallibly, 152-153
human being, 66, 144, 146, 151, 165-166, infant mortality, 11, 204
172-174, 273, 283 infanticide, 36
human condition, vii, 30, 55, 273, 278, informed consent, 75, 102-103, 209, 255
285-286, 289, 294, 296, 302-303, innocence, 292, 307
306 Innocent IV, Pope, 16
fallen, 306 inquisition, 16
human dignity, 39-40, 41-42, 64, 96, 149, Spanish, 187
286, 288-289, 293 Institute for Advanced Study in West
human flourishing, x, 8, 12, 25-26, 38-40, Berlin, x, xiii
44, 56, 63, 75-76, 82, 122, 129, Institute of Religion, x
257-258, 285, 287, 292, 302 InterAction Council, 16, 20
human nature, 33, 94, 108, 120, 147, International Federation of Catholic
276 Universities, xii, xiv
human rights, 2, 4, 24, 42, 63, 216, 286, International Study Group in Bioethics
288-289, 293, 298-299 of the International Federation
human sacrifice, 239 of Catholic Universities, xiii-xiv
human subjects research, 5 inter-subjectivity, 33-35, 37
Humanae Vitae, 156 intuitionist, 73, 93, 174
Hume, David, 33, 35, 68, 265 intuitions, 5, 61, 92-94, 96, 118, 211, 267
humility, 52, 168, 199 Ishmael, R., 311
Hunter, James Davidson, 16, 20 Israelites, 305
Husserl, Edmund, viii, 54 Isaac of Syria, Saint, 32
Hütter, Reinhard, 313
hypothetical contractors, 93, 267 Jackson, John Hughlings, viii
Jacob the Candlemaker, 196
ideology, 11, 16, 28, 39, 56, 64, 97, 99, James, Saint, 125,160
204, 288-289, 294 James, William, 224, 226
liberal social-democratic, 82 Jarmusch, Jim, 160
idolatry, 65 Jehovah Witnesses, 15
Idziak, J.M., 160, 163 Jericho, 303
ignorance, 15, 50, 173, 215, 223, 230, Jesuit, xii, 283, 294
240-241, 298 Jesus, 125, 136, 147, 149, 150, 154, 162,
illness, 248, 278-279, 282 167, 169-170, 184, 191, 199, 203,
Iltis, Ana S., v, 18-21, 87, 104, 313-314 206, 222, 225, 282-283; see also:
immanence, 1-2, 8, 34, 109-110, 112, 114, God
118, 120, 122, 124-125, 128-129, Jew
132, 138, 143, 154, 162, 204, 207, Orthodox, 37, 72, 75, 79, 138, 175,
212, 250, 252-254, 259, 290-291 214, 291, 302-303, 305, 312
immortality, 31, 183, 280, 287 Reformed, 27
impecunious, 28 John Paul II, Pope, 57, 165-166, 171, 174
in vitro fertilization, 168, 177 John, Saint, 196
incest, 145 John Cassian the Just Roman, Saint, 303
indentured servitude, 181 John Chrysostom, Saint, Liturgy of, xi
indulgences, 136, 206, 300 John, the Evangelist, Saint, 32
328 Index
Joint Commission on the Accrediation knowledge

