In the OT and in Judaism, to use the divine name of God in an inappropriate way is blasphemy and is punishable by death (Lev. 24:10-16; m. Sanh. 6.4; 7.5; Philo, Moses 2.203-206). At the base of these ideas about blasphemy lies the command of Exod. 22:28 not to revile God or the leaders he appointed for the nation. In Second Temple Judaism, blasphemy covered a wide range of activity. In the Mishnah, m. Sanh. 7.5 defines a procedure for examining a charge and limits the offense to using the very name of God disrespectfully. Later rabbis debated whether the use of an alternative name qualifies as blasphemy (m. Sebu. 4.13; b. Sebu. 35a; b. Sanh. 55b-57a; 60a). Warnings were issued in such cases, but such usage does not appear, at least in the rabbinic period, to have carried an automatic death sentence.
There are acts of blasphemy. These include the use of substitute titles and a whole range of actions offensive to God. Acts of blasphemy concentrate on idolatry, a show of arrogant disrespect toward God, or the insulting of his chosen leaders.
Often those who blasphemed verbally also acted on their feelings. God manages to judge such offenses. Examples in Jewish exposition are Sisera, against God’s people (Judg. 4:3; Numbers Rab. 10.2); Goliath, against God’s people and worship of Dagon (1 Sam. 17; Josephus, Ant. 6.183); Sennacherib, against God’s power (2 Kgs. 18-19; cf. Isa. 37:6, 23); Belshazzar, disrespect for God’s presence (Dan. 3:29 Q [96]; Josephus, Ant. 10.233, 242); Manasseh, against the Torah (Sipre 112); and Titus, defaming the temple (b. Git 56b; Abot R. Nat. B 7). Acting against the temple is also blasphemous (1 Macc. 2:6; Josephus, Ant. 12.406).
There are a few texts involving Jesus and blasphemy. First, in Mark 2:7 Jesus is charged with blasphemy for forgiving sin. The charge revolves around Jesus directly exercising an exclusively divine prerogative (cf. Exod. 34:7). Here Jesus gives forgiveness without any cultic requirements, an approach pointing to Jesus’ own authority.
In Mark 3:29 Jesus warns about blaspheming the Spirit, as opposed to other sins and blasphemies. Those who blaspheme the Spirit (i.e., deny what God does through Jesus) are guilty of an “eternal sin.”
Finally, in Mark 14:53-65 Jesus is examined by the Jewish leadership, and his reply, appealing to a combination of Ps. 110:1 and Dan. 7:13-14, leads to a charge of blasphemy pronounced by the high priest and approved by the assembly. For them, Jesus’ blasphemy operated at two levels. First, Jesus claimed that he would exercise comprehensive authority from God’s side. Although Judaism might contemplate such a position for a few (1 En. 62; Ezek. Trag. 69-82), the leaders did not think that this Galilean teacher was a candidate. As a result, his remark would have been seen as a self-claim that was an affront to God’s presence. Second, Jesus implicitly attacked the leaders by claiming to be their future judge (or by claiming a vindication by God). They held him in violation of Exod. 22:28, which commands that God’s leaders not be cursed. Jesus’ claim that their authority was nonexistent and that they would be judged represented a total rejection of their authority.
The resurrection was evidence for Jesus in this
difference of opinion.
See also Speech Ethics
Darrell L. Bock
Blessing and cursing are specific forms of performative speech. They enact their words rather than refer to something independent of them. They speak in both the optative and imperative moods, wishing and bestowing either good or evil. The speaker thereby intends a way of acting in addition to revealing an inner disposition (such as anger or love). It is too simple to equate receiving a blessing with reward. In the Bible, blessings often show themselves in material goods (Prov. 10:22). But Israel is subject to God’s blessings and curses only because of Abraham’s antecedent covenant (Deut. 11:26-28; 29:19-20) and the gift of land (Exod. 3:8). In Christian worship, liturgical blessings often follow the people’s offering and God’s return gift in the Eucharist. Every blessing is grace and gift, overflowing with goodness and boundless love.
Acting rightly is a fruit of the blessing to which it is tied. Against the Pelagian heresy (obedience merits a blessing), God’s initiative makes human obedience possible. Furthermore, obeying per se is a blessing activity, even while not exhausting the blessing. This befits the excessiveness of divine goodness. Since blessing is the vehicle of the blessing (performative rather than indicative speech), an ethical act is never a complete blessing on its own, either in its intrinsic rightness or in its effects. The Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-11) are not commands to specific ways of being (meek, poor in spirit), but rather indications of what God’s kingdom is like so that any effects (“they shall see God”) are themselves just as much blessings as are lives characterized by a particular ethic (“pure in heart”). Human blessing of God or of one another is always, respectively, either a gift returned or passed on. David thus blesses God at the gifts offered for building the temple: “Blessed are you, O Lord. . . . For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you” (1 Chr. 29:10, 14).
