A Case for Character: Towards a Lutheran Virtue Ethics

6. An Ethic for the Church

6 An Ethic for the Church The Place of Character Formation The death of character as eulogized by James Davison Hunter seems to be an altogether modern—or perhaps some would argue, postmodern—problem.1 In many ways, of course, it is. Economic, societal, academic, and psychological forces have collided if not conspired to create the normal nihilism and therapeutic culture that now define Western civilization.2 But the final passing of character after a long but precipitous decline has not provoked the shedding of tears or the founding of memorials. Besides some who make it their business to worry, few notice and few seem to care, which is not surprising given the realities of the sort of world in which the would-be mourners live. Christians, however, do care—or at least they should. Christians care about character because character is the reflection of a person who is living in tune with the Creator’s will. Character is a living profession of the basic truth of this world’s inherent, God-given order. Hunter is quite right: “To have a renewal of character is to have a renewal of a creedal order that constrains, limits, binds, obligates, and compels.”3 A pluralistic, therapeutic world of normal nihilism scoffs at the idea of a comprehensive order that directs all things, but the church 1. James Davison Hunter, The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age without Good or Evil (New York: Basic Books, 2000), xiii–xv. Admittedly, Hunter wrote not a sympathetic eulogy but, rather, a more sober and factual yet no less passionate postmortem for character. 2. The amount of material written on the contemporary situation and its causes is bewildering. But one would be well served by considering James C. Edwards, The Plain Sense of Things: The Fate of Religion in an Age of Normal Nihilism (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); and Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). Also worth consideration are two from Peter Berger: The Heretical Imperative (New York, Anchor, 1979) and The Sacred Canopy (New York: Anchor, 1967). 3. Hunter, Death of Character, xv. 165 embraces it. The culture cannot cultivate character. It is simply incapable of the feat. But the church can. In fact, the church is ideally suited for the task of character formation—that is, if the church can come to terms with the idea that training in character is not somehow antithetical to its own essence or raison d’être. This challenge is hardly a new one. The end of character as a viable cultural objective may be a new phenomenon, but the church’s struggle rightly to locate the place of moral training and formation in character is very old, indeed. If Lutherans Can Do It, Anyone Can While even the book of James can be read as an effort to inculcate moral virtue among people saved by grace, it is enough for the present purpose to go back in church history only half a millennia and pick up the saga of the church’s effort to understand the place best to fit character formation with the advent of Lutheranism. Since the beginning of the Reformation, of course, Lutherans have championed the foundation of justification by grace through faith alone. This doctrine remains, quite rightly, a central hallmark of Lutheran theology. Nevertheless, even the earliest Lutheran theologians were aware of the potential hazard of a lackadaisical licentiousness that abuses the central doctrine and makes a mockery of the Christian life. The relentless tug of sinful appetites is, as James and the other scriptural authors amply attest, simply a reality of life in a fallen world. The struggle against the temptation to sinful indulgence is challenge enough, though, without the complication of a doctrinal position that, intentionally or not, actually serves the cause of sin by denigrating God’s law. Whether in the name of crass immoral license, human freedom, individual autonomy, or even the protection of the gospel, theologians commit a serious error when they endorse an antinomian spirit that in any way disregards or diminishes God’s commandments. Well aware of the gravity of this errant move, the first generation of reformers resisted the antinomian incursion, with both Luther and Melanchthon involved directly in the fighting. Reinhard Hütter considers this battle to be a significant shift in the course and emphasis of the Reformation: “It is important to at least explicitly acknowledge Luther’s clear awareness of how...