The Sabbath was instituted shortly after Israel
gained freedom from Egyptian slavery (Exod. 16:23-30). In Gen. 2:2-3, however, God already established the Sabbath on the seventh day of creation. Commands to observe the Sabbath appeal to God’s hallowing that day at creation, Israel’s deliverance from bondage, and freedom for all, including slaves and animals, to rest from labor and celebrate joyfully (Exod. 20:8-12; Deut. 5:12-15). The seventh-year sabbatical and the fiftieth-year Jubilee express God’s Sabbath grace (Lev. 25; Deut. 15).
Jesus and his disciples observed the Sabbath (Mark 1:21; Luke 4:16; 23:56b), although Jesus tangled with the Pharisees over Sabbath laws. Willy Rordorf holds that Jesus attacked the Sabbath itself, not just the Pharisaic laws “fencing” the Sabbath (Rordorf 15). Jesus healed on the Sabbath, allowing physical exertion on that day: taking up one’s mat and walking (John 5:2-12), plucking grain (Mark 2:23-28), and washing in a pool (John 9:1-12). Jesus’ Sabbath actions spiraled into mortal conflict with the religious leaders.
Jesus explains his Sabbath practices as life-affirming: “The sabbath was made for humankind; and not humankind for the sabbath,” and therefore “the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28). In speech and action Jesus fulfills the Sabbath, bringing rest to the weary (Matt. 11:28-29) with human liberation.
Sabbath practices among early Christians differed. Paul counsels that no one should judge another over observance of Jewish festivals and Sabbaths, for these “are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col. 2:16-17). Luke highlights Jesus fulfilling what the Sabbath signifies (quoting Isa. 58:6; 61:1-4 in Luke 4:18-19). In the book of Acts, however, Paul’s custom is Sabbath observance (Acts 17:2); he regularly goes to the synagogue (Acts 13:14, 44; 16:13; 18:4). The believers’ custom of gathering on the first day, the “Lord’s Day,” is attested in Rev. 1:10 (see also Did. 14.1), and began early (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2), likely pre-Pauline (Rordorf 218).
Differences in Sabbath observance among Christians continued. Some sources relegate Sabbath observance to Judaism and urge celebration of the Lord’s Day only, the spiritual fulfillment of Sabbath (Ign. Magn. 9.1-3; Clement of Alexandria; Origen; Justin; Irenaeus); other sources urge both Sabbath observance and Sunday Lord’s Day gatherings (Ebionite and Nazorean Christians; Syriac sources) (Ekenberg 651-53).
The Sabbath is God’s temple in time (see He-schel 79-83). Seventh-day Adventists and several Christian minorities continue Sabbath observance, worshiping on the seventh day, Saturday. They appeal to second-century apostate influences causing the switch to Sunday: anti-Judaism, the influence of sun cults in pagan Roman religion, and growing authority in the church of Rome to change the day (Bacchiocchi). Constantine legalized Sunday rest (March 3, 321 CE). The case for three different positions on observance has been argued by various writers: Sabbath/Seventh Day observance; Sunday Lord’s Day worship; and All-Days-Holy (Swartley 65-95).
Increasing numbers of Christians recognize the importance of keeping the Sabbath in today’s pressured societies. Marva Dawn identifies four dimensions of Sabbath-keeping crucial to faithful Christian living, each with ethical import: “ceasing,” to deepen our repentance from self-planning our future; “resting,” to strengthen faith, breathing God’s grace; “embracing,” to apply faith practically to our values and friendships; and “feasting,” to celebrate the joy of God’s love and the Sabbath’s foretaste of the age to come (Dawn 203). Similarly, the Sabbath enables us to discover “the rhythms of rest and delight” (Wirzba). In Sunday worship we participate in God’s re-creation, marked by joy, peace, hospitality, and love, renewing allegiance to Christ (Wirzba 48-49). Sabbath renews work, home, economics, education, environment, and worship (Wirzba 91-165). Sabbath-keeping is essential for shalom wholeness.
The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day point us toward God’s “eighth day” of eternal bliss.
See also Creation, Biblical Accounts of; Jubilee; Play; Time, Use of; Work
Bibliography
Bacchiocchi, S. From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation. Pontifical Gregorian University Press, 1977; Carson, D., ed. From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Investigation. Zondervan, 1982; Dawn, M. Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting. Eerdmans, 1991; Ekenberg, A. “Evidence for Jewish Believers in ‘Church Orders’ and Liturgical Texts.” Pages 640-58 in Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries, ed. O. Skarsaune and R. Hvalvik. Hendrickson, 2007 [contains other pertinent articles]; Heschel, A. The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1951; Rordorf, W. Sunday: The History of the Day of Rest and Worship in the Earliest Centuries of the Christian Church. Trans. A. Graham. Westminster, 1968; Swartley, W. Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation. Herald Press, 1983; Wirzba, N. Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight. Brazos, 2006.
Willard M. Swartley
The word salvation appears relatively rarely in the Christian Scriptures. The term, however, unites other concepts into an ultimate eudaemonism: a concern for eternal human flourishing that has its roots in present deliverance from sin, violence, and evil.
Given the numerical symbolism of the book of Revelation, it should not surprise us that “salvation” (soterion) occurs three times there (Rev. 7:10; 12:10; 19:1). Each use shares a common setting—a great sound in the heaven proclaims “salvation” in praise of God. Those robed in white “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9) are no longer in “the great ordeal” (v. 14a). “Salvation” involves movement—the One on the Throne moves those dressed in white from suffering to human flourishing through the “blood of the Lamb” (v. 14b). They now worship the One on the Throne and the Lamb who “will guide them to springs of the water of life” (v. 17b). The time of this movement is ambiguous. The translation of “have come out” of the NRSV (v. 14) masks the present partici-ple—“These are the ones who are coming out of the great ordeal.”
The second use occurs after Satan and his minions are thrown from heaven to the earth. A great heavenly voice declares: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah” (Rev. 12:10).
“Salvation” quells the war in heaven (Rev. 12:7) “by the blood of the Lamb and by the work of their testimony, for they [the saints] did not cling to life even in the face of death” (v. 11). The third occurrence follows the downfall of Babylon (Rev. 18:1-24). The judgment of the “whore” on earth (Rev. 19:2) gives a reason for the heavenly multitude to ascribe “salvation and glory and power to our God” (Rev. 19:1), a salvation celebrated in the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (19:7). Salvation entails a movement from violent conflict to peace and flourishing. In salvation God moves the faithful from the violence of this world to find their end in God eternally through Christ’s nonviolent overcoming of the evil of this age.
The Pauline use of “salvation” possesses a similar underlying structure. “Salvation” is a present, continuous reality. The verb “to save” occurs twice in the present passive participial form to indicate “those who are being saved” (1 Cor. 1:18; 15:2). This “salvation” arises from participation in the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1-2a); its end lies still ahead of the believer when “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26) so that “God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). “Salvation” has a sense of deliverance, whether release from present-day affliction (Phil. 1:19; 2 Cor. 1:6) or future judgment (Phil. 1:28). It calls for believers to “work out your own salvation” in the tension between one’s present “salvation” and the future deliverance at the culmination of all things (Phil. 2:12; see also 1 Thess. 5:8-9; 2 Cor. 7:10). As James Dunn writes, “Paul’s understanding of salvation as a process has frequently been summed up as a tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet.’ The process character is clear from the consistent way he speaks of salvation itself as a goal still to be attained, the final good” (Rom. 5:9-11) (Dunn 93).
The eudaemonistic tension is creative, not vicious, because “salvation” has already fully occurred in the gospel—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:1-2; see also Eph. 1:13). The centrality of “salvation” for Paul appears in the “thesis statement” of the Epistle to the Romans: “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile” (Rom. 1:16-17). Because “salvation”—the human flourishing that arises out of deliverance from sin, death, and Satan—has already happened, it is continuously happening in the believer through participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus by faith in baptism (see Rom. 6:1-11; Gal. 2:19-20; 3:26-4:7).