of Healthcare Organizations, moral, ix, 7, 71, 90, 100-101, 103, 218,
255 230, 238, 240, 286, 305
Jones, L. Gregory, 313 theoretical, 270
Jonsen, Albert, viii-ix, xvi, 97-98, 104, Knox, T.M., 20
279, 283 Koczwara, B., 258-259
Joshua, 303 Kotzias, Konstantinos, 192, 201
judgments Kraft, R., 20
factual, 270 Krahn, Cornelius, 196, 201
value, 270 Kuehn, Manfred, xvi
Jurick, Donna, v Küng, Hans, 41
jury nullification, 304
jus gentium, 92 Lake, Kirsopp, 314
jus naturale, 92 Lamar, Mirabeau B., 18
justice, 4-5, 41, 43, 94, 96-97, 110, 131, language-game, 37, 55
155, 157, 166, 169-172, 174, 249, Lao Tzu, 215
282-283, 287, 291, 297-299 Law
distributive, 278 of Noah, 304, 311
retributive, 278 Roman, 92
social, 138, 185, 308 laxism, 153
Lee, Shui Chuen, 87
Kabul, 13 legalism, 9, 135-137, 139-143, 149, 151,
Kant, Immanuel, vii-viii, xvi, 4-5, 16-17, 153-154, 159, 162, 307
20, 23, 25, 29, 33-37, 39, 46, 54, legalistic approach to sin, 3, 9, 50,
61, 109-110, 118-119, 123, 135-137, 143-145, 148, 153-154,
129-131, 173, 178-179, 221, 231, 157, 162, 307, 309
237, 287, 291-293, 312 Leo III, Pope, 16
Kantianism, 209 Levinas, Emmanuel, 132-133
Kaveny, M. Cathleen, v, 9, 20, 155, 163, liberal cosmopolitanism, 118, 176, 204,
306-309 208, 217, 248, 257-259, 301
Kee, H.C., 225-226 liberalism, 39, 59, 219, 257, 271-272, 312
Kelly, J.N.D., 225-226 libertarianism, 2, 6, 9, 12-13, 28, 39-40,
Kennedy Institute, ix, xii 42, 56, 72, 76, 100, 108, 117-118,
Kierkegaard, Sören, 45, 109-110, 131, 138-139, 176, 219, 231-232,
124-126, 130, 132, 224, 253 242-245, 248-249, 251, 256-259
killing, liberty, 5, 12, 18, 40, 55-56, 93-94, 96, 138,
revenge, 239 176, 257, 265, 267, 270, 272, 287
kingdom civil, 18
of God, 54, 149, 152, 167, 169, 200, personal, 2
300 life
of grace, 4, 16, 221 human, 23, 42, 50, 137-138, 140, 158,
of man, 192 160, 167-169, 171, 241, 277-278,
of nature, 16, 221 293
of reason, 4 human biological, 46, 165
Klaassen, Walter, 196, 198, 201 human personal, 165
Klein, Eran P., xvi liturgy, xi, xiv, 82, 123, 185, 206, 213, 281,
Kloesel, C., 226 283, 308
Index 329
Locke, John, 62, 264 martyrdom, 14, 50, 53, 64, 185-188, 196,
logic, 30, 32-34, 191, 198, 221, 268, 272 300
Louden, Robert B., xvi martyrs, 197, 308
Louisiana, 160 Marx, Karl, 27, 265
love, v, 14, 30, 32, 47, 50, 52, 58, 60, 66, Marxism, 72, 271-272
77, 81, 116, 162, 168, 170, 172, Maryland, ix, 136
174, 184, 188, 199, 212, 215-216, masturbation, 127-128
282, 298, 310 mathematics, 32, 161, 221, 273
love commandments, 236-237 Mauer, A., 283
love Maximos, 211, 223-224
between parent and child, 82 Maximos the Confessor, Saint, 211,
between siblings, 82 223-224
conjugal, 166 McCartney, James, xv
failure of, 172 McGovern, Fr. Thomas Aquinas, 283
of enemies, 66 McKenny, Gerald, 8-9, 20, 295
of God, 49, 52, 116, 211, 224 medicine, vii-x, 8, 16, 24, 32, 46, 54, 91,
of neighbor, 174 95, 101-102, 148, 203, 205, 218,
of self, 49, 52, 167 256, 265, 270, 275, 277-281,
loyalty, 81, 302 305-306, 308
Luckmann, T., viii, xvi history of, viii
Luibheid, C., 225 organization of, 102
Lumitao, J.M., 225 socialized, 258
Luther, Martin, 130 Melchizedek, 299
lying, 58, 214, 224, 229-230, 303 Mendieta, Eduardo, 314
Menno Simons, 130, 196, 201
Maastricht, xiv Mennonite, 196-198, 200-201
MacIntyre, Alasdair, ix, xvi, 24, 68, Mennonite Central Committee, 197
96, 104, 107-108, 119, 131, 133, Mennonite Disaster Service, 197
138 Mercurius, holy Great Martyr, 311
Madison, James, 275-276, 283 Mergal, A.M., 201
magisterium, 136, 151-152, 157 Messiah, 297; see also: Jesus
magistrates, 10, 193-194 metaphysics, viii, 31, 36, 57, 59, 221, 261,
manualist, 122, 136, 145, 160 267, 273, 290, 309
Marcion of Sinope, 305 Middle Ages, xiii, 24-27, 30-31, 36, 47,
Marion, Jean-Luc, 132-133 49, 59, 166, 263
Maritain, Jacques, 148, 163, 244 middle level principles, 5, 41, 96-97
market, x, 7, 24, 27, 37-38, 40, 55, 58, Milan, xiii
61, 75, 83-84, 103, 182, 204, Milbank, John, 107-108, 119, 133
268-269, 302 military, 18, 276, 301
failure, 277 Miller, M., 195, 201
rights, 83-84 mind-brain relationship, viii
marriage, 75, 128, 150-151, 158, 166-168, Minogue, Brendan P., 61, 68-69, 104,
197, 233, 287, 298, 308 285, 314
same gender, 2 miscarriage, 30, 156, 166, 169
second, 308 modernity, 3, 26, 29-30, 31, 35, 41, 59, 99,
Marten, R., 69 119, 176, 291-292, 312
Martin, Gottfried, viii collapse of, 44
330 Index
Mohammedans, 13, 291, 302, 312 judgment, 229-230, 233-234, 242-244

