Whither Personal Morality?

Herein, a break from my backwards, chapter-by-chapter review-in-depth of Albert Nolan's Jesus before Christianity. Before moving on, I have something I want to discuss further. In the installment I called Chapter 19, "Faith in Jesus," Part 2, I mentioned that:

... the evangelists who wrote the four New Testament Gospels "apocalyptized the message," according to Nolan. They "adapted [it] to other situations or indeed to any and every situation," by using it "in typical apocalyptic fashion, for moralizing purposes and as a threat concerning the individual rather than society ... laying great emphasis on the judgment day and upon the apportioning of reward and punishment" (pp. 108-109).

I find that a key passage which raises a question I can ask but don't think I can answer: if we take Nolan's version of Jesus' teaching to heart, whither personal morality? If traditional Christian moral teaching rests on a "threat concerning the individual" — on the "apportioning of reward and punishment," come judgment day — what does Nolan have to say about it?

Not a lot, it would seem. For, aside from the above-cited passage of his book, Nolan makes few if any other references to moral issues as we would customarily tend to think of them. I may be reading too much into what he does say about these matters, but it appears to me that Nolan's emphasis on boundless mercy and unquestioning forgiveness as a pathway to compassionate solidarity among all humans suggests he is "soft on morality."


I think of the "sins" traditional Christian morality abhors as falling in two groups: sins of aggression and sins of appetite. The former group is pretty much self-explanatory. Blind hostility, gleeful violence, brutal mayhem, homicide, genocide, thirst for vengeance — all are sins of aggression.

Sins of appetite include, of course, sexual sin (misused genital appetite). They also include such things as gluttony (exaggerated appetite for comestibles) and sloth (overweening appetite for ease).

Nolan gives short shrift to such sins in his exegesis of Jesus' teachings. He seems to imply that Jesus considered sins of alienation and aspersion more key than those of aggression and appetite. There is little mention of sins of appetite in Nolan's book whatsoever — except to say that Jesus' enemies accused him of immorality by virtue of his willing association with known drunkards, gluttons, and prostitutes.

Nolan does take up the question of whether violence is always forbidden, a topic I'll cover in depth when I deal with Nolan's chapter on "The Temptation to Violence." The short answer: "Jesus was not a pacifist in principle, he was a pacifist in practice" (p. 136). "Unlimited compassion" for the poor and oppressed could, under just the right circumstances, justify "violent indignation" — as when Jesus ousted the money-changers from the Temple courtyard.


It is possible to read Nolan, therefore, as "soft on morality." Or, rather, to read Nolan's Jesus as way too permissive.

In fairness, one must admit that for Nolan to take up such questions would have cluttered up his exposition fatally. He wants to show that Jesus' main thrust was to wipe out the sins of alienation and aspersion which were fragmenting his people and inviting the historical catastrophe which did in fact occur within the lifetime of many who had known Jesus.

Furthermore, it would be foolish to fail to note that Nolan wrote in the mid-'70s, a time when the air was filled with angst over unjust war, environmental desecration, apartheid, impending nuclear doom. Meanwhile, the sexual revolution was in full stride. Those of liberal mindset were apt to consider the latter small potatoes by way of contrast with the former.


Reading the signs of today's times is, however, a different matter.

Religious conservatives say they are embroiled in a culture war. Depending on which pundits you believe, the 2004 presidential election was or was not decided on "moral values." The country debates abortion rights and gay marriage. It is generally understood that a big chunk of the populace wants to re-enshrine traditional Christian assertions about sins of appetite.

Oddly, that same chunk seems willing to turn a blind eye to Abu Ghraib and other sins of aggression against the "enemies" whom Jesus said we should love. But, never mind.

Inevitably, it comes time for full disclosure: I myself am quite torn about such things. Especially sins of appetite, since I've long since been able to get my aggressive instincts under some semblance of control. Or, at least, I think I have.

I'm, it seems, half Puritan and half libertine. Mostly, the Puritan rules my life, the libertine my X-rated imagination. It likely is the libertine in me that most resents religion when it clamps down on sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and the like. But it is definitely the Puritan in me that turns up its nose, of late, at the manifest coarsening of our culture.

So there are admittedly dueling agendas in my soul ... a fact which I feel disqualifies me from making any for-all-time pronouncements about traditional Christian morality. When I read the signs of today's times, I'm apt to come to different conclusions depending on which lobe is in charge at the moment: the rigid Puritan or the relaxed libertine.


Yet it seems clear to me that the religio-cultural warriors of today are much more in the mode of worrying about the threat to individual souls come judgment day than about the threat to the community posed by, say, marginalizing gays who won't recant. These warriors seem to me to take an apocalyptizing, moralizing view of the Gospel message ... not the "de-apocalyptized" prophetic view Nolan prefers.

Many Christian conservatives — though surely not all — think we are approaching the "end times." Witness the vast popularity of the Left Behind series, with its instant "rapturing" of the faithful into heaven, followed by tribulation for those remaining on earth.

If that's not using the Bible message "in typical apocalyptic fashion, for moralizing purposes and as a threat concerning the individual rather than society ... laying great emphasis on the judgment day and upon the apportioning of reward and punishment," I don't know what is.

As I say, I don't feel qualified to resolve such tensions, but I also feel I would be remiss in not mentioning them. There does seem to be a rift between conservative outlooks of the moment and Nolan's take on Christian morality, in which sins of alienation and aspersion far outweigh those of appetite and aggression.