Cursing should be understood in relation to this, as terminating the reciprocity of blessing’s gift. A curse calls down evil on God or others and refuses to return the initial blessing of life and speech. Since everything created is good (Gen. 1:31), it is not permitted even to curse the devil, who is a creature (Sir. 21:27). And since the purpose of human speech is to adore God (Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 98.9), cursing God is blasphemy. The NT prohibits the cursing of enemies (Rom. 12:14), to whom God’s love has been reasserted in Christ’s abundant blessing to humanity. For Thomas Aquinas, cursing must intend not evil, but good (ST II-II, q. 76, a. 1-2), such as conforming with justice and so, paradoxically, with the logic of blessing. Cursing sin is therefore permitted, as is the cursing of inanimate objects (e.g., Gen. 3:17; Mark 11:14), only insofar as they are used to punish sin and enable larger blessing.
See also Beatitudes; Blasphemy; Enemy, Enemy Love; Speech Ethics
Craig Hovey
The status of the body in Christian ethics has long been an ambivalent and debated one. A stark and hierarchical dualism between body and soul or between flesh and spirit is popularly assumed to provide a sound biblical basis for dealing harshly with the realities of embodiment and physicality. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the reductive materialism of empiricist science would shrink human existence to bodily existence, denying the human being as a spiritual creature in relationship to God. Yet the witness of Scripture in relation to questions about human bodies is far less simple than facile assumptions of dualism or materialism would suggest. Any seeming opposition between body and soul is made problematical by a careful reading of relevant biblical passages and by a biblical theology that recognizes the central importance of the body within the greater narrative of redemption. Many aspects of human life once believed to be purely spiritual are implicated in embodiment, but human life cannot be reduced to physical life in ways that underwrite treating human bodies as machines or commodities. The place of the body in Scripture challenges both hierarchical dualism and simplistic materialism. Both of these challenges entail important moral implications.
Scholars of the OT warn against imposing modern conceptual categories on a text that comes to us from a context very different from our own. The case of the understanding of bodies in the OT is one in which contemporary Westerners may be especially prone to import their own understandings of the body into the biblical text. We should not assume that the Hebrew basar, translated “flesh” or “body,” exists in opposition to or is a problem for nepes, often translated as “soul,” in the way that the body is constructed as burden or prison in opposition to the soul in Western thought. The anthropology of the OT focuses on the whole human being in relationship to God. In the book of Psalms that relationship includes soul and body together. In Ps. 16:9 the “soul rejoices” and the “body also rests secure.” In Ps. 31:9 the supplicant’s grief includes both body and soul. Old Testament regulation of bodily life is an important part of observing the law. Fluids and discharges that are part of being a physical creature are regulated as part of the nation’s obedience to God. This regulation is part of Israel’s identity and often relates to the health and justice of the community as God’s people. Rules about the body reveal the body’s individual and corporate meaning. It is regulated to protect health and to direct people, individually and communally, toward God.
The primary NT referent for the word body is the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus teaches against fearing the death of the body, not because the body is unimportant, but because the greater fear is “him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). The eye, as the lamp of the body, must be healthy lest “the whole body be full of darkness” (Matt. 6:23). The body is “more than clothing” (Matt. 6:25; Luke 12:23), and so the listener ought not to worry about what to wear. This lack of worry is not because the body is unimportant, but because the body has a greater purpose.
In Jesus’ ministry, salvation embraces the body, allowing no separation between physical and spiritual needs. We see this in his mission statements, his ministry of healing, and profoundly in the Last Supper. There is a connection between the ordinary physical body of Jesus of Nazareth and the bread he breaks with his disciples shortly before his death. Christ’s command “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matt. 26:26; cf. Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19) is central to a biblical understanding of the place of the body in Christian ethics.
There is considerable discussion in the literature of the use of the terms soma (“body”) and sarx (“flesh”) in Paul’s letters. There is a consensus, however, that Paul’s understanding of the opposition between flesh and spirit is something very different from the body/soul dualism of Western thought. Paul was a Jew and thus was influenced in his understanding of the human being by the OT perspective. The Pauline sarx can be a value-neutral reference to the stuff of the physical body. Thus, it is often used to refer to the body of Jesus. The Pauline sarx can also be the whole human being under the condition of sin. When Paul speaks of the moral difficulties of life in the flesh, he is not referring to bodily life as such. Instead, he speaks of the whole of human life when it is controlled by sin. “While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (Rom. 7:5). When one comes to the text of Paul’s letters assuming hierarchical body/soul dualism, it is easy to suppose that the problem of flesh is simply that the body is evil, a weight that pulls the human being away from God. Paul does not use sarx in this way.
The great conflict in Paul’s thought is not between the physical and the immaterial. It is not between body and soul. Rather, it is between the human being captive to sin and the human being controlled by the Spirit. Both ways of being human include the body. The Spirit is opposed not to the body but to sin, and “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11). The interesting moral question, then, is not “How can I be freed from my body?” but “What will my body look like when the Spirit gives it life?”