monastery, 78 law, 9, 16, 92, 94, 141-142, 148, 151-
monasticism, 188 153, 155-156, 158-159, 169, 219
moral life, 5, 8, 28, 37, 39, 44, 59, 76, 82,
acquaintances, 11, 66, 204, 208, 222, 100, 136-137, 140-143, 146, 153,
295 155, 157, 162, 216, 229-230, 232,
agent, 170 242, 251, 257, 288, 292
agreement, 8, 64, 101, 231-232, 241 maximalism, 153
anthropology, 8 minimalism, 153
argument, 14, 73, 85, 107, 285 narrative, xi, 15, 17, 251
authority, 2, 6, 42, 55-56, 60-61, 67, norms, 14, 25, 35, 119, 137, 140,
73-75, 81, 83, 85, 90, 100, 102- 142-143, 146, 151, 157-159, 235,
103, 175, 262, 286, 289, 296, 306 238, 241
authority, secular, 1-2, 15, 56, 83, 175 orientation, 50-52, 122
authority, state, 4 perspective, xi, 5, 27, 43, 295
authority, universal, 175 pluralism, ix, 1, 7, 11, 17, 24, 30,
character, 75, 159, 236 41-45, 55, 57, 63, 67-68, 73,
community, 7, 38-40, 44, 55-56, 61, 285-286, 288-290, 292-294, 296,
64-66, 71-73, 75-81, 83-86, 90, 299, 306, 310-311
98, 100-103, 175-176, 182, 190- precepts, 142-143, 187-188, 216, 225,
191, 193-194, 204, 208-210, 212, 236-238
217-218, 220, 231-232, 235, 241, premises, 14, 25, 39-40, 60, 77-78, 81,
257, 289, 294-295, 301-302, 305 96, 99, 103, 285, 287-288, 295,
consensus, 5, 23, 26, 28, 41, 56, 57, 299, 305
60, 62, 65, 99, 208, 288, 294, 305 relativism, 43
controversies, 14, 39, 60, 73-75, 77, rules, 136, 143, 150, 153, 162, 287
81, 85, 91-92, 94-99, 209, 219, strangers, x, 1, 6, 11-12, 14-15, 26, 38,
230, 295-296, 299 40, 47, 54-55, 60-62, 64, 66, 67,
disagreement, 11-12, 110, 229-232, 73-81, 85, 167, 174-176, 181-183,
234-235, 239-242, 244, 303 189, 204, 208, 210, 231, 247-249,
disagreements, 62, 216, 231-235, 251, 253, 256-257, 259, 286,
241-242, 267, 295 294-296, 301
diversity, 5, 23, 41, 55-57, 63, 65, 82, tradition, 123, 152
91-92, 120, 241-242, 267, 286, truth, 1, 8, 43, 60, 85, 110, 112, 116,
289, 304, 306 137, 158, 232, 240, 257
dogmatism, 230 values, 25, 92, 96, 103
enemies, 286, 302 virtues, 3, 12, 80, 92, 108, 178, 207,
evidence, 8, 25, 60, 287-288, 299 223, 262, 277, 282
friends, 11, 39, 44, 54, 66, 73, 77-81, vision, xv, 5, 28, 37, 42, 63, 73, 75,
85-86, 181-182, 204, 257, 295, 84, 94-95, 97, 103, 110, 175,
302 205, 208, 217-220, 257, 285,
gradualism, 158 289, 295; Christian, 15;
guidance, 14, 50, 122, 236, 238, 247, secular, 44
253, 285 morality, ix-x, xiv-xv, 4-11, 15-17, 25-30,
ignorance, 240 32, 35-38, 42-44, 46, 49-57,
indeterminacy, 214 59-62, 64, 71-72, 74-76, 81-82,
intuition, 91, 98 84-86, 90, 94, 96, 100, 109-110,
Index 331
112-120, 123, 130-131, 137-138, mutual consent, 36-37, 44, 75, 243
140, 142-143, 146, 148-149, 151, mutual love, 50, 167
153-154, 156, 158-159, 165, 169, mutual recognition, 41
172-177, 181, 194, 204-205, 210, mysticism, 2, 48, 138
215, 218-219, 222, 230-232, 234-
238, 240-245, 251-252, 263, 271, Nagel, Thomas, 266
285-289, 293, 299, 301-303, 305 National Bioethics Advisory
canonical, 56 Commission, 99, 289
Christian, 9, 29, 50, 54, 76, 146, 185, National Commission for the Protection
205, 214; see also: Christianity of Human Subjects in
common, ix, 27, 74, 82, 92, 96-97, Biomedical and Behavioral
101, 103, 118-119, 123, 138, 253, Research, viii, 20, 98
287-288 National Endowment for the
content-full, 14, 23, 114, 138-139 Humanities, ix
first order, 38 National Rifle Association, 195
immanent, 117 National Socialists, 303
intermediate, 304 natural law, 16, 25-26, 33, 92, 94-95, 117,
of consent, 39 122, 137, 152, 157, 169, 174,
political, 77, 138 230-232, 236, 244, 263, 281, 293,
post-Christian, 36, 299 298-299
post-traditional, 84 naturalism, 108, 129
procedural, 43, 75, 113 nature, fallen, 50, 276
public, 138, 231, 242 naturopathy, 2
rational, 65 Neal, Patrick, 219, 226
second order, 28, 36, 37, 38, 40, 44, Nelson, J.L., 62-67, 69
54, 61, 67 neo-pagan, 76
secular, ix-xi, xv, 1-2, 4, 6-7, 11-12, neo-Platonism, xiii
24, 36, 42-43, 55, 57, 59, 64, 66, Netherlands, 179, 187, 225
74, 83, 123, 167, 182, 191-192, Neufeld, V.H., 198, 201
194, 198, 217, 231, 247, 251, 285, New Age universalism, 208
290, 295, 299 New England, 63
sexual, 167 New Hampshire, 249
social, 244 New Orleans’ Charity Hospital, vii
universal, 2, 4, 6, 42, 204 Newton, K.S., 201
Moreno, Jonathan, 218, 226 Nicholas I of Rome, xiv
Mormons, 42 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 27, 113, 130
Moses Maimonides, 305 Nieuwsma, Virginia, xvi
Mount Athos, 48 nihilism, 74, 113, 130-131, 286
Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary, 136 noesis, 210, 212-213, 218, 224
Muenster, 195 noetic, 2, 46-49, 58, 64, 75, 108-110,
Muentzer, Thomas, 189 125-126, 130, 139, 142-143,
multi-culturalism, 95, 99 206, 210, 212, 218, 223-224,
murder, 10, 17-18, 97, 144, 165-166, 251, 296
168-169, 178, 181-182, 245, 297- experience, xiv-xv, 32, 48-49,
298, 311 124-126, 139, 143, 146, 155, 210,
Muslims, 10, 72, 138, 194 212, 218, 224, 251-252, 286, 296,
mutual agreement, 64, 73, 208 305-306
332 Index
knowledge, 46, 48, 74-75, 77, patients bill of rights, 255