Because the gospel happened “in accordance with the scriptures,” Paul reached into the ancestral Jewish writings to articulate his understanding of “salvation.” Paul describes God’s salvation in Christ through his use of Isa. 49:8 (2 Cor. 6:2), Isa. 28:16 (Rom. 10:10-11), and Joel 2:32 (Rom. 10:12-13). First Peter shares this background presupposition—“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace . . . when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory” (1 Pet. 1:1011). “Salvation” in Christ found its intelligibility through the Prophets. These writings “are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ” (2 Tim. 3:15).
The Gospel of John, then, should not surprise us when we read that “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). The Gospel of Luke develops this Jewish context for the use of “salvation” in the Jewish psalms spoken by Mary (Luke 1:47) and Zechariah (Luke 1:69, 77) and in quotations from Isaiah (Luke 2:30; 3:6). These provide the matrix for the introduction of Jesus as “Savior” by the angels at his birth. Jesus himself represents and enacts salvation (see Luke 19:9-10).
In Luke “salvation” is moving through the “narrow door” (Luke 13:23) where the one who loses one’s life will save it (Luke 9:24; 17:33). Jesus himself embodies this saying on the cross, ironically recognized by the mockers who deride him (Luke 23:35, 37, 39). “Salvation” becomes fully visible in the resurrection of Jesus (see Acts 4:10-12; 13:26-41), Jesus’ bodily flourishing that exceeds his crucifixion. For Luke “salvation” marks God’s rescue of humans within and beyond the present suffering of this age through the suffering and resurrection of Jesus, all interpreted through the words of the Jewish prophets.
It is helpful to turn to the OT to grasp how the NT uses the term salvation. Early Christians did not read the Hebrew text but the Old Greek translations. Translators used the Greek soterion to translate two Hebrew roots and related terms: ysh’, deliverance, and shlm, peace/flourishing. The Old Greek version had already brought together the two concepts of deliverance and flourishing into the one Greek term, soterion. We find the use of soterion and related terms particularly concentrated in three loci: within the book of Isaiah, the sacrificial sections of the Torah, and the book of Psalms.
Prophetic “salvation oracles” arose within Judah following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, oracles incorporated into the book of Isaiah following earlier oracles of judgment. As Claus Westermann stated, “The prophecies of salvation constitute a bridge to the life of a ‘remnant’ in the land of their ancestors after return from exile” (269). The history of the formation of the book of Isaiah, therefore, placed an interpretive context for reading the text. As a complete scroll, the book provides a narrative world in which the prophetic sayings have been given a new interpretation by shifting the literary context of the original oracles (see Childs). Salvation entails a movement from sin and judgment to a restoration for the fullness of life.
“Salvation” in Isaiah looks to the future even in the first half of the book (Isa. 12:2-3; 25:9, 26:1; 33:2, 6). The middle of the book declares the nearness of God’s salvation, as God declares Zion’s time of judgment past (Isa. 40:5 Old Greek; 45:17; 46:13). The speech shifts to first person (49-53). God announces that God will spread “salvation” to the nations through a first-person speaker (Isa. 49:6-8; 51:6-8; 52:7-10). The next concentration of the term comes in Isa. 60-62 (60:6, 16, 18; 61:10; 62:1). “Salvation” looks to a future renewed Zion as the center of the nations. The “salvation” from exile has occurred; “salvation” as the flourishing of “Zion” still stands in the future.
A new third-person voice connects these two notions of salvation. Isaiah 53:12 speaks of the suffering and execution of the first-person voice of Isa. 49-52. The narrator nonetheless looks for a future in which “I [the Lord] will allot him [the servant] a portion with the great and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he [the servant] poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors” (Isa. 53:12). The “servant of the Lord” accomplished salvation as deliverance; his death and future open into the future flourishing of Jerusalem (Isa. 60-62). The Isaiah Scroll looks to salvation, a present deliverance from past judgment for God’s “servants” through a suffering “servant” that leads into a future flourishing Zion that includes gentiles.
The Torah moves from deliverance to flourishing in its use of soterion. Within narrative sections, salvation as “deliverance” predominates. Moses assures Israel that the Lord will deliver/ save Israel from the pursuing Egyptian army (Exod. 14:13); the song following the demise of the Egyptian army states that the Lord “has become my salvation” (Exod. 15:2). “Salvation” in the Torah therefore also describes positively a particular type of sacrifice: the “salvation offer-ing”—or as the NRSV translates the phrase, “the sacrifice of well-being” (see, for instance, Lev. 3).
It is a celebratory sacrifice, barbequed lamb with pan bread to be consumed in thanksgiving (Lev. 7:11-18), personally brought before the Tent of Meeting and shared with the officiating priest (Lev. 7:28-36). One participates in eating the body and bread of the “sacrifice of salvation” in thanksgiving. Salvation as deliverance brings Israel into the salvation-sacrifice of flourishing.
Soterion finally appears regularly within the Greek book of Psalms. The NRSV commonly translates the term as deliverance or safety—a present rescue from danger and the subsequent flourishing. God’s “salvation” reaches into the lives of individuals (Ps. 69:29) and Israel (Ps. 85:1-4). “Salvation” can take on an undetermined future sense in some psalms (see, e.g., Pss. 12:5; 14:7; 37:39; 40:10; 85:4, 9; 119:41, 81, 123, 153, 174). In one case “salvation” even takes the individual beyond death (Ps. 69:19-20). As Schaper writes, Ps. 69 (MT) “was reinterpreted according to contemporary Jewish rules of textual hermeneutics, and its message now became that of an exodus even from within the boundaries of death” (90). “Salvation” in the Greek Psalter can involve God rescuing an individual and Israel now, in the future, and beyond death.
Salvation entails both a negative aspect (salvation from) and a positive aspect (salvation for). Positively and negatively, the word overcomes artificial dichotomies that have entered Christian ethical discourse from the early modern period on. Negatively, God saves from evil, personal and social; from suffering, individual and political; from death—even in its midst. Positively, salvation is both present and eternal; both within suffering and ultimately the cessation of suffering; both personal and communal; both deliverance and forgiveness from the past and healing and purity in the present and future. The negative and the positive characteristics of “salvation” set those “saved” apart from the perpetuators of sin, violence, death, and oppression within creation and in eternity. The concept thus is closely related to “sanctification” and “holiness” in the Christian Scriptures.
Salvation in the Christian Scriptures requires a eudaemonistic ethic—a concern for human deliverance leads to subsequent flourishing. Humans may flourish in the present, even amid suffering, but always look to an eschatological end that exceeds the suffering of “this age.” The hinge for this flourishing, present and future, is Jesus Christ, who himself is God’s salvation. Jesus defines the nature of the flourishing of human life on the other side of deliverance in his resurrection.
See also Eschatology and Ethics; Happiness; Liberation; Sanctification
Bibliography
Childs, B. “The Canonical Shape of the Prophetic Literature.” Int 32 (1978): 46—55; Dunn, J. D. G. New Testament Theology: An Introduction. Abingdon, 2009; Schaper, J. Eschatology in the Greek Psalter. WUNT 2/76. Mohr Siebeck, 1995; van der Watt, J., ed. Salvation in the New Testament: Perspectives on Soteriology. NovTSup 121. Brill, 2005; Westermann, C. Prophetic Oracles of Salvation in the Old Testament. Trans. K. Crim. Westminster John Knox, 1987.
