Ethics With a Telescope

The distinction between flesh and spirit in not dualistic but eschatological. Paul’s contrast between flesh and spirit is not between matter and mind but between the old, fallen humanity of Adam and the new humanity of Christ. ‘Flesh’ refers to the fallen humanity; ‘spirit’ to the redeemed, eschatological humanity which has already taken shape in Christ and begins, through the Spirit, to take place in those who are being conformed to his image, when and as God pleases.

– Colin Gunton, Act and Being (2002), p. 114

This brief remark from Colin Gunton crystallizes a point which is of great importance in Christian ethics, and which ultimately sets it apart from other ethical systems. Ethics is often discussed in the New Testament, particularly in the writings of Paul, in deceptively simple terms of choosing between actions of the ‘flesh’ and actions of the ‘spirit’ (e.g. Romans 8, Galatians 5). What this means is not that there are earthy, physical, sweaty, dirty and all-too-human actions on the one hand and lofty, heavenly, blissful, pure and divine actions on the other, and that therefore ethics is somehow a matter of trying to be less human and more like God.

Rather, what it means is that ethics needs to tell a story. Christian ethical systems, Christian ethical decisions, Christian ethical reasoning and Christian ethical prescriptions need to tell a story about God, Jesus, humanity and – crucially – the future. It needs to tell a story about two different ages, a story about the difference between the past and the future. It needs to tell the story of what human life was meant to be like, and what, because of God’s acting in Jesus, it will one day be like. This is the context in which these terms ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ find their meaning, and to rip them out of this serves only to obscure things.

Christian ethicist and theologian Oliver O’Donovan is helpful in continuing this thought, arguing that this dichotomy brings a simplicity to ethics, and can be utilized as a decision procedure. He writes:

The final question is whether this life, this act, this character, belong to the renewed and transformed world which God is bringing into being…In the light of that question, the issues of morality which are as complex and diverse as the created world which gives rise to them are reduced to a stark and awesome simplicity. We can speak of the simple choice for or against God’s new creation, the simple alternative of a broad way and a narrow way, the straightforward either-or opposition of sin and virtue.

– Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order (1986), p. 259-260

God is Spirit

That God is spirit, generally, does not mean simply that his is not material but that he is able to encompass both what we call spirit and what we call matter. To have spirit is to be open to the other – God, the human other and the world; to be spirit, as God is, is to be able to cross the boundary between creator and creature, even to the extent of God the Son’s becoming identical with Jesus of Nazareth by the power of the Spirit. In scripture, God’s being spirit appears to refer to the capacity of the creator to cross ontological boundaries: to interact with and become part of that which he is not.

– Colin Gunton, Act and Being (2002), p. 115

In this confusing little passage, Colin Gunton attempts to suggest a way in which Greek Philosophy needs to be filtered out from the Christian understanding of God. The Bible states that God is spirit (John 4:24) and that he is creator. Gunton suggests that Christianity, fascinated with Greek Philosophy as it was in it’s early days, has then rushed into trying to erect neat theological categories in which to express these propositions – spirit contrasted with matter, creator contrasted with creation, self contrasted with other. These seem like helpful little categories, but Gunton suggests that what is more fundamental to God than being spirit and not matter,  or to being creator and not creation, or to being other and not one of us, is God’s inability to be bracketed in such dualisms, and his unique ability to cross between these categories.

Far from undercutting any sensible attempts to speak of God accurately, I think Gunton suggests that this has the possibility to allow for the development of a uniquely Christian vocabulary which aspires to speak truthfully and deeply about God. Gunton suggests that this ‘ontological modesty’ is actually a unique and fundamental hallmark of Christianity: that is makes sense of believing that God became human, that God died,  that God is knowable by those on the other side of the divide, and that God is more deserving of worship than any other being.