It is upon this that our whole Western culture has been built: The universe had a personal beginning—a personal beginning on the high order of the Trinity.
—Francis Schaeffer
One goal of rhetoric is the apologia, the articulate and well-reasoned defense of belief. During the rhetoric stage, the student should certainly learn to defend his own faith without resorting to rhetorical abuses—ad hominem attacks, abusive fallacies, black-and-white fallacies, or any of the other illegitimate arguments forbidden by both logic and rhetoric. And the study of rhetoric should protect the student from abuse of his own beliefs by others.
Religion and rhetoric have an even deeper relationship, though. Classical rhetoric cannot be pursued apart from the considerations of faith. In Rhetoric, Aristotle writes that the man who wishes to master rhetoric must be able
(1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions—that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.1
The ability to reason logically is learned during the logic stage; rhetoric itself aims to name and describe human emotions. But an understanding of human character and goodness in its various forms cannot be separated from our belief about who human beings are, where they came from, and what they are essentially like. Goodness itself cannot be defined without making serious faith decisions: either goodness resides in a Being, or it exists as a social construct.
This is the foundation of ethics.
Nor can ethics be discussed in some sort of “neutral” fashion. If you are a theist, you believe that human character comes from a Creator and reflects some of the Creator’s qualities. If you are a materialist, you believe that human character is primarily the result of biological factors, some of which can be controlled, some of which can’t. If you are a Christian, you believe that moral absolutes are binding upon every human being. If you are an agnostic, you believe that moral absolutes are unknowable and that making pronouncements about moral absolutes thus reaches the height of arrogance.
What sort of neutral ground can these views meet on?
None. Rhetoric involves an intensive discussion of social ethics, the nature of good and evil, individual responsibility, and the extent to which the manipulation of emotions is morally acceptable. None of these issues can be tackled without a grasp of ethics. And ethics is, itself, inseparable from our view of God, our belief about the nature of humankind, and our expectations of society.
The rhetoric exercises we recommend—evaluating the ideas and philosophies of the great books, writing about the moral and ethical implications of technology—have to be done in the context of faith. Tolerance for the faith of others doesn’t mean that the student simply throws open his arms and says, “We’re all right” that makes nonsense of five thousand years of deeply held and contradictory beliefs. The tolerance taught by rhetoric involves the student’s holding on to his own deep, well-reasoned convictions, while simultaneously treating others with respect. Respect doesn’t mean admitting that someone else is right. It does mean refraining from resorting to abusive fallacies and the rhetoric of propaganda so that those of different faiths can seriously and peacefully argue about ideas.
We think that every rhetoric-stage student should make at least a preliminary study of ethics. Since ethics is related to belief, we can’t (obviously) recommend an ethics text that will satisfy all home schoolers. The texts we recommend are those we’ve used ourselves—as Protestant Christians. We encourage you, as you work through the rhetoric stage with your high-school student, to formulate your own beliefs. Use logic and rhetoric to extract what you really believe from the cloudy ideas that may be swirling around you. And then base your own discussions of ethics—right and wrong—self-consciously on those beliefs.
RESOURCES
Consult your own religious or intellectual community, or make use of the following resources:
Christian Ethics
Schaeffer, Francis. How Should We Then Live? Wheaton, Ill.: Good News Books, 2005.
$19.99. Order from any bookstore. An outline of Western history and the place of Christian morality within it. Special emphasis on art and philosophy.
Wilkens, Steve. Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics: An Introduction to Theories of Right and Wrong. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1995.
$16.00. Order from any bookstore. The basics of cultural relativism, emotivism, utilitarianism, situation ethics, and deontology, with an evaluation of each.
Jewish Ethics
Gittelsohn, Roland B. How Do I Decide? A Contemporary Jewish Approach to What’s Right and What’s Wrong. West Orange, N.J.: Behrman House, 1989.
$11.95. Order directly from Behrman House, which also offers other titles on ethics.
Grishaver, Joel Lurie. You Be the Judge: A Collection of Ethical Cases and Jewish Answers. Los Angeles, Calif.: Torah Aura Publications, 2000.
$9.95. Order directly from Torah Aura, which also offers other titles on ethics.