John W. Wright
The books of Samuel were one book in the ancient Hebrew manuscripts, and they narrate the stories that move Israel from a loose tribal association to a small monarchy in the eleventh century BCE. Modern scholars understand these books as part of a larger edited narrative that tells Israel’s story from entry into the land of Canaan to the destruction of Jerusalem and the start of the Babylonian exile in 587 BCE—that is, the books of Joshua through 2 Kings (excluding Ruth, which was placed after Judges in later Bibles). This narrative is edited together from multiple sources to form a continuous narrative. The process for this was complex and its description disputed, but almost all agree that some materials date close to the events of the period described, and that the process of editing and collecting was completed by editorial comments and shaping from a Deu-teronomistic editor responsible for the final collection from Joshua to 2 Kings seeking to explain and interpret the end of Israel’s history in exile.
The books of Samuel open in a time of internal and external crisis in Israel. The closing stories and final verse of the book of Judges suggest a situation of moral anarchy, as “there was no king in Israel” (Judg. 21:25). This is compounded by a story at the beginning of 1 Samuel that tells of corruption in the house of Eli, who with his impious sons served as priests for the sanctuary of the ark of the covenant in Shiloh (1 Sam. 2:11-17). The internal moral crisis is related to a crisis of leadership, and the birth of the prophet Samuel and the song of his mother, Hannah (1 Sam. 1:1-2:10), suggest that God is at work to answer the central question of the books of Samuel: “Who will lead Israel?”
The internal crisis is matched by an external threat in the form of the Philistines, Israel’s aggressive and militaristic neighbors on their southern coast. This becomes a crisis threatening Israel’s extinction when the Philistines invade Israelite territory, capture the ark, and occupy all of Israel’s territory west of the Jordan River (1 Sam. 4-6). Such a threat is a factor behind the elders’ demand for Samuel to “appoint for us . . . a king to govern us, like other nations” (1 Sam. 8:5) and the call and anointing of Saul to lead Israel against the Philistines (1 Sam. 9-10).
The remainder of 1-2 Samuel is dominated by three major figures whose stories are intertwined and overlapping: Samuel, the prophet who anointed the first two kings of Israel; Saul, Israel’s first king, whose story ends in a tragic suicide; and David, Israel’s second king, described as the “man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14) who later betrays his own promise by committing adultery and murder to satisfy his own desire (2 Sam. 11). Especially in 1 Samuel some stories seem to reflect a negative attitude toward kingship as a sinful rejection of God’s rule, while other stories see kingship as the gift of God, probably reflecting the existence of a similar tension when kingship began for Israel.
The books of Samuel, like other narrative traditions in the OT, have not often been treated as material with significant theological or ethical importance. More attention has been paid to material with overt moral content, particularly if it addresses the norms of moral conduct. The books of Samuel usually are treated simply as historical narration of an important period of events establishing kingship in ancient Israel, and discussion often focuses on the reliability of its testimony.
The stories of 1-2 Samuel are actually better treated as historically realistic narrative with an intense theological testimony to God’s providence as the true source of power in a transformative period of Israel’s life. These narratives are not dispassionate history writing, but neither are they the saga-like narratives of the Pentateuch, where God is likely to appear and act as an overt character in the story. In the books of Samuel divine providence operates through human events and personalities, but the narration makes it quite clear that God is at work in and through the characters and events of the stories (see, e.g., 2 Sam. 5:10; 11:27b).
Several themes with theological and ethical significance can be identified in the books of Samuel:
1. In the course of transformative events in ancient Israel, God is at work subverting the usual arrangements of human power. Hannah’s song at the beginning of the narrative (1 Sam. 2:1-10) and David’s song at the end (2 Sam. 22:2-51) witness to God as one who overturns the world’s customary power arrangements. God can allow the ark of the covenant to be captured by the Philistines and yet bring them low through the “hand of the Lord” without any human agency (1 Sam. 4-6). God can look on the heart and choose an eighth son, just a boy (1 Sam. 16:1-13), to become Israel’s greatest king and the “man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14), yet who later will be confronted and judged by God’s prophet (2 Sam. 12:1-15).
2. The nature of leadership of God’s people requires more than personal charisma and human skill. Both Saul and David are legitimized not through their own power and authority or by the recognition of their abilities by the people. They are anointed by God’s prophet and receive the indwelling of God’s spirit as a result (1 Sam. 10:1-8; 16:13), so that even their achievements are understood in the narrative as manifestations of the power of God’s spirit. That recognition of God’s providential working through events is more crucial than human skill or power is clear in David’s own statement during his retreat from Jerusalem during Absalom’s rebellion: “If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back” (2 Sam. 15:25).
3. There is a moral valuation attached to the contrast in the stories of the books of Samuel between the ability to receive power as God’s gift and the exercise of power as a matter of grasping for oneself. David’s early story shows a man of prayer constantly grateful for the providential gifts of God (1 Sam. 16-2 Sam. 10), but tragic consequences result from his use of power to grasp the objects of his own desire by taking Bathsheba and murdering her husband, Uriah (2 Sam. 11-18). Saul comes to his tragic end largely because he, constantly pursuing his own desire to control events, falls victim to his inability to trust what God is doing. His own anger, envy, and violence are his undoing (see 1 Sam. 18).
The books of Samuel are not occupied with the ethics of conduct made explicit through commandment, law, or admonition. The expression of divine will is not overt and direct. The narratives of Samuel are reflective of an ethics of character, which focuses on the working of divine providence in partnership with the workings of personality and power. We experience the successes and failures of moral character in these appealing and all-too-human characters and come away wiser in our efforts to perceive the workings of God’s providence in our own lives.
See also Deuteronomistic History; Old Testament Ethics Bibliography
Birch, B. “The First and Second Books of Samuel.” Pages 947-1383 in vol. 2 of The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. L. Keck. Abingdon, 1998; idem. Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life. Westminster John Knox, 1991, pp. 198-239; Brueggemann, W. David’s Truth in Israel’s Imagination and Memory. Fortress, 1985; idem. Power, Providence, and Personality: Biblical Insight into Life and Ministry. Westminster John Knox, 1990.
Bruce C. Birch
The concept of sanctification brings together a constellation of terms in the Bible originating in the Hebrew root qds and the Greek word hagios. English versions translate these terms with words having Latin (sanct-) or Germanic (holi-) roots. The basic meaning is “to set apart.” The NT presupposes the use of “holiness” or “sanctification” in the OT. As Hannah Harrington observes, “Christianity owes to its Jewish parent its strong emphasis on ethical goodness as a component of holiness, its imitation of the divine model for the acquisition of holiness, and its dependence on the divine word as a guide for becoming holy” (205-6).
The first instance of qodes/hagios in the Bible appears in the book of Exodus. The “holy ground” from which God summons Moses (3:5) becomes the site of God’s call to deliver Israel (3:7-10). Before the Passover, God tells Moses to convoke a “holy” (NRSV: “solemn”) assembly (12:16) as a “day of remembrance” (12:14). Likewise, Israel must “sanctify” (NRSV: “consecrate”) their firstborn to God (13:2, 12) as a visible remembrance of God’s deliverance. Sabbath, the seventh day, is “sanctified” in the wilderness (16:23) to remember the original order of God’s good creation (see also 20:8). Sanctification becomes a means of remembrance.
The center of the sanctification of Israel comes in the covenant and the law (Exod. 19:1-24:18). God says, “If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (19:5-6). The law is to set Israel apart from the nations as a witness to the God of Israel. Israel’s sanctification becomes the goal of the law as the law becomes the means to exhibit Israel’s God to the world.
Israel’s sanctification requires a sanctified space, the tabernacle (Exod. 25-31; 35-39). The tabernacle itself has gradations of holiness, sanctified spaces within the sanctified space (26:33). At the very center is “the mercy seat on the ark of the covenant” (26:34). Physical barriers set the tabernacle apart. To enter it, one must wear holy clothing, and those who can wear such clothing are priests (28:3-4, 36, 40-43). The altar itself, upon which the priests cook the sacrificial meat, becomes set apart (29:37). God takes what humans set apart in obedience to the divine command and completes its sanctification with his own glory so that “they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them; I am the Lord their God” (29:44-46; cf. 40:34-38).