109-110, 114-116, 120-121, 125, patriarchal Church of New Rome, xiii
130, 143 Paul, Saint, 160, 300
theology, 29, 305 peace, 53-54, 57-58, 63, 175, 181, 191-192,
non-maleficence, 41, 96-97 291-292
Noonan, John, 155, 157, 163 peaceable negotiation, 74
noumenal world, 34, 290 Peirce, Charles, S., 207, 210-211, 221-223,
noumenon, 34 226
nous, 29, 48, 64, 211, 218, 223-224 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 311, 314
Nozick, Robert, 14, 20, 98, 266 Pellegrino, Edmund, ix, 95, 104
Nuremberg Code, 209 penance, 127, 136, 145, 188
penitential practices, 136
O’Donovan, Oliver, 119, 133 Percy, Walker, 24
Obama, Barack, 17 permission, v, 15, 37-38, 40, 44, 61-62,
obedience, 44, 49-50, 62, 119, 126, 141, 64, 66-67, 75-76, 81-82, 103, 112-
152, 161, 169, 188 113, 118, 127, 131, 175-176, 181-
objectivity, 33-35, 66 182, 190-192, 196, 198, 206-207,
objectivity-as-inter-subjectivity, 34 209, 215-216, 218-220, 222, 243,
Ockham, William, 47 247, 249-252, 257-258, 295-296
Ogilvie, Captain J., 201 permission, principle of, 36, 38-40, 44,
Ophiuchus, 280 67, 74, 77, 81-82, 85, 110, 113,
organ donation, 282-283 118, 205-206, 210, 248, 251, 285
organ transplantation, 5 person, 10, 12, 14, 18, 27, 30, 35, 40, 47,
Orthodox Church, xiv, 48, 146, 157, 182- 49, 50-51, 62, 64, 81, 98, 100-
183, 211, 213-214, 224, 309, 311 101, 112, 131, 145-146, 148-149,
Russian, 199 155-158, 161-162, 165-166, 168-
Orthodox Mounted Posse, 10, 192 170, 172-175, 178, 182-183, 186,
191-192, 198, 229-230, 233, 235-
pagan, 36, 76-77, 126, 215 236, 240, 242-245, 251, 295-296
pain, 190, 233, 275, 277-278, 280, 282, respect for, viii, 15, 102
304 personal responsibility, 249
Paisios, Elder, 224 personhood, 37, 46, 62, 165-166, 169,
Palamas, St. Gregory, xiv 172-174, 177, 191, 198
Palestine, 300 Peter, Saint 10
Palmer, Gabriel-Fernández, 68-69, 211, Petry, M.J., 68
218, 223-224, 226, 314 Pharisees, 159, 162
papal infallibility, 309 Philips, O., 196, 201
papal magisterium, 309 philosophy, vii-ix, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13-14, 27,
papists, 10, 194 30-33, 36, 45-48, 54, 57-60, 65,
paradise, 149 111, 116, 118, 138, 160, 210, 250,
parents, 38, 82, 173, 198-199, 277, 282 261, 263, 265, 290-292, 294, 296,
Amish, 191-192 298-299, 301
Parliament of the World’s Religions, analytic, 265, 271
16, 20 Aristotelian, 31, 33, 263-264
Partridge, Christina, xiii, xvi Greek, 263, 309
passions, human, 35, 44, 49-50, 119, 148, moral, 24, 46, 51, 91, 95, 97, 107,
211, 223-224, 251, 307, 310 116-117, 177, 292, 309
Index 333
of medicine, viii procreation, 50, 167, 183