In 1 Cor. 15 the hope for the resurrection body is contrasted to the body as it is now known. The body now is the seed; the resurrection body is that which will grow. It is sown a soma psychikon, raised a soma pneumatikon (1 Cor. 15:44). The NRSV translation of soma psychikon as “physical body” is unfortunate. It underwrites the tendency to assume that Paul is speaking here of body/soul dualism. Many translations instead describe the body that is sown as a “natural body.” The contrast between the present and the resurrection is not between flesh and spirit but between bodies under the condition of sin, directed by the human desire, and the hope to which Paul points his reader, bodies under the leadership of the Spirit. The history of interpretation of this passage has been unrelentingly physical. Against gnostic visions, the hope of the resurrection body has been seen in the Christian tradition as maintaining material continuity with the soma psychikon. The “flesh and blood” that cannot inherit the kingdom (1 Cor. 15:50) is not the physical body but human life under the condition of sin. In 2 Cor. 5:8 Paul says that “we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord,” but this is a statement about the fragility of bodily life under sin and the dominion of death. Again, the “earthly tent” is the body under sin, not physicality itself. “For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:4). The force of the interpretive tradition brings together 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 5 to claim a hope that the material stuff of the body will be changed but also will be in continuity with materiality as it is now known.
The body is for God. It is “not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor. 6:13). What follows is vital. The resurrection of the Lord is tied to the resurrection of humans in general, and for this reason, the life of the body takes on tremendous moral significance. The bodies of the Corinthians are “members of
Christ” (1 Cor. 6:15). Union with a prostitute resuits in becoming “one body with her,” and union with the Lord results in becoming “one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:16-17). There is something mystical at work here. The violation involved in fornication is anything but trivial. It involves sin “against the body itself” (1 Cor. 6:18), the body that is “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19). Holiness includes both body and spirit (1 Cor. 7:34). A key locus for a biblical ethics of the body might be 1 Cor. 6:20: “For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”
In formulating a biblical ethics of the body, we must understand that individual bodies participate in far greater realities; they are in Adam or in Christ. “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Rom. 12:5). The “sharing in the body of Christ” in the broken bread (1 Cor. 10:16) makes all who partake into one body. “Discerning the body” at the supper is so important that eating and drinking without doing so results in judgment and even in weakness, illness, and death (1 Cor. 11:27-30). The twelfth chapter of 1 Corinthians is an important text for understanding the corporate body as the body of Christ. Paul reflects on the one body into which all are baptized and draws out the implications of the church as one body with many members. Dale Martin points out that although the analogy of the social body usually supported conservative hierarchy in the ancient world, “Paul’s rhetoric questions this hierarchy” (Martin 94). In the body of Christ, the members need one another. A variety of gifts are given, and they are mutually interdependent. The parts of the social body that seem weakest are indispensable.
The body, individual and corporate, is integral to holiness. Paul images people who are “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:10). The body is something in which Paul can “carry the marks of Jesus branded on” it (Gal. 6:17). “He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil. 3:21). Paul’s body is for God. He disciplines the body so that he “should not be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27). The holiness of the body, however, cannot be only about disciplining it. It has far greater positive than negative implications. In fact, “severe treatment of the body” can have “an appearance of wisdom” (Col. 2:23) but only indulges sinful desires. Sanctification includes all the aspects of the human life, as Paul prays for “spirit and soul and body” to be “kept sound and blameless” (1 Thess. 5:23).
Many major theological loci ought to illuminate a biblically grounded understanding of the body’s relation to ethics. The doctrine of creation suggests that all those things Christians claim about creation as a whole also ought to be claimed about the body: as creation is good, so is the body. As creation is fallen, so the body is fallen as well. Creation, including the body, is completely dependent on the sovereign God. Human bodies should not be despised or idolized. The body is a good gift, one that should honor the giver.
Christian doctrine about what it means to be human, often referred to as theological anthropology, takes seriously the biblical picture discussed above when making claims about the constitution of the human being. The vast majority of the Christian tradition has understood the human being as a psychosomatic unity of body and soul. While not accepting hierarchical or moral dualism, most of the interpretative tradition has assumed that the human being is constituted both spiritually (either by a soul or by a soul and a spirit) and physically (by a body). The emphasis in recent theological discussion has been to point away from understanding this dual constitution as a moral dualism in which the physical body is negative and only the spiritual is valued. Attempting to be faithful to the place of the body in Scripture has led to a variety of efforts among contemporary philosophers and theologians to find language that denies both popular dualism and reductive materialism. In this vein, contemporary theologians have used various philosophical categories to speak about human psychosomatic unity. Some have reclaimed the language of Thomas Aquinas in which “the soul is the form of the body,” and it is impossible to understand the human being without accounting for the body. John Cooper advocates a “holistic dualism” in which body and soul are seen as integrally knit together though still separable. Advocates of nonreductive materialism take the materialist emphases of contemporary science as instructive and claim that the human being is the body even while remaining a spiritual creature. These ways of articulating a philosophical rejection of moral dualism emphasize the unity of the spiritual and the physical in the human being and so value the body as constitutive of human life before God.
The church is the body of Christ. At the least, ecclesiology suggests that God’s work for and with people includes the body, both individually and corporately. In the life of the church the human body is important, as is the way human beings relate to God through the body’s senses. References to the body in the Letter to the Ephesians unfold the connections between ecclesiology and the body. The head of the church (Eph. 5:23; cf. Col. 1:18) is Jesus Christ, who holds the body together and “promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love” (Eph. 4:16). The saints are to be equipped “for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). Christ as head of the church body nourishes it, holds it together, and “grows it with a growth that is from God” (Col. 2:19).