The book of Leviticus describes the goods that pass into and through the tabernacle. Only parts of sacrifices reserved for compensation for the priests (see 2:2-3, 10; 6:14-18; 7:1-6) and special donations (22:2-4, 6-7, 9-10, 12, 14, 15-16, 32) are “holy.” The priests are commanded to “distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean” (10:10); they must remain visibly set apart (see 21:6, 7, 8, 12, 15, 22, 23). Unclean and clean fall within a system of ensuring that the space remains functional as “set apart.”
Leviticus further shows how Israel is also set apart for God through observing commandments involving diet, Sabbath observance, eating sacrifices as prescribed, caring for the poor, and sexual practices (see chaps. 11; 19-20, especially 11:44-45; 19:2, 8, 24, 30; 20:7-8). Participation in particular festivals and economics sanctifies Israel as well (see 23:2-4, 7-8, 20-21,24, 27, 35-37; 25:5, 10, 12). The people of Israel must consecrate themselves to their God. As they do, God sanctifies them in their difference from the world to show his glory: “You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine” (20:26).
God prohibits Moses and Aaron from entering the promised land because of their refusal to sustain God’s holiness in the wilderness (see Num. 20:12; 27:14). Deuteronomy 14:2 makes explicit what has been implicit previously in the Torah, that God’s election of Israel is their sanctification: “You are a people holy to the Lord your God; it is you the Lord has chosen out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (see also 7:6; 26:19). The struggle of Israel to be holy as their God is holy (see Josh. 24:19) dominates the narrative that follows until Judah loses their land (see 2 Kgs. 25). Israel’s sanctification remains commanded but unfulfilled.
The OT prophetic books, particularly Isaiah and Ezekiel, thicken the moral content and hope for the future sanctification of Israel. In the book of Isaiah, the God of Israel, the Holy One, “shows himself holy by righteousness” (5:16). Following God’s judgment on Judah, the book speaks of a “Holy Way” “for God’s people” to “come to Zion with singing” (Isa. 35:8, 10). Within the narrative structure of the book, God opens this Holy Way to a promised future Zion (chaps. 60-62). In this new Jerusalem Israel will be called “The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord” (62:12). After judgment, the Holy One of Israel leads the elect from exile through a Holy Way to an eschatological end in which they finally are made a “Holy People”
(cf. Exod. 19:6).
The book of Ezekiel has a similar underlying narrative. Following exile from the land, Ezekiel looks to the future for Israel’s sanctification. God declares that he has been the sanctified space, “a sanctuary to them for a little while in the countries where they have gone” from which God will regather them (11:16-17). God will gather them on his “holy mountain,” promising, “I will manifest my holiness among you in the sight of the nations” (20:40-41; see also 28:25). God tells Israel that he will display his holiness through sprinkling “clean water upon you, and you shall be clean. . . . A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you. . . . I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (36:23-27). This future is imaged through a future temple (chaps. 40-48) where Israel may participate in the sacrifices “and so communicate holiness to the people” (46:20). God will manifest his holiness through restoring the elect within a new temple.
The OT presents the sanctification of Israel as an unfinished but future task. The prophets look to a future in which Israel might be holy as their God is holy. This underlying narrative sets the stage for the use of sanctification in the NT.
In the Gospels Jesus is identified as “the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34; John 6:69), and he teaches his disciples to pray to God, “Hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9; Luke 11:2). In John 17 Jesus prays that the Father will sanctify Jesus’ followers “in truth; your word is truth” (v. 17). The sanctification of the believers depends upon Jesus sanctifying himself (v. 19), a reference to Jesus’ voluntary death. Sanctification sets the disciples apart from the world to sustain their witness in unity as they are sent into the world (v. 18). Their sanctification arises from their participation in the love shared between the Father and the Son that sets the believers apart from the world for the sake of the world (vv. 21, 23).
The Pauline epistles, Hebrews, and 1 Peter provide the center of the NT’s teaching on sanctification. Frank Matera observes, “The Pauline tradition portrays the church as a sanctified community, the body of Christ, the temple of God because it begins with Christ’s redemptive death and resurrection. . . . For those who have been redeemed live in a sanctified community as they wait for the coming of their Lord” (448). All believers are in one sense already “sanctified” as they are baptized “into Christ Jesus” (see Rom. 6:3), so Paul addresses his letters to the “the saints.” Yet, believers are to become what they have already been made through their own consecration: “Present your members as slaves of righteousness for sanctification” (Rom. 6:19; see also 6:22). Paul exhorts believers to an ethical distinctiveness as “set apart,” much as the tabernacle was kept set apart as “pure”: “Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1; see also 1 Cor. 3:17). Just as the tabernacle possessed degrees of holiness, so does the life of believers, who participate in God’s holiness in Jesus Christ, “who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). The sanctified life has a final end: “May [the Lord] so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (1 Thess. 3:13). “Entire sanctification” prepares the believer to be kept “sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23). As with the tabernacle, sanctification is completed by God, who takes the human consecration and fulfills it: “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this” (1 Thess. 5:24).
Later Pauline Epistles develop Paul’s thought. Ephesians extends the call to holiness into the very eternal plan of God for human beings: “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love” (1:3-4). Christ becomes the temple: “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (2:21-22).
Hebrews likewise describes sanctification in OT imagery. Jesus becomes the high priest who sanctifies others (see 9:1-23): “The one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father” (2:11). As the sacrifice himself, Jesus sanctifies those who participate in him: “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (10:14; see also 13:12). Nonetheless, the sanctification of believers is not necessarily complete. Discipline comes so that “we may share his holiness” (12:10). The “apartness” that arises from participation in Christ again has an eschatological end: “Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (12:14).
The Letter of 1 Peter interprets the beginning of the Sinai narrative, at Exod. 19:5-6, to develop its concept of sanctification. Sanctification comes in fulfillment of God’s purpose in the giving of Torah through Christ: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (2:9). The Christian life forms desires profoundly different from the society around them: “Do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’ ” (1:14-16). To accomplish this end, the letter exhorts believers, “In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord” (3:15).
Sanctification requires a “set apartness” from the “the nations” or “the world.” Sanctification names the fulfillment of the divine law in the formation of the church and its particular members—those who live the fullness of God’s deliverance from the evil and sinfulness of the world in preparation for participation in the eschatological end of all things in God. Ultimately centered in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, sanctification names the process and the result of how the triune God moves the saints to their eschatological end; it characterizes the subsequent visible witness of the body of Christ in its moral and political difference from the nations, for the sake of the nations. Participation in the love that names the eternal unity between the Father and the Son, sanctification names the work of the Holy Spirit that cleanses the human life from sin and refills it with this love. Ethically, sanctification speaks of the reforming of the church’s and the believer’s desires from that given by the sinfulness of the world to that which God intended for human beings in their creation. The “sanctified difference” that results from this process ultimately takes on a Christoform shape in the believer, the true end of human life, but lives that look very different from the virtues, character, and practices of “the world.”
See also Holiness; Salvation Bibliography
Harrington, H. Holiness: Rabbinic Judaism and the Graeco-Roman World. RFCC. Routledge, 2001; Matera, F.
New Testament Theology: Exploring Diversity and Unity. Westminster John Knox, 2007.
John W. Wright
To speak of the sanctity of human life is to assert that all human lives are equally precious to God and are to be respected as such. As the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain often pointed out, the sanctity and rights of human life ultimately rest in the fact that Christ became incarnate as a human creature, not as some other sort of creature. The doctrine of the incarnation involves God taking on human flesh in the person of Christ. Karl Barth wrote, “The respect of life which becomes a command in the recognition of the union of God with humanity in Jesus Christ has an incomparable power and width” (Barth 339). God became human and, in doing so, affirmed human life as unconditionally special and worthy of the gift of eternal life.