pagan, 48, 65, 215 promise-keeping, 66
political, 117, 131, 256 property,
rationalist, 161 rights, 15, 18, 83-84, 146, 195, 214,
relationship to theology, 16, 24, 45 219, 231, 233, 239-241, 272, 278,
Western, 33, 311 287
Photios the Great, Saint, xiv prophylactics, 156
physician, xii, 16, 28, 67, 97, 145, 243, proportionalism, 144, 150
279, 287 prosperity, 39, 60, 93, 192, 267, 276, 287
physician-assisted suicide, 28, 287, 299 prostitution, 225
physics, 31-32, 94, 209, 221, 273-274, Protagoras, 6, 311
305 psychology, 31, 271
pietist, 35 psychotherapy, viii
Pinkard, Terry, xv-xvi public discourse, 41, 222
Plank, Elvin, 195, 198 public good, 67
Planned Parenthood, 195 punishment, 189, 276, 282, 301
Plato, 29, 60, 68, 92, 147, 219, 223, purification, 30, 145, 156, 206, 211, 213,
261-262, 276, 309 307
Platonism, 218, 263
political liberalism, 107-108, 312 Quine, Willard Van Orman, 94-95
politics, 83, 200, 226, 256, 268, 275-278 Quinisext Council, 18, 20, 311
pope of Rome, xiii Quitchke-Fransen, Angelika, 195
positivism, 265
post-modernity, 3, 7, 17, 24-30, 32, 34-39, Rahner, Karl, 100
41, 43-46, 49, 53-55, 57, 74, rape, 145
90-91, 99-100, 104, 183, 191, Raposa. M.L., 211, 226
231, 249, 251 rational
Potter, Van Rensselaer, 203 argument, 5, 14, 16, 23, 29, 42-43,
poverty, 53, 276-277 56, 60, 72-75, 78, 92, 99, 114,
prayer, 3, 51, 53, 122, 137, 149, 152, 169, 264, 267, 285, 287-288, 295, 306,
188, 191, 194, 211, 297 310-311
pregnancy, 173, 307 contractors, 92
President’s Council on Bioethics, 98, rationalism, 35, 108, 121-122, 129, 131,
289 147, 151, 154, 161, 231-232, 242,
pride, 263, 286, 310 253
priest, xii, 77, 155, 158, 177, 198, 250, 283 rationality, 2, 5, 17, 23-26, 31, 33, 35, 40,
priesthood, xii, 18, 128, 214 44, 61, 68, 91, 94, 235, 292
principle of double effect, 144-146, 162, discursive, xiv, 32, 35-36, 109, 131, 154
307 moral, 4, 5, 17, 23, 28, 36, 74, 94, 112,
cancerous uterus, 144 267, 285-286, 299, 303-304
early delivery of a nonviable baby philosophical, 290
in the case of the mother’s secular, 1, 29
congestive heart failure, 145 Rawls, John, 56, 60, 63, 69, 93, 98, 104,
principle of sufficient reason, 310 117, 266, 312, 314
principlism, viii, 92, 254 Reagan, James E., 61, 68-69, 314
privacy, 98, 103 realism, 271
proceduralism, 102 Realpolitik, 289
334 Index
reason, ix-x, 6-9, 11, 15-17, 25-28, 30, Republic of Texas, 18

