Virtue Ethics

As I mentioned in a previous post, Aristotle was responsible for the understanding of the relationship between virtue and happiness that dominated until it was slowly eroded by the Enlightenment. (Not that the Enlightenment was all bad, either, but it certainly wasn't all good.) In short, he was responsible for the way people thought about ethics/morality. The result of the Enlightenment was that we didn't end up with a more coherent way of looking at morality, but a much less coherent way. There was Kant's 'categorical imperative', utilitarianism, and later 'situational ethics', and the ubiquitous 'value ethics' that describes so much of what we call ethics today, just to name a few schools of thought. All of those deserve individual consideration at some point, but I'm going to give a separate post to 'value ethics' after this one.





Aristotle thought that goodness and happiness had to do with things that promoted an 'actualization of what human beings are capable of.' That's from page 48 in Colin Brown's book. Aristotle believed in design and purpose in nature, and moral goodness in people derived from fulfilling your purpose, what you were designed to do. The virtues weren't desired merely for their own sake, but they were instrumental in allowing one to achieve the designed purpose. To Aristotle the virtues were habits that needed to be developed by training.





Aristotle was consistent with the Bible in that respect. In Ephesians 5:1 we are told to be 'imitators of God' and in Hebrews 13:7 we are told to look to those who have been good witnesses before us and imitate their faith. If we imitate them and turn their habits into our habits it will show up in our walk with God.





As far as purpose and design, the Bible declares that God has created everything, and there is a purpose in creation and history. That is pretty clear. There are a couple of passages in particular I can think of that relate to our discussion of Aristotle. Proverbs 22:6 says "Train up a child in the way he should go..." The passage is well know, but perhaps a little misunderstood. Certainly raising our kids to be Christian is part of that, but as I understand it the passage literally means to 'train up a child according to his bent, or tendency or character.' This involves the idea that the child was created with a purpose in mind, and our job as parents is to help foster the development of that child into the person God wants them to be, taking into account their particular gifts, etc. (Chuck, any input here on the Hebrew would be welcome.)





Also, in Matthew 21 and Mark 11 Jesus curses a fig tree that was not bearing fruit. That tree represented Israel, who was not bearing fruit. Israel had been given a purpose by God and it was not fulfilling that purpose.