In addition to the incarnation, the sanctity of life has roots in Gen. 1:26-27, where human beings are described as created in the image of God to take caring dominion over other species. Being in the divine image, human life is to be especially protected (Gen. 9:6), and justice for the poor is required. Human beings are to be respected simply by virtue of being members of the human species and enjoying the special blessing of God.
The doctrine of the sanctity of life is grounded also in the idea of a human “soul” or “point of contact” between the human and God such that a unique relational reality exists that other species do not have. To our knowledge, nonhuman species do not pray.
Finally, the Christian tradition understands “pro-creation” as a participation in divine creation, whereby as humans we are involved in the creative action of God. “Pro-creation” is a very different concept than “re-production,” for the former implies higher theological purpose in life’s biological creation, whereas the latter is entirely secular and devoid of higher meaning. From the very beginning, a human life is deemed a part of divine creative action and, as such, is loved by God.
Human dignity is based in the prior assertion of the sanctity of life, and from this flow the ideals of rights and justice that define Western civilization. There is a dignity, significance, and sacredness that sets human life apart from other biological life and that warrants its special protection regardless of circumstance or condition. The Christian tradition has built its robust practice of civilization and moral decency on this lofty view of human worth;
as this view has deteriorated, the destruction of human life has become trivialized. In response, Christian thinkers have exhorted a “consistent ethics of life” that precludes abortion, infanticide, mercy killing, suicide, capital punishment, and the destruction of human lives generally, with the exception of carefully justified war.
Protestant ethicist Paul Ramsey extrapolated from the idea of the sanctity of life his classic arguments against the neglect of imperiled infants born with cognitive disabilities. Famously, Helen Prejean has extended the sanctity of life to arguments against execution; Jean Vanier has distinguished himself in the founding of L’Arche, a faith-based international program for the care of persons with developmental cognitive deficits. Quaker concerns with the fate of the mentally ill undergirded the emergence of compassionate and “moral treatment” in the 1820s (Tomes). Christian interest in persons with dementia has resulted in assisted-living reforms to humanize and dignify the lives of the deeply forgetful (Post). Concerns with economic justice, global poverty, AIDS prevention and treatment, access to healthcare, and adoption as an alternative to abortion are extrapolations from the bedrock principle that every human life has a special significance against the background of divine love, creation, and incarnation.
The Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant attempted to base human dignity on rational autonomy, but this foundation fails to protect those in whom rationality has faded or developed only in small part. The idea of the sanctity of life has been challenged by philosopher Peter Singer, who denounces it as a form of “speciesism.” As a result, Singer sanctions abortion, mercy killing, killing of the elderly, and infanticide, as long as these practices are carried out without causing pain. In the final analysis, his failure to appreciate the depth of the idea of the sanctity of life rests on metaphysical assumptions.
Some critics have attacked the idea of the sanctity of life on the grounds that proponents espouse a medical vitalism in which every possible means must be used to extend the lives of the terminally ill. In general, however, the ethic of the sanctity of life has included profound appreciation for hospice and options for palliative care as well as for distinctions between ordinary and extraordinary care. As Barth asserted, the sanctity of life does not make life “a second God.”
In the absence of a robust sense of the sanctity of life, civilization cannot thrive. The secular alternatives neither adequately protect life nor commit us to its flourishing. Increasingly, the perennial idea of the sanctity of life, which has given to the world much of its moral progress, becomes more plausible as wanton violence has become routine and casual.
See also Abortion; Capital Punishment; Dementia; Disability and Handicap; Euthanasia; Healthcare Ethics; Humanity; Human Rights; Image of God; Incarnation; Killing; Suicide; War
Bibliography
Barth, K. Church Dogmatics. Vol. III/4. T&T Clark, 1961; Post, S. The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer Disease: Ethical Issues from Diagnosis to Dying. 2nd ed. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000; Ramsey, P. Ethics at the Edges of Life: Medical and Legal Intersections. Yale University Press, 1978; Singer, P. Writings on an Ethical Life. Ecco Press, 2000; Tomes, N. The Art of Asylum-Keeping: Thomas Kirkbride and the Origins of American Psychiatry. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994; Vanier, J. Becoming Human. Paulist Press, 1998.
Stephen Post
Attending to the Scriptures
While the English word sanctuary can refer either to a sacred space or to a place of refuge, the Hebrew terms (qodes, miqdas) designated the temple, where some aspect of God “dwells” among the Israelites. Because of God’s presence, human action in the temple was regulated according to purity stipulations.
Temple architecture demarcated spheres of holiness. In the holy of holies and the courtyard that immediately surrounded it only the best materials could be used, and only certain priests could officiate. Nonpriests used outer courtyards, where the materials could be less “pure.” All human participants in ritual had to be purified as well. One thing that contaminated a person was contact with a corpse (Num. 19:11-22). Because of this, slaying a person within a temple precinct was forbidden.
Priests maintained the purity of a sacred precinct by serving as judges of purity cases. Deuteronomy 17 assigns judicial duties to Levites, and Exod. 28 describes the use of the ephod in judicial decisions. Priests had the authority to kill anyone who attempted desecration of the sanctuary and to conduct trials decided by ordeal. They were also authorized to protect innocent people by providing them sanctuary or safety. In that way, the sacred space became also a place of refuge. In 1 Kgs. 1:50-53 we read of Adonijah’s attempt to find safety within a sacred area until he has been rightfully judged (see also 1 Kgs. 2:28-34).
Biblical law, moreover, required the creation of cities run by Levitical priests that served as sites of refuge (see Exod. 21:13; Num. 35:9-15; Deut. 4:41-43; 19:1-13). There were six of these “cities of refuge,” three on each side of the Jordan River. If the elders decided that the accused was innocent or that a death was accidental, the priests would protect the accused until the death of the high priest. This refuge was available not only for Israelites but also for resident aliens.
Although there is no mention of sanctuary as refuge in the NT, it was practiced in both ancient Greece and Rome. Within the postbiblical period, evidence of sanctuary first appears in the Edict of Toleration (313 CE), which identified certain churches as exercising legitimate sanctuary. These churches followed biblical principles: sanctuary lasted until due process could be carried out. The Justinian version of sanctuary (535 CE) notes that its purpose was to protect the security of the victims of injustice, and it often was used to protect people in the lower classes. It was applicable only for certain crimes, although in England in the early Middle Ages churches did have the right to grant mercy from execution to the guilty through restitution and penance. As time progressed, however, the right of sanctuary became increasingly limited until it was abolished by James I in 1625.
The Sanctuary Movement
The call for sanctuary was renewed by churches in the 1980s with the birth of the Sanctuary Movement. This movement combines the concept of sanctuary with the biblical teachings on the treatment of resident aliens and strangers. The OT offered significant legal protection for resident aliens. Although this practice of protection is found in other ancient Near Eastern law codes, the laws in the Pentateuch suggest that ancient Israel was more benevolent toward this social group. One of the clearest and most comprehensive statements protecting resident aliens is Lev. 19:33-34.
Although the NT does not mention sanctuary, some texts do focus on the treatment of “strangers.” In Matt. 25:34-46 final judgment is based in part on how one has treated the stranger. Here the stranger, who needs shelter and safety, is associated with the hungry and thirsty—that is, those lacking basic human necessities. This stranger is someone with no local social ties and therefore particularly vulnerable to victimization. The parable of the good Samaritan features someone helping one such stranger (Luke 10:30-37).
Members of the Sanctuary Movement used these biblical texts in defense of their illegal offer of shelter to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala.
The Sanctuary Movement began formally in 1982 when several churches formed an underground railroad for these refugees. Under President Ronald Reagan, the United States, which provided military support to the ruling party in El Salvador, did not recognize these people as political refugees. Churches that opposed this policy offered asylum until such time as due process could be restored in their homelands. They argued that God’s law, the command to offer sanctuary to the innocent and provide shelter to vulnerable strangers, outweighed civil law.
In the United States a number of people assisting in these efforts were arrested and convicted. In Latin America Christians acting on behalf of political prisoners were killed. Eventually these regimes fell, and the Sanctuary Movement receded into the background.