33-34, 36-37, 48, 57, 59, 64-65, research ethics, 102
73-75, 90, 92, 94, 95-97, 99-100, resource allocation, 5
108-112, 114, 117-124, 129-131, resurrection, 133, 240
141-144, 146-147, 150, 152, retroduction, 211, 223
157-159, 161, 173, 176-177, 183, revelation, 46, 64-65, 108, 119, 123, 132,
194-195, 205, 210- 211, 213, 215, 137, 161, 252, 273, 276-278, 282
219, 222-224, 229-230, 232, biblical, 121, 129, 132
234-236, 241-242, 244, 252, divine, 132, 277
258, 263, 267, 277, 281, 286, Rice University, x, xiii, 77
290-291, 299, 302-304, 306, right worship, 77, 299-301, 303, 308, 311
308 rigorism, 153, 162
common, 238, 241 risk aversion, 93
corpse of, 290 ritual purity, 85
discursive, 8, 108-110, 112-115, 119- Roberts, Alexander, 313
124, 139, 142-143, 146-147, 204, Robison, W.L., 61-62, 64, 67, 69
219, 221, 293 Romanides, John, 286, 309, 314
failure of, 12, 26, 46, 56, 113-114, romanum gubernans imperium, 16
251 Rome, 10, 15, 65, 194
faith in, 25-26, 36 Bishop of, 160
human, 2, 25, 91, 142, 146, 231-232, fourth, 10, 192, 200
235-238, 240-242, 244-245, second, 10, 192
303-304 Rorty, Richard, 5, 23, 35-36, 43, 56, 69,
making idol of, 25 99, 104, 117, 130
moral, 7, 25, 89-91, 95-96, 100-101, Royce, J., 207, 221, 226
107, 114, 121-122, 130 rule by the majority, 306
natural, 92, 236 rule of law, 40, 149
practical, 90, 95, 98, 131, 144, 158 rules of evidence, 14, 39-40, 73, 78, 81,
public, 89-90 285, 294-295, 305
religion of, 291 rules of inference, 14, 306
secular, x, xi, 7, 12, 14, 25-26 rumspringa, 191-192
universal, 175 Russell, N., 225
redemption, 197, 282, 298
reflective equilibrium, 97 Sabbath, 159
Reformation, 15, 26, 48, 91, 130, 184, Saint Louis University, v
194, 230, 301, 311 salvation, 2, 10, 54, 100, 157, 167, 184,
Reich, Warren T., xvi 186, 192, 198-199, 207, 264
Reign of Terror, 291 Samaritan, 170
reliability, 44 San Francisco, 118
religion, x, xiii, 26-27, 75, 80-81, 90, 107, sanctity of life, 96, 144
109, 119, 130, 231, 241, 251-252, Sanders, T.C., 104
261, 291, 312 Santa Fe, 10
repentance, xi, 3, 15, 50-52, 156, 169, 185, Sattler, Michael, 190
188, 297-298, 307, 311 Schaff, Philip, 18, 20, 200, 313
reproduction, 101, 167-168, 200, 281 see schism, 86, 123
also procreation Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst,
assisted, 128 119, 130-131
Index 335
Schleitheim Confession, 190, 193, 196, atonement for, 312