In the sacraments materiality meets materiality, water and wine meet flesh and blood, and something spiritual occurs. The existence of the sacraments is an affirmation of the importance of the body to Christian practice and piety. Prayer and liturgy include the body. The postures of prayer, the psychosomatic acts of worship, are at the heart of God’s purpose for bodily creatures.
Christology is central to a Christian ethics of the body In the incarnation the Word becomes flesh (John 1:14). Jesus took on all that it means to be human. Thus, in Jesus, God has a body. The body of Jesus Christ is the site of the reconciliation of humanity (Col. 1:24). Sanctification is accomplished through “the offering of the body of Jesus once for all” (Heb. 10:10). Jesus “bore our sins in his body on the cross” (1 Pet. 2:24). It is crucial to confess that Jesus has come in the flesh (1 John 4:2; 2 John 7). The particular body of Jesus, crucified and risen, is key to a biblical understanding of the body in general. In Jesus, the resurrection of the body is seen as both continuous with and discontinuous with his body before he died. The resurrection is a fleshy thing. The risen Jesus seems to walk through doors, but also he eats fish and carries the marks of his crucifixion. The resurrection of Jesus is the model for Christian hope. It is the model for what human beings might hope for the body to be. This means that salvation always includes the body.
The nature, role, and value of the human body are central to many moral questions. Embodiment is key to human life, and human beings as psychosomatic unities are always embodied in all aspects of the moral life. Classic moral emphases surrounding the body generally focused on questions about the propriety and purpose of asceticism and issues surrounding sexuality. Many people assume that Christian ethics is mostly about restricting the bodily pleasures of sexuality and eating. These strands certainly exist in the moral tradition, but careful theologians have always nuanced such
positions. If pleasures of the body are restricted, it is not because the body itself is bad; it is because those pleasures, when misdirected, may point the human being away from God. In the best of Christian tradition the goods of bodily life have been ordered and subject to discipline but also embraced as God’s good gifts.
So, in the case of sexuality, the good of marriage has always been upheld against gnostic opposition. Christian marriage is a way to glorify God in the body. In the embodied difficulties and vulnerabilities of married life, God provides one opportunity for sanctification. Christians also need to think about celibacy as a way of being embodied for the glory of God. Instead of constructing singleness as a dualistic calling that rejects the goods of the body and the importance of the body in life before God, we must see the single life much like married life. So singleness is a way of directing the body, with all its passions and desires, to God’s purposes. Where sinners want their bodies to be for themselves alone, a means of unfettered personal gratification, Christians have ways of seeing the body as being turned outward, toward God and others. Thus, both marriage and singleness are bodily vocations, ways of living an embodied life in relationship with and for God.
Where hierarchical dualism would disparage and belittle the body, a Christian ethics of the body will grant enormous significance to all aspects of bodily life. Far from being insignificant, the ordinary, physical, daily realities of embodied life matter to God. Materiality and material life are not to be shunned. Material life must be embraced, treasured, and nurtured for God’s glory. What we eat and how we eat it matters. Sexuality matters. Housework and manual labor, childbearing and childrearing, creative work and material beauty— all of these matter for the moral life. They are goods to be directed, in the power of the Holy Spirit, toward God’s glory.
Where militant naturalism would reduce the body to a collection of material stuff, a Christian ethics of the body will act on the truth that the body is itself always spiritual. The body is spiritual because it is God’s good creation central to human relationship with God. A Christian ethics of the body will, then, resist treating the body just as we treat any other material stuff. It will resist acting on the body as one more commodity in a system of consumer capitalism. The body is not a product to be bought and sold. It certainly is not a commodity to be controlled by the highest bidder. This will be important as Christians approach questions about both the beginning and the end of human life. It will also be important in a Christian analysis of products aimed at the body: plastic surgery, the wares of the beauty industry, and medical technologies. Christian ethics of the body must resist a pragmatic, utilitarian account of the body that treats it as a machine to be used.
In failing to see the body as God’s good gift meant for God’s glory, both hierarchical dualism and reductive materialism devalue the body. This devaluation can result in either extreme asceticism or extreme self-indulgence. Denigration of the body can be seen in the abuse of particular bodies, disgust for female or male embodiment, or in downplaying the importance of the physical life. Devaluing the body is seen in both overly restrictive and in viciously permissive sexuality, in the disordered eating that leaves the body wasting away and in the disordered eating that leads to obesity. The right valuing of the body recognizes it, within the economy of God’s work in the world, as a good gift. This right valuing celebrates the life of the body while directing all aspects of that life, including eating and sexuality, toward the glory of God. More recent questions centered on the body and the moral life might do well to keep this classic perspective in mind. The bodily life is very good, but, like all of life, it is subject to the condition of sin and so is in need of redemption. The incarnation and resurrection of Jesus push the ethicist to think about how redemption, holiness, and the moral life must always include the body.