Churches have remained involved in immigration issues in this country. The New Sanctuary Movement asserts that the global economy renders countries such as the United States responsible for the economic injustice that compels many people to flee their homelands. Groups working in the New Sanctuary Movement aid illegal immigrants by leaving food and water in the deserts through which many enter the United States. They do so as a way to fulfill the biblical proscription to feed the hungry, provide water for the thirsty, and shelter the stranger.
See also Aliens, Immigration, and Refugees; Hospitality Bibliography
Coutin, S. The Culture of Protest: Religious Activism and the U.S. Sanctuary Movement. Westview, 1993; Crittenden, A. Sanctuary: A Story of American Conscience and the Law in Collision. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988; Cunningham, H. God and Caesar at the Rio Grande: Sanctuary and the Politics of Religion. University of Minnesota Press, 1995; Golden, R., and M. McConnell. Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad. Orbis, 1986; MacEoin, G., ed. Sanctuary: A Resource Guide for Understanding and Participating in the Central American Refugees’ Struggle. Harper & Row, 1985.
Corrine Carvalho
The Relations between Science and Ethics
The word science is understood in various ways. Science is broadly defined as a systematic body of knowledge. In that spirit, during medieval times theology was called the “queen of the sciences” because major thinkers, especially Thomas Aquinas, integrated revelation and natural reason to provide comprehensive accounts of the nature and being of God, relations between God and his creatures (including angels, humans, and animals), and between God and the world at large. Since the time of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, science is now understood in a more specific and more limited fashion. It refers to the systematic study of natural phenomena via rational empirical methods. More pointedly, it also refers to particular branches of such specialized knowledge, wherein the exploration of empirical phenomena leads to replicable and predictive generalizations according to basic principles and covering laws. In many fields of science, such principles and laws are rigorously formulated in mathematical terms. Thus, physics and chemistry are often viewed as “hard” sciences, while other fields, especially some social sciences, may be viewed as “softer” to the degree that they resist mathematical exposition. Moreover, in contrast to classical and medieval conceptions of science, modern science is characterized by a methodological reductionism: more complex natural phenomena are most appropriately explained in terms of underlying more basic components, processes, or mechanisms. The movement from a classical, primarily Aristotelian science to the modern scientific perspective, therefore, reflects a fundamental shift from a broadly teleological approach that focuses on an appeal to the final ends or purposes of entities to a perspective that views the world largely in mechanistic terms (Dijksterhuis). And although much recent discussion in the life sciences and in ecology eschews efforts to reduce biology, without remainder, to the laws of physics and chemistry that underlie the emergence of life, earlier metaphysical notions of teleology have not been reintroduced.
Ethics is defined as a systematic reflection on morality. Although the terms morality and ethics are often used synonymously, the latter is a more restrictive term: morality designates first-order experiences of moral choice and action, while ethics is a second-order reflection on the moral reasoning that informs and justifies such choices and behaviors. There are several types of ethics. Metaethics analyzes the status of moral terms—for example, the meanings of right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and obligation. Descriptive ethics, often done by anthropologists and ethnographers, provides accounts of the moralities of different communities and cultures in order to identify moral diversity or commonality, often depending on the predilections of the observer. Normative ethics focuses on the moral norms that should guide our moral choices and actions. In contrast to descriptive ethics, normative ethics is prescriptive in its intent; it seeks to justify particular moral choices and actions, often in situations of ambiguity or conflict. The issues raised by considerations of science and ethics generally fall within the domain of normative ethics.
The relations between science and ethics are best assessed by considering the epistemic warrants for scientific activity, as well as possible constraints on it. During much of the twentieth century, claims were made that science, as a rational activity that seeks to discover and systematize facts about natural phenomena, is entirely (or nearly) “value free,” and that normative issues arise not with science itself but only with the technological applications of scientific knowledge. That stance held sway for several decades among scientists themselves, among philosophers known as positivists, and to significant extent among the public at large. Nonetheless, the insufficiencies of positivism have become clear over time. As its central tenet, positivism limited valid knowledge to the findings of logic and to claims that could in principle be scientifically verified. But it became evident, especially with the influence of the later Wittgenstein (see his Philosophical Investigations), that there are existential forms of justified belief (i.e., knowledge) that are warranted on extrascientific grounds, and that scientific knowledge is only one avenue for experiencing the world. For example, there are forms of experience and humanistic reflection upon them that, while unscientific, are nonetheless meaningful and appropriate objects of knowledge. Moreover, science itself cannot claim to be value-neutral. Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pointed out the inevitable contextuality of scientific paradigms and the importance of social and psychological factors in the acceptance of new theories. Others have noted that the scientific method necessarily presupposes certain epistemic norms about the forms and sources of knowledge to which it accords legitimacy (e.g., Rollin). Moreover, the technological applications of scientific research are inherently ethical. Given their size and scale, many modern technologies are necessarily the objects of societal deliberation and collective funding, and virtually all such technologies (e.g., nuclear energy, genetic engineering, nanotechnology) offer both benefits and risks that require careful ethical assessment.
Science and Ethics in a Theological Context In the Christian tradition, the fundamental theological warrants for science as an appropriate activity are twofold: God is the creator of the world
and humankind, and we are made in God’s image and likeness. The meanings associated with humans as imagers of God in the Christian tradition include capacities that in some respects mirror the attributes ascribed to God and at the same time reflect our distinct status in the created order. Central to these interpretations are two dominant strands: our rationality as self-conscious and free creatures, and our dominion over creation. Both emphases provide the warrant for science as an activity to explore the created world, as well as to derive appropriate benefits from dominion over the world and its resources. But both emphases are also problematic. Rationality is not, in the first instance, the mere capacity to reason about means to any and all ends. Theologically, judgments about appropriate means require a prior acceptance of, and reasoning about, God’s creative and sustaining purposes, which provide the general framework for particular moral judgments, including judgments about science and technology. And the concept of dominion is often misconstrued as the exercise of mastery or control, whereby nature is reduced to the merely manipulable object of human desire. As recent discussions in ecotheology remind us, the value of nature, though not independent of human agency and judgment, is not thereby reducible to its instrumental use by humans. Instead, a rational sense of dominion will include an appreciation and affirmation of the integrity of all creation, which maintains its own “goodness” as an aspect of God’s creating and sustaining will.
Within an expressly theological context, science emerges as our rational inquiry into the patterns of God’s order, as well as our partnership with God as stewards and cultivators of the natural world. One finds, classically in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and notably in the writings of believing scientists since the time of the seventeenth century, a strong affirmation of what has come to be called the “Two Books” tradition about the sources of our knowledge of God (Barbour). In Scripture, the first book, God provides, through the history of Israel and the coming of Christ, God’s self-revelation as Father, Son, and Spirit. Nature, the second book, also provides its own witness to the patterns of God’s creative, ordering, and sustaining will as revealed in nature and its regularities. This natural knowledge of God, available to all persons of goodwill, is a central theme of Jewish wisdom literature and is also fundamental to Paul’s judgment about the universal moral accountability of all humans (see Rom. 1). Preeminently in the Scholastic tradition, Thomas Aquinas spoke of certain naturally available facts about the world that bespeak God as creator and orderer as “preambles” to faith, accessible to all persons by the light of natural reason (ST I, q. 2,
a. 2).
Theologically construed, the relations between science and ethics pose several concerns. First, the warrants for science as a rational inquiry into nature, including human nature, necessarily raise prior questions about “created nature” itself. What is the status of nature as the handiwork of God? What are the connections between nature as currently “given” and God’s original purposes in creation? What have been the effects of sin on the natural order and, perhaps more crucially, on the efficacy and appropriateness of human rationality in exploring that order? Second, what are the scriptural warrants for, and limits on, human responsibility in exploring and controlling created nature when analyzed according to the broad norms of conservation, stewardship, and created cocreation? Third, of what relevance are various metaphors, especially that of “playing God,” to debates about human interventions into and alterations of the created order? Finally, what areas of current and prospective scientific and technological exploration raise specific ethical concerns within a theological framework of interpretation and assessment?