199 disease as symptom of, 279
Schmidt, Kurt, 313 involuntary, 127, 156, 169
Scholasticism, ix, xiv, 3, 26, 31-32, 48, 58, mortal, 142, 150
73, 84, 119, 122-123, 140, 160, original, 156, 198, 277-278
290, 309 venial, 151
second, 25 Singapore, 287
Schönmetzer, A., 160, 163 Singer, Peter, 95, 104
Schutz, Alfred, viii, xvi skepticism, 235, 273
scientific inquiry, 221, 223 about morality, 241-242
scientism, 265, 267-268, 270 epistemological, 43
Scofield, Giles, 15, 20 moral epistemological, 285
Scotus, Duns, 119 moral metaphysical, 285
scripture, 48, 121, 132, 139, 223, 184-185 slavery, 14, 172-173, 238
Scrivener, Martin, v Smith, Norman Kemp, xvi, 20
sectarian, 11, 53, 189, 203-204, 207-208, Snyder, G.F., 195, 201
217-218, 250 Snyder, Jon R., 314
sects, socialism, 37, 182, 219, 271-272
Christian, 184 society, secular, 28, 66, 89, 91, 100-103, 138
religious, 78, 80, 199, 262 Socrates, 60, 92, 309
secular humanism, 97, 203-204 Sohm, J.F., 200
security, 5, 39, 93, 223, 267, 287 solidarity, 96
self-defense, 84, 238 sons of Noah, 305
self-gratification, 57 soul, 18, 31-32, 64, 148, 156, 187, 197,
self-reliance, 249 215, 223, 298, 310
sense experience, 32-33 Soviet Union, 197
Seraphim of Sarov, Saint, 215 Sparks, Jack N., 17-18, 20
sex selection, 200 Spicker, Stuart, ix
sexism, 50, 138 spiritual
Sextus Empiricus, 25 father, 152, 155-156, 183, 307
sexual license, 176 harm, 51, 127, 145-146, 156
sexual relations, 28, 198, 287 life, 7, 136
sexuality, 35, 50, 101, 127-128, 167-168, therapy, 151, 156, 298, 307
183 treatment, 145, 156
carnal union, 127-128 spirituality, mystical, 206
disordered, 65 St. Edward’s University, v
marital, 167-168 St. Mary’s Grammar School Houston, xi
Sharpton, Al, 98 St. Thomas High School, xi
Sherman, 250 Standing Conference of Canonical
Sherrard, P., 211, 218, 223-224, 226 Orthodox Bishops in America,
Sherwin, Susan, 218, 226 217
shunning, 189, 191-192, 198-199 starvation, 171
Silouan the Athonite, Saint, 184-185, 201 state
sin, xi, 11, 51, 58, 93, 127, 150-151, 158, liberal, 62, 176
162, 166, 188, 198-199, 206, 211, minimal, 56, 62, 83-84
223-224, 273, 275-278, 281-282, secular, xi, 9, 15, 42, 83, 90, 100-101,
297-298, 303, 306-308 103
336 Index
statism, 192, 264-265, 266 noetic, 2, 47-49, 58, 108, 138, 147,
liberal-social-democratic, 83 307
sterilization, 10, 166, 172, 177-178, 200 Orthodox, xiv, 8, 24, 306, 309 see also
Stevens, M.L.T., 218, 226 theology: noetic; noesis
Stoltzfus, Samuel, 199, 201 of discipleship, 186-187
Stout, Jeffrey, 117 of discursive reflection, 301
Strawson, P.F., 169, 297 of holiness, 301
striptease, 225 of human rights, 301
suffering, 50, 101, 171, 190, 249, 251, 254, of martyrdom, 186
275, 277-278, 280, 282-283 of social justice, 301
suicide, 93, 186, 220, 239 Patristic, 48
supernatural, 108, 119, 121-122, 277 personal, 309
surrogacy, commercial, 15, 168 post-Tridentine, 122-123
Swiss Brethren, 190 Western, 7, 9, 30, 32, 46, 48, 108
Switzerland, 187 theosis, 168
Symeon the New Theologian, Saint, 32 Theotokos, 215
symphonia, 10-11, 192, 194 therapy, spiritual, 298, 307
Synod at Basel, 65 thing-in-itself, 33-34
Thirty Years War, 25
taxation, 13, 39, 84, 258, 265 Thomasma, David, 96, 104, 222, 227
temperance, 277 Thoreau, Henry David, 249
Texan, xi, xiii, 10, 15, 18, 283, 301-302, tithing, 55, 162
304 tobacco, 195
Texas, vii, x-xi, 10, 13, 18, 192, 194-195, toleration, 41, 44, 57, 118, 176, 265
306 religious, 264
Texas Revolution, 18 Tollefsen, Christopher, 9-10, 20, 297-299,
Texian, 10, 18-19, 183, 200, 203 301
TEYKU, 219 Torah, 214, 225, 305
theologians Torrey, R.A., 312, 314
as academics, 48, 308 torture, 16, 187, 209, 233, 305
as holy men, 48, 308 Toulmin, Stephen, 97-98, 104
theology, xii, 3, 24, 30-32, 35, 45-49, Tower of Babel, 288
51-52, 56, 58-60, 65, 107-108, transcendence, 3, 8-9, 15, 32, 34, 37-38,
117, 119, 123, 136, 142, 147, 155, 43, 45-47, 49, 55, 61-62, 67, 74,
160-161, 184-188, 191-192, 101, 108-118, 120-121, 123-132,
194-195, 218, 263, 290, 292-293, 135, 138-139, 143, 154-155, 189,
296, 298-301, 303, 309 204, 206, 212, 218, 248-250,
academic, 52 257-259, 261-263, 270, 286,
as academic inquiry, 108 290-294, 298
ascetic theology of holiness, 186 Trinity, 86, 104, 161, 211, 286, 308-309,
discursive, 47, 185, 307 311
discursive rational, 47 Trotter, Griffin, 11, 20, 215, 221, 227, 295,
dogmatic, 142 301-304
empirical, 309 truth-telling, 102, 214, 254, 256
liturgical, 59 Tulane University of Louisiana School
moral, 9, 24, 51-52, 123, 136-137, 139, of Medicine, vii
141-143, 154, 292, 297 Turiaso, Jennifer, xvi
Index 337
Ulpianus, 92 Walzer, Michael, 86-87, 118, 244