How will the Spirit enable the service and glorification of God in the bodies of human beings? As we seek to answer this question in the Christian moral life, at least four areas are suggestive (see Jones). The Spirit transforms human bodies, individually and corporately through (1) bodily spiritual discipline, (2) the fruit of the Spirit nurtured in church practice, (3) embodied human love, and (4) embodied witness. Spiritual discipline acknowledges human psychosomatic unity in the moral life. As Christians engage in embodied disciplines such as prayer, reading Scripture, fasting, and works of mercy, the moral effects are embodied in their lives. Embodied church practices—hearing the word, feeling the water of baptism, tasting the supper—are used by the Spirit to grow moral fruit in our very embodied lives. When we hear, feel, taste, and see, we are transformed in love, joy, and peace. Human beings love one another as bodies. Our passions are embodied. The way we care for one another is embodied. The opportunity to love other human beings is an embodied opportunity to serve and to glorify God. The Spirit transforms our bodies into material witnesses. The Christian moral life is a life meant to reach out to the world, to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the weak and the broken. It is as bodies that we reach out, that we proclaim and live the gospel. Evangelism reaches out to the needy bodies beloved by God through embodied witness.
See also Asceticism; Celibacy; Dualism, Anthropological; Food; Gender; Health; Healthcare Ethics; Holiness; Humanity; Incarnation; Martyrdom; Monism, Anthropological; Passions; Procreation; Resurrection; Sanctity of Human Life; Self; Sex and Sexuality; Sexual Ethics; Singleness
Bibliography
Bauerschmidt, F. Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ. University of Notre Dame Press, 1999; Brown, P. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. Columbia University Press, 1988; Brown, W., N. Murphy, and H. Newton Malony, eds. Whatever Happened to the Soul: Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature. Fortress, 1998; Bynum, C. The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200—1336. Columbia University Press, 1995; Coakley, S., ed. Religion and the Body. CSRT 8. Cambridge University Press, 1997; Cooper, J. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Eerdmans, 1989; Cullmann, O. “Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament: The Ingersoll Lecture for 1955.” Pages 9-53 in Immortality and Resurrection: Death in the Western World; Two Conflicting Currents of Thought, ed. K. Stendahl. Macmillan, 1965; Green, J. Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. STI. Baker Academic, 2008; Gundry, R. Soma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology. SNTSMS 29. Cambridge University Press, 1976; Isherwood, L., and E. Stuart. Introducing Body Theology. IFT 2. Pilgrim Press, 1998; Pope John Paul II. The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan. Pauline Books, 1997; Jones, B. Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection. Oxford University Press, 2007; Martin, D. The Corinthian Body. Yale University Press, 1995; Rogers, E. Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God. Blackwell, 1999; Shults, F. Reforming Theological Anthropology: After the Philosophical Turn to Relationality. Eerdmans, 2003; Shuman, J. The Body of Compassion: Ethics, Medicine, and the Church. Westview, 1999.
Beth Felker Jones
Brain Death See Death, Definition of Bribery
A bribe is “something of value that passes between two parties to induce the bribe-taker to use his position inappropriately to the advantage of the bribe-payer” (Wrage 14). The English word bribery is represented by no single Hebrew or Greek word.
The English word bribe has been used to translate several Hebrew words: sohad, koper, mattdna, and sillum. These Hebrew words also appear in other biblical contexts where they have been translated by words such as gift, present, ransom, satisfaction, reward, and offering Other narratives describe what appears to be bribery—for example, someone taking money to deceive someone else— but none of these words is used as a descriptive adjective in those passages. The exegete must always look to the context to understand how the word should be translated.
A few direct admonitions against bribery are scattered through the law (Exod. 23:8; Deut. 16:19), wisdom literature (Pss. 15:5; 26:10; Prov. 17:23), and the prophets (Isa. 1:23; 5:23; 33:15; Amos 5:12; Mic. 3:11). These laws warn rulers and judges against accepting gifts and follow the logic that since God does not take bribes to pervert justice (Deut. 10:17), neither should they.
The law prohibits a gift that “blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right” (Exod. 23:8) and warns, “You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue” (Deut. 16:19-20). As with the advice given in Prov. 17:23 and the accusation in Amos 5:12, the issue throughout Scripture seems to be the acceptance, not the offering, of a gift that “perverts justice” or would “push aside the needy in the gate.”
The NT has no word for bribery and no direct admonitions against it. There are cases of persons taking money to pervert justice: Judas Iscariot (Matt. 26:14-16), the guards at Jesus’ tomb (Matt. 28:12), and the witnesses against Stephen (Acts 6:11-14). There is also a case of a governor expecting money before rendering a judgment: Felix (Acts 24:26).
The biblical question is not whether gifts are exchanged with an expectation of return gifts or favors. That is a constant of life. Rather, the biblical concern is whether the transaction disadvantages the poor and weak in society. Indeed, this is recognized in proverbs and in cases. Proverbs notes rather neutrally, “A bribe is like a magic stone in the eyes of those who give it; wherever they turn they prosper” (17:8). If proverbs are good advice, the theme continues: “A gift opens doors; it gives access to the great” (18:16); and “A gift in secret averts anger; and a concealed bribe in the bosom, strong wrath” (21:14).