The Status of Created Nature It is inaccurate to speak of a univocal Christian perspective on the warrants for, and limits on, the scientific study of nature and the appropriate applications of technology, since a range of perspectives and assessments can be identified both within and across various traditions. At the same time, several shared Christian emphases serve to distinguish these perspectives, writ large, from secular approaches. That general distinctiveness is hardly surprising; one would expect that the idea of created nature, interpreted in light of God’s purposes, would transform nonreligious accounts of nature as an independent domain, with possible implications for judgments about the appropriateness of particular scientific and technological pursuits.
Consider the range of Christian perspectives on created nature, with implications for the legitimacy of particular scientific and technological pursuits. Nature may be viewed as intrinsically valuable (“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” [Gen. 1:31]). This perspective situates humans as stewards of creation, according to God’s initial purposes. At the same time, nature may also be seen as fundamentally disordered as the result of sin. In light of the deleterious effects of the fall on both external nature and human reason, this emphasis may reinforce the importance of humility and caution in dealing with nature.
Alternatively, accounts that view nature as a relatively trustworthy source of insight may emphasize the appropriateness of human beings responsibly working as partners with God’s good purposes. For example, in traditional Roman Catholic moral theology, reasoning about the appropriate pursuit of human goods establishes a set of natural law-based duties. Catholic perspectives are often judged to be conservative because natural tendencies and forms of human flourishing have traditionally been interpreted in relatively static fashion. However, a number of recent Catholic discussions have proceeded in more historicist terms, with an emphasis on the dynamics of human responsibility in an evolutionary universe (e.g., Fitzgerald).
In historical contrast to the traditionally positive appraisal of nature in the Roman Catholic tradition, classical Protestant thought has been less prone to appeal to nature as a source of moral insight because of its disordered character as the result of sin and because of the moral ambiguities that attend human efforts to alter or reconstruct natural givens. This more literally conservative vision emphasizes the need to be responsible stewards of the orders of creation, as well as the likelihood of human hubris in the desire to deny our finitude (e.g., Hanson; Niebuhr). Here, the metaphor of “playing God” is invoked in largely negative fashion as the illegitimate effort of humans to usurp God’s prerogatives by confusing remediable suffering with the conditions of our creaturehood. Such traditional cautions, however, are countered in recent Protestant discussions by an emphasis on a more positive and capacious role for humans in repairing, restoring, and even improving created nature. Some perspectives (Hefner; Peters) emphasize the duties incumbent on human beings as “created cocreators” of the human future with God. From this vantage point, the dialectic between the fall and creation is interpreted in far more optimistic terms, with the emphasis on the goodness of a continuously evolving creation rather than the depravity of the human condition. Here, the metaphor of “playing God” is invoked quite positively as an appropriate celebration of human creativity, which is seen as the primary attribute of humans as imagers of God.
The Art of Technology Assessment There are three broad levels of inquiry at which the effects of technology can be analyzed (McKenny). At a first level, discussion focuses, either currently
or prospectively, on particular devices and techniques. A second level of discourse considers the range of social practices that are altered by the introduction of new technologies. At this level, we are assessing not simply a particular invention or technique, but the ways that its introduction reframes our cultural understandings. At a third level are broad discussions of technology as an entire way of relating to the world. At this level, one finds analyses and, quite often, critiques of technology for its characteristic willingness to reduce the natural world to the malleable object of human mastery. All three levels are of interest to both secular and theological ethical analysis, but the second level is perhaps the most fruitful way to focus the distinctive concerns posed to, and the distinctive contributions offered by, theological perspectives on science, technology, and ethics. At this level, the central normative issues that arise are not simply whether it is appropriate to alter nature or to what extent, but more complex questions about how nature is being altered and toward what end. Thus, ethical judgments about which technologies should be pursued or forgone will invariably be linked to other broad understandings, including perspectives on God’s creative and sustaining purposes, the appropriate relations to be maintained between nonhuman and human nature, the scope of justified human responsibility, and basic issues of justice in the distribution of likely benefits and burdens of new technologies.
Four broad areas of technology have been the subjects of significant recent theological discussion and debate: reproductive technology, somatic-cell nuclear transfer (cloning), developments in genetic therapy and enhancement, and human-machine incorporation technologies (Lustig, Brody, and McKenny). The particulars of these debates are beyond the scope of this article, but a number of theological ethical concerns emerge as common themes in the various discussions. First, the ways that nature is perceived will influence judgments pro or con. Is nature, as a given, linked closely to God’s creative and ordering will, with the subsequent emphasis primarily on conservation or restoration as our duties of stewardship? Alternatively, is nature viewed in more dynamic and open-ended fashion, with a subsequent emphasis on remaking the world as the appropriate expression of human partnership as created cocreators? Second, and obviously linked to the first question, what central themes in Christian anthropology do we bring to bear on our reflections about particular technologies? To what extent has sin affected the natural order, including our own natural capacities to identify and accomplish the good? In light of such judgments, what implications follow concerning our interventions into, and alterations of, the natural world, including the physical basis of our own humanity? Where does the burden of proof lie in decisions about whether to encourage, regulate, or ban certain types of research activity? Finally, as a matter of theological method, how does the Christian tradition best honor the integrity of its own deepest convictions when assessing issues in science and technology? Given its understandings of God’s purposes and of human nature, in a particular case, which of several strategies—pro-phetic resistance, thoughtful accommodation, or creative reinterpretation—emerges as the most appropriate expression of traditional Christian commitments?
See also Artificial Intelligence; Bioethics; Creation Ethics; Ecological Ethics; Humanity; Image of God
Bibliography
Barbour, I. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. Rev. ed. HarperOne, 1997; Cahill, L., ed. Genetics, Theology, and Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Conversation. Crossroad, 2005; Dijksterhuis, E. J. The Mechanization of the World Picture: Pythagoras to Newton. Trans. C. Dikshoorn. Princeton University Press, 1986; Fitzgerald, K. “The Need for a Dynamic and Integrative Vision of the Human for the Ethics of Genetics.” Pages 79—96 in Genetics, Theology, and Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Conversation, ed. L. Cahill. Crossroad, 2005; Hanson, M. “Indulging Anxiety: Human Enhancement from a Protestant Perspective.” ChrBio 5 (1999): 121-38; Hefner, P. The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion. Fortress, 1993; Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. University of Chicago Press, 1996; Lustig, A. “Are Enhancement Technologies ‘Unnatural’? Musings on Recent Christian Conversations.” AJMG 151C (2009): 81-88; Lustig, A., B. Brody, and G. McKenny, eds. Religion, Biotechnology, and Public Policy. Vol. 2 of Altering Nature. PM 98. Springer, 2008; McKenny, G. “Technologies of Desire: Theology, Ethics, and the Enhancement of Human Traits.” ThTo 59 (2002): 90-103; Niebuhr, R. The Nature and Destiny of Man. 2 vols. Prentice-Hall, 1964; Peters, T. Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2003; Rollin, B. Science and Ethics. Cambridge University Press, 2006; Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations. Prentice-Hall, 1973.
B. Andrew Lustig
The complex of definitions surrounding the term security reveals its usefulness, diverse applications, and slipperiness as a term. One can speak of physical security (e.g., freedom from the threat of harm), metaphysical security (comfort in one’s relationship with God), psychological security (self-confidence), political security (the ability of a state to protect its citizens), economic security (freedom from concerns about changes in the market, a deposit that one gives as collateral toward the fulfillment of a pledge), and so on. One can locate security concerns at individual, family, community, nation, state, international, and global levels and apply it to contexts as diverse as military strength, adequate food supplies, the tenure system in higher education, the protection of personal information shared via the internet, systems of economic security for retirees, and the use of home alarm systems to protect property and people. Across all these definitions, levels, and contexts, however, are shared basic connotations about a sense of freedom to pursue one’s purposes and protection from the vicissitudes of life.