UNESCO, 16, 20 Wang, Xiaoying, 72, 87
Unitarianism, 249-250, 258 war, 311
United States, 84, 171, 219, 306, 312 American Civil War, 250
Universal Declaration of Human of religion, 91
Rights, 217 European wars of religion, 25
University of Bonn, vii War between the States, 18
University of Louvain, 196 War of Northern Aggression, 250
University of Notre Dame, 17, 133 War of Southern Insurrection, 250
University of Paris, 16 World War II, 197
University of Texas at Austin, vii Ware, Kallistos, 211, 218, 223-224, 226
University of Texas Medical Branch, viii warfare, 80, 238
Urban II, Pope, 16 Washington on the Brazos, 18
utilitarianism, 4, 41, 174, 209, 266, 271, Wear, Stephen, 11-12, 21, 255, 258-259,
287 301, 304-306, 314
utopianism, 264 Weiner, R. B., 61, 66-67, 69
welfare state, 258
van Braght, Thieleman J., 187, 200 Wenger, J. C., 190, 193, 196, 199, 201
Vatican Council, Wesley, John, 130
First, 146-147 Western Europe, xii, 187
Second, xi-xii, 122-123, 136, 140, 143, Wildes, Kevin Wm. S.J., 6-7, 11, 21, 61,
147, 149, 152, 163, 293 65-66, 68-69, 90, 92, 95, 98, 100,
Vattimo, Gianni, 29, 35-36, 69, 286, 288, 102, 104, 204, 227, 294-295
314 Willems, Dirk, 187-188
Veatch, Robert, 95-96, 104 Williams, A.N., 163
vegetarianism, 182 Williams, Bernard, 130, 160
veil of ignorance, 63 Williams, Esther, 314
Velimirovic, St. Nikolai, 311, 314 Williams, G.vH., 201
venom, 279 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 34, 36, 60-61, 69
vigils, 51 World Medical Association, 16, 21
violence, vii, 6, 15, 54, 131, 182
Voegelin, Eric, 270, 272 Zabala, Santiago, 291, 314
voluntarism, 47, 119, 121, 141, 154 Zagalo e Melo, Paulo, 313
Zanardi, William J., v
Wace, Henry, 18, 20, 200, 313 Zaner, Riichard M., xvi
Wake, Peter, v Zerkavos, Pilotheos Fr., 165
Walker, Lucy, 199-200 Zeus, 280
Walter, Jennifer, K., xvi zygote, 168, 172
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At the Roots of

Copyright © 2010 M & M Scrivener Press

Cover design by Russell Richardson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

At the roots of Christian bioethics : critical essays on the

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

Printed in United States of America on acid-free paper.

Thomas J. Bole, III

Mark J. Cherry and Ana S. Iltis

Part I: Re-reading Engelhardt: The Old and the New

Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.

Part II: Challenges to Engelhardt’s Orthodox Christian Theology

Part IV: A Restatement

Thomas J. Bole III

Engelhardt never was, nor is he now, a man of half-measures. He is

Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, namely, “what is man?”

of society’” (Jonsen, 1998, p. 103). In any event, beginning at least in the

In late 1982 he returned to Texas, where he was appointed Professor in

came to include his being accompanied to Milan by his second daughter

It is never easy to leave that to which one is accustomed, especially if the

experience was that which alone could supplement the incompleteness of

This book is as much about a philosophical puzzle as it is about bioethics.

libertarian – not due to any particular celebration of personal liberty, nor

of a radically transcendent, personal God. Here philosophical solutions and

II. Bioethics and the Culture Wars

The elements or dimensions of morality cannot be fully integrated in a secular moral

visions, divergent understandings of the good life, varying senses of what

III. Re-reading Engelhardt: The Old and the New

As Delkeskamp-Hayes argues, when both aspects of his scholarship are seen

IV. Challenges to Engelhardt’s Orthodox Christian Theology

invitation to the transcendent to accept as an invitation to truth. Even where

Thus, McKenny concludes that from an external perspective Orthodox Chris-

Foundations of Christian Bioethics states unequivocally that abortion is the spiri-

Fransen’s concern is whether such a millennial vision is compatible with

As a result, while Fransen ﬁnds himself in deep sympathy with many of

V. Christian Bioethics, Moral Pluralism and the Hope for a

However, Trotter argues that it is more accurate to the ways in which we

Following similar threads of argument, both Joseph Boyle and Stephen

VI. Engelhardt’s Reply – A Restatement of Position and a

others? Which values should we choose or eshew? As Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes

Here, the recognition of post-modernity is simply the understanding of the

Boyle, J. “The Ethical Signiﬁcance of Moral Disagreement,” in At the Roots of Christian

Wildes, K. Wm., S.J. “Completing the Picture: Engelhardt’s Christian Bioethics,” in At

I. Life with a Plurality of Moralities

(1973), to his contemporary publications (2006), in diverse venues and in a

pluralism has always been with us. “Post-Babel”-civilizations have always

today, the remaining children of the Enlightenment are the legitimate

One can now re-state Engelhardt’s diagnosis: contemporary Western culture

morality, while not claimed to be rationally compelling in the sense of being

II. Morality in Secular Philosophy

impotence only by multiplying its attempts, thus disintegrating into a plural-

Conﬁned within that inter-subjectivity, Kant nevertheless, as it were, still ges-

also radically transforms those historical aspirations. Engelhardt’s second-

(and merely rational-humanity-cushioned) manner. Engelhardtian persons

“liberal” (e.g., social-democratic) invocation of the canonical character and

framework on which any substantial and (if only parochially) defensible

2. The moral seriousness afﬁrmed in Engelhardt’s philosophical work

rationality to establish a canonical secular moral vision by sound rational

and one-sided. Most of Engelhardt’s readers, who imagine themselves

III. Morality within “Philosophy as Theology”

A. Retrieving Christianity from postmodernity

1. Moral philosophy as based on theology