However, the application of this criterion follows biblical values, not our contemporary values. There are two cases of a king sending a gift to another king to entice the latter to attack an enemy. Asa sent a gift to Ben-hadad of Aram, enticing him to attack Baasha of Israel, which he did (1 Kgs. 15:18). Ahaz sent a gift to Tiglath-pileser, who attacked the army of Damascus and killed Rezin (2 Kgs. 16:7—9). Neither the good king Asa nor the evil king Ahaz is judged for this use of gifts. Instances such as these lead some to dismiss the Bible as containing too many inconsistencies to serve as a moral guide on this issue (Noonan).
It is unlikely that Scripture has in view all giftgiving. Central to all culture is reciprocity (Mauss), and the form that reciprocity takes (direct, indirect, delayed, equal, unequal) helps shape society (Levi-Strauss). Gift-giving without incurring an obligation is rare in, if not absent from, human nature (Sahlins). In many places, such as Papua New Guinea, the local languages rarely have a phrase for “thank you” because words are never an adequate response to the thought and work that it takes to provide a gift. Only a return gift or action, carefully chosen and properly timed, is appropriate.
In many places in the world it is impossible to do business without first building social relationships through gift exchanges (not one, but several in a properly escalating cycle). The J apanese concept of On, for example, involves asymmetrical gift-giving that is intended to build obligations that last for generations. This is a classic case of the general rule that a quickly offered equivalent return gift completes the obligation and thus destroys the relationship, while unequal gifts mean that the relationship will continue because something is still owed.
What is identified as gift-giving by some and as bribery by others continues to be an ethical issue in international trade and even international aid. Bribery can take several forms, and it spills readily over into corruption. Government officials can be induced to do or not do their job, as in the case of the Enron failure in America or Suharto’s record of $35 billion in a lifetime (Wrage 4, 11). Low-level officials can be bribed to look the other way, as the Russian police did in an act of bribery that permitted armed Chechnyans to pass through checkpoints to reach the town where they took control of a Russian school and eventually killed 344 people, more than half of them children (Wrage 19-20). International aid program officials can be induced to move food and supplies in one way or another, as in the UN Oil-for-Food Program, which left the decisions about oil customers and food suppliers in the hands of the Iraqi government, which proceeded to demand bribes for contracts (Wrage 86-87).
While some imagine that bribery and fraud in economics and politics is an issue only outside the
West, big cases continue to explode on the scene in the United States. At this writing, the governor of Illinois has been impeached for inviting bribes in exchange for a nomination to fill a US Senate seat left open by the presidential election outcome. At the same time, one of the most profitable investors on Wall Street has been indicted for running the largest Ponzi scheme ever without raising alarm in the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with oversight of investment firms.
Only by examining the cultural context on one side, around issues of whether the gift is voluntary or coerced (Adeney 162), whether it speeds up what should be done anyway or changes an outcome from a legal to an illegal practice, and whether the decision disadvantages the poor (because they lose out or because they cannot afford the gift), and by examining the biblical context on the other side, around issues of higher laws such as love, justice, and mercy, will Christians be able to make decisions about what constitutes a bribe and what constitutes a gift. This is the hermeneutical task of the church (Hays).
See also Business Ethics; Loans; Poverty and Poor; Wealth
Bibliography
Adeney, B. Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multicultural World. InterVarsity, 1995; Hays, R. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, and New Creation; A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. HarperSanFrancisco, 1996; Mauss, M. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Trans. W. Halls. W. W. Norton, 2000 [1925]; Noonan, J., Jr. Bribes. Macmillan, 1984; Sahlins, M. Stone Age Economics. Aldine, 1972; Wrage, A. Bribery and Extortion: Undermining Business, Governments, and Security. Praeger Security International, 2007.
Michael A. Rynkiewich Burial and Cremation See Death and Dying
The seeds of this relatively new field of applied ethics were planted long ago, but they have begun to flower only in the last couple of generations as one of several areas of ethics and the professions in a more highly differentiated global civil society than the ancient and early modern worlds could have imagined. In fact, the world economic situation is now so vast and complex, and some of its crises so deep, that business ethics must reexamine its foundations. No longer can it rely only on the maxims of the ancient classics or on the libertarian theories of Adam Smith or turn to the critical liberationist theories of Karl Marx. Today, most are democratic capitalists or social democrats, and even these must take a longer, wider, and deeper view of our situation—that is, take social-historical, comparative-civilizational, and religiously based ethical motifs into account at every point.
Business in the sense of production of goods for trade and peaceful exchange for mutual enrichment has, of course, been conducted on a modest scale for as long as we can trace the interactions of weavers, potters, and toolmakers with hunters, herders, and farmers. Further, bartering “markets” have been frequent in exchanges between primal societies almost as long.
Ancient trade routes crisscrossed Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East long before Europeans arrived in the Americas, and we now know that such routes also connected pre-Columbian civilizations in what is now Latin America using silver and gold as media of exchange, and that wampum was a form of extratribal currency among the first peoples of North America. These facts indicate that goods were prepared for trade, and that there was enough of an ethic in place for it to be peacefully conducted from very early on in human history. Where there were written languages, we can find traces of moral advice about being diligent in work, honest in dealings, modest in desires for things, prudent in the use of resources, and aware that wealth and plenty, if not ill-gotten, are divine blessings to be enjoyed with thankfulness. Also, we are to honor those who recognize that it is a duty to give alms for the poor, to leave grain in the fields for gleaning by those who lack such resources, and to care for the widow and orphan who are left without a provider, as repeatedly commanded in the Bible.
Elsewhere, we also find references to a jus gentium, a cross-cultural ethic of “fairness” mixed with warnings against its violation, suggesting that a common morality functioned to regulate trading between peoples from different societies, although caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) also was a warning in the marketplaces. Indeed, Greco-Roman and early Christian authors thought that these pointed to a lex natura that, like the wisdom literature of the Bible, seems to assume that all people can recognize morally just and unjust forms of trade and human relationships. And, the OT books of law and prophecy contain many references to the importance of being trustworthy in “dealings” and many warnings about treacherous and false dealings with the neighbor and the exploitation of the weak (see Stackhouse et al. 37-198).
In the modern West, and increasingly around the world in developing societies, business reflects a growing distinction between the institutions that produce for immediate use, such as nuclear or extended family households or primal communal villages, and chartered firms or incorporated industrial or financial institutions, whose task it is to produce goods and services for an impersonal market in a commonwealth. This has entailed removing production from the household or local community, shifting it to the latifundium (an early plantation or landed estate as a form of agribusiness with intensive manual labor) or to the more recent factory, which left the family or clan as consuming units of items purchased by wages or salaries.
Moreover, the modern West saw in the growing urban centers a remarkable increase of civil institutions, often mothered by church-related institutions (especially monastic and charity organizations), which won the legal right of selfgovernance and the provision of goods and services independently of familial ties and political regime. These created a great number of incorporated institutions that generated the social space for modern civil society and served an ever-wider public. Socially, this has meant that paralleling a separation of church and state has also been a separation of corporation and state, although the moral influence of religion has continued in indirect, sometimes attenuated forms in familial, political, and economic life.
These institutions developed the pluralistic fabric of modern civil society on which modern business depends. However, they are essentially built not to increase wealth but rather to increase the quality of life. These include schools and universities, hospitals and clinics, think tanks and research centers, artistic associations and singing societies, museums and orchestras, service and advocacy organizations, political parties and humanitarian institutions, and especially religious bodies that draw our attention to nonmaterial, socially transcending values.
The history of the development of the pluralistic spheres of society reveals that the church—which itself declared its independence from tribal particularity, imperial authority, and the ultimacy of material things—founded or fostered these other spheres of civil society in cultures where it gained influence. Similar effects were only partly realized by the temple, the synagogue, and the mosque. The other spheres under Christian influence often enhanced the creation of wealth indirectly by the nurture of values that shape how and why people work, relate to others, and understand what is to be treasured, but they betray their central purposes if they are used primarily for personal or group gain. The professionals in these other spheres do not want to become “merely a business,” and often they see business as little more than an organized form of greed, self-interest, and materialistic preoccupation. Yet these same professionals and their institutions must be financially supported, directly through business- or government-based grants or indirectly through invested funds or the donations of the employees of those who work in government or in that sphere of society that is now called “business,” located primarily in for-profit corporations that are embedded in a complex of civil institutions on which they depend.
At the same time, most of the nonprofit institutions that exercise increased influence in now globally oriented civil societies have a business office, comptroller or treasurer, fund-raising and budgeting staff, or accounting division to manage the relation of income to expenses, to allocate resources, and to manage property, insurance, employee benefits, and salary ratios. In fact, the management of nonprofit organizations has become a profession in itself, and both for-profit and nonprofit institutions, like families and governments, must obey one primary negative law of business: if output exceeds intake, upkeep becomes downfall.
As these institutions of civil society have increased in number and influence in highly differentiated societies, much of ethical reflection has developed in directions that are no longer rooted in theories of personal virtue, even if that remains critical in regard to the character of business leaders and employees. Still, ethical reflection has become more and more rooted in first principles of moral law, some of which have become incarnated in civil and criminal law and in the particular excellencies that are required to perform the various tasks associated with the specific purposes of particular institutions. Where this is the dominant mode of ethical reflection, the case study tends to be the focus. At its best, the key question becomes how to make executive decisions under a given set of conditions that can resolve apparent conflicts between what is right and what is good for the firm and how to do good while doing well. At its worst, the question becomes how to make decisions so
as to avoid prosecution or bankruptcy.
Although traditions of deontological and teleological ethics from the Enlightenment have been applied to medical, law, architectural, and engineering schools during the last several centuries, only in the last half century have most institutions of higher learning rapidly developed departments of business or management stressing ethics.
Indeed, the post-World War II period has seen the founding, funding, and rapid expansion of graduate schools of business and management, many of which aspire to match the excellence implied by the classical professions, usually with required courses in business ethics. This flurry of development indicates that this sphere of life has its own distinctive ethos that is having increased pervasiveness in modern and modernizing societies. Its ethos is one to which the first principles of right and wrong must be applied, and ends are defined in the context of a sphere of society that must be dedicated to the creation of wealth that serves the commonwealth as well as rewards the owners, managers, and employees of the business who deploy their wealth, skills, and energy to create an ever-generating enterprise. This will, of course, demand an adaptive system that produces goods and services for changing the world, makes a reasonable profit, and makes it over a long period of time—a condition that rules out methods or gimmicks that offer the illusion of big profits in the short term (such as Ponzi schemes) and whose moral base is something deeper than efforts to avoid getting caught.
To this end, a large industry in its own right, the production of textbooks for teaching ethics, has been developed. These books testify to the fact that a number of areas need moral attention. The best of these texts treat areas such as conflicts of interest, the boundaries of collusion and competition, corporate governance, advertising, accounting, marketing, pay scales, working conditions, personnel, customer and community relations, ecological responsibility, racial discrimination, sexual harassment, affirmative action, socially responsible investments, and issues related to legal demands in regard to usury, contracts, property rights, bribery, health and safety regulations, liability, taxation, and so on (see Beauchamp et al.; Hoffman et al.).
Furthermore, there is a history of moral reasoning in the intervening years between the jus gentium of ancient pre-Christian reflections and modern management training, for there are long-recognized ethical principles and images of good and evil that are conveyed by economic motifs. Beyond the commands to cultivate the earth and to be good stewards of the natural and cultural resources, to relieve poverty and want by direct sharing and the reduction of debts that keep the poor in thrall, even when done as a matter of shrewd self-interest (Luke 16:9), there are famous stories such as that of the good Samaritan, a religiously suspect trader who surpasses the orthodox religious leaders in actual compassion (Luke 10:25-37); the prodigal son, a wastrel who could graciously be restored to his family when he recognizes his foolish ways (provoking the jealous anger of his obedient, hardworking brother) (Luke 15:11-32); the generous owner of the vineyard who paid part-time workers a full wage in their need (Matt. 20:1-16); and servants who multiplied the wealth entrusted to them by the master by trading in the marketplace versus those who took no such risks (Matt. 25:14-30 // Luke 19:11-27). These stories are widely acknowledged to be exemplary parables for those who are to have priority in the kingdom of God, but it is of great interest that business themes are used to illustrate this.
It must be admitted that there is no systematic treatment of business ethics in the Scriptures, and that there are occasional assumptions about slavery (Philemon), the end of the world (Matt. 24 pars.), and the demand for communistic practice in the church (Acts 4:32-5:11) that, if taken as normative (as occasionally has been tried), would make business practices inhumane, immoral, and/ or impossible. Moreover, there are stern warnings about making money the focus of life (e.g., Luke 12:15-34), and most translations of the NT keep the word mammon from the Aramaic, since that word for money has taken on the meaning of a false god that some believe can save one from meaninglessness, emptiness, and death by trusting it above all. It is not money or wealth that is the root of all evil, but rather the love and idolatry of money (e.g., 1 Tim. 6:10).
Still, there are passages in the Bible and traditions in Christian spirituality that support the development of a business ethic for a complex economy, just as there are passages in the Scriptures and traditions of other religions that enhance or inhibit that possibility (see Hill; Miller; O’Brien and Paeth). In order to discern such elements, we must recognize that business does not constitute the whole of an economy. The form of governance (e.g., constitutional democracy versus tyranny or mass populism) makes a great difference in terms of the kind of business life that can be developed, as do both the laws governing property, inheritance, taxation, and the ease of forming corporations. The same is true of pervasive cultural attitudes toward nature and human nature and thus toward the kinds of technology and social relations that are thought to be legitimate. And the ethical principles guiding politics, law, technology, and human relations are influenced greatly by the dominant religious orientations that shape the whole society. That is why, for instance, different societies guided by different religions develop different kinds of business habits and institutions and why they adapt to global trends in divergent ways (see Harrison et al.; Berger et al.).
In short, business ethics can be taught in ways that are highly practical with specific case-oriented discussions of how to make managerial decisions that calculate the best possible or the least harmful results with the lowest level of damage to the business enterprise. Or business ethics can be taught as a way of examining civilizational dynamics, since business is fatefully intertwined with whole societies—indeed, intertwined today with the developing global civil society that has had a series of severe crises in the twentieth century and now in the twenty-first. If the latter choice is made, business ethics will be more historically, sociologically, and religiously based. It is the presumption of this choice that only it can start to overcome the pathologies that derive from irresponsible practices and unjust institutions while preserving the benefits of modern business.
See also Capitalism; Consumerism; Debt; Economic Development; Economic Ethics; Globalization; Just Wage; Koinonia; Leadership, Leadership Ethics; Professional Ethics; Profit; Wealth
Bibliography
Beauchamp, T., et al., eds. Ethical Theory and Business Practice. 8th ed. Prentice Hall, 2008; Berger, P., et al. Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World. Oxford University Press, 2002; Harrison, L., et al. Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. Basic Books, 2000; Hill, A. Just Business: Christian Ethics for the Marketplace. IVP Academic, 2008; Hoffman, M., et al., eds. Business Ethics: Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality. 4th ed. McGraw-Hill, 2002; Miller, D. God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement. Oxford University Press, 2006; O’Brien, T., and S. Paeth. Religious Perspectives on Business Ethics: An Anthology. Rowman & Littlefield, 2006; Stackhouse, M. Globalization and Grace. GG 4. Continuum, 2007; Stackhouse, M., et al., eds. On Moral Business: Classical and Contemporary Resources for Ethics and Economic Life. 2nd ed. Eerdmans, 1995.
Max L. Stackhouse