Although most of these meanings and contexts are addressed both in Scripture and by Christian ethicists, the primary foci of attention have been national and personal security, in part due to their emphases in the OT and NT, respectively.
National security concerns the ability of a nation to protect itself from both external and internal threats. Those threats can take many forms—for example, famine, disease, political instability, invasion—but nations have tended to focus security concerns on their ability to maintain sovereignty. Painting in the broadest of strokes, we might order the history of national sovereignty as a long age of sequential empires followed by an era of unstable equilibrium in which many states attempted to coexist through balance of power arrangements, which itself has been replaced by projects of collective security in which states band together to ward off the threats of either opposing collectives (as in the Cold War) or nonstate actors. It is a question of current investigation as to whether we are entering yet another era. Spanning a longer period of time and giving special attention to the relation between God and Israel, the OT repeatedly connects national security to national fidelity: when Israel is faithful to its God, it exists as a state; when it pursues its own plans for power and security, it falls. The prototypical example here comes in Proto-Isaiah, in which Israel seeks to maintain its own security by making alliances with surrounding nations against the growing threat of the Assyrian Empire. God sides against Israel for its failure to trust in divine protection, and the result is exile.
Coming together during a time of Roman occupation, the NT radically deemphasizes the importance of national security, building instead a vision of security that can be found only by participation in the kingdom of God. Neither force of arms nor economic power can ensure safety, and in most NT examples such an approach to security is treated not only as a refusal to trust God but also as a failure to understand the transience of this life and the dangers of those who would destroy body and soul. Thus, Matt. 10:28 warns, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell,” and Luke 12:16-21 treats the rich man who builds bigger barns as a fool for not being aware of his own impending death.
As the church came into closer contact with sources of political power, eventually becoming a political power itself with responsibilities for those within and around it, it found itself in the awkward position of attempting to reformulate its thoughts on security in such a way as to maintain consistency with its early teachings while supporting those institutions that promoted security. Never reaching consensus on either the value or the direction of such reformulations, Christians nevertheless have developed a wide-ranging literature that analyzes the importance and limitations of pursuing security, whether of persons or communities, bodies or souls.
Several tensions recur throughout these analyses of security. Are we more secure when we are independent or when we are interdependent? Must we make trade-offs between structures that promote freedom and those that ensure security, and if so, how thoroughgoing must those trade-offs be and what justifies them? Do political manifestations of religion make states less secure, or, given the apparent permanence of religious inclinations in people, does the squelching of such political manifestations have the effect of promoting instability? Given both the inevitability of death and the responsibilities of faithful stewardship, how important ought security be to any of us in the first place?
See also Economic Ethics; Freedom; Government; Property and Possessions
Mark Douglas
Self
At its most basic level, the self is the subject or referent of the English word I, when that word figures in such thoughts as these: “I am not feeling well today” or “I hope we get some rain today.” The human self is, in the first instance, that which is not feeling well and, in the second instance, that which hopes for rain. What is the nature of the self? Is the human self a material being, an immaterial being, or a compound of both? Is the human self the sort of thing that endures or persists through time and change, or is what we think and call the same human self actually a concatenation of many selves bound together by overlapping psychology or consciousness? In the Christian tradition, questions about the nature of the human self include questions not only about its metaphysical nature, whether it is material or immaterial, but also about its origins, purpose, and end, whether the self can survive death, as well as questions about how the human self is related to God and to the rest of nature, and its moral obligations both to other human selves and the natural world more broadly.
The relation of soul and body became a subject of intense theological speculation from the earliest days of the church, and such speculation continues to this day. Marcion of Pontus (c. 84-160), an early thinker who eventually was excommunicated from the church for his views of Scripture and his denial of the incarnation of Christ, posited a stark dualism of soul and body. Marcion’s rejection of the incarnation stemmed largely from his outright contempt for the material world.
Manichaeus of Manes (c. 216-76) described the cosmos as being embroiled in a battle of good and evil, where the good is spiritual and the evil is material. With respect to the human self, Manichaeus viewed the good spiritual soul as being trapped in the evil material body.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430), who went to great lengths to reject the moral dualism of Man-ichaeus (spiritual/immaterial good versus material evil), nevertheless retained a metaphysical dualism of soul and body, as did Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), John Calvin (1509-64), and even, it has been argued, Karl Barth (1886-1965). Although each retained a dualist view of the human self, their “holistic dualism” of “embodied souls or ensouled bodies” differed in important respects from the straightforward dualism of thinkers such as Plato and Rene Descartes, both of whom seem to have identified the human self with an immaterial soul housed in a material body.
Although the majority of Christians and Christian thinkers continues to embrace some form of dualism (for recent book-length defenses of dualism, see Taliaferro; Hasker; Moreland and Rae; Cooper), some are embracing various forms of anthropological physicalism. Among Christian philosophers, Peter van Inwagen, Trenton Merricks, Lynne Baker, and Kevin Corcoran defend views of the human self as a wholly physical object with no nonphysical parts such as an immaterial soul. According to van Inwagen and Merricks, human selves are human animals or physical organisms. What most would identify as the biological body of a human person or self, van Inwagen and Merricks identify as the self itself. Both, however, believe in the Christian doctrine of resurrection of the body, and neither denies that God and the angels are immaterial or nonphysical selves. Lynne Baker and Kevin Corcoran, however, defend a “constitution view” of the human self, according to which the human person or self is a wholly physical object but not the object that is one’s body or organism. According to Baker and Corcoran, the human self is constituted by one’s organism without being identical with that organism.
Among contemporary theologians who defend versions of a “nonreductive physicalism” are Nancey Murphy and Joel Green. Nonreductive physicalists deny the existence of immaterial souls (hence the “physicalism” part in nonreductive physicalism), and the “nonreductive” part refers to a denial that our mental lives can be reduced to, or are wholly and exhaustively, the outworkings of neurochemical discharges inside our heads.
It has been argued that views of the human self that emphasize the centrality of embodiment, whether holistic dualism or nonreductive physical-ism, make more sense of the Christian doctrines of creation, incarnation, and resurrection of the body than do their dualist counterparts, and they can also help to ground Christian moral obligations to steward the earth and its nonhuman inhabitants, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and so on.
Although the metaphysical nature of the human self in Christian theology and philosophical theology has received no small amount of attention, it is the identity, flourishing, and destiny of the human self that receives the most attention and concern in the Scriptures (e.g., Gen. 1-2), as well as in Christian theology itself. In this regard, God is understood as triune, three persons or selves—Fa-ther, Son, and Holy Spirit—in intimate, trinitarian relations. And the scriptural portrait of authentic human selfhood is likewise relational insofar as it consists in a fully embodied life rightly—that is, ethically lived in relation to God, neighbor, and the rest of the terrestrial world. The identity of the human self, therefore, is to be found in relation to God and others, and it is in the context of these embodied relations that humans flourish, both now and forever.
See also Body; Dualism, Anthropological; Humanity; Image of God; Monism, Anthropological
Bibliography
Baker, L. Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. CSP. Cambridge University Press, 2000; Cooper, J. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Eerdmans, 2000; Corcoran, K. Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist
Alternative to the Soul. Baker Academic, 2006; Green, J. Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. Baker Academic, 2008; Hasker, W. The Emergent Self. Cornell University Press, 2001; Merricks, T. Objects and Persons. Oxford University Press, 2003; Moreland, J., and S. Rae. Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics. InterVarsity, 2000; Murphy, N. Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? CIT. Cambridge University Press, 2006; Taliaferro, C. Consciousness and the Mind of God. Cambridge University Press, 2005; van Inwagen, P. Material Beings. Cornell University Press, 1995.
Kevin